King's Test (61 page)

"Go ahead,
Your Majesty." Sagan spoke almost irritably. "If you're
going to kill me, do so now. Or do you plan to talk me to death?"

"Stand up."
Dion licked his dry lips.

"Oh, no."
The Warlord shook his head. "I remain on my knees before my
king. You must kill me as I am, Your Majesty. Kneeling, unarmed, at
your feet."

Dion gritted his
teeth. "You don't think I can! I can kill! I've killed before!"

"I know. I
saw your bloody handiwork aboard
Defiant.
But it's one thing
to kill men in battle, when you're fighting for your life, when
you're scared. Me, you must murder in cold blood. You must watch me
die."

"This is
another test, isn't it?" Dion shouted, losing control. Tears of
anger flooded his eyes. "Another one of your goddam tests! And
what do I have to do to pass? Kill you! That's it, isn't it? I have
to kill you because if I don't you'll think I'm weak, spineless, not
fit to rule a hill of ants!"

He raised the
weapon, aiming at the Warlord's throat, the one place left vulnerable
by the helmet and the armor. He could barely see through his tears.
Sagan had become nothing to him but a shining blur of gold and
blood-red. "Make your peace with that God of yours, Derek Sagan!
Because this is one test I will pass!"

Dion summoned
the power of the Blood Royal. Electricity surged through his body,
danced in his nerves. The energy flooded him, flooded the gun.

He was
clearheaded, in control. Carefully, he took aim and fired.

. . . quod
per sortem sternit fortem, mecum omnes plangite!

. . . and since
by fate the strong are overthrown, weep ye all with me!

Carl Orff,
Carmina Burana

"My fault,"
Maigrey said, staring at the body of the Adonian. slowly revolving on
the silver chain. "All my fault. . .

Marcus whispered
urgently, "My lady! We've got to get out of here!"

"Too late.
We're caught." She shook herself, seemed to come out of a daze.
"And I'm not leaving without what I came for."

Detaching the
sword from her hand, she caught hold of a low limb of the tree from
which Snaga Ohme hung and started to pull herself up. Marcus,
realizing her intent, caught hold of her. "Begging your pardon,
your ladyship, but let me do that."

Maigrey glanced
up at the corpse, at the starjewel dangling just below the left ear.
Her stomach wrenched; her hands weakened, nearly losing their grasp.
She was thankful for the offer and was tempted to give in. The moment
she recognized that temptation, she steeled herself against it,
rebuked herself for her weakness.

"It's my
responsibility, centurion. Besides, you can't use the bloodsword."
Maigrey pulled herself up into the tree until she was level with the
head of the gruesome object that had once been the Adonian.

"My fault,"
she repeated through clenched teeth. Ohme's hands were tied securely
behind him. This had been murder, not suicide. Not that she had ever
suspected suicide. Adonians think far too well of themselves to leave
the universe poorer by their absence.

The silver chain
had been twisted tightly around his neck and attached to a hook
embedded in an overhanging tree limb. The Adonian's wrists were wet
with blood. He'd struggled against his fate, the ropes cutting into
the flesh of his arms as the chain cut into his neck. Death had been
long in coming, his own weight dragging him down, strangling him
slowly, slowly. . . .

Maigrey swung
the bloodsword. The blade sliced through the silver chain. The body
plummeted to the ground, landed in a twisted heap at Marcus's feet.
The centurion bent over it, obviously intent on retrieving the
starjewel. Maigrey leapt lightly from the tree, shoved him aside.

Cursed, defiled.

She knelt beside
the corpse, cringed at the touch of the fast-chilling flesh beneath
her fingers. The jewel was dark and slippery with the Adonian's
blood. The chain had sunk so deeply into the flesh it had almost
completely disappeared. Struggling to get a grip on it, she slid her
fingers beneath the chain and finally wrenched it free. She clasped
the starjewel thankfully in her hand, rose to her feet, and very
nearly blacked out. Marcus caught her, held her, steadied her.

"I'm all
right," she said thickly, drawing in deep gulps of air. The
sword's light was dimming; her weakness was affecting her power to
wield it. Angrily, she thrust the jewel on its broken chain beneath
the breastplate of her armor. The pointed crystal pierced her flesh.
The pain was welcome, helped her clear her head. The sword's light
grew brighter.

"Now we can
leav—" she began.

"My lady!"
Caius shouted. "Look ou—"

A flare of laser
light, a blast that registered somewhere near the door.

"A kill,"
reported a mechanized voice, echoing in the darkness.

Marcus darted
down the path, Maigrey beside him. They dove through the vegetation
and came within sight of the exit.

"Down!"
the centurion gasped, reaching out and pulling Maigrey to the ground.
A Corasian trundled into sight, spinning around, seeking a target. It
fired at the sound; an inoffensive beam of light streaked over their
heads.

"Miss,"
reported the same mechanized voice, which seemed vaguely familiar to
Maigrey, though she couldn't take time to think why.

It's only one of
the target robots!" Maigrey whispered, almost laughing in
relief.

"No, it
isn't, my lady," the centurion returned grimly. "Look!"
He gestured forward.

Cautiously,
Maigrey lifted her head. Caius lay unmoving, his body sprawled in the
hallway.

"Your
comrade isn't fond of playing practical jokes, is he?" she
whispered.

The Corasian's
robot head rotated, trying to zero in on the noise.

Marcus shook his
head.

"Then we
can assume he's dead. ..."

The door began
to close, sliding shut, sealing off their only way out. The robot
stood between them and the exit.

"I'll draw
its fire!" Maigrey shouted to her guard. "You hold open
that door!"

She jumped to
her feet, flaring sword in her hand, the bloodsword's shielding
device activated. The Corasian robot swiveled to face her. The
centurion made a desperate attempt to dodge around it. The robot
ignored Maigrey. Its weapons system, built into its body, fired at
Marcus. The beam was lethal, blowing up parts of the artificial
jungle, showering the centurion with bits of plastic, wire, and
polystyrene, but he managed to avoid the hit. Twisting in mid-air, he
crashed down among the foliage, uninjured but far from the rapidly
closing door.

"Miss."
This time, the mechanized voice seemed amused.

Maigrey raced
forward, switching her sword to attack mode, and smashed the blade
into the Corasian before it could fire again. The robot burst apart,
its lights sizzled, its insides smoked, and it went lifeless.

"A kill,"
conceded the mechanized voice.

Marcus, on his
feet again, made a despairing lunge for the door, crashed into it
bodily as it boomed shut.

A troillian
warrior leapt up out of the jungle undergrowth directly in front of
Maigrey. She reacted, but she was too late. The warrior fired at her
point-blank. The lasgun's beam struck her in the head.

She was nearly
blinded by the bright light, but beyond that, nothing happened. The
robot troillian immediately went dark, and sank back down into the
fake plants.

"That would
have been a kill," the mechanized voice said. "But I don't
want you dead, fair lady."

Maigrey gasped
for breath, closed eyes that burned from the light. Sweat chilled on
her body beneath the armor. The bloodsword's glow dimmed, nearly went
out.

"Abdiel
..."

"My lady,
I'm with you!"

Maigrey opened
her eyes, tried desperately to blink away the blinding afterimage.
"Marcus! Keep down! Don't move!"

The centurion
ignored her command, lunged through the jungle to try to reach her
side.

A robot Corasian
popped out from behind a tree, fired. The blast struck the centurion
in the back. He fell heavily to the ground and lay without moving.

"A kill."

The darkness
around her was lifeless as the artificial jungle. The target ranges
were soundproofed. No one can hear me scream, Maigrey realized. No
one had heard Snaga Ohme's scream before the chain cut it off. The
door's sealed shut. No way out.

Maigrey felt
Abdiel's probe, felt the mind-seizer try to enter her brain.

The bloodsword!
Those who use the bloodsword are connected mentally.

Feverishly, she
jerked the needles out of her palm, tossed the sword on the ground,
far from her. She might have used it to defend herself, but logic
told her the sword could be a greater danger to her than a help. Only
one weapon would serve against Abdiel—and that was Maigrey's
own mind and she wasn't strong enough to wield such a weapon alone.

She tried to
establish the link with Sagan.

Abdiel
intervened. "Calling for help, are you, my dear? I'm afraid your
call can't be completed as dialed. There's no one on the other end.
The Warlord is dead. And so is Dion. It's come down to you and me,
fair lady. Only the two of us."

Dead! Both of
them dead!

The vision came
to her of Dion pointing a gun, of the Warlord on his knees before the
boy, of deadly beams shooting out of both ends of the treacherous
weapon, the murderer dying even as he killed. The vision was real,
too real. Surreal. Maigrey burned with shared pain, but she didn't
feel the emptiness of death.

Somehow, Abdiel
had been deceived, but Maigrey didn't dare concentrate on the Warlord
long enough to learn the birth. The mind-seizer believes them both to
be dead, she thought. Let him.

But it meant
that she would have to face him alone.

Maigrey
struggled against the probe that was like a worm trying to bore its
way into her consciousness, seeking out weak, soft spots in her
defense.

"You have
the starjewel with you, don't you, fair lady?" Abdiel continued.
"I watched you take it from the corpse. "

That horrible
moment came back to her: the dead eyes staring at her, the terrible
distortion of the bloated face, the blood on the Adonian's wrists.

Maigrey pushed
the memory away, deliberately kept her mind dark and empty while she
tried to shut down circuits, erase anything in her consciousness that
could be used to destroy her.

"Don't
waste your pity on the Adonian, Lady Maigrey. He never intended to
give the star back to you. It was an ambush. As you suspected, Ohme
realized that the starjewel is the missing element—the
starjewel arms the bomb. He lured you to this range to murder you,
assuming that with you dead, he would be able to recover the bomb.
Unfortunately for the Adonian. my disciple arrived on the scene
first. Would you like to witness the Adonian's execution, my lady?
You will find it most entertaining."

Maigrey saw a
vivid picture in her mind, realized she was watching Ohme's last
agonized moments of life. The body twisted and jerked as the chain
tightened slowly around the neck. He gasped, fought, struggled . . .
and then, suddenly, Maigrey was Ohme! She was hanging from the tree.
The chain was slicing through her flesh, cutting off her air. The
pain was excruciating. She couldn't breathe. Terrified, she gasped,
fought, struggled . . .

No! It wasn't
happening to her! She was herself, not the Adonian.

Maigrey regained
her own reality, but with her success came the numb despair of
knowing that it had actually been failure. Abdiel was the one who had
succeeded. He had gained entry to her mind. And he knew, because he'd
been there before, how to open the Pandora's box Maigrey kept stored
in the attic of her subconscious.

"Our host
is dead. 'The party's over,' as the old song goes." Abdiel
appeared before her, moving out of the darkness. In his hand, he held
a nuke lamp; the harsh glare lit his face, shone brightly in the
shadowless eyes, gleamed off the decaying flesh of head and hand. "I
will escort you to your spaceplane, Lady Maigrey. You will invite me
inside and turn over to me the bomb and the starjewel. And then, if
you are very good, my dear, I might let you join Derek Sagan in
whatever afterlife he finds himself."

Part of Maigrey
wanted to fight with her bare hands, to hurl herself at the old man
and claw his face with her nails. But part of her remained cowering
in the attic that had become her mind, weeping, afraid to move,
afraid of so many, many things that she knew were waiting to reach
out and rend her apart.

Abdiel, a
pleasant smile on his lips, came closer and reached out his left
hand. Needles flashed. Maigrey shrank back before him, but he caught
hold of her arm, her right arm. Lifting it, he turned her right hand
palm upward. . . .

The centurion,
Marcus, lay in the darkness, silent, unmoving, watching. The blast,
though it had knocked him down, had not penetrated the armor. He lay
where he fell, feigning death, waiting for his chance, praying only
that somehow God would put a weapon into his hands.

He had no idea
what was wrong with the Starlady, but obviously this man had some
type of mental hold over her. Marcus willed her silently to fight
against it, was shaken and appalled when he saw her hurl away the
bloodsword, her only means of defense. The weapon hit the ground,
slid to a stop near his hand.

Marcus stared at
it. A weapon. God had answered his prayer, but He demanded a
sacrifice in return. The bloodsword could be used safely by only the
Blood Royal. Anyone of ordinary birth and genetic structure jabbing
those needles into his hand would inject himself with death. And
there was the possibility he might do so and still not be able to
activate the weapon. The centurion had been trained by the Warlord in
the techniques of mental discipline, but he doubted if he had the
knowledge and the ability to channel his nerve impulses correctly,
the strength to combat the inevitable pain that must go with the
sword's use.