The Lost King (34 page)

"I've never told
anyone about that night at the palace. And it's not me talking now.
It's the booze. I lied when I said I wasn't there the night of the
revolution. The night that came to be called '
die Freiheit
.'
Freedom! Hah! I was there." Dixter lifted the brandy bottle with
a shaking hand and poured. Most of the liquor made it into the glass.

"God help me! I
was there."

Where sceptered Angels
held their residence And sat as Princes . . .

John Milton,
Paradise
Lost

"Minas Tares—the
royal city. God, it was beautiful. Maybe it was everything else they
say now—decadent and extravagant. People living in unimaginable
wealth while millions went hungry. All I know is that for me it was
the center of everything that was wonderful and lovely. Music, art,
literature, architecture—the best came to Minas Tares. It was
all destroyed in the name of 'democracy.'

"We knew what was
coming, I think. The king knew, certainly. But he either didn't want
to believe it or he couldn't decide what to do. Starfire was a good
man, but he was weak. His ministers weren't much better. As Yeats
says, 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of
passionate intensity.'" Dixter stared at the brandy, then
drained the glass all in one gulp. He closed his eyes, drew a breath,
and expelled it in a sigh. "Anyway ... I was there that night
for two reasons. One, I'd just been made a general. Me and about five
hundred other human and alien commanders from all over the galaxy. It
was quite a ceremony. 'For meritorious valor.' The king himself
pinned the stars on my collar.

"So I was on Minas
Tares for that, and I was there because she was there. It was the
night the Golden Squadron was being honored by their peers-—the
Guardians—for their battle against the Corasians on some
planet, somewhere. Maigrey was attending, but her most important
reason for being there was to be with her best friend, Semele
Starfire, wife of the crown prince, who was due to have her baby
anytime."

Dixter didn't look at
Dion when he spoke. The boy flinched but kept quiet. It seemed to him
that the general had forgotten he was there, had forgotten their
danger. Dion remembered but he didn't want to remind the general,
fearful of breaking the spell. Besides, to Dion, it wasn't danger, it
was deliverance.

"I guess you've
heard all about the traitors within the Royal Army who detected the
rebel fleet entering orbit around the planet and didn't report it.
The base fell. There wasn't even a fight; most of the soldiers joined
the rebels. When Robes's army held control of the city, he ordered
them to march on the palace.

"I was in the
palace ... or rather on the grounds. The palace was a city in itself.
Beautiful buildings, tree-lined boulevards, galleries, shops,
restaurants. Thousands of people lived and worked there. It was
filled with light and music, day and night. I was there by
invitation—it was the only way you could get in. Maigrey's
invitation, of course. She wanted to congratulate me. We were going
to celebrate. "

Dixter reached for the
bottle, but it was empty. He gripped it, hard, and stared into the
past.

"The rebels hit
the palace with everything they had. I'd just come through the first
series of gates when the first wave struck. I knew in an instant what
it was—there'd been rumors and civil unrest for months. Some of
the king's own personal troops switched over to the rebel side. Most
of them stayed loyal, though. It was chaos. No one knew whose side
anybody was on. People shot each other down like dogs in the name of
freedom.

"We were
outnumbered a thousand to one. They came out of the skies, poured
like rats up through the sewers. What fighting there was wasn't
resistance so much as plain frustrated anger. I was unarmed but I
grabbed a lasgun from a corpse and fought until what I figured would
be my end. A mortar round saved my life. The explosion blew me into a
ditch. It was nighttime. In the confusion, no one noticed me, or if
they did they must have thought I was dead. When I came to, it was
all over.

"I could see
flames on the horizon and I knew it was the palace. My one thought
was Maigrey. I took the uniform off the body of a rebel solider, a
sergeant, and put it on, grabbed his blaster, and headed for the
palace.

"The night's like
a horrible dream to me. I'd been hurt in the explosion, but the pain
didn't seem to register. It just made things unreal. Still, I don't
think that even death will blot out my memory of what I saw that
night. Robes's troops were out of control—drunk on liquor and
blood. Rape, torture, burning, looting—I saw it all and yet I
didn't see it. I made myself
not
see it because I knew if I
looked I'd open fire and keep on blasting until they cut me down. I
had one idea in my mind—Maigrey.

"After a while, I
welcomed the confusion, because it let me go where I pleased. I kept
heading straight for the palace. I could see it now—its
steelglass spires glistening in the flames. Whenever I came up on
someone who seemed halfway sober, I asked what had happened there. I
heard all sorts of gruesome rumors—the king was dead, murdered.
Everyone in the palace was dead, the Guardians slaughtered. One
soldier came past, wearing one of those blue robes. It was torn and
black with blood. I don't know how I stayed on my feet. The
unreality, I suppose. Part of me still couldn't believe it was
happening.

"When I reached
the palace, I got a shock. Here, everything was under control. The
troops were cold sober, disciplined— an army, not a mob—and
they were standing guard against their own. I found out later who
their leader was. I might have expected. Derek Sagan. They all wore
that new crest of his—the phoenix rising from flames.

"I picked out a
side entrance and waited for my chance to get inside. Fortunately, a
brawl among the rebel troops drew the guards away from their posts.
The soldiers'd heard rumors of loot inside the palace and were trying
to break in. The guards beat them back with the butt ends of their
guns or stunned them. During the confusion, I slipped through the
door.

"I'd been in the
palace before—Maigrey'd taken me around. But I damn near didn't
recognize the place. Some of it had burned; Sagan's troops were busy
putting out the fires. There'd been explosions, holes blown in the
walls, floors knocked down, staircases hanging out in the middle of
no where. I was standing there, staring, trying to orient myself,
when one of the soldiers came up to me.

"'What's your
business here, Sergeant?'

"'Dispatches.' I
spoke automatically. I don't even remember thinking about it. I put
my hand over my breast pocket. 'For the commander.'

I didn't care anymore.
I knew, now, she was dead. I
prayed
she was dead, after what
I'd seen. I was dead myself, inside, and I just plain didn't care.
The soldier looked at me and must have decided that since I was sober
I was telling the truth. He motioned me on.

"'Commander
Sagan's in the computer center. Up those stairs and turn to your
right.'

"Sagan! My mind
reeled. Derek Sagan. A traitor. Of course, by now he knew me.
Maigrey'd introduced us. I wondered if she'd known he was going to
betray his king. If so, that alone must have killed her.

"You can be sure
that, once the soldier was out of sight, I
didn't
go in
Sagan's direction. I made my way to the hall where she'd told me they
held the royal banquets. The chamber was enormous. It took up almost
half one whole floor. And it was filled with bodies. The Guardians
hadn't been armed, you see. That was part of the plot.

"I searched among
the dead for what seemed like hours. I saw the body of the king,
lying in his throne. Robes put it out that Starfire had died of a
heart attack, but that wasn't true. I saw the hole—burned
through the crown, burned through his skull. But I didn't find
Maigrey. I couldn't find any of the Golden Squadron, and I began to
hope. I went out into the corridors again, searching—for what
I'm not sure. There was even this crazed idea in my head to go find
Sagan and ask him.

"It was quiet in
the palace; the silence seemed eerie after the noise outside. There
was almost no one around—a few soldiers moving about on
business, a few standing guard, but most of them were outside. There
were no medics, tending to the wounded. There were no wounded. Only
corpses. Whenever someone passed me I looked purposeful. I walked
quickly, like I knew where I was going. Amazing, what that'll do for
you.

"Not really
thinking much about it, I made my way to the king's private living
rooms. Of course, I'd never been up there. I couldn't have entered
now except his own personal guards were dead. I'm not sure why I
came. It seemed to me later that I was stumbling around in a fog of
pain and despair, but I guess I must have had some kind of rational
thought process. I think it was in my mind that if Maigrey could have
escaped she would have gone looking for her friend, Semele. And that
would have brought Maigrey here. And it was here I found her."

Dixter's voice was
thick, but his words were clear, obviously coming from somewhere deep
inside him that the liquor couldn't touch.

"She was lying
across a doorway, the bloodsword in her hand, as if she'd been
holding that door against attack. Her hair covered her face and it
was matted with blood. I sank down onto the floor beside her. There
was no strength left, nothing left in me. I knew she was dead and I
was thankful she'd died quickly. I lifted her hand and put it to my
lips and the flesh was warm. That jolted me. I found a pulse. She
wasn't
dead!"

Dixter looked at Dion,
bringing the boy back into focus. "She wasn't dead. Do you
understand? None of the other wounded had been allowed to survive.
Everyone had been ruthlessly slaughtered. But not her. Of all the
things I saw that night, that seemed to me to be the strangest. Her
enemy had struck her down and then left her. But I couldn't take time
to think about it.

"The wound on her
face was terrible, I could tell that much, though I didn't dare
examine it. Her blood-soaked hair had stuck to it, formed a kind of
bandage over it. Carefully I stripped off her blue robes—that
would have marked her for death for certain—and I dressed her
in the clothes of a murdered nurse, whose body I'd seen lying in the
hallway. I carried her out of the palace.

"Once back in the
confusion outside, I was in more danger than when I'd been in the
palace. But when anyone stopped me, I leered and joked about my
prize' and said I was just looking for a quiet place where I could
have some fun. No one tried to take her from me. I think they thought
she was dead and I was some sort of crazed pervert.

"A terrible storm
was raging. Rain fell in torrents; the lightning was brighter and
more deadly than the artillery. God must be really pissed, I thought.
But I guess He wasn't mad at me, because I carried her safely through
the turmoil to the hospital in the city.

"It was hell in
there. You can imagine. The rebels had taken it over. They were
permitting their own people and civilians be treated, but I saw them
kill a wounded royal officer, who was brought in on a stretcher.
Fortunately, my stolen uniform gained me safe passage.

"When the doctor
examined Maigrey, he saw the starjewel hanging around her neck. There
was a nurse and another young doctor with him. They all saw it and
they all looked at each other. I held my breath. The doctor glanced
around, saw the rebel soldiers standing right outside the door of the
emergency room.

"This woman's
dead," the doctor said. 'I need this space for the living. Get
the body out of here.'

"I was on my feet.
The doctor, walking past me, jabbed me hard, in the ribs. 'Shut up
and wait for me in there!' he hissed, nodding at the visitor's room.
The nurse drew a sheet up over Maigrey's body, covering her face, and
she and the young doctor wheeled her out right past the rebels.

"Dazed, I went
into the waiting room. Somebody cleaned and dressed my wounds. That
was the first I think I knew I'd been hit. I sat there in a stupor
for hours. Finally, the doctor came to find me. He led me to a ward
filled with wounded. Maigrey was there, her face bandaged. The nurse
I'd seen with her handed me a medicine bottle. Inside, swathed in
cotton, was the starjewel. I heard later they'd operated on Maigrey
in the morgue.

"When she came out
of the sedation, she looked around and seemed just as amazed as I'd
been to discover she was alive. She asked me where I'd found her,
what had happened. I told her I'd found her lying in a doorway,
alone.

"'There was no one
else?' she persisted. 'Not Platus? Not Stavros or Danha. Not . . .'
she hesitated before she spoke, 'not a baby?'

"When I told her
no, she seemed relieved and lay back. 'Forget I asked you that,' she
said, gripping my hand tightly. 'Promise me, John.' I promised.

"She didn't say
anything else to me after that. She just lay there, holding on to my
hand, staring into nothing. A few days later, when she was stronger,
I asked her what had happened in the palace that night. The doctor
had told me she might feel better if she talked it out. But she only
shook her head.

" 'I don't
remember, John. I've tried, but I don't remember anything except—
I don't remember anything.'

"The next day,
when I came to visit, she was gone. She'd fled in the night. Then
came the news report that Maigrey Morianna, former Guardian and enemy
of the people, had been attempting to escape in a stolen spaceplane.
She'd been shot down over Minas Tares.

"I managed to make
my way off-planet and I started life over, though lots of times I
wondered why I bothered. But years pass, wounds heal. The pain
subsides and you find out you can laugh again. But it's never quite
the same. Never quite the same."