The Navigator of Rhada (8 page)

She shook her head and half reared, setting the stirrups to swinging against her sweating flanks. For a moment

Kynan despaired of being able to control her sufficiently to make her comply with his orders. But old Skua, her patience at an end and her jealousy aroused, slashed angrily at the young mare with a clawed forefoot. For a moment the two animals glared furiously at one another, and Kynan thought that a battle must surely begin between them. Then Skua’s age and experience overbore the young beast’s energetic anxiety, and the silvery head lowered and bobbed in submission.

Kynan breathed a deep sigh of relief and slapped at Skua’s flank. “You go now. To the sea. Wait for me.”

Skua butted the silver mare into action, herding her toward the opening of the paddock. Kynan watched as they vanished into the night. A movement near the staircase descending from the upper levels made him turn, reaching for his pistol. But there was nothing visible. His heart raced, and he heard the watch calling the half hour before midnight. He shoved his way through the restless horse herd toward the stairs. He must free Janessa now and reach Gonlanburg before first light.

I concluded that our holy Order had the responsibility to return to the people of the worlds a voice in their own destiny. I preached that the power of the star kings was not absolute and that the rights of the Galacton were his only so long as the people desired his rule. To this end I sought to unlock the ancient mysteries. This, too, I recant. Democracy lies far in the future.

Navigator Anselm Styr’s confession on the scaffold at Biblios Brittanis, Mars,
early Second Stellar Empire period

I am the law. You are only the Galacton.

Attributed to General Alain Veg Tran (to Torquas the Poet),
middle Second Stellar Empire period

The great starship lay in the umbra of Gonlan, an immense dark shape against the sparse starfields of the galactic Rim. In the control room, the Five still watched their instruments.

“He did not reach Kreon. The plan is breaking down,” the Tactician said. The Preacher, sensing an opening for theology among these worldly princes of the Order, said heavily, “No plan can operate exactly as men devise it, brothers. The hand of God works in mysterious ways.”

The Psychologist sighed. “No plan has ever worked without a bit of help. We will simply have to take the longer way. If he had reached Kreon in time, it would have been easier to resolve. The Vulk very nearly did our work for us.”

The Logician studied the symbols that had replaced the holographic figures on his console screen. “We must not rely too heavily on the Vulk. Remember they have a strangely tolerant attitude, and they rely too heavily on the nature of men. Gret has always been a libertarian at heart. All Vulks are.”

“It is not my field,” the Technician remarked, “but I have always understood that the plan envisioned a democratic endpoint.”

“Too much too soon is worse than nothing at all,” the Tactician said brusquely. “This stage is simply meant to protect the Order, not to give a franchise to every peasant on every backwater world.”

The Logician gave a short, unpleasant laugh. “Let us at least be honest with one another. This stage of the plan is intended to make the Order and the Imperial power one. No more than that, and certainly no less.”

The Tactician responded sharply, with military intolerance. “Are you suggesting at this point that the plan is wrong?”

The Psychologist intervened swiftly. “Enough, now. No one questions the value of the plan. But the boy didn’t reach Kreon in time, and the Vulk has mind-touched him. Variables are being introduced more quickly than we can cope with them. The important thing is to get him to Nyor at once. Can you guide him, Technician?”

The Technician shook his head. “The Vulk has interfered with his conditioning. I can’t break through the mind-touch.”

“What of the girl?”

“She was implanted with a locator, nothing more.”

“Thank the Star for that, at any rate,” the Logician said. “At least we can follow them.”

“Quite helplessly, I’m afraid,” the Technician said. “My contact with him has been distorted badly ever since the Vulk touched him. Now there is no way of interfering.”

The Logician said impatiently, “To make the plan function, we must have a confrontation. It is imperative.”

“Don’t despair of the plan. Torquas will surely be with Tran when the good General plunges into the situation on Aurora.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” the Logician said. “Torquas prefers poems to battles. Tran will probably handle Aurora alone.”

The Psychologist said, “An agent in Saclara says our contact has been murdered by Tran’s AbasNav Vegans.” The Preacher nodded as though expecting this information. “He was piloting a holy vessel. Whatever he learned was under the seal of service. He was going to report it to us, and the hand of God has struck him down.”

“Nonsense,” the Tactician snapped testily. “The hand of
Tran
struck him down because he suspected where a priest’s higher duty lies.
With the Order.”

“Nevertheless,” the Psychologist said, “his information failed to reach us. Logician--can you make an educated guess what it might have been?”

“Partially, only that.”

“Well, then?”

“That Karston is on Earth--very probably at Saclara.”

“A sorry awakening for him,” the Preacher said sadly. “To have bought disaster at the price of one’s own father.”

“These Rim princes are a grasping lot,” the Tactician said. “No price is too great for them to pay for a little power.”

The Psychologist smiled mirthlessly. “And are we so different, brother?”

The Tactician retorted smartly, “We fight for the Order.”

“Yes, well at the moment we don’t fight at all,” the Psychologist murmured. “Everything rides with a twenty- year-old boy. And we can only watch.”

“I have them again,” the Technician said, working on his instruments.

The Five gave their attention to the display consoles. The images were dark and indistinct, doll figures moving through a microcosmic storm of wind and rain.

“By the Star!” the Technician breathed. “There is someone waiting for them on the beach.”

“The Vulk?” demanded the Tactician.

The Technician shook his cowled head. “No. It is Baltus, the star king’s warlock.”

The Five bent to the consoles, watching and waiting.

With the towering, dark bulk of Melissande behind them, Kynan and Janessa made their way down the twisting path to the sea. They had managed to move through the back passageways and corridors of the ancient stone keep without arousing pursuit--for Kynan remembered Melissande well. But there had been no possibility of taking Janessa from her tower apartments out of sight of the young warman put by her door to guard her; this man Kynan had simply overborne with both his priesthood and his position as a member of the royal house of Gonlan. But it was inevitable that the soldier would check with his captain when Janessa was not promptly returned, and when this happened, the troops would be turned out to search for her.

The wind, racing across a thousand kilometers of open ocean from the ice barrier far to the north, was frigid with polar rain. The path, steeply descending the rocky cliffs, was dangerously slippery. Once Janessa stumbled, and he had to turn and hold her until she regained her balance. The warmth of her against him set his heart to racing. He could scarcely see her face in the stormy night, but he felt her wet hair blowing against his cheek. “All right?” he said.

“Yes,” she breathed, “but hurry. They’ll be after us soon.”

He turned and continued down the path. He could hear the sound of the surf now, very clearly. He hoped desperately that the mare Skua had found her way to this place. Without horses they would be hopelessly trapped against the sea. And what he could say by way of explanation to Crespus and LaRoss would save neither Janessa nor himself. With Kreon dead, his position among the nobility of Gonlan was anomalous. Only those who chose to honor the old star king’s blood-relatives need do so; no longer were free men bound to
b
e guided by the hand of a dead king.

The path began to level now, and Kynan could feel the gritty depth of sand beneath his feet. But the wind was turbulent here, billowing against the base of the sheer cliffs, and it was necessary to shield one’s face against the stinging lash of the driven spray.

Kynan heard, over the roar of the wind and sea, the cry of the mare Skua, and soon her sender bulk stood between him and the slashing spray. Janessa pressed close behind, and Kynan said in her ear, “I didn’t think the storm would be this bad. It may drive the sea against the cliffs.”

Gonlan’s seas were without tides, for the planet had no satellites. But the howling equinoctial storms often piled the waters against tie sheer cliffs of the Stoneland Peninsula, covering the narrow strands of beach at the base of the palisades.

“We might be trapped here?” Janessa asked.

It could be far worse than that, Kynan knew. Rhadan mares were strong swimmers; even they could brave the fury of this storm for only short distances. But he said with a confidence he did not feel, “We’ll stay on the beach only a short time. I know these cliffs. There’s a trail we can use to get to the plateau about two kilometers from here.”

The mare tossed her head and said warningly, “Ky-nan. Go. Go now.”

Kynan rubbed the soft, storm-wet nuzzle and said, “Yes,
now.” He turned to help Janessa mount and saw the other shapes in the darkness. The silver mare was moving toward him across the strand, but behind her came still another animal, this one carrying a man whose cape, wind-driven, stood out like a black banner. Kynan drew his pistol, aimed, and fired.

The flint spark sputtered across the priming pan and died. The pistol was useless in this drenching rain. Kynan dropped it and drew his sword from the scabbard across his back.

The mounted man pulled up short and raised his open hands. He said, “Kynan.”

The Navigator knew that voice: his bond-father’s warlock, Baltus.

“Get down,” Kynan shouted, his words whipped away into the night by the storm.

The warlock slipped from his charger and came near. Kynan kept the point of his sword against the old man’s chest. “I heard you instruct the mare in the stable court,” the warlock said.

“You can’t stop us, Baltus,” Kynan said. “Why did you come here?”

The warlock inclined his head toward Janessa: a touch of courtliness that seemed to Kynan wildly out of place on this rain-lashed, dark stretch of ocean beach.

“He is unarmed, Kynan,” Janessa said.

“Why have you come here?” Kynan demanded again. “Are you alone?”

“Yes, Nav Kynan. But we had better leave this place quickly.”

Kynan frowned in a fury of indecision. But the warlock was right. Even as they spoke, he could feel the force of the wind increasing. Soon they could be overwhelmed by the piling of the sea against the cliffs. Kynan made his choice. He had known from the moment the pistol misfired that he could not kill his bond-father’s warlock in cold blood.

“All right,” he said tightly. “Mount up. But you’ll explain, Baltus. And keep your hands where I can see them.”

“I will explain willingly, Nav Kynan,” the warlock said, “when we’ve put Melissande well behind us.”

Kynan called the silver mare and told Janessa to ride Skua. The warlock swung back onto his animal. Kynan looked back along the steep path to the place where the massive bulk of Melissande lay hidden in the wild darkness. There were no signs of pursuit yet.

He reversed his sword and handed it to Janessa. “Ride behind him,” he said. “If he tries to leave us, use this.” The girl’s fingers closed over the hilt, but Kynan could not see the expression on her face. He felt harried and not in control of the situation. He knew that the girl would be no more willing to strike down the old warlock than he was. Yet there was nothing else he could do but chance the dangers of the developing situation. The silver mare danced under him and rolled her eyes at the encroaching sea.

“Follow me now,” Kynan shouted, and guided the procession along the narrowing strand of beach at a gallop. The waves were crashing against the scattered boulders at the cliff base, and he hoped desperately that he had not waited too long.

Though I wear a crown of stars and comets and my word is law on worlds I have never seen; and though I command great fleets and armies and men fear me and obey--yet my truest pleasure is to know that men everywhere sing my songs. What greater legacy could I leave to my people? Art is love, and love is all.

Torquas the Poet,
The Eroticon,
middle Second Stellar Empire

By the middle years of the Torquan Dynasty, the Empire had broken the absolute power of the feudal star kings. Throughout the lmperium, the forces of home rule and popular democracy were stirring. But the power wrested from the provincial kings was not yet free to be delivered into the hands of the citizens of the Empire. It lay now in the mailed fist of the Empire and the only slightly gentler hand of the Order. This was the situation extant as the forces of Gonlan and Aurora mobilized to fight the first civil war in a century.

Nav (Bishop) Julianus Mullerium,
Anticlericalism in the Age of the Star Kings,

middle Second Stellar Empire period

The city of Nyor at evening time was one of the magnificent sights of the known galaxy. Time out of mind the capital of the Empire had stood on the island between the two rivers; as the tides of history swept over it again and again, it had expanded and contracted like a living organism. In the Dark Time it had been a keep and a few blocks of hovels atop its ancient tel--a massive mound of earth enriched with uncounted layers of archeological debris; the heritage of aeons of human occupation. But now, in the reign of the last of the Torquans, the city stood sheathed in colored marble and exotic building stones brought from worlds across the galaxy. White colonnades and crystal towers caught the fading light of the sun. Warmen from the farthest provinces of the Empire patrolled the walls and terraces of the citadel, the streets and gardens of the city proper.