Treason (16 page)

“I’ve been to hell,” I said. “It’s a better place than this.”

“What if you burn like you burnt these fields?” called a soldier. There was a murmur of bitter assent.

“I didn’t do this,” I said, perplexed that they could think I did.

“Didn’t do it!” shouted a man. “I saw you dangling a torch yourself, ahead of all your inker troops!”

How could I even protest against a charge so absurd?

“Enough talking,” said the commander. “He’s going to claim he was insane or some such nonsense. No one will believe him, he’ll get the death that such a man deserves, but there’ll be no glory in it for us, having found him. The damage is already done beyond repair, and killing him won’t undo any part of it.”

It was a strange thing for any commander to say, and yet it had a strange calming effect on the men. They had none of the hearty lust for battle that I had seen in the army all my life. But the commander’s words had stirred in them some silent, desperate courage. All did their work quickly, wordlessly. They threw me over a saddle, strapped my legs to the stirrups, and left me to find my balance as best I could with bound arms on a galloping horse. They rode madly across the fields, as if they hoped (and I’m sure they did) that my horse would fall, would shatter me, would crush me into the ashes that had once been grain. Or perhaps they thought of me no more, and merely rode, machines of flesh astride these heaving horses, empty of thought, empty of anything but the knowledge of desolation.

As I rode, what else had I to do but think? Somehow I was blamed for all this devastation, and not just by strangers, but by the men of Mueller—the ones who once had loved me, if not for myself, then as my father’s son. This was not something Dinte’s lies could accomplish, nor could Ruva have persuaded anyone to think of me that way, nor any other jealous enemy. The man said he had seen me.
Seen
me, and though I know it was impossible, I could not doubt his honesty. It wasn’t just my name that was hated here, it was my face.

Thinking of hatred, thinking of my own face, I saw an image of myself before my eyes, and it was not a memory of my face as I saw it in mirrors. Then I knew the answer, knew why it was that every accusation they made against me could be true and not-true all at once. I also knew that no matter how convincingly I told my tale, they would never believe me.

The slap of hard leather boots rang out in the stone halls of my father’s palace. I was dragged in brutally and thrown down on the floor. I had seen the scene before, but from the other point of view, as men accused of treason were prepared for trial. The trial was a mere formality. The charge was so serious it was never brought unless guilt was certain.

Yet my thoughts kept wandering. As they marched me through the corridors, held me in the small cell while the court assembled, I kept looking at the dead stone of the walls, realizing how much death this place had cost the earth. If I said as much to anyone, it would be taken as madness. Living stone? But I spoke in my mind and sang the song of the rock, and felt the resonation. Far under the castle, the stones were listening. They would hear, the living stones would know, if my blood were shed.

The punishment for treason is drawing and quartering the living man. Women are decapitated first. It’s grisly, but I had always thought of it as a fine deterrent.

I arose from the floor and stood.

“Kneel!” shouted Harkint, the Captain of the Guard (he used to race me on horseback through the streets of the city). I turned to him and spoke coldly, dramatically, because trials, like most of royal life, are theatrics, and I couldn’t help but play my part. “I am royalty, Harkint, and I stand before the throne.”

This quieted him, and now the court settled into the steady business of hate and fear.

My father looked old. It was for his sake I had returned at all. Now he looked weary and sick at heart. “Lanik Mueller, there’s little point in a trial,” he said. “You know and we know why you’re here. You’re guilty, so let’s end this shabby business.”

Every delay is a promise of life; and even though I knew there was no chance that they’d believe me, still I had to have my say. Perhaps it would be many years before my innocence was proven, but there would be some then who would remember that I had told the truth this day. “It’s my right to hear the charges against me.”

“If we listed them all,” said my father, “I couldn’t stop the people here from killing you with their hands.”

“Say them briefly then, but name my crimes, since I don’t know what they are.”

My father’s face wrinkled in distaste at what he thought was a feeble lie. “You shame yourself,” he said. But he looked at the herald, and old Swee called out in a ringing voice:

“The crimes of Lanik Mueller: Leading the Nkumai armies into battle against the armies of Mueller. Destroying fields and homes of citizens of Mueller and dependent Families. Betraying the secret of regeneration so that our enemies now hack the bodies of our soldiers to pieces on the field, so they die. Plotting to undo the succession and take the rightful heir from the throne.” Swee looked bitter and the gathered court shouted in outrage as each charge was read.

“I didn’t do any of this,” I said, looking my father in the eye.

“You’ve been seen by a thousand witnesses,” said my father.

A soldier stepped forward in rage—a commoner, since he had lost his arms and neither had grown back. “I saw you myself,” he cried, “when you cut off both my arms and made me come here to tell the Mueller that you planned to drink his blood!”

“I never did that, never said it.”

Father answered contemptuously. “There are others who knew you who saw you leading the Nkumai armies. We’ve heard enough now. You’re guilty, and I sentence you to—”

“No!” I shouted. “I have a right to speak!”

“A traitor has no rights!” shouted a soldier.

“I’m innocent!”

“If you’re innocent,” cried my father, “every whore in Mueller is a virgin!”

“I have a right to be heard, and I will speak!”

They fell silent then, perhaps because my voice still had some power to command; or more likely because they drew some bleak satisfaction out of watching me struggle vainly for my life. Still, useless as the effort was, I tried to tell them the only explanation that would fit what they had seen, and what I knew I had and had not done. Half of what I said was speculation, but as far as I knew then, I was telling the truth.

I told them that I had gone to Nkumai, but my subterfuge had been discovered only moments after I found the secret of what they sold to get iron. I told them of my escape, my disembowelment, and of the echo of myself that had been regenerated from my own gut. I described my imprisonment on a Singer ship and how the Schwartzes had cured me (I said nothing of how, or what I had learned about the living rock of our world), and how I had come as quickly as I could to warn my father of the danger.

As to the person who claimed to be me and fooled others into thinking he was, I could only guess that he was my double; that he had not died, but had been found by the Nkumai. “I was careless. I should have destroyed the body. But I wasn’t thinking clearly then, and most Muellers would have died from such wounds.” They must have trained him, I speculated, and he would have had all my inborn abilities. No wonder people believed he was Lanik Mueller—right down to the genes, he was.

I explained everything I could think to explain, and then I stopped talking.

What effect had all my talking had? Little enough. Most of the people were still hostile, openly disbelieving, eager for my death. But here and there, especially among the older men, there was a face that looked thoughtful. And when I looked at my father, I knew (or did I only wish to know?) that he believed me.

I was no fool. I realized that whether he believed me or not, he had no power to save me. He couldn’t have acquitted me, not that day, not before that audience.

I had hardly noticed Ruva and Dinte before, but now they both came up to confer with my father. It startled me to see them as allies—hadn’t Dinte hated her as much as I did? But allies they were, and of course they had noticed the change in Father’s expression that had told me of his belief in my tale. Now they would try to undo any good my speech might have done for me. Ruva kept whispering to father, while Dinte stepped forward and spoke loudly, for all the court to hear.

“Apparently you think we’re fools, Lanik,” he said. “Never in all the history of radical regeneration has anyone formed an entire duplicate of himself.”

“No rad has ever had his guts torn out and strewn across the countryside, either.”

“And then you say the Schwartzes cured you. Desert savages, and they can do what none of our geneticists can manage?”

“I know it’s hard to believe—”

“What’s hard to believe is that you could tell us all this with a straight face, dear brother. No one has ever come out of the Schwartz Desert alive. No one has ever done any of these heroic deeds you claim to have done. What people
have
done is see you at the head of the enemy’s army. I saw you myself, when I was commanding the Army of the South in Cramer, and you waved to me and shouted some obscenity. Don’t pretend you don’t remember.”

“I’d hardly be the first to shout an obscenity at you, Dinte,” I said, and to my surprise there were a few chuckles in the court. Not enough to hint that I had any friends. But enough to prove that Dinte had some enemies.

Now my father interrupted. “Dinte,” he said, “you’re being undignified.” There was contempt in my father’s voice. But there was some other emotion when he spoke to me:

“Lanik Mueller, your defense is implausible and the testimony of a thousand men is unarguable. I sentence you to be drawn and quartered alive on the playing field by the river tomorrow at noon and may your soul if you have one rot in hell.”

He got up to go. How much did I want to live? Enough to sacrifice all dignity and cry out after him, “Father! If all this were true, why in the name of God would I have given myself up to you?”

He turned slowly and looked me in the eye. “Because even the devil gives some justice to his victims, when they’re beyond all help.”

He left the court. The soldiers took me then, and because I had been sentenced to die they spent the afternoon and evening torturing me. Since Muellers heal so quickly, we can bear exquisite injury and still not die. Of that night I’ll say no more.

I wasn’t bleeding anymore, but I was still in pain, and more painful was the memory of the hatred of the soldiers. I knew only a few of them, but those had always been kind to me, and some of them had been my friends since I was a child. Now they delighted in my pain, wanted me to suffer, and still it was plain that to them, nothing I went through could equal the punishment I deserved. Their loathing stung, worse because I didn’t deserve it and yet had no hope of proving my innocence.

So I lay in darkness in the dead stone cell where they at last let me rest until my death the next day. My wounds were healing quickly enough, leaving me exhausted; but soon enough I would be whole. Father had given me a night and morning of life before I died. I determined to use the time, not preparing for death, but trying to think of a way to escape.

I admit my thinking wasn’t good. I had come too recently from Schwartz, and still found myself as maddeningly disdainful of normal concerns as they were. No one had fed me since I came to Mueller, but I wasn’t hungry. No one had offered me water, but I felt no thirst. And since I could ignore pain as it subsided, what was there to remind me that I had to act quickly, act immediately if I was to save my own life?

Save it for what?

My purpose in Schwartz had been to come warn my Family. The warning was a little late, and no one wanted messages from me now anyway. Worse, they had locked me in a prison of dead stone, so I couldn’t even speak to the rock and sink into the soil and escape.

I could kill myself, of course, but my natural aversion to that was abetted by the fact that I could not bear to be guilty of adding that much pain to the earth. Rock bears enough murders without the scream of the self-murderer’s death.

There was a patter of light footsteps outside the door of my cell. The bar lifted, and the door, with difficulty, swung out.

“Lanik,” said a voice in the darkness. I knew the voice at once, could not believe that I was hearing it. And then Saranna was holding me and weeping. “Lanik, they even put out your eyes.”

“They’re growing back,” I answered. “It’s so good to be home.”

“Oh, Lanik, we’ve been so afraid for you!”

She spoke to me as if I had never been away, as if nothing had changed. Her hands fit exactly on my back, in places where ancient habit said that hands that size belonged. She held me with a pressure that I had last felt yesterday (had last felt a year ago) and her breath, her skin as her cheek brushed mine, the scent of her, even the wild wisps of hair tickling my nose—

I held tightly to her because for a moment she took away the nightmare of the last few days and months and years, and I was Ensel Mueller’s son Lanik, heir to the throne and a happy young man. Damned happy. Damned.

“Why did you come?” I asked.

“You have friends, Lanik. Some of us believe you.”

“Then you must be insane. There’s nothing believable about my story.”

“I have known you long enough to know when you tell the truth. I don’t want you drawn and quartered tomorrow. Come with me.”

“You don’t think you can get me out of this prison, do you?”

“I can with help.”

She held my hand and led me through the corridors. She squeezed once when we reached steps going up, twice when the steps went down. We were as soundless as feet can be, and I, for one, didn’t breathe. It was easier that way. My eyes were healing well; already they had their round shape; but it would take time for the nerves to heal properly, for vision to be fully restored. It was frightening to be blind and moving, like that dark night crawling along wet slick branches in Nkumai. That night I never knew what lay ahead. Nor did I this night—but tonight someone held my hand and led the way. Tonight I trusted my life, not to my instincts, but to a woman whom I had always thought of as being a little flighty. Loyal, of course, and wonderfully exuberant in making love, but not dependable. I was wrong, obviously. We met no one on the way.

We stopped.

“What are we waiting for?”

“Quiet,” she said, and I was quiet. After a few minutes I could hear, the distant shuffle of footsteps. An old man, I decided from the sound. And then he was close and I felt arms going around me and an iron grip holding me and hot tears on my neck.

“Father,” I whispered.

“Lanik, my son, my son,” he said, and I wasn’t afraid anymore.

“You believe me.”

“You’re my single hope.” Always the old bastard regarded me as
his
hope, as if he had first claim on my loyalty, before even myself. Well, he did.

“Four much smaller hopes tomorrow,” I answered.

He only held me tighter. “There are times when an honest ruler has to abdicate, and this is that time. They won’t cut you up. I knew you’d never betray me, not permanently, anyway.”

“Not even temporarily,” I said. “But now let’s get moving before somebody notices that you’re holding court down here.”

“We can’t go yet,” Father said. “We have to wait.”

“Why?”

“Changing of the guard at dawn,” he said. “We hope they’ll be distracted.”

“The guard? You’re afraid of the guard? Can’t you just hide me and command them to let you through?”

Saranna answered. “It’s not that simple. Your father doesn’t command the guard.”

“Well, who the hell does?” I whispered.

“Ruva,” said Father.

I raised my voice. “The Turd rules in your palace!”

“Quiet. Yes, she does, she and Dinte. They were plotting it before you left the palace, and once you were gone they made their move. I could have blocked them, I suppose, but I couldn’t afford to kill my only heir, as I thought, and so I went along, pretending I didn’t notice how my prerogatives were usurped, how my friends’ offices became sinecures and the real power seemed to gather in much younger hands.”

“My mother tried to warn the court,” Saranna said.

“I had to sign her death warrant.”

“Why did you sign it?” I asked.

“For the reason I signed yours,” said my father. “She escaped and is living in exile in the north. In Brian, I believe. Her agents smuggled out half the Family fortune. It stopped when Ruva found the leak.”

“I see,” I said.

“When we heard you were commanding the Nkumai invaders, I was overjoyed. I used my influence, such as I have, to put our stupidest commanders, including Dinte, in the key positions. I opened the doors to the enemy. Thinking, of course, that you were coming to liberate me and the people from that ass I had the misfortune to marry and that child your mother claimed was also mine.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“I knew it couldn’t be you when we heard how the armies were destroying everything. You’re too wise for that. I knew it was a fraud. But then there were so many witnesses.” He sighed. “I betrayed my own Family, thinking I was opening the door for my son to save me from my wife and our monstrous little whelp Dinte. Now the enemy ravages from Schmidt to Jones and it’s only a matter of time before they cross the river and take this city. They’ll surely do it soon. The rains will make the river impassable in a few more weeks.” Suddenly he wept again. “I dreamed of your homecoming, Lanik. Dreamed that you’d come in triumph and lead these people into battle.
You
could have led my army to defeat the Nkumai. They must have known it. That’s why they destroyed the people’s love for you. Now we can only run.”

“Good enough,” I said. “Let’s start running.”

“The changing of the guard,” Saranna whispered.

“No,” I said. “Dinte and Ruva are surely watching you. They probably left me unguarded just so you’d try this and get yourselves killed. You’d better go back upstairs, both of you, and pretend you had nothing to do with this.”

“Not this time,” Saranna said.

“We have to leave with you,” Father said. “Things are intolerable here. We have a few hundred loyal men that I’ve already assigned to duty in the north. They’re expecting us. They’ll rally to us.”

“To you, you mean. Not a soul alive would rally to me. But we’re not going to wait for the changing of the guard.”

“Then we’ll be caught. Every gate is watched closely.”

I could see the flicker of Saranna’s torch now. My vision was returning. “I’ll create a diversion. The postern gate.”

“It’s heavily guarded.”

“I know. Take me near there, but keep me out of sight. I can see faintly, and I should have full vision soon, but in the meantime I couldn’t defend myself against a gnat. Once I’m there, you two be ready to spring for the water gate. I’ll join you there.”

“Blind?”

“I know the way blindfolded. And by then no one will be looking for me.”

“What kind of diversion can
you
create?” Father asked doubtfully.

In answer I opened my shirt and showed them my chest. “Do you remember what grew here when you sent me away, Father?”

He remembered.

“It will never grow back. The Schwartzes cured me, as I told you. If they could manage
that
, don’t you think they could teach me other things as well?”

Saranna’s hand brushed down my chest, like the dream I had lived through a hundred nights on the Singer ship.

“Let’s go,” I said.

They led me up the stairs and ramps and corridors that would take us to the postern gate. They left me in the window well over the palace door, where, if I could have seen, I would have scanned the courtyard before the postern gate in the palace walls. As it was I could see shapes, dimly; though torches were only bright sparks of light, I could see the flames dance.

There was so much dead rock around that I was hampered, but I soon found the voice of the rock. Much was new; the soil, unlike the sand, had too much life in it. It was a barrier, not a channel. But at last I found the voice of the living rock. I explained my purpose, I asked for help, and the rock complied.

I couldn’t really see it happen. I could only hear the grinding of dead stones as the earth heaved under them and cast them from their piles onto the ground. There were shouts as the men from the postern gate ran to the breach in the wall. The earth kept heaving, and some were thrown to the ground. Others foolishly ran too close to where the walls were dancing, where great blocks of stone toppled from their place and crashed into the earth.

I lowered myself from the window and walked the other way, toward the water gate.

Saranna and Father and four soldiers leading seven horses waited in the shelter of a wall.

“What did you do?” Father asked, in awe. “It was like an earthquake.”

“It
was
an earthquake,” I said. “Just a little one. Big ones take a committee.” Then I strode toward the gate. In the gathering light of predawn I could see again, though things were blurry, and with relief I noticed that the gate was unguarded—the soldiers had run off to the breach in the wall.

Unguarded, and so we passed through, Father and Saranna first, and then the soldiers. Which is why I was last and still unarmed when Dinte emerged from the shadows.

I saw the glint of torchlight reflected in steel. “How unequal we are,” I said. “A mark of your courage.”

“I wanted to have no doubt of the outcome,” he said.

“Then you should have picked a different target,” I answered. It was a simple thing to make sweat and oil seep out of his hands, so the hilt became slippery. He trembled; he couldn’t hold the sword; it slipped out of his hand, and he looked at it there on the ground, horror in his eyes. He tried to pick it up. It slid again from his fingers. He rubbed his palms frantically on his tunic, leaving dark stains. Did he think he could dry his hands that easily? He tried again to pick up the sword, this time with both hands. He cradled it, then tried to lunge at me; I easily slapped it out of his hands. And this time it was I who picked it up.

It would have been pure justice if I killed him, but he was screaming for help and he was my father’s son, so I merely slit his throat from ear to ear and left him silent and bleeding on the ground. He’d regenerate and recover, as I had from the same wound more than a year ago. But at least he’d know that next time when he came for me, he’d have to bring some friends.

I passed through the gate, still holding the sword, and mounted the horse they held for me. I said nothing of my reason for delay. If Father had heard Dinte’s voice, if he guessed what had happened inside the gate, he said nothing about it.

We rode north all day, and at night came to a military outpost that had once guarded Mueller’s northern frontier in the old days, when Epson had been powerful and Mueller a peaceful farming Family with some strange breeding practices. The outpost was run down, but a quick count made me estimate three hundred or more horses, which meant there’d be as many men at least.

“Are you sure they’re friends?” I asked.

“If not, we haven’t much hope anyway,” Father answered.

“Either way, it would be better if you had this sword, and not I.”

I handed it to him. He looked at it and nodded. “Dinte’s.”

“He’ll recover,” I said.

“Too bad,” Saranna said gruffly.

“Maybe he’ll do us a favor and die on his own,” I said. But I was sure the wound was one he could recover from.

Then we were at the outpost gates and the soldiers let us in and cheered Father, and he explained (very roughly) that it was an imposter and not I leading the Nkumai. I don’t know how many believed him. But they were courageous men and loyal to Father; most cheered and none protested.

“You’re brave,” he told them, “brave and worthy, but three hundred men are not enough.” He ordered them to go back to their homes and bring as many loyal men as they could find. Wisely, he urged them not to mention that I was with him. Let them rally to the king, not to someone most would surely think of as a traitor.

As the three hundred soldiers rode out to bring an army to us, we changed horses for the fifth time that day and rode on north into the darkness.

“You must have been planning this for months,” I said.

“We weren’t planning on
you
,” Father said, “but we knew that sometime soon I’d have a crisis with my dear younger son and would have to be free to call on the loyal troops. We planned for contingencies.”