Rykilth removed and deliberately counted out (twice) ten well-worn and obviously well-loved bills, each stamped with ten golden eagles. Slowly, reluctantly, fog roiling in his helm, he handed them over, then turned and stalked angrily to his shuttle.
DiLuna, laughing, bid Olefsky a safe journey, cast Williams and Aks a disdainful glance, and headed for her shuttle. Olefsky stuffed the bills into his fur-topped boot, thrust the purse inside his leather armor. He turned to Aks and Williams, who were trying hard to look as if they hadn't heard a word.
"The fog-sucker may be right. Still, my money on the colt. I like his bloodline." The Bear winked. "Wouldn't you agree, Admiral?"
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Aks returned stiffly.
Olefsky seemed to find this funny. Rounding up his hulking sons, he lumbered off to his shuttlecraft. His booming laughter vied with the roar of the engines warming up for takeoff.
"The galaxy is falling apart around them, and all they can talk about is horse racing!" Aks glared after the three indignantly.
"And yet, sir," said Williams with a tired smile, "it has been called the sport of kings."
Chapter Ten
. . . then the queen stole away . . . and great penance she took, as ever did sinful lady in this land, and never creature could make her merry. . . .
Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte dArthur
The Academy, it was called; named for a garden near Athens where Plato taught. Eighteen years ago, it had been a place where the children of the Blood Royal came to learn how to be rulers.
The Academy was far from Athens, far from Old Earth, light-years from almost any civilized planet in the galaxy. Such isolation had been chosen purposefully. The planet had to be safe from the threat of any type of war, either local or solar in nature. There were no major population centers on the planet, for the same reason, and also to discourage outside interference or distractions that might tempt students away from their studies. Only one small village was located near the Academy, and it had sprung up to serve the Academy's needs.
Those responsible for selecting the location of the school in which the human children of the Blood Royal were to be educated decided that, in addition, the planet on which the Academy was located must be a planet similar in nature to Old Earth. Since so much of human culture emanated from Earth, it was deemed valuable to the students to experience an Earth-like environment. It is difficult to understand the lines of Shakespeare, "In me thou see'st the twilight of such day, As after sunset fadeth in the west ..." if you come from a planet with three suns, eternal days, and no nights, or perhaps from a planet where the sun is so far distant that it is tantamount to having no sun at all.
The Academy had two separate and distinct campuses— one for girls and one for boys. The courses taught in each were identical in all respects. The educators had decided to separate the sexes due to the feet that females tended to assimilate knowledge fester than males at a young age. When the students were older, in their teen years, they attended school together, mainly for purposes of socialization. These boys and girls, when they became men and women, would be rulers of planets, perhaps entire solar systems. Alliances formed at this age could prevent wars in the future.
Few aliens attended the Academy. There were other schools, located on other planets, where children of the genetically superior of alien races were sent to complete their education. The Academy for humans was the largest, however. It was humans, with their proclivity and ability for rapid breeding, their burning ambition, and their insatiable curiosity, who had become the major force in the galaxy.
There had been children present in the Academy the night of the Revolution. What had happened to these children, whose parents were slaughtered in the royal palace on a distant planet, far away?
President Peter Robes, unwilling to be known as another Herod, issued a statement that the children of the Blood Royal were being taken to a location where their minds could be "reformed" and they could be "assimilated" into the general population. Vids were broadcast showing the children, clutching their small bundles of clothing, boarding huge transports. The children looked somewhat dazed, having been awakened in the middle of the night, but a few managed to smile and wave on cue. The assimilation process must have worked extremely well, for not one of those children was ever heard of after that night.
The Academy's grounds were extensive, its buildings numerous, designed in a classical motif. Rolling, densely wooded hills, where soft mists settled in the cool mornings, often hid one hall from the other. Trails connected each. Students walked to classes, exercise being considered an important aid to learning. Gardens flourished. Everyone, from the headmaster to the smallest child, worked in the gardens, cultivating not only vegetables for dinner, but a knowledge of and appreciation for plant life. As for its libraries, no vaster collection of knowledge had been known to exist since the great library in Alexandria.
Following the Revolution, Congress voted to turn the Academy into a school for the people. Professors were hired, students flocked to sign up. Merchants moved to the area, planning to establish a city nearby, prepared to meet the needs of students and faculty. President Robes himself cut the ribbon that opened the campus to all and sundry (who could afford the high tuition).
All and sundry soon departed. No one stayed beyond the second semester. Strange rumors circulated. Strange things happened. No plant would grow in the garden. The buildings began to fall apart: windows cracked for no apparent reason, roofs developed leaks in the most unexpected places. Books disappeared from the library the moment anyone wanted to read them. It rained endlessly, terrible thunderstorms, the likes of which no one could remember.
In vain, President Robes pleaded with students and professors to remain. No one did. One professor of advanced mathematics, a noted disbeliever in "psychic phenomenon" did research and announced that, in her opinion, the air was bad for the health. Too much oxygen.
The property was too valuable to give up, however. The Academy was, at various times after that, a low-income housing development, a retirement community, a luxury resort and health spa. All failed dismally. The poor abandoned it and took to the woods, the retired people fled in the night, the luxury resort never opened. Eventually, Congress, tired of pouring money into worthless projects, gave up. The Academy was forgotten, its gardens left to run wild, its buildings empty and abandoned . . . except for those of the dead who were rumored to walk them at night.
And, now, one living person, who walked them by day.
The Warlord's space shuttle set down at what had once been the Academy's spaceport. The port was not large, meant to accommodate only one or two craft at a time. Visitors had not been encouraged; children rarely or never went home for holidays or any other reason. Parents, it was believed, had generally an unsettling effect on their offspring.
His Lordship's Honor Guard marched down the shuttle's ramp and onto a tarmac that had fallen into disrepair. Grass and weeds sprang up through large gaps in the concrete surface. The spaceport's communications tower had been long abandoned. Its foundation was cracking, most of its windows were broken out. Its guidance equipment no longer scanned the skies, no longer paid any attention to the heavens.
One other spaceplane, a long-range Scimitar, was parked at the edge of the landing strip. A canvas cover had been drawn over the plane to protect it from the weather and the planet's wildlife. It had obviously been there many months. Grass grew over its wheels. Autumn's leaves drifted down around it. The Warlord, scrutinizing the plane carefully, thought he detected bird's nests near the region of the cockpit.
Sagan gestured to Agis, who stepped forward with alacrity.
"My lord."
"My respects to the Lady Maigrey. Inform her that I have arrived on planet and that I await the pleasure of her company in"—Sagan paused, considering—"in the headmaster's rose garden."
"Yes, my lord. And where will I find her ladyship?"
The Warlord glanced up at th
e heavens, judging the planet's time by the sun that hung low in the sky.
"In the gymnasium," he said. "You can see it from here. That domed building there, to your left. When you have delivered your message, return to the shuttle."
"Yes, my lord." Agis was about to detail a portion of his force to go with him, leaving another to stay behind with the Warlord, when Sagan interrupted him.
"Take all the men."
Agis appeared dubious. "My lord—"
"That's an order, Captain."
"Yes, my lord."
Agis could not refrain from casting an uneasy glance at a figure standing directly behind the Warlord. Dark and silent and motionless, the figure might have been Sagan's shadow. The young man was dressed in long brown robes; his arms and hands were invisible in long sleeves, arms folded, hands clasping his elbows. A brown cowl was pulled low over his head, hiding his face from sight. None of the centurions knew who the man was, where he'd come from. He'd simply appeared, mysteriously, on board Phoenix II. By coincidence, no doubt, Dr. Giesk had reported at the same time that one of his male nurses had gone AWOL. Agis was able to put two and two together, but the answer made no sense. He therefore kept his mouth shut.
But he didn't like, didn't trust that robed and hooded figure. The man had done something to his lord—aged him, drained him of life, of spirit. Agis was not a fanciful man, and it must have been racial memory that stirred the bottom of humanity's dark caldron and brought to the surface of the mind tales of evil warlocks and black magic, long pins stuck through the hearts of waxen dolls.
"Do you have a question regarding your orders, Captain?" Sagan asked with some impatience.
Yes, Agis had a great many questions, but none that he dared ask. He assembled his men and marched off the broken tarmac, heading for a walkway arched over by the tangled limbs of swaying poplar trees.
The Warlord saw his guard well on their way, then he turned on his heel and started across the tarmac in the opposite direction. He said no word to the robed young man, who hesitated and did not immediately follow, perhaps uncertain whether he was wanted.
Sagan, not hearing the softly slippered shuffle of footsteps behind him, glanced over his shoulder.
"Come along, Brother," he commanded. "My lady will want to meet you."
Brother Fideles bowed his head in response and hastened to catch up, not an easy task. It was occasionally difficult for his own Honor Guard to keep up with their Warlord's long strides. Brother Fideles panted and puffed and fought to keep the skirts of his robes from tripping him as he ran.
Sagan, seeing out of the corner of his eye the young man's difficulty, said nothing, but obligingly slowed his pace. Brother Fideles caught up with him and the two walked side by side. The young brother's arms remained folded and hidden, his head bowed slightly as was proper. Sagan walked with his own head bowed, either lost in thought or burdened by memory. His hands were clasped behind his back, beneath his red, flowing robes.
They left the tarmac, entered and passed through the deserted spaceport building, and out onto its covered walkway. From the porch, the young priest caught a breathtaking glimpse of the Academy, buildings and grounds spread out before him in mist-shrouded valleys and on low, sunlit hills. The Warlord turned to his left, followed a pathway that led down the high rise on which the spaceport was built.
They walked for a long time and covered a vast distance. The beauty of the place overwhelmed the young priest. The afternoon sun gleamed golden against a cloudless azure sky.
The air was cool, touched with the frost that would come with nightfall. Leaves of gold and red streaked with green fluttered downward in the sighing wind, drifted about their feet.
Man had worked with Nature when taking over her lands and making his mark upon them, and it seemed that when man left, Nature returned the favor. Gardens lost none of their charm by becoming wild and overgrown. Trees from the encroaching wilderness did not threaten the buildings, but seemed to offer shelter with their strong, protecting arms. The abandoned halls and libraries, laboratories and classrooms, looked calm and serene, their white marble edifices glistening in the bright sunlight.
But Brother Fideles could well understand why no one could bear to stay long on these lovely grounds, to stroll among the trees, to sit in the echoing halls. Sadness—unbearable, unutterable—was the ghost that walked the Academy grounds, walked it during the bright day, walked it during the moonlit night.
"What a sorrowful, eerie place. I wonder the Lady Maigrey can bear it, all alone," Brother Fideles said, and only when the words were spoken did he realize he'd said his thought aloud, interrupting his lord's meditation.
Sagan stopped, looked long at the surroundings that had changed so much, yet not enough. "Alone, Brother?" he said reflectively. "No, in this place, she would never be alone. Perhaps to her regret."
Maigrey heard the door to the gymnasium open, she heard the booted feet tramp across the wooden floor. She did not turn around. Hand on the bar, she continued her exercises, her eyes fixed on the mirror opposite, on the reflection that stared gravely back at her.
"Look into the mirror always." The dance master's voice echoed in her memory. "Come to know your own body. Only then will you understand how it moves and how you can control that movement."
She had performed these exercises every day of her life with only few exceptions since she'd come as a child to the Academy. She had fidgeted and giggled through them when she was little, reveled in them when she was in her teens. She and her squadron, the famous Golden Squadron of the King, had performed them before battle. Many times, she and Sagan had done the exercises alone together.
She had gone through the routine herself, alone, the day before the night of the Revolution.
The days after the Revolution had been one of the few times she did not do the exercises. And then she had been in the hospital, near death, wondering bitterly why she hadn't died.
After her escape, she had continued the exercises on the tropical planet where she'd gone to hide. Seventeen years, every afternoon, just before sundown, she'd performed them, though she couldn't say why. Why keep the body fit? Why keep the mind trained? She did not hold the bloodsword once during those years of exile, did not even look at it. She never expected to hold it again. Still, she exercised.
"You should look only two places in my class, at me and at yourself. You do not look out the window, Maigrey. You do not look at each other. Stavros"—crack went a wooden ruler—"you do not look at the clock."
You do not look at the clock. Not once, in seventeen years. Yet she had been aware of every second that passed, of the change each second brought.
"What is that hand doing at the end of your arm, Maigrey? Has it died, that you allow it to flop around so gracelessly?" Crack went the ruler against her palm.
The dance master carried a wooden ruler, a meter long, that served, at various times, as dancing partner, a baton to tap out the rhythm, and his means of enforcing discipline. He was amazingly quick; he was also their swordmaster. Crack. Maigrey could feel the sting of the wood against her skin.
"The hand is alive now, isn't it? You feel the pain, Maigrey? You feel the life?"
She'd done the exercises on board Phoenix, when she'd been a prisoner of the Warlord. She and Dion had done them together; the boy having been taught the routine by Platus. Her brother. The boy's guardian. One of the last of the Guardians.
Do you feel the pain, Maigrey?
The booted measured tread came to a halt almost behind her. A centurion, captain by his insignia, stepped forward, body straight, rigid, fist over his heart in salute.
"Lady Maigrey Morianna, Lord Sagan's respects. He requests the favor of your presence in the headmaster's rose garden."
Do you feel the pain, Maigrey? Do you feel the life?
She kept her gaze steadfastly on the mirror.
"My respects to Lord Sagan and I will attend him presently."
"Yes, my lady."
The c
aptain saluted, wheeled, and marched his men out. Maigrey watched them from the corner of her eye. The centurions did not move with the knife-edged sharpness and precision generally seen in the Warlord's guard of honor. They seemed nervous, ill at ease. They might have been trapped and surrounded by the enemy, instead of wandering about the deserted grounds of an abandoned school, surrounded by the ghosts of dead dreams, dead hopes.
Do you feel the pain?
Their footsteps retreated in the distance. The gymnasium was quiet, except for the voices and the music of memory. Maigrey continued the exercises, worked through them to completion.
The rose garden of Headmaster Aristos was one of Maigrey's favorite walks. Sagan would know that, of course. Just as she knew he was waiting for her there. Sending the men to her had been a mere formality. Connected as the two of them were by the mind-link, they were close enough to touch, though light-years separated them. She, alone, had known of his coming. He, alone, had known where to find her.
Maigrey returned to her dwelling on the grounds of the Academy—a small house that had once belonged to one of the caretakers. She could have moved into any of the many empty houses, including the beautiful home on the wooded hill that had belonged to the headmaster. But her awe of that frail man, who had seemed ancient to her, and wise beyond anyone she'd ever known, lingered past her childhood. She would not have been comfortable in his house. She would always feel that she must move quietly, hold her breath, keep her hands at her sides, fearful of breaking some rare and priceless object.
She showered, washed, and dried the pale hair, brushed it out until it was smooth as the surface of a placid lake. She dressed in a long gown of dove-gray lamb's wool, draped over her shoulders a mantle of sky-blue lined with eiderdown. The autumn evenings grew chill. She walked alone to the rose garden; the rays of the setting sun slanted golden through the green and orange leaves of the oak trees.
Do you feel the pain?
Chapter Eleven
King's Sacrifice Page 10