King's Sacrifice

by Margaret Weis

  Bones cracked and crunched. Abdiel screamed horribly. His head flopped like the head of a broken doll, the feeble body went limp. But the lidless eyes stared at Sagan, seemed to be laughing at him. The dead lips were parted in a smile. The Warlord flung the corpse to the ground, kicked the body, kicked it to the edge of the bridge.

  Brother Daniel ran to stop the desecration. "My lord, no more!" he pleaded.

  Sagan kicked the corpse off the bridge. It fell into the fiery water with a splash, floated on the surface amid the flames. The magenta robes began to smoke, smolder. Abdiel's face looked up at them, smiling.

  Daniel saw the madness in the Warlords eyes. The priest turned to Maigrey, hoping she might help. "My lady!" he began, but his words died on his lips.

  She had moved swiftly to wipe away the blood, wipe it on the silver armor. But not swiftly enough.

  "Deus!" Brother Daniel whispered.

  Maigrey saw he knew the truth.

  "Say nothing to him." She spoke without a voice, glanced meaningfully at Dion.

  Sick at heart, horror-stricken, Brother Daniel turned away. Abdiel's body, floating in the water, had caught fire and was blazing brightly. The smell of burned flesh drifted up with the smoke. The prayer for the salvation of the soul of the dead was bitter on the priest's lips. He placed his hand on the Warlord's arm.

  "My lord, I know, I understand," Daniel said softly. "She needs you now. His Majesty needs you. Don't abandon them."

  The Warlord drew a long, shuddering breath. The fire died in his eyes, died in his heart.

  "Dion!" A woman's clear voice echoed through the chamber. "Dion! Where are you? Are you in there?"

  "Nola?" Dion turned toward the eastern tunnel entrance. "Nola! I'm here!"

  Sagan took advantage of the distraction to grab hold of Brother Daniel's arm, draw him near.

  "You know?" Sagan repeated. "You understand what will happen to her?"

  "Yes, my lord."

  "Then you know you've got to get the king out of here. Take him up to the surface. Stay with him."

  "God help me!" the priest whispered. "What do I say?"

  "Anything! Make some excuse! Just—"

  A woman ran inside the chamber. Ignoring everyone else, she hurried to Dion, grasped hold of him. "It's Tusk, Dion. He's hurt. Bad, really bad. He's—" She paused, unable to keep from crying. Shaking the tears from her eyes, she continued steadily, "he's dying. He needs you."

  "Tusk . . . dying." Dion stared at her.

  "You must go to him, Dion," Maigrey said. She swayed where she stood, but her voice was firm. "He's your friend. He needs you now. You owe him a great deal."

  The Warlord put his arm around her. Maigrey leaned against him, grateful for the support.

  "I owe him more than I can ever possibly repay," Dion said quietly.

  "Dion, come, please!" Nola clasped hold of him.

  "Of course, I'll come. Don't cry, Nola He's going to be fine. It's probably just a flesh wound. You know what a fuss he makes."

  "I'm a nurse, Your Majesty," said Brother Daniel, thanking God his prayer had been answered. One of them, at least. "Perhaps I could be of assistance. If ... if my lord doesn't need me—?"

  "Go with His Majesty, Brother. I will do what needs to be done here. "

  The priest heard the bitter grief in the man's tone, saw it in the face, dark, ravaged. Maigrey's skin was deathly white, the livid scar had all but disappeared. And though the Warlord supported her, it seemed that she was the one giving him strength, not needing it. She smiled at the priest.

  Brother Daniel came to her, placed his hand on her wrist. "God is with you," he said in a low voice.

  "It makes no difference," she said steadily. "The choice was mine."

  The Warlord's faced darkened. "Is He with us, Brother? Where?"

  The priest started to reply, to give the proper response, the response he'd known and trusted in all his life. But his hand on Maigrey's arm could feel, already, the fever of the poison burn in her flesh. Abruptly, he turned away.

  "Ill be sending for Phoenix, my lord," Dion was saying. Sheathing his bloodsword, he strapped the weapon around his waist. "The warship will destroy this planet and its machines for good. Well get Tusk to the sick bay. I'll be on his Scimitar, if I'm needed."

  Dion glanced at Maigrey, frowned. "You should come back with us, my lady. That cut on your hand doesn't look serious, but it should be attended to."

  Maigrey's lips parted to answer. Her voice foiled her. Sagan clasped her tightly, lent her his strength.

  She drew a deep breath. "Go to Tusk, Dion. He made this sacrifice for you. Only you can help him now, if you choose to do so."

  Dion didn't know how to respond. He had the feeling that something was dreadfully, terribly wrong, but it was as if a thick curtain of darkness had been dropped before his eyes. He struggled to part it. Stronger hands and minds than his kept it intact.

  Nola fidgeted nervously beside him, tugged at his sleeve.

  "God go with Your Majesty," said Maigrey.

  Dion stared at her, stared at Sagan, trying to penetrate the shadows.

  The curtain remained lowered.

  Turning on his heel, back stiff, head held high, the king walked out, left his Guardians behind.

  Chapter Sixteen

  E quindi uscimno a riveder le stelle.

  Thence we came forth to see the stars again.

  Dante, Divina Commedia. Inferno.

  Maigrey and Sagan stood alone in the chamber of burning water, alone, except for the dead.

  "Dions angry," said Maigrey, looking after the king, her last image of him blurred by her tears. "He doesn't understand."

  "He will, soon enough," replied Sagan.

  Maigrey felt her reason slipping from her. The pain was intense, sapping her strength, wearing her down. It had taken all the courage and effort of her will to remain standing, to hide the truth from Dion. Darkness came over her. On the horizon of her mind, she could see armies of twisted, demented creatures rising up to do batde. They did not come to kill her, she knew, but to arm her with terrible weapons, and carry her, triumphant, to be their leader in murderous insanity.

  "My lady ..." Sagan's voice, gentle, called her.

  He caught her when she fell, held her in his arms, and for a moment the armies were driven back, daunted by the bright gleam of his golden armor. Clashing their weapons, they howled and gibbered in impatience. But they kept their distance. For the time being. They were patient. They knew victory must ultimately be theirs.

  "You'll . . . stay with Dion?" Maigrey asked.

  "He doesn't need me now, my lady. He will do better on his own. Abdiel was right. Though we won the battle, we must lose the war. We are the end. He is the last. After him, the crown returns to ordinary mortals."

  "Men created by God, not by men. The victory is His." Maigrey closed her eyes, rested her head against his chest. The breastplate that covered his flesh was warm from the heat of his body. She could feel the beating of his heart, strong and steady; she heard each indrawn breath.

  Closely as he held her, he could not hold her close enough. She felt herself begin to slip from his grasp. A cloud rose to cover the sun, dimming the golden armor. The armies raised a terrible cheer, began to surge forward. Frightened, shuddering, she hid from the ghastly sight, hid her face in his shoulder.

  "Derek, stop them! Don't let them take me!" she cried, clinging to him.

  "I'm here, my lady," he answered, and his strength comforted her. "Trust me, Maigrey. I won't fail you."

  Once more, the armies retreated, fell back. But they came a little closer, every time.

  Maigrey looked around, shivering. "Not down here," she whispered. They have us trapped down here. We must go to the surface, go to where we can see the stars."

  He carried her through the dark tunnels, not knowing where he was going, not caring. From the slope of the rock floor and the increasing biting coolness of the flowing air, he guessed that he was moving upwar
d.

  At times, she was with him. And at other times, she was not. He sensed her leave him and followed after her, and through the mind-link, he succeeded. He stood on a blasted plain, an empty battlefield beneath a glaring sun. She fought, alone, against legions of apparitions sprung from the appalling depths of human depravity. Apparitions whose intent was not to slay her but to make her their queen.

  He was powerless to defend her, for he had no weapon, nothing but a small ceremonial dagger with a hilt in the shape of an eight-pointed star.

  He saw her once as she would appear on the other side. A woman savage, brutal, silver armor changed to steel, her beauty made hideous by her cruelty.

  He called to her fiercely, loudly, and she managed to free herself from the grasping, clutching hands and return to him, but she was weak, wrung by pain and by her own fear, for she had seen herself, knew what she would become, knew she was powerless to stop it.

  The glaring sun beat down on them with blinding white-hot fury. Her body burned with fever. She begged for water to quench a thirst that would never be satisfied, writhed in an anguish that would never be soothed. No sleep, no rest, no ease; no difference between sleeping and waking except that she lived by day the nightmares she dreamed by night.

  He held her close, pressed her to him, and for a brief time he shaded her from the burning sun, his voice silenced the braying of the iron trumpets, the beating of the heartless drums, the laughter of her tormentors. In that fleeting moment of stillness and peace they said to each other what they had never said in the turmoil of their lives.

  And then the armies dashed forward, the trumpets shrieked, the drums boomed, steel clashed. Skeletal hands, wiry tendrils, misshapen coils snaked out, wrapped around her. She fought, struggled against them. Raising herself up, she put both hands on his face and looked at him long, earnestly, keeping him between her and the sight of the horror.

  And he knew it must be now.

  "My lady!" he cried and snatched her away from the terror and saw the sun go out.

  Sagan came to himself in cold and in darkness. He was on the planet's surface, kneeling on the chill, rock-strewn ground. He cradled Maigrey in his arms. His right hand was wet with blood that made glistening trails down die silver armor. In his right hand, he held the dagger; its sharp blade glimmered in the starlight.

  "My lady!" he whispered and, looking down at her, saw she was at peace, her pain ended, lying quiet on the empty battlefield.

  "I'm sorry, my lord," she said softly, with a sigh that took the last breath from her body. "Mine is the easy part."

  "My lady!" he cried.

  But her gaze had shifted from him. She looked up into the night sky and smiled.

  And he saw, reflected in her eyes, the bright and shining stars.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The darkness is no darkness with thee . . .

  Prayer Book, 1662, Psalms 139:5

  The planet's surface was quiet when Dion emerged from the mounds. A man, armed with a beam rifle, stood alert in the entryway. He had apparently heard their approach long before they saw him, for he had his rifle aimed and ready. Dion came to a hah, wished he'd thought to ask Nola for her lasgun. The man ignored him, however.

  "You Nola?" he asked, lowering the rifle.

  "Yes."

  "I'm Lee. Xris sent me. It's all clear. Brother Daniel, glad to see you're still in one piece." He sounded considerably astonished. "Guess that God of yours pulled you through, huh?"

  "I was spared, though I'm not certain why," said Brother Daniel quietly. "Others were not as fortunate."

  Lee's expression grew somber. "Yeah. I hear you're needed in that Scimitar. Go on ahead. I'm pullin' guard duty. Don't worry about that," he added, indicating several explosions that lit the night sky. "Harry and Bernard are mopping up."

  "We will remain here," stated a Loti, whom Dion vaguely recognized as someone he'd seen before, though he couldn't remember where. "The Little One is extremely tired following his exertions."

  "Thank you for your help," said Dion.

  "We were pleased to have been of service to Your Majesty." The Loti fluttered, bowed gracefully, handed Dion a gold-embossed card.

  COMPLIMENTS OF SNAGA OHME.

  Dion thrust it in his pocket.

  Nola didn't hear the Loti, she had already hurried on ahead.

  Dion had the feeling she would have gone even if the area had been crawling with Corasians.

  He went after her, saw Lee's glance flick over him curiously. "King, huh?" he thought he heard the man say as he passed him. Lee sounded impressed.

  Dion himself wasn't feeling particularly impressed. His victory was yet still unreal to him, the golden gleam dimmed by a shadow of impending loss, sorrow, bitter regret.

  He couldn't understand it, but the farther he walked from that chamber of burning water, the heavier his heart grew, the more difficult it became to move through the darkness. At one point, he halted, with the idea of turning back, but the priest, hand on his arm, reminded Dion gently that his obligation lay to his friend, who had been wounded in the king's cause.

  They came within sight of the Scimitar. Nola flung down the heavy beam rifle, broke into a run. Dion was hard-pressed to keep up with her. The ground was uneven, covered with rocks and littered with the bodies and pieces of bodies of the mind-dead. He heard Brother Daniel, hastening along at his side, mutter whispered words of prayer that sounded, to Dion, as if they were flung at the Creator in defiance, rather than offered in the spirit of a contrite heart.

  Dion reached the Scimitar, began to climb up the side toward the hatch. Memories assailed him suddenly, and for a moment he couldn't have told if he was on this tortured fragment of an unnamed planet or back on Syrac Seven.

  It had been night, then, too. He remembered scrambling up the side of the Scimitar in the darkness, remembered Tusk swearing at him one moment, offering rough sympathy the next, pushing and prodding him along. If it had been up to Dion, the boy would have sat down on the empty sidewalk and waited, uncaring, for whatever might have come.

  Dion lowered himself through the hatch, slid down the ladder, remembered the first time he'd come down that ladder. He'd come down slowly, terrified he'd slip, fall, look like a fool.

  Landing lightly on the deck, he saw a tall, muscular man hunkered over Tusk. Not man, Dion corrected, looking at him again, but half man, half machine. The cyborg, a long, thin piece of tobacco in his mouth, spent no more than a minute regarding Dion, as if his mechanical eye, with its augmented vision, could see through the young man's flesh, analyze every part of him, snap his image, and carry it forever.

  "How is he, Xris?" Nola asked, her heart on her lips.

  "Alive." The cyborg stood up, shifted the twist in his mouth from one side to the other.

  Nola knelt down on the deck. Tusk lay beneath a blanket, his black skin shining with sweat, body shivering with fever and pain. The blanket covering him was soaked with blood. Blood lay in a pool on the deck, was slippery beneath their feet.

  Dion's throat constricted.

  Brother Daniel came up behind him.

  "Are you all right, Your Majesty?"

  "I didn't . . . expect it to be this bad," Dion said, the burning ache of fear and grief nearly choking him.

  "You must be strong, for his sake."

  Nola caressed Tusk's forehead, ran her hand through the tight-curled hair.

  Tusk looked up at her. "Let me go, sweetheart!" His breath came in gasps. "Let me go!"

  "Tusk, I've brought Dion," she said, forcing a smile.

  "The kid?" Tusk looked pleased. "He's okay—" He coughed, gagged. Blood trickled out the side of his mouth.

  Brother Daniel was at his side, skilled, gentle hands doing what they could to make the wounded man more comfortable. He wiped away the blood, mopped the sweat-covered face with a soft cloth, offered by the cyborg.

  Nola's face grew paler, she kept smiling, kept soothing him. But when she turned to Dion, her eyes were anguis
hed, pleading.

  Dion started to kneel down beside Tusk when the lights on board the spaceplane suddenly flared, nearly blinding him. In the next instant, the plane's interior was plunged into darkness.

  "Get those lights back on!" ordered Brother Daniel sharply.

  An odd blurping sound came from the front of the plane. Dion noticed then a wild fluctuation in the air temperature. A chill blast blew down the back of his neck, hot air baked his feet.

  "XJ?" Dion called, afraid to move, afraid to fall over Tusk. "XJ, damn it, turn on the lights!"

  "Swearing! Don't swear. You know . . . how I . . . how I . . . Underwear ... on the deck. In the fridge. Can't move , . . out tripping over . . . shorts. And towels. Wet towels . . . wet towels."

  The lights flickered, came on dimly.

  "I didn't mean it!" XJ hiccuped. "I didn't mean it about Link! He's not half the pilot Tusk is! No one could fly this baby like Tusk! And I don't care about the money he owes me. What's one hundred and seventy-three kilnors and forty-nine . . . forty-nine ..."

  Dion crouched down beside Tusk. The mercenary looked up at him, managed a weak grin. "Jeez, it's almost been worth it," he breathed, "just to hear old XJ . . . carryin' on."

  He closed his eyes, drew a ragged breath that clicked in his throat.

  "How bad is it?" Dion asked the priest in a low tone.

  Brother Daniel lifted the blanket, glanced beneath it. His face grim, he replaced the blanket, looked at Dion, and motioned him to stand. They walked over to where the medkit rested on top of a storage chest.

  "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. If he'd been in a hospital, he might have had a chance. But now ..." The priest shook his head. Lifting the syringe, he began to fill it with the remainder of the painkiller. "This will make him sleep. If you have anything to say to him, say it now. He won't wake up."

  Dion sighed, lowered his head. "Let me tell him good-bye-"

  "No!"

  The men turned, saw Nola standing behind them. Her face was white, but firm and resolute. The green eyes were fixed on Dion. "You can help him!"

  Dion licked his lips. "Nola, I'm not a doctor—"