Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (76 page)

A pair of dorles chitter. The lone sea gull has been gone for some time.

The raven stares unblinking at the white stone pool, at the black footprints.

The bird disappears, and a man stands atop the boulder.

For a space he stands. Then he walks down through empty air to the precipice, from where he looks over the edge, as if to reassure himself that the waves still crash in against the sheer stone face far below.

They do, and the water foams golden green, as it did before and will again.

Martel steps out into the emptiness. He gathers his cloak about him and is gone, replaced instantly by the wide-winged raven he also is.

The two youths who have climbed the gentle slope from the upland meadows drop their jaws open as they watch the transformation. The taller one, red-haired, recovers first and sprints for the edge, peers over, and sees nothing.

He looks up and sees the raven beating into the distance.

The shorter, brown-haired boy has found the stone pool and the black prints.

The two look at each other. The shorter makes the sign of the inverted and looped cross. They shake their heads and hurry back to tell their parents, who have not slept well in previous nights, and who will sleep even less well in nights to come.

Martel notes this as he flaps off, but does not hesitate.

His destination is a small cottage behind a larger home, south of the city called Sybernal, a cottage he once thought of as home, or the closest thing to it.

Someone has kept the quince pruned, even planted a younger tree close by the oldest, as if to ensure there will always be the same number of quinces.

Which means there will not be.

The cottage is as he left it days, or has it been years, ago. Except that a black velvet rope is looped to bar access from either the porch or the front entry. A small black looped and inverted cross is mounted upon a black marble pedestal beside the pathway leading to the cottage. The cross is not new, though its location is.

Martel extends his perceptions and finds that the cottage is empty, although recently it has been cleaned.

Seeing the black velvet ropes, he does not enter, though he knows that two sets of black tunics and trousers hang in the closet in his sleeping chamber, as do three preserved sets of pale yellow tunics and matching trousers.

Instead, he crosses the hillside and stretches his steps toward the crest from where he can see both sides, the cottage and the sheltered bay. The heavy grass on the hilltop is longer now, and thicker, as if it relished the nights and grew in response.

Is that true of men and women as well?

There is no answer, not that he expected any.

The bay is calm, and only the smallest of waves lap at the golden sands.

The times when the waves roiled and beckoned he remembers, and when he walked the sea, and the seabed.

Thetis? Gone. You, too, and that demigod you tried to protect. And how many others have I banished? Yes, how many, Martel?

But she has gone where he has sent her, and there is no answer.

He recalls the last image from Thetis—a leaden shield, circled in black—cast at him as he left her and her charge next to a wine-dark sea.

Should you regret what is done? Should you undo it?

Those are not the questions. They never were, Martel knows as he gazes down at the green waters.

The time for gods, for an ever-growing pantheon of powerful beings with little restraint and less morality, has gone.

Morality now, Martel? How high and mighty you sound. Morality from you? How moral was it to force the Prince to use his hunting laser? How moral was it for you to block Emily's memory to create your own dreams? To send Thor back to the barbarians? To scatter nearly a thousand ships across desolate planets? To do nothing when Apollo snuffed out Rathe?

Morality aside, what he has done is right.

You hope.

Martel turns from the sea to the cottage, its lines as firm as when Mrs. Alderson first owned it. The dorles chitter in the quinces. The grass grows, and now there is sunlight, and a natural shadow down the slope of the lawn.

Sunlight … and shadow.

What more is life … than sunlight and shadow?

He turns back to the other side of the hill to watch the waves. They have picked up, and gnaw at the beach, already beginning to change, ever so slowly, the countours of the sand, to change what was so long unchanged.

… Tell me now, and if you must,

Is a man much more than dust?

His words are low, hardly louder than the dorles, or the swish of the water against the sand. But the birds cease their twittering, as if to hear the next line of the ancient song. The waves pause. The air is still. The shadow of the cottage shortens, darkens, as the distant sun rises.

The hillcrest is empty, and not even a raven crosses the heavens.

 

lxviii

“Where did you get it?” the Matriarch asks as she freezes the holo that fills the end of the hall.

More than three battle lasers are focused on the figure of a man, dressed in black and hanging in the void. Although he wears only a cloak to guard him against the chill of deep space, the power sheets around him, haloing him.

“Where did you get it?” This time her tone is sharper.

“From M-7a. The molecular patterns match those of the Viceregal forces. So do the focal lengths and energy levels.”

The Matriarch takes a last look at the figure, tries to identify the face shrouded in shadow, but finally touches the control on her throne. The holo vanishes.

“Do you believe what's on the cube?”

Her Admiral turns his eyes to the floor without answering.

“Do any of you believe what you see?”

Still there is no answer.

“Then why did you bring it to me?”

“Because we dared not to do otherwise.…”

“What are the associated probabilities?”

“According to Stats, the probability is nearly unity that he destroyed the Grand Fleet of Karnak. We ran the series twice, with a complete systems check in between.”

The Matriarch smiles, a cold smile, one that would make the poles of Tinhorn seem warm by comparison.

“There's one other thing, Matriarch.…” The tall woman who wears the winged stars of a Commodore waits.

“Yes?”

“Aurore has been moved.”

“Impossible, I'd say. At least if the conventional wisdom is correct.”

“According to conventional wisdom, Matriarch, that holo is impossible as well, but every test we can devise bears out its truth. And Stats computes that the destruction of the Grand Fleet and the removal of Aurore to its present distance from its primary are linked. Probability eighty-five percent. And Aurore was moved
before
the Grand Fleet broke subspace.”

“Before? Are you positive?”

“Absolutely.”

“Command the Fifth Fleet to avoid the entire Karnak system. Otherwise proceed on plan. And make it a standing order that
no
armed Matriarchy ship is to approach Aurore.
Ever.
”

“Yes, Matriarch.…” The quiet stretched out.

“You question my orders, or the wisdom behind them?” The Matriarch barked a sound that might have been a laugh. “Remember that the Grand Fleet of the Viceroy was ten times the size of our Fifth Fleet, and even the Grand Fleet couldn't move planets. If we're fortunate, the Fuards won't understand that in time, but I doubt they are that dense.”

“Matriarch … I don't understand,” confessed the tall Commodore.

“You will, one day. Just because some gods are men doesn't lessen their powers. Check the name Martel under the Apollo files. You might also note why he fled to Aurore.”

The Matriarch gestures, and both the Admiral and the Commodore step back, bow, and depart to carry out their orders.

 

lxix

Except for Forde, the Viceroy knows, the palace is vacant.

The screens will hold against small arms for a century, if necessary, although the mob has not yet formed.

The four towers strike into the morning, blunted spears glittering as they have for more than nine centuries, ever since she completed the rebuilding from the ruins of the Prince's Palace.

The gold-shot blue of the synthestone walls stands unmarred, stands on the hill above the rubble that is the city that has fallen to the vagaries of two gods.

Kryn had hoped that her city of Karnak would have stood longer than the city of the Prince Regent which it replaced, much longer. Instead, she stands on the East Tower, overlooking the tumbled chaos that had been order such a short time before.

By shifts, Forde has instructed the entire retinue, even the Generals and Marshals who have protested their undying loyalty, to depart.

In few cases, few indeed, was force required.

The reconstruction, directed from the fringes of the city by the Marshal of Strategy, the man named Reitre, is under way. Reitre has enough fear to be wise, and enough caution to deal with whoever follows the Viceroy.

A gold-winged bluetail alights on the corner of the battlement. Useless as they are, her father had liked battlements. Not that he had really been her father. The gene patterns hadn't matched, but what else could she have called him? And how else could she have been named Viceroy out of the Times of Trouble?

Her thoughts are broken by the sound of footsteps.

“All gone, my Lady.”

“Thank you, Forde.”

Forde, in red trousers, tunic, and boots, stands like the obsolete column he is, ready yet to support a ruler who knows her time has passed.

“Forde, you are the last. Reitre will need you, and you him. Serve him, and through him, my people.”

“My Lady…”

His protest is formal. They both know it.

“… do you think…?”

“Yes. Shortly. And that will be between Us.”

The way she says the word “Us” sends shivers down Forde's spine, and he bows.

“As you wish, Lady and Viceroy.”

“Lady will do, Forde.”

She inclines her head to dismiss him.

The footsteps echo as he heads for the drop shaft.

The people grieve now, she knows. They grieve and dig their own from the rubble left by two gods. When their grief is buried with their dead, then they will decide why they should blame their Ruler. Who did not protect them.

Who could not,
she thinks.

The gold-winged bluetail preens, spreads his wings, and leaves the battlement.

A pair of sirens howl, and another overloaded skitter makes another emergency flight to another overcrowded health center. Shortly there will be more deaths as rejuve treatments lapse for all but the most powerful and secure, and that means those with private armies and independent power sources.

The people do not know that the Grand Fleet has failed. Or that Karnak lies defenseless. Or that the Twenty-third Emperor of New Augusta has been poisoned by his second wife. Or that the Fuardian First Fleet is on its way to declare Karnak a protectorate. As is the Fifth Fleet of the Matriarchy of Halston.

Occasionally, through the pall of smoke over the city, she can see a brown-robed figure surveying the defense lines of the palace. A scent of that smoke reaches her, and the bitterness waters her eyes momentarily.

The teletale at her belt indicates that Forde is outside the screens, that he has left the defenses intact.

Not altruism, nor loyalty, but realism is represented in that action. While an intact palace, with all its shielded weapons, should not fall into the hands of the first armed adventurer, neither should the palace, the symbol of the Viceroy, fall, or fall too easily. For then the mob will require more destruction to avenge the betrayal they will feel.

After a millennium of protection under the hand of the Viceroy, they will feel betrayed, and there are more than enough who will use that sense of betrayal as the rein to power.

“So why don't you do something?” she asks herself.

Instead, she crosses the tower top slowly until she can see the Lake of Dreams.

“I can just remember when it was the Park of Summer,” she tells the redbird that chirps from the empty jackstaff.

She stretches forth a hand to the songster, but the bird takes flight.

“You should have been a blackbird,” says the Viceroy. “But you couldn't be. Not here.”

She turns back to the bench and sits, waiting, wondering if she should descend to the vacant strategy center to await the coming of the Fleets, to do her best to protect her people. Or would the few screens she could throw up now merely make the eventual situation worse?

The teletale chimes.

Forde, for some reason, is returning. Alone.

Reitre would need Forde. Therefore, Reitre is no more. No ships have arrived except two medical relief freighters.

Who? It can only be the Brotherhood, and they must have heavy weapons, for nothing less could have taken Reitre, even away from the shields of the palace.

She can only wait now.

Presently, Forde arrives on the parapet.

“Lady, do you have some way to depart? Unknown?”

“Is it the Brotherhood?” she asks, a faint quirk to her lips. After all, the brown-clad monks had started the whole thing, in one sense, by helping Martin to escape. Or had Martin maneuvered them into helping him? Or … she shrugged.

For all she knows, the man she knew as Martin Martel is more than that and has been all along. If he had been, had been that experienced, why would he have been interested in a mere slip of a woman, and one without much memory of her past at that?

Unless he knew she would be Viceroy. Unless he planned she would succeed the Prince. If he had known, had planned for those eventualities, why has he destroyed her Fleet, her capital, and left her alone in the wreckage of the Grand Millennium?