Deathstalker Return (13 page)

But a lot of things had changed since the old days, not least Anne Barclay. The new Anne was tall and willowy, with pale perfect skin and a great mane of long flowing crimson tresses. Her face and especially her chin had been subtly redesigned to more fashionably feminine lines, and she now also possessed a quite magnificent bosom. Anne had been to the body shops, and had paid a not so small fortune to have herself remade in the image of her private dreams. She’d got her money’s worth. She was drop-dead gorgeous now. But for all her dazzling silk dress and elegant makeup, she still moved like the old Anne, striding everywhere and standing like a soldier. She had no style to her, no grace. She might be beautiful now, but she moved as though she didn’t really believe it. Being feminine was a new thing for her.

Douglas stopped at the door to his bedroom, and looked back at her. “Why?” he said abruptly. “You never cared about what you looked like, before. You never cared about what anyone thought of you. So why the makeover? Why give up being you?”

“Because I chose to,” Anne said flatly. “You only thought you knew me. You never knew what I wanted. What I really wanted. And you never cared enough to find out. I was just there to be used, to be useful. Well, I haven’t changed, inside. I’m still me, and I’ve got a job to do. So have you, Douglas. We’ve all indulged your protracted sulk long enough. Your seclusion’s over, as of now. And no, you don’t get a say in the matter. Finn and I have protected you as long as we could, but now something’s come up, and you’re needed.”

“Something’s happened,” Douglas said slowly. “Have they found Jesamine and Lewis?”

“No. Not yet. Not everything is about you and them, Douglas.”

“Is it the Terror? Has it reached another planet already?” Douglas tried desperately to work out how much time he’d lost. Had Anne really said
two months
?

“No. It’s still four months and three days before the Terror is expected to hit Heracles Four. This . . . is something new. Something unanticipated. It’s not anything I can explain. You have to see this for yourself, in person. And you can’t do it looking like that. Get dressed! Full kingly apparel, including the crown. After so long out of the public eye, you can’t afford to appear in front of the cameras looking anything but your best.”

 

 

Some time later, King Douglas followed Anne Barclay through the wide, handsomely decorated corridors of the palace, and had to hurry to keep up with her. They were heading for the Imperial Court, and Douglas had a really bad feeling about that. He hadn’t been in the main court since his Coronation. It seemed to him more and more that all his troubles stemmed from that time. He’d been happy before then, as a Paragon, and Lewis had still been his friend. They would have died for each other, then. Now here he was heading towards the court again, and Douglas felt a strange dread, as though his whole life was about to undergo another irrevocable change.

He was properly dressed now, in all his kingly robes, with the great cut-diamond crown of the Empire upon his head. He’d bathed and shaved, and even eaten a hot meal under Anne’s watchful eye, and he had to admit he felt better and sharper than he had in . . . ages. He felt almost like himself again. But the bad feeling persisted, and he snatched another sidelong glance at Anne. She still hadn’t told him what the hell this was all about—wouldn’t tell him anything. In the past, she would have provided him with a full briefing by now, telling him everything he needed to know, along with carefully worked out answers to the press’s most probable queries, and even half a dozen different strategies for dealing with all the various ways to salvage the situation if it all went wrong. That was Anne’s job, and she’d always taken pride in being very good at it. But now she just ignored his questions and stalked along in front of him, her familiar scowl distorting her new, beautiful face. People they passed fell back hurriedly to get out of her way—her way, not his. Douglas didn’t miss that. Just another sign of how much things had changed during his seclusion.

He could hear the court long before they reached it. From the babble of raised voices up ahead, there had to be a whole army of reporters waiting, and not being at all patient about it. As Douglas and Anne slipped through the back door and approached the great hanging curtains that separated them from the court proper, the sound became actually deafening. Douglas frowned. What the hell could be so important, that didn’t involve Lewis or the Terror? It couldn’t be the return of the blessed Owen; Anne had no reason to keep that from him. But then, what reason could Anne have to keep anything from him?

Douglas straightened his shoulders. Whatever it was, the odds were it wasn’t going to be good news, so the sooner he faced it, the better. He’d been kept in the dark long enough. He let Anne give him a quick check over, to be sure everything was as it should be, and then he nodded sharply to the two waiting guards, who pulled back the curtains so he could make his entrance. He strode out onto the raised dais, accompanied by a recorded fanfare, and settled himself onto his throne while Anne was still hurrying to catch up. Douglas smiled inwardly. He might have been away, but now he was back, and the sooner everyone recognized that, the better. Time to remind people he was still the King—perhaps himself, most of all.

He looked benignly out over the great wide hall of the court, most of which seemed to be packed full of reporters. Hundreds of remote control cameras floated above the pack, occasionally getting into savage butting contests over the best angles. King Douglas smiled on them all, deliberately ignoring the roar of shouted questions as he seated himself as comfortably as possible on his ancient throne. There were some cheers at his appearence, but not nearly as many as there should have been. It seemed absence didn’t always make the heart grow fonder. And whatever story the mob had been led to expect, it clearly wasn’t anything to do with his return.

Anne came forwards to stand stiffly beside him, and that was new too. Normally, she stayed well in the background at all public affairs. There was another burst of recorded trumpets, and the roar went up again from the reporters as the hanging curtains parted to reveal the Imperial Champion, Finn Durandal. He came striding out onto the raised dais, as tall and muscular and classically handsome as always, smiling and nodding affably to the media pack, surrounded by his own personal honor guard of six Paragons, grim-faced in their polished armor and dramatic purple cloaks. Finn had never had any trouble looking every inch the hero, though up close his charisma had a cold and calculated feel. And he looked a lot better in the official black leather armor of the Champion than Lewis Deathstalker ever had.

Finn still wore his old purple Paragons’ cloak over his gleaming armor, as though to show he hadn’t forgotten where he came from. He struck a grand pose at the front of the dais and waved and smiled to the media mob, and they gave the Champion the kind of cheers that once would have been reserved for their King. Douglas looked at the six Paragons accompanying Finn. They’d spread out in a bodyguard’s pattern, studying the reporters with cold, inimical eyes. Douglas had to wonder just what it was that the apparently popular Finn Durandal felt he needed to be protected from so thoroughly. And there was something . . .
off,
about the Paragons. They wore their armor sloppily, and carried themselves more like thugs than warriors. And none of them had so much as glanced at Douglas, even though he would have called some of them friends.

What could have happened, out on their failed quest, to have changed them so harshly?

Finn Durandal smiled graciously out over the court as though he owned it, holding his noble heroic pose with the ease of long practice, allowing the media pack to worship him. Finally, he raised a single hand, and the crowd’s acclaim cut off immediately. The floating cameras all came rushing in for close-ups. A few targeted Douglas as well, just to be sure they didn’t miss out on anything. But it was the Champion and not the King who held everyone’s attention, and everyone there knew it.

“My friends,” Finn said grandly, “today, as I promised you, I bring you the story of the century. No, not the return of the blessed Owen Deathstalker, unfortunately. The great quest continues, but I have to tell you that more and more of our noble Paragons are returning, disappointed. Instead, I stand here now to inform you of the return of a man almost as legendary, as well loved and almost as long lost. A man long considered dead has been discovered very much alive; a hero, returned to us all in our hour of need! My friends . . . allow me to introduce to you James Campbell, first son of William and Niamh Campbell; the man born to be King!”

For a moment there was utter silence in the court, and then a tall and handsome man in kingly robes came striding from behind the curtains and out onto the dais as though he belonged there, and always had. The media crowd went crazy, screaming with joy and shock and approval, though not forgetting themselves so much that they neglected to order their cameras to get the best possible shots of the Empire’s most unexpected come-back. James Campbell stood beside Finn, who shook his hand warmly, and then put a comradely arm across his broad shoulders as they both beamed into the camera lenses—while Douglas Campbell sat slumped on his throne as though someone had just punched him under the heart.

It couldn’t be James. Not brother James. It just couldn’t. His elder brother had died in a stupid traffic accident, long before he was born. Everyone knew that. But the man on the dais had the same smiling face that Douglas had seen in so many family holo images. He had the same long golden mane of hair as Douglas, and similar roughly handsome features. Put them side by side, and even a stranger could have seen they were brothers. But how could it be James, the perfect Prince whose memory Douglas had been raised to revere? Douglas found he was actually trembling, as though he’d been brought face-to-face with a ghost.

James was big and broad and effortlessly hearty, all bluff cheer as he good-naturedly called for the crowd to shut up so he could say a few words. The media pack fell silent immediately, even the most hardened types crowding forward to the very edge of the raised dais, their eyes shining with more than just the pleasure of a good story. James Campbell: the man who should have been King, the greatest monarch the Empire never had. His return was a miracle, and in the face of all that had happened recently, like everyone else, the media desperately needed good news and a hero they could believe in. If they couldn’t have the blessed Owen, well, James Campbell was a perfectly acceptable substitute.

James made a short speech, all bluff sincere charm about how glad he was to be back, and how all he wanted was a chance to serve Humanity to the best of his ability. It was a slick and polished performance, and to Douglas it sounded more than a little rehearsed. Just the kind of thing Anne would have written for him, once. He looked at her, but she had eyes only for James. The moment he stopped talking, the reporters burst into spontaneous applause, an almost unheard-of event. Douglas joined in, though he still wasn’t sure what he felt or believed about this James.

The media pack finally remembered why they were there, and began shouting questions, but James just shook his head and said he’d let Finn speak for him, for the present—which was the first wrong note. In everything Douglas had read on his deceased brother, all the historians had agreed that James had been a natural orator, fluent and commanding, and never afraid to speak his mind.
That
James had never let anyone speak for him. Douglas looked at Anne again and tried to attract her attention, but she was ignoring him, staring at Finn and James with a smug, almost self-satisfied smile. It gave her carefully sculpted, beautiful face an ugly look. Douglas realized that she had to have known about James long before this. She must have helped plan this whole scene, this carefully orchestrated reintroduction to the Empire. But she hadn’t said a word to Douglas, before now. Until it was . . . too late for him to interfere? Douglas considered that thought, not liking the taste of it. Anne Barclay was one of his oldest friends. Finn Durandal was his friend, and his Champion. And neither of them had said a word about his dead brother’s return. If he couldn’t trust them . . . Douglas felt his heart grow cold. He realized Finn was speaking, and made himself pay attention as the Champion finally launched into the epic story of James’s return from the dead. It was a hell of a story, full of thrills and surprises, and it sickened Douglas to his soul.

It seemed James hadn’t died of his injuries in that famous traffic accident, all those years ago. Instead he was seriously injured and hideously disfigured, far beyond the ability of medical knowledge to repair him, in those days. There were even fears that he would come out of the regeneration tank mentally retarded. So King William and Queen Niamh decided to hide away their crippled, hideous son in the depths of their ancestral home, House Campbell, his existence to be kept secret until such time as new medical techniques could be developed to help him. But that could take years, even decades, with no guarantee of success at the end. So even as trusted servants tended to the hideous monster in his hidden room, William and Niamh decided that James should be declared officially dead, while they raised another son to take his place.

All this was bad enough, but there were hints too; hints that William was glad of an excuse to replace James with a new son. Hints that James—perfect and honorable James—had become too independent, too much his own man and a power in his own right; that William had become jealous of a son who threatened to be a much greater King than he ever had been. Apparently, William had determined that his new son would be more carefully guided, and controlled. Douglas was to be a model son and a credit to his father, and nothing more.

And so it might have gone, but a few weeks back Finn Durandal had been contacted secretly by one of the guards responsible for watching over James in his cell deep under House Campbell. And this guard told Finn that James had in fact made a full physical and mental recovery years ago, but that William had chosen to still keep him prisoner, rather than have his favored son Douglas deposed. Indeed, William had decided that James was no longer needed, with Douglas due to be married and produce heirs of his own, and so William had determined to have his first son killed, rather than risk having the truth come out after his death. This was too much for the guard, who’d grown fond of James, and he’d contacted the only man he felt he could still trust: the Imperial Champion.