King's Sacrifice (73 page)

"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 upward.

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.

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 anguished, 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—"

"You can
heal him! You did it before! And that was a stranger! Tusk risked his
life for you, Dion. You can't let him die."

"Nola, I
don't know . . . That other . . . may have been a ... a coincidence.
Sagan himself said ..."

"Lady
Maigrey said you could help your friend." Brother Daniel
reminded him.

Was that what
Maigrey had meant? Dion wondered dazedly. Had she been giving him her
sanction? Her blessing? Her reassurance? And what about Sagan. After
all the arguments. Everything he'd said. The bitter sarcasm. . . .
Had he meant any of that? Or had the arguments been an attempt to
force me to mean it?

Nola's face
became a blur. Brother Daniel's was too sharp, too vivid. Xris's
mechanical eye stared into him, like another eye, a calm, unblinking
eye. Dion was frightened, more frightened than he had been facing
certain death. He was frightened of himself, of Ming. For if he did
fail, it meant he would fail, always.

God go with
Your Majesty
, came a voice. Maigrey's voice, or maybe the
priest's.

And Dion knew he
wouldn't fail. He would be granted the power, but not without cost.
And, at last, he understood what that cost would be. He had come
prepared to sacrifice his life. He would do so, only not in the way
he had imagined.

He would give it
up, little by little, piece by piece, everyone wanting, taking a tiny
part of him, eating his food to sustain themselves, drinking his
water to quench their thirst, warming themselves at his fire.

This is what the
rite had tried to teach him. This is what it meant to be king.

"I can't do
it alone!" he said and didn't realize he'd spoken aloud until
Brother Daniel answered him.

"You won't
be alone, Your Majesty. I am here for you and"— the priest
hesitated a moment, then said firmly—"and so is He."

"I want to
believe you, but I can't see Him and I don't know where to look."