Songmaster (25 page)

The vows were made, the abdication and the coronation took place with a great deal of pomp, and Susquehanna’s caterers and hotelkeepers became wealthier than they had ever dreamed of. All the contenders and pretenders were slaughtered, and Riktors spent a year going from system to system to quell all the rebellions with his own mixture of brutality and sympathy. After the first few planets were at peace, the populace happy and the rebels butchered, most of the other rebellions quelled themselves.

It was only the day after the papers announced that Riktors Ashen was coming home when the soldiers appeared at the door of the little house in Brazil where Mikal and Ansset lived.

“How can he!” Ansset cried out in anguish when he saw the soldiers outside. “He gave his word!”

“Open the door for them, my Son,” Mikal said.

“They’re here to kill you!”

“A year was more than I hoped for. I’ve had that year. Did you really expect Riktors to keep his word? There isn’t room in the galaxy for two heads that know the feel of the imperial crown.”

“I can kill most of them before they could come near. If you hide, perhaps—”

“Don’t kill anyone, Ansset. That’s not your song. The dance of your hands is ugly without the song of your voice, Songbird.”

The soldiers began to beat on the door, which, because it was steel, did not give way easily. “They’ll blow it open in a minute,” Mikal said. “Promise me you won’t kill anyone. No matter who. Please. Don’t avenge me.”

“I will.”

“Don’t avenge me. Promise. On your life. On your love for me.”

Ansset promised. The door blew open. The soldiers killed Mikal with a flash of lasers that turned his skin to ashes. They kept firing until nothing but ashes was left. Then they gathered them up. Ansset watched, keeping his promise but wishing with all his heart that somewhere in his mind there was a wall he could hide behind. Unfortunately, he was too sane.

They took twelve-year-old Ansset and the ashes of the emperor to Susquehanna. The ashes were placed in a huge urn and displayed with state honors. Everyone was told that Mikal had died of old age, and no one admitted to suspecting otherwise.

They brought Ansset to the funeral feast under heavy guard, for fear of what his hands might do.

After the meal, at which everyone pretended to be somber, Riktors called Ansset to him. The guards followed, but Riktors waved them away. The crown rested lightly on his hair.

“I know I’m safe from you,” Riktors said.

“You’re a lying bastard,” Ansset said softly, so that only Riktors could hear, “and if I hadn’t given my word to a better man than you, I’d tear you end to end.”

“If I weren’t a lying bastard,” Riktors answered with a smile, “Mikal would never have given the empire to me.”

Then Riktors stood. “My friends,” he said, and the dignitaries present gave a cheer. “From now on I am not to be known as Riktors Ashen, but as Riktors Mikal. The name Mikal shall pass to all my successors on the throne, in honor of the man who built this empire and brought peace to all mankind.” Riktors sat amid the applause and cheers, which sounded like some of the people might have been sincere. It was a nice speech, as impromptu speeches went.

Then Riktors asked Ansset to sing.

“I’d rather die,” Ansset said.

“You will, when the time comes. Now sing—the song Mikal would want sung at his funeral.”

Ansset sang then, standing on the table so that everyone could see him, just as he had stood to sing to an audience he hated on his last night of captivity in the ship. His song was wordless, for all the words he might have said were treason, and would have stirred the audience to destroy Riktors on the spot. Instead Ansset sang a melody, flying unaccompanied from mode to mode, each note torn from his throat in pain, each note bringing a sweeter pain to the ears that heard it.

The song broke up the banquet as the grief they had all pretended to feel now burned within them. Many went home weeping; all felt the great loss of the man whose ashes dusted the bottom of the urn.

Only Riktors stayed at the table after Ansset’s song was over.

“Now,” Ansset said, “they’ll never forget Father Mikal.”

“Or Mikal’s Songbird,” Riktors said. “But I am Mikal now, as much of him as could survive. A name and an empire.”

“There’s nothing of Father Mikal in you,” Ansset said coldly.

“Is there not?” Riktors said softly. “Were you fooled by Mikal’s public cruelty? No, Songbird.” And in his voice Ansset heard the hints of pain that lay behind the harsh and unmerciful emperor.

“Stay and sing for me, Songbird,” Riktors said. Pleading played around the edges of his voice.

“I was placed with Mikal, not with you,” Ansset said. “I must go home now.”

“No,” Riktors said, and he reached into his clothing and pulled out a letter. Ansset read it. It was in Esste’s handwriting, and it told him that if he was willing, the Songhouse would place him with Riktors. Ansset did not understand. But the message was clear, the language unmistakably Esste’s own. He had trusted Esste when she told him to love Mikal. He would trust her now.

Ansset reached out his hand and touched the urn of ashes that rested on the table. “I’ll never love you,” he said, meaning the words to hurt.

“Nor I you,” Riktors answered. “But we may, nonetheless, feed each other something that we hunger for. Did Mikal sleep with you?”

“He never wanted to. I never offered.”

“Neither will I,” Riktors said. “I only want to hear your songs.”

There was no voice in Ansset for the word he decided to say. He could only nod. Riktors had the grace not to smile. He just nodded in return and left the table. Before he reached the doors, Ansset spoke to him.

“What will you do with this?”

Riktors looked at the urn where Ansset rested his hand.

“The relics are yours. Do what you want.” Then Riktors Mikal was gone.

Ansset took the urn of ashes into the chamber where he and Father Mikal had sung so many songs to each other. Ansset stood for a long time before the fire, humming the memories to himself. He gave all the songs back to Father Mikal, and with love he reached out and emptied the urn on the blazing fire.

The ashes put the fire out.

“The transition is complete,” Songmaster Onn said to Songmaster Esste as soon as the door to the High Room was closed.

“I was afraid,” Esste confided in a low melody that trembled. “Riktors Ashen is not unwise. But Ansset’s songs are stronger than wisdom.”

They sat together in the cold sunlight that filtered through the shutters of the High Room. “Ah,” sang Songmaster Onn, and the melody was of love for Songmaster Esste.

“Don’t praise me. The gift and the power were Ansset’s.”

“But the teacher was Esste. In other hands Ansset might have been used as a tool for power, for wealth. Or worse, he might have been wasted. But in your hands—”

“No, Brother Onn. Ansset himself is too much made of love and loyalty. He makes others desire what he himself already is. He is a tool that cannot be used for evil.”

“Will he ever know?”

“Perhaps; I do not think he yet suspects the power of his gift. It would be better if he never found out how little like other Songbirds he is. And as for the last block in his mind—we laid that well. He will never find his way around it, and so he will never learn or even search for the truth about who controlled the transfer of the crown.”

Songmaster Onn sang tremulously on the delicate plots woven in the mind of a child of five, of six, of nine; plots that could have unwoven at any time. “But the weaver was wise, and the cloth has held.”

“Mikal the Conqueror,” said Esste, “learned to love peace more than he loved himself. So will Riktors Mikal. That is enough. We have done our duty for mankind. Now we must teach other little singers.”

“Only the old songs,” sighed Songmaster Onn.

“No,” answered Songmaster Esste, with a smile. “We will teach them to sing of Mikal’s Songbird.”

“Ansset has already sung that song, better than we could hope to.”

They walked slowly out of the High Room as Songmaster Esste whispered, “Then we will harmonize!” Their laughter was music down the stairs.