The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (24 page)

“Give their kingdom up or else have it taken away?” Quickly asked.

“That’s exactly why all of these ships are here. These are the rulers who are smart enough to realize their time was limited in one way or another. Either Mowbray would set his sights on them or else their people would see entire kingdoms able to live peacefully at the round table. Either way, their time was coming to an end.”

“The entire galaxy will change,” Quickly said.

For the first time in a very long time, she smiled. “Yes, it will.”

60

Mowbray didn’t know for a fact that Scrope was dead. He guessed that he was though, by the way the urgent incoming communications had abruptly stopped. His appointed ruler of Edsall Dark had been replaced once more by Vere.

In and of itself, that was of no great concern. He would kill Vere soon enough. What did concern him was that her letter to the galaxy’s leaders had been received with more tolerance and acceptance than he ever would have imagined possible.

Clearly, he had miscalculated. If the letter had actually been meant for the leaders of each planet, kingdom, and territory, none of them would have done anything but laugh. The message hadn’t actually been intended for them, however. It was meant for their citizens. As soon as word of Vere’s offer spread from spaceport to spaceport, the people in every other kingdom wanted their leader to agree to it. After thousands of years of accepting one way of life, they had seen the possibility of a different way. They would have a voice in what happened. They would be represented by one of their own rather than a ruler who lusted for power and glory. Of course they would all want their leaders to do the same thing that the CasterLan Kingdom was doing.

Mowbray didn’t blame the populations, he blamed the rulers. No one on a Vonnegan-controlled planet was calling for change because they knew they would be sent to the Cauldrons of Dagda if they did. It showed just how weak the other galactic leaders were that they didn’t crush their discontented people and force them to live under their rule.

For once, another ruler’s weakness was actually a hindrance to Mowbray rather than a benefit. While his own empire was based on fear and power, and while no other kingdom would ever declare war on the Vonnegan Empire, his fleet of Athens Destroyers wasn’t infinite. The hundreds of ships that remained were spread thin throughout his kingdom. He could have ordered the shipyards to increase production, but at the expense of bankrupting his entire empire. He could no longer successfully fight wars on multiple fronts. He either had to destroy Vere and her allies or move on to another kingdom and conquer it. If he moved on, though, the rest of the galaxy would see he had backed down. If he showed any weakness at all, he would prove he could not only be defied, he could be defeated. As soon as people realized that, he might as well give the throne up... or destroy as much of the galaxy as possible on his way from the throne.

Mowbray knew his own people would never tolerate the conditions he imposed upon them if they thought they had an alternative. Through power and fear, he had shown them they didn’t have that choice. If he didn’t go to Edsall Dark, those same people would see he could be disregarded. They would begin to complain about the brutal regime. His entire dominion would fall to pieces.

Already, he was getting reports that five other armies had joined Vere’s cause. Mowbray’s generals had been opposed to sending his fleet into battle against an enemy of such combined might. While he privately agreed with them that it was foolish, they didn’t realize he had no other choice. It wasn’t their empire to lose when he returned home, it was his. And so he ordered the fleet of Athens Destroyers to continue ahead for Edsall Dark, regardless of how many fleets were lined up to oppose him.

61

LangeloMiek was CamaLon’s oldest and most accomplished carpenter. Like many others, he had been living in the Forest of Tears ever since the Vonnegan flag had gone up. Once the banner containing the purple warhawk was lowered and replaced by the blue CasterLan dragon, hundreds of such people—women and children, tradesmen and farmers—appeared from the forest and began making their way back across the wide stretch of fields and toward the capital.

The gates swung open, allowing people to pass through the high wall that had kept invaders at bay millennia earlier.

“LangeloMiek,” Vere said, smiling at the talented carpenter as he shuffled through the gates. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

“Vere,” the old man croaked, squinting to make out all the changes in her face since the last time he had seen it. “Pleasure to see you again. What can I do for you?”

“Set your shop up. I have a job for you.”

It was as colossal an understatement as would be heard around the capital that day. Vere wasn’t just giving the famed woodworker a job, she was charging him with the design and creation of a table that would represent the entire free galaxy. The same hands that had built a coronation throne for her father, the bed her mother had slept in for much of her life, and many other famed pieces of CasterLan history would now create a circular table that would seat as many representatives from other planets and kingdoms as were willing to answer Vere’s call.

LangeloMiek, along with his young apprentice, started by designing a series of wedges that encircled the table’s middle. This was the core of the round table. He then designed a series of larger wedges that could attach to what was already there. This served to allow more and more people to sit around the table as its popularity grew. Understanding Vere’s intent, the old man drafted a table that could always be expanded to accommodate more seats.

Very little of the actual labor was actually performed by LangeloMiek, though. His wrinkled hands and swollen knuckles were simply too weak and sore from years of sanding, cutting, and hammering. For these things, he relied on his apprentice, who had more energy than the old carpenter ever remembered possessing.

The teenager, who went by the name of EllRaph, had initially relied too much on the strength of his broad shoulders for his master’s liking. One of the first lessons he had taught the boy, now a young man, was to correct that approach.

“The hands do all of the work,” LangeloMiek had said, holding his own worn out hands up for display. “Through them, you mold the wood into what you want it to become and it tells you how far it can bend and form to your wishes.”

EllRaph, under his teacher’s careful watch, had started by cutting and chiseling the planks of wood that would go around the table’s center. For each one, he sawed a curved line, then used long strokes of an edger to give them their basic shape. The wood shop was soon filled with so much dust that the walls became coated in a veil of silvery tan particles. The master carpenter walked around every side of each plank, taking measurements and noting imperfections as he went. Whenever he was satisfied with a piece, he marked a set of four pencil lines into the piece of wood, then set EllRaph on the job of sawing the connectors and supports into it.

Piece by piece, the round table went from idea to reality. The work was surprisingly quick because of how simple the design was, and because LangeloMiek made sure it was executed without undue complexity. He had once spent two and a half years making a single chair because of how intricate the design was. The round table was already taking shape after only a few days.

After the initial set of pieces had been carved but before they were smoothed with a fine sander and then polished, LangeloMiek had his student arrange the pieces into the shape they would take. A circular piece lay at the very middle. Arranged around it were a series of wedge-shaped pieces that aligned with the circle.

“What do you think, my boy?”

EllRaph, covered in sawdust that clung to him because he was drenched in sweat, took a step back.

“It’s a round table all right.”

LangeloMiek shook his head in amusement. “It’s much more than that, my boy. Much more.”

Because the table could always have more rings added to it, there would always be enough seats to host someone new. Yet no one would have a more prominent position at the table than anyone else.

“Your hands are changing the galaxy,” the old master said.

The student, still not understanding why a table might be of such importance, shrugged and went back to work.

The only noise in the wood shop came from the carpenter’s saw as it cut new pieces of wood. Morgan stood in the doorway, watching the carpenter’s efforts. As she did, her shoulders rose and fell with each breath. Her eyes narrowed. Her hands trembled until there was nothing she could do with them except allow them to curl into fists. Even then the irritation began to overflow.

A voice boomed from behind her: “Who thought we would ever see this?”

Turning, she saw a light growing larger as it approached. Although there was dust in the air, even outside the doorway, Morgan could make out the immense figure as it got closer. Hector.

“How many times have you been by?” she asked.

The man with the gargantuan arms and shoulders blushed. “A couple times a day. I can’t seem to stay away.”

“Are you guarding it?”

Hector laughed, then moved beside her so he could continue to watch the progress for himself. “Guarding it? I’m in awe of it. It’s going to change the galaxy.”

There was none of the same admiration in Morgan’s voice when she said, “Who would have ever guessed that our kingdom would be replaced by a piece of furniture?”

As they watched, LangeloMiek hobbled to a block of wood, checked the marks he had drawn onto it, then waved for EllRaph to begin cutting. After a while of back and forth sawing motions, one of the corners fell off and a chunk of wood thudded to the ground.

“It’s history,” Hector said, “in the grandest sense.”

“
Our kingdom
is what’s history,” she said, shaking her head.

He turned and faced her, every part of him seemingly twice the size of her. “You would rather have the banner of the blue dragon waving in the air each time another battle is fought, than to have no more battles at all?”

If it were anyone else saying this to her, she would have argued. She couldn’t quarrel with her hero, however. Better than anyone else, he knew the true costs of war. It was the banner of the five-tailed dragon that he had left floating above countless ships following his victories. It was the CasterLan flag that he had been fighting for when he lost his legs. He could have become the kingdom’s greatest general if he had wanted to. Not only couldn’t she argue with him, there was nothing at all she could say to rebut him.

Tiny grains of sawdust floated toward the ground but instead rested against Hector’s energy platform, sizzling when they came into contact. The man didn’t seem to notice because he was so enthralled by the carpenter’s work. As much as Morgan had once enjoyed visiting the massive assembly hangars where Solar Carrier were constructed, she had never seen anyone there with the expression Hector had as he hovered beside her. And it was for nothing more than a wooden table!

As if sensing her opinion, Hector said, “It’s more than the materials used to make it.”

“Is that right?”

He smiled at the cynicism in her tone. “I fought in battles I didn’t believe in. For that, I lost my legs. Westmoreland and Hotspur and many others fought in battles they did believe in. They lost their lives. Others have survived physically, but were destroyed mentally.” He smiled at the sound of the cutting and sawing, then added, “Who, in all of those cases, would you rather be?”

Morgan didn’t think it was fair to group Westmoreland and Hotspur together. One had been a friend and ally and had tried to preserve the kingdom. The other had been a maniacal sociopath bent of glory.

What she said, though, was, “There’s no shame in dying for what you believe in.”

Hector smiled, then went back to watching the carpenter work. “I didn’t die. Is there shame in me surviving?”

“Of course not.”

“What about the people who go into war because they are simply following orders? They aren’t dying over something they believe in; they’re just dying. Is there shame in it for them?”

“No,” she said quietly.

“Then who would you most want to be out of those groups?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

The carpenter’s young assistant rubbed a rough sheet of paper against the side of a piece of wood. The sound, methodical and steady, sounded almost as if the wood had a heartbeat.

As Morgan turned to leave, Hector said, “If the round table works the way Vere envisions, maybe that will help answer the question for you.”

62

Traskk growled and hissed as he left the king’s chambers. His tail smacked either side of the corridor as he made his way to the lift that would take him down to Vere and the others. A strange thing had happened.

He had prolonged Scrope’s beautiful death as long as he could, taking as much delight in the screams and agony of the man who had cut off his limbs. There was something to be proud of in how he had managed to keep from ripping Scrope’s head completely off until the politician finally succumb to his injuries. Usually, when he wanted to kill someone he did so in seconds.

And yet he was still angry. No amount of pain experienced by Scrope could satisfy the rage that had been unleashed in the Basilisk. Once Traskk stopped seething, he realized that it wasn’t only what Scrope had done to him that bothered him so much. It was that someone Vere had trusted and depended upon had been able to double-cross her and everyone else.

What continued to anger him after the floor and walls of the king’s chamber were drenched in blood was that the betrayal had happened when everyone was too busy to worry about the possibility of such an event. Now, another battle was going to begin and anyone around them could also be a traitor. Rulers from all over the galaxy were appearing through the portal. What were the chances that all of them intended to fight for Vere rather than choose Mowbray’s side once the fighting started?

This was why Traskk continued to rage as he entered the lift, and why he hissed the entire way down the hundreds of floors back to the ground.