The Warlock of Rhada (26 page)

For a moment the Navigator thought Glamiss might kill him; his thin face grew livid and the eyes seemed to turn black with rage.

“Do you know what you’ve done?’’
Never had he heard such hatred in a voice.

Emeric said, “Yes, I know what I’ve done.”

Glamiss stepped back and stood for a moment, his hands white-knuckled on his weapons. His voice was strangled with fury, and as cold as the death of friendship. “When we reach Vara, I want you gone. Never let me see your face again--
brother.”

He turned and swept from the room, already regal in his movements, Emeric thought ruefully.

Was I right?
he asked himself.
Did I have the right to destroy all this knowledge? Knowing nothing could be preserved save a few trivial things, would I do it again ?

Yes.
Yes,
by all that men held holy--he
would
do it again. And again. And still again. Better that Glamiss spend his life at war killing thousands than he have the science of the past to spend months killing billions. Because no Empire, no matter how necessary, could ever be built by men without war and killing. We are still too near to our australopithecine ancestors for that, the priest thought firmly.

He glanced at the chronometer and heard the growing confusion of retreat and withdrawal in the corridors of the hospital. He looked about longingly at the library and then forced himself to gather his thoughts. It was time to go.

The
Gloria in Coelis
was near the boundary of space when the valley of Trama vanished in fire. The mushroom pillar glowed crimson, yellow, vermilion, and white in the darkness of Vyka’s night.

The novices at the control consoles stared through the tinted shields, muttering Aves and crossing themselves with the sign of the Star.

Bishop Kaifa, his face drawn and yellowish with anger, spoke in a voice that rasped like steel on glass. “You are either a saint or a madman, Nav Emeric. It will be the duty of the Grand Master to decide which. Now get out of my sight and stay out; I can’t bear to look at you.”

Emeric made his genuflection to his superior and left the bridge. He was thinking that Talvas Hu Chien was a priest of the severe persuasion, a book burner--a killer of scientists. Ironically, the old Grand Master’s savagery would probably approve of what Emeric had done.

Emeric made his way toward his own quarters. The starship was crowded with the levy of Vara, the folk of Trama (dispossessed now, because of what Emeric had done--their beautiful valley a radiating, boiling ruin), and even the Tramans’ livestock.

“Nav--Lord.”

Emeric looked down into Shana’s pinched, dark face. He had forgotten about the girl. Was she mourning her eagles? he wondered. He had destroyed them, too.

“What will become of us. Lord?”

What could he say that would have any meaning to her? “You will be given new land--somewhere else, Shana.”

“Our valley is gone? “

He nodded slowly.

“Who did this wicked thing to us?”

Who, indeed? “I did, Shana.”

The girl studied him intently. Since his experience on the Personality Exchanger there had been a difference in the way she treated him--a strange, touching diffidence that was unlike her.

“Was it necessary, Lord?”

Emeric’s face grew stern. “Yes. It was necessary.”

The girl was silent for a time, and Emeric made to move past her. He was tired and sick at heart and longed for the silence and emptiness of his cell-like room. But Shana said, “The Lord Glamiss is angry.”

“Very,” Emeric said dryly.

“He has offered us land, but I wanted to ask you.”

“He has the right now, Shana. Vara-Vyka is his.”

“There is talk among the folk that you are a great lord on a world called Rhada.”

“I have lands there,” Emeric said.

“That was the Warlock’s place.”

“He was born there,” Emeric said, remembering. The rest of it couldn’t be so easily explained to this weyrherd girl. But that the Warlock had been born by the Rhad north sea--that she could understand.

“Will you settle us on your land, Lord?”

“You want to go off-world?”

“Yes. Our valley is fire. There is no place here for us.”

Emeric the Rhadan disputed with Emeric the Navigator--but only for a short time. The folk of Trama deserved that much from him, at least. Perhaps, he thought ruefully, they’ll found a dynasty of their own one day--when Glamiss Magnifico is ruler of all the Great Sky.

“It will be done, Shana,” he said.

And then the girl did a strange thing. She touched the hem of his habit and brought her fingers to her lips. The cult of St. Emeric is born, he thought ironically. The cult of the man who flamed the last mountain into the sky.

He walked on alone now, knowing that he would always be alone, the object of an Emperor-to-be’s bitterness.

Was I right? he wondered. He might one day ask the Vulk, but he knew that they would not tell him. They would not tell him until he grew wise enough to know without being told.

He closed himself into his tiny humming cell and knelt at the prie-dieu. How long, he wondered, would he ask himself the thing Shana had asked him, the thing he had answered with such certainty?

He spoke aloud, forehead pressed against the thrumming metal.

“Was it necessary, Lord?”

And as the starship drifted slowly across the line that divided night from day and into the light of the Vyka sun, Emeric had his answer.