Empress of Eternity (35 page)

16 Tenmonth 1351, Unity of Caelaarn

Fire burned along his left arm, and his lower legs were ice, and hot pokers stabbed into his body in too many places…Maertyn tried to turn, but found he could not move. Then he dropped back into a hot darkness…only to half-wake sometime later mouthing a name…

It was a beloved name, so beloved…and so much a part of him, but he could not remember it before another wave of darkness took him…and so it went, endlessly, dozing, fire, pain, darkness and light, and names and words coming from his mouth, none of which he recognized…until an even deeper and cooler darkness claimed him.

Then…he was awake

Slowly he opened his eyes, but he was alone in a small chamber—a hospital room, or a reasonable substitute for one. Equipment hummed, and some of it was centered on him, if only for the reason that he was the only one in the room. He was restrained in a bed, with regen pads clamped everywhere, it seemed, but only below the neck.

He was alive…but he was still tired…and his entire body ached…particularly places in his thighs and abdomen.

He tried not to think about what might come next.

An angular woman in the pale greens of healing walked into the chamber. “You’re awake at last, Lord Maertyn. You’re much better today.”

“Could…I have…”

His mouth was so dry he could not continue, and she stepped over to the bed and offered a tube from a beaker. The liquid helped.

Finally, he completed the sentence. “Could I have been worse…still survived, Doctor?” Maertyn assumed she was a doctor because of the competence and the lack of badges and credentials affixed to her greens.

“Some have,” she replied with a smile. “Not many. You have a visitor. He can only stay a few minutes, but he insists that it’s important. Since the Executive Administrator of the Unity sent him, we had to agree to a few minutes. But if your vitals get disrupted, we’ll be back to escort him out. Immediately.”

Maertyn almost smiled at that, but he worried. Exactly who was the EA these days, and how long had he been recovering? Before he could ask, the doctor had stepped out.

The figure who stepped into the room and closed the door was not unfamiliar.

“Ashauer…I can’t say as…I’m exactly surprised to see you.”

“How could I not pay my respects to the hero of the Unity?” asked the older lord politely.

That certainly wasn’t what Maertyn expected. He swallowed, then tried to gather his thoughts. Finally, he said, “My memory is a little hazy. Perhaps you had better refresh it.”

Ashauer smiled warmly. “After all you’ve done and been through, that’s scarcely surprising. I can’t tell you everything, because your efforts to protect Tauzn from the assassins within his own bodyguards damaged several of the security scanners. The records we did recover implicated Aembit, not to mention Smaert…”

Maertyn had never heard of Smaert, but just nodded.

“…Caellins, the head of the Gaerda, turned a stunner on his brain before he could be taken into custody. It’s amazing what you uncovered, Maertyn.”

“I just did what was necessary…”

“EA D’Onfrio has already made a public statement that your actions prove that Caelaarn still has heroes…”

Maertyn was beginning to get a very uneasy feeling.

“There are some matters unresolved. No one can enter the research station…and your wife is missing…”

Maarlyna…was she as lost to him as if she had died? Or he had? His eyes burned, and he shook his head, then swallowed.

“Another casualty of the renegade black-shirts?” asked Ashauer gently. “I do know how much you loved her.”

Maertyn just nodded.

“I hesitate to ask…but the station?”

“Something happened…after everything. It’s sealed. I don’t know how, only that nothing I know how to do will open it.”

“…and then there’s the matter of the rainbow.” Ashauer looked at Maertyn.

“The rainbow?” asked Maertyn.

“While you were fighting off the assassins, a brilliant rainbow arched across Caelaarn, its tip touching the Ministry of Protective Services.” The older lord shook his head. “It couldn’t have been orchestrated more dramatically.”

“I’m afraid I’m both tune-and tone-deaf,” Maertyn managed, “and certainly no composer or orchestrator.”

“All who know you agree to that. It’s also what makes your efforts so much more heroic, Maertyn.” Ashauer smiled once more, not quite ironically. “We also found records about all the attempts on your life. What the various media found most interesting was how you avoided so many without ever having to kill those who were trying to kill you.”

“You made…all that public?”

“There wasn’t any choice, Maertyn. If we hadn’t…”

Although Ashauer hadn’t completed the sentence, Maertyn knew exactly what he meant. One of Tauzn’s remaining subordinates would have taken over where Tauzn had left off.

“D’Onfrio will endorse you, if you choose to seek his position.”

“Me? I’ve never sought anything like that…”

“Precisely…and he will make that quite clear. He’ll actually request that you seek the office of Executive Administrator because it is obvious that you have always put Caelaarn and others ahead of personal gain and power…and that you have lost so much in doing so.”

“Ashauer…you—”

“Lord Maertyn,” interrupted the older lord quickly, “I know that you are suffering great losses, but so is the Unity.”

The formality of Ashauer’s words stopped Maertyn’s objections. He took a deep breath. “I see.”

“I believe so.”

“Still…a lord…there hasn’t been an EA who was a lord since…” Maertyn started to shake his head, but the instant stab of pain down his neck stopped that abortive motion cold.

“Since Lestaat…and that was a bloody experience. But the people have seen that you were willing to brave the cold and storms trying to find a way to help them, that it is evident you lost your wife to the assassins, and that you avoided bloodshed as long as you could. The media are calling you a throwback…the last honorable lord…”

“I never…”

“No…but there are times when only one man can lead…and you are that man.”

Thanks to Ashauer and D’Onfrio, Maertyn realized.

He also doubted he’d ever know all that had happened while he’d been recovering. Knowing Ashauer, no one else would, either.

“I can’t stay long, the doctors say, but I did want you to know, as soon as possible.” Ashauer inclined his head. “We all appreciate everything you did and look forward to your complete recovery.” With a last smile, he turned and left the room.

Maertyn stared blankly after him.

The white dirigible hovered over the blue-gray stone of the canal, just to the east of the station and the dilapidated light house, while a figure in a white cold-weather jacket followed two guards, also in white jackets, down a heavy rope ladder onto the stone. Two more guards followed the older man. Then, the five walked away from the airship, and the dirigible lifted fifty yards skyward, holding its position, hovering into the wind.

The man in white walked toward the station, motioning for the guards to remain behind.

He stopped short of where the south entrance was, or had been, waiting.

A silver haze appeared before him, a haze he knew would appear as mist or fog to the guards.

“I came back,” he said quietly.

“In time,” she replied.

“It would have been too painful, earlier.” He offered a warm but crooked smile. “I couldn’t have returned to you, not and have things except like this, could I?”

She shook her head, sadly. “I hoped you’d see that. Once you left the station…”

“You held the rainbow for me, didn’t you?”

“I did. It took all that the Bridge could muster.”

“Thank you, dearest. That may have saved Caelaarn.”

“You saved it. I might have helped.”

“More than you know.” He paused, then went on. “You saw more than you’ve ever told me, didn’t you? Well before it all began?”

The hazy silver figure in the red singlesuit nodded. “Then…I didn’t know what it all meant. Even while I was recovering in Caelaarn, I’d seen the station. I saw us standing as we are now, except I didn’t recognize me. I wondered who that striking woman you were talking to happened to be and why she was so ghostly.” Her thin lips offered a smile both warm and rueful.

“You were always striking,” he said.

“I owe you everything. You coddled and protected and saved me.”

“…and loved you,” he added. “You were…you are…my empress.”

“You did, and I still love you. Yet I belonged to you. That was my choice as well. But…I chose to do something that allows me to belong to me. Something…purposeful, with meaning. As you have found.”

“Will you be lonely?”

“At times…but whenever you were not around, I was lonely…and without meaning. The Bridge, from it and what you…and the others…did, showed me that without meaning…there is no life…Even the universe will die if meaning departs.”

“Will you see me if I come again?”

“Always…dearest…always…”

He stood there for a time, caressed by the silver mist, by his empress of eternity, before he turned.

The Executive Administrator of the Unity of Caelaarn walked southward toward the dirigible that would convey him to Daelmar and the special tube-train that waited for him.

Behind him, once the dirigible lifted and carried him eastward, a brilliant rainbow arched across the northern sky.