King's Sacrifice (14 page)

"Yes, my
lord. And where will I find her ladyship?"

The Warlord
glanced up at the heavens, judging the planet's time by the sun that
hung low in the sky.

"In the
gymnasium," he said. "You can see it from here. That domed
building there, to your left. When you have delivered your message,
return to the shuttle."

"Yes, my
lord." Agis was about to detail a portion of his force to go
with him, leaving another to stay behind with the Warlord, when Sagan
interrupted him.

"Take all
the men."

Agis appeared
dubious. "My lord—"

"That's an
order, Captain."

"Yes, my
lord."

Agis could not
refrain from casting an uneasy glance at a figure standing directly
behind the Warlord. Dark and silent and motionless, the figure might
have been Sagan's shadow. The young man was dressed in long brown
robes; his arms and hands were invisible in long sleeves, arms
folded, hands clasping his elbows. A brown cowl was pulled low over
his head, hiding his face from sight. None of the centurions knew who
the man was, where he'd come from. He'd simply appeared,
mysteriously, on board
Phoenix II.
By coincidence, no doubt,
Dr. Giesk had reported at the same time that one of his male nurses
had gone AWOL. Agis was able to put two and two together, but the
answer made no sense. He therefore kept his mouth shut.

But he didn't
like, didn't trust that robed and hooded figure. The man had done
something to his lord—aged him, drained him of life, of spirit.
Agis was not a fanciful man, and it must have been racial memory that
stirred the bottom of humanity's dark caldron and brought to the
surface of the mind tales of evil warlocks and black magic, long pins
stuck through the hearts of waxen dolls.

"Do you
have a question regarding your orders, Captain?" Sagan asked
with some impatience.

Yes, Agis had a
great many questions, but none that he dared ask. He assembled his
men and marched off the broken tarmac, heading for a walkway arched
over by the tangled limbs of swaying poplar trees.

The Warlord saw
his guard well on their way, then he turned on his heel and started
across the tarmac in the opposite direction. He said no word to the
robed young man, who hesitated and did not immediately follow,
perhaps uncertain whether he was wanted.

Sagan, not
hearing the softly slippered shuffle of footsteps behind him, glanced
over his shoulder.

"Come
along, Brother," he commanded. "My lady will want to meet
you."

Brother Fideles
bowed his head in response and hastened to catch up, not an easy
task. It was occasionally difficult for his own Honor Guard to keep
up with their Warlord's long strides. Brother Fideles panted and
puffed and fought to keep the skirts of his robes from tripping him
as he ran.

Sagan, seeing
out of the corner of his eye the young man's difficulty, said
nothing, but obligingly slowed his pace. Brother Fideles caught up
with him and the two walked side by side. The young brother's arms
remained folded and hidden, his head bowed slightly as was proper.
Sagan walked with his own head bowed, either lost in thought or
burdened by memory. His hands were clasped behind his back, beneath
his red, flowing robes.

They left the
tarmac, entered and passed through the deserted spaceport building,
and out onto its covered walkway. From the porch, the young priest
caught a breathtaking glimpse of the Academy, buildings and grounds
spread out before him in mist-shrouded valleys and on low, sunlit
hills. The Warlord turned to his left, followed a pathway that led
down the high rise on which the spaceport was built.

They walked for
a long time and covered a vast distance. The beauty of the place
overwhelmed the young priest. The afternoon sun gleamed golden
against a cloudless azure sky.

The air was
cool, touched with the frost that would come with nightfall. Leaves
of gold and red streaked with green fluttered downward in the sighing
wind, drifted about their feet.

Man had worked
with Nature when taking over her lands and making his mark upon them,
and it seemed that when man left, Nature returned the favor. Gardens
lost none of their charm by becoming wild and overgrown. Trees from
the encroaching wilderness did not threaten the buildings, but seemed
to offer shelter with their strong, protecting arms. The abandoned
halls and libraries, laboratories and classrooms, looked calm and
serene, their white marble edifices glistening in the bright
sunlight.

But Brother
Fideles could well understand why no one could bear to stay long on
these lovely grounds, to stroll among the trees, to sit in the
echoing halls. Sadness—unbearable, unutterable—was the
ghost that walked the Academy grounds, walked it during the bright
day, walked it during the moonlit night.

"What a
sorrowful, eerie place. I wonder the Lady Maigrey can bear it, all
alone," Brother Fideles said, and only when the words were
spoken did he realize he'd said his thought aloud, interrupting his
lord's meditation.

Sagan stopped,
looked long at the surroundings that had changed so much, yet not
enough. "Alone, Brother?" he said reflectively. "No,
in this place, she would never be alone. Perhaps to her regret."

Maigrey heard
the door to the gymnasium open, she heard the booted feet tramp
across the wooden floor. She did not turn around. Hand on the bar,
she continued her exercises, her eyes fixed on the mirror opposite,
on the reflection that stared gravely back at her.

"Look into
the mirror always." The dance master's voice echoed in her
memory. "Come to know your own body. Only then will you
understand how it moves and how you can control that movement."

She had
performed these exercises every day of her life with only few
exceptions since she'd come as a child to the Academy. She had
fidgeted and giggled through them when she was little, reveled in
them when she was in her teens. She and her squadron, the famous
Golden Squadron of the King, had performed them before battle. Many
times, she and Sagan had done the exercises alone together.

She had gone
through the routine herself, alone, the day before the night of the
Revolution.

The days after
the Revolution had been one of the few times she did not do the
exercises. And then she had been in the hospital, near death,
wondering bitterly why she hadn't died.

After her
escape, she had continued the exercises on the tropical planet where
she'd gone to hide. Seventeen years, every afternoon, just before
sundown, she'd performed them, though she couldn't say why. Why keep
the body fit? Why keep the mind trained? She did not hold the
bloodsword once during those years of exile, did not even look at it.
She never expected to hold it again. Still, she exercised.

"You should
look only two places in my class, at me and at yourself. You do not
look out the window, Maigrey. You do not look at each other.
Stavros"—crack went a wooden ruler—"you do not
look at the clock."

You do not look
at the clock. Not once, in seventeen years. Yet she had been aware of
every second that passed, of the change each second brought.

"What is
that hand doing at the end of your arm, Maigrey? Has it died, that
you allow it to flop around so gracelessly?" Crack went the
ruler against her palm.

The dance master
carried a wooden ruler, a meter long, that served, at various times,
as dancing partner, a baton to tap out the rhythm, and his means of
enforcing discipline. He was amazingly quick; he was also their
swordmaster. Crack. Maigrey could feel the sting of the wood against
her skin.

"The hand
is alive now, isn't it? You feel the pain, Maigrey? You feel the
life?"

She'd done the
exercises on board
Phoenix,
when she'd been a prisoner of the
Warlord. She and Dion had done them together; the boy having been
taught the routine by Platus. Her brother. The boy's guardian. One of
the last of the Guardians.

Do you feel the
pain, Maigrey?

The booted
measured tread came to a halt almost behind her. A centurion, captain
by his insignia, stepped forward, body straight, rigid, fist over his
heart in salute.

"Lady
Maigrey Morianna, Lord Sagan's respects. He requests the favor of
your presence in the headmaster's rose garden."

Do you feel the
pain, Maigrey? Do you feel the life?

She kept her
gaze steadfastly on the mirror.

"My
respects to Lord Sagan and I will attend him presently."

"Yes, my
lady."

The captain
saluted, wheeled, and marched his men out. Maigrey watched them from
the corner of her eye. The centurions did not move with the
knife-edged sharpness and precision generally seen in the Warlord's
guard of honor. They seemed nervous, ill at ease. They might have
been trapped and surrounded by the enemy, instead of wandering about
the deserted grounds of an abandoned school, surrounded by the ghosts
of dead dreams, dead hopes.

Do you feel the
pain?

Their footsteps
retreated in the distance. The gymnasium was quiet, except for the
voices and the music of memory. Maigrey continued the exercises,
worked through them to completion.

The rose garden
of Headmaster Aristos was one of Maigrey's favorite walks. Sagan
would know that, of course. Just as she knew he was waiting for her
there. Sending the men to her had been a mere formality. Connected as
the two of them were by the mind-link, they were close enough to
touch, though light-years separated them. She, alone, had known of
his coming. He, alone, had known where to find her.

Maigrey returned
to her dwelling on the grounds of the Academy—a small house
that had once belonged to one of the caretakers. She could have moved
into any of the many empty houses, including the beautiful home on
the wooded hill that had belonged to the headmaster. But her awe of
that frail man, who had seemed ancient to her, and wise beyond anyone
she'd ever known, lingered past her childhood. She would not have
been comfortable in his house. She would always feel that she must
move quietly, hold her breath, keep her hands at her sides, fearful
of breaking some rare and priceless object.

She showered,
washed, and dried the pale hair, brushed it out until it was smooth
as the surface of a placid lake. She dressed in a long gown of
dove-gray lamb's wool, draped over her shoulders a mantle of sky-blue
lined with eiderdown. The autumn evenings grew chill. She walked
alone to the rose garden; the rays of the setting sun slanted golden
through the green and orange leaves of the oak trees.

Do you feel the
pain?

Now conscience
wakes despair That slumber'd,—wakes the bitter memory Of what
he was, what is, and what must be . . .

John Milton,
Paradise Lost

A low stone
wall, of irregular shape and design, surrounded the rose garden. A
wrought-iron gate, accessed from the headmaster's tree-shaded patio,
permitted entry. The garden was large. Stone paths and walkways wound
around maple trees and lindens, oaks and pines and spruce. Statuary,
copies of famous pieces of antiquity, stood in nooks and niches and
crannies. Rosebushes, a thousand varieties, filled the air with their
fragrance, filled the soul with their beauty.

Maigrey pushed
on the gate, its hinges made no sound. She had taken care, when she
first came here, six months ago, to oil them. The silence of the
grounds was sacred. It seemed to Maigrey that only Nature's voice,
like that of a priest's in a cathedral, had the right to disturb it.

Thinking of
priests and cathedrals, she was rather disconcerted to catch a
glimpse, as she entered, of a brown-robed and cowled figure, standing
in the shadows of an oak tree. Maigrey did not speak, nor make any
indication that she had seen the priest. The young man, for his part,
remained immobile as one of the statues, keeping his eyes lowered. It
was not permitted to those who had taken the vow of chastity to look
at women directly.

Maigrey sighed
deeply when she shut the gate behind her.

She could not
see the Warlord, but she knew where he was. It was as if she heard
the beating of his heart and could find him by following the sound.
She walked the stone paths that had, despite the years, remained in
relatively good condition. Maigrey had been surprised, pleasantly
surprised, to see that few changes had come to the garden. She had
expected to find it dead, bleak and barren. But it teemed with life,
though some of the hybrid roses had gone wild and some of the
climbers, with their long, thorny runners, had completely overrun
certain sections.

The paths had
almost vanished, covered with dead leaves, those of this autumn and
those of autumns gone by. The hem of her skirt, as she walked,
brushed among them, making a soft, whispering sound that was echoed
by the gentle breeze and the drifting, falling leaves.

Rounding a
corner, she came upon Sagan, seated on a marble bench near a copy of
one of Rodin's sculptures,
The Burghers of Calais.
The Warlord
had removed his helm, it lay upon the bench at his side. His head was
bowed, his arms crossed over his chest. His black hair, streaked with
more gray than she remembered, fell loose around his neck and
shoulders.

He sat silent,
staring at nothing, immovable as the statue of the brave, doomed men
standing over him. He had been sitting thus for a long time, Maigrey
noticed. Brown and withered leaves had fallen on his shoulders, on
the hem of his cloak that trailed on the stone walkway.

Maigrey paused
at the bend in the garden path. Whatever had brought her this
far—courage, pride—failed her. She could not take another
step.

He either heard
her or sensed her coming. He lifted his head, saw her standing
beneath the oak tree, her hand upon its trunk as a child might have
clung to the hand of its mother. He rose to his feet with respectful,
soldierly grace.