Lammas Night (54 page)

“I shall not fail you, my liege. Only, let us speak no more of this until we must again.”

William smiled and nodded gently, then stood and laid an arm around the other man's shoulders as he, too, stood, and the two of them headed for the door.

Everything was done. The horses were waiting. The last preparations had been made, and the stage was set. So long as neither's courage faltered at the end, all would be well. This life was cycling to its end, but the ending would serve its purpose. The Norman line established by his father must be wedded to the land with Norman blood. Though not his father's eldest son, he had been born in this land to be its king. The people had known it from the beginning, and so had he. Even through the foolish, futile tries to perhaps avoid it, to set another in his place, he had known that it must come to this. He was ready.…

In Graham's short absence, the very air around Dieter had changed. It was not easy even to find him again, for the closer he got on the Second Road, the more thickly was the atmosphere charged with malevolence, made foul with the psychic stench of power raised for unspeakable intentions.

Approaching that ill-hallowed circle with dread resolve, Graham gathered the strands of the Oakwood potential into a shining knot and set it unreservedly into Dieter's use as he locked back into the link forged before, his own commitment adding yet another glowing skein to plait into the rest. With an answering surge of relief, Dieter bound his own enormous ability around the shining power Graham had brought. Confident now, Dieter returned his attention to his coming need as he wound and coiled the power, ready to be unleashed. Something else about Dieter had changed, but Graham could not quite pin it down. The instant of reckoning was approaching very, very fast.

Again, Graham caught snatches of visual impression: the triple ring of Sturm's black adepts, grim mouths set in obscene anticipation, hungry-eyed behind their masks … the Führer seated in their midst, stiff and almost rigid with the power being raised—a satanic overlord holding court, masked face lit eerily by torches and candlelight … Sturm himself bowing low before the satanic throne, SS blade held horizontal above his head in both hands in terrible salute.…

The cupbearer kneeling between Sturm and the Führer, raising the golden cup in offering … and the doomed victim forced to his knees before it, chest thrust rigidly forward from the pressure of a warder's knee in the small of his back, neck bent back taut and straining, mouth agape, the eyes dulled past caring, as Sturm laid one hand on the pulsing throat and raised the knife in his other—

God, how long would Dieter delay?

Only as the blade started to flash downward did Graham sense Dieter's full intent—not
only
the psychic assault for which he had begged their aid but destruction less subtle than magic emerging from beneath his robe in a desperate attempt to make the most of what the fates had dealt.

Fire spat from the cold iron in Dieter's hand: once through the victim's heart in mercy, once at the man in the chair. The second shot incredibly pinged off the golden cup, hitting one of the torchbearers as he bowled over chair and occupant, flinging himself across his Führer's body in death.

Another shot went wild as men tackled Dieter from either side and manhandled him to the floor, but he twisted the gun into the belly of one of his assailants and fired a fourth time at point-blank range. As he squirmed out from under the body that collapsed across him, he backhanded another man brutally with the barrel and managed to wrench free as the others faltered before his defense. Rolling to his knees, Dieter fired again in the direction he had last seen Hitler.

Black-robed bodies amassed over the spot where the Führer had disappeared, becoming human shields to save their leader's life. Though Dieter continued to pump round after round into their midst, heedless of their screams and the hands dragging him down again, he knew that it was futile. Another weapon spoke—this time from Sturm's hand—but Dieter's clip was empty, the Luger being twisted from broken fingers, useless against Sturm's gun. Now he shifted focus for the other assault, the last one, the one for which he had summoned Graham in the first place.

Dieter hardly even felt the crippling bullets that slammed into both his legs, for he was out of his body with a snap, yanking Graham with him, his will a burning lens focusing all their power on Sturm.

Now!
came Dieter's sharp command, cutting through Graham's shock and hesitation.
This chance we still have!

The order helped Graham concentrate. Detached with Dieter now, he gathered the plaited strands of the power he bore and fed them all to Dieter—pulling the energy from willing sources, deep, deeper, ramming it through the nexus of Dieter's intent with a force that would not be turned aside. The bolt went straight toward Sturm on the Second Road: a clear, sun-bright beam of cleansing psychic fire, burning through all resistance and subterfuge.

Sturm seemed not to feel it at first. Scarred face contorted with rage, he waved his men aside with a curt gesture of his weapon and took three swift steps toward the motionless Dieter, sighting along the barrel to take deliberate aim. His first shot shattered Dieter's right arm at the elbow, but Dieter was beyond pain now, eyes only glaring back defiance as the power continued to pour through him from Graham.

Sturm faltered as his finger jerked a second time, the shot going wild. Then he clutched at his chest and staggered, collapsed, his eyes glazing over. The gun, which slipped from lifeless fingers, skittered to a stop at the feet of Adolf Hitler.

Dieter might expect no second victory over such as this. The sudden flare of Sturm's dying was enough to catapult him back into his bleeding body, and Graham with him. Contorted and paralyzed, he groaned aloud at last, giving release to the pain so long denied.

He was dimly aware of hands roughly turning him on his back, stripping off his mask—the ripple of reaction at his identity, the loathing—but all that was as nothing. Through a haze of distant pain, Dieter watched Hitler yank off his own mask and swoop to pick up Sturm's gun, eyes wild with impotent fury. Dieter felt no fear as death stalked him—only a profound sense of fulfillment: Sturm, at least, was dead.

As the Führer bent over him and raised the gun two-handed, shaking with rage, Dieter smiled a little and closed his eyes. No longer aware of Graham, he commended his life into the judgment of the lords of karma. Graham, too stunned to pull out from the link, felt the cold barrel of the pistol against Dieter's temple and even heard the faint click just an instant before the bullet exploded into Dieter's brain.

The force of the shot reverberated all the way back to England, catching Graham even as he tried too late to disengage. No cry escaped his lips, but his body convulsed in echo of all the agony felt by Dieter in that final instant. Then merciful blackness claimed him.

A single low moan was the first thing William heard as he dropped back to his own body and time with a jolt, but it did not occur to him that the faraway sound came not from himself but from Michael, lapsing into deep unconsciousness with the shock of Dieter's passing. William found himself gasping with his own terror, fingers locked around the carved animal heads of the stall's arm rest in mute appeal for some reprieve. Surely what he had seen had been part of some terrible dream!

But as he stopped gasping at the air and ceased his shaking, he knew that in lives past he had played the sacrificed king himself as well as sacred substitute! Not only had he been Becket but also that other William, the very Rufus whom Gray had often cited as a slain sacred king and with whose tomb William himself had held idle converse not many weeks before. Had some deep part of him suspected even then?

And Gray had been with Rufus as well as Becket! Did he know? Had he read his own role as king slayer and simply not told William, fearing at some deep level, perhaps not even conscious, that the two of them were scheduled for a repeat performance of old, familiar roles? Was that what the Rufus and Becket memories meant? Was Gray fated somehow to slay him in this life as well?

The connection came to him so abruptly that he gasped aloud. The notion terrified him, suddenly taken out of the realm of the abstract, but all at once a great deal seemed to make sense.

He had been Rufus in some other lifetime, and he had also been Becket. Becket had been the substitute victim for his king, who was acknowledged as the incarnate god by the very fact of his anointing and recognition at his coronation.

But William had
also
put himself in the role of the incarnate god in
this
lifetime, when he offered himself as the focus for the oaths taken by the grand coven leaders. Gray had seen it and had warned him at the time that the others might have seen it thus, but the impact of that warning had been lost on both of them in the urgency of Wells's betrayal and because they did not want to see it.

The signs had been present even earlier than that, when William handed Gray his Garter star at Deptford and offered to bring the grand coven together in the first place. That had been but a parallel of his Hatton role—but now he knew he had been the sacrificed Rufus as well as catalyst to Gray's defender. If he had also been Becket, who had combined functions in his martyrdom as Christian saint and sacred substitute, was it possible that he was being called upon to combine roles again, as Becket had already done? Having already catalyzed the work necessary to protect England, as Hatton had done, was he now destined once again to substitute for his King to seal that work, after having taken on the role of god in the eyes of those who still observed at least a part of the old faith that protected England? Was that where it was all leading?

He shivered and hugged his arms across his chest, refusing to believe it. The very idea was absurd. The old gods did not demand the sacrifice of their kings in these modern times. He was not even certain he believed in the old gods. One God was enough for him.

But as he re-examined all that had happened in the past few months, he had to admit that everything
could
be interpreted that way. And if it was needful for the king or his substitute to die periodically, perhaps to ensure the success of the very venture now in progress all around him, then who was better suited?

Not the King himself, whose leadership and example were so badly needed and whose death would put a defenseless young girl on the throne prematurely to bear burdens that might well crush her. Not his brothers, Gloucester and Kent, both of them vitally involved in the war effort and, furthermore, married and one of them with children. Not his sister Mary, also married and with little ones. And David had already been offered the chance and refused. The sacrifice must be willing.

Of the immediate Royal Family, that left only William, who met all the requirements of a royal substitute: son and brother of kings; an extra prince, as he himself so often lamented; deprived of the likelihood of wife and children, at least in the immediate future, by the death of a much-loved and much-missed fiancée. Had it been for this, he wondered, that she had met
her
fate? Most importantly, he knew he had done the job before—and so had Gray.

William shivered again at that, for the thought of being slain by Gray in this life was inconceivable. Yet try as he might, he could not dismiss the other factors. There was too much coincidence—and Gray often said that there was no such thing. A pattern had formed, and he and Gray seemed to be at the heart of it.

Vainly, he tried to put it put of mind, to concentrate instead on what was being done elsewhere for England's sake, but the images persisted—haunting, horrifying, and yet oddly familiar—the king or his proxy slain for the good of the land. As his eyes strayed to the image of the Christ carved above the altar, his thoughts returned time and again to sacrificed gods and sacrificed kings and memories of other lives and Gray—and his brother the King, who even now was probably on his way back to Windsor, heavy-hearted with the burden of the war, not dreaming of the other burden awaiting—
someone
—if the land was to be preserved.…

After a while, William rose and made his way down to the checkered floor, now reconciled with his destiny. He stood in the aisle before the closed choir doors for a long time again, fingering the Garter in his hand and taking in every detail of the Sovereign's stall, remembering his brother kneeling there the last time the order met in chapter—gentle, shy, loving Bertie, who had never wanted or expected to be King.

When, at last, he laid his hand on the gate and swung it wide, mounting the few steps into the Sovereign's stall, no doubts remained. He sat long enough to raise his trouser leg and buckle the Garter above his left knee, then slid to both knees on the velvet cushion and bowed his head in prayer, palms upturned in selfless offering.

C
HAPTER
23

The prince was still bowed in the sovereign's stall when, nearly half an hour later, he was startled from his meditation by the sight of Michael staggering into the choir by the sanctuary entrance, obviously in distress. By the time William could reach him, Michael had crumpled to a sitting position beside the communion rail, one hand and his forehead braced against the cool wrought iron.

“Michael, what's wrong?” William whispered, crouching to steady him.

Gasping, Michael shook his head. “I think—some kind, of—psychic backlash.”

“You mean something went wrong?”

Michael winced at the sound of William's voice, lowering his head between his knees until a wave of vertigo passed.

“I think something's happened to Gray,” he murmured when he could see again. His voice was so low that William could hardly hear him. “They—didn't do what they were supposed to do. There was—some kind of—change of plan at the last minute.”

“A change of plan? What kind of change of plan? Is he all right?”