Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy (16 page)

Chapter 20

“T
hey’re the fiercest fighters in the Solar System!” Om Quet claimed proudly.

“But will they fight for me?” Trel Clan said without conviction. Like most generals who had never fought a battle, Om Quet was a peacock, more feathers than beak. His dress was fastidious, which also annoyed Trel Clan. “If they fight so well, why do they hide in this smelly cave?”

The general was also a strict disciple of Moral Guidance, and bristled at any hint of blasphemy. “My king, I hardly think it prudent that you treat the tenets of your own ancestors so lightly; as you know, the smell of sulfur is a sacred thing to us.”

“To you, perhaps. To me it is nothing more than a bad odor. Did it bother you when Wrath-Pei made such comments?”

“My king, Wrath-Pei was …”

“Yes?”

The general finally decided on a word: “… different.”

“How so? Were they frightened of Wrath-Pei?”

“Oh, yes, my king!”

“And are they not frightened of me?”

There was silence; the general, unable to come up with an answer, said nothing.

Trel Clan, showing building anger, snapped, “All I wish to know is; will they fight for me as they fought for Wrath-Pei?”

“I honestly cannot say, my king. Wrath-Pei thought it prudent to hold these troops on Jo in reserve when the war on Titan broke out. They were pledged to him. Even though Wrath-Pei is gone, and even though most of them are Titanians, I cannot guarantee their loyalty…”

“Are you saying that because they do not fear me, they will not follow me?”

“It is more … complicated than that, my king…”

“And what about you, General Quet? What about your loyalty? How complicated are you?”

The general tried in vain not to preen. “They do owe me a certain loyalty. And since Wrath-Pei’s loss, they have looked up to me as their natural leader.”

“Enough!” The king stepped forward and struck Om Quet in the face with the back of his hand. “Two guards!” he shouted. “Come immediately!”

A pair of black-clad soldiers appeared, blinking at what they beheld: General Quet, stunned, a hand against his flushed check; the king, fuming.

Trel Clan screamed, “Drag him out of here and put him under arrest! I want him bound to a lashing pole in the temple in twenty minutes, and I want every soldier assembled! Each and every one of them is to take a blood oath to me, in my presence!”

Om Quet’s eyes widened. “My lord, you cannot administer such an oath in the Temple of Faran Clan! It is pure sacrilege!”

Trel Clan’s face grew bright red. “It is what I command!”

The king stared at the two soldiers for a moment, until they finally looked at one another and took the general gently, each by an arm.

“I said drag him out!”

The two soldiers gripped Om Quet tighter and drew him out of the room.

W
hen they had left, the anger immediately drained from Trel Clan’s face, replaced by cold passivity.

Everyone was susceptible to acting, it seemed. Act angry, and they will think you angry. Act like a child, and they will know you as one.

Act like a king—

No, that one was real.

And would soon be more so.

For though the actor could get away with just about anything, mimic just about anyone—clown, child, king—the real king had to be even more than an actor.

He had to not only fool his audience, but own them.

Trel Clan had seen immediately that this incoherent, ragtag group of Wrath-Pei’s soldiers could not possibly hope to survive an assault on Prime Cornelian. They had military discipline of a sort, yes, but it had been based on the iron terror imposed by Wrath-Pei. Once Wrath-Pei had been removed from the picture, they had fallen into slovenly ways.

They needed to believe in something.

Be afraid of something.

Afraid of him.

There was no time for anything else.

And he almost had them. In the short weeks following his coronation, he could sense that what had first been respect for his crown had begun to grow into respect for him.

And fear.

For fear was the only weapon he had to forge of this mass of soldiers a deadly weapon in such a short period of time.

After today, he would have them.

Pacing back and forth, enjoying the feel of his silken purple robes and the light weight of the yellow-gold crown on his head, Trel Clan allowed the actor to drop from his face for the briefest moment, and the inner certainty that was growing within him rise. The tiny seed of the hidden Trel Clan—which he had always known was there, in all those cold years at Titan’s Ministry of Foreign Import Trade, Second-Class Division, Expendable Goods, in all those years as fourth cousin to Jamal Clan, twentieth removed from the throne, all those bleak empty years of nothing—was sprouting at last. His fondest, most secret, most desperately held dreams were coming true.

He clasped his hands together and allowed the first smile that had ever passed his lips to brighten his face. I’m going to do it!

After today, after the lashing death of general Om Quet, he would truly be king.

I
n the Temple of Faran Clan, night was falling. A glimmer of reflected light from Jupiter, Jo’s master, filtered into the tiny windows at the apex of the church; caught in dust motes, it floated red, yellow, dusky brown. The temple’s own lamps were turned up bright on their stands, and the ever-present fragrance of sulfur hung in the air, though the bath, at the king’s request, had been covered.

The altar itself had been moved; in its place was a marble font, beside which stood a whipping post to which general Om Quet, stripped to the waist, had been bound, his back to the congregation.

Trel Clan entered from the nave and walked solemnly to the altar. His long ceremonial robe’s train was borne by two red-robed retainers; behind them, a trumpeter sounded a loud voluntary, harsh and echoing in the huge chamber; behind them, two drummers beat funereal time, thump, thump, on muffled snares. Behind them, a contingent of black leather-clad soldiers marched in grim lockstep, leading the final member of the train, the executioner with his weapon coiled like a snake around one muscled bare arm, his face tightly hooded in black leather, eyes unreadable.

Trel Clan proceeded to a marble throne mounted behind the ceremonial font while the musicians fanned out to the sides along with the guards; only the executioner mounted the steps past the coffined sulfur bath to stand beside the lashed figure of Om Quet.

Save for the faint hiss of the lamps and the occasional sighed breath of the general, there was dead silence in the Temple of Faran Clan.

His words echoing from his throne, Trel Clan said, “This is the dawn of a new time for us. For after today we will be bound together, you and I, as tightly as lovers. Today you pledge your fealty to me unto death.”

The king rose, stepped down from his throne, and made his way slowly to the font. A retainer approached, bearing a gleaming dagger set on a crimson pillow brocaded in yellow.

The king drew back his robe from his left arm, baring it, lifted the silver dagger, and without grimace drew a bloody line above the wrist; as red appeared, he turned the wrist over and let it drip into the font copiously until murmurs of alarm spread through the soldiers.

Trel Clan looked up at them with a set mouth and the temple quieted.

After another minute the king turned his wrist over and allowed a bandage to be affixed; it instantly grafted with the skin and the cut was all but gone.

Trel Clan remounted his throne, looked from one side of the temple to the other.

“After today,” he intoned, “this place will not be known as the Temple of Faran Clan, but the temple of Trel Clan. And soon, you and I, bound with blood, soul to soul, will set out from this place like a sulfur fire and strike vengeance, not for Titan, but for ourselves, on Prime Cornelian and his dominion. We will seed space with their bodies, even as they attempt to flee their doomed homeworld. We will crush them before they can foul a new world with their presence. And Venus will be ours alone—Venus will be a new Titan!”

With an angry gesture, the king turned to the executioner and screamed, “Whip him until he dies—and any other man who from this moment forward dares to come between my people and I!” To the black-leathered guards he snapped, “Bring the first ones to swear allegiance!”

The front row of pews emptied, and, as the first cries broke from the lips of general Om Quet and the loud snap of the lash striking deep into his back filled the temple, a line of soldiers bared their arms and lined up at the font, the first lifting the same dagger the king had used to break his own skin.

There came a commotion on the bare altar, beside the king’s throne—a sound like an intake of breath, a swirling mist in the shape of a top.

Something—the post of a bed—struck Trel Clan’s throne as it appeared. He was knocked to the ground, the throne barely missing him as it toppled.

The mist cleared.

And there beside the iron-filigreed bed was Lawrence, bearing Wrath-Pei in his chair.

W
rath-Pei leaned forward to look around, and his ruined face brightened in pleasure.

“Have I interrupted something? So sorry!”

The executioner’s mouth opened in astonishment, and the whip slid from his slack hand. Even General Quet, breathing hard in pain, turned to look. “Wrath-Pei … ?”

The whisper of “Wrath-Pei …” went through the temple, as fast as a flow of electrons.

As one, the assembly rose to attention.

“Correct!” Wrath-Pei said delightedly. He continued to stare this way and that until his sight rested on the fallen king, who lay in a heap, his robes twisted, his crown askew.

“Well, well!” Wrath-Pei said, his eyes filling with pleasure as his hand slipped to the side of his gyro-chair to find the cutting snips still holstered there, and so long unused.

Chapter 21

A
ll of a sudden, things had changed.

But not utterly. For even without his metal carapace, his artificial body, Prime Cornelian was still Prime Cornelian. Within the tortured soft face still burned, behind the weak and rheumy eyes, the same ice fire that had burned within the perfect quartz orbs. Within were the same black holes.

Only now he was so damned dependent! With Pynthas Rei, and others, at his side constantly, he was no longer able to control his feelings. His constant bad mood was only tempered by the unchanged nature of his larger plan.

His body was different—ruined, old, defiled, diseased—but his mind was precisely the same.

And Wrath-Pei! The High Leader almost had to grant his nemesis a measure of admiration for what he had accomplished. Prime Cornelian blamed himself for not insisting that Sam-Sei show him the dead body of his rival--that one small indiscretion had nearly cost him everything. That one small mistake, out of all the hundreds of calculations and plans he had made. “Ramsden! Come here!”

The military leader appeared at once, showing, as they all did, the split second of startlement when he first faced the changed High Leader; his men were still not used to his appearance, swaddled as he was in a forest of warming blankets, propped in a chair like an infant, only his ruined face visible.

“What’s the matter, Ramsden, have you forgotten how ugly I am already? You were in here ten minutes ago.”

“Of course not, High Leader,” the general said, leaning close to hear Cornelian’s weak breath of words, which issued from his always open, horizontal oval of a twisted mouth. The general, Cornelian noted, was polite enough not to wince at the faint peppery odor of death that accompanied the breath.

“Never mind. You will get used to it, for now, as will I. When Sam-Sei is found, other accommodations will be made. I take it …”

Ramsden straightened. “No, High Leader. We have not found the Machine Master.”

“Well, keep looking!” Cornelian snapped. “You know how important he is to my plans! Without him I stay like … this! And I need his latest weaponry!”

Ramsden bowed. “Of course, High Leader.”

“I want your search parties to stay, even after we have left.” There was a pause, while the High Leader let the meaning of his words seep into the general. “You mean, High Leader—”

“Exactly. Tell them that as soon as the Machine Master is found, they will be transported to Venus. If they do not find him … “ Incrementally, the High Leader shrugged. “They will get a close look at the Three Comets.”

“I will see to it,” Ramsden said.

“And Tabrel Kris?”

“She is no doubt with Wrath-Pei, wherever he is, and safe. I would imagine they are off world. That search continues, also.”

“And what of that … thing the Machine Master was working on? The … Irregulator?”

“It was given to the members of the Syrtis Retreat, as you requested.”

The High Leader shook his head slightly and almost smiled. “Fools.”

“Yes, High Leader, they are.”

“I didn’t ask your assessment.” Cornelian’s filmy eyes stared unblinking at the general. “And what of our own preparations?”

“The evacuation of civilians will be complete by noon today. The Machine Master’s transport devices have been at work night and day, and the last shuttle left Mars early this morning. On Venus, population centers have already been established at Katue Tessera, Rusalka, Bascom, Uni, Sige Dorsa, and elsewhere.

Military bases are under construction at Aita, and at Sachs Patera in the north, and Wollstonecraft and near Ix Chel Chasma in the south.”

“And our capital city?”

“Cornelian City has been ready for weeks.”

“It sounds so much better than Frolich City, doesn’t it?”

“Of course, High Leader.”

“And there will be no problems with the transportation of the High Leader’s residence?”

“You can sit where you are and will barely feel it, High Leader. The masons are loosening the final stones in the foundation as we speak, and a matching foundation awaits in Cornelian City. It’s a shame the Machine Master only modified one of his transport devices to handle something of such size. It would have been of great help.”