Sebastian of Mars (14 page)

“Oh, yes, I am sure of it.”

Miklos ignored me, and turned his attention
to Radion’s tone of surety.

“Really?”

Radion nodded.

“Then so be it!” Miklos hefted me up again,
setting me on his shoulders and striding like a giant into the
midst of the mad carnival.

“Listen to me!” he shouted, and instantly the
music stopped, the singing stopped, all chatter and laughter
stopped. I saw from this great height that the camp was nearly
surrounded by wagons, most of them covered, which had come upon us
almost unheard. By me, at least. Amazing.

“And listen well!” Miklos went on. He grabbed
me from his shoulder and hoisted me even higher. “And I
do not
jest
. This boy is to be your king!”

There were gasps from the assembly, and then
the deadest silence I had ever heard. Even the crackling fires
seemed to cease their noises.

Miklos slowly turned, so that I faced the
crowd. I knew perhaps I must say something, but I was speechless. I
thought perhaps there still might be some joke to come.

As one the entire multitude lowered
themselves prostrate to the ground.

“I –”

“Be silent, whelp,” Miklos ordered in a
whisper. “It will be over in a moment.”

Miklos lowered me gently to the ground, and
then threw himself down before me. I saw that Radion had done the
same.

When Miklos arose the others did likewise,
and he paused for a moment at eye level and said, with frightening
solemnity, “I will never call you whelp again, only
King
.”

Dizzy, I wandered out of the camp, refusing
every sweetmeat and dainty morsel thrust at me by these suddenly
adoring felines, and made the climb, unmolested this time, to the
bluffs. Earth was setting, but distant Venus, a yellow eye, hung in
its place, and Jupiter, the King of Planets, was just rising in the
east. The sky was full of planets. I thought for a moment of the
telescope Newton had promised me, and wondered if I would ever get
to use it.

It occurred to me that I had no idea what
would happen to me tomorrow, or the day after that.

I felt suddenly cold and small and weak, not
like any sort of King at all.

I wished fervently that my mother was alive,
if only to counsel me.

She had been so
strong
. . .

Something flitted down in front of me, and I
looked up to see Radion standing there. I could not read his face
in the darkness, but he was not laughing.

He sat heavily beside me, and retrieved the
card he had dropped in front of me. He turned it over, making it
snap
.

It was the last, the ninth, card from the
reading he had done for me a week ago. He dropped it into my lap,
where it landed face up, the most beautiful cat I had ever seen
with the circlet of stars surrounding her head and holding what
looked like a long, thin olive branch.

“I apologize for not speaking with you
earlier of these things,” he said. “But it is difficult for a man
to face his own death.”

“You!”

He nodded in the darkness, and seemed to
study the sky for a moment. Was he looking for more portents?

I kept silent.

“You must realize that the gypsies have never
recognized any King except their own. As a self banished clan we
have our own king, of which I am one. This has been our way for a
thousand years.

“But there is a legend, and a very old one,
the oldest in fact, and it says that one day a king would come who
we would serve. Call it a prophecy if you like. And this prophecy
said that when that day came we gypsies would, for the first and
only time, put the welfare of our world ahead of our own
people.”

He looked at the ground, and then down at the
rather more subdued party which was continuing below us. Then he
pointed to the card in my lap.

“When that card surfaced as the last card,
with all the cards before it, the prophecy came true.”

“But what does it mean?”

He sighed, and for a moment was silent. “It
means that the gypsy king will die for the one King. He will lay
down his life.”

“And you believe this?” I said. For some
strange reason I felt I must comfort him.

“I believe it as I believe the beating of my
heart.”

I held the card up to the light.

“So this last card is about you, not about
me?”

“I did not say that,” Radion answered, his
deep voice sounding sad. “And I will tell you no more. But let me
say this. Before I knew who you really were, I was ready to take
you to the mouth of the cave below us, and leave you there. That
was my bargain with One, for favors owed. But now I, and all my
people, will take you to the mouth of hell itself if we must.”

He started to get up and I held the card out
plaintively.

“But Radion, didn’t I hear you whisper that
night that this card meant love and death for me?”

“I told you: I will say no more.”

He started to move away from me, looking like
an old man.

“Does this card mean that I will find
love?”

He stopped, and his shoulders sagged.

“You already have.”

I felt a strange mixture of dread and
delight.

“Please, Radion, tell me the rest.”

He shook his head, and would not turn around
as he trudged off. And then he stopped at the edge of the path down
to the food and drink and merriment and song, and turned to regard
me.

“Look at what she holds in her hand.”

I gave a short laugh and waved the card at
him. “Why, it’s an olive branch – a symbol of peace!”

Without saying another word, he turned and
left.

And there, alone, by the light of the stars,
I studied the card closely, and saw that what the beautiful feline
held was not an olive branch at all, but rather the thinnest and
sharpest of daggers.

We set out the next morning.

There were many hangovers, but mine not among
them. I had learned much about cooking, and had had my first taste
of gypsy wine, and found it to be bitter; Miklos, who had
administered it, and who was very drunk himself, had merely laughed
and said, “Don’t worry, king, someday it will taste as sweet as
sugar to you.” This morning, the way he groaned theatrically and
held his head, I wondered if perhaps Miklos had filled himself with
too much sugar. His hangover did not prevent him from giving me my
first lesson in swordsmanship, though, after which he pronounced my
skills, “Merely rotten.” He then went off to nurse his head once
more.

But once it was time to leave, these gypsies
were all business. The wagons were packed with care and speed, and
our caravan had more the look of a military campaign than a ragtag
march. Scouts were sent out far ahead, and signaled from every hill
ahead of us and to either side. Others, I knew, trailed in our
wake.

It was a rougher country than it had looked.
Though this land had reminded me of my own, it proved to be less
tamed. The hills were steeper than their appearance, more rutted
with red rocks and boulders, and what had appeared as oases of
verdant green from the distance proved to be tangles of growth.
Some of the plants were strange to me, a cross between cactus and
fruit tree. When I stretched out from my seat on one of the wagons
to pluck one of these strange, yellowish melons Radion slapped my
hand down and shook his head.

“The skin of the fruit is poisonous to the
skin of the paw,” he explained, and turned over his own left paw
after transferring the reins to his right. There at the bottom of
the palm was an ugly mass of scar tissue, welted and dark pink.

“My father was not fast enough to slap my own
hand,” he said with a grunt.

At the end of the first day we made camp
between two of these oases, in a valley protected on all sides by
easily guarded hills. The mountains had looked no closer at the end
of this day than they had at the beginning. But there seemed to be
little tension in the camp. When I asked Miklos about this he said,
“We travel through a land that no one wants.”

The next few days were the same as the first,
and still the mountains drew no nearer. But the river expanded from
a distant blue ribbon to a looming presence, and on the fourth day
the plants became heartier, less dessert-like, and the ground
showed the unmistakable richness of flood plains.

In camp that night, after another lesson with
the sword, Miklos stood by me, his hands on his hips like a
storybook giant, and surveyed the horizon.

“Tomorrow we will cross the river, and then
things will change.”

“How?”

He smiled, but it was a grim one.

“Because then we will be in a place that
someone wants.”

He left me there,
imagining I could hear the rushing water and realizing that, yes,
the mountains were now, indeed closer.

B
ut our river
crossing was delayed the next day.

We reached a small settlement at midday,
stopping at its perimeter. Radion surveyed it through a spy scope,
an instrument whose appearance much excited me. I made plans to ask
him to borrow it this coming night, to study the sky with.

He was waiting for something, I could tell.
Then he suddenly grunted and said, “Our scout has signaled. It is
safe to continue.”

We drew into the river town, little more than
a dusty street bordered with shacks and poor man’s tents. It seemed
deserted. The main street ended at what once had been a dock on the
river, but which was now a blasted pile of timbers.

“They’ve taken the boats, too,” Miklos
reported to Radion, who nodded.

“I expected this. But there was always
hope.”

Miklos laughed curtly. “Hope is for fools,
brother.”

“Then we are all fools in the end. What shall
we do?”

“Let us wait for Vilmos and Takrok to return
from upriver. Then we will know what we must do.”

Radion nodded. “Very well. But I doubt the
Drost bridge will be intact.”

“If they destroyed this baby dock, I’m sure
you’re right. But it is better to know.”

Radion gave orders, and we stayed where we
were.

“May I look around?” I asked.

Radion eyed me. “Why? This was just a river
town. Two years ago it didn’t exist. The people are gone or dead,
driven away or killed by the F’rar.”

“I’m just curious. I’ve never been in a river
town.”

He regarded me with a steady eye for a
moment, and then shrugged. “But don’t go far, my King.”

I started with the nearest shack, which
proved to be empty and devoid of character. There were a few sticks
of furniture which were now, literally, sticks; they had been
savagely broken and left in piles. In the coal stove I found what
looked like a feline finger bone, which chilled me.

The other shacks and tents were much the
same, the tents being poorer versions of the shacks. One structure,
the largest, had obviously been a saloon – there was a long bar, a
rough hewn table, actually, and shelves behind it, empty now. There
was broken glass everywhere.

As I was leaving I heard a sound.

I backed out of the sunlight into the center
of the saloon and stood stock still.

Nothing.

Then –

The faintest sound of movement, a creak,
somewhere close by.

Beneath me.

I stepped back, and studied the floor.

This spot was clear of glass and debris, and
there were the merest of outlines, in dust, of a square cut into
the floor.

I heard what sounded like a cough.

I turned to shout for Radion, but he was
there, standing behind me. He put his finger to his lips, and drew
out his knife, a long, curling blade with a nasty tip like a sharp
talon.

He motioned me aside and crouched in front of
the square, putting the tip of the blade into the cut and prying it
up.

He kicked the square of floor away as it
became free.

“Get out or die,” he said.

I peeked into the hole but was pushed back by
Radion as he motioned the blade toward the hole.

“I am not F’rar,” he hissed, “but I will kill
you if you don’t come out.”

There was movement in the hole, and Radion
stepped carefully back as something scurried all of a sudden out of
the hole and tried to scamper out the door.

Radion grabbed it by the scruff and the neck
and held it up.

“Anyone else in that hole?” he asked to a
dirty feline little more than a kit.

I expected a squeak, but the young fellow,
dressed in a simple smock and with almost pure white fur, said in a
surprisingly strong voice, “No. I am the only one they didn’t
kill.”

“You won’t try to run?”

“I promise.”

“Very well.”

Radion slowly lowered the fellow and then let
him go.

He immediately bolted like a rabbit for the
door, where he was met by Miklos, who scooped him up, and held him
like a trophy.

“A little fish!” he laughed.

Radion was grim. “I already know his story.
The entire town was driven away or killed, and he hid alone.” He
turned his attention to the white-furred fellow, who was twisting
and growling in Miklos’ grip.

“How long ago were the F’rar here?”

“Weeks!” the young cat shouted. “Weeks! They
killed my sister and mother! They killed them all!” He went limp,
sobbing.

Miklos had lost his good humor.

“If I set you down, will you run? Because if
you run, we will catch you.”

“You’re gypsies!” the little one sobbed.
“Kill me and eat me now! Get it over with!”

Miklos put him down, and the young cat pushed
himself from all fours onto his feet and ran out the door.

“Let him go,” Radion said, wearily.

“Where did he get such an idea?” Miklos said,
spreading his hands. “That we are cannibals?”

Radion laughed shortly. “Probably from me. We
spread such tales through this area so that we would be left
alone.”