The Phoenix in Flight (26 page)

The Archon next turned to Brandon, who remained in a
position of social isolation. Omilov was glad not to be on the receiving end of
the Archon’s look. Under such circumstances having to return the gaze of that
dark, chiseled face and night-black eyes would be like trying to outstare a
statue of some ancient and awesome king. The Archon could look into and through
one.

But Brandon’s gaze did not flinch aside. His left shoulder
was very subtly turned toward the Archon and lowered—a position that would
escape most onlookers, but that a Douloi would immediately recognize as
submission, or admission of responsibility for an improper action. Omilov could
see that Brandon deeply regretted the position he had inadvertently put the
Archon and his planet in, and that he knew that no words would serve to convey
this. He could not even offer himself as a willing sacrifice to save the people
his presence had put in jeopardy—the Archon’s oath of fealty would mandate
rejection of such an offer, which would therefore appear a cowardly saving of
face on Brandon’s part.

The Archon held out his hands palms-up, in the ancient
Noble-to-Royal modality, and Brandon, at first hesitating, laid his hands
palms-down in the Archon’s.

“What is past is past,” said the Archon. His voice was
pitched low, for Brandon alone, but Omilov heard nonetheless, and was moved by
the Archon’s generous spirit. Even facing defeat and probable death, the Archon
was concerned with the pain of another—even one who had offended against him in
law and courtesy.

When Brandon responded with a troubled smile, and lifted his
hands, the Archon pulled his Archonic signet off and handed it to the Krysarch.
“My younger brother is a commander on Ares. This will be his, now, and our
Family would be honored to have it conveyed to him by a scion of the House of
Arkad.” He placed the ring in Brandon’s right hand and gently folded the
Krysarch’s fingers over it. “The Light-bearer guide you.” There was the
faintest emphasis on the word “guide.”

o0o

Brandon heard the emphasis, and it shocked his mind into
heightened awareness, so that every aspect of the room and the people in it was
clear and sharp, while his mind shifted rapidly with fragmented thoughts. He
remembered reading a monograph that claimed a link between the tendency to
telepathic flashes and the genetic complex governing melanin production. The
essay had seemed a mere intellectual exercise; now the Archon’s intent and
steady gaze and the set of his ebony features confronted Brandon with the
choice he thought he’d already made. Made its conclusions seem established
fact.

Just how much did the Archon understand? Whatever the
answer, his request brought all of Brandon’s questions about his future into
poignant, urgent focus; and that unrelenting gaze required an immediate
decision.

A flash of resentment mixed with a sense of pressure almost
claustrophobic in intensity. Many of the monitors were looking up at them.
Their expressions underscored the power of the responsibilities his birth had
imposed upon him—responsibilities it now seemed he could never escape.

A prison unsought...

He wondered if he’d ever really had a choice. The sense of
freedom he’d felt in lifting off from Arthelion was gone now.

“It shall be as you have asked,” he said formally. “It is
the Phoenix House that is honored by such a trust.”

The Archon nodded, gratitude easing the severity of his
countenance. As he withdrew he bowed, this time to the full extent due a Krysarch
of the Blood Royal.

Brandon looked down at the ring in his hand.

Or, a smiling charioteer, sable, vested proper, driving a
chariot gules, drawn by two sphinxes, sable and argent, all affrontee, in base
a ford proper.
The small, brilliantly clear enamel figure on the heavy ring
seemed poised on the verge of movement.
Volo, rideo,
read the motto: I
will, I laugh.
How odd that humor should be such a constant in the Faseult
line.
The memory of those three months at Omilov’s estate returned to
him—the tall black woman, willowy and quick-moving, who had visited one day.
She had laughed often, and not the controlled titter that Brandon became
accustomed to from the women who courted his father after his mother died.

He heard the laugh again, vividly present, and started,
almost dropping the ring; but it was an octave lower. The Archon, not the
Dowager Archonei, his grandmother.
The same laugh.
What did people see
as the distinguishing mark of an Arkad? Whatever it was, he’d seen something of
it mirrored in the Archon’s eyes when he’d accepted the ring, which lay solidly
in his hand, a tactile antonym to the Heart of Kronos.

He slipped it onto his ring finger, where his personal
signet had been less than a week before. And ten years before that his cadet
ring.

Markham.
Was he in one of those Rifter ships up
there? Brandon couldn’t imagine anything that could induce his friend to
participate in such savagery—but it had been ten years since he’d seen Markham
last.

o0o

Omilov watched his son scowl at the banks of displays, as if
the rapid shift of numbers there would restore the world to order and meaning.
He moved to Osri’s side; they might never see one another again. Should he say
something? What was there to say besides
I love you, son
?

By now the relentless pounding from the other side of the
sky had become a regular, mind-deadening sequence of blows. With the Heart of
Kronos no longer his responsibility, Omilov had been able to dredge up what
little he knew about planetary Shields, whose invention had been foundational
for Jaspar’s Thousand-Year Peace. In spite of all the defenders’ efforts, the
enemy was slowly tuning in to the fundamental resonance of the planet, for the
tesla fields which protected the atmosphere from the impact of near-cee plasmas
by translating their momentum through ninety degrees also coupled a portion of
their energy most effectively to the crust. The overwhelming power of the
Rifter’s weapons was exciting the Shield into spasms of revealing harmonics, a
process that normally took weeks.

A couple of guards came up the stairs, vivid in trim red
livery, and black glossy hats with slightly down-curving bills front and rear.
They saluted the Archon, and as the Archon acknowledged them, Brandon glanced
up from his perusal of the ring in his hand.

Omilov embraced his son and then held out his palms to
Brandon. He closed his fingers around Brandon’s hands as they touched. Omilov
regretted anew, with almost as sharp a psychic pang as the physical one he had
experienced earlier, that their talk had been interrupted.
It is likely I
will never know why he came to me.
And though none of this had been
foreseen, was nothing he had caused, a sense of failure suffused him. It had
little to do with duty. This was a personal failure.

Their minds had almost met, there on the terrace before the
hand of Dol’jhar had descended on Charvann.
He’s struck before at both of
us.
The thought brought the memory of Brandon as a young boy standing
before the portrait of his mother in Sebastian’s study, just once when he first
arrived after her death, and then never again.
I didn’t notice how he’d
avoided it until now.
What else had Omilov missed?

Omilov winced with regret. He’d done his best when Brandon
and Galen were young, by inviting them to Charvann for visits during the
clement summers, though his motive had been to get them away from Eusabian’s
son Anaris, the hostage to the fragile peace. Then Brandon had gone to the
academy, and it had been too easy to permit time to speed past.

Finally there was the matter of the Archon of Lusor and the
ruin of his son Markham—and honor had prevented Omilov from going back to
Arthelion...

Did it look like honor from Brandon’s view, or just another
abandonment?

He feared he knew the answer—and it was too late to repair.
To explain.

Omilov stepped back and pressed his hands together tightly.
His voice was a little hoarse as studied the two younger men, impressing them
on memory. “Get to Ares safely, both of you.”

Brandon touched hands with the Archon again, and followed Osri,
the guards walking ahead and Deralze in guard position. The crowd divided
around them, eyes focused on Brandon until the heavy door hissed shut behind
them, leaving only the echoing quiet of the corridor and the blank wall of an
unknown future.

Anaris rahal’Jerrodi lengthened his stride as they
approached his father’s cabin, using the advantage of his height to force the
black-clad Tarkans on either side of him to hurry to keep up. The guards’ faces
were expressionless, as prescribed by the savage Dol’jharian military code.

Tarka ni-retor,
he thought,
Those who do not
retreat.
His mouth curled in disdain.
Those who do not think.
And
yet, if he survived this interview, the first with his father in almost three
years, he would have to win such as these to his side.
For I will not
change, even if those who opened my eyes perish utterly at my father’s hands.

He had grown up on the planet below, the planet now supine
beneath his father’s wrath. In Eusabian’s eyes he had been a hostage against
revenge for Acheront; to the Panarch, a mind and soul to be salvaged. And to
himself?
I still seek the answer to that question
.

They halted before the entrance to his father’s suite, deep
within the
Fist of Dol’jhar.
One of the Tarkans identified them, then it
opened and Anaris stepped through, fighting against revealing his tension. The
Tarkans did not follow, and the door slid shut behind him with finality.

The room was large and stark. At the far end, the
heavy-shouldered figure of Jerrode Eusabian stood before a giant viewscreen,
silhouetted by the blue and white glamour of Arthelion. Tension sharpened into
fear when Anaris recognized the trembling figure standing to one side. It was
Lelanor, clad only in a shift, her face streaked with tears.
What is she
doing on this ship? Why didn’t Barrodagh warn me?

The bluish light from the viewscreen cast a corpselike
pallor over his lover’s smooth, golden skin and short white-blond hair, making
his heart thud painfully in his chest. He made an abortive move toward her,
then halted as his father spoke.

“The next step in my paliach approaches. In a few hours I
will descend upon Arthelion in triumph. My enemy lies captive within this ship.
His sons are dead.”

Anaris’s thoughts tumbled in confusion, unsettled by the
unexpected presence of Lelanor
.

“But my enemy will deny me total victory if he has stolen
the last of my seed from me.”

Perhaps you shouldn’t have been so quick to murder the
others,
Anaris thought
. And now you have no options. The Panarchists
told me what the weapons unleashed against your ship at Acheront did to your
germ plasm. And I’ve heard rumors of the pitiful monstrosities you fathered
afterward.

“I will not permit him even this partial denial of my
paliach,” Eusabian stated, giving Lelanor a glance of disgust. “This is
evidence that he has made you incapable of the rigor necessary to a ruler,
contaminating your spirit—” Eusabian used the word
hachka,
denoting the
virtues inherited from one’s ancestors. “—with Panarchist depravities such as
love.”
His father’s sneering emphasis on the last word was accentuated by the fact
that he perforce used the Uni term, there being no Dol’jharian equivalent.

“You have befouled your ancestors with your behavior with
this slave, as if such a
prikoschi
could even offer a wholesome
struggle.” Eusabian broke off, smiling with cold distaste. “Oh yes, you were
watched.” His face tightened to grim anger. “How do you expect to have worthy
heirs from such a worm?” Eusabian struck quickly, casually. His great strength
lifted Lelanor off her feet, smashing her against a bulkhead.

Anaris’s stomach tightened, but he showed no reaction as his
lover struggled to her feet, her frightened eyes meeting his in mute appeal.

“Yet you persist in meeting with this slave again and again,
a sickness you have learned from the Panarchists, for there has been no such
perversion in my House since the founding of Hroth D’Ocha.” Eusabian stopped
abruptly, as if mastering an overwhelming revulsion.

No doubt it was sincere. When he first came to Arthelion as
hostage, Anaris had been too young to have any interest in the strictness of
Dol’jharian ritual, but the single servant (or spy, as the man himself had
admitted) sent with Anaris had tried his best to inculcate these views. Which
had lasted about a year after Anaris discovered sex, and not much longer than
that in his servant, eventually making them conspirators instead of watcher and
watched.

Anaris schooled his expression, dismayed at the betrayal
implied in his father’s words: he really thought he’d gained control over that
wing of the household. He would remember this—if he survived the next few
minutes.

As none of my siblings did
.

Eusabian’s voice dropped back to its original level. Was he
remembering that he had no more sons or daughters?

“But now I have time to devote to your reeducation, to
inculcate in you the virtues inhering in the descendants of Dol, so that the
spirit of Dol may someday dwell in you as it does in me. I will not be denied.
I shall reclaim my son.”

Anaris glanced covertly at Lelanor, whose frail body was
shaken at intervals by bouts of trembling. She hugged her elbows in against her
sides, her skin roughened by the cold air of the suite, and looked from one to
the other of the two men in incomprehension. Brought as a slave to Dol’jhar by
Rifters, she had never learned Dol’jharian. Anaris, newly returned to his home
planet, had found her company a relief from everyday life among Dol’jharians.