Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four (35 page)

“Ahhhhh! ” the boy shrieked, trying desperately to get up again, but the pain in his tailbone wouldn’t allow it.

D looked at Matthew blankly. In that dazed but radiant expression, something stirred. The iron rod went up.

Matthew shrieked again.

Rod still raised, the man with D’s face walked forward.

“It would seem he’s not our foe,” Count Braujou said, and though his muscles relaxed as he gazed at the approaching figure, the glint in his eye made it clear he hadn’t dropped his guard.

This strange D fearlessly advanced to about six feet from the count before halting.

“Who are you?” the count inquired. Though the tip of his spear rested against the ground, he had power and speed enough to raise it in a heartbeat and impale his foe if the need arose.

After some time, the man replied, “D.”

“No, you’re not. Your face may look exactly like his, but your build’s different. However, the fact that you can duplicate his beauty so precisely makes you a most intriguing man. What’s your connection to Valcua?”

The man said nothing.

“What in the—” the count exclaimed, suddenly raising his spear.

D’s face had changed unexpectedly.

An impact with a force that seemed like it would knock the earth from its axis startled the count. The man had parried the blow with his iron rod. And the face that grinned back at Braujou was that of Valcua himself.

“You—you freak!” the count exclaimed, swinging his spear around.

Still in the same stance as when he’d parried, Valcua Two was thrown high into the air by the Nobleman’s monstrous strength. He was powerless to stop Braujou’s spear from sinking deep into his flesh. The body that thudded to the ground was like a tiny insect struck down with an enormous stake. As he writhed on the ground, the spear also thrashed about wildly, whistling through the wind.

The sight was so grisly Matthew had to shut his eyes, while the count laughed, “That’s a strange power you have, but while you’re wearing Valcua’s face, I can’t allow you to live. I’ll send you to the next life ahead of your master, so you can arrange a welcome party for him in hell if you like.”

He looked at the man thrashing on the ground. And the man was looking at the count.

“What’s this?” This time, it was a cry of unadulterated surprise that flew from the count’s mouth. “Valcua’s face, D’s face—and now that of the Sacred Ancestor?”

So great was the count’s astonishment, he didn’t even turn when he heard someone say, “Incredible, isn’t it, Braujou?”

When he finally did turn his gaze down the road the man had appeared on, he found a figure in a golden robe that glittered in the darkness. Every inch of the count’s body readied for battle. Finally, he said, “Valcua! The real one, I take it.”

“I needn’t ask, Braujou, but I assume that as you’ve entered my domain, you’re prepared to meet your fate.”

With this remark, the golden robe flew up as his right hand raised Glencalibur, the longsword’s gilded blade glistening in the moonlight.

And in response—a hint of turbulence stirred in Count Braujou’s expression. His long spear was thrashing back and forth against the ground.

“Go ahead and get it, Braujou,” Valcua said with a toss of his chin at the writhing figure. “But be careful. That man—”

Not listening to the rest, Count Braujou dashed over for his long spear. He reached for the shaft, but at that moment the spear disappeared, being driven instead through the giant’s heart and out his back.

“Gaaaaah!” the count howled in unearthly agony.

“I told you to be careful,” Valcua said to him with a smirk.

“Bastard! You lousy bastard!”

Spitting up blood, Count Braujou grabbed the spear with both hands. Though it was his own spear, the Nobleman couldn’t make it move an inch for all his prodigious strength. The reason was simple: another powerful hand gripped the shaft of the spear: the hand of the other Valcua.

No, look. There beneath the moon, the man’s features shifted as if by some magical trick of that mysterious light—his face changing from Valcua’s to D’s, and from D’s to another man’s.

Forgetting his pain, Braujou stared intently at the visage.

“Why .. . why ... are you here ... milord?”

Little by little, a hue of incredible terror had begun to stew in the count’s eyes.

“It can’t be . .. Those other two .. . They couldn’t be ...”

Regardless of what the count might’ve suspected, he didn’t get a chance to say it aloud. A golden god descended from the heavens— or so it appeared to Matthew. Leaping up to be framed against the moon, the Ultimate Noble brought his blade down on the gigantic Count Braujou, slicing from the right side of his neck clean through the left side of his torso in one stroke!

Amazingly, as his upper body started to slide apart, Braujou used his massive arms to pull the pieces back into place.

“Outstanding,” Valcua said as he drew his longsword back. Would the coup de grace be a thrust or—

Just then, a figure in a white dress floated down from the sky, accompanied by a seductive laugh. It was a woman of otherworldly beauty. She stood before them like a fairy, balanced on the blade of Valcua’s sword.

“Long time no see, Grand Duke Valcua,” she said, an alluring smile on her face.

“Why, if it isn’t Duchess Miranda! How nice of you to deliver yourself to me like this.”

“I wonder if even the Ultimate Noble is a match for the combined might of Braujou and me.”

Grinning at the bewitching beauty, Valcua replied, “We shall see—now.”

At that moment, Matthew saw the blade of the sword rise and fall ever so slightly.

Losing her footing, Miranda fell, her body straddling the blade as she did. As she landed, a vermilion line zipped through the duchess from the groin to the top of her head. Blood gushed from that line the instant Glencalibur was through her head.

“This can’t be . ..” the lovely woman said, staggering.

“Wounds from Glencalibur don’t close, no matter how great your molecular regeneration might be,” Valcua sneered.

As she started to split down the middle, Miranda wrapped her arms around herself. Braujou had been sliced through at an angle, and now the seductress had been split in two—such was the might possessed by the Ultimate Noble.

“How good of you to gather here in the valley for me today. I offer you my thanks... with this longsword!”

Once again he drew back his blade. He intended to impale both of them on it at the same time. However, something stopped him. Someone had grabbed the hilt of his magic sword.

Turning around, he said, “D.”

Letting go of Glencalibur, the Ultimate Noble reached into his robe as he leaped ten feet away. What he sent flying like a shooting star was a blade over a foot and a half in length. A split second before it pierced the silvery chest, it was batted down by an iron rod.

While Valcua could tell Braujou and Miranda were getting away, he couldn’t pursue them.

“So, your power is a match for mine and D’s, is it? I wonder what the
other
you would do now?”

The grand duke raised his right hand. The sky was torn open as blue lightning scored a direct hit on the man with D’s face. Ions and nothingness filled the air.

The two Nobles had already fled to the entrance of the valley.

White smoke and flames engulfed the man.

“Come," Valcua said to Matthew—who’d been left behind— grabbing him by the arm and pulling him closer before raising his right arm once more. He swung it down again in a forceful, powerful gesture.

“Ahhhhh!” Matthew screamed, his cry swallowed by movements of incredible mass.

The mountains themselves were shifting—mountains of steel. Mountains that rose more than three thousand feet above sea level were slamming into each other. The man who wore D’s face was between them, as were Valcua and Matthew. The collision unleashed a wave of destruction to which the shock waves from the asteroid missile couldn’t begin to compare. Winds pelted the plain and surged into the sky, shifting the clouds and obscuring the moon’s corona. Far across the plain, remnants of the shock wave seemed to travel endlessly.

When the rumble finally grew thin, the mountains moved once again, returning to their original locations. The valley they’d

crushed between them returned to silence in the moonlight as if nothing had happened, with no trace of the mysterious stranger or the Ultimate Noble to be found.

As soon as Valcua and Matthew returned to the castle, Kima rushed over to them.

“Lock this rascal up,” Valcua said, handing Matthew over to his subordinate. “Were you watching?”

“Yes, I saw it all.”

“Do you think he’s dead?”

Kima didn’t reply.

“Would you care to bet me that he still lives?”

“Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be much of a wager.”

Valcua recalled what the man who wore D’s face had left behind: a hole carved into the steel mountain range. It’d been less than ten feet deep, but that would be more than sufficient to weather a collision between the two mountains.

Giving orders that no effort was to be spared in the search for him, Valcua left, while Kima brought Matthew to a subterranean dungeon, threw him into a solitary cell, and left again. Although it was “solitary,” the cell was no smaller than the average room and was enclosed by invisible walls. The boy’s vital signs were monitored continuously. There was no sign of any guards.

Walking stealthily, Kima headed for the master monitoring center. Since he’d been there until Valcua’s return to the castle, it would be

more accurate to say he went
back
to the center. There was almost no machinery in the spacious control room—the main computer controlled everything. Where the actual computer was located was a mystery, and it only recognized commands given by Valcua or Kima.

Filled with a misty fog, the room was reminiscent of the charnel houses of ancient times. In antiquated fashion, the room had towering stone posts in lieu of machinery, a vaulted ceiling, old-fashioned stone steps, and a bed that called to mind nothing save a gravestone—and on that bed, Callas lay on her back. She was no longer breathing.

Whisking the fog away from her, Kima stared at the dead woman’s lovely features.

“You only had a short time left, but you did well. It’s my turn next.