Songmaster (19 page)

The Captain and Chamberlain came together to take Ansset from the cell where he had spent the last four days.

“He wants you to come.”

Ansset had Control again. He showed little emotion as he asked, “Am I ready?”

They said nothing for a moment, which was answer enough.

“Then I won’t go,” Ansset said.

“He commands it,” the Chamberlain said.

“Not if we don’t know what’s been hidden in my head.”

The Captain patted Ansset’s shoulder. “A loyal attitude. But the only thing we could find was that at least some of the blocks were laid by your teacher.”

“Esste?”

“Yes.”

Ansset smiled, and suddenly his voice radiated confidence. “Then it’s all right. She wishes nothing but good for Mikal!”

“Only some of the blocks.”

And the smile left Ansset’s face.

“But you will come. He’s expecting you in court in less than two hours.”

“Can’t we try again?”

“Trying again would be pointless. Whoever laid the blocks in your mind laid them well, Ansset. And Mikal won’t be put off any longer. You have no choice. Please come with us now.” And the Captain stood. He expected to be obeyed, and Ansset followed. They wound their way through the palace to the security rooms at the entrances to the court. There Ansset insisted on their most thorough search, every possible poison and weapon checked for.

“And tie my hands,” Ansset said.

“Mikal wouldn’t stand for it,” the Captain said, but the Chamberlain nodded and said, “The boy’s right.” So they clamped manacles onto Ansset’s forearms. The manacles quickly fit snugly from elbow to wrist. They were held by metal bars exactly twenty centimeters apart behind his back, which was uncomfortable at first and steadily more uncomfortable the longer he had to hold the position. They also hobbled his legs.

“And keep guards with lasers far enough from me that there’s no chance of my taking a weapon.”

“You know,” said the Captain, “that we might still find your kidnappers. We’ve identified the accent now. Eire.”

“I’ve never heard of the planet,” said the Chamberlain.

“It’s an island. Here on Earth.”

“Another group of freedom fighters?” asked the Chamberlain, scornfully.

“With more gall than most.”

“An accent isn’t much to go on.”

“But we’re going on it,” the Captain said, with finality.

“It’s time,” said a servant at the door.

They left the security room and passed through the ordinary security system, detectors that scanned for metal and the more ordinary poisons, guards who frisked everyone, including Ansset, because they had been told to make no exceptions.

And then Ansset passed between the doors and walked into the great hall. When the students had visited, most of the hall had been empty, their chairs gathered up near the throne. Now the full court was in session, with visitors from dozens of planets waiting along the edges of the room to present their petitions or make gifts or complain about some government policy or official. Mikal sat on his throne at the end of the room. He needed nothing more than a simple if elegant chair—no raised platform, no steps, nothing but his own bearing and dignity to raise him above the level of everyone around him. Ansset had never approached the throne from this end of the room. He had always stood beside Mikal, had always entered from the back, and now he knew why so many who walked up this long space were trembling when they reached the end. Every eye was upon him as he passed, and Mikal watched him gravely from the throne. Ansset wanted to run to him, embrace him, sing songs, and find comfort in Mikal’s acceptance. Yet he knew that in his mind might hide instructions to kill the old man on the throne.

He came within a dozen meters of the throne and knelt, bowing his head.

Mikal raised his hand in the ritual of recognition. Ansset had heard Mikal laugh at the rituals when they were alone together, but now the majesty of set forms helped Ansset maintain his calm.

“My Lord,” said Ansset in clear, bell-like tones that filled the room and stopped all the whispered conversations around the walls. “I am Ansset, and I have come to ask for my life.” In the old days, Mikal had once explained to Ansset, this was the ritual for rulers of hundreds of worlds, and it had meant something. Many a rebel lord or soldier had died on the spot, when the sovereign denied the petition. And even Mikal took the
pro forma
surrender of life seriously. It was one of many constant reminders he used to help his subjects remember that he had power over them.

“Why should I spare you?” Mikal asked, his voice old but firm. To anyone else, he would have seemed a model of poise. But Ansset knew the voice, and heard the quaver of eagerness, of fear and gentle trembling on the edges of the tones.

The ritual required Ansset to simply state his accomplishments, something modest yet impressive. But Ansset left the ritual here, and fervently sang to Mikal, “Father Mikal, you should not!”

The crowd around the walls began whispering again. The sight of the Songbird in manacles and hobbled was shocking enough. But for the Songbird to plead for his own death—

“Why not?” Mikal asked, seeming impassive (but Ansset knew that he was warning him, saying, “Don’t push, don’t force me”).

“Because, my Lord Mikal Imperator, things were done to me that are now locked in my mind so that neither I nor anyone can find them. I therefore have secrets from you. I’m a danger to you. Father Mikal!” Ansset deliberately broke with formality in his last sentence, and the threat in his voice struck fear in everyone in the room.

“None of that,” Mikal said. “You think you’re acting for my good, but you don’t know my good. Don’t try to teach me to fear you, because I will not.” He raised his hand. “I grant you your life.”

And Ansset, despite the strain it caused on his bound arms, leaned down and kissed the floor to express his gratitude for Mikal’s clemency. It was a gesture that only pardoned traitors used.

“Why are you bound?” asked Mikal.

“For your safety.”

“Unbind him,” Mikal said. But Ansset noticed with relief that the Captain of the guard disarmed the men who came out to untie the hobble and break open the manacles. When they were removed, Ansset stood. He raised his now-free arms over his head, lifted his gaze to the great vaults of the ceiling, and sang his love for Mikal. But the song was full of warning, though there were no direct words, and the song also sang of Ansset’s regret that because of Mikal’s wisdom and for the sake of the empire Ansset would now be sent away.

“No!” cried Mikal, interrupting the song. “No! My Son Ansset, I won’t send you away! I would rather meet death at your hands than receive gifts from any other’s. Your life is more valuable to me than my own.” And Mikal reached out his arms.

Ansset came to him, and embraced him before the throne, and together they left the hall, with legend already growing behind them. In a week all the empire would know that Mikal had called his Songbird
My Son Ansset
; the embrace would be pictured in every newspaper; storytellers would repeat over and over again the words, “Your life is more valuable to me than my own.”

The door to Mikal’s private room closed, and Ansset stood only a few steps into the room. Mikal was ahead of him, stopped, looking at nothing, his back to Ansset.

“Never again,” Mikal said.

The voice was husky with emotion, and the back was bent. Mikal turned around and faced Ansset, and it shocked the boy how old Mikal’s face had become. The creases were deeper, and the mouth turned more sharply down, and the eyes were deep with pain. They lay in the sunken sockets like jewels in dark velvet, and Ansset suddenly realized that Mikal might someday die.

“Never again,” Mikal said. “This can never happen again. When you pleaded with me for freedom from guards and rules and schedules, I said, ‘That’s right, you can go, a Songbird can’t be caged.’ To me, to my friends, you’re a beautiful melody in the air. To my enemies, who far outnumber my friends, you’re a tool. The very taking of you might have killed me, Ansset. I’m not young. I can’t take such things.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry. How could you have known? Raised in that damnable Songhouse with no exposure to life at all, how could you have known what kind of hate propels the animals who walk on two legs claiming to be intelligent?
I
knew. But ever since you came, I’ve been a fool. I’ve lived for it feels like a thousand years, a million years, and never made so many mistakes as I have since you came.”

“Then send me away. Please.”

Mikal looked at him closely. “Do you want to go?”

Ansset wanted to lie to him, to say yes, I must go, send me home to the Songhouse. But he couldn’t lie to Mikal. “No,” he finally said.

“Then there we are. But from now on, you’ll be guarded. It’s too damned late, hut we’ll watch you and you’ll let me and my men protect you.”

“Yes.”

“Sing to me, dammit! Sing to me!” And Mikal strode across the floor, lifted the eleven-year-old boy in his arms, carried him to the fire, and held him as Ansset began to sing. It was a soft song, and it was short, but at the end of it Mikal was lying on his back looking at the ceiling. Tears streamed out from his eyes.

“I didn’t mean the song to be sad. I was rejoicing,” Ansset said.

“So am I.”

Mikal’s hand reached out and gripped Ansset’s. “How was I to know, Ansset, how was I to know that now, in my dotage, I’d do the foolish thing I’ve avoided all my life? Oh, I’ve loved like I’ve done every other passionate thing, but when they took you I discovered, my Son, that I need you.” Mikal rolled over and looked at Ansset, who was gazing at the old man adoringly. “Don’t worship me, boy,” Mikal said. “I’m an old bastard who’d kill his mother if one of my enemies hadn’t already done it.”

“You’d never harm me.”

“I harm everything I love.” His face relaxed from bitterness into the memory of fear. “We were afraid for you. At first we were afraid you were another victim of this madman who’s been terrorizing the citizens. The audacity of it was incredible. I expected to learn they’d found your body torn to pieces—” His voice broke. “But then we didn’t, and we didn’t, and we kept finding more and more bodies, but none of them was yours. We even had to fingerprint some, or use their teeth, but none of them was you and we realized that whoever had taken you had picked his time well. We had wasted weeks trying to fit you in with the other kidnappings, and by the time we realized that was all wrong, the trail was cold. There were no ransom notes. Nothing. I lay awake at night, hours on end, wondering what they were doing to you.”

“I’m all right.”

“You’re still afraid of them.”

“Not of them,” Ansset said. “Of me.”

Mikal sighed and turned away. “I’ve let myself need you, and now the worst thing anyone can do to me is take you away. I’ve grown weak.”

And so Ansset sang to him of weakness, but in his song the weakness was the greatest strength of all.

Late in the night, when Ansset had thought Mikal was drifting off to sleep, the old emperor flung out his hand and cried in fury, “I’m losing it!”

“What?” asked Ansset.

“My empire. Did I build it to fall? Did I burn over a dozen worlds and ravage a hundred others just to have the whole thing fall in chaos when I die?” He leaned close to Ansset and whispered to him, their eyes only centimeters apart, “They call me Mikal the Terrible, but I built it all so it would stand like an umbrella over the galaxy. They have it now: peace and prosperity and as much freedom as their little minds can cope with. But when I die they’ll throw it all away.”

Ansset tried to sing to him of hope.

“There’s no hope. I have fifty sons, three of them legitimate, all of them fools who try to flatter me. They couldn’t keep the empire for a week, not all of them, not any of them. There’s not a man I’ve met in all my life who could control what I’ve built in my lifetime. When I die, it all dies with me.” And Mikal sank to the floor wearily.

For once Ansset did not sing. He reached out to touch Mikal, rested his hand on the old man’s knee, said, “For you, Father Mikal, I’ll grow up to be strong. Your empire will not fall!” He spoke so intensely that both he and Mikal, after a moment’s surprise, had to laugh.

“It’s true, though,” Mikal said, tousling Ansset’s hair. “For you I’d do it, I’d give you the empire, except they’d kill you. And even if I lived long enough to train you to be a ruler of men, to put you on the throne and force them to accept you, I wouldn’t do it. The man who will be my heir must be cruel and vicious and sly and wise, completely selfish and ambitious, contemptuous of all other people, brilliant in battle, able to outguess and outmaneuver every enemy, and strong enough inside himself to live utterly alone all his life.” Mikal smiled. “Even
I
don’t fit my list of qualifications, because now I’m not alone.”

“Neither,” said Ansset, “am I.” And he sang Father Mikal to sleep.

And as he lay in the darkness, Ansset wondered what it would be like to be emperor, to speak and have his words obeyed, not just by those close enough to hear, but by billions of people all over the universe. He imagined great crowds of people moving to his song, and worlds moving in their paths around their suns according to his word, and the very stars moving left or right near or far as he wished it. His imaginings became dreams as he drifted off to sleep, and he felt the exhilaration of power as if he were flying, the whole of Susquehanna spread below him, but at night, with the lights shining like stars.

Beside him someone else was flying. The face was familiar, but he did not remember why. The man was tall, and in a sergeant’s uniform. He looked at Ansset placidly, but then reached out and touched Ansset, and suddenly Ansset was naked and alone and afraid, and the man was fondling his crotch, and Ansset didn’t like it and struck out at the man, struck out with all the power of an emperor, and the sergeant fell from the air with a look of terror, fell and was smashed on one of the towers of the palace. Ansset stared at the broken body, the crumpled, bleeding body, and he suddenly felt the terrible weight of responsibility. He looked up, and all the stars were falling, all the worlds were plunging into their suns, all the crowds were marching over a huge and terrible cliff, and however much he wept and cried out for them to stop, they would not listen; until his own screaming woke him up, and he saw Mikal’s kind face looking at him with concern.

“A dream,” Ansset said, not really awake. “I don’t want to be emperor.”

“Don’t be,” Mikal answered. “Don’t ever be.” It was dark, and Ansset slept again quickly.