The Navigator of Rhada (21 page)

On the plain before the sanctuary, the murdered starship burned. The remainder of the squadron, stunned by the swift destruction of the lead vessel, hovered uncertainly out of range of the meson screen.

The religious procession, too, had reached the plain, and the Tactician, with consummate showmanship, marshaled the cowled priests in a wide semicircle. Slowly, and with great solemnity, he led the false Galacton forward so that he could be seen by the shaken Navigators in the starships.

Kynan could feel the throbbing ache in his skull again, and he knew that the Technician was at his machines in the starship in the forest, urging him to take the homage of the stunned and confused men in the Vegan ships.

The brilliant sunlight bathed the plain. Kynan narrowed his eyes and looked at the flaming disk of Aurora: a star like thousands of other stars scattered across the swirling mass of the galaxy.
To rule, to be king of all--to accept the submission of all men, everywhere
-- Could ever a man have been so tempted?

Skua whickered uneasily and pranced on the hard- packed soil of the plain. Kynan awoke from his reverie to see that the starships had landed, and a delegation of Navigators and Vegan officers were approaching the semicircle of priests.

He sat bareheaded in the morning, the sunlight flashing from the jeweled circlet on his brow. He seemed to be partaking of some strange and unbelievable dream. A voice whispered in his mind:
King--you are the Star King
--
these are your soldiers--your starships. The soil on which your charger stands is yours--the star that sheds its -warmth on you is yours
-- He felt the burning touch of a pride and arrogance that was like a consuming fire within him.
Why not?
Was his blood any different from the blood of him whose crown he wore? Wasn’t he, too, descendant of a hundred generations of Vykan kings? What was the way of the Navigator compared to that?

He was not Kynan of Gonlan, Kynan the foundling, bond-son to a petty chieftain, Kynan the Navigator. He was the Galacton, king of an empire of stars!

His eyes were no longer those of a simple pilot of starships. They were suddenly dark and farseeing, the eyes of a man with power--power greater than he had ever imagined one single human being could command.

The Vegan officers, astonished to see the Galacton here on Aurora, stood at rigid salute. The Navigators from the ships, still stunned by the seemingly supernatural force that had struck down the first vessel, were bareheaded before the frightening presence of the sovereign surrounded by priests and four princes of the Order.

The Logician was speaking. Kynan heard his words dimly, through the roaring pulse of his own blood in his ears.

“--the power of the holy Star has struck the forces of rebellion. Where is Tran? He must be brought to book for this!”

The Logician’s voice was like the rumble of thunder to the Vegan warmen. They stood fearfully, waiting for the crushing word from the Galacton--this strangely possessed and burning king so terrifyingly different from the foppish dandy of Nyor.

Kynan heard himself speaking, and somewhere within him
there was a tiny bead of despair, for in speaking now as Torquas, it seemed to him that he surrendered completely to the deception and all that it might entail for generations of men yet unborn.

The Vegans were accepting his orders unquestioningly, completely. This was the loyalty that Torquas, fool and dilettante, had never commanded. It had always been there, due to the blood of Glamiss the Magnificent and his descendants. It needed only to be demanded as the Galacton’s due.

This, then, was the taste of power. Kynan, for the first time in his twenty years of life, sensed the true nature of his world. It was in the suddenly pleased fearfulness of the captains, in their willingness to respond to the leadership of blood, honor, and feudal privilege.

He touched Skua with his heels, and she stepped forward, out of the circle of priests and into the ranks of the warmen. Kynan addressed himself to a decorated regimental commander. “What is your name, warman?”

“Auden Veg Novens, King.” The soldier’s face, scarred with the marks of many battles, expressed the man’s pride in being addressed directly by the Galacton.

Kynan heard a murmuring in the ranks of the Navigators behind him. He turned to look coldly at the Tactician. He felt a dour satisfaction. The princes had created a king, now let them accept him.

“You will take your regiment to Star Field, warman,” Kynan said. “Starships of the Gonlani-Rhad will be arriving within the hour. You are to carry this message to First Minister LaRoss and General Crespus. Say to them that there is to be no fighting with the men of Star Field. Say that is by
my
command. Crespus and LaRoss are to come here--to me. Is that understood?”

“As you command, King.” The Vegan gathered his staff and the Navigators of his ship and retreated across the plain.

Kynan looked achingly at the still smoldering ruins of the great ship that had crashed. Navigators from the sanctuary searched now in the rubble for survivors. It was a sight that filled Kynan with angry bitterness. He turned and searched the ranks of the cowled priests, searching for Janessa, but he could see nothing but the increasing alarm on the faces of the four members of the Five who had accompanied the procession from the starship in the forest.

He found a Vegan officer wearing the harness of a general officer and ordered him to disembark the troops in three of the grounded starships. “Deploy them for battle, warman,” he said in a ringing voice.

This command brought forth a protest from the Tactician. Kynan looked down on him and said, “This is not a matter for priests, old man.” His voice was flinty. “Or is there something you wish to say to the troops yourself, Navigator?”

The Tactician, with the look of a man who has created a monster, retreated and went into private conference with his three colleague princes. They would send word to the Technician now, Kynan knew, and the machines in the starship would begin to punish him for his insubordination. But he was a man adrift from his faith; he was beyond caring.

“Starships, King!” A Vegan officer pointed into the brightness of the rising sun. The second squadron of Imperial starships had arrived to attack the sanctuary.

Kynan gave an order to signal the leading ship. “General Veg Tran is to report to me. Personally and at once.” He felt a sudden wry pleasure. How easily one became accustomed to the sense of power, he thought. How swiftly one learned to expect commands to be obeyed.

He watched the heliographed orders being flashed to the starships. To
his
starships. To the starships of the King.

“Set up a camp,” he ordered, and then, with an almost hysterical pleasure, he added, “And keep these Navigators away from me. There has been too much interference by priests already!”

And he wondered:
How long now? How long before the Tactician and his machines began to fight him for possession of his own personality?
It was like waiting for a descent into hell.

Truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

Attributed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, warleader of the American Millennium,
middle Dawn Age. Fragment found at Tel-Manhat, Earth

Let tomorrow take care of tomorrow
--
Leave future things to fate.

Attributed to Charles Swain, Dawn Age poet, period unknown.
Fragment found at St. Francis Town, Earth

For one strange moment in time, all power in the galaxy was concentrated in the person of one unknown man standing before a sanctuary on a hinterland planet of the Rim. It was then that men learned the meaning of the phrase: the way of the Navigator.

Nav (Bishop) Julianus Mullerium,
Anticlericalism in the Age of the Star Kings,
middle Second Stellar Empire period

Kynan sat on a camp chair in the bannered pavilion set up for the Galacton’s use by the staff of the Vegan regiments. The sides of the tent flapped in the wind from the Inland Sea: their fluttering sound was the only thing heard within.

Outside, the Vegs were drawn up in battle order, though their officers were uncertain whom they were expected to fight and when.

The Navigator searched the faces of the staff officers surrounding him. For the past twenty minutes he had been giving detailed instructions for the reception to be given General Alain Veg Tran and the men of the Gonlani- Rhad.

The Vegans were respectful and obedient. But Kynan could not help noticing the strangely puzzled expression that came across each man’s face as he received orders from a king he had known before only as the Poet or the Fool.

“Among the Navigators who came with me from the hill, you will find the warlock Baltus and the heiress to this place, Janessa. I want them brought to me here. The prince Navigator who was with me will want to come as well--” He had to repress an ironic smile at that. The Tactician must be suffering badly now, thinking that he had forever shattered that holy
plan
that meant so much to him. “I will have him here, as well.” He stood to indicate that the officers should be about their duties. “The First Minister of Gonlan and his general are to be put under guard as soon as they arrive. If the Royal Vulk of Rhada is with them, he is to come to me at once. General Veg Tran and all his officers will wait until I summon them. First, I will see all the Vykan regimental commanders here. See to it.”

The Vegans saluted and withdrew. Kynan could hear them murmuring at the strangeness of the Galacton’s behavior. But praetorians though they were--they would obey. With the power of the Galacton surrounding him, the Navigator never doubted it.

Presently, a Vegan officer appeared to report that the warlock and the Aurori girl were outside the tent.

“Send them to me. Alone,” Kynan ordered.

“Alone, King?”

Kynan fixed the man with a hard look. “Warman, understand this--and make certain that all officers of the army understand it as well. When your ruler gives an order, it is to be obeyed. At once and without question. The time of the light shows is over.”

The officer’s eyes widened with surprise, and he saluted formally. “Yes, Warleader. Certainly.”

“Send the girl and the warlock to me.”

Baltus and Janessa, still wearing the cowled clericals of Navigators, entered the tent. Kynan received them with a sad half-smile on his face. The girl’s face went pale at the sight of him.

“Kynan
--it
is
you!” she exclaimed.

Baltus touched her lips with his fingertips and shook his head. “Be careful what you say,” he murmured. “The Vegans are only just outside the tent.”

Kynan took the older man by the hand and drew him into the center of the pavilion. “You don’t seem surprised, Baltus,” he said.

“I suspected,” the warlock said. “Your bond-father knew who you were--and though he never told me, I suspected that this might be true. You are brothers, you and Torquas. By the Star, who could tell you apart?”

“You could,” Kynan said. And looking gently at Janessa, he added, “And you, Princess?”

The girl’s eyes were fixed on the Galacton’s circlet of power on Kynan’s brow. Her expression was a mixture of relief, perplexity, and a growing anxiety. “If you are Kynan, then where is--
he?”
She could not bring herself to pronounce the Galacton’s name.

Baltus regarded the Navigator speculatively. “Now what will you do, Kynan?” He knew what temptation was. He understood what the Navigator was facing.

Kynan drew his Navigator’s pistol from his harness and handed it to Baltus. “Do you know how this weapon works?”

The warlock smiled thinly. “At the risk of profaning one of your precious mysteries--yes, I do.”

“Torquas may have been taken back to the starship in the forest,” Kynan said.

“Yes, I think so. A party of Navigators went back the way we had come as soon as you joined the Vegan officers.” Kynan shuddered. Soon the power of the Technician’s machines would begin to attack his brain in an attempt to force him back into the pattern of the Five’s plan to take power for the Order. There was little time left, and there was still so much to do . . .

“I want you to take Skua and ride back to the starship. Give the Navigators there this message: They are to send Torquas to me with you. They are to do it at once and without question--or I shall lead the Vegans and the Vyk regiments into the sanctuary and take
for the Empire
what they make there.”

“You will burn, apostate
--” The Tactician stood at the tent entrance, his face livid with anger.

Janessa drew closer to Kynan, and even the warlock was shaken by the prince Navigator’s words.

Only Kynan remained unmoved. To Baltus, he said, “Go and do as I tell you. Time is very short.”

Baltus shoved past the Tactician and departed.

An officer entered, saluted, and said, “King, the Vykan regimental commanders are waiting for you.”

“In a moment,” Kynan said.

The Tactician swept into the tent and, ignoring the girl, said bitterly, “You are a Navigator, a priest of God and a servant of the Order. If you do not obey me, what I said will come to pass. There will be a burning for the first time in a hundred years!”

Kynan pressed his fingertips to his temples and said, in a voice of cold hatred, “Not even the love I bear the Order can justify what you have done to me. And the holy Star knows that you have done it badly--”

“The Vulk interfered with your conditioning. But for that, there would have been no problems. You would never have needed to kn
ow.”

Kynan marveled at the cynicism of the worldly priest. “And the Empire would have been ruled by the Order-- through
me
--”

The old priest’s eyes narrowed. “Would that be so bad a thing? Have you no loyalty to the Order which has guided you, cared for you, taught you?”