The Phoenix in Flight (43 page)

The Avatar had missed it—if it really was a cue. He smiled
mockingly, his anticipation obvious now. “Your concern for my travails is
touching, Arkad, but your grasp of my power is faulty. Just hours ago one of
that ragtag gang, as you call them, compelled the surrender of Charvann, after
but a half-day’s resistance. The battlecruiser
Korion
lasted only
minutes in that same action, and that was one of the least of my victories.”

“Charvann is three weeks from here,” the Panarch countered,
lifting his voice slightly. “There is no way you could know that, even had it
actually happened: I know of nothing that could overpower a battlecruiser’s
shields in minutes, or a planet’s in hours.”

“You may not, but the Ur did.” Eusabian smiled on his enemy.

Though the Panarch’s lips were closed, the skin over his
cheekbones, above his beard, tightened with the slight drop of jaw that
signified shock.

Eusabian saw that. He smiled broadly, and made an
open-palmed gesture of mocking beneficence, toward Barrodagh.
“Tel urdug
paliachee, em ni arben ettisen.”

The reversion to Dol’jharian was the signal that the formal
completion of the paliach’s humiliation ritual was at hand.
Here it comes.

Barrodagh bowed deeply, then moved around to the back of the
throne as the Avatar continued. “I see that you believe me, now.”

His tone invited retort. Anaris could have told him that the
invitation was too obvious, too heavy, and sure enough, Gelasaar waited, but
Anaris saw the signs of fatigue in the man’s stance, feet planted and spine
braced for endurance.
He knew, and now he knows what’s coming.

But Barrodagh had not seen the signs either. He reappeared,
carrying the pair of translucent boxes as he said, his tone so gloating that
Anaris wondered if he had practiced alone in his chamber, “So, Arkad, are you
curious to know your fate?”

The Panarch ignored him, his eyes following the boxes as
Barrodagh took his time placing them at the foot of the Throne, careful to make
certain the line between them and the Panarch afforded him the best view of
Gelasaar’s countenance.

The Panarch turned his gaze back to Eusabian, his voice
gaining in resonance. “Your creature asked the question, no doubt to maintain
your dignity, but I saw it in your face. I’m sure you’ve spent much of the past
twenty years devising something sufficiently bloody, so my curiosity would be
redundant.”

The Avatar put his chin on his hand, his expression one of
entertainment. “Bloody?” Eusabian echoed. “Yes, I suppose so, although not to
match the hecatomb offered to Dol here today.” He made a benevolent gesture
that encompassed the vastness of the Hall. “And it will not come at my hands. I
need not exert myself to kill you—not when the denizens of Gehenna will do it
for me.”

A snort of amusement escaped Barrodagh. There was a rustle
of movement from the assembled Douloi, both those to the right and to the left
of the throne.

“Your pardon, Lord,” Barrodagh said, his voice thin as he struggled
to be heard. How was it that only Gelasaar’s voice resonated? Anaris had
dismissed from early in his hostage days the legends about this room being
haunted. He’d assumed from the very first that they were fabricated in an
attempt to frighten him. Barrodagh seemed to hear how reedy he sounded, for he
cleared his throat, then spoke again, his tone revealing the strain he exerted
to be heard. “I was just imagining the celebration the Isolates on Gehenna will
have when he arrives.”

“Yes, it was the symmetry of the arrangement that
recommended it to me.” Eusabian turned back to the Panarch.

“But it’s a pity the portion of my paliach dealing with your
sons could not be completed as nicely. Formal vengeance is rigidly defined
among my people.”

Barrodagh, reading his command in Eusabian’s voice, leaned
over and tapped once on top of each box. Their fronts cleared to reveal the
heads of two men, neatly preserved and mounted. Their eyes were open, fixed on
infinity. The blood pooled at Eusabian’s feet cast a mocking flush of health on
their pallor.

“Unfortunately an overzealous subordinate ran your youngest
son into a gas giant, so I can’t complete the set,” Eusabian said, betraying
his own interest by leaning slightly forward in order to see his enemy’s reaction.

Gelasaar did not try to hide the wince of grief, but then
his face smoothed back into Douloi control. And something else. Did he still
hope, lacking real evidence to the contrary, that Brandon was still alive?

Anaris almost shared that hope, experiencing again the sharp
disappointment that he’d felt on hearing that Brandon was dead. He knew that
seeing Brandon alive again would have been impossible in any case, yet he’d
sometimes entertained himself with imagining his own duel of wits with his hated
rival—followed by some instructive explorations with pain to test the limits of
that Douloi superiority.

Eusabian’s dark eyes were wide and unblinking. “Has your
famous wit deserted you?”

“Brevity is the soul of wit, Dol’jhar.” Gelasaar looked
around the Throne Room once more, as one does at the last sight of something
familiar. His voice was more revealing than his face: breathy, a little
tremulous, but once again it smoothed into Douloi cadence as he said
deliberately, “And either is wasted on a fool.”

Barrodagh’s lips parted, then he turned to the Avatar for a
sign.

Anaris mentally awarded Gelasaar another point in the duel
of wits. Though he was going to lose, he would die fighting. Few survived
addressing the Avatar with such freedom
. Is he trying to goad Eusabian into
ordering his death?

But the Avatar didn’t look angry. If anything, he seemed
interested. Anaris enjoyed the sheer unexpectedness, the unlikeliness: here was
the enemy who had defeated Eusabian twenty years before, and who now had lost
everything but his life, talking as freely as if the two of them stood alone on
the deck of a ship somewhere, out in the reaches of space where titles and
possessions had no meaning.

Eusabian’s teeth showed in a strange, tight smile. “I think
the evidence of foolishness points in quite another direction. It is you who
lost your empire, your fleet, your heirs. It is you who never penetrated the
secrets of the Ur.”

Barrodagh brandished the neuro-spasmic control, as if to
silence the Panarch, but Eusabian lifted two fingers in a gesture of abeyance.

“But I have.” Eusabian sat back. “And I control the powers
of the Ur as easily as that controls you.” He indicated the spasmic controller
that Barrodagh still brandished, ready on an instant to unleash its charge.

Gelasaar braced himself again. Yes, he was trying to hide
pain. Either the Tarkans had beaten him, or he was exerting the last of his
energy to control his reactions to the emotional shocks of the day. “Where are
the Ur now, Jerrode Eusabian of Dol’jhar?” His voice had gone husky, but there
it went, resonating effortlessly through the Throne Room. Anaris heard a faint
echo from the far walls.
I am going to find out how he does that, if I have
to order Ferrasin and his techs to rip out the walls
.

“The Ur are gone, ten million years and more, and their fate
has put a charged weapon in the hands of an idiot. You have gained an empire
you cannot rule, and a throne you cannot keep.”

Eusabian’s eyes narrowed. Barrodagh’s chin jerked up. With a
vindictive stab he brought his forefinger down on the control’s tab.

The collar around the Panarch’s neck began to pulse with
light, a shrill keening emanating from it. Gelasaar’s face contorted. His chest
heaved as he fought for breath.
He’s trying to speak
, Anaris thought in
amazement.

Then the Panarch convulsed, his head thrown back, his eyes
so wide they bulged, reflecting all the stars overhead. His voice became
distant, almost hierophantic.

“Hear me, Dol’jhar,” he intoned, his eyes looking through
his enemy to something far beyond.

I should have guessed that Gelasaar would be one of those
in whom the collar induces epilepsy, and sometimes visions.

“I see your destiny now. This Throne
is
yours, for a
time, then another, older one, and finally none.”

Barrodagh stabbed frantically at the control in his effort
to silence the man. The pulsing quickened, the keening grew in pitch and
volume, yet the Panarch continued as though he had not noticed, as if held in
the grip of some vast force welling up from the foundations of the Mandala. The
sound of his voice rolled through the room, charged like a thunderbolt about to
strike.

“In the end, all time will be yours, yet no time will be
enough...” The wheezing voice went on, the blue eyes reflected a glow of
preternatural light.

“Get out!” shouted Barrodagh to the terrified assemblage.
“Now!” The Tarkans thrust the mob of Douloi away from the Throne.

Barrodagh trembled, the control held high in his hands.
Still Eusabian had not moved, had not touched the enemy, whose neck now
displayed the blistered stigmata induced by the sonic component of the collar’s
impulses.

“A short reign, Dol’jhar... and an end violent beyond
imagination,” the Panarch said, as Barrodagh shook the control in angry
desperation.

The Panarch sagged into a slouch. He could barely stand, but
he twisted his trembling head to gaze directly at Eusabian. His blue eyes, that
moments before had glowed—had appeared to glow, it was only trickery,
reflections in this chatzing place—were now mild, their focus diffuse, the
whisper wondering. “I pity you,” he said.

He dropped flat on his face.

Barrodagh lunged forward to kick the fallen man, as if to
give Eusabian’s rage a focus before it struck at everyone around him.

“No,” the Avatar commanded. “Do not touch him.”

The entertainment has ended
. Prudence dictated a
tactical retreat. Anaris backed away slowly, retreating behind the Throne so
that he could head for the far exit. He’d had high expectations, but Gelasaar
had surprised him.
How much of that vision was invented beforehand?
If
the Panarch lived past the next twelve hours, Anaris was going to find some way
to interview him before the inevitable end.

o0o

Barrodagh blanched and backed away, bowing; then, terrified,
he turned so fast he slid a little on the congealing blood, and almost fell. He
hurried toward the exit, afraid to run and even more afraid of looking back.
The delay caused by the knot of Douloi being herded out of the hall seemed
endless, but he could not get around them.

Finally he reached the massive leaves of the Phoenix Gate.
He glared at the guards posted there. “Go in at his command,” he ordered, and
only then did he dare to look back.

At the foot of the Throne, black above red, Eusabian stood
unmoving, a dim presence dwarfed by his surroundings, untouched by the light
that haloed the man crumpled at his feet, the same light Barrodagh had seen
reflected in the Panarch’s eyes before the throne.

Barrodagh fled.

Vi’ya hefted the Heart of Kronos.

How was the artifact constructed? No matter how closely she
scrutinized that mirror-smooth surface, she could descry no seam or join.
Stranger even than the physical effect was the mental effect, which was roughly
analogous. Her head panged warningly; the mental distortion translated into
physical terms, like color saturation too bright, sounds too sharp, too loud,
sensations intensified, rather like continuous electrical shocks.

She was still testing the strange properties of the Heart of
Kronos when she entered a small natural cave deep within the complex. The only
other occupant of the room, a tall, spare man of about forty-five years, looked
up from the large screen he’d been watching.

“Learn anything?” he asked, with a slow smile that seemed to
increase the hound-like sadness of his brown eyes.

“Enough,” she replied, considering how much to tell him.

Norton was her second-in-command, the captain of the only
other armed craft in the organization’s fleet. Norton was one of those Rifters
who had grown up to his vocation, inheriting his ship from a parent. His somber
black jumpsuit carried a gold-ringed sun over the heart pocket, twin emblem to
the blazon on the hull of his
Sunflame.
Honest and loyal, he knew little
of Panarchist politics and cared less.

She changed the subject. “How long until the repairs on the
Sunflame
are complete?”

He pursed his lips, his long nose wrinkling thoughtfully.

“I can’t say... Jaim is in there with Porv and Silverknife,
and I just sent Marim out to give them a hand. Most of the exterior work is
done. If I hadn’t been following every step of the work, I wouldn’t recognize
the ship myself. There’s no chance Hreem or his gang will figure out it’s
Sunflame,
even if we fly right across their noses.”

He studied the screen and continued musingly. “I’m still not
sure that last jack against Hreem was wise—it was perilously close to
infringing the Code. I’m still expecting a rogation from the Adjudication
Consistory on Rifthaven.”

Vi’ya shrugged. “I don’t expect any trouble. Considering the
audits against him waiting there, I don’t think he will dare approach Rifthaven
anymore. And he’s unlikely to demand one against us. He’d rather blow us out of
space himself.”

She looked down at the Heart of Kronos. Norton’s eyes
followed her gaze.

“What about the fiveskip?” she continued.

“Can’t work on it until everything else is done. Expect
it’ll take a day or two.”

“You might have to do that in a Realtime Run. Break down
everything here and fall back to the other base. Leave sufficient fuel for
Telvarna
at the cache. Don’t check in at Rifthaven on the way—wait until you’re
established. I have an idea Marim—”