CHAPTER 58
THE PALACE OF THE UNDYING
Calen Harendotes had to die.
He had no intention of honoring his bargain—I had known that from the beginning. Though he had needed his peace with the Imperium, needed the Chantry’s bombs and me for whatever secret reason . . . I knew he meant to kill me when all was done. It was I who had cost him his kingdom, after all, I who had caused the shattering that birthed his predecessor and his sister-self.
I who had threatened his immortal life, or a part of it.
How could he ever let that stand?
And Cassandra . . . Cassandra.
O, my daughter, forgive me—who brought you to that evil place and day. May your eyes never find these pages—if you yet live. May you never learn all that happened in the bowels of the Palace of the Undying, or who I met there—or what I had to do. May you never learn why Kharn Sagara kept us alive.
May you never learn what weapon his other self tried to cultivate there in the darkness, in the stone grottoes and bottled gardens of that terrible underworld.
And forgive your father, who loves you still and always, his silence.
We came at last to the gates of the palace, passing through the slaughter in the streets beneath the wings of cephalophore and Irchtani. When I rode out from the Mistwalker earlier that day it had been with the intent of betraying the Monarch, of gaining the upper hand and forcing him to grant my demands. But a new plan had leaped into my mind—full-formed and -figured as Pallas from the brow of Zeus.
I would betray him to his sister if I could. Offer her her freedom and her life in return for the Demiurge. I could stop the slaughter in the city, stop the Demiurge destroying the fleet above.
I would destroy the alliance Selene had forged, the peace between Empire and Monarchy, but I would have done the will of the Absolute. The Quiet’s will. And with the Demiurge, the Imperial fleet might turn upon the Latarrans. It was possible we could secure a surrender.
We had the telegraph device. Lord Simeon Ardahael’s embassy had taken one with him when he left with Selene and Prince Matthias. But could I reach Lord Douro? Sentinel Commander Kedron? Could I make them agree to such a plan?
Could I trust them?
Well I remember those hideous gates, and the road to them—narrow and winding. When I had first come to the house of Kharn Sagara, I had ridden the tram from one of the city’s many domed enclosures along a cutting in the rock. The silver line of the tracks shone in the roof overhead, while on the ground below, the way was choked with bodies.
The remains of gun emplacements sparked and smoldered on the walls. Our infantry and the Latarrans had been forced to negotiate their way along the floor of that deep and narrow chasm, relying wholly on their body shields, and upon the few cephalophores that had made it through that narrow cutting.
The fighting was done by the time we came to that place, and we were forced to negotiate that trench of corpses. The wreck of no fewer than three cephalophore platforms greeted us in the floor of the cutting, and on one occasion we were obliged to clamber over it.
Of the tram itself, there was no sign, and when we reached the end of the ravine that approached the palace gate, we were made to climb a stair so steep and narrow that only one might climb behind the other. All the while, I found myself picturing the fighting, the struggle and terrible violence that had unfolded there.
But the gates of the palace itself were open, and the blue flame still danced in the brazier before them. One of the Latarran cephalophores had brought a plasma bore and carved through the two cubits of solid steel that formed the ancient doors to the Mericanii fastness.
Harendotes had gone ahead of us, and waited with his guard by the gates. 2Maeve stood with him, with both her first lieutenants—5Eamon and 8Gael. They had shed their armored platforms, and though they were masked and helmeted, I knew them by their rank. The Monarch had not trudged through the gully below the track of the monorail, but had ridden across in his cephalophore, wending his careful way through the air above our heads. Had he meant to tire me by the added journey? Or only to humiliate me?
“Where is Sagara?” I asked.
Both 8Gael and 5Eamon answered me in unison: “Locked in his palace.”
I swept my gaze over the doors.
Sagara would be in the inner sanctum, in the inverse pyramid hanging from the roof of the cavern above the waters of Brethren’s home. There were his private quarters. Her private quarters, I supposed. Unreachable even from the main mass of the palace. A gust of wind rushed through the burnt opening, ruffled my tunic and the pteruges at my shoulders. I did not have to smell it to imagine the scent of molten metal, of the bodies of the khaki-clad SOMs strewn on the gray steps of the palace.
One lay almost at my feet, and I spurned it with my toe, rolling it onto its back.
The creature had been a man, once, pale faced and green eyed. His hair had been all shorn away, and black wires like the new lines in Lorian’s face threaded his face and scalp. A heavy iron collar ran about his neck, and it was a moment before I realized that it was a part of his neck, that the chest beneath the ugly khaki uniform was more machine than man.
“What is it, Abba?” Cassandra was at my side.
I knew the Interfaced were watching. Calen Harendotes stood alongside them, still and silent, doubtless locked in deep communication with the captains of his fleet.
“When I came here last,” I said, “the Empire sold Kharn Sagara twenty thousand human beings in return for his services. He arranged a meeting with one of the Cielcin princes. The first meeting of our two races.” Though it did not understand my Jaddian, I directed the words at Ramanthanu, who loomed over me like a white shadow. “I only wondered if this poor bastard was one of them. If he, too, would not be here if not for me.”
“I wonder what his name was,” Cassandra said. “How he got here . . . don’t you?”
“I try not to,” I said.
2Maeve’s voice slashed across the conversation. “We cannot take the AMPs inside the palace,” she said. “The ceilings are too low, our scouts report.”
“You have scouts already in the palace, then?”
The commander nodded. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” She knew I had, but we did not much speak with one another, and had not upon this particular subject. “What should we expect?”
I glanced to her silent master, the golden king standing in the shadow of his cephalophore harness. Presently, I said, “There’s an inner keep beyond the main fortress. A pyramid hanging from the ceiling of a cavern. It can only be reached by rail. That’s where you’ll find Sagara.”
Another nod.
“The laboratories are all below. There’s a step-well with a garden. The doors are at the bottom, but there are other ways in. Lifts. I don’t remember where.”
Absalom Black had not presented plans of the palace itself in his meetings, nor had Calen Harendotes. He had withheld that information, so committed was he to the ruse that Calen was not Kharn. That was why, I deemed, he had determined to lead the assault upon the palace himself, that he might lead his people where they must go, seemingly by accident.
I did not see how Harendotes intended to maintain the illusion that he was not another Kharn Sagara. It seemed incredible to me that so many among his supporters had no notion as to his true identity. The sorcerers of MINOS had known that Kharn Sagara was at war with himself. But they could not have known that the Monarch of Latarra was one of them. They had traded with Harendotes, after all, and I’d had the impression there was no love lost between the Lodge and Vorgossos.
“Have you heard from Lorian?” I asked, changing the subject.
I thought I could sense the woman’s eyes narrow as she looked sharply up at me. 2Maeve held her silence for the space of a breath. “No. No, comms are down.”
“The bombs?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, and I could sense the quiet tension in her. The dread. “We won’t be able to contact him until the fighting’s done.”
Absurdly, I felt the need to comfort her, though I knew she would resent me for it. I knew nothing of 2Maeve, nothing of her people, just as I knew nothing of the corpse lying on the steps before me. In my short time on Latarra, I had learned nothing of their origins, their history. I knew not where they lived, or why they had thrown in their lot with the golden Monarch.
“I’m sure he’ll be all right,” I said, smiling beneath the serenity of my black mask. “He’s come through far worse.”
She said nothing. Almost it seemed I saw the woman through the armor, her pale eyes glassy with concern, shoulders tense, frozen.
“Lorian Aristedes is the finest officer I know,” I said. “If anyone could hold the line against that dreadnought—”
“It’s him,” 2Maeve said, voice strangely hushed. “I know.”
Implicit in the lack of any rebuke from the Extrasolarian woman was the fact that I had been right.
She did love him.
“You said you have scouts in the palace?” I asked.
2Maeve raised a hand for silence, turned to look at 8Gael and 5Eamon. None of them spoke.
“What is it?” I asked, not privy to their internal sharing.
In unison, the three Interfaced thrust hands in my direction, each animated by the same impulse, though whether it originated from 2Maeve or one of the lieutenants was any man’s guess. So still were they, that for a moment I was acutely aware of the rest of Harendotes’s force: armored troopers dismounting from cephalophore harnesses, my HAPSIS men still clambering up the narrow stair.
Calen Harendotes had himself noticed whatever it was that had claimed his dragoons’ attention. He had been seated on the stirrups of his cephalophore, but stood then, not speaking, but conversing in that manner that among the Extrasolarians transcended speech.
“What is going on?” I asked, pressing forward.
“We have him,” said 2Maeve, looking from myself to her lord. “They found him.”
Cassandra stepped forward. “Kharn Sagara?”
The commander of Lorian’s dragoons did not reply. Still looking to her liege, she said, “It’s over, but . . . ” The eyes of her helmet mask swiveled to look at me.
“But what?”
Another silence, evidence of words passing between 2Maeve and her fellow Interfaced.
The Monarch shook his head.
“What is it?” I was tired of asking questions.
“Take us to him,” Calen said.