Winslow had none of Miguel's crisp, compact muscularity, Kesley saw, as
he hesitantly approached the throne. North America's Duke sprawled as
massively across his gleaming white metal throne as the broad continent
he ruled did across its hemisphere; he was an enormous, ponderous,
obese man. Winslow's sobbing intake of breath was plainly audible even
at the distance Kesley maintained.
"Your Highness," he said, and knelt.
"Rise," Winslow ordered. His voice, like Miguel's, was deep, but
Winslow's voice had a soft, throaty liquidity to it that was most
unlike Miguel's compelling boom.
Kesley rose and faced Winslow squarely. The Duke's features were
blurred and indistinct, misshapen by the billowing puffs of fat that
sagged from his cheeks. He wore a thin fringe of golden-red beard which
screened a thick, many-chinned throat.
"Our audience was scheduled for this afternoon," Kesley said, since
Winslow was evidently waiting for him to speak. "However, a change of
schedule was made necessary by--"
"I have heard," the Duke murmured lazily. "News travels swiftly here,
sir. The Archbishop lies dead in an inn, is that it?"
"Dead at the hand of his own servants, Duke Winslow. Betrayed."
"Indeed?" The sleepy eyes of the gross-bodied Duke stirred; Kesley
observed that behind the outward facade of sloth lay the nervous
reflexes of a cat-keen intellect. "Betrayed? And by whom, _señor_?"
Kesley glanced uneasily around the room. "May we be alone, Duke
Winslow?"
Chuckling, the Duke said: "Certainly not. My life is much too important
to me, young one. But you can speak freely here; the word of my court
is sacred."
"Very well, then. I'll begin at the beginning." Drawing a deep breath,
he said, "I was sent here to assassinate you."
Around Winslow, courtiers paled and reached for their weapons at
Kesley's flat admission, but Winslow himself showed no reaction
whatever. It was infuriating to see the slow smile finally spread over
his face. "How unfriendly," he observed at last.
"I had no intentions of actually carrying it out, of course."
"Of course." With biting sarcasm.
"I accepted the order in an attempt to free myself of Don Miguel's
power. I had every intention of swearing allegiance to you, and--"
It seemed to Kesley that some ugly thought had passed at that moment
through Winslow's mind and, disconcerted, he halted. Then, recovering,
he continued: "On the other hand, Archbishop Santana came here with the
definite intent of doing away with you.
"However, this morning a courier arrived from Miguel, instructing our
retinue to set upon us and kill us."
"A noteworthy aim," Winslow said. "One which, I take it, was only
partially accomplished."
"Yes."
"Why are you telling me all this?"
"I want to expose Miguel's treachery. I want to make everything clear
to you, show you what's been going on." Kesley spoke with desperate
sincerity now.
Winslow laughed suddenly, his entire body quivering. "This is very
funny," he said, when he had subsided. "Miguel sending men here to
assassinate me--and then having his own assassins assassinated!" He
narrowed his eyes and peered curiously at Kesley. "Why do you suppose
he would do a thing like that?" he asked.
Kesley moistened cracking lips. "It is not for me to understand the
ways of Dukes, Sire."
"I hardly expect it of you."
"Then--"
"You wish to enter my service?" Winslow asked. "It is strange that a
former assassin would beg me to gather him to my capacious bosom. It is
an amusing idea."
Suddenly Kesley felt like an insect being toyed with before having
its wings plucked. Dizzily he glanced at the long rows of halberdiers
standing like carven images, at the wax-faced courtiers grouped about
Winslow's throne, and for a bewildering instant he thought that this
was all some kind of dream from which he would soon wake and find
himself back behind the plough, awaiting Tina's call to lunch.
"I never intended to strike a blow against you, Sire," Kesley lied
humbly. "You believe that, don't you?"
"Of course I do," Winslow said gently, and without any trace of
sarcasm. "Perhaps that's why Don Miguel decided to blot you out.
However," he said, sighing, "I'm afraid you represent as great a threat
to the Twelve Empires as has ever been born, my young friend."
He gestured to a hawk-faced man in somber robes standing to his left.
"Lovelette, take this man and convey him to the dungeons. Tomorrow,
he's to be executed. Is that clear?"
"Certainly, Sire."
It had happened so quickly that Kesley did not fully understand it. One
moment he had been on dangerously thin ice but managing to keep aloft;
the next, he had plunged through into utter cold.
He felt thin fingers bite into his bicep, and a low voice say, "Come
with me."
Two halberdiers advanced mechanically and took their posts at either
side of him. Numb, he allowed himself to be marched away from Winslow's
presence, with an infinite series of maddening _whys_ screaming at him
all down the long hall.
Why this sudden reversal on Winslow's part? Why the execution order?
This, not Kesley's switch of allegiance, was obviously the "_betrayal
again_" Lomark Dawnspear had foretold.
As Kesley was led from the Ducal presence, he heard Winslow's sardonic
chuckling coming from behind. Tomorrow, he thought bleakly, it would be
the headsman who would chuckle.
He had changed his coat once too often. Going to Winslow had proved a
fatal move.
Kesley resolved that if he ever escaped from Winslow he would stay as
far as he could from all the Dukes. Life was hard enough without making
one's self subject to the caprices of life-jaded Immortals.
But, as the dark corridor leading to the dungeon opened out before
him, he saw clearly that there was little chance of an escape this time.
* * * * *
During the rest of the day and the long night that followed, Kesley,
alone in the darkness, had plenty of time to think.
He was in complete isolation, somewhere in the depths of Winslow's
palace. He had been thrust in; microrelays had clicked, and a heavy
metal door had whirred creakingly closed. Air came filtering in from
a dimly-visible grid in the ceiling, twelve feet above. There was no
furniture in the cell, not even a cot. He could stand, or he could lie.
He stood for a while, pacing the length and breadth of the cell until
that palled, and then he stretched out full length to wait for morning.
There was no point wasting energy in fruitless escape tries; he had
determined very quickly that his cell was proof to any attempts.
One dull gray thought flickered monotonously through his consciousness:
tomorrow his life would end. That wasn't so bad, he thought; everyone
dies--everyone but the Twelve. What hurt more was the rasping
realization that he had never really lived at all.
What had he done, in the twenty-four years he'd had? Twenty of them
were blank, cloaked by darkness more complete than the inkiness that
surrounded him in the cell. He had lived and farmed in Kansas, he told
people, but he knew it was false, and van Alen, whoever _he_ had been,
had known it was false.
Van Alen had confronted him with the naked lie he had been living, and
it had hurt. Probing the past caused pain. All right. Blot out twenty
years, begin life four years ago, ignore the mystery that cried to be
solved.
_What kind of world is this_, he asked himself, _where you never start
to live?_
He had never known the rules. He never knew who made the moves, who
played the game. Unseeingly, he had shunted from one pattern of action
to another, without ever understanding the world he was in. It was
ironic. A world carefully tailored for simplicity, a world scrupulously
designed by its proprietors to avoid the complexity that had destroyed
the previous civilization--and here he, after twenty-four years, was
going to his death uncomprehendingly.
Something was terribly wrong with a world like that, Kesley thought.
Perhaps its goals had been good, once. But as the Immortals had moved
timelessly on through the years, they had grown remote from the charts
and maps of society, and begun to play some inscrutable, unfathomable
game of their own.
"It isn't fair!" he said out loud. His protesting voice echoed weirdly
in the confines of the cell, bounced back grotesquely from the metal
walls. He knew that if there were a light in the cell he would be able
to see his own distorted image on their shining surfaces. It would be a
mocking clown-face, laughing at him for his own ignorance.
But there was no light. There was only darkness, and the silence of
solitude.
And then, after hours passed, there came the faint humming sound of
relays clicking in the massive door.
_Morning already?_ Kesley wondered.
Time had passed; he knew that. But so much time? Was so little left?
The door was undeniably swinging open.
He had remained alone for almost a day and a night, and had returned no
answers to his many questions. Shrugging, he waited for the Duke's men
to take him away. _Maybe there aren't any answers_, he thought dismally.
He heard soft padding footsteps in his cell, and felt a cool hand grasp
his.
"Stand up," a whispered voice said.
Wondering, Kesley pushed himself up from the floor. "You're not the
headsman," he said.
"No. The headsman waits for morning."
"Isn't it morning yet?"
"The hour is four," the strangely familiar voice whispered. "The Palace
lies asleep."
Dimly, Kesley realized that this was some sort of impossible
rescue--unless, that is, it was another hoax. Frowning into the
impenetrable darkness, he said: "Who are you?"
There was no answer. But gradually a faint glow enveloped the cell,
flickered warmly for a bare instant and died away.
"Dawnspear!"
"Speak quietly, friend. It was not easy persuading the guards to sleep."
Kesley rubbed his eyes, tried to peer into the darkness. The momentary
glow of light had revealed the bizarre, piebald mutant towering above
him. Cautiously, Kesley extended his hand and felt the rough, cool skin
of the mutant's bare chest as if to confirm his vision.
"What are you doing here, Dawnspear?"
"There are those who would not have you die," the mutant replied.
"Winslow and Miguel know you. Two Dukes are in league to take your
life, now. They can be dangerous enemies. Come."
Dawnspear grasped Kesley's hand firmly and guided him forward. As they
passed through the open door of the cell, the metal began to swing shut
again. Kesley heard a faint clang as the cell closed.
Outside, in the dim light of the dungeons, Kesley made out sleeping
forms lying here and there, slumped over their weapons. Guards.
"Did you drug them?" he asked.
"They were very sleepy," Dawnspear said ambiguously. "We must hurry,
now."
They glided through the dungeon together, the man and the mutant.
Kesley walked on tiptoe, moving delicately as if he were walking on
the fragile surface of a dream; at any moment he expected Dawnspear to
vanish and the entire illusion to drift into nothingness.
But then he smelled fresh air instead of dungeon mustiness, and he knew
he was free.
"The gate is open down there," Dawnspear said, pointing. "The guards
are lost in slumber."
Together they crossed the palace grounds and passed through the
gate. Kesley turned to the gaunt figure of the mutant to demand some
explanation, but Dawnspear had released his hand and was pointing
toward the distance.
"Within a minute they will all be awake. You will be missed. Flee now,
while you have the chance."
"Wait a second! How did--why--?"
Kesley's whispers died away impotently. Dawnspear had slipped away
silently into the night. "_Dawnspear!_" he called harshly. There was no
reply.
_There never are any answers when you call_, Kesley thought sourly. He
wheeled, looked back at the sleeping Palace. Lights were beginning to
flicker on here and there; the mutant's influence had ended, and the
sleepers were waking.
He was free to fly. Once again, he was his own master, bound to no one.
The guards stirred within the walls. He could imagine their dismay when
they found him gone. Wrapping his cloak tightly around him, he edged
off into the night.
A horse, first. Then, out the walls some way or other, and to freedom.
Both Winslow and Miguel would be hunting him, why, he could not say.
But both his fealties stood revoked; his Dukes sought his life.
Well enough, Kesley thought. He had no debts to either Miguel or
Winslow. Once again he stood alone. Where to, now?
He thought of Narella, in Buenos Aires. She would be waiting for him to
come back--or was she, too, only part of Miguel's scheming. He didn't
want to believe that.
Van Alen had told him he belonged in Antarctica. Suddenly the image of
the mysterious continent rose in his mind. He saw a vast wall. Nothing
more was visible.
It took only a moment to frame a resolution. Find Daveen. Find Narella.
_And then_, he thought, _to Antarctica. To Antarctica!_