Nightmare Kingdom: A Romance of the Future Page 17

  Somehow he managed to draw strength where there seemed to be none left. He’d been shafted, than he’d undergone the ‘treatment’ given the young emperor. By all rights he should be dead, but he’d learned a long time ago that impossible things could be done if you just tried hard enough.

  He grabbed hold of a rough cleft in the stone wall, bracing himself to get to his feet, then he pushed against the iron door and, confirming his dream, it screeched as it opened and he stumbled forward to find himself standing in a long dark corridor.

  Once again he steadied himself against a stone wall, closed his eyes, than opened them again to realize that all was not darkness. A thin gleam of light lit the way to his left.

  The dream Adaeze had told him to follow the light. He had no other plan in mind, so with cautious steps he began to inch forward, now and then touching the wall to steady his passage as things seemed to whirl and dip around him because of his extreme dizziness.

  After what seemed like a very long time, but was probably only an hour or so, he found himself emerging to the strong light of day. He stood outside the palace in what looked like a vegetable garden where he stumbled and fell, retching miserably against the ground.

  He had to get up and go on. Adaeze had given him directions; he must follow them. In his current state of mind, it did not occur to him to doubt his dream. Later he might try to rationalize the experience and tell himself it was no more than a transference of his fears from his subconscious mind, but right now the directions the princess had given him were all he had to go on.

  She had told him to reenter the palace and so, once he was able to get to his feet, he went in the nearest doorway and found himself in an enormous kitchen where about half a dozen people were busy at work.

  He supposed the scents of roasting meat and baking bread might have been pleasant under other circumstances, but with the sour taste in his mind and his churning stomach the smells only make him sicker.

  Nobody seemed to notice as he stumbled past and this was confirmation of his dream. Only Princess Adaeze could have clouded minds so that a filthy, blood-covered Earther could move through without being immediately taken back into captivity.

  He left the kitchen, following the directions she had given him, barely managing to heave his way up stairs and toward the rear of the central structure, the furnishings and decorations around him growing increasingly elegant as he left the service area.

  He didn’t pause as he wondered how he would know which apartments belonged to Claire and her daughters. He’d just keep going and try to find out.

  And then as he was fighting against passing out once more, he saw a closed doorway guarded on either side by soldiers in fancy dress. They looked, he thought, like drum majors in a college band.

  Adaeze had said they would allow him to enter so he stepped past them, taking a blaster from the closest one without interference, and opened the door.

  Claire had spent the time making plans for escape and rejecting them one after the other for practical reasons. She’d managed to sneak off the planet once before, but the likelihood of accomplishing that a second time seemed minimal. And this time she didn’t have the imperial cruiser and a crew of guards standing by waiting to take her away.

  By the time she arose nearly sleepless from her bed, she was no closer to working out how she, Jamie and Alice were going to get back to Sanctuary alive.

  She’d showered, dressed and was sitting in her chair sipping a cup of the coffee imported from Earth for her special use when Alice tiptoed into the room.

  Isaiah’s little daughter might be quiet as a mouse, but she’d roared like a lion when confronting the Gare empress yesterday. Claire would not once again fail to take the girl’s courage into consideration.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  Alice nodded and tried to smile.

  Claire encouraged her to eat and even managed to get down some food herself.

  “What do we do next?” Alice asked once she’d finished a thick slice of toasted bread spread with jam made from berries never grown on either Earth or Sanctuary. The food for the emperor’s family was made up of rare delicacies imported from many worlds throughout the empire. Really rare from now on, Claire thought, now that there was no far speaker.

  She only wished she had an answer for the girl. Since she didn’t, she made up one. “We have to get to the spaceport and go to Sanctuary. Of course, we’ve got to locate Jamie first.”

  “We couldn’t go without him. Maybe the dragon lady will just free us all now that the emperor doesn’t need our blood.”

  Dragon Lady! Claire liked that. “Maybe,” she agreed only because she didn’t want to discourage the girl.

  “She must know you can’t give her your daughter the way she wants.”

  “She will try to blackmail Adaeze into returning home by threatening us,” Claire had to admit.

  Before she could elaborate, the door opened and in a reenactment of her entrance on the previous day, Empress Mellisande came in. A guard closed the door behind her.

  The empress didn’t bother with a greeting. “I have decided to include the catere in the agreement,” she announced, “since I feel you have a certain fondness for the Earther male.”

  Claire regarded her thoughtfully, then took a sip of coffee. “Tell Adaeze and Lillianne good morning for me,” she countered.

  Surprisingly Mellisande sank gracefully into one of the Gare-sized chairs. “She is constantly in my mind. She won’t leave me alone.”

  Claire understood that they were talking about her older daughter. “That must be uncomfortable. I wouldn’t know. My mind is my own.”

  “It’s so remarkable,” Alice contributed, “the way you can talk brain to brain. But I don’t think I would like it.”

  Mellisande regarded the girl as though she were a worm or insect who had decided to speak. “I have been trained since girlhood to shelter my mind from invasion. This child of yours, Claire, is a perversion. Even Mathiah would not have invaded another in this way.”

  “I don’t think he could,” Claire said, “at least he never mentioned it. With Adaeze, your race seems to have taken a step forward.”

  “You can’t imagine the social ramifications.”

  “I can imagine,” Claire retorted, smiling. “My daughter can communicate from world to world in an empire that has detached. She can see that supplies are sent, armies managed, traffic routed. The possibilities are endless.”

  Mellisande sat in stony silence until Claire opened her mouth to add to her own comment. “If Adaeze does not agree to return and submit to my guidance, the catere male will be executed. Today.”

  She didn’t even know that he was still alive, didn’t know where they were keeping him. A chill ran down Claire’s spine, but she wouldn’t give her former mother-in-law the satisfaction of seeing her fear.

  “Tomorrow it will be the girl.” Mellisande met Claire’s gaze in direct challenge, ignoring Alice.

  Claire closed her mouth. Hopefully her thirteen-year-old daughter was responding to this edict. But before she could think how to find out, the door opened unexpectedly once more and Jamie stepped into the room.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  He looked absolutely appalling. Smeared with his own blood, his face contorted with the effort he was making to remain upright, Jamie looked like a walking corpse. He pointed the blaster in his hand and held it, wavering, directed at Mellisande.

  Claire had no doubt the empress sent a message because the two guards stationed at her doorway followed Jamie inside. To her surprise neither of the high-ranking soldiers displayed a weapon.

  Her heart bounded at the realization that Jamie was still alive.

  “My gratitude, officers, for bringing the captive to me,” the dowager empress said. Claire knew she had only one reason to speak out loud and that was to impress her.

  Not easily done. She saw who was holding the weapon. Faced with a choice between defending one dowager empress or the ot
her, the soldiers didn’t know which step to take. The wrong one could not only end their careers, but their lives as well.

  She had little time to make a decision. “Shoot!” she yelled at Jamie.

  She was afraid he would collapse first, but he gave a nod of agreement and squeezed the trigger. She heard a whizzing sound and Mellisande collapsed on the floor.

  “Escort us to a ship,” she ordered, than added, “To my cruiser. And I want my usual crew.”

  “But your highness,” one of the soldiers protested, “they are imprisoned awaiting trial on charges of treason.”

  She hoped her daughter’s mental voice was supporting her claim to authority. No matter. There was only one road to take. “Order them released and have them waiting at the port by the time we arrive. In the meantime, make certain the cruiser Princess Adaeze has been serviced and is ready for flight.”

  She barely noticed that her mother-in-law looked to be still breathing and ordered her into confinement even as she stepped over her prone body. The blaster had obviously not been set to kill and she wasn’t in the mood to execute anyone. All she asked was that the three of them get safely off the planet. Somebody had to take charge of the empire once she’d left and she didn’t want it to be her daughter.

  Half-dazed and believing that he’d just killed the current ruler of the empire, Jamie allowed himself to be led from the room, through the corridors of the palace and outside to where the crowds were already gathering. The Aremians seemed shocked, neither displaying support or reproof at the sight of the three Earthers.

  He expected to die at any minute, either at the hands of the crowd or from army fire. It was hard enough in his current state to keep up with the pace that Claire set, but he pushed Alice ahead of him and tried to keep his body between her and Claire and the silent, watching crowd as they proceeded with little ceremony to a long, dark vehicle. Claire took the wheel herself and started driving them through the increasing crowd.

  Once seated he must have slipped from consciousness, waking only when shaken by Claire to find they were about to get out at the central building of the spaceport.

  No crowds were gathered here, but still he took a swift analysis of their surroundings. A few workers, but no soldiers, no public. They seemed to be advancing safely.

  The empress would never allow this. She had to stop them. Then he remembered that the empress was dead. He’d killed her.

  Trying to keep Alice and Claire safe was no easy task, especially not considering his brain wasn’t operating at top level and his body was barely able to move him toward the front entrance. Still he did his best, trying to see every odd movement, the flash of a weapon in the sun at the same time he did his best to shelter them with his own body.

  If they could only get to the cruiser and then out away from Aremia and into space.

  He could almost imagine the relief he would feel when that happened.

  It couldn’t be that easy. A whole planet full of people wouldn’t let them escape, wouldn’t allow him and Claire to have the time together of which they’d been cheated.

  Wouldn’t let Alice return safely to her father.

  His thoughts were clotted, not moving smoothly through the pathways of his brain, but winding down, running out.

  Claire felt rather than saw Jamie’s confusion and wondered if among his other injuries, he’d been hit on the head. He showed all the symptoms of having suffered a concussion.

  She took his arm and dragged him along with her, urging Alice to follow. “We’re nearly there,” she whispered. “We’re going home to New London, Jamie. You’ll see Mack and Isaiah and even Karen and the boys too, Charlie and David.” She rambled on, trying to keep him reasonably alert as they approached the shuttle area.

  She understood something of what was happening. By rendering Mellisande impotent, they had caused the leadership to grind to a temporary halt. The little emperor had been removed the minute he lost his gift and Adaeze made public announcement of that fact.

  Nobody was left but the wife of the late emperor and she had been declared truant, and two princesses of suspect character and the wrong gender to inherit their father’s throne.

  It was deadlock. For a few minutes at least, nobody ruled the Aremian Empire.

  Except maybe her own Adeaze. And she was beginning to think this was what Mathiah had intended all along. If so, he’d never confided in her, never treated her as an equal partner. He’d intended the child to look after the mother and that was what was happening now. If she allowed that to go on what kind of monster would her daughter become?

  Powerful beyond imagining, possessing skills that no one even of her father’s people had shown before. Only her mother stood between this girl barely in her teens and the fate her father had bequeathed her.

  She and Lillianne, they were the balance on the wheel that would keep Adaeze human. Without her mother and sister, as absolute ruler of the small planet of Sanctuary she could reach out to take control of many telepathic people and their worlds.

  Claire had always thought of Aremia as a kingdom of nightmares where the Gare parasites lived off human blood, but where would an inexperienced girl with unlimited power take all of them. To the people of the countless worlds influenced by the empire, Sanctuary would become the lead planet of a nightmare kingdom.

  Jamie stumbled in his weakness and Claire propped him up on one side, while Alice took the other as they walked him into the shuttle. Operated automatically it lifted them toward their ship.

  Only when they were inside would Claire finally feel safe.

  It was hardly fair that so few resources were available to him in this hour of need, but even as he was pushed and pulled on board the cruiser Princess Adaeze, Jamie fell into what felt like a black hole.

  From somewhere as though at a great distance, he heard Claire say, “Finally. We’re safe, Alice. Captain Thereon, take us to Sanctuary.”

  And then, from even further away, he heard a familiar voice say, “I am afraid I can’t do that, your highness.”

  What the hell! He tried to pull himself back to wakefulness, but in spite of all his efforts found himself sinking into the quagmire of unconsciousness.

  The rush of relief she’d felt on entering the ship had left every muscle in Claire’s body limp, but she stiffened as she heard the captain’s refusal.

  She stared at the kindly yet disciplined face she had known for so long. This man had come as close as possible for anyone to being the emperor’s best friend.

  She heard the sounds of the takeoff, felt the ship beginning to lift. “What are you saying, Thereon? Are you declining my orders?”

  The other members of the crew were presumably at their stations, only the captain had greeted them. Jamie lay helpless on the floor and Alice, nearly as helpless, quivered at her side.

  “Thereon?” She couldn’t believe this. Was there no one left to trust?

  “I am truly sorry, Lady Claire, but I have no choice. The god is talking to me and he’s saying that the princess must return to Aremia and the empire. Without her we are lost.”

  Claire continued to stare at him: wide gray eyes, shining dome of an intelligent looking head, thoughtful wrinkles around the mouth. This was the same man she’d admired and trusted as long as she’d lived on this blasted planet. The god? Finally she came to realization. Captain Thereon was not only loyal to her husband, he was a true believer. He believed Mathiah had been translated to godhood.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “He speaks to me, my lady, and he tells me that the princess must return to our home world.”

  “I knew Mathiah was a far speaker, but I didn’t know his voice carried quite that far.”

  “My lady!” he expressed his shock that she could quip about such a sacred subject.

  She had never taken the ancestor worship of her husband’s people all that seriously and hadn’t dreamed that anyone else did. She was fairly darned sure Mathiah had never thought of himself as
being a potential god.

  For herself, well she’d have to admit she’d hung on to the old beliefs from home. Back when Dad gave her frequent beatings and nobody was on her side, especially not her stepmother, she’d taken to talking to heaven now and then. She’d needed somebody, but it had never occurred to her that these competent, hard-headed people wanted a divine presence in their lives.

  “He talks to you,” she repeated incredulously.

  “And tells me it is my duty to bring the princesses back to rule the empire.”

  “Then why can’t you take us to Sanctuary?” Alice asked in her little voice. “That’s where Adaeze and Lillianne are right now.”

  His face tightened and his eyes glazed with what she thought of as madness. “The Lady Claire will never let us take them away. That’s why she must not return to the planet.”

  Well, he was right about that. She also noticed that he refrained from calling her either the empress, or royal highness. Maybe he felt better thinking of her as only a lady and not the consort to his emperor.

  Or was it when she’d forced him to perform the wedding ceremony that linked her and Jamie that he’d swallowed more than he could bear? Did he, like Adaeze, think she had betrayed her husband?

  “What do you intend to do with us, Thereon?” If she was no longer his empress, then he was not her captain.

  The lines in his face deepened, his features tightened into something almost like disdain. “We will take you to your home. We will return you to Earth where you can live out your life with this man.” He looked down at Jamie, barely breathing on the floor. “And the girl can take the place of your daughters.”

  He paused, considering this outcome, than gripped his head as though it ached unmercifully. “She keeps trying to make me do otherwise, but I am strong and I will fight her for her own good and to do what her father would have wished. I will return the princesses to their rightful places at the head of the empire.”