He was guessing, Dion decided. He couldn't possibly know the truth.

Dion stood up straight, critically examined his reflection in a steel bulkhead. He decided his face would pass even Kamil's loving scrutiny, and started to place his hand upon the security plate that would scan his palm, permit him to enter.

What makes your crime different from your uncle's?

Dion drew his hand away abruptly. Who had spoken? Sagan? Or some part deep inside of him; some part the moralists would undoubtedly term his conscience?

"Of course it's different," he reassured himself. "Our love is not incestuous! Not a sick obsession. It's love. I love Kamil and she loves me. We were meant to be together. Only a trick of fate keeps us apart. We're not hurting anyone else. And how can I break vows that held no meaning for me to begin with? Our love is right. Everything else in the universe may be wrong, but our love is right. . . ."

Resolutely, he placed his hand on the scanning pad. His identification verified, the door slid open.

Kamil shut the book she had been reading. She advanced toward him with a smile that soon faded. Apparently he had not arranged his face as carefully as he had hoped.

"What is it, Dion? What's happened? You can't tell me," she said quickly, sparing him the need to respond. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. Do you want me to leave? I-"

"My dear!" Dion took her in his arms, held her close, absorbing her strength, her comfort. "No, don't go. Not now. Not ever. I can't tell you what's going on. But it doesn't matter. Just let me hold you."

They clung to each other in silence. Dion could imagine her shield, held over him, protecting him from the blows aimed at him, giving him time to recover his strength, pick up his weapons, and return to the battle.

I will take this time, he decided. I should return to the palace, I suppose. I should inform Dixter of what I've learned. I should place the admiral in touch with Sagan.

But that can wait until tomorrow. Until the morning. It's bad enough that I must cut short my time with Kamil. I will have this night with her. I need this night. ...

"Your Majesty." A voice, over the commlink.

Dion kissed Kamil's hair. Holding her, keeping her near, he answered. "Yes, D'argent?"

"Admiral Dixter needs to speak with you, Your Majesty. He is on the vidcom. It's .. . confidential."

Dion sighed. Kamil slid out from his embrace. "No, don't go!" he whispered. "Can't this wait until morning, D'argent?"

"The Admiral says the matter is one of extreme urgency, Your Majesty."

"I better talk to him. Hopefully I won't be long."

"I'll be here."

"I wish . .." he said, pausing, "I wish sometimes I was ... we were ... ordinary. Like Tusk and Nola. Together all the time. Our biggest worry whether or not the collection agency was going to repossess the vid machine."

She didn't answer, lowered her eyes.

Dion sighed again. "It's humanity's curse, I suppose-never to be happy with what we have. Always wanting something else. When I was nobody, I didn't want to be. Now that I'm king, I wish I was nobody again."

"Go deal with your latest crisis, Your Majesty," Kamil told him softly. Kissing him on the cheek, she picked up her book and disappeared into the bedroom.

Arranging his face again, Dion walked back out into the corridor. D'argent was waiting for him, as was the captain of the guard.

"Yes, Captain?" said Dion, moving toward the communications room.

"The electrical disruption of the systems in the audience chamber has been fixed."

"Very good, Captain."

"We didn't fix it, Your Majesty," said Cato dourly. "It ... seems to have fixed itself, so to speak."

"As long as it's working, Captain. I wouldn't be overly concerned with it. Instruct the technicians to examine it when we return to base." "Yes, Your Majesty." Cato paused, stared at his king, as if wanting to add something else.

Dion met the captains eyes, held them.

Cato's gaze wavered uncertainly.

"Was there something else on your mind, Captain?" Dion asked, pausing outside the door to the communications room.

"No ... no, Your Majesty."

"Then you have leave to return to your duties, Captain," said the king.

"The admiral has requested that this conversation be kept strictly confidential, sir," D'argent repeated. "You will need to access the transmission yourself, highest level security. I will be in room, if you desire anything."

"Thank you, D'argent," said Dion, keeping his voice even, level.

He entered the room, shut and sealed the door, and began to go through the complicated process of opening the secured channel. It took some time. He waited with enforced patience while all systems checked and double-checked that the channel was secure, waited still longer while the transmission was scrambled, coded at Admiral Dixter's end, then descrambled, decoded at Dion's end. The king hoped the transmission wasn't a long one; he could be here for hours.

As it turned out, it was short. All too short.

"Your Majesty." Dixter's face appeared on the vidscreen. He looked exhausted; his skin was gray, face haggard. "I have bad news, I am afraid."

"Of course," Dion muttered to himself. "Nobody ever comes to me with urgent, top-secret good news. Yes, sir, what is it?" he asked aloud, bracing himself.

"The queen has left, Your Majesty."

Dion stared, perplexed, not understanding. So what if Astarte had left the palace? She left all the time. Her schedule of public appearances was almost as demanding as the king's.

He frowned. "I am afraid, admiral, that I fail to see-"

Dixter shook his head, forgot, in his worry, that he was speaking to his king. "What I'm trying to say, son, is that your wife has left you."

Chapter Twenty-two.

So farewell hope, and with hope, farewell fear, Farewell remorse! All Good to me is lost ...

John Milton, Paradise Lost Sagan walked rapidly across the tarmac, keeping to the shadows, leaving as he had come. He walked with his head covered, his arms crossed, hands clasping his wrists beneath the long, flowing sleeves of his habit, as was the custom among the brethren of the Order of Adamant.

He did not, however, walk toward the transport which had brought him to this planet, a transport owned by the Church, operated by a hired crew that ferried the priests of St. Francis to wherever in the galaxy their calling took them. Sagan had need of thought and he did not care to do his thinking under the curious stares of the night watch.

The hour was extremely late. An ancient clock in one of the towers chimed twice; the bell's echoes were almost immediately swallowed up by the darkness. The spaceport, though brightly lit, was quiet. No flights were expected in or out until morning. Sagan skirted the lights, kept out of sight of the night watchman, who was chatting companionably with one of the cleaning crew.

Numerous paths and walkways led from the spaceport to the Academy buildings. Some were old, others new, added during the phase of building and reconstruction that had been started under the auspices of die new king. Sagan chose one of the older paths, one he could walk without thinking about where it would take him, retracing the footsteps of the brash and arrogant youth who had walked that path some thirty years before.

The campus was deserted, halls of learning empty, classrooms dark. The night was clear; the path was easy to see, lit at intervals by glowing lamps that shed circles of light along the walkway and by the lambent light of moon and stars. Sagan did not walk aimlessly. He had his destination in mind and, though it was in one of the new buildings, he had, with characteristic foresight and planning, studied a revised map of the Academy grounds and determined the route to take to reach it. His feet kept stolidly to the path; his thoughts were free to rampage.

He was angry, and he found it convenient to focus his anger on Dion. Why couldn't he see the danger-the extreme danger-he was in? They were all in?

"Certainly I didn't expect you to attack and destroy Vallombrosa without warning," he muttered. "I knew when I proposed such a plan you would reject it ... as you should," he admitted somewhat grudgingly. "Though it would have been simple. Detonate the bomb in what, by all accounts, is an uninhabited region of the galaxy. Tell the people you are acting to rid the galaxy of a heinous weapon. Outwardly you appear the champion of peace; all the while destroying your enemy completely, utterly, with no one left alive to tell the tale.

"No, Dion, I didn't expect you to take the easy way out. I would have been disappointed in you if you had," he added, with the shadow of a dark smile on his lips.

The smile straightened to a thin, narrow line. "But you should have taken the starjewel. You should have taken it three years ago, when I offered it. You should have taken it now. A foolish move, my king. Not logical, not practical. It is all very well for a king to hold an olive branch in one hand, but he must hold steel in the other."

Three years ago. He had offered Dion the starjewel. Offered it over Maigrey's grave.

He thought back, tried to recall the king's words to him then, but he couldn't. Time had stopped for Derek Sagan the moment he had looked into her eyes and seen only the cold reflection of the stars. What had happened to him after that came to him in brief flashes, illuminated vividly by jagged bursts of pain. The rest was lost in a dark, chaotic storm of agony, grief, and howling silence. He remembered offering the starjewel, remembered that Dion had refused to take it. But what words he had used, what reason he gave were obliterated.

The king had left the Warlord alone with the dead. Sagan's body and mind had acted, dragging his unwilling soul along behind. He had fought hordes of Corasians in his efforts to return to his own galaxy. Fought them brilliantly, or so he presumed, simply because he would not have survived otherwise. He had been wounded-severely, they told him later. He didn't know. He didn't remember.

It was Brother Miguel who had found him, and they had proven to be each other's salvation. The sole survivor of Abdiel's plot to trap Sagan, Brother Miguel had seen his brethren murdered at die hands of the fearsome mind-dead. The brother had escaped by a mere fluke and, terror-stricken, had fled to the tombs far below the abbey, where he had hidden in fear until he had been discovered by Brother Fideles.

Fideles's hand had drawn Miguel back from the edge of madness, reminded him that his faith and trust must rest in God. Strengthened somewhat, Miguel had at last summoned the courage to leave his hiding place. He had discovered the mind-dead gone, the abbey deserted, except for the ghosts of his dear dead companions.

Dazed and bewildered, Miguel had wandered the desolate halls, envying the dead, feeling horribly guilty that he himself had survived. He had nowhere to go, for the abbey was built far from any city; the planet's atmosphere was harsh and lethal for those humans who ventured into it without sophisticated survival apparatus. The apparatus was present in the abbey, but Brother Miguel-having never before used it-had only the vaguest idea how to operate it.

The young brother might well have sunk back into the madness from which he'd only just emerged, had not the spaceplane crash-landed outside the abbey's walls.

The noise and flames brought Miguel rushing to one of the windows. He saw the plane on fire, saw a figure-silhouetted black against the flames-stagger out of it, fall to the ground.

All thoughts of himself had vanished in his concern for the wounded man. Miguel had struggled into the breathing mask, praying to God to show him how to use it. Thanks to either God's intervention or the instructions printed on the side of the oxygen tank, Miguel managed to equip himself to brave the harsh, unbreathable atmosphere. He had even had the presence of mind to remember to take an additional breathing device for the injured pilot.

Miguel half-dragged, half-carried the wounded pilot back to the abbey. Both were safe inside the sheltering walls when the spaceplane blew up in a rolling ball of fire.

Miguel had no idea who the pilot was, would never know the truth. The brother was, at first, overwhelmed at the extent of the man's injuries, thought he must surely die. Miguel was not a doctor, but he had worked in the infirmary, and he treated the pilot with what medicines he had available, supplementing these with devotion and fervent prayer.

He had succeeded and the day his patient's fever broke and he opened his eyes and looked in wonder around him, Brother Miguel knew two people had been saved, not just one. He had gone down on his knees and wept and whispered, "Thank God!"

Brother Miguel had afterward reported to Brother Fideles, on Fideles' return to the abbey (following a mysterious journey, the details of which he was always somewhat vague about relating), that the pilot's first words were an echo of Miguel's.

"Thank God."

It was well, perhaps, that Miguel, caught up in his own joy, had not noticed the tone in which these words were said. He had not realized that they were spoken in sarcasm, more a curse than a blessing; a bitter denunciation, hurled in God's teeth.

It was not until some weeks later that Derek Sagan, kneeling at the tomb of his father, had come to accept the fact that he was alive and that God expected something more of him. He'd assumed, at the time, it was to do penance for his sins, for sins of pride and of arrogance, for daring to think he-puny mortal-knew God's mind, for daring to act in God's stead, judging who should live and who should die.

And so, for three long years, he had done penance. He had lain down in the dust, he had fasted, scourged his flesh, worked selflessly to the point of collapse, and prayed, always prayed.

Never an answer. Never a word. No relief from the torment of the emptiness within him, the absence of her voice. Even during those long years when she was in exile, when the mind-link had been broken, still he heard her voice in his soul, like the strains of a half-remembered, well-loved aria.

That God should have abandoned him did not overly surprise Sagan. That Maigrey should have left him to fight this battle alone was devastating, galling.

Faith seeped away. Anger and doubt crept in to fill the void. And now this . . . this temptation. For Sagan recognized it for what it was. He alone recognized it, apparently. Dion hadn't- though the Warlord had tried to make the king see his danger. Nor had the archbishop. Well, he had warned them. He had given them every chance. They would have no one to blame but themselves.

He stopped, raised his head, which had been bowed in thought. He had reached his destination.

The memorial's white stone glimmered softly against a background of night-shadowed trees, coldly shining stars. Sagan advanced swiftly up the path, placed his hand upon the wooden door, gave it a small shove to ascertain if it was locked.

It was not. Then he noticed the placard, which stated that the building was always open to any who might be seeking a place of solace, whether by day or by night. Noiselessly, Sagan pushed on the double doors and passed inside, careful to shut them quietly behind him.

Music, counterpointed by the gentle comforting murmur of a fountain, spread a soothing balm across his raw wounds, the festering sores that would not heal. He recognized, within the part of him that was functioning on the categorical level, the "Sanctus" from Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor.

As he moved farther inside the chapel, the same part of his mind noted with approval the simplicity and elegance of the design, the dignified tribute to all those who had lost their lives during the escape from the Corasian galaxy. His gaze passed rapidly over the small plaque on the fountain, illuminated in the light of the flickering flames that were never doused, never allowed to go out. He cast one brief and uninterested glance at his own portrait hanging on the wall, though one corner of his mouth twisted at the irony of his memorialization as a dead hero.

A person is said to feel a chill when walking on the site of his own grave, but Sagan felt nothing as he passed by the plaque listing the date of his unhappy, unwanted birth and the year of his presumed, glorious death. In a sense he had died that year. So be it.

He came to stand before her portrait.

It was very good, very like her, he decided in that same part of his mind that had led him here, the part that had noted and approved the architecture, the choice of music. The artist had portrayed her essence-loving eye guiding living hand and brush, imbuing his subject with his own feelings toward it. Unlike the cold, uncaring eye of the camera that freeze-dries a single split-second of a person's existence.

The artist-what was his name-Youll (Sagan had some vague recollection of him as a spacepilot)-had even painstakingly painted, in accurate detail, the scar on Maigrey's face, as if he understood that this was an integral part of her being, not a flaw to be glossed over with brush-stroke cosmetics.

Sagan stared at the portrait and tried, Pygmalion-like, to will the gray and solemn eyes of the artist's creation to come to life, to meet his. But they did not see him, stared off at a point beyond him, past him, as if they no longer had any concern for the constricted world of a mortal.

Sagan's fist clenched beneath his sleeve. "You came ... to him, to Dion!" he said in a voice choked, smothered, gasping for breath. "And never to me. Dear God! Why not to me?"

No answer. The eyes gazed with that maddening calm into the past, the future, the present-all one for them now. Sagan's fury and frustration burned. He was reminded suddenly, with vivid clarity, of the night of the Revolution, the night she'd opposed him, thwarted his ambitious designs, prevented him from claiming the newborn king. He'd struck her down in a moment of rage very like the one he was feeling now.

His anger blinded him. For long moments he could not see for the red tinge and smoke of the flames that burned him up inside. Slowly, he mastered himself. Slowly, rational thought regained control. It was a portrait, he told himself. Paint smeared on canvas. Nothing more.

Yet he cast it one more dark and accusatory gaze, then started to turn away. Something white-bright, vivid white- lay on the dark and polished floor at his feet.

It was a rose-a white rose.

Odd, that such a thing should be here. He thought back, tried to recall if the rose had been King on the floor when he'd first entered, was fairly certain it had not, although he was forced to admit that his own robed shadow might very well have obscured it from view. He bent down and picked it up.

The rose was freshly cut, apparently, for the edges of its petals were only just beginning to go limp. A small piece of paper was twined around its stem, using the thorns as anchor. Hardly knowing what he was doing, acting primarily out of a need for some type of distraction from his pain, Sagan unraveled the paper: glanced over the words written there.

I am forbidden to see or communicate with you. I have no

choice but to obey. To do otherwise would imperil both of