"If all had gone as I first planned," Sagan continued, talking to the lady, one longtime friend and companion to another, "Flaim would not have discovered the switch until he was on the other side of the galaxy, prepared to blow up the Corasians. I would arm the bomb and Pantha and Flaim would flee to safety. The bomb would not, of course, go off. Tusca and his mutineers would seize control of the ship, battle the Corasians if necessary, and return with the king to fight the pretender.

"That was my plan, my Lady," he said quietly, apparently completely forgetting Kamil's presence. "But the dark-matter creatures forced the issue and so I had to alter it. It is a pity they must be destroyed. They were undoubtedly harmless until they came in contact with humans. We contaminate everything we touch, it seems."

"What will we, do now?" Kamil asked, speaking for herself. She had the feeling the Lady-if she was truly here-already knew the answer.

Kamil's voice reminded him of her presence. He glanced at her, made no mention of the fact that he had been talking to someone else. Probably he had not even realized it. But now he spoke to Kamil.

"I am going to arm the bomb and set it to explode-after we've left the planet."

"Won't the dark-matter creatures try to stop the bomb from going off?"

"They can't. Once the cycle is started, only the person who knows the code can stop the bomb from detonating. My guess is that if the creatures figure out it is armed and set to explode, they will be afraid to touch it, afraid they might set it off.

"Actually," he continued, "exploding the bomb at this location will prove far safer for the galaxy. According to my calculations, the anomaly of the strange dark matter should contain the power of the blast. Reduce its destructive force."

"But Vallombrosa will be gone?" Kamil looked around.

"Oh, yes," Sagan said dryly. "I simply meant the blast would no longer possess the force needed to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe."

"I see." Kamil swallowed. "And . . . after that . . . well return to the ship?" Back to Dion, she thought, but did not say. "What will we do then?"

"If Tusca has seized control, we simply walk on board. If not, then I will take over myself. In that eventuality, Flaim will probably escape us. And His Majesty will have a continuing fight on his hands. But in the end, Flaim will fall. He does not have the makings of a true king."

"Yet you said he passed the test...."

Sagan glanced at her; a dark smile touched the thin lips. "Perhaps I lied." "You should tell that to Dion, then," Kamil pointed out. "When this is over."

"He knows," Sagan said quietly. "He told you."

Kamil remembered her conversation with Dion in the courtyard. You can't see down that road because that road doesn't exist for me, he'd said to her then. I am king.

She flushed uncomfortably, fell silent.

They continued moving farther into the alcazar. The fortress was truly ghostly now. Unseen eyes watched them, unheard voices cursed them, silent footfalls accompanied them. A door opened as they passed by. Some distance ahead, another slammed shut.

Nerves taut, Kamil's hand fidgeted around the lasgun. She walked behind the Warlord and to his left, instinctively leaving his weapon hand free-though he was not armed-instinctively covering his back. She didn't even know she was doing it until she saw him give her an approving look.

"Your father has taught you well."

"Oh, this . . ." Kamil smiled shyly, pleased with his praise, glad to talk again. Their talk drowned out the whispers. "Actually, it was my mother. She is a shieldwife. Something I guess I'll never be," she added softly with a sigh, "no matter what happens."

"You have loved and been loved," Sagan said. "That is what's important."

Kamil, surprised, couldn't answer immediately. Perhaps Sagan had surprised himself with his comment because he pressed his lips tightly together, as if to keep a check on them.

A table tipped over as they walked past. A chair skittered across a floor.

She turned, nervously flashing the light behind her.

"The dark-matter creatures,' Sagan told her. "They are watching us."

Kamil found herself walking at his side, almost touching him. He glanced over at her, frowned. Blushing, she fell back to her former position.

The silence, which wasn't silent, was unnerving.

"You were loved," Kamil said. "And you loved."

"Not enough," he answered.

A porcelain vase lurched to the floor, shattered. Kamil gritted her teeth, shut her eyes to what was going on in the darkness around her. She edged closer to him. "I don't understand."

Perhaps he needed the sound of living voices as much as she did. Or perhaps he was again talking through her to someone else. .. .

"We both loved other things more, and that came near destroying us."

"What things?"

"Power, for one. Glory, for another. Pride, ambition, the need to control everything around us." He looked down at the five scars on his hand. "Not surprising. We were bred to it. 'The taint in our blood,' my lady used to say. But that's no excuse. Dion was bred to it, as well. And he has turned out differently. Glorie a Dieu."

"That's the reason you're doing this for him?" Kamil spoke hesitantly.

Sagan flicked her a brief glance, then looked away. "My lady sacrificed her life for him. Left him as a sacred charge in my care. If I had no other reason, I would guard him because of that alone. But Maigrey was right. Dion will be our redemption. Because of him, the Blood Royal will no longer be remembered with a curse. I have pride enough left in me to appreciate that.

"Not that I wasn't tempted," he added after a moment's thoughtful silence, talking again to his unseen companion.

"Flaim would have given me everything he promised. I would have been Warlord of a vast and powerful armada. But I saw how it would end. I would not be satisfied unless I had it all. Unless my power was absolute. I would challenge him . . . and he, being younger, stronger, would have defeated me. I would have fallen in ignominy and shame. I would rather die."

His expression was suddenly chill and cruel. Kamil caught a glimpse of the man he might become, of the man he had once been. She wasn't certain now that she trusted him. Which man was the truth? Did he know?

Kamil kept still after that, deciding she preferred the unquiet silence to any more disturbing revelations.

Sagan was also apparently no longer inclined to talk. He had come to a halt. Kamil, looking around, now recognized where she was-the great hall, where Flaim had brought them on that first terrible night.

The Warlord appeared displeased now, and impatient, and once Kamil thought she heard him mutter. "I should have heard by now. Something's gone wrong."

She was frightened then; afraid for Tusk and for Dion. She ventured a question, but he ignored her. He shoved open the doors, entered the room.

The strong beams of the nuke lamps reflected brightly off the huge fireplace, the furniture, the near walls. She sent the light stabbing into the vastness of the hall, was sorry she'd done so. The darkness seemed to suck the light into its maw and swallow it. Kamil lowered the light swiftly, kept the beam on the floor directly ahead of her.

Sagan entered the room, his light flashing here and there along the wall. He walked across the stone floor, came to a tapestry. He pulled the embroidered and moth-eaten cloth aside, revealing a small door.

He looked back behind, flashed the lamp around the room briefly, then returned it to the door. He focused his light on the door handle. Reaching out, he plucked a small piece of black cloth from between the door and the frame. He nodded, satisfied. "Undisturbed. Flaim never thought to check. I'm going in here. Keep watch," he ordered.

Kamil stared inside when he opened the door, caught only a swift glimpse of the room's interior. It appeared to be a storage room. He shut the door.

Shivering, trying to tell herself that she didn't mind being alone in this terrible place, Kamil drew her lasgun and took up a position near the door. She even remembered to check the gun's setting, make certain it was on kill, not stun.

She stood in the empty hall, listening to the perturbed stirrings of the dark-matter creatures, stirrings that seemed suddenly to become angry, dangerous.

Kamil licked dry lips, held tightly to the gun, tried to keep her hand from shaking. With every breath she drew, a sharp pang of fear jabbed beneath her rib cage.

She recalled an old saying of her father's-something to the effect that the enemy climbing over the wall was always less frightening than the enemy hiding in the hills, and she suddenly realized its truth. She would have given a great deal for a real, live, solid, substantial person right now-be it friend or foe.

And then she heard Sagan's voice coming from within the room, heard him swear a brief, bitter oath. Footsteps crossed the room. He yanked the door open.

"What-" Kamil began, but the question died on her lips. Despair and fear squeezed her heart.

"Flaim has discovered the fake. He and Pantha are on their way here . . . may be here already."

"Dion?" She asked it without a voice, only her lips moving. "Tusk?"

"They are bringing Dion here. Tusca has failed. I've lost contact with him. He may already be dead."

Sagan walked back into the storage room.

Kamil, not knowing what to do, stood staring into the whispering darkness until she felt it start to close in around her. It was trying to steal her breath, to suffocate her. She crept into the storage room, nearer the light, nearer Sagan.

His nuke lamp rested on top of a table, its harsh beam shining on a crystal cube with a golden pyramid in its center. A row of tiny buttons, each with a strange character on it, were positioned on the top of the cube.

He held in his hand a dark and ugly jewel, carved into the shape of an eight-pointed star. The jewel was revulsive to look upon, conjured horrible images in her mind. She saw a hideous, distorted twin of herself, evil, perverted, dancing on her own grave. Now she understood the expression on his face; fey, dire, doomed. He was seeing himself.

Kamil shuddered. She didn't want to look at the jewel, didn't want to look at him. Yet, she discovered, she couldn't look anywhere else. Her gaze was held by the jewel, by his face, both terrible and awful. She shut her eyes, but that didn't work, for she could still see the jewel's dark light and, worse, she felt as if she were slowly falling into its dark heart.

Opening her eyes, she asked him softly, "What . . . what are you doing?"

His large, strong fingers moving with incongruous delicacy, Sagan carefully embedded the jewel in the bomb, fitting it into a star-shaped depression obviously intended to receive it.

"Arming the bomb." He did not look at her. "You should return to the spaceplane."

"I couldn't. I don't know the way. I'd get lost."

"Your godmother will assist you," he said dryly. "She will see to it that you escape Vallombrosa safely."

Kamil only shook her head. "No, my lord. I'll stay."

He said nothing more. He began to punch in the code, repeating the words as he depressed each button. " 'The center cannot-'"

Kamil heard movement behind her-real movement, solid movement.

Sagan lifted his head. Kamil turned, her lasgun drawn and aimed.

Dion and Flaim stood in the doorway. Kamil had a clear shot. But which was which? The white light of the nuke lamp reduced all complexities to simple shapes formed of brilliance and shadow, reduced the two cousins to one. The Starfire flared white-hot-all-consuming in one, blazing with a clear, pure light in the other. But it burned in the blood of both. And, for an instant, both looked uncannily alike.

Startled, uncertain, Kamil hesitated. In that instant, Flaim drew the bloodsword, held it in front of him, its shield activated.

"Take your hands away from the bomb, my lord. Keep them still. Make no move. Not so much as the flicker of an eyelid. Or His Majesty dies. You"-Flaim's eyes flicked to her, returned immediately to the Warlord-"throw down the gun."

Bitterly reproaching herself for her failure, Kamil held on to the gun more out of frustration than because she hoped to be able to do anything with it.

"Throw it down!" Flaim commanded.

"Do as he says," Sagan told her.

Half-blinded by tears, Kamil hurled the gun away from her. It slid across the floor, banged up against Flaim's foot.

A third person emerged from the darkness. Garth Pantha bent down, picked up the gun, thrust it into the belt of his robes.

"Move away from the bomb. Come out in the open, my lord," Flaim ordered. "Keep your hands where I can see them. Both of you-move!"

The prince began backing up, motioning with the bloodsword for the two inside the storage room to follow. He kept fast hold of Dion, pulled him along with him.

Dion was pale, dazed and groggy. He stumbled when he walked. He didn't even seem startled to see Kamil. He only looked bewildered, almost stupefied. And then his eyes rolled back, his head lolled on his shoulders. He fell to the floor, on his hands and knees. Flaim loosened his grip.

"Watch him, Pantha!"

Drawing Kamil's lasgun, Pantha held it to the king's head.

"Keep walking, my lord!" Flaim ordered.

The Warlord emerged from the storage room. Kamil followed at his left, a pace or two behind and to one side. The part of the hall in which they stood was lit by the eerie blue glow of the bloodsword, the bright white glow of the nuke lamp. But most of the rest of the vast hall was in darkness, as though a gigantic hand was cupped over them, sheltering the light from a whispering wind.

Flaim made a gesture. "Pantha, go inside the room. Get the bomb. It's sitting on the table. And while he is doing that, you, my lord, will die."

Pantha left to obey the prince's commands. Flaim advanced on Sagan.

Dion lifted his head slowly. His eyes were alert, flaring blue. His fainting spell had all been an act, Kamil realized confusedly, but what could he do?

Attack Flaim with his bare hands, if nothing else. Dion gathered his energy and strength within himself. Coiled like a wild beast, he prepared for a desperate lunge.

Sagan looked at Dion, smiled slightly, shook his head. The dark, shadowed eyes shifted to Pantha, who was hurrying toward the storage room.

There lies your duty, Dion, his look said plainly. Kamil could almost hear the unspoken words. You cannot save me.

Dion understood. So did Kamil. Fear, anguish, and helpless frustration choked her throat. She longed to do something, but she had no idea what. She was afraid to interfere, afraid of destroying whatever slim hope they all had.

Face pale, jaw set, Dion altered his stance slightly, shifted his attention to Garth Pantha.

Flaim raised the bloodsword. The blade flared a brilliant blue. Sagan stood motionless, bathed in the blinding light, unarmed, unable, unwilling to defend himself.

"Now, child, spoke a cool, low voice in Kamil's ear, "be ready."

Chapter Eight.