ABOARD THE FIST OF DOL’JHAR

Apprehension gripped the vitals of both the secretary and the prisoner moving down the empty corridor, but being enemies, they could not share it.

Morrighon still could not believe his orders. But to hear them was to obey.

He stopped at the only door on this corridor, deep within the battlecruiser, and peered both ways. No one in sight. No sound except the breathing of the deposed Panarch of the Thousand Suns standing behind him. Long, deep breaths they were, like a runner; not noisy, nor was the old man trying to hide his exertion.

Morrighon tabbed the door open, then guided the Panarchist into the darkness beyond with a hissed admonition, “Be silent!”

Gelasaar stumbled as the hatch engaged behind him. He’d smelled the sour fear on the thin, misshapen secretary, which caused him to brace for anything as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

The thick, coarse-woven cloth of the dzirkash’juluth—the Dol’jharian penance robe that Morrighon had disguised him in—did little to ward the room’s chill. Perceiving a dim shape at the other end of the chamber, he shuffled carefully toward it. Although the plates sewn into the robe were merely aluminum foam, instead of the heavy iridium ordained for Dol’jharians who incurred their superiors’ displeasure, the 1.2 standard gees maintained on board the Fist of Dol’jhar constrained his movements just as effectively. It was a realistic disguise for one accustomed to standard acceleration, perhaps the only one that would have worked among a people accustomed to the brutal gravitation of Dol’jhar.

Though Gelasaar recognized the merciless speed with which higher acceleration could wear down an aging body, he was finding it difficult to attend to all the protocols for long exposure to high gravity. At least he’d mastered the shuffling and the breathing against a hard-set core that partially decompressed his spine, but if he was already feeling the effects, after less than a week, what damage would he sustain by the time they finally reached Gehenna?

Gelasaar smiled grimly at the pale form emerging from the darkness. Doesn’t matter. The Isolates his justice had exiled there would see to that.

He stopped. A skull smiled back at him with the humorless grimace of the fleshless dead. It hung above a long, high carven table, flanked by two massive candles that emanated a faint sweet carrion odor. The shock of recognition was immediate: he was in the Chamber of the Mysteries.

As he puzzled at the significance of this, he recalled the Dol’jharian name of the chamber: Hurreachu i’Dol. It meant something like “the Unknowable-Presence-Indwelling of Dol,” although the first word was essentially untranslatable. Merely being here was a death sentence for any non-Dol’jharian, for this was the cultic center of the Avatar’s power. No wonder Morrighon had been afraid, though he was secretary to the son of most powerful man on board this ship, Gelasaar’s conqueror, Eusabian of Dol’jhar.

But the balance of power yawned chasm-deep between Eusabian and his only living son. Eusabian had killed all his other offspring, and Gelasaar knew that Eusabian would kill Anaris rahal’Jerrodi, too, if he suspected either weakness or disobedience.

The door hissed open, and Anaris entered. The tall, broad-shouldered young man and the short, frail older man gazed at one another with interest freighted by the twenty years Anaris had spent as Gelasaar’s hostage.

Gelasaar pushed the cowl of the robe back. He sensed an odd amalgam of emotions in the young man; Anaris’s stance was easy, but the angle of his head and the tightness of his shoulders revealed the wariness that he did not bother to hide.

Anaris said, “I see you’ve met Grandfather.”

The Panarch inclined his head. Was this how it was to be? Irony had become one of Anaris’s strongest defenses during his fosterage in the Mandala. Gelasaar wondered if the young man’s choice of this room for their meeting revealed the final victory of his Dol’jharian nature, or a fear of the resurgence of his Panarchist nurture.

“We didn’t have much to say to each other,” he replied.

Anaris gave a short bark of laughter. He’d known he would enjoy this encounter, perhaps the more as it took place in secret, without his father’s knowledge.

He stepped forward to place his hands on the altar as he peered up at the skull of his father’s father. “He has no words for anyone, but most fear his voice nonetheless.” Anaris’s Uni diction was perfect, right to the sardonic Douloi drawl. “Even my father avoids this chamber except in execution of his ritual obligations, especially now that he has formally accepted me as heir.”

Ah. Gelasaar was not here for summary execution, then, but in secret. And now Anaris was heir! No longer rahal’Jerrodi, but achreash’Eusabian, indicating a sharing of the ancestral spirit. Gelasaar knew what that meant: danger and opportunity both.

Anaris stepped away from the altar, his heels ringing on the inlaid stone of the floor. Then he wheeled about to face Gelasaar. “But I needn’t speak to you about the efficacy of ritual, empty though it be. We share that habit, Panarchists and Dol’jharians alike: using ritual as a tool of statecraft.”

His voice had slowed to a mockery of the Douloi drawl. Gelasaar knew that Anaris’s lessons from the College of Archetype and Ritual had shown him the political necessity of symbolism and ritual, and other factors in his fosterage on Arthelion had emptied him of Dol’jharian superstition. But, he grieved, they somehow failed to put anything in the place of the void that was left.

Anaris stepped closer.

“This journey itself is the final ritual of power. Only at its end, after I have dealt with the guardians of Gehenna and delivered you to your fate, will authority finally pass from Arthelion to Dol’jhar.” Anaris waited expectantly for reaction from Gelasaar.

It sounded rehearsed to Gelasaar, who hid his pulse of relief. Then they didn’t know about the Knot! As had so many others, Anaris and his father had assumed that Gehenna was secured by force of arms, rather than the anomaly that had claimed so many ships before its secret was unraveled, over seven hundred years before. That was not unanticipated: the Knot was one of the best-kept secrets of his government.

This meant that Gelasaar had the ability to deliver the exile ship to sudden death, if he so desired.

But Anaris had said “I,” not “we,” implying that he alone would escort Gelasaar and his former privy council to Gehenna. If so, Anaris’s death would do nothing to shake Eusabian’s hold on the Thousand Suns; and the fact that they were having this interview at all was a reminder of their conversations when Anaris had been Gelasaar’s prisoner. And a new idea: Anaris sought something from him.

The pause had become a silence, more reflective than threatening. Did Anaris see how this interview mirrored the days when Gelasaar had forcibly cleared his schedule, just so the two could talk alone?

Anaris did. It was memory of those interviews that had prompted him to risk this one. He was pleased with the result so far; Gelasaar exhibited no fear, no intent to bargain or to plead. Excellent. This might while away the otherwise deadly boredom of life so close to his father.

Gelasaar adjusted his stance minutely as his back reminded him of another high-gee protocol. By now he was certain that Anaris had not brought him here to force abasement from his prisoner, or Gelasaar would be wearing a shock collar, and likely facing an introduction to one of the ritual torturers.

Therefore Gelasaar had one last task as Panarch of the Thousand Suns. He had no doubt that the fusion of Dol’jharian savagery and Panarchist subtlety that his fosterage of Anaris had created would be more than Eusabian could deal with in the end. If it was to be that Anaris would rule the Thousand Suns, this conversation, and the ones that might follow, would be his final, necessary lessons in statecraft. For Anaris could not rule the Thousand Suns as a Dol’jharian. That kind of brutality would smash the polity beyond repair, if it were not already. He had to learn patience, and compromise, and respect.

And though Anaris had remained Dol’jharian enough to survive his return to his father, and even to be lifted to heirship, there remained a hope that Anaris would listen, and hear, and even understand. After all, he had disclosed that Brandon was alive, when there was no need to do so, and here they stood, alone, without the threat of violence.

Gelasaar arrived at an inward decision. Prisoner though he was, he would open his mind to Anaris on any subject he wished. Excepting only one: the secret of Gehenna.

And if, when they reached Gehenna, Gelasaar had seen no signs of understanding, or if Eusabian were indeed still with them—the decision for death would still be his.

He smiled, and Anaris smiled back, surprised at the sense of anticipation Gelasaar’s smile engendered in him. Nothing his father had done or ever would do could ever rouse any such emotion. But emotion could be costly.

“You know that is not so,” said the Panarch. He held up his hand, forestalling Anaris’s objection. “Oh, certainly the transfer of authority will appear valid to your fellow Dol’jharians, but they are an atom in the void against the trillions you intend to rule.”

Anaris breathed a laugh, disappointed. Surely Gelasaar could not possibly harbor hope that Eusabian’s paliach—ritually defined vengeance—would fail.

“You cannot hope to succeed without adopting and adapting the rituals of power, as you term them, that we have evolved over the past millennium. They are too deeply ingrained in the people of the Thousand Suns.” Gelasaar tipped his head, his gaze distant for a heartbeat or two. “But you, at least, can see this, and grasp the necessity, I think. Your father cannot, as demonstrated by the Throne Room bloodbath.”

“Agreed,” Anaris replied, amused at the Douloi distaste with which Gelasaar pronounced the last word. “He cannot and will not.” He could sense control of the conversation passing to the Panarch, as had always been the case on Arthelion during his fosterage there. It was time to assert his authority. “But neither could Brandon.”

Gelasaar could not hide a wince of pain. Anaris enjoyed the spurt of triumph following his conviction that he would not have seen even that much had the Panarch not acknowledged the truth of his statement. The Panarch’s third son had abandoned the Panarchy by avoiding his Enkainion, though that action had accidentally saved his life.

The Panarch spread his hands in a graceful Douloi gesture, empty of mockery. “I am grateful to you for telling me Brandon lives. What have you heard of him?”

It pleased Anaris that Gelasaar asked directly. For now, he would tell him the bare minimum. Perhaps later he would describe the humiliation Brandon had inflicted on Eusabian in the Mandala.

“He was taken on board the battlecruiser Mbwa Kali near Rifthaven, in the company of a group of Rifters. By this time he is no doubt safe on Ares.”

“Safe?” the Panarch repeated. “No more than you, I should say. Do you remember so little of your lessons in the Mandala?”

Control had slipped away from Anaris again, but he forbore to interrupt. He found an odd comfort in resuming the old relationship, bounded by the newer comfort of authority. “Speak.”

“My eldest son was fond of saying that politics is the continuation of war by other means,” the Panarch continued. “I’m not sure if he knew that for the misquotation of an ancient theorist of Lost Earth that it was, but it was and is true of the Panarchy. Suspicion, intrigue, treachery, and violence—both subtle and overt—are the price we Douloi pay for our privilege, so that, at least ideally, under us the Polloi may live in freedom.”

The Panarch’s gaze lifted, diffuse, and Anaris could not remember when Gelasaar had spoken so frankly. It was as if the loss of power had liberated him.

Gelasaar blinked, and awareness returned. “Think, Anaris! Ares must now be the last bastion of my government, for its location is unknown to your father. There will be concentrated all the millennial subtlety of the surviving Douloi, with Brandon at the focus of all their hopes and fears.”

Gelasaar paused, bracing against a growing ache in his abdominal muscles and spine. “You know your opponent, Anaris. There is only one, your father, and the terms of your engagement are fixed by ancient tradition and religious force. On Ares my son can be sure of neither his friends nor his enemies, nor can he be sure that one will not become the other at a moment’s notice.”

Gelasaar paused, then gave his head a slow shake. “I did not know him as well as I should have. There is no more that I can do.” The Panarch paused, husbanding his breath. “But . . .” Gelasaar’s gaze reached past Anaris to some vision of the future.

Anaris prompted, “But, Gelasaar?”

The Panarch sighed. “I would have you on the Emerald Throne rather than your father, if we are defeated.” He turned a reflective gaze to the skull grinning down at them. “And I’m sure we have very little time. Both of us.”

Anaris couldn’t decide whom he meant: himself and Anaris, or himself and Brandon.

The Panarch turned back to him.

“Shall we agree to make the best use of it?”