Below, the reserves were taking something of a beating from the power of the covens, but it wasn’t a hundred and sixty-nine witches to forty besils now, as it had been back in the witch village. It was more like twenty besils plus a dozen wuks and running, well-armed ground troops against thirteen witches in each case. It was costly to take them out, but even though they took half the attackers with them, the witches went down—went down and were mercilessly hacked to death.
I put down the monocular and looked at Ti for a moment. She seemed to sense it and turned to look at me, the stricken and confused look on her face mirroring, I’m sure, my own.
“The Lakks attacked the witches,” she said wonderingly. “The two sides joined up. Cal, what’s going on here? Have we been taken for suckers?”
I shook my head dully. “No, honey. Well, yes, I guess we have. It’s kind of crushing, though, finally to understand all this. Damn!” I smacked my fist in my other hand. “I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out from the start—at least from a few days ago, when I had all the pieces.”
“But they were fightin’ for us, weren’t they? They were gonna get us Zeis Keep!”
I shook my head slowly and sadly and squeezed her hand. “Baby, I doubt if anybody down there gives a damn about us one way or the other. I doubt if they have since the decision was made to fight.” I let her go and smacked my fist in my left hand again. “Pawns!” I muttered. “God damn it! All this way, all this far —and still pawns!”
She looked at me uncomprehendingly. “Wha…?”
I sighed and got up. “Come on. Let’s take a nice long walk down to the Castle. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to stop us or probably even notice our existence.”
With Ti still confused, we started on down.
Chapter Twenty-Two
First Lord of the Diamond
The extent of the carnage was enormous. The massacre of the witches had been most thorough, more gruesome than any autopsy.
It took over two hours to reach the Castle, and by that time even the mop-up had been completed. Yellow and red forces were methodically surveying the field, helping those who could be helped, cleaning up the debris. It would be a long, tough job.
As I expected, Father Bronz and a number of others were sitting in wicker chairs outside the Castle’s gates, relaxing, eating, and drinking. I recognized Vola and her sister, Dola, Boss Rognival and the Ladies Tona and Kysil, and Master Artur. The others were not familiar to me but wore designs indicating they were of Zeis. One of them—a small, frail-looking man, bald and wizened—was dressed as elaborately in ornate silken tunic, heavy boots; he wore atop his head a tiara with a single large blue gem similar to, but not identical to, the one Rognival wore. Another man, dressed in a manner similar to the older, thin one but wearing mostly gold colors, as well as a wide-brimmed hat, relaxed nearby. He was an older man, with neatly trimmed gray beard, certainly once of the civilized worlds. Although he was many years my senior he looked to be in nearly perfect physical condition. •
Father Bronz spotted us. “Call Ti! Please come over!” he called pleasantly, and we did. Up close Bronz looked dead tired, and very, very old. He’s put on at least ten years this morning, I thought. Still, he rose wearily from his chair, took my hand warmly, then kissed Ti on the forehead. Only then did he turn and nod toward the others.
“Some of these fine people you know,” he began, “but I don’t think you ever met Sir Honlon Tiel.” The thin old man nodded in my direction, and I could only stare at him. So that was the knight I was to take on, I thought glumly. The Boss of Zeis Keep. The Warden cells glowed more in Artur than in him.
“The gentleman in gold there is Grand Duke Kob6,” Bronz continued, and the other also nodded. He also introduced the others, but they were all of Zeis’s ruling group. Then he turned back to me. “I assume you understand everything now?”
“Pretty much,” I told him. “I can’t say it makes me happy to be used in such a way, though. I feel like the child promised the new toy he’s always wanted for his birthday, only to have nobody even come to his party, let alone getting the gift.”
Bronz laughed. “Oh, come now! It’s not all that bad.”
“Will somebody,” Ti interrupted in an even but slightly angry voice, “please tell me what the hell is going on here?”
I looked at her and sighed. “Ti, may I present Ma-rek Kreegan, Lord of Lilith, First Lord of the Diamond?”
The fact that she gasped when Father Bronz bowed indicated she still had a lot to learn.
The full explanation came later, after we’d bathed, changed, and sat down to a sumptuous feast in the great hall of the Castle. Ti still hadn’t recovered from the shock of Father Bronx’s true identity, but given that, she had managed to figure out the basics, I’ll give her that. And she was mad as hell.
Still, I wanted to hear the tale from the man who had planned it all.
“From the top, then,” agreed Marek Kreegan. “Of course, we had a problem. Lilith, as I told you long ago, is a rigid ecosystem “in which we humans play no part. Its economy is fragile, its ability to support a large population in the wild very much in doubt without Warden protection of the masses. The pawns don’t enjoy a wonderful life—but who does? The ruling class, always, that’s who. Because while everybody would love to be king, if everybody was a king there’d be no labor to support this monarch. The civilized worlds are no different, only thanks to technology on a massive scale the standard of living for their pawns is higher than is currently possible on Lilith.”
“I still can’t see the masses on the civilized worlds as pawns with a privileged class,” I responded.
His eyebrows rose. “Oh? Were you born in that body?”
“You know I wasn’t,” I growled.
“Exactly. The Merton Process, right? Potential immorality for anybody and everybody, right? But will the masses get it? Of course not! For the same reason that cures for the big three diseases that kill people have been withheld. We are at maximum and the frontier can expand only so fast. New planets take decades to develop, particularly to the point of self-sufficiency. Cal, no system can survive if its population doesn’t die. Nor is the Merton Process’ any cure-all, since you need a body for it. That means massive cloning—a couple of trillion clones. Ridiculous. They have to be raised and supported by some biomechanical means until needed. But the leaders of the Confederacy, now—that’s a different matter. They’re already immunized against diseases people don’t even know are killing them. They get age-retardant processes like mad. And when they finally do wear out, they now have the Merton Process to keep ’em going for an infinite number of cycles. The masses count, in Confederacy society, only in the plural. Masses. Averages. Everything’s an average. Only the elite get the plums. Exactly the same as here.”
“I’ll agree with you to a point,” I admitted, “but leadership is available to those who wish it.”
Again he laughed. “Really? You think so? You think you got where you were because of willpower and dedication? Hell, man, you were bred for it. They designed and manufactured you as they would any tool they needed, because they needed it. The same as they did me.”