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Nita could feel the power the King was bringing to bear on Memeki. Even she began slowly to feel that it was wrong of any being to resist such honor, that Memeki should forget all about them, save herself, bow down before the King.

Beware! said the peridexis’s voice in her head. Don’t let Its shadowy little truth overwhelm the greater one.

Nita blinked, shook her head slightly as if to clear it. Thanks, she said, and the King’s influence receded. But this is just Its usual game, isn’t it? The Lone One would really love it if It could not only stop Memeki from being the Hesper, but also break her will before she died.

Memeki now stood swaying on her many legs, her eyes reflecting nothing but the King as she leaned more and more toward him. “For am I not the One who set your people free from the tyranny of the mighty and evil Force from Outside?” the King was saying. “Do you not owe all your loyalty to the One who stole the tyrant’s power despite everything it could do, and so made your world free?”

Memeki swayed, swayed, slowly grew still … then looked up. “Free?” she said. “Yes. You made us free.” She was shivering again, and she crouched down as if once again feeling the pangs of the eggs beginning to move inside her. “Free to kill. And free to die.”

“But what other freedom is there,” the King said, more softly still, “in this concentration camp of a universe, where all things must happen according to the evil Other’s inflexible rules, on threat of some awful eternal punishment? Far better to tell it, ‘Not your will, but mine!’—and turn your back on the Other’s unkept promise that groveling to It will bring you joy. Death comes no matter what the Other does, and so only Death’s servants, my servants, are truly free! Free to take what they want, to kill what they want, no consequences, no punishment, no limits!”

“Except when the freedom is one you don’t choose to grant,” Memeki said, more loudly this time. She was shaking herself all over, struggling to stand straight again. “You hold out hope with one claw and take it away with the other! I may be weak and doomed soon to die, but I will die as an I, not just one more nameless scrap of shell to be thrown out into the sucking mud! No matter how little a time it lasts, I will be what all these are—” And she looked around at Kit and Ponch and Nita and the others. “— selves unto themselves, and beings that matter to each other! Such a life, even a breath’s worth of it, is better than anything you’ve ever given me!”

Memeki was trembling again, but with passion, with determination, desperate and doomed. She took a step toward the dais, and another, her claws lifted not in that old gesture of submission, but in one more like a warrior’s threat. “I will be what the Voice said I was, the Hesper, I will be the Aeon of Light, the Power that made a different choice from yours. I will be the Star that did not fall, no matter how little a time the light lasts!”

The possessed King tapped a fretful foreclaw on the dais, almost like someone drumming his fingers. It looked past Memeki at Kit and Nita and the others. “Well, they have spoiled you beyond tempting,” It said, sounding aggrieved. “What a shame. But this is no great loss, for in a very little while I will nonetheless get a couple of hundred more avatars out of you. Oh, yes,” It said, as once again Memeki’s legs started to give way under her. Dairine and Roshaun reached out to support her on one side, and Kit and Ronan on the other. Ponch shouldered in between them and started licking Memeki’s face. “I have hastened your time considerably; you can feel them preparing to come forth. This should be educational for these ‘friends’ you’re so enamored of.”

The King waved away the handmaidens servicing him; they scuttled away into the shadows behind the dais. “And after that, you will have an honor guard to accompany you on your road into the dark from which there is no return. But, no, of course, I forget.” It looked around at Nita and Kit and the others. “Obedient to the Other’s brainwashing, you have all deluded yourselves into thinking that the darkness is actually light. ‘Timeheart.’” It chuckled. “Little consolation that place will be to you, even if you manage to reach it; for there you’ll sit outside of time, waiting for the sufferings of everyone you’ve ever known to end. And I need not do anything further to bring that fate about, for the Pullulus has already doomed all your worlds.”

It turned Its head just enough to look over at Carmela, who was standing there with her hands on her hips, looking scornful. “And to your ignorance you’ve now added folly,” the King said, “for you’ve gone so far as to bring with you someone who doesn’t even have any of the Other’s vile power. Whatever possessed you to do something so foolishly arrogant, so sheerly useless?” Then It laughed. “Well, I suppose that in the long run, probably I did. You, alien thing, come over here.”

To Nita’s absolute horror, Carmela’s arms suddenly flopped away from her body, jerking like the arms of a puppet on strings. Carmela wobbled, her balance lost, and her face went slack with shock as she took a step toward those nastily working jaws. Then she scowled, dug in her heels, and stopped again.

“Oh, resistance,” the King said. “How amusing. But you have no more power against me than that. Now come here.”

Carmela struggled, but it was no use. Nita watched with horror as she put one foot in front of the other, clumsy, stiff—and with each step she was able to resist less, and her face went still and empty. “No!” Kit yelled, and started forward, but the warriors who had been lingering nearby now grabbed him roughly from behind. They did the same with Nita and Roshaun and Ronan when they tried to move.

“This has all been just a game for you, hasn’t it?” the King said. “But you see now how wrong you were. Maybe it would be amusing to do to you what we do to the handmaidens. Wall you up in an incubatorium, without food or water, and see how long it takes before you beg to be fed what the grubs are fed. Or perhaps even feed you to the grubs. There are always some whose first meal isn’t big enough.”

There was no sign of struggle left in Carmela, none at all; Nita got just a glimpse of the blank look of her eyes as she stepped closer and closer to the King, as if sleepwalking, helpless. Kit threw himself again in the King’s direction, but the warriors held him fast. “No!” he shouted. “Do it to me if you want, not her!”

The King’s regard slid in Kit’s direction. “We will do it to you soon enough, I think,” It said. “But first we will let her bleed a little. Just a nip here… a nip there.” It lazily stretched out Its claws. “She will feel every moment of it, but not be able to move a muscle. It should be a learning experience for one so spirited.”

Carmela stepped closer, and closer. Another step or two would bring her within range of those cruel claws; they were stretching toward her, one of them would be close enough with the next step to brush her cheek—”NO!” Nita screamed, struggling in the grip of the claws that held her.

“But wait. What might this be that I perceive there?” said the King’s soft, oily voice. “A weapon of some kind? And how cunningly hidden under that body-covering. But though you might have been clever about hiding it, it makes no difference if the mind that hid it is helpless to hide its own thoughts. Bring it out.”

Carmela stopped, and slowly reached inside the light vest she was wearing, bringing out the curling iron. Very softly the King said, “Perhaps blood would be the wrong approach after all. What delicious irony if one who lives by such a weapon should die by it, and be unable even to—”