Part 33 (1/2)

He moved his hand and pulled at her gown near her hips. 'Don't you wish to be immortal? Certainly you don't want to die. I understand that. It's what makes us so alike. Our will to live. Do you understand?'

Janier shook her head. She tried slowly backing away. The crowd giggled. Kratine still had hold of her gown. He slowly pulled her back to him and patted her leg.

'You will understand,' he said. He stood and removed his cloak. 'I'm so proud of you. You have come so far. In your land you were only a Princess. Here, right now, you will become a Queen.'

Still, Janier did not understand what he meant. 'You said you were going to send me home,' she whispered.

Kratine ignored her for the moment and stepped to where he had deposited the eggsh.e.l.l. Taking the sh.e.l.l in his hands, he raised it to his lips and sipped the sickly green embryonic fluid. He swallowed with satisfaction, and returned to stand over her. He kept the eggsh.e.l.l in his hand.

'I'm glad you decided to join me, Janier. For a while there I didn't know what I was going to do with the restrictions Rankar placed on my original plan.'

'Rankar?'

'Don't worry about him. The dead are dead. Besides, he isn't your King anymore. You forsook his protection, remember? I am your King. It's a good thing, too, for the Asurian future.' He sat by her side. 'Janier, are you aware of the pa.s.sion you arouse in my royal blood?'

Janier shook her head timidly. Now she understood. 'No,' she whispered.

'Well, then let me show you.' He grabbed her gown and ripped it across the top. The cloth tumbled from her shoulders. Kratine licked his lips as he stared at her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 'Excellent,' he said.

She wept. 'Why are you doing this?'

'It's necessary, and I enjoy it,' Kratine replied. I always enjoy my duty. But I could never explain to you the importance of my taking you as a bride, the profound significance of what we've done here today. The young can never understand the pains of old age: the loss of one's vitality and power. The young can never understand death. To them it always seems so far away. But for me, for too long, it has been close at hand. I'm not one to complain, though. I'm not concerned with problems. I'm concerned with solutions. Yes, even with the solution to old age and death. I a.s.sure you, I have discovered such a solution.' He shook his head sadly. 'Unfortunately, there are now too few Sastra left alive to carry out the full scope of my plan. Too many died in the war. You might be surprised to hear I didn't even want to go to war with your people. Be that as it may, there's no sense complaining about what has happened. The day may be lost but tomorrow looks bright. The future is full of promise. Chaneen's children will survive the blow I have dealt them. They will flourish over their lands, forgetting much of their ancestry, and losing many of their powers. But they will learn new ways of accomplis.h.i.+ng what they want, and one day, one great day, they will come here. And on that day, they will be mine. Do you understand?'

'No, 'Janier whispered.

'It doesn't matter.' He stood and motioned to his aides. Instantly a dozen Asurian b.i.t.c.hes emerged from the shadows and pinned her to the floor. They stripped her naked and yanked her legs apart. Kratine tipped the eggsh.e.l.l above her, ready to pour the embryonic fluid over her bare flesh.

'You can't do this!' she screamed.

Kratine snickered. I can't? Even at this late stage in the game you fail to guess what I can do. You would have fared better, Princess, to have jumped in the pit when you had the chance.'

Janier struggled with what strength was left in her body against his brides, to no avail. 'Stop,' she cried.

Kratine stared down at her. 'You are the scourge of your kind, Janier. You are the mother of the curse I now lay upon the Sastra. In time Chaneen's children will come to hate you, and I will triumph. My seed will bear fruit. I shall be immortal.' Kratine began to unbuckle his gold girdle with the hand that was not holding the eggsh.e.l.l.

'Don't touch me!' Janier yanked her head from side to side. 'Chaneen! Chaneen, save me!'

Kratine regarded her sympathetically. 'You were tricked, Janier. From the very beginning, you have been a fool. This has all been an elaborate ritual. There were wors.h.i.+pers present. I was the priest. You are the sacrifice. Now we will consecrate the sacrament.' Kratine tossed aside his girdle and his illusion of human form began to dissolve.

Janier twisted her body off the floor, but was thrown back down. The shouts from the audience grew louder. 'But you said you would send me home,' she said, sobbing. I want to go home.' 'I lied,' Kratine said. 'Are you going to rape me?'

I am going to love you,' he said with a grin. I am going to plant my seed, and then I'm going to make you take your bath.'

Kratine's human flesh vanished. A hideous monster stood in its place. He was scaled, and coated with mucus. He had claws for hands and horns for ears. A roving black snake uncoiled between his legs as it searched for the place to enter her. Kratine tilted the broken eggsh.e.l.l and the embryonic fluid splashed over her body. Immediately her skin seethed with pain as it began to rot on her bones. The crowd began to chant a one-line prayer that echoed in her shaking head like a curse that would go to the end of time.

Then Kratine climbed on top of her, and entered her, and nothing could have been worse.

'It's me, my love,' he said in a voice that belonged to her late husband. 'Only me.'

Janier opened her eyes and saw Kratine had put on an illusion of Tier's face. Quickly she shut her eyes, but he forced open her mouth and bit her tongue and sucked on her blood. Then the stagnant cold sprayed inside her, and the blood in her mouth cracked into ice. A numb wave of a million piercing needles crawled through her limbs and into her head.

Janier began to die.

Kratine suddenly pulled away, and kicked her, and spat on her. Perhaps he had not enjoyed his lovemaking as much as he had hoped. He spoke with disgust. 'Hang this witch for her bath!'

Janier could not breathe. She was cold, so cold.

Kratine's aides snapped the clamps on her wrists and went to hoist her above the lava. Only now she was heavy as stone and she slipped from their grasp and crashed back onto the black altar. It was then she felt Chaneen's ring pressing into her s.h.i.+vering flesh. Somehow, blocking the move from Kratine's eyes, she managed to slip the ring back onto her finger.

Now if only she could die, she thought, and stop the cold.

They yanked her into the air again. Her arms were twisted behind her back and she heard the bones snap inside. The huge dark chamber spun around her. The boiling mud now bubbled beneath her feet.

Then her eyes fell on Kratine for the last time. He had returned to his black throne and reclothed himself in human form - down to the last detail. He had human eyes now, blue eyes like hers.

'The future will be ours,' he said. He gestured to his a.s.sistants. 'Lower her slowly.'

The lava hissed as it touched her skin. Her feet fused into blackened stumps. Her s.h.i.+ns disintegrated as her knees smoked. Yet still the terrible cold remained, the cold of Kratine's seed, the curse that he said would one day awaken. Nothing seemed able to stop the cold.

All was not lost, however. Kratine had also been fooled. A spark of life remained with janier. In the last instant before the red mud closed over her, Princess Janier held aloft her sister's ring and said, 'Remember me, Chaneen.'

TWENTY-SIX.

In the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Hawk, on a cold Martian morning, Dr Lauren Wagner watched impatiently as Major Gary Wheeler worked a fine blue torch over the edge of the steel case that housed a thermonuclear warhead.

The pa.s.sing minutes were hard on Lauren. Dazed and confused, Jessica had left with her husband forty minutes earlier. Lauren herself had just returned from the Karamazov with the laser.

'What's taking you so long?' she demanded. 'Is that all you've done?'

'If I don't go slow,' Gary growled, 'I might trigger the d.a.m.n thing.'

'If we don't get going, it won't matter if you do.'

'I'm terribly sorry, but this bomb wasn't fitted for quick removal.'

'Just leave it,' Lauren said. 'I told you, it will only slow us down.'

Gary readjusted his dark goggles. 'I'm going to burn the heart out of this b.a.s.t.a.r.d planet and nothing's going to stop me.'

'But what about Jessie?'

'I'm going as fast as I can!'

'That isn't good enough! I just can't stand here while she's down there with that monster.'

'Then do something else, and get out of my hair,' Gary said. 'Decipher Dmitri's diary. I don't know why you haven't done so already.'