The Altar at Asconel Read Free

day succeed to the Warden’s chair, and I don’t think any of us would envy him this task. We’ve seen from the inside what it’s going to be like—an infinity of hard work,a paucity of reward and comfort. But what I’m afraid of is something more subtle than the possibility you mentioned.”
    He found himself a seat on a chair carved from the living trunk of a tree, and relaxed into it, his hair very bright against the dull brown bole.
    “I don’t pretend to Spartak’s knowledge of what’s gone one elsewhere,” he continued. “But I’ve heard stories that frighten me.…It doesn’t have to be the doing of a rival heir which oversets a smooth succession. It might be an independent faction taking someone’s name in vain. Vix, you’ve generaled an army to put down insurrections in the northern islands, and you’re pretty well regarded over there.”
    “I should think so,” Vix agreed without a trace of modesty, letting his hand fall to the butt of his sidearm.
    “Now suppose in five years, or ten, some discontent arises there, and the rumor goes about that you’ll seize power and deliver them from some harsh decree of the Warden—may you not find yourself called to put down a revolt of which you’re the patron without your knowledge?”
    Spartak felt a stir of admiration at the way Tiorin was broaching this subject to the touchy Vix; he himself could never have found such tact, being unused to the devious paths of diplomacy.
    “It could well happen,” Vix conceded grudgingly.
    “We have nine hundred million people on this planet,” Tiorin stressed. “It could happen far too easily! It could happen to me, likewise—I’ve never disciplined myself as Hodat had to, for I’ve always assumed he’d live and inherit, and consequently I’ve been … let’s say more popular than he was. I’ve had a lot more fun as a result. But I’d hate to think that anyone could visualize me as a more easy-going Warden, and try to rebel against Hodat in the hope of having me take over. Even you, Spartak, might find yourself in a similar plight.”
    “Me? How?” Spartak raised his eyes in disbelief.
    “I mean no disrespect,” Tiorin emphasized. “But your reputation isn’t so—so fiery as ours. An ambitious party wishing to become a power behind the Warden’s chair might think of you as pliable, a potential puppet. Knowing you as I do, I believe they’d be mistaken.
But …!”
    Vix clapped his half-brother on the shoulder with bear-likeclumsiness; the blow stung, but Spartak, from long habit, smiled under it. “I’ll grant that,” Vix declared. “I used to think he was just a milksop, but I’ve come to have some respect for brains since I’ve had a man’s problems to contend with. He doesn’t fool easily, this boy here!”
    At age twenty-two, it was Vix’s use of the term “boy” which made Spartak wince, rather than the bang on his shoulder. He said, to cover his annoyance, “Well, Tiorin? What lies behind this smoke screen of verbiage?”
    “I think we should all leave Asconel,” Tiorin said.
    Once more there was silence. During it, Spartak thought with an aching heart of a lifetime without this green, hospitable world, its orderly cities, its prosperous commerce, its high reputation among less fortunate neighbor systems, its bleak majestic mountains and its soft tropical sea.…He almost cried aloud:
Not to see Gard again, not to stand and watch the sun go down behind the Dragons Fangs, not to eat island-caught fish and bread from the plains of Yul—!
    And then he thought of his mother, a wandering singer and teacher who had seen and perhaps loved twenty worlds before she saw and loved the man to whom she bore her son.
    He said, in a voice that surprised him by its steadiness, “I think you’re right, Tiorin. And I’ll go. I’ve often wanted to visit Annanworld—wished I could have been sent there to school as used to be done in the old days of the Empire. I think I could almost be