Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

could never compete with that. So all that was left was for Douglas to do his best to be his own man, even if that man wasn't what his father had wanted or intended.
    King William was still slender and elegant for all his years, but the grace had gone out of him with Niamh's death. His short, neatly-trimmed hair was as much white as gray, and getting decidedly patchy.
    His face was heavily lined and shrunken, and his official robes flapped loosely about him now. He moved slowly and carefully, as though he'd become fragile, and perhaps he had, at that. His mind was still sharp, though his speeches tended to flounder and get lost in their own arguments if they went on too long. Like this one. Douglas listened with half an ear and looked out over the Court again, still trying to get his head around the idea that as from tomorrow it would all be his.
    It should have been James's. He would have known what to do with it.
    The wide open space of the great hall was bounded by towering walls made from warm and glowing woods from a hundred worlds across the Empire, culminating in an arched ceiling of interlocking beams that was practically a work of art. Even the colorful mosaics of the great open floor were constructed
    from thousands upon thousands of tiny wooden plaques, waxed and buffed and sheened till they seemed to glow with their own inner light. This new Court, built right in the heart of the Parade of the Endless, had been designed and constructed as a deliberate contrast to the inhumanly cold metal and marble Court of the deposed Lionstone, long abandoned now in its bunker deep in the earth. This was to be a more human Court, for more human monarchs, reflecting the warmth and open-heartedness of King Robert and Queen Constance, of blessed memory.
    Douglas looked over at their huge idealized images, shining from the stained-glass windows at the far end of the hall. He tried to feel or find some connection between them and him, but it was hard. They were both dead and gone long before even James was born. Douglas's gaze wandered over the images in the other stained-glass windows, the icons of Empire, blazing fiercely as the late afternoon light fell through the glass in bright shimmering shafts. They seemed more like saints and angels than heroes of the old Empire. All long gone now, but everyone knew their names. Owen Deathstalker. Hazel d'Ark. Jack Random. Ruby Journey. Douglas could feel his chest tighten as he said the old names of glory to himself.
    He felt as though he should kneel to them, just for being in their presence. What did being a King mean, in comparison to who they were, and what they did? And yet; they were real men and women, once.
    Before they were transformed from heroes into legends, what human imperfections they might have had wiped away, and their rough edges smoothed over, their humanity forgotten so that they might be worshiped the more easily.
    Douglas felt guilty at such a thought, but unlike many he was in a position to know some of the truth.
    Very early in their reign, King Robert and Queen Constance allowed themselves to be persuaded by Parliament to sign a decree destroying all the actual footage of Humanity's saviors in action. Not one scrap, not one contemporary record, remained of what the blessed heroes actually did during the Rebellion. Not one interview survived, not one holo image. Every last news report or eyewitness account had been carried out of the archives and museums and news stations and wiped clean or burned. It was hard work, constructing a Golden Age. Humanity needed legends to inspire them, perfect men and women they could worship and revere. Facts would only have gotten in the way.
    And the greatest legend of all had arisen around Owen Deathstalker, the Lord of Virimonde, who gave up wealth and power and prestige to fight Lionstones evil. The good man who saw Humanity's plight, and could not look away. The greatest warrior of his time, who somehow single-handedly saved Humanity from extinction at the hands of the Recreated out in the dark, dark spaces of the Rim. And never returned home, to receive the thanks and blessings of a grateful Empire. No one knew what had become of Owen Deathstalker. He passed easily out of history and into legend, and though not a year went by without some sighting of him, quietly doing good, healing the sick or performing some minor miracle, most preferred to believe he was sleeping somewhere, resting and preserving his strength for the