Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

day he would be called back to be a hero and a savior again, in the hour of the Empire's greatest need. There were statues and shrines to him all across the Empire, and even after all these years, people still laid fresh flowers at those sites every day. Beside the two great golden Thrones of the Court, of King and Queen, there was a third Throne, simple and unadorned and set slightly apart, waiting there for Owen should he ever return.
    There were other idealized figures portrayed in the Court's stained-glass windows. Stevie Blue, of course, the esper martyr and saint, wrapped in bright blue flames of her own making. Who lived so briefly but blazed so very brightly. (No such portrait for Diana Vertue, of course. Even the official myth making process hadn't been able to smooth the rough edges off Psycho Jenny. She'd been dead almost a hundred years now, and the powers that be were still scared she might someday make a comeback.) But the greatest icon of them all, represented again and again in windows all across the Court, venerated and adored, was the only real Saint of the Empire; the Blessed St. Beatrice. More respected, more important, and more loved than any poor damned hero.
    Douglas liked to think Owen would have approved.
    He sighed quietly, hardly listening to his father at all now, lost in his own thoughts. He was intelligent and cynical enough to know the political reasons and imperatives behind the creation of such legends, but still
    . . . these had been real men and women once, and they had overthrown an Empire. His breath caught in his throat as he thought of what it must have been like, to fight such a clear and obvious evil in the company of such people in the great Rebellion. Everything and everyone seemed so much ... smaller now. Part of him ached to know what it must have been like, to have fought in a war when giants walked the worlds . ..
    Douglas was proud to have been a Paragon, to have fought the good fight and protected the people. But for all the good he'd done, the lives he'd saved and the things he'd accomplished, no one would ever set his image in stained glass after he was gone or set aside a Throne for his return. He was a Paragon, and he'd done his job. That should be enough.
    To be King was actually a step down, as far as he was concerned. This vast and glorious Court was only there for show, for Ceremonial matters, and the kind of empty pageantry the people still loved.
    Power lay with Parliament, as of course it should. The King had a place there, but only as Speaker, to preside over debates and provide an impartial voice, to help Parliament reach its decisions. As it should be, of course. The Members of Parliament represented the worlds of Empire, one Seat to a planet; they were the Voice of Humanity, and expressed its will. Mostly. But never again would any one man or woman be allowed dominion over Humanity. Not after Lionstone.
    Douglas approved. He really did. It was just that ... if he had to be King, he wanted it to mean something.
    Desperate for distraction, Douglas's gaze wandered over the hundreds of people scurrying back and forth in the Court, until his eyes stumbled over a short, stocky man in a shimmering white gown and tall jewel-encrusted mitre, and then he had to smile. It was good to know there was someone in the Court who wanted to be there even less than he did. As tradition demanded (and there's nothing more intractable than a fairly newly minted tradition), the new King would be crowned by the Patriarch of the Empire's official religion; the Church of Christ Transcendent. However, the current Patriarch had been in his job for only about five minutes, following the sudden and very unexpected death of the previous Matriarch in an accident apparently so embarrassing that the Church still wasn't willing to release any details on the subject. So the new Patriarch, chosen by blind lottery from among the hundred and twenty-two Cardinals, had turned out to be an extremely inexperienced twenty-seven-year-old man from a backwater planet who'd only been made Cardinal because no one else on that world wanted the position. No one doubted his sincerity or his good intentions, but it was clear to Douglas that the new Patriarch couldn't have been any more nervous if someone put a gun to his mitred head. Pretty much the whole Empire would be tuning in to watch him crown the new King, and the opportunities for screwups, fiascos, and making a complete bloody pratt of himself were