Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

our absence, and the whole nasty business is over. We could go home!"
    "No," said Rose flatly, from her corner. "The Durandal wouldn't die that easily. And even if he were gone, Pure Humanity and the Church Militant would still go on. It is their time. The Empire is sick, and all the poisons must leak out."
    "Don't you all just cringe, every time she opens her mouth?" said Jesamine.
    Lewis looked at the viewscreen to avoid having to answer. "Jenny Psycho was very insistent we come here, to Shandrakor. Maybe she got here first, and… did some tidying up. Clearing the way for us. She was one of the most powerful uber-espers ever, back when she was alive."
    "Death didn't seem to have slowed her down any," Jesamine admitted. "But what could the Standing hold, that we could need so badly?"
    "Guns," said Brett. "Really big guns. Really appallingly big guns."
    "Maybe information," said Lewis. "Jenny Psycho was right there on the Standing when Owen and Hazel went down to Haden and entered the Madness Maze for the last time. Perhaps the great old Standing of my Clan is the one place where true information might still be held about what really happened, back then, at the end."
    "All right," said Brett. "If we have to do this, let's get down there, do the business, and get the hell offworld as fast as we can."
    "Sounds like a plan to me," said Rose.
    "Yes," said Lewis. "This world has never been a lucky place for my family. Take us down, Oz."
    The ship's AI took them down slowly and carefully, checking constantly for traps and unpleasant surprises all the way down to the surface, but there was nothing. Lewis checked the instruments as well, but his eyes kept straying to the view of Shandrakor on the big screen. A steady tingle of excitement pulsed through him at the thought of being the first of his Clan to look on the original Standing in two hundred years. The ancient stone castle was a thing of legend, not history. The first Deathstalker, Giles, originator of the Family, had fled the old Empire in that castle, over a thousand years ago, before disappearing into the deadly jungles of Shandrakor; never to be seen again until the blessed Owen discovered the castle in the time of his own outlawing. The tangled tops of the jungle swept past beneath the Hereward as Oz headed for the exact coordinates provided by Lewis's father. Lewis's sense of awe became almost overpowering, not least because, deep down, where it mattered, he'd never felt like a real Deathstalker. The direct line of descent had been cut off two hundred years ago, with the deaths of David and Owen. King Robert and Queen Constance had granted the Family name to a line of distant cousins, to keep the celebrated name going. There was Deathstalker blood in Lewis, but he had to wonder if by now it was running thin. He looked down at the chunky black-gold ring on his hand, the sign and symbol of Clan authority. It had been Owen's ring once, long thought lost along with him, but a man who everyone said was dead had come to Douglas's Coronation, specifically to give the ring to Lewis. It felt very heavy on his hand. No one knew how old it was. Centuries, certainly—perhaps even from Giles's time. Family legend had it that the ring contained secrets, but no one knew what they might be anymore. And now here Lewis was, bringing the ring back to Shandrakor, a planet that seemed determined to weave itself into Deathstalker history again and again. A world so significant to Clan
    Deathstalker that they had taken its name as their battle cry for over a thousand years.
    Lewis also remembered the fate of Owen's ship, the original Sunstrider, which crashed while trying to land in the Shandrakor jungles. Supposedly, bits of it were still scattered across the landscape somewhere. So Lewis made sure Oz took the Hereward down with all caution, and had the AI bring the ship to a halt hovering above the spiky canopy of the jungle. There was no clearing big enough to land the ship safely in, so Lewis used the Hereward's newly discovered weapons to make a clearing, with a little creative destruction. Trees and vegetation disappeared in the blast of searing energies, and soon enough the ship settled softly down onto steaming, new-baked earth. Lewis checked the sensors carefully, but though there was a lot of restless movement in the trees at the edge of the new clearing, nothing ventured out into the open.
    "I'm getting multiple life-readings in every direction," Oz said conversationally.