Heaven's Gate by Toby Bennett Read Free Book Online

took the older Necromancers more easily than any frailty of the flesh and Rugan had seen something of that mania in the Captain’s eyes. Indeed, the fact that he was prepared to use such a tool, made Rugan even more inclined to self-examination. He looks back critically at the mirror, looking for some crack in his mask, some sign of the inevitable disintegration. No, he was not mad but he was old and growing desperate! Extreme action was required if he was to finish what he had started. The necessity for such action was disturbing but still logical, he assures himself as he gathers his robes and prepares himself to go to the waiting General. In the final analysis he was beyond human moralities, almost any price was better than the idea of the Strigoi gaining what they had sought since men first became trapped in the Bowl. Next to that the deaths of Blake or Lillian Carter were sins too small to concern himself with; or was that the start of madness? The disassociation that allowed any number of terrible actions?   Rugan had lived a long time but he had a growing suspicion that he had been arrogant to think that he could pit his experience against the ageless evil of his undead enemies.
     
    Before entering the chapel, the priest pauses and surreptitiously slides back a thin panel, which allows him a glimpse into the chamber beyond. As Rugan had expected, Angus has not wasted his time simply waiting for his confessor to come, the General is on his knees, hunched before the carving of the Christ man, in supplication. Rugan can never help a flush of pride when he sees his chapel. Only in Island City with the clear waters of the Blue Snake to nurture the trees could so much wood be found. A fortune in amber varnished wood gleamed in the light of countless candles. No doubt, in their own places in the desert, dwellers like Mordiki felt that their brethren had nothing to lose by acting precipitously but Rugan knew well how far he had come, he would no more willingly lose this chapel to open war than he would the man who kneeled penitent within it. Not to the blood drinkers and not to the political vampires that served them.
    “Angus,” the priest greets his old protégée as he enters, “I have missed seeing you at prayer.”
    Leedon’s shoulders, already hunched, seem to tense still further.
    “Yet I assure you that I have not missed a call to dedications, Father.”
    “Oh I am sure of it, my son but having built me this sumptuous chapel, it is unfortunate that it is so rarely that you share it with me.” Rugan extends a hand to forestall Leedon’s protest. “Don’t worry, I know, affairs of State. I understand, even if it is disappointing for an old man. It is not as it was in the beginning, we must be respectable now.”
    “We have always been respectable,” the General responds, the iron in his voice warning Rugan not to take his familiarity too far.
    “Indeed, indeed, but the barons did not always think so! I was merely wondering what had torn you away from them for the moment and brought you back to me?”
    Not as politic as I should have been, Rugan admonishes himself even as the words leave his lips, but damn it, the boy had to be reminded. The barons had not made him a leader willingly, merely ratified his position, when they had been given no choice.
     
    Anger then acceptance war on Angus’s face.
    “No, you do right to admonish me.” He says at last.
    Rugan does not dare hope that the boy has regained some of his honesty, indeed it said something of how far those political animals have twisted him that he was so easily able to master his emotions and present the face he knows his old councilor would want to see most. Rugan was a master of this himself and he recognized it easily in others.
     
    “No I understand, our position is still not certain and with the wedding so imminent…” Rugan reassures, him taking his place in their game easily and with practiced innocence. He notes the veiled emotions