Ruler of Naught Read Online Free PDF

prematurely aged infant with his head bald as an egg, his complexion
an ugly mix of gray and mottled red under the normal brown.
    “Why does he have cuts all over his head? Did you shave
him?”
    “No. The Dol’jharians did. They had him wired up to a
torture machine. Mindripper. Brandon slagged it,” Montrose added with morose
satisfaction.
    At least Brandon had that much sense , Osri thought.
    Montrose closed the berth door. “From what the gnostor was
muttering before I put him under, the Dol’jharians were trying to find out
where that silver sphere was. It is apparently a key to their military effort.”
    “The Heart of Kronos,” Osri corrected automatically. His
father had been so excited over the Urian artifact showing up at his home via
ParcelNet delivery, scarce hours before the planet was attacked.
    By Rifters .
    “The attack on Charvann seems to have had at its goal the
acquisition of the Heart of Kronos,” Montrose said, those massive brows now
lifted interrogatively.
    “That’s impossible,” Osri retorted.
    But why not? He would have thought it impossible that anyone
would attack Charvann, which had no military importance, and scarcely any
political presence in the Tetrad Centrum—the central Panarchic planets. It was
too far away from the Mandala, and its famous university was hardly a center of
the kind of power Dol’jharians, or Rifters, were concerned with.
    Yet the attack had happened. A brutal attack, apparently;
Brandon had mentioned that the Archon Tanri Faseult, a family friend all Osri’s
life, had died in it.
    Osri shook his head. “I don’t understand. The Heart of
Kronos is an Urian artifact, but what would Rifters want with it? They couldn’t
sell it anywhere, it’s one of a kind. The planet it was stolen from—and it only
could have been stolen—has been proscribed for a very long time. Merely having
possession of that thing would be a high crime, possibly treason.”
    “Under your former government,” Montrose said, looking amused.
“It’s wanted by no less than Jerrode Eusabian, the Dol’jharian war leader who
calls himself Avatar, or Lord of Vengeance. Maybe both.” Montrose lifted a
massive shoulder. “However unlikely this man’s string of titles, he’s managed
to smash the Panarchy pretty thoroughly, and he was having your father
brutalized in some kind of torture machine in order to discover the Heart of
Kronos’s whereabouts. We can assume that the ferocity of this hunt is not going
to abate.”
    “Why?” Osri asked. “What’s it for? What does it do? There
were no controls on it, nothing whatsoever, just the unbroken surface. And the
fact that it is inertialess.”
    “That information seems to be a mystery to all concerned.”
Montrose tipped his head toward the berth. “Let the gnostor sleep. You will see
him when he wakens, I promise you that. When his heart has stabilized to my
satisfaction, you may bring him his first breakfast.” Montrose frowned. “I
suggest you get some rest yourself. It’s been a very long day for us all.”
    Osri was going to protest, but a violent yawn seized his
jaw, nearly unhinging it. He turned away.
    Back in the cabin he was required to share with Brandon, he
discovered the Krysarch—no, the Aerenarch —asleep. Osri took a fast
shower, and feeling incrementally better, hitched himself into the upper bunk,
where at least he didn’t have to see anyone, and the Rifters had fitted sound
baffles into the bulkhead, so he didn’t have to hear Brandon’s breathing. He
tabbed the air flow to max to simulate a breeze from an open window, a
revealing Downsider habit that his Highdweller bunkmates had teased him for
during his naval academy days, and though his mind was still reeling
frantically from question to question, sleep took him within seconds.
    o0o
    “They’re all asleep,” Montrose said.
    “As I would like to be,” Lokri murmured, his gray eyes
half-closed, his whisper venomous.
    Montrose shook his head, hiding