The Indigo King by James A. Owen Page A

compromised myself greatly to do so. I’ve made many more compromises since, all to make certain that we would be here, tonight, to have this very conversation. So were my actions virtuous, or shameful?”
    “That,” an icy voice said from just outside the door, “depends entirely on one’s point of view.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Noble’s Isle

    All of them save for Uncas and Fred recognized the voice immediately.
    “May I come in?” it said, in a tone that made it sound more like a statement than a query.
    Bert sighed heavily. “Enter freely and of your own will, Mordred.”
    The door opened, and silhouetted against the rising sun they saw the imposing figure of the man they had known as the Winter King. The man they had caused to be killed. The man who, more than once, had tried to kill them . And their most trusted ally had just invited him into his house.
    Mordred was not significantly different from when they had seen him in their own world. He seemed perhaps more aged, more weathered here. He was stouter, and slightly round-shouldered, but his arms were corded with muscle, and his hair cascaded down his back in a mane. He was dressed in royal colors and had the bearing and manner of a king.
    He was in appearance, John realized with a shock, everything one would expect a king to look like, to emanate. And he suddenly understood how a man could be a tyrant and still rule: It was a question of the ability to command, to draw respect, even in the wake of evil acts.
    Immediately John and Jack took defensive stances in front of Bert and the badgers, but Mordred ignored them, leaning casually against the door frame and addressing Bert.
    “My old friend, the Far Traveler,” the king said. “We meet again.”
    Bert glared at him. “Nothing going on here concerns you, Mordred,” he said, gripping the staff so tightly his knuckles turned white. “You needn’t have come.”
    “Oh, but everything in my kingdom concerns me, Bert ,” Mordred replied. John and Jack, still facing their enemy, didn’t notice the blood drain from Bert’s face at the mention of his name. “The citizens who walk my streets, as well as the Children of the Earth who live beneath them.”
    This last he said to Uncas and Fred, who both hissed at him in reply. They did not need to have seen him before in the flesh to realize they were facing the greatest adversary of legend, whom Tummeler had told them about.
    For his part, Bert simply slumped in the chair, his chin resting on his chest. He seemed already defeated in a game where the stakes had not even been named. “Why are you here, Mordred?”
    “Why?” Mordred replied in mock surprise. “I have simply come to meet the two new friends I have waited to meet for so very, very long.”
    Waited to meet? John thought. Had Bert given them up as well? John looked at his mentor, but the old man simply continued staring at the king.
    “That’s very bold, to come here alone,” Jack said to Mordred, taking the lead in the game being played out in the shack. “Maybe you don’t have any memory of it, but we have all clashed before and seen you bested in battle.”
    “Is that so?” Mordred purred condescendingly. “What battles were these?”
    “I beat you on the ocean, with a ship called the Yellow Dragon in the Archipelago of Dreams, and he,” Jack said, gesturing at John, “beat you in a swordfight.”
    Technically, everything Jack said was true—although there had been luck and allies aiding him in the sea battle, and John had not precisely won the swordfight. Either way, the bravado didn’t faze the king.
    “I think not,” Mordred said, smiling. “At any rate, the loss of a battle is not the loss of a war—or its victory, either.”
    “You’ve certainly learned a few things,” John said. “There’s no disputing that. It’s a shame it didn’t make you a better ruler.”
    “Whether I am a better ruler than others might have been is not for you to judge. There is only one man