Green Lantern - Sleepers Book 2 Read online

  By Christopher J. Priest and Michael Ahn

  Original Green Lantern character created by Martin Nodell

  J

  ibooks, inc. new york www.ibooks.net

  DISTRIBUTED BY SIMON £t SCHUSTER, INC.

  CHAPTER

  1

  T

  he Palace at Whitehall, London, 1630 “Your Highness, I beg you to reconsider... ”

  Surrounded by courtiers and servants, the most powerful man in the world languished on his throne in the heart of the great hall. His skin chalky white, he appeared as thin, weak and emaciated as a South London urchin. The king of England wore a bland, neutral expression on his gaunt face as Lord Wolverton kneeled before him, eyes beseeching.

  Stroking his long, sparse goatee, King Charles appeared to be deep in thought. He opened his mouth as if to respond to Wolver-ton’s entreaty, but instead let loose with a vicious, wet sneeze. His servants were quick to aid the sickly king with handkerchiefs and poultice but he quickly waved them away, and turned to address another lord begging his attention. This was the young king’s manner of telling Lord Wolverton that his position on the matter would not be altered.

  Lord Wolverton was fleshy and damp with perspiration, his eyes

  flicking about, his mind racing for the right words to speak. Although he was not terribly old, his responsibilities as an aristocrat in Charles’ court had aged him beyond his years. In fact, no one near the king seemed to have the blessing of good health. This included the monarch himself. Charles appeared to be physically and mentally weak, with a blandness about him that made him appear to always be suffering from some ailment. Wolverton suspected that it was a ploy to avoid direct discourse, or more likely a tactic to hide his perpetual stammer. But worst of all was Charles’ vanity and absolute belief in his being infused with the will of God. This was his rationale for tyranny.

  The king of England, with great arrogance and with a simple, slowly spoken utterance, had just set into motion the violent, premature deaths of thousands of his subjects. Doing this behind a sneeze and a ruffled silk kerchief infuriated Wolverton.

  What the king had said was, “Wolverton, I put it upon you to end the treachery and insurrection by the blasphemous Scots. You will proceed in the manner as was employed on the continent.”

  The second sentence was in reference to Charles’ earlier folly, sending armies to aid the Protestant rebels in France. Of course this aid was a thinly veiled bid to gain a portion of Europe as part of his kingdom. It was on French soil that Wolverton had developed his talent for warfare without mercy: he had seen that his men killed the wounded, prisoners, innocents, even livestock—all in a bid to terrify the population. Charles was delighted by the results and privately rewarded Wolverton with his own army, an abundance of gold to arm them, and land to garrison and train them. He became

  a fearsomely useful motivator for Charles and was well rewarded for his dedicated service as the king’s most brutal enforcer.

  But Charles’ command to Wolverton to exert the same will on his homeland, on his own kind—to build an army to put down the treasonous Scots rebelling in the north-filled Wolverton with trepidation. He feared that more bloodshed would only deepen the rift between the king and Parliament, creating a greater risk of civil war. And if the king were to be defeated, Wolverton would surely be destroyed as well. This made him less than eager to follow through with Charles’ wish to annihilate those who would be loyal to Parliament.

  Wolverton had rationalized his brutal action on the continent by considering his foes less than human. To kill a Huguenot or Spaniard was nothing more or less than slaying a vicious cur: Wolverton even came to enjoy the act. During those lost wars, brutality was his sport and he was champion. But Wolverton was not sure he had the stomach to unleash such carnage on his own people.

  “But your grace... I’m unsure that my men will be ready... some may balk at the action... ” Wolverton said.

  Charles was now staring directly up, as if in supplication. Like aping fools, the courtiers in waiting followed the king’s gaze upward. But he was not praying; instead he was staring at the paintings upon the ceiling he had commissioned from Rubens. Charles smiled beatifically, enjoying the massive depiction of his father in the light of glory bestowed by God, a ruler by divine right.

  Wolverton had seen it many times and he did not bother to look again. He was sick of it, just as he was sick of this great chamber and this king. Yet he was too weak in spirit to resist the king’s will, which made his self-loathing deep and molten. He thought to himself how men who were stamped with petty cruelty quickly become the stuff of their tormentors. He could feel himself blushing as he stood awaiting some further response from the king.

  King Charles finally brought his eyes down to stare sleepily at Wolverton through hooded lids, a slight sneer smeared across his face. He spoke slowly, as if congested and sleepy. “Is your continued presence before me one of contrariness, Wolverton?”

  The pale, sweating aristocrat struggled to alter his expression from exasperation to smiling indulgence. He needed to be careful. King Charles was especially sensitive to being patronized and many a courtier had lost his head through thinly disguised disagreement with the king’s wishes. To move freely within the walls of Whitehall, one had to be an actor of Burbage’s caliber, and Wolverton burned at being reduced to this idiotic, deceitful charade of manners, like a lowly player at Stratford-Upon-Avon.

  “Certainly not, your Highness. I am and always will be your humble servant.”

  “I’ve given you land, money, and the authority to build my army. If you cannot carry out the wishes of God and king, there are many commanders that would have your place.” Charles said this slowly, his struggle to deliver the words without a stutter also giving them a menacing emphasis. The courtiers—Wolverton’s peers—looked on, enjoying Wolverton’s discomfort at the hands of the king.

  “I understand, your Highness. By the grace of God, I will destroy the traitors.”

  “God and I expect nothing less, Wolverton.”

  His face flushed with humiliation, Wolverton bade the king farewell with a flourishing bow and backed away. Charles simply ignored him and lent his ear to the concerned whisperings of the archbishop, sure and eager to hatch yet another conspiracy.

  Once he was clear of the king’s hall, Wolverton stormed heavily through the corridors to his waiting horse, his heavy bootsteps echoing through the ornately decorated palace rooms. It sickened Wolverton that he was compelled to do the king’s bidding, for the benefit of England, and to put up a good face doing so.

  If the king’s subjects knew the true extent of their leader’s weakness in mind and body, the kingdom would be fraught with rebellion. Wolverton cursed himself for tying his future and the future of his heirs inexorably to this shallow, weak-minded shell of a being he was obliged to call “Highness.”

  Wolverton slammed open the studded doors, startling the members of his party. He had made up his mind to follow the king’s orders. If men die for a ruler’s arrogance, so be it. He himself could not and never would be king. Truly, he would be lucky to keep his head and his land. Yes, damn it, so be it: If he was to maintain his power and his fortune, he would destroy the Scottish rebels with terrible force. If the king wanted a rebellion quelled, Wolverton would leave no man, woman or child in the path of this goal unharmed. He would be fury incarnate: vengeance by divine right.

  The ride home, north through the low empty hills and bone-chilling forests, was exhausting and fraught with peril. Yet Wolverton rode with reckless speed, with no regard for his mount or his men, who struggled to keep pace. Wolverton had an army to raise and little time to do so.

&n
bsp; After hours of relentless riding, the young lord was relieved to see the warm glowing lights of his manor through the heavy forest fog.

  His immediate desire at this time of night was to pull off his boots and sit before the fire, drinking something warm and intoxicating.

  And more than anything, he wanted to see Marie, smell the oily richness of her dark hair and taste her salty skin.

  She was one of the few whose lives he had spared during the bloody siege at La Rochelle. Her family murdered by his men, herself almost dead from famine, Wolverton stopped his yeomen from cutting her throat and swept her up onto his horse. She became his trophy, and he brought his prize back to England.

  A captive in a strange land, the young girl knew that she lived only by Wolverton’s whim, and he took great pleasure in her knowledge of this. There had been several before her, and she knew she would not be the last. Alone with Marie, he could unleash the world’s torment, exorcising the demons of his everlastingly damned soul.

  The young chambermaid heard the trampling of his horse’s hooves on the pebbled carriageway and trembled in loathing and misery. Lord Wolverton would insist on her attending him in his chambers.

  Her English was not good, but she understood enough to have gleaned through overheard conversations that his subjects hated him and he was despised by the officers of his regiment. Of course, like so many who wield power sloppily, he had no idea that he was perceived as a sadistic instrument to a pompous, tyrannical king.

  She also found him repulsive in the most base, innate ways. His chin was weak, his flesh soft, yet he was nevertheless strong enough to hurt her until she was numb from pain and despair. To be alone with him was a living nightmare.

  As his prisoner, she had no illusion of her place in this world. She was property to be enjoyed at Wolverton’s whim until either she became pregnant or he grew bored of her. Either circumstance would be the cause of her death and her replacement by a fresh, new innocent.

  One of those circumstances had become reality. She touched her belly, knowing that a child grew within her, sealing her fate. But she did have an option, and while it had not been open to her before, her tolerance for Wolverton’s tastes was diminishing, and the viability of exercising it began to gain prominence in her thoughts.

  Hurrying to light the lamps along the tapestry-lined hallway leading to the lord’s chamber, the young maid shivered with dread as she heard the oaken door slam open, followed by the clatter of boot heels and the heavy rustling of leather riding coats. The young lord’s sharp shouts told Marie that things had not gone well on his journey. And experience taught her that he would be especially harsh on her tonight.

  Worse, were he to discover that she was with child.

  She heard the lord’s shouts of displeasure at a poor stable boy and Marie trembled at the echoes of Wolverton’s coarse words and the awful snap of his leather riding crop flaying the lad’s skin.

  The flame trembled as she lit the candle. Then it went out. She took this as an omen.

  She knew she could not take another night with him. The open window beckoned.

  The dark and wet of the rain-soaked countryside was a comfort to Marie. She had been raised in the woods and its mysteries held no fear for her.

  At first she tramped through the forest aimlessly, shivering and soaked, until the spitting rain let up and she was drawn to a deep, rushing roar.

  The sleeves of her bodice tore on unseen thorns as she stumbled toward the sound of her salvation. Finally she broke through the bramble to the silveiy sheen of a small river, its banks engorged by the runoff from the storm. She dipped her hands into the fierce current and brought a handful of the icy water to her mouth to drink. The water began somewhere in the high moors and emptied a mile downstream into a larger river before making its way to the sea.

  And somewhere across that sea was her homeland. The memories of the ocean’s vastness, the magnificence of its dominion captivated her mind. She remembered walking along its shores as a child, daydreaming, watching the fishermen unload their bounty, the breakers of the low tide rolling gently onto the long stretch of beach. The ocean had always called to her.

  And now, little more than a child, she was determined to see it finally and forever.

  She could hear dogs and shouts behind her. Wolverton had wasted no time in sending his men to hunt her down.

  She stared into the dark, flowing water. Then she waded in, gasping at it coldness. As she lifted off the bottom muck, the current tore her slippers from her feet. She could feel the silky softness of the sand and mud beneath her toes, the smoothness of pebbles.

  No more Wolverton. No more fear.

  Marie moved in up to her waist, the skirt billowing like a cloud drowning in the moonlit torrent. The rushing water was louder now, fiercer. She became afraid. She wanted death, but not dying.

  Then she heard the barking of the dogs. More steps, then suddenly deeper, to her breasts, armpits, over her shoulders, the current pulling at her at first playfully, then relentlessly, cruelly and mindlessly, like Wolverton.

  Then she was under water, the river taking her, spinning her, tumbling, hurling.

  She struggled at first, fighting for air only to breathe in water and choke on it, struggling like an animal, arms and legs flailing, then spinning, surrendering and opening her eyes. It was so dark, terrifying and strange, and all she felt now was sadness and the pity of having lived without joy. Sadness at the loss of her child.

  The last thing she saw before consciousness left was green. Glowing green.

  Marie awakened to neither heaven nor hell, only a mighty roar.

  She felt no joy at being alive. She felt nothing at all. This must be purgatoiy, she told herself, and why not? It was against God’s will to waste life.

  She sat up to sand beneath her hands. She looked around in the pre-dawn light and saw that there was miles of it. And before her, mighty and powerful, benign yet capable of such unimaginable power, lay the ocean. She touched her hair-it was wet. Her lips were salty. How had she come this far? How had she survived?

  The roar that awakened her was coming from the sky—a meteor was flaming through the sky in a arc of green light and flame. It fell from the heavens and crashed into the ocean, a mighty plume of water rising from the surface of the sea.

  Marie was in awe of the immense force of the water rising from the surface of the ocean, then falling back heavily onto itself. Where the object had impacted, the water churned as if boiling, the foam effervescent and spreading.

  Then she saw a green light in the roaring surf. Something was coming out of the water. In the half-light of the dawn, the glow swung to and fro, and she was mesmerized by its approach. It came closer to her and only when it was a few feet away could she see that it was attached to the ring of a man. And she saw that the man was not ordinary. He was twice the size of a normal man, his skin a pale blue with muscles rippling and eyes alive with an intellect that was neither of this world nor this time. His garments were ripped, his face freshly scarred.

  This monster/demon stood over her, his chest heaving from the effort of emerging from the sea.

  Then he bent down to her.

  Marie fell back in the sand, terrified. She neither screamed nor fought. She was beyond survival. She simply awaited her fate.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Wolverton Manor, East Yorkshire, 1648 Lord Wolverton held the parchment in his trembling hands, and did not notice when it fell to the granite floor. Two decades of war against the Scots had taken its toll on the commander, and now that full-blown civil war was being lost to the Scots and parliamentarians; Wolverton’s worst fears were being realized. The writing on the parchment was the summation of those fears.

  None of his officers bothered to pick it up, nor did they make eye contact or offer any interest in the old man’s tearful reaction to the message. Gossip had preceded the news and they were all delighted. After years of bloody civil war waged with gusto by Wolverton
, the king was sentencing Wolverton to be executed for some trivial slight. Of course, this was an appeasement, face-saving by King Charles to the Roundheads loyal to the Parliament that was now defeating him.

  In exchange for peace, he would give the Roundheads the butcher

  of their kinsmen and families. The man who had led campaign after bloody campaign against men, women and children for year after tortuous year of civil war. Wolverton had served King Charles impressively. The lord had exceeded his expectations for waging a totally savage campaign, to the point where his enemies despised Wolverton even more than the king himself. How fortunate that Charles had Wolverton’s head to offer up to the Puritans.

  Wolverton’s mind was reeling. After decades of good and faithful service to the king, fighting the war as if it were his own cause, his life was tossed away as a chit in a political bargain. He wept bitterly at the irony of this. He wanted desperately to believe that there had been some kind of misunderstanding. But none of his officers would offer support in any way.

  However, one young cavalier was as unhappy about the news as was Wolverton, perhaps even more. He stepped forward and picked up the parchment.

  The lord stared at the young, battle-hardened officer before him. The man was of massive proportions, with dark hair that flowed to his shoulders and a fierce brow over black eyes. Everything about the man radiated brute strength, as if the wool and brass of the uniform could barely contain his power.

  The officer handed the parchment to his lord, bowing deeply as he did.

  “You have my sympathies, my lord,” said the black-maned soldier.

  Wolverton cast a cold eye on the speaker. “Who the devil are you?”

  “One, my lord,” he said, “who has long had the honor of serving in your army.”

  “From where do you hail?”

  “Why, from here, sir.”

  “Here?”

  “This region. I am an orphan from the shores, from a nearby fishing village.”

  “Let me have a look at you,” Wolverton ordered. “You’re as big a bull ox.”