Of Fire and Night (13 page)

29

MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA’H

A
fter sending Osira’h away, Jora’h walked a curving path high in the skysphere dome, searching for a moment of tranquillity. Colored light shone through the faceted panes, and misters kept the air moist. Servant kithmen had polished the walkway, and agricultural kithmen tended the skysphere’s flora and fauna. Hanging vines and sweet flowers filled the huge terrarium; flying insects and feathered creatures darted about in flashes of vibrant red, green, blue.

The Mage-Imperator absorbed the soothing ambiance, but it could not counteract the ominous knowledge of the impending war. All around him, he felt the thrumming presence of his people. The Prism Palace was like a magnification lens, concentrating all of their faith and confidence in him. Jora’h could barely stand under the weight of it.

He recalled a stanza from the
Saga of Seven Suns,
words he had always found disturbing: “There will come a time of fire and night, when enemies rise and empires fall, when the stars themselves begin to die.”

That time is already here. And I have helped bring it about.

His people did not understand the potential cost of his agreement with the hydrogues, but because he was their Mage-Imperator, they would not question it. They would do anything he asked, blindly follow their leader’s instructions—and somehow that made the situation even worse. How could he explain and justify his actions?

Here inside the lush gardens he found the chunks of worldtree wood he had purchased from Roamer traders months ago. He had placed the fragments here to remind him of Nira. At least Osira’h will soon be with her mother . . .

Yazra’h trotted toward him along the pathway from the opposite side of the skysphere. Her mane of coppery hair flowed behind her as she ran, eyes intent on her father. Even before she came to a stop, she had touched her right fist to the center of her chest, giving him a formal salute. “Liege, the Roamer trader Denn Peroni has just landed on Ildira.” Yazra’h gave a wolfish grin. “He says he wishes to sell us a full cargo of ekti.”

Jora’h was surprised. With the Hyrillka insurrection, the dying sun of Durris-B, and the hydrogue ultimatum, he’d forgotten the Roamers’ request to reopen trade with the Ildiran Empire. “We certainly need it.” He frowned. “But be careful. Make sure he learns nothing about our dealings with the hydrogues.” If Denn Peroni suspected a secret alliance, then Jora’h would be forced to capture the man’s ship and hold him prisoner, just like the other humans being held in the Prism Palace. “Keep Sullivan Gold and his skyminers out of sight, as well as your friend Anton Colicos. I don’t want this Roamer to catch a glimpse of them. Their presence would raise far too many questions.”

Jora’h resented that he had to imprison the humans. Sullivan Gold and his crew were heroes who had rescued Ildiran skyminers from a hydrogue attack; and the scholar Anton Colicos had survived a Klikiss robot massacre and saved Rememberer Vao’sh. By the rules of honor, those men and women should have been rewarded. Instead, since they had seen the warglobes, Jora’h had no choice but to keep them under guard. He feared he would never be able to let them go.

He despised being trapped like this!

“Yes, Liege. I will make the arrangements. The trader is already on his way.” She bowed, then ran off, colored light dappling her smooth skin. Jora’h began to make his way back down to the dais and his duties.

In an attempt to show respect, the Roamer man dropped to one knee before the chrysalis chair, then looked up with an infectious smile. His long brown hair was tied in a ribbon, and he wore a fine outfit embellished with clan markings. He seemed very pleased with himself.

“This ekti comes from a cometary processing facility, where we strip out the hydrogen and convert it to stardrive fuel. It’s a difficult and costly process, Your Majesty.” He shrugged. “The hydrogues haven’t left us many alternatives.”

Ever since the beginning of the hydrogue war eight years ago, the production of stardrive fuel had dwindled to a trickle, and the Empire’s vast stockpiles were now severely diminished. “We will pay your price,” Jora’h said. Humans worried overmuch about rising and falling expenditures, trying to trick their commercial partners into greater or lesser payments. Ildirans, on the other hand, operated as aligned pieces in a large, interconnected network.

Peroni grinned. “I have some good news for you, though. The Roamer clans are skymining again! We found at least one gas giant cleared of the hydrogues. There’ll be plenty more ekti to come. This could be the start of a long and profitable partnership between humans and Ildirans. I’m sure of it.”

“We thank you for your trust.” Jora’h’s heart felt cold and heavy inside his chest. Yet the hydrogues intended to exterminate
all
humans . . . and the Ildirans just might be forced to help them do it.

30

SULLIVAN GOLD

T
he Hansa skyminers hated being held hostage inside the Prism Palace. Tabitha Huck slumped onto a bench, scowled at the guarded door of their spacious chambers. “A damned odd way to say thank you.” She glared at the muscular guard woman who prowled the corridors with her vicious-looking panther pets. “You do a good deed and just look what happens.”

Sullivan took a seat beside her. When the hydrogues attacked Qronha 3, the Hansa workers had been ready to evacuate, but the Ildirans had no way to escape. After a wrenching decision, Sullivan had ordered his crew to save the doomed Ildirans, at great risk to themselves. “We couldn’t just leave them all to die, Tabitha.”

“Maybe we should have! We lost one of our own escape modules while the drogues were attacking, and now we’re stuck here. If we’d evacuated while the warglobes were busy destroying the Ildiran facility, we’d be home right now.”

Sullivan put a paternal hand on her arm. “But would you be able to sleep at night?”

Tabitha looked sideways at him. “I’m willing to take tranquilizers.”

Sullivan watched the silhouette of Yazra’h pacing in the hall. The lean guard looked in on them and scanned their forlorn faces. “Stay here until we release you again. You are not to leave these rooms for the next two hours.”

“Why? What’s changed?” Sullivan barged toward the door. “What did we do wrong?”

“It is not my place to explain.”

“Our loved ones need to know we’re all right,” he pleaded. “Can you at least provide a treeling for my green priest, so we can send a message? Tell our families we’re still
alive
. Please, it would mean so much to him. To all of us.”

Kolker was the most desperately affected member of his crew. The green priest had always been loquacious, talking endlessly through his treeling with his comrades across the Spiral Arm. But Kolker had lost his treeling during the destruction of the cloud harvester and now was utterly cut off from his beloved telink. He was more than just lonely, more than sad. He was like an addict forced to endure a prolonged withdrawal. And it was all so unnecessary! Why was the Mage-Imperator doing this to them?

“I have other duties.” With an abrupt dismissal, Yazra’h stepped away from the door and closed it behind her.

Tabitha scowled as the guard woman departed. “The Ildirans wouldn’t be doing this unless they had something to hide.” She shook her head, her forehead furrowed with unanswered questions. “I tell you, something smells fishy—and it isn’t caviar. What were all those warglobes doing over the Prism Palace? As soon as we saw that, we got sent to our rooms.”

Sullivan went to the green priest and touched his bare shoulder in sympathy. Deeply depressed, Kolker sat silently by himself. Although his skin was a bright and healthy emerald green from the abundant sunlight, he needed contact with the worldtrees.

Kolker raised his heavy head, as if he sensed something unexpected. His expression showed a glimmer of surprise, even a faint shadow of optimism—and it had nothing to do with what Tabitha or Sullivan had said. “I thought it was just a desperate hope, but it’s not my imagination! I know that now. There really is something here.” The green priest looked directly at Sullivan. “There is a treeling in the Prism Palace—and I will find it.”

31

ANTON COLICOS

C
ome with me to the Hall of Rememberers,” said Vao’sh. “You have never seen the sanctuary and headquarters for my kith, where all stories begin and end. I have not been there since I awakened from my nightmares.”

Anton brightened. “I’d love to! And not just because it’ll get me out of the Prism Palace for a change.”

Ever since the warglobes had come and gone, the Ildirans were panicky and suspicious. With good reason, he supposed . . . but why restrict
his
movements? Anton got the impression that he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to, and now his hosts watched him more closely than ever. What could a skinny and preoccupied scholar do against the Ildiran Empire? Anton finally asked the question. “Why won’t anyone tell me the reason I can’t go home? I’d really like to know.”

Vao’sh frowned. “You have not accomplished your purpose in coming here, Rememberer Anton. Are you anxious to leave?”

“I’m not anxious, but it makes me uneasy. My father was killed at an archaeology dig years ago, and my mother is still missing. I’m so out of touch. What if there’s news? I just don’t like being kept in the dark.”

Vao’sh rocked backward. “In the
dark
? We would never do that to you!”

Anton placed a reassuring hand on his friend’s forearm. “It was just a figure of speech. Don’t worry.” He saw he wasn’t going to get an answer.

Moving briskly, the rememberer led him down a long hall and out through the arched side entrance of the Prism Palace. A winding path descended the elliptical hill to the extensive city. The view was so breathtaking that he barely noticed the pair of silent and muscular guard kithmen accompanying them.

“Will Yazra’h come with us?”

“I believe the Mage-Imperator has currently assigned her to other duties.”

Anton felt disappointment mixed with a small measure of relief. The intimidating woman had been his diligent guardian since he’d returned from Maratha with a catatonic Vao’sh. She didn’t seem like the type, but Anton knew that she enjoyed his stories. He awkwardly suspected that Yazra’h wanted something more from him.

One of the most impressive buildings in Mijistra was a storehouse of records for the kith responsible for writing, memorizing, and preserving the
Saga
. Vao’sh hurried up the polished stone stairs, obviously excited. The two guards took up their positions outside the huge hall and waited. Anton barely spared them a glance. Where in the world did they think he might go?

He entered, thinking of all the university lecture halls he had haunted before he’d been invited to study the
Saga of Seven Suns
. This was quite different from anything he had seen before.

Row after row of sequential wall panels formed a labyrinth, each segment delicately engraved with long lines of precise letters. The wall sections were giant diamondfilm sheets etched with the approved stanzas of the
Saga,
line after line after line. Just inside the doorway, a group of rememberer children, their faces showing prominent lobes, stood rapt before the writing-covered walls. The children stared at the stanzas and mumbled to themselves, repeating what they read, over and over until they had burned each word into their brains.

“They learn the
Saga
from beginning to end,” Vao’sh explained. “A rememberer will spend half of his life absorbing all the stanzas until he can recite it without error. The story must be told without a single change.”

Anton gave a wry smile. “I hate writers who keep editing even after a story is finished.” As he and Vao’sh continued past scrollwork pillars and mirrored fountains, rememberers stood before each of the text-covered wall panels, memorizing and reciting. “They’re getting older from one segment to the next.”

“The youngest rememberers begin their training just inside the entrance. Once they perfect the first segment of the
Saga,
they move to the next plate on the wall, progressing year by year until they have absorbed the whole epic.”

Anton laughed. “And I thought Earthbound academia was tedious!”

At the core of the Hall of Rememberers, scribes quietly and intensely discussed their work, crowded around tables. Middle-aged storytellers pored over stacks of records. Working together with a single goal, they compiled and critiqued one sheet after another, adding new lines to the never-ending
Saga
.

The ceiling swept upward in a gigantic chimney above a huge brazier that burned with bright flames. Discarded sheets were cast into the hot fire, destroying unacceptable drafts. Once each line was finished, discussed, and approved, then—and only then—was it scribed in permanent diamondfilm that would eventually be mounted onto the walls within the Hall of Rememberers.

“The accurate recording of events is as important as the events themselves.” The lobes on Vao’sh’s face flushed a chameleon palette of colors. “A society that does not remember is not worth remembering. It is a core Ildiran belief.”

Although human epics were often embellished myths that served a purpose beyond the mere chronicling of facts, Ildirans took every mark of recorded history literally. Only Vao’sh’s kith—and presumably the Mage-Imperator—knew that the legends of the Shana Rei were false, made up to add drama and conflict to the
Saga
. But if the Shana Rei were fictional, then might not other parts of the
Saga of Seven Suns
be suspect?

As he watched the rememberer kithmen scribbling and discarding draft stanzas, Anton realized that “history” was literally being made before his eyes. An apprentice threw another sheaf into the brazier, where the flames consumed more unacceptable lines.

Vao’sh walked from one table to the next. “Right now, my comrades are writing the story of Adar Kori’nh, from his evacuation of Crenna after the blindness plague, through his struggles against the hydrogues, to the final battle in the clouds of Qronha 3.”

“Your Adar Kori’nh certainly earned his place in the
Saga
.”

Vao’sh smiled. “Within months, rememberers will discuss the inclusion of
our
long trek across Maratha and our battles with the Klikiss robots.”

Anton gasped. “I came to study your history, not make a mark on it. You mean I . . .
we
—”

“You are no longer a mere observer of historical epics, Rememberer Anton. You will soon become part of one.”