The Hermetic Millennia

by John C. Wright

  Illiance asked, “How does this happen to fall into the realm of interest of an historian?”

  Menelaus said, “Simple enough. What gets passed between generations can be analyzed as transmission of information. Simple dramatic narratives are easier to recall than messy historical facts. Flattering narratives are even easier, so founders tend to turn into demigods. Simpler rules are also easier than complex ones, so stagnant societies tend to turn into parodies of themselves. When the transmission of social norms and mores is hindered or halted, the society starts to die. My particular field of interest is studying the symptoms of cultural decline in dying societies.”

  Illiance tilted his head as if puzzled and said, “We are indeed fortunate—abnormally so—that someone with your qualifications should happen to have been unearthed from the Tombs. Your studies will find particular application in our project.”

  Menelaus said, “Which is what, again, exactly?”

  Ull said, “We are seeking the source of a legend.”

  Menelaus said, “What legend?”

  To answer, Ull handed him a sheet of silk on which characters in the Iatrocrat language were printed. It was not smart material: the letters did not form or change under his fingers.

  It was a fragment.

  6. He Who Waits

  … Giants walked the Earth in those days, and destroyed the Antecpyrotic World in storms of fire. Only one righteous man, with his wife and sons and their wives, was spared, for benevolent posthumans carried him in a flying ship, and a complete DNA library of all fauna and flora, into the cool air above the midst of the sea, where the flames did not reach.

  In the farthest times they said his name was Satyavrate, and in the times not so far, they said Deucalion whose wife was Phyrra, but in the true world, is remembered that the survivors of the burned Earth were called Simon and Glinda, who were brother and sister, king and queen, man and wife, warlock and witch. These wed each other in incest, and brought forth the race of the long-lived ones, or Longevitalists.

  The astrologers of the Longevitalists contemplated eternity, and read the fate of man in the stars; and they learned our world to be no more than a bauble, like a semiprecious stone meant for the smallest finger of a great lady, but held to be of low account by her, owned by star-monstrosities of unlimited mind from beyond Aldebaran, destined to come after an immensity of time has passed, at the End of Days. Learning these things, the weight of these infinities smothered their souls, and so they became Witches.

  The Witches were starved for length of life, and never fully achieved it, for they flinched away from the Dark Knowledge.

  Their life-hunger drove the Witches mad, and they destroyed the machinery of the forgotten age that came before them, and when it came time to die, they did not die, but called upon the hills and mountains to fall on them, that they might be buried in the ground by the thousands and tens of thousands, freezing themselves like lungfish in winter. The only machines they did not trouble were the aestivation coffins, and they thought to pass the aeons in timeless slumber until an aeon arrived when death itself should perish.

  But a time came when the Witches grew aware that there were other coffins buried deeper than theirs, giants and flying men from an earlier age, pale men and servants of the machines who worshipped Ghosts of Iron, and did not serve the living trees, the sun and water and moon and fire, sacred to the witchkindred.

  In their jealousy and rage, the witches doused themselves with consecrated wine, and dressed their men in the skins of bears smeared with opiates, and with fennels stalks and besoms in hand, made as if to tear these older coffins out of the ground.

  They came upon the corpse of a pale white horse, a horse of a breed that does not exist in nature, and the corpse came to life at their touch.

  Now, they held the lore that such a horse as this was the steed of the messenger who goes to summon Death from his house among the stars of the Hyades beyond Aldebaran. The Crone of Witches slew the horse with her athame, her magic knife, to offer sacrifice to the Biosphere and strengthen it, and to curse the Infosphere, where the ghosts live, and weaken it.

  Yet by digging up the Tombs, the Witches unforethoughtfully and unforeseeing woke the most ancient and the first of all the Revenants there buried.

  Forth he came from the deepest and darkest pit of the Tombs, and in his hand he held a wand as pale as mist from which drops of fire fell, whose touch was slumbering death. On his head was a crown of roses red as blood, and scallop shells white as bone, which he wore to show that he was judge over land and sea alike. And the thorns of the roses pierce his skull, and he is mad for a season and sane for a season, and only his wife makes him sane. Some say it is the winter season when he is sane, and others say it is high summer, but some say it is no season of Earth when his wits shall return, but only when his wife returns from where she walks among the stars.

  This one turned and called into the dark pit behind him. IS IT YET, THE AEON?

  And many voices answered him. IT IS NOT YET!

  He called into the dark pit behind him. IS SHE COME, MY BRIDE?

  And many voices answered him. SHE IS NOT COME!

  And he called into the darkness of the old Earth. THEN ARISE! ARISE AND SLAY, FOR THEY DARE WAKE ME WHEN MINE AEON IS NOT YET, AND MY BRIDE IS NOT COME.

  And the many fell voices answered: LET NONE DARE WAKEN HE WHO WAITS, LEST HIS WRATH AWAKE!

  And one hundred knights on ninety-nine pale horses rose from the deep, old places of the Earth, and in their hands were pale white staves. They slew the Witches by thousands and by ten thousands, and never a mark was on them, for the staves slew by a touch; and also not a single corpse was ever brought back to their coven houses for lamentation and wake-drinking, because the knights drew the bodies down into the mountain with them when they descended, and the mountain closed after them, and no one can say where the door now lies.

  And that one knight who bears the sign of the Cross, he whose steed the Witches slew, he was afoot during this terrible battle, and he could not return to the deep when the trumpet sounded from below the mountain roots, and all the cavalry of the underworld rushed past him faster than his feet could pursue.

  He was left outside when the great door closed, and he pounded on the rocks and wept, but the doors would not open.

  Some say he still serves the Judge of Ages from that day to this, and walks on moonless nights among living men in secret, wrapped in shadow and leaning on his pale white staff, and listening to idle talk, seeking any man who believes the tomorrows will be brighter than the chores and sorrows of today: and those dreamers of dreams who answer him yea, he comes by night and takes away.

  A time came when the Witches repented their folly, and they set up shrines and images of him to serve, and they sacrificed bears and tortoises and swans, who are sacred to him.

  At the appointed time, and also thereafter, a great voice issued from the deep of the mountain, and prophesied against the Witches, saying, “You have forgotten eternity; therefore, the judgment of the Judge of Ages against your age is that forgetfulness shall consume your…”

  7. Chimera Lore

  Ull said, “I see by your eye movement that you can understand the ideographs of the Iatrocracy period. This is a fragment from a tome of instruction used, we theorize, by the Clades of the Black Sea area, called The Understanding of Dark Sentences, which alleged to gather the surviving tales from an even earlier period: but no record remains of the origin of the tale.”

  Menelaus handed back the silk. “So what did the Judge of Ages say against the Witches?”

  Ull said, “Is there no record of this legend among your people, Beta Anubis?”

  Menelaus shrugged. “The Tombs were erected by some civilization or civilizations from before the fire, the Ecpyrosis that burned the world. There have been people from every era, either for medical reasons, or merely to escape the age they live in, who try to dig into the Tombs, copy the technology, and they have added to them and
modified them, and help defend them. So there is layer after layer of accretion. No Chimerae from the time of the Social Wars knew where the Tombs came from, or cared much about stories about them. Some of the entrances were known locations with still-active weapon systems, and so we generally steered clear.”

  Ull said, “But you are an academic, and you entered the Tombs.”

  Menelaus said, “The level I entered was staffed by Chimera, part of Medical Command. There were antiques, people from older coffins, that I knew our top brass from time to time thawed out and consulted with at a high level, deciding policy. As best I knew, these were older Chimerae, from the Pre-Proscopalian Era. Republican times. We did not mess with them. Some of them still had living relatives running major cities, for one thing. We dealt with them like you would deal with a foreign power: We had official emissaries, and a strict code saying what was our jurisdiction, and what was Old Chimera jurisdiction, whose soil belonged to who. But the old-timers were not awaked except once every few decades, so Medical Command ran the levels open to us to suit ourselves.”

  Ull said suspiciously, “And you heard no rumor from this older generation, who had built these Tombs?”

  Menelaus said, “What? You think the Old Chimera thawed out the frozen Witches for a chat? We denied them recovery rights. If any of them woke up in our era, we sent them back down into the Tombs at gunpoint. But asking who built the Tombs? I mean, someone must have invented the firebow, or the wheel, or the stirrup, or domesticated the very first dog, but who knows his name?”

  The Blue Men started to speak, but Menelaus raised his voice and spoke over them: “No more! Now it is time for me to ask questions. What the hell is your interest in all this? You gents cannot possibly expect me to believe you are engaged in a massive looting and Tomb-robbing expedition merely to satisfy some intellectual curiosity?”

  8. Diffusion and Parallelism

  Illiance said, “Mentor Ull believes there is a single founder to the Tombs, and his work was copied by many cultures through diffusion. I happen to support the theory that the various elements found at various sites are examples of parallel evolution.

  “Since the ultralongterm-hibernation technology exists, and since the alleged founder (whether dead or in slumber) could not know nor prevent any person with the resources and inclination from using that technology to erect competing Tombs systems, if there were not forces herding the Tomb systems into parallel similarities, we would have many diverse Tombs, each with its unique architecture and technology—instead we have what seems a single, monolithic, worldwide system continuous and unchanged throughout history.”

  Ull said, “The similarities are too statistically improbable to admit of such facile attempts at explanation. Locust records dating from after the beginning of mental-electronic history (which we take to be more reliable than written history or oral tradition), contains accounts of the horsemen of the pale horses who rise from the Tombs. They are seen to ride when plagues strike, or wars, or whenever there are many of the dying to gather. The two riders approach sickbeds and asylums, hospitals and temples housing the infirm, asking if any within have hope that the future will discover cures for their ills. Those who have no hope, they will not take. Accounts also say these knights act in the name of one same founder. In the lowest of levels, from the earliest of days, from the Second Age of Space, or the First Age, there is a sleeping figure whom it is death to disturb, a lord of the dead who sleeps surrounded by his knights.

  “He is known by many names: Charlemagne, Karl or Kralj; Frederick Barbarossa or Finn McCool; Holger Danske, William Tell or Thomas the Rhymer or Rip Van Winkle; Brian Boru, Montrose, and Arthur; but it is always said that he will arise when the people have need of him, and deliver judgment against the age.

  “If the age has forgotten the purpose of history, or the rulers have fallen into corruption, or if the people forget that an enemy comes from the stars of the Hyades to enslave the children of men at the End of Days, then the Judge of the Ages will overthrow the age and destroy their works, sparing only such children of theirs as vow to keep and remember the Year Foretold, and prepare against that day.”

  “Spooky!” commented Menelaus. “My dam used to tell me that if I didn’t go to sleep on time, but stayed awake talking to my brothers, my voice would call the Red Indians down from the hills, because some still survived from the old days, and still kept their old ways. She told me how they could reach in the window without making any noise with their long, strong, terrible arms, and cut off the top of my head, hair and scalp and all, with their cold, stone tomahawks. When my brothers woke the next morning, I’d be dead, my brains slithered out over the pillow, my eyes as still and white as two peeled eggs, and my mouth hanging open in a scream that would never come. I can assure you, that tale gave me spiders in my belly! In hindsight, I think she just wanted me to hush up at lights-out. But, a tale to give you the willies, nonetheless.”

  Mentor Ull, his face nonplussed, turned his head slowly and gazed at Preceptor Illiance. Both men, with furrowed brows, listened. Eventually Ull said ponderously, “I believe your mother’s tale was a fabrication, but I happen not to apprehend any immediate relevance to the discussion.”

  Menelaus said, “No? My dam warned me there were those in the hills, old things, that might come down upon me if I called them to me. And you are meddling with something older and deadlier. If he was real, this Judge of Ages, and he has people to guard his burial grounds, what happened to them? Where are they? And what are they waiting for?”

  Ull and Illiance rose gracefully to their feet.

  Mentor Ull said, “That perhaps will be the first question to ask the relict. Shall we go above?”

  Without a further word or gesture, the two Blue Men drifted up the ramp to the next level.

  6

  The Testament of Soorm the Hormagaunt

  1. The Hormagaunt

  There were three more dog things in the chamber on the next level above. Two were hunkered to one side, muskets in their paws, watching the prisoner and pricking up their ears with every movement.

  Another dog thing, this one with the more intelligent face of a black Sheepdog, crouched on a stool at a table. Like the table in the chamber below, albeit larger, this table was a thin sheet of polished coral suspended from the ceiling. The Sheepdog was bent over what seemed to be a polygraph—the tracks and pulses of light from the glass plate atop the instrument corresponded to typical patterns of heartbeat, electroencephalogram, and galvanic skin response.

  However, if it were a polygraph, it did not require any tubes or wires to take a reading from the subject.

  The subject was seated in a chair, rudely but solidly built of branches lashed together, with a seat and back of woven willow.

  He was a massive man, over six feet tall, but with such prodigious breadth of chest and shoulders as to appear like one of the Giants of old. His skin was dark, like seal pelt, because he was covered from heel to crown in fine, thick, dark hair. He had no nose, merely two tiny slits above a very wide mouth.

  Only his palms and the area around his mouth and eyes showed his skin beneath, which was orange yellow, and the rings of orange around his mouth gave him a clown-makeup look, and his ringed eyes make him look like a raccoon.

  The man had no visible ears, merely a dimple at either side of his skull, and his neck was so thick that it sloped into the massive planes of his shoulders evenly, given him a bullet-headed, almost torpedo-like aspect. The white frills down his chest and under his armpits seemed to be gill tissue. His waist was blubbery and legs like columns. His feet were almost comically large, swim-fin shaped and covered with a coarser and darker hair, scabrous, almost like the quills of porcupine, emerging from red orange scaly integument. His heels boasted an impressive set of spurs.

  The seat of the chair divided, to allow a bulky tail to hang down. It looked something like an otter’s tail, but with flukes of cartilage and membrane folded like Chinese fans against its length
. At the tip was a barb like a scorpion’s tail, complete with a venom sac, swollen and purplish.

  The man raised his hand in greeting. Menelaus saw the fingers were webbed, and that the velvet tips hid retractable claws like those of a cat.

  His eyes were not only different colors, they were different species: his left eye was pale, with a square pupil like that of a goat. The right eye was dark, with a bright gold pupil shaped like the letter W.

  Menelaus wondered if, like the eye of a cuttlefish, this right eye had more than one set of receptor cells, called fovea, along the back of the eyeball. Cuttlefish distort their whole eye to change focus rather than using a lens, like humans, and they can see polarization of light.

  The seated man turned one of his lunatic-looking eyes toward Menelaus, but he had the other eye tilted, like the eye of a chameleon, independently of the first, and it was looking at the Blue Men.

  His voice was a rumble: “Han forwityng yon fremde not ken my tongue. Be ye tongue-witty?”

  Menelaus raised his palm by way of greeting and answered him. “My lowely tonge is naught unweedle ne unkonnynge. I speke Leche. Assent ye to be apposed by twa wee pers lordynges?”

  “Am naught looth ne drede,” said the big man with a chuckle of expansive good humor. “Find me servysable, who has none been hende weel-dressed muchel mee!”

  And he pulled back his lips, revealing an impressive set of tusks. In addition to the molars and incisors of an omnivore, his mouth had a pair of serpent fangs and what looked like an extra row of shark teeth. When he laughed, his nostrils (which had been pinched shut) opened and gasped air. Menelaus listened, and tried to guess at the capacity of the lungs.