The Sovereign Road

by Aaron Calhoun

  The figure laughed jovially.

  “Rise, and pay me no homage. In the highest order of things, am I not a servant such as you. Be welcome here, creature of the lower worlds. I am Hyperion Starfather. Welcome to my home.”

  Starfather?

  The word tugged at Garin’s mind, and he turned again to the monoliths that filled the valley, scrutinizing the inscriptions one by one.

  “Alpheratz, Wezen, Adhara, Menkalinen, Deneb…”

  As the unfamiliar names rolled off of Garin’s tongue, a vision of the ancient night skies he had seen in his dream rose up in his mind. Then he understood.

  “The stars,” he said softly. “These are the tombs of the ancient stars. They were your children?”

  “Yes,” said Hyperion, “and I loved each one dearly.” A single, shining tear rolled down his face and Garin at once felt a sadness deeper than any emotion he had ever experienced before. They stood for a while among the tombs in silent contemplation of what the universe had lost, neither one speaking, neither one wishing to.

  “Come,” said Hyperion at last. “Join me for a meal in my home. Come meet my remaining sons and tell us of your journey.”

  Garin nodded, and followed Hyperion though the vast cemetery to the stone house at its center. Entering through a massive portal framed by slabs of granite and rock crystal, they passed through a grand hallway into a high-ceilinged great room lit by tall windows that flashed and sparkled in the noonday sun. A long table dominated half of the room, laden with meat, bread and fruit. At the table sat two frail, elderly men robed in grey. Their faces were shriveled, and their eyes dull. In the corner of the room stood three beds. Two were empty, but the third was occupied by a near-motionless figure.

  “Vasya, Verduun, how fares your brother?” asked Hyperion.

  Garin’s eyes widened as he realized who these men were.

  “The same,” whispered the nearest of the old men, his voice barely discernable. “Vai barely moves now. There is yet a faint spark of life within, but each minute he grows closer to death.”

  Hyperion nodded gravely, then brightened.

  “My sons,” he said, “let us put this sadness aside. We have a guest for our midday feast.” Hyperion motioned to Garin, who introduced himself. Hyperion then sat down at the great table and bade Garin do likewise. After a brief benediction, which Garin found both surprising and strangely comforting, the feast commenced.

  Garin had not realized how hungry he was, and he ate with abandon to the bemused smiles of Vasya and Verduun, who themselves consumed only a little bread and wine. Hyperion and his sons waited patiently while Garin refilled his plate a second and a third time. Only when it was clear that he had eaten his fill did they speak.

  “From whence do you come?” asked Verduun.

  “I am from Latis, in the world of Phaneros,” replied Garin.

  “Latis…” murmured Vasya, “All mesas and crystals, is it not?”

  “Yes,” said Garin.

  “I’ve always loved that planet,” said Vasya. “I remember when it formed from the dust, all heat and molten rock burning in the void. It was one of my originals, you know…” Vasya’s eyes closed for a moment in reminiscence, and Garin marveled at the immense age of the being he was conversing with.

  “Many days I have stood in the city of Scintillus and basked in you and your brother’s light,” Garin said at last in reply. “I thank you for that.”

  Vasya nodded with a smile.

  “What of Xhorhallas, the water world?” asked Verduun expectantly. “How fares it and its people?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Garin, a note of sadness in his voice. “It was destroyed in the last entropy storm.”

  “Oh,” murmured Verduun quietly. He sat in silence for a moment. “It is a hard thing to hear of the death of your children,” he said at last.

  “Indeed,” said Hyperion with a sigh. “But come, I would not hear of these sad events any longer. Rather, I would know what brings you to our valley, child of Phaneros. It is fortunate that you have come to us.”

  Garin took a deep breath and told them of his journey. Beginning with the day that Vai’s light failed, he spoke of Kyr, Sha-Ka-Ri, the Sovereign Road, and his encounters with the beings of Materia. When he reached his confrontation with Daath, Hyperion’s countenance darkened.

  “You know of him?” asked Garin.

  “Daath is well known to most who dwell in our world,” said Hyperion grimly. “He has done much evil here and in the lower worlds. But I would know more of the being you call Kyr. I confess that I have not heard that name before.”

  “He is old,” said Garin in reply, “older than anyone I have ever known, but he does not bear himself as if he was weak. His eyes seemed young and alive. It’s hard to describe, but he seemed almost… authoritative, as if he were a Heirophant of the Conclave.” He reflected for a few more moments, then said: “I don’t know if this is important, but he had a strange pattern of scars around his forehead.”

  At the mention of the scars, Hyperion closed his eyes in recollection, murmuring to himself.

  “So that is his name in this age of Phaneros…”

  Suddenly Hyperion opened his eyes, a wide smile on his face. “Indeed I know Kyr,” he said to Garin with a note of gladness. “I know him well, though when he last traversed Mythos he was known by another name. It is unfortunate you were separated from him by the Shadow. My council would be to seek him out with all your strength.”

  “Apart from fleeing Daath,” said Garin, “that is my desire as well. But I do not know where to start. In fact, I do not know even know the name of this world. Did I hear you refer to it as Mythos?”

  “Yes,” said Hyperion, “and, as the word implies, it is the place from whence the stories that form the structure of Phaneros are derived.”

  As Hyperion spoke, Garin saw in a flash of insight the common thread that linked the Conclave with higher worlds. If Materia was the reality behind the physical substrate of the universe, the Mythos was the reality behind its ongoing narrative. But if that were true, and the Shadow lay between them… Suddenly the implications struck him with almost physical force.

  “Daath,” said Garin in horror, “he’s trying to sever the material universe from its purpose, to make it into a world of meaningless matter in motion. He’s trying to make the Axioms become reality!”

  “Yes,” said Hyperion coldly. “That has always been his aim, and it is why he pursues you. Now that you understand, you have become a danger to him, for his strength lies in blindness and ignorance.”

  “But I lost him when I entered Mythos,” said Garin.

  “No,” said Hyperion, “the entrance into Mythos only split your paths, as it also split your path and Kyr’s. For each of you is on a different meridian.”

  Seeing the look of confusion on Garin’s face, Hyperion rose and left the room, returning a few moments later with a large blank parchment and a quill pen. Clearing a space on the table, Hyperion flattened out the parchment and drew a series of five concentric circles. He then drew four smaller semicircles within the outermost circle at the four points of the compass.

  “This is the basic structure of Mythos,” explained Hyperion. “Each circle is a movement, a chapter in the grand narrative of the cosmos. The outer circle is that of beginnings, and each of the cardinal directions represents a type of beginning that influences the lands around it.”

  At this he indicated the four smaller semicircles.

  “My house stands in the Sepulcher of Suns, a great valley in the Lands of Stone and Light to the east. You arrived in Mythos through the Columns of Morning at Worlds Edge, a place not too far from here. To the north, at the base of the World Tree, lie the Lands of Ancient Night. The Lands of Silence and the Sacred Mountain lie to the west, and the Lands of the Hidden and the Great Colossus lie to the south. When a conscious being arrives at our world the choices they have made, the overall direction of their life’s path, determine the location where
they first enter. Even Daath is bound by this this law, for despite all his power he is still subject to the Great Story. When he has come to Mythos in ages past he has entered through the Lands of Ancient Night.”

  “And what of Kyr,” asked Garin, “where does he enter?”

  Hyperion laughed. “Child,” he said, “the one you call Kyr can enter wherever he wishes. Those who tell the stories are not subject to them, unless they so will it.”

  Hyperion’s words puzzled Garin, but before he could ask their meaning Hyperion had begun to draw again, filling the image with an array of lines. Each started at the outermost circle and continued inward until it reached the very center of the image. Some curved gently like the course of a meandering river, others twisted and looped in dizzying spirals, none were straight.

  “These are the Meridians,” explained Hyperion. “They are the only way to successfully traverse the circles of this world. I have drawn each circle as a finite space but in reality each extends forever, just as each page of a book represents a fixed but infinite section of the time and space of the story it contains. To turn the pages is to move through the story, and so it is with the Meridians. Each reflects a particular narrative connecting the circles; only by submitting to its flow can one travel.”

  The sheer complexity of the diagram threatened to overwhelm Garin, and he sat back in his chair with a discouraged sigh.

  So many paths…

  “Do not be troubled,” said Hyperion. “Did I not say that it was fortunate you came to us?”

  Hyperion marked a small circle within the northwestern portion of the Lands of Stone and Light, next to one of the larger, straighter meridians.

  “The Sepulcher of Suns lies close to the origin-point of the Great Eastern Meridian. If you leave this valley in the direction of the setting sun, you will soon come to the shores of Mare Primum, the universal ocean that once deluged the worlds beneath in judgment. There you will find the Mariner, who is also called Unapishtim, Atrahasis, Mano, Deucalion and Noah. Even now he completes the great Ark with which he seeks to cross the floods. Go to him and seek passage, for his ship travels the meridian.”

  Garin stared at the map, examining the gentle curve of the Great Eastern Meridian. It did seem to be a more direct route than many. He traced its lazy arc as it crossed the inner circles before ending deep in the heart of Mythos, the place where all Meridians met.

  “Hyperion,” said Garin, “All the meridians begin in different places, but they all seem to go to the same place. Where do they lead?”

  Hyperion sighed. “To the end of all stories, Garin,” he said cryptically. “Once the heart of Mythos was a paradise, a mountaintop garden filled with beauty and delight that grew in the light of the Trees of Life and Wisdom. In those days the Beloved dwelt there in splendour, and all journeys ended with her embrace, but since the coming of Daath all that has changed. Paradise has withered, leaving only a bloody mount of sacrifice rising above the corrupt city of Hyrosol Eld. Few from the Lands of Stone and Light travel there in this age, and so I have little knowledge of what you will find when you arrive, though what rumors have come to us are filled with shadow and terror. But this I do know. If there is any place within our world where you might find Kyr again, it is there. Now come, our meal is over and you must prepare for your journey.”

  Hyperion, Garin, Vai and Verduun rose from the table and began to exit the room. Suddenly a piercing scream rent the air, freezing them where they stood. As one they turned toward the source of the screem to see Vai convulsing upon his bed, surrounded by a nimbus of ghostly blue light.

  Hyperion and his sons stared, their eyes widening in fear as Vai screamed again, and Garin suddenly realized what he was witnessing.

  “It’s Father!” said Garin. “The Gravitic Council is trying to reignite Vai!”

  Chapter 18: Anastasis Astrae

  The Worldship Gog hung in the skies above Vai’s darkened orb. Shaped like a titanic golden lotus the size of small moon, the craft spanned one thousand miles between its furthest reaches. Each petal of the lotus, strengthened against its own weight by an infrastructure of pion-energized neutronium spars, carried more laridian rings than entire planets. The petals joined together at the central ovule of the flower, which housed the ship’s mighty engines. Its primary reactor was fueled by a blazing mass of neutronium slowly being converted into strange matter, a process capable of producing millions of petajoules of energy, enough to power an entire planet. The long, tapering column of the flower’s central pistil extended outward from the engines. Crafted of noetic crystal and imagnite, this structure housed the computational and navigational infrastructure of the worldship, as well as the quarters of its crew. At its very tip stood the bridge of the ship, a vast tiered platform of gold covered by a canopy of reinforced crystal. The bridge was filled with mounting ranks of infochryst terminals operated by the elite of the College of Gravitists. In its center stood Gedron, clad in the formal raiment of the High Gravitist and surrounded by his personal retainers. Though his face was stern, his heart was heavy. The time for reignition was at hand.

  “Sir,” said a red faced Gerellian, his three eyes blinking asynchronously, “Shemyazai, Armaros and Turiyel are now in position. That accounts for all the Ethereavers. The equator of Vai is encompassed.”

  “Thank you Yithra,” said Gedron. “And I see that the Neutronium forges have reached polar alignment.”

  “Yes sir, replied Yithra-Gor.

  Gedron nodded in silent acknowledgment, and then lifted his hands in a formal gesture of summoning. Three infographic crystals silently rose from the platform in response. Within seconds, each crystal was alight with shifting images and symbols, the sum total of the current available data from the Ramachrond and the Ionocaric Infochrysts regarding the state of Vai.

  “The deep probes have reached the core-radiative boundary,” said Yithra-Gor after scrutinizing the data. “We can prepare no more.”

  “Indeed,” observed Gedron, “we begin now.”

  Gedron raised his right hand in preparation for the first gesture of command, but then hesitated at the last moment. Instead, he called up an additional data stream that displayed on one of the peripheral infographic crystals: a realtime image of the state of the entropy clouds. Yithra-Gor examined at it for a few minutes and then looked to Gedron questioningly.

  “To remind us of what we are fighting,” said Gedron in response, though the words rang hollow. Then he steeled himself, raised his hands again in a gesture of declamation and gave the first commands.

  “Accelerate laridian rings, initiate fermionic field charging process!”

  Transmitted ship to ship and magnified by a thousand relays and amplifiers, each crewmember of the massed reignition fleet heard Gedron’s words as if he were standing beside them. Within moments the petals of the Gog had taken on an eerie, almost ephemeral quality as their surfaces shimmered with concentrated gravitic force. Angry blue discharges crackled across the hull, as if the worldship were somehow anticipating what would soon take place. A flood of data from the infographic crystals confirmed that the Etherreavers and neutronium forges were in a similar state of readiness. Gedron glanced one last time at the image of the entropy clouds. Although there was some new agitation, they had not changed position.

  Gedron opened his mouth to give the word to continue, but choked at the last minute, so that it came out not as a command, but as a whisper.

  “Begin reignition…”

  The petals of the Worldship Gog erupted in searing blue fire.

  ***

  Ten thousand spikes of sharp blue incandescence lanced through Vai’s darkened atmosphere, driving deep into the star’s core like adrenalin-filled needles aimed at the heart of a dying man.

  And Vai convulsed.

  Rivers of red flame larger than worlds flashed through the dead star’s bowels as helium ash, crushed beyond thought by the gravitic pulse, began to fuse. The streams of burning plasma expanded, mixing and churn
ing the cooling gases of Vai’s mantle until at last they reached the surface, erupting from the photosphere in great gouts of hellish light like blisters of flaming blood. And deep beneath it all, a subsonic cry of pain echoed throughout the remains of the cosmos as walls of green flame collapsed inexorably inward, annihilating all the worlds in their path.

  ***

  In the House of Hyperion, the body of Vai writhed upon the bed. Now swollen with power, the nimbus surrounding him pulsed with an unholy radiance. Garin watched in horror as tendrils of spectral light reached inward from the glowing cloud, penetrating the flesh of Vai’s chest. Suddenly the light flared, each tendril becoming as bright as a lighning bolt as arcs of actinic blue flame raced down them into Vai’s faltering heart. Vai’s body stiffened, his eyes snapped open, and a cry of such agony issued from his mouth that Garin thought his heart would break.

  Hyperion rushed to the bed and dropped to his knees.

  “Vai! My son! What are they doing to you?”

  Vai continued to convulse violently as the cataract of lightning poured into his chest, and an alien radiance began to burn in his sightless eyes. Seeing this, Hyperion cried out again with a deep wail of lament and prostrated himself before the bed. Vasya and Verduun stood behind him with bowed heads, weeping silently but with no less sorrow.

  Suddenly overcome by the scene before him, Garin screamed.

  “Father! Father please stop!”

  Then he too fell to the ground sobbing, his words a muted whisper of pain.

  “Father, please stop!”

  ***