The Sovereign Road

by Aaron Calhoun

  “I don’t know,” said Trielle. “I suppose it was built by someone. But I don’t see how that relates to…”

  “Patience, Trielle” said Yochenath. “Again you are correct. In this case it was built by my predecessor Elinoh. Now, so far this has been relatively straightforward, but it is time to explore some deeper considerations. Tell me, Trielle, how do you know that this is a lectern?”

  “I know it is a lectern because it looks like one,” she replied, her confusion beginning to give way to frustration at the oblique line of questioning.

  “Indeed,” said Yochenath, “and many debates have been held as to how that act of knowing takes place. For the sake of brevity, however, please accept at least provisionally that this act of knowing can only occur because in fact there is a form, a pattern, in your mind to which the table corresponds. Now, bear with me for one last question. What is this lectern for?”

  “Right now, it is for supporting the Book of Utohu,” said Trielle, her frustration level rising.

  “Yes,” affirmed Yochenath, “its final reason for existence is to bear the book. Do you see now how these four causes - the material of which the object is made, the place it fits into the ongoing flow of world events, the pattern to which it conforms, and the purpose for its existence - cohere in the lectern in front of you?”

  “I suppose so,” said Trielle skeptically. “But I still don’t see how this pertains to the Canticle!”

  “One last question,” said Yochenath, “and I promise that all will be clear. Consider this, Trielle. If these causes pertain to the lectern, how do they pertain to the cosmos as a whole, and, perhaps more importantly, where do those causes originate?”

  As Trielle pondered the question an image of the cosmic mountain flashed into her mind, the bright gems of the worlds perched on its craggy slopes.

  Four worlds…

  Then she understood, and her frustration was washed away by a flood of excitement.

  “The worlds!” she said. “The worlds are the causes!”

  “Ever since the first Anastasi stretched their wings and soared above the confines of the cosmos, we have known by sight what was long only suspected by faith and logic” responded Anacrysis.

  “Our world, the lowest in creation, is the place where the rays of light shed by the higher worlds cohere and interact, said Yochenath. “And though their inhabitants are mighty and exalted far beyond the races of our cosmos, it has also been truly said that the higher worlds were created by He Who Is to be the foundation and substructure of our own. Thus the first shall be last, and the last first.”

  “But why was I never taught this understanding of cause and effect?” asked Trielle. “I can see why the Conclave would conceal knowledge of the Dar and of the war, but my father gave me no hint that they know of the other worlds, so why would they censor what from their perspective only amounts to a point of philosophy?”

  “I think you know,” said Yochenath darkly.

  Trielle thought for a few moments. “It’s the Axioms, isn’t it?” she said finally. “The Axioms only allow for material causation, and so even the suggestion that there might be more to existence than matter had to be suppressed.”

  Yochenath nodded. “It is for that reason,” he said, “that the vision accompanying the Canticle speaks of one from the darkened spheres ascending the heights of the cosmic mountain, for only one who has seen the worlds as they are could hope to break through the lies that have imprisoned the minds of your people.”

  “You see, Trielle, our aging cosmos will not exist forever. The Sur Ekklesia have known this for millennia and rejoice in that knowledge, for although we love this world we hope for a better one. Though the Book of Utohu may seem ancient to you, in truth it is the one of the most recent writings of the Sur Ekklesia. There are other, far older prophecies that speak of a time when the elements will melt with fervent heat and the universe be consumed in a conflagration from which none will escape. But those same prophecies also say that a new cosmos will be born from the ashes of the old, a cosmos in which darkness has been erased and the light of He Who Is shines through all things. It is for this renewal that we wait.”

  “It sounds almost too good to be believed,” said Trielle.

  “Several millennia ago I had the same thoughts about resurrection,” replied Anacrysis.

  Trielle nodded, deep in thought. After a long silence she spoke. “You think this child from the darkened spheres is my brother, don’t you?”

  Yochenath and Anacrysis nodded.

  “Before the final cataclysm the cosmos will be given one last prophet, one final messenger of mercy from its Father” said Yochenath. “He Who Is does not wish that anyone be destroyed.”

  “That is why we need you and your father, Trielle,” said Anacrysis. “If the Entrope succeeds in using the vacuum sculptors and Vai detonates then your brother will have no cosmos to return to, and those that might be rescued from the final cataclysm will be lost.”

  “Vacuum sculptors?” said Yochenath, “I fear that I am missing something.”

  “Tell him, Trielle,” said Anacrysis.

  Trielle quickly outlined the Heirophants’ plans for the second ignition attempt and her father’s concerns regarding the vacuum sculptors. When she finished, Yochenath bowed his head in deep sorrow.

  “Even how they oppose us,” he murmured. “Not only do they desire their own destruction, but they would prevent others from escaping. What hatred!”

  “Who are you talking about?” asked Trielle in confusion.

  “The Entrope, child,” sighed Yochenath. “The Entrope and the one that controls him…”

  “There are forces in the cosmos that desire nothing more than the dissolution of all things,” added Anacrysis. “You saw one of them in Xellasmos’ photonoscope as he tempted the mother of your race to eat from the Tree of Wisdom. Many times I have watched from outside the world-shell as their master communed with the Entrope in secret, shaping his thoughts into an almost perfect contempt for existence. The Entrope has been deceived so greatly that he does not know he is as much a pawn as those he commands.”

  A sudden crack of thunder sounded in the antechamber behind them, followed by a rush of warm wind. Startled, Trielle turned to see the unfolded wings of a second Anastasi.

  “Auriel,” said Anacrysis with a look of concern.

  Auriel bowed briefly toward Anacrysis and Yochenath. “My brother, High Overshepherd,” he said in grave tones, “I regret the need to disturb the sanctity of this place, but time is now growing short. This morning, on my patrol of the inner Conclave, I witnessed an armada of Etherreavers massing around the corpse of Vai. I fear that a second reignition attempt may be at hand.”

  Anacrysis placed a hand on his shoulder. “We thank you for this intelligence Auriel,” he said softly. “Take five battalions of Anastasi to the space surrounding the three suns, but do not breach the world-shell. The time may soon come when we must break the siege but I will not put the inhabitants of the valley at risk unless pressed.”

  Auriel bowed, then wrapped his wings about his glowing body and vanished with a rush of imploding air.

  Anacrysis turned to Trielle. “Do you now see the importance of your brother’s journey, and of your own?”

  Trielle thought for a moment. “I don’t know what I can do to delay the second ignition attempt,” she said finally, “but if I see a way I will give my all to prevent it. I have to,” she added, “now that I understand the cost.”

  Anacrysis smiled grimly. “Know that I will be following you wherever you go and will offer what protection I can. As I told my brother, we cannot breach the world-shell in the inner Conclave unless the need is great, but we will if we must, for if Vai becomes a supernova the valley is also lost. Come now, I will return you to Galed’s moon.”

  Trielle nodded, and then stepped toward Anacrysis as his wings unfolded.

  “We thank you for your time Yochenath,” said Anacrysis, “and I apologize that
we must leave in such an abrupt manner.”

  Then his golden wings wrapped around her and once again they soared above the crystalline skin of the universe.

  Chapter 29: The Shattered Sphere

  Garin flashed through the diamond pathways of the Cube of Cubes. All around him was crystalline beauty, a cosmos of endless geometric perfection.

  Then the pain began.

  Cracks shivered into the surrounding matrix, dark discontinuities where light arced and crackled across fractured connections. Each spark wracked his body like an electric shock. His perspective began to twist, as if the geodesics of space itself were tangling in impossible knots. No membrane lay ahead, only bright shards that hung amidst a blurry void like a shattered pane of glass floating in the depths of space. As he hurtled onward the cracks around him grew larger and larger, and his body became an endless wasteland of electric agony. In vain Garin tried to cry out, but there was no voice in this place. Then there was a flash and a feeling like a million needles passing through his flesh. A moment later he opened his eyes on the primal wound.

  He stood atop a cliff of glass beneath a storm-wracked sky filled with billowing shadows and crackling streaks of electric blue light. Great curving fragments of crystal tumbled overhead, each flashing with echoes of how this domain had once appeared: endless mountains bathed in brilliant starlight, a soaring tree wreathed in flames of rose and violet. But now all that was gone. Nothing remained but the abyss.

  A vast shaft flickering with lurid fire stretched downward from the cliff’s edge, a bottomless pit that pierced the heart of the cosmos, inexorably leading to the sickly boiling deeps far beneath.

  Tehom…

  Chaos…

  Above the center of the abyss Daath floated on wings of shadow, his cloak billowing behind him, his noble countenance crowned by a black rainbow. In his eyes a cold light gleamed like foxfire in a swamp, a fetid harbinger of decay.

  “Blind Monkey!” he said with a horrible smile, “you have joined me at last. I thought the journey might prove too difficult for you. Tell me, what do you think of my domain?”

  Curiously, Garin felt no fear.

  “I see in the crystal shards above the beauty that it once possessed,” said Garin, “and I am saddened that you have shattered that beauty.”

  “You think to lecture me on beauty!” said Daath with a flare of anger. “I who stood here before the lower worlds emerged from Tehom. I who have climbed the cosmic mountain countless times and have stood in the ancient councils of He Who Is amidst the stones of fire?”

  “Until darkness was found in you,” said Garin sadly. “Daath, I too have walked the worlds, and though I am from the lowest place in the cosmos, though you have power that dwarfs my own as the fire of a star dwarfs the flame of a candle, can it be that I see something you cannot?”

  “And what is it that you have seen,” said Daath, his words dripping with malice. “Please enlighten me.”

  “I have seen that none of us is our own,” said Garin. “I have seen that the idea that each of us exists for ourselves is a lie. I have seen that the song of the cosmos is one of sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice!” bellowed Daath as dark shadows writhed beneath his cloak. “You would have me uphold the vermin that crawl on the low worlds, freely giving them my amassed knowledge and expecting no glory or fealty in return? You would have me veil my majesty, I whose might can crack a crystal sphere and cast a world out of the heavens? You would have me serve you!”

  “And what would you propose in turn?” said Garin, inwardly amazed at his calmness. “A world where each is walled up in their own nothingness? A world where the damned look only after their own pleasures, ignoring the cry of their father, their sister, their brothers? A world where we each make up our own story? No, Daath! In the spheres below I have learned at least a part of my purpose, and if it is truly my role to stand here in the heart of creation’s deepest wound and deny your vision and claim over the races of Phaneros, then I will do so with all my strength.”

  “With all your strength indeed,” said Daath with a laugh. “But whatever makes you think that will be enough… You have spoken of sacrifice, and sacrifice you shall have.”

  As Daath spoke a chill wind began rose, blowing his cloak behind him like the tail of a black comet. Beneath it the shadows twisted and grew, and a strange scent like burning sulfur began to permeate the air.

  “Until now I have permitted you to call me by me ancient name among the Arethoi,” hissed Daath. “Yet I have been known by many other names on many other worlds, names at which entire planets have trembled in abject fear. I think it is time you learned this fear, blind monkey! Some have called me Borog, the black cloud of hate. Others Choronzon, the tyrant of oblivion. On yet another world I was called Lukifell, the corrupted lantern. Yet on your ancient homeworld of Sha-Ka-Ri I was given perhaps my favorite. Leviathan, the seven-headed chaos-serpent.”

  At those words Daath began to swell. His cloak seemed to grow into an encircling canopy of wings, merging with the black rainbow that crowned his head in a mass of shadow and cold flame. His noble face fell away like a mask, and from the boiling darkness beneath spun seven serpentine necks covered in red and black scales, each ending in the fanged maw of a dragon. The dragon’s heads were crowned with circlets of iron that burned as if just drawn from a blast furnace.

  “Perhaps you will fear now, blink monkey,” roared the heads in unison, and a pang of terror smote Garin’s heart. Yet still he held fast.

  “I will die, if I must, for the worlds below,” said Garin. “I have already faced death in the desert of the flaming sword and fear it no longer.”

  “Death!” laughed the heads. “I will have nothing of death. Instead I will take you to Tehom, where the dregs of creation ceaselessly churn in undying agony around the void from whence all sprang!”

  “Enough Daath! You will not claim this one, he is mine!”

  The words startled Garin, and he turned to see the figure of an ancient man cloaked in white linen ascend the edge of the precipice.

  “Kyr!” Garin shouted.

  “It seems we have finally caught up with each other,” said Kyr as he laid a hand on Garin’s shoulder. Garin looked at that hand, marred with a single central scar, and for a brief moment recalled the vision granted by the black sword on the plains of fire. He could almost hear the sound of the mallet slamming downward, and as he thought on it a great sadness filled him.

  “Be of good cheer,” said Kyr, “I saw your stand for my Bride in the world below, your willingness to face death for me and those I love.”

  “Your Bride!” roared Leviathan. “I wonder how much you know of this bride you say you love. Do you know of the countless times she has prostituted herself to me for power? Can you smell the stench of her sins rising to the top of the celestial mountain?”

  “Yes,” said Kyr, a tear rolling down his face.

  “Then how can you still love her!” cried Leviathan. “Why do you still care for her when every deed she does binds her to death, to Tehom, to me?

  “For the same reason I still care for you, my poor, lost son,” said Kyr. His tears were flowing freely now. “It is in the nature of Eternal Love to Love. That is the music my Father and I have sung from before always.”

  Kyr paused for a moment, and then said, “you could hear the music again, my lost son, if you would only come home. Again we could walk like we did in aeons past…”

  Leviathan screamed a cry of such primal rage that Garin thought his heart would stop.

  “Never! I will never return to servitude!”

  “Then you damn yourself,” said Kyr softly.

  Kyr turned to Garin. “When the conflict is done,” he whispered, “you must ascend the road no matter what you witness. Regadless of how it appears, know that I will return to you on the third day. You must wait for me at the Rose.”

  Garin nodded uncertainly. “What are you going to do,” he asked softly.

  K
yr did not speak, but turned to face Daath and cast his robe aside. Clad only in a loincloth, Garin could clearly see the wounds that marked his body. Great welts furrowed his back, the remnants of a bloody beating in ages past. Each hand and foot was marred by a circular scar, and a deep gash lay just beneath the ribcage on his left side. His face grim, Kyr stretched his arms wide and began to rise into the air.

  “Again?” said Leviathan with a harsh laugh. “You would give yourself for the blink monkeys again.”

  “No,” said Kyr, his voice rising in power, “not again, ALWAYS!”

  A blast of light and glory burst from Kyr’s form like the brilliance of a newborn star. His wounds began to shine, erupting with living streams of red and blue flame. Garin fell to his knees in awe.

  “THEN COME!” roared Leviathan, “and I will drag your living form into the deep for all eternity!”

  In one fluid move Kyr cast himself from the edge of the precipice and dove toward Leviathan. By now his body was almost too bright to look at, a spear of silver light that trailed blood-red and cool blue flame in its wake. He struck Leviathan with the force of a meteor, shattering the dark scales of his chest, and the dragon screamed in pain. But, despite the wound, the beast’s shadow grew into a great burning mass of darkness that swallowed the light, sank slowly into the abyss below, and was gone.

  And Garin was left alone.

  For a long time he stared downward into the sickly boiling depths of Tehom and contemplated what Kyr had done. Silent tears ran down his face. He said no words. There were none that were worthy of utterance.

  “Child of Phaneros, why do you look beneath when the way is now open to you?”

  The gentle voice startled Garin, and he raised his head to see a vision of a crown made of stars filling the sky on the far side of the abyss.

  “I… I do not understand,” said Garin, fighting back waves of sadness. “How?”

  “Behold,” said the voice softly, “the blood of He Who Is Son of He Who Is beckons you…”

  Suspended in the air above the abyss were scintillating clouds of red and blue sparks, the last remnants of the fiery light shed by Kyr as he assaulted Leviathan. The clouds swirled together as Garin watched, their shapes merging and shifting until at last they settled into a pathway of stars laced with the blackness of the cosmos. The road stretched across the abyss before mounting upward through the center of the crown that still floated in the sky.