by Alma Boykin
“Surely you exaggerate, lord Defender,” Bai’taklo said with a frown.
Leesh and Sklee shook their heads, their spines twitching. “Lord Mammal does not exaggerate, Major,” the former Imperial stated flatly. “There are some who consider it blasphemy for the ambassador and for Lord Reh-dakh to enter even the Forbidden Lands, let alone the Place of Memory. His Excellency will be protected by diplomatic immunity from reprisal, but neither Lord Reh-dakh nor his Imperial Majesty come under that shield.” Sklee dipped his head. “Your indulgence please, Lord Mammal.”
Ambassador Bolton raised his hand for silence. “Lord Reh-dakh, gentlemen, I want to talk to Major Bai’taklo.” The Azdhagi and their commander bowed and left the two mammals alone. Reh-dakh took advantage of the moment to visit the necessary, then to go by the Defenders’ shrine. Unlike the reptiles, she did not venerate her ancestors. Right, whom would I venerate, anyway? Certainly not my sire’s people—their ghosts would probably inform on my location. My dam’s folk would just be puzzled at the strange smell, and she chuckled very, very quietly. However, the Azdhagi took such things quite seriously and so she made a point of being seen lighting two sticks of incense at the altar dedicated to the first Lord Defender and to King-Emperor Seetoh and his mate. I probably should have lit one to Shi-dan to see if he would grant me some of his patience.
Whatever passed between the ambassador and his head of security, it took the better half of an hour to resolve. Finally, Bolton opened the door and the soldiers returned to their earlier seats. The major obviously disapproved but held his peace and just glowered at Reh-dakh. You’ve never seen me fight, have you? she thought towards him. The Ambassador will be safe. But she’d served as a bodyguard more than once and she couldn’t be too irritated with the man.
“Where exactly are we going tomorrow, Lord Defender?” Bolton inquired.
The Wanderer took a deep breath as she tried to explain without revealing everything. “We are going to the ruins of a small city. It was the last inhabited place on the continent following the Great Relocation and there are records there of events leading up to the Relocation. His Imperial Majesty and Great Lord Li-kss hope that these will explain some of the Azdhagi reluctance to accept the technology offered by the Sapient Republic. I do not wish to say more for the time being, your Excellency. However, I assure you that there is nothing that could do you harm.” Unless an old wall falls on us, that is.
The Lord Defender awoke well before dawn, ate, and drilled by herself in the practice area at Erinnerung Base. For a change, she ran through patterns that made use of the war fan and a dagger of the style that all courtiers were allowed, even those without sword-right in Court. Rada slowed every movement in the sequences until her muscles screamed with the tension and she could barely balance at times. After less than an hour she warmed up enough that she took off her jacket, forgetting the presence of the two mammals in the base. Major Bai’taklo reminded her abruptly when he said, “I thought only Hailor females wore those.”
Rada sheathed her weapon and pulled her jacket on over the lightly armored breast support. “So do females who serve alongside Hailorski.” She returned to her current quarters and put on less revealing clothes.
The three-vehicle convoy departed before the sun crossed the horizon. Bolton dozed for part of the drive, and Reh-dakh wished she could do the same. However much she trusted her Defenders, their imperial lord and master was asking a lot of them by ordering her to take an outland mammal into the memory keeper, and Reh-dakh dared not let her guard down. The morning wind hissed over the knee-high grasses covering the plateau, and Reh-dakh kept a close eye on her troops. No one overly superstitious ever volunteered for Erinnerung Base, but there was always a first. Reh-dakh sipped water and felt her eye growing tired as she searched for any sign of life. There weren’t even grazers here at the moment. The few that had returned to the plains were south, along the Haunted River, where they could find water. Not for the first time, she wondered what it would be like to ride over the land on horseback. Well, to begin with I’d be courting death from a lot of Azdhagi if word ever got out about what I’d done she reminded herself. And there was the little matter of smuggling a horse, tack, and supplies down here in the first place.
As they got closer to their destination, the landscape changed. The plants thinned away until only a few hardy clumps of bunch grass and some scraggly bushes held any of the dirt down. The rest of the ground lay bare to the sun and wind. No birds, reptiles, or even insects moved over the ground or in the air. By now many of the Azdhagi had taken to clutching their medallions, although Lt. Sklee didn’t seem bothered. Well, he and she had exchanged stories one night over drinks and the dead bothered him about as much as they bothered her, and for the same reasons.
The convoy stopped half a kilometer from the edge of the ruins. Reh-dakh would not ask her people to go any closer and she and Bolton proceeded on foot. The woman leaned on her walking stick, her knee aching from the long drive. Bolton stared around, obviously fascinated by the remains of what had once been a very large town. The mammals walked down a broad street surrounded by brick and steel buildings. Although some of the walls still stood, the doors and windows gaped empty, the glass and other materials long since battered away by storms.
“Some of these were multi-story, weren’t they?” Bolton observed.
“I believe so, Your Excellency. Even I do not go exploring here. All the risks are too great,” she replied, her black tail swishing under her skirt. They stopped beside an intact wall bearing colored tiles. “This is the archaic form of Court Azdhag. The sign warns away anyone who comes here looking for ancient secrets, telling them to leave the past well alone.” The Wanderer leaned on her stick and glanced around. “Not that any Azdhag would dare loot these ruins.”
“I assume this town had a name,” the human ran his hand over the tiles, impressed with the durability of the glaze.
“It did once. But the records do not give it anymore and its not preserved in oral tradition,” Reh-dakh explained. “This way, please sir,” and she walked another two blocks, then turned a corner and led him into what looked as if it had been the courtyard of a complex of buildings. The woman studied the pavement closely, obviously searching for something. After a few minutes she located her target, a large square barely visible under dirt.
Lord Reh-dakh knelt beside the flat square and began dusting it off, revealing a panel of glass. She then stepped back and pointed. “Your Excellency, this is why the Azdhagi refuse the Sapient Republic’s genetic and nanotechnology.”
Bolton looked at the panel, then stared as he realized what he was seeing through the top of the, “Display case?” he asked.
“Reliquary or sarcophagus would be more appropriate, Excellency,” the brunette corrected as she cleared off another square.
The size and general shape of the form were those of a typical Azdhagi, but one with horrible deformations. The head looked half-again as large as the reptiles Bolton had grown used to seeing every day, while the tail seemed twisted. The creature had no eyes, only depressions where eyes should have been, and the hind legs splayed out from misshapen hips.
The creature in the next case made his skin crawl. Again, the basic form was Azdhagi, but this one’s snow-white skin was lumpy and patchy, as if diseased. It had been male, judging by the neck spines that had grown backwards, piercing the skin ahead of the miserable creature’s shoulders. The body of an immature reptile lay below the adult, sporting much the same deformity but with a rigid bony spike instead of a tail.
Reh-dakh had cleared off a third spot and stood staring down at the contents, sadness in her single eye. “At least they didn’t live long enough to suffer,” she offered. Bolton took one glance at the clutch of misborn and their dam and had to look away.
“Twelve hundred years ago, long before I came here, the Azdhagi did practice genetic modification and research, Your Excellency. The southern continent was the main population center, with m
ore scattered settlements on the northern lands, although the Capitol had already been shifted north for political reasons,” Reh-dakh began. “The scientists had begun trying to modify Azdhagi genetics to eliminate some of their chronic medical problems and also to improve their species. What exactly they hoped to accomplish along those lines I don’t know. I am not privileged to access that information. But something went very, very wrong with one of the agents they were using to carry the altered genetic material. The results did not become apparent until after a number of affected individuals had taken mates and spread through different communities.”
The human ambassador looked at the cases and then turned back to his guide. “This was the result?” His eyes widened in horror at her next words.
“These are some of the least of the deformations, Mr. Ambassador. Not only were there macro physical problems like these here, but the effects lasted for three or four generations.” She grimaced, “The researchers tried to undo the damage but weren’t successful. People panicked, as you can well imagine, blaming the scientists, foreigners, their gods, or their mates. Much of the Southern continent was abandoned to the dead, and the population of Drakon IV plummeted, in part because one of the lingering consequences of the carrier agent’s mutations was female sterility.” Reh-dakh rubbed under her missing eye as she stared into the hard blue overhead, then looked back at him. “I suspect that’s when females lost their voice in government, but I could be very wrong. I’m a soldier and a Healer, not a historian. It is where Azdhagi sexual dimorphism comes from.
“A few brave souls stayed here, creating this memorial and warning. With the collapse of the cities a number of materials, including nuclear and chemical waste products, escaped into the atmosphere and soil and water, nearly sterilizing the land in some areas.” Bolton thought about the emptiness around them and felt ill. Reh-dakh continued mercilessly, “It was only a century before I arrived that resettlement of this continent had become possible. And even now there are areas like this one that remain barren in all senses of the word. In fact, Azdhagi are not allowed to remain here for more than an hour or so at a time, just in case anything might remain of the mutagens or chemical and nuclear toxins.”
She led him back to where the Azdhagi waited. Bolton kept glancing around, half expecting to see a warped form peering from behind a rock or the remains of a wall. “I trust you understand why the Azdhagi have no truck with anything more advanced than crossbreeding?” Lord Reh-dakh inquired.
“I certainly do, although . . .” he hesitated. “Given all the safeguards around modern technology, something like that can’t happen anymore. Is there any way to persuade the King-Emperor and others of that?”
The one-eyed woman frowned. “Yes, but not the majority of the population. Your Excellency, the Azdhagi do not want genetic or nanotechnology, so why force it down their throats? Pardon my bluntness, but they found a lifeway that works for them and that is successful. Why insist that it change, especially by using technology that caused so much pain and horror, even if it was centuries ago? People have long emotional memories, sir.”
Bolton had a great deal to think about on the return trip from the ruins and from Erinnerung Base. Surely, after almost a thousand of their years, the Azdhagi should be able to move beyond what had happened and begin accepting bio-technologies again. After all, all the other worlds in the Sapient Republic did, so why should the Azdhagi be any different? But the human kept seeing the bodies in their clear tombs and hearing Reh-dakh’s words. And the King-Emperor and Imperial Council made it plain that the Empire wanted trade rights and peace, not membership within the Sapient Republic. Trying to force them to trade in biotechnology could well terminate the second phase negotiations currently underway.
And then there was Lord Iron Fan. Charles Bolton didn’t know what to make of her. The woman had obviously carved a place for herself in Azdhagi society and yet remained outside of that society to a large extent. Reh-dakh insisted that she was only a soldier but she certainly spoke like someone who’d been trained in diplomacy. And her comment about the cross and medallion meant that she practiced an archaic Earth religion. As he put the pieces together, the redheaded diplomat realized that she must have traveled in time at least once, something that only complicated things further. It was easier just to take her as she was, he decided. Rather like the Azdhagi themselves in fact, Bolton mused, staring out the window as the HalfHover approached Stormgate.
Reh-dakh discreetly watched the human and wondered if the mission had succeeded. She hoped it had. For a diplomat, Bolton was an honest and fairly transparent creature, and she sensed a basic decency in him. Well, the Azdhag Ambassador to the Sapient Republic would also be working to dissuade the Republic from pressuring the throne for biotech access, so if she’d failed, there would be a backup. The Wanderer hybrid snorted to herself. It was a form of nanotechnology that had kept her alive and more or less intact on several occasions, and yet even she didn’t completely trust it. Like so many things in this lifestream, she mused, it’s both blessing and bane, depending on the circumstances. What was that planet that even the Wanderers shun? Oh yes, Depuli. Weaponized nanotechnology became sentient and carried a grudge—baaaad juju, as Captain Munroe would say.
Well, it wasn’t her problem. She had other concerns, judging by Captain Leesh’s grave expression as he read something. He scrawled an order and handed it to the aircraft’s communications specialist, then passed a note back to his commanding officer. She read it, read his order, and nodded her agreement. Stage three alert was sufficient for the time being.
Alma T. C. Boykin was born in the Midwest, moved to the Great Plains, and after a brief period living in places where trees almost outnumber people, returned to the plains. She escaped college with a BA, worked for a living, then returned for an advanced degree some years later. When not writing or rotating the cat, she teaches and does a few other odds and ends. Hobbies include cooking, reading, hiking, geology, astronomy, and music.
Visit Alma’s blog at AlmaTCBoykin.Wordpress.com
Elizabeth of Starland
Book 1 of the Colplatschki Chronicles.
Stubborn as a mule? No, stubborn AND her mule.
Colonial Plantation Ltd. abandoned ColPlat XI, writing the planet off as a tax loss after a series of severe Carrington-type events. Now, four hundred years later, Laurence V of Frankonia wants to write Elizabeth von Sarmas out of his kingdom, but like her Lander ancestors, Elizabeth refuses to roll over and die.
To survive, she needs to cross the continent, thread her way through a holy war, and find friends in the Eastern Empire—an impossible task for a sheltered gentlewoman. Or is it? Never underestimate a woman with a mission and a mule.
Available from Amazon.com at:
www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Starland-The-Colplatschki-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00HFEWKXY/
Elizabeth of Donatello Bend
Book 2 of the Colplatschki Chronicles
Elizabeth grows into her duties as colonel and lady of Donatello Bend, and makes a fateful enemy.
Available from Amazon.com at:
www.amazon.com/dp/B00KKY2G1M
Elizabeth of Vindobona
Book 3 of the Colplatschki Chronicles
Ten years after Elizabeth reaches the Empire, court politics and military command aren’t the only things she has to deal with. A marriage proposal, an assassination attempt, and a siege on the Imperial Capital bring new challenges... and new opportunities.
Available from Amazon.com at:
www.amazon.com/dp/B00LNE7D2U
Elizabeth and Empire
Book 4 of the Colplatschki Chronicles
Twenty years after the events of Elizabeth of Vindobona, an untried emperor sits the throne while courtiers scheme. Elizabeth must navigate politics, religion, her relationship with Lazlo, and the Frankonians’ wrath in this fourth book of the Colplatschki Chronicles.
Available from Amazon.com at:
www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Empire-Colplat
schki-Chronicles-Book-ebook/dp/B00PNW640U
Peaks of Grace
Book 5 of the Colplatschki Chronicles
Margurite deSarm knows that she cannot govern the Sarm lands alone. But her husband, Gregory Berlin of Louvat, refuses to fulfill his duties. As Marta attempts to undo her marriage, Odile Rheinhart discovers her own unique calling. In their own complimentary ways, over ten years the two women work to keep the Sarm Valley free from the machinations of Phillip of Frankonia while balancing family, duty, and desires.
Available from Amazon.com at:
www.amazon.com/dp/B00S1XGJSA
Circuits and Crises
Book 6 of the Colplatschki Chronicles
The Turkowi begin their advance from the south as a fight between brothers threatens the Empire.
Available from Amazon.com at:
www.amazon.com/dp/B00UZP7QFM
Blackbird
Book 7 of the Colplatschki Chronicles
Charles Malatesta will defend his inheritance or die trying.
Available from Amazon.com at:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YHXJ3A4
And more...
Keep up with all the latest books by Alma T C Boykin on her blog: AlmaTCBoykin.Wordpress.com
(Listed in chronological order from the perspective of Rada Ni Drako.)
Hubris: The Azdhagi Reborn
Book 1 of the Cat Among Dragons prequel series.
When the Azdhagi overreach the limits of their science, only a few individuals stand between them and chaos. Three interlinked disasters start a chain reaction of tragedy and triumph leading to the re-creation of Azdhag society.