The Kinship of Stars

by Julie Ishaya

  Standing at the manse door on a clouded day, he watches the wall of his father's back as Adam steps into the family transport and is taken away.

  Kieriell didn't feel the physical tears that began to fall freely from his eyes at the memory from when he was but four years old. Then one-by-one more surfaced.

  Why are his eyes different from the eyes of other Valtaerians? The eyes that stare back at him from the mirror, with their slit pupils, seem more than a little scary compared to his friends' eyes.

  Mother is crying in her chamber. She's so lonely.

  The first time he manifests a shadow blade, he accidentally cuts himself.

  He barely felt his body spasm and almost fall backward before the emperor caught him up in one arm and secured him closer.

  He tries to block out Adam's psionic missives. They offer nothing but a cheep substitute for a father's presence.

  He has his first close experience with a woman when he's fifteen. She follows him from town right up to the school gates. "I've seen you before. You're the son of Lord Asmirrius." Her skin is so soft, and she never tells him her name. He never sees her again, but he fantasizes about her for over a year while masturbating.

  He discovers that he can teleport by mistake. He's late for class! No, not this time, he thinks, I have to get there, and he runs. The quadrangle is in sight, and he only needs to get to the far building. Light floods over him and his body tingles. Disoriented, he wonders if he just incidentally looked directly at the daystar? Beyond the light, the classroom appears right there in front of him. It can't be. He still has to get across the quadrangle—doesn't he?

  The more he gets used to teleporting, the more fun he begins to have with it, until he manifests outside Jarren's dorm room after the incident at shadow blade practice when Thalassa Rychaeris waltzed by fresh as sea foam under moonlight.

  Jarren's voice, just inside the door, is laced with spastic laughter. "Did you see how he bent over? He was hurting something awful, wonder he didn't hit himself in the face. Nexian freak."

  "You're a deranged bastard, you know that?"

  His father is away so much that sometimes he wonders if he really is a bastard.

  Then. Nothing. White light whispered over his inner vision and swallowed him, very much like teleporting. He waited for more memories to wash up and found himself in the most soothing place of non-memory somewhere between sleep and waking.

  He drifted there, oddly content and warm, before his self startled and he teetered over the edge of a virtual cliff. The ledge was made of crystal, shining beneath him, the drop steep and endless, disappearing into nebulous space. As his mind's arms flailed about to pull him back to safety, he looked up into a void of light. It pulled at his core-being, numbed him, offered something wonderful and overwhelming. He leaned forward, still fighting for balance, before a hand came out and caught him by the elbow.

  (Not yet, young one,) Asmodéus' voice echoed around him. (You are not ready for that place.)

  Was that a tone of worry he heard?

  And, abruptly, the full sensation of his body fell into place, his consciousness trailing back into his limbs. The beat of his own heart came back to him. His throat was tight and closed, and he was on his knees. Eyes closed, he still saw the white light.

  Still saw the void.

  A hard blow came down on his back, jarring out what little breath he had. His hands touched the cool floor, observed its smoothness. He still didn't breathe. Another blow to his back and searing pain erupted in his air passage. Breath flowed in and he coughed it back out. His eyes flew open and he stared at the floor, at a pair of black boots.

  Hands grasped him under the arms and hauled him to his feet. He collapsed forward against the emperor's chest, found it warm against his cheek. His wet face stained the fabric of the robe.

  (Enough,) Asmodéus' voice came to him almost muted. (These are but the memories of a struggling boy. I see that before you arrived here, you had no contact at all with another Nexian other than your father. But there is something else.)

  Kieriell felt no pain, no peace. Numb with the limbo of his awakening, he could only listen.

  (The shift is hard for one so young living on the outside. I do understand that, but be wary, boy.)

  Slowly, Kieriell raised his head.

  (Stand on your own.)

  Clearing his throat and taking deeper breaths, Kieriell pushed himself away from the stronghold of his grandsire. He felt that if he spoke, his voice would crack apart. He wiped at his mouth and sniffled. "Wh—" he tried. "Wh-at hap—"

  Asmodéus shook his head. (Speak from within.)

  Frowning, Kieriell stared in disbelief.

  (You need only think what you want to say, Kieriell. I will hear it. But you must learn to send as well.)

  Still uncertain, Kieriell tested the notion. Is it over? he thought.

  (Yes. Through our link I knew you.)

  Kieriell offered back a weary nod. He swayed where he stood and closed his eyes against the dizziness. I'm tired.

  (You may go. No further plans have been made yet for the scheduling of your tutorials. You will be notified. If you wish,) he added, (I will have a tray of food delivered to your chambers.)

  Kieriell nodded. He couldn't think anymore. A dull hurt settled into his brain. He turned and tried as best he could not to stagger in his departure.

  Adam knew when Kieriell returned to his chambers. The neural walls sent a small hum of sensory notification. From his office, he felt the boy's presence moving closer down the corridor until it veered off into the neighboring quarters across the way.

  The meeting was over.

  Still deeply concerned, Adam rose and headed out into the corridor. He paused, listening, but there were no other sounds of movement.

  He started for his son's chambers walking softly, one hand reaching out to run across the jags in the wall. At the first entry, he paused again to wonder exactly what he would find inside. Would he find his son? Or would there only be a husk of a boy left?

  Evaluations had several levels of severity, and after undergoing the memory probe sometimes comparable to psychic rape as it dug into the deepest recesses of the mind, some were never quite the same, especially the young ones.

  Adam braced himself. He sensed nothing more than the presence in the lounge chamber, but no surface thoughts came to him, no emotions. He took precisely spaced steps until he reached the lounge then let out the breath he'd been holding.

  Beneath the portrait of his mother Kieriell reclined on the couch amid the scores of pillows, one of them bunched under his head. His cloak and jerkin were discarded in the floor alongside his belt, and his tunic was askew. His face smooth in sleep, he looked more childlike than ever in spite of those sharp Nexian angles.

  A second presence towered behind Adam's shoulder. Without so much as glancing back, he sent, (I suppose you feel better now.)

  (Not at all,) Asmodéus replied.

  (How far did you take the evaluation?)

  Asmodéus looked into the lounge. (I tested him, but I did leave some psionic wards to protect his more vulnerable points, like the surface knowledge of his teleporting ability. You will not tell him about the wards. They are no better than scabs. If he's aware, his own psyche will pick at them until they're weakened.)

  Adam nodded. That was why he found Kieriell's mind so quiet now. The wards were keeping any intruding consciousness at bay. He could no longer simply read his son, and in many ways resented it while he understood completely the need for the wards.

  (Now we begin scheduling his training.) Asmodéus relaxed against the wall. (The chamberlain has agreed to help, and I will do my part.)

  (You?) Adam arched one brow. (Are you sure you won't be too busy otherwise?)

  (I'll make time. The last known transcendant child to be born into Nex met with a destructive fate at the hands of an adversary's challenge. There's no telling what might happen if Kieriell's skills aren't tempered.) That last statement co
uldn't be emphasized enough.

  "Yes," slipped out of Adam's mouth before he meant it to. (Yes,) he repeated. For all that he and his father had fought through their own trials, Kieriell, he sensed, was going to be the greatest one ever for both of them.

  8

  The colony glistened beneath its imitation light dome, while a blanket of mist crept up, enshrouding bridge and tower. This mist was created by the asteroid's natural water sources that crept up through the base rock and then reacted to the dome's heat, evaporating and swirling up around the metropolis like a cleansing and protective cocoon. Asmodéus had always found the mist alluring.

  From a balcony offsetting the private passage down from his chambers, the emperor watched over the largest colony in his realm. Warm wind from the upper cavern stirred his hair while he sipped from a chalice of spiced wine.

  Somewhere below, music played. A small concert sent out soft, jangling tones and the rise and fall of a melodious wind instrument. Other noises carried, distant but definable: the drone of street craft, voices from crowds gathered in the multi-leveled plexes.

  Asmodéus pressed one hand forward against the lip of the balcony wall and focused on the light of a single craft moving just beneath the surface of gauzy white. Obscured by the haze, the glow resembled a tiny star. Moments later the light descended from view, swallowed into the pale void.

  The void, Asmodéus thought, Kieriell's face fading in and out of his mind. So much for one young mind to comprehend. There was no doubt about it, the boy was a transcendant. After the vision of the great openness on the edge of Kieriell's psyche, he was certain he'd looked at the gateway into infinity that was part of a transcendant's genetic makeup, and that made Kieriell's training all the more important.

  He didn't move when the chamberlain emerged from the dark portal at the back of the balcony.

  The masked figure stood still for a long time, equally entranced by the view. "You sent for me, my lord?" he asked at last, his voice muted by the soft den of activity below.

  (I did.) The emperor raised the cup and took a long swallow of the wine. (I assume all preparations have been completed for my grandson's education.)

  (Of course. I will be meeting Adam and Kieriell in two hours for the first of a lecture series. As for his teleportation skills, the old green room will make a sufficient training ground. He may practice there in privacy.)

  (Good, but I do not, under any circumstances, want him to go into the colony alone. If he wants to see it, I will accompany him myself.)

  (As you will.)

  Asmodéus tilted his head back and closed his eyes, savoring the wind on his face. He sorted out which thoughts he wished to share from those he wished to withhold. The chamberlain would certainly advise against the insistent reflections on the past. But there was no release, not with this new dread. It gnawed at the emperor's conscience. (During the evaluation, I saw something in Kieriell Shyr'ahm that has no definition. Something vast, completely part of him, but he doesn't even know it.)

  The chamberlain knew exactly what he was saying. (The void.)

  (Yes.)

  (You saw it?) He turned so that his back was to the colony and he faced Asmodéus directly. (You actually saw it during the evaluation?)

  The emperor nodded. The void, as it had been known before, was only a hypothesis with only a thread of mention in any of the old records of previous transcendants. (From what I could tell, it can only be defined as a place of expanded consciousness, something most of us will never comprehend, not in our fleshy state of being. His mind holds a delicate balance between that place and the routine existence he knows. During my link with him, he almost slipped away. I caught him, pulled him back, but should it ever happen again, I don't know what—) He shook his head. (I could have killed that boy. In my determination to be strict with him, I could have pushed his consciousness over that boundless cliff before he was ready and rendered him mindless.) He stepped closer, casting his eyes down, feeling strangely inferior. (You have studied the few records on transcendant children born into Nex. I have only heard stories about them. Have you, in any of your research, come across other mention of this void and how it was handled?)

  (I cannot say that there is information on how to train a transcendant to deal with it. It's believed to be the place of collective universal energy and, as you said, it is too vast for us to know as individuals as it permeates the entire macroverse. I can imagine that it takes extreme volition and self awareness to traverse it from one dimension to another.) The eyes within the mask grew more intense, pupils dilating from slits to full windows. (Did it frighten you?)

  It was a question Asmodéus would never have answered openly in mixed company. He closed his eyes, again saw that steep cliff in Kieriell's mind and how it fell off into nothing. (Yes.) Then, with a gesture for the chamberlain to follow, he made for the passage, and the darkness engulfed him.

  Kieriell gaped at the palace library and the multiple levels of balconies and the millions of books, many of them plated with silver down the spines. Like the banquet hall, there appeared to be no ceiling here. Somewhere far above, it vanished in shadow while remote light fixtures hovered in the air. The entire chamber was circular, like an expansive well shaft.

  The main entrance stepped out onto a balcony that circled around to a large staircase to the next level. Kieriell followed his teachers in this direction and found the second level had another balcony. This one slanted down with a small section of auditorium seating facing across a great open space to a wall dominated by a huge blank screen obviously intended for large presentations.

  Another room offset this level. The ceiling here was inset with various devices like transparent crystal screens of different sizes and widths which extended down in rectangular plates, creating a maze of glassy divisions throughout the room. It was here that the group settled down to begin the new pupil's learning.

  "This," Adam explained, "is the map room. Here we keep our records of every outworld we have observed and documented for coordinates. Our maps, so far, document thirteen-hundred dimensions overlapping ours and where the nexus points are to reach them. Not all of those nexus points, however, open close to planetary or other vital class worlds that are inhabitable like Valtaer."

  He walked over to one of the crystal screens and lightly touched the surface to activate it. The screen flared to life with holographic lines of brilliant blue that formed a basic grid with an equilateral triangle at its center. "The whole is three dimensional, but to keep it simple for now, we're going to look at a two dimensional image that bisects Nex space. Treat it like a land map, if you will." The lines on the screen began to shift and grow out from the central triangle, building lines out from each vertex. "You see that overall it's a grid pattern. We call it the infinity grid because it never ends. Each grid line is actually a wall of energy which we call a titan, which stretches beyond our means to map its outer edges. All titans exist multidimensionally, though in some dimensions they do not appear as prominently as in others and they can be almost impossible to detect without the right tech."

  "Is that supposed to be the center?" Kieriell asked, indicating what appeared to be the central triangle. The grid lines grew wider apart as they moved out from this particular location.

  "That's exactly what it is," Adam said. "We've divided the entirety of what we have mapped into sectors. We are in the sector, right here at an approximated eighty-trillion light years from that center sector. You can see that the titans and the sectors between them grow closer together the closer they move toward center. Its location was calculated back during the reign of the second Asmodéus by using the rate of reduction in space between each titan. It's said he was obsessed with tracking back to the center, and obviously he succeeded."

  Kieriell absorbed it all with a frown. He worried over keeping up with so much information at once.

  "Now, Valtaer is here," Adam continued. On the map, Nex was represented by uneven flecks and a dust field surrounding
a red glowing dot, obviously meant to be Arctus. The neighboring titan was labelled T-III, and Kieriell recognized that it met a second titan labelled T-VI, and that was the nexus point through which he had travelled with his father. "Although Nex and Valtaer are in two totally different dimensions, on this map they look like perfect neighbors."

  Kieriell interrupted to ask, "Is every nexus point in the titan structure a different doorway?"

  "As far as we know, and as you can see, each one has a coordinate assigned to it." Adam gave an impressed smile at his son's comprehension. "With our rift-tech, we use plasma energy as a means of ripping through the magnetic fabric of the titan. Our ancestors settled in this sector because it is part of the dimension in which titans were found to emit the strongest, most manipulable energies and because it is near one of few doorways that open directly on a habitable planet surface. Many other doors open into nothing but more space. Some have been explored as far as possible and led to nothing, others have rendered contact with other species almost immediately. Very few of them have any kind of rift-tech."

  Kieriell wondered if that was for the best or not, but he was in no mood to get into a discussion on ethics and other races. He had a feeling that was coming soon enough in one form or another, given what he'd learned already of the Nexian view. "What does it look like in three dimensional format?"

  Adam and the chamberlain exchanged a look, and then Adam crossed the room to a small ornate podium from which he pulled up a control console. His fingers danced over the console and the lights dimmed before a projection of light lines emitted from the walls, and Kieriell found himself surrounded by a vast grid of blue holographic titan walls. Their flat planes looked much like those of the titans he'd seen already in Nex space, shimmering with soft blue energy, but where titans crossed each other, lines formed. The central triangle was, in fact, more like a pyramid once its additional titan walls were added.