Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra

by Stephen Lawhead

  Treet got the idea that they were a little reluctant to pin the Deity down to one name or expression. They preferred a much more flexible and elastic approach. But although they spoke of Him in many different ways, depending on what they wanted to say about Him, it was always understood that to invoke one Aspect implied all the rest. The Infinite Father was One, after all, indivisible and ultimate in every sense.

  This was the Fieri doctrine—not complicated or obtuse, but ripe with enormous implications. For once a person accepted the idea that the Infinite Father of the entire universe actually desired commerce with individual men, literally no sphere of mortal endeavor was untouched. Each and every thought and action had to be examined in light of an expressed partnership with an infinite and eternal patron.

  These were not utterly new ideas, Treet knew. There were several Earth religions that espoused the same general themes. The difference here, as far as Treet could tell, was that the Fieri’s beliefs had created a vital, thriving society of nearly eight million souls in love with truth and beauty and kindness to one another. Nowhere else he’d ever heard of had that happened on so great a scale.

  In Treet’s experience, personally and scholastically, theocracies produced miserable societies: stubborn, resistant, suspicious, intolerant, highly inequitable, and so hidebound they could not function in the face of change or conflict.

  The Fieri had apparently avoided all that and stood at a pinnacle of social experience unique in human existence. They had discovered Utopia, had been smart enough to recognize a good thing when they saw it, and had worked at making the vision reality. For this they had earned Treet’s respect and admiration. Orion Treet also recognized a good thing when he saw it.

  The one item that puzzled him in all this, however, was how such a society could have developed at all, considering how they had originated. The Fieri were part of the same population of the colony ship that had landed on Empyrion in the beginning.

  According to the colony’s official historian, Feodr Rumon, a group of dangerous malcontents had been cast out, or had left of their own accord, but under protest. Exactly what had taken place wasn’t clear; Rumon’s Chronicles were slightly schizophrenic on this point. Still, the proto-Fieri had been forced from the safety of the colony and condemned to wander the wild wastes of Empyrion.

  But the homeless nomads had somehow transformed themselves into a culture that in almost every respect surpassed the highest achievements of any Earth had ever seen. At least, in three weeks of scrutiny, Treet had not discovered any flaw. Theirs was a perfect society: no poverty, no disease, no crime, no homeless, no idle lonely old.

  Now he and Mentor Mathiax walked along the coarse, pebbled beach of the inland sea the Fieri called Prindahl. The wide water shone flat and metallic beneath the white sun, quicksilver sea over which the knife-hulls of boats with sails of crimson and ultramarine raced, trailing diamonds in their rippling wakes. Closer in, the sky held the gliding bodies of long-winged birds, rakkes, diving and soaring, feathering the gentle wind to rise high and then plummet to shoals of sparkling yellow fish.

  A little distance away, graceful Fieri children frolicked at the water’s edge with their wevicats, dark and feral beside the angelic youngsters. Together the huge, lithe animals and their diminutive masters abandoned themselves to play, tromping the shallow water into foam, lost in laughter and the joy of the moment. The children’s voices rang clear like notes struck from silver bells.

  Treet watched the boats and the birds, creatures of the wind, so fast and free. He listened to the sound of the children playing. A pang of envy shot up in his bones, an ache for something he’d scarcely been aware of lacking: peace. Not merely the absence of tension or conflict, but the complete unity of body, mind and spirit, the total harmony of life in all its parts. That is what the boats and birds and children symbolized: creatures at rest within themselves and in harmony with their environment. Not fighting it, but accepting it, shaping it and being shaped by it to live in it and beyond it.

  That, Treet decided, was exactly what the Fieri were about as well: transcending the conditions of their existence by the force of a unity of spirit so strong it re-created all it touched. They had discovered the secret of this harmony, and he envied them.

  For most of his 153 years, Treet had thought it was freedom he was after. He realized now that it was harmony. Without inner harmony, no amount of external freedom would ever make one free. One would always be a slave to selfishness, to pettiness, to passion, or to any of a jillion other afflictions of the soul.

  This spiritual harmony had finally to rest on something absolute—this was what Mathiax had been trying to tell him for the past weeks. The Fieri peace was not the absence of something negative, but the presence of something positive—a solid force knitting the center together, and around which everything else moved: a starmass whose gravitational field held all lesser bodies in their orbits, described their movements, kept them spinning in their flight.

  For the Fieri, that solid force at the center of everything was the Infinite Father.

  “Tell me something,” said Treet, breaking the long silence that had wrapped them as they walked. “What do you remember of Dome? Why did the Fieri leave?”

  Mathiax pursed his lips and scowled. He took a long time to answer, but at last said, “No writing has come down to us from the Wandering. But in earlier times, the old rememberers said that a great change swept through Dome—a change that left it forever twisted. Those in power no longer respected life; they respected expediency. Any who argued for life over expediency fell under suspicion, were persecuted and eventually driven out. For Dome to exist, it was said, all had to yield to the greater good. The Fieri—only our name and these few memories come down to us from those times—said that what could not be good for one individual, could never be good for the whole. If one person suffered, all suffered. The rulers of Dome could not accept this. Persecution began—terrible suffering for all who stood with us. Rather than retaliate in kind or endure the injustice of persecution, our forefathers left their homes.”

  “And then?” Treet weighed this version of the story with the one he’d read in the colony’s official records.

  “We wandered. Empyrion was a vast, rich world designed by the Creator for sustaining life. The land welcomed us, and our people roved the world and learned its secrets. Later, much later, we built great cities on fertile plains and raised a strong people under peaceful skies …” Mathiax drifted off. The Clerk’s gray eyes gazed far out across the lake, remembering things he’d never seen.

  “What happened?” Treet asked softly.

  “The Burning …” Mathiax made a choked sound deep in his throat, and Treet turned toward him. Tears streamed down the man’s face.

  Afraid to speak lest he intrude on the Mentor’s sorrow, Treet looked out across the lake to where the boats were but smears of color in the distance.

  After a moment, the Mentor came to himself again and wiped his eyes. “These are things which cannot be remembered without sorrow,” he explained.

  “I understand,” replied Treet. “If you’d rather not talk about it—”

  “No, no. You will hear it. But perhaps I’m not the one to tell it.” Mathiax turned, and they began walking back to the waiting evee. The lesson was over for the day, and Treet had more than enough to think about.

  On the way back to Liamoge, Treet felt again the sense of urgency he had begun experiencing at odd times in the last several days: a straining forward, a quickening of the blood, a momentary catch in the heart’s rhythm, a skipped beat in the anticipation of an unknown event speeding toward him. He wondered, not for the first time, if the feeling was in some way connected with the purpose the Preceptor had spoken of. A purpose he did not recognize yet, but felt drawing inexorably nearer with every passing hour.

  Treet did not wonder about this purpose; he figured he’d know it when he found it. Or rather, when it found him—the sense of being pursued was that
strong. The urgency puzzled him, however. While content to let whatever was pursuing him catch him, he also felt that time was in some sense running out—for him, for the Fieri, for a person or persons unknown. And if he did not act soon it would be too late—although what act or too late meant Treet could not guess.

  All this provided Treet with the overall impression of being impelled toward a far-off destiny, a fate already chosen for him from the first—although he believed in neither fate nor destiny. Still, he sensed that events beyond his control were aligning themselves around him like lines of magnetic force, and he was powerless to prevent it.

  And now, as he and Mathiax sped along the seamless causeway over sparkling Prindahl toward Talus’ pavilion, Treet allowed the surge of confused emotion to play over him, savoring the heightened awareness emerging from the muddled wash.

  Yes, something was about to happen; it waited only for him to set it in motion. I am the catalyst, he thought. It’s up to me. But will I know what to do when the time comes?

  FIFTY-NINE

  When they reached Liamoge, there was a large, multi-passenger evee waiting outside the entrance of the pavilion. Treet walked briskly through the entryway and into the main hall where Talus and Dania stood talking to several guests. One of the guests turned as he entered, and Treet found himself looking into the face that had begun to haunt his dreams.

  “Yarden!” He stared, afraid to move lest the vision vanish.

  She approached him slowly, almost shyly, he thought, until he saw that she was studying him closely. “You’ve changed,” she said. “But I don’t know how.”

  “You haven’t,” relied Treet. The others had stopped talking and now looked on. He told Talus, “Excuse us for a moment. We—”

  Dania answered, “You have much to say to one another. Walk in the courtyard; no one will disturb you.”

  They walked through the hall and into the deep green confusion of the courtyard. He had so much he wanted to tell her—he’d been saving things up for months, it seemed—and now that she was here, he could not think how to begin. His mind went blank. After a few steps they slowed, turned, and gazed at one another.

  “How have you been?” he asked. No, that’s not what he wanted to say at all. Just say it!

  “Well,” Yarden answered, looking away. “And you?”

  “Fine …” This was getting them nowhere. He glanced down at his hands and noticed that they were quivering. “Look at my hands—they’re shaking.”

  Yarden placed her hands over his. “They’re cold too.” She stepped closer to him, raised her eyes. “I’ve missed you, Orion,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you very much.”

  Then, without his knowing how exactly, his arms were filled with her warmth. “Yarden … I began to think I’d never see you again. The last time we were together … I was afraid—”

  “Shhh,” she soothed. “Not now. Just hold me.”

  Treet stood with his arms wrapped tightly around her, cradling her softness. They stood for a long time without moving, without speaking, letting their embrace find its own eloquence. At last Yarden pushed back to look at him. She raised a finger to trace his chin. “Funny, I’d forgotten about your beard,” she said.

  “I’d forgotten how beautiful you are.” Her long dark hair was smoothed back from her face to fall in a loose cascade behind her shoulders. Her eyes, jet beneath sweeping brows, hinted at depths unexplored. She put her cheek against the hollow of his throat, and he smelled the freshness of her hair. “I never want to let you go.”

  “I could tell when you were thinking of me,” she said almost absently.

  “I wondered if you would know. What did you get?”

  “I’m not going to tell you. But it let me know that I was right about you.”

  “I thought you considered me an ogre.”

  “Crusty, conceited, and too independent for your own good, but not an ogre.”

  “Coming from you, ma’am, that’s a compliment.” Still holding her, he led her to a grouping of chairs in a far corner of the courtyard. They sat together in one of the larger chairs. “I thought I had so much I wanted to say to you, but I seem to have forgotten everything. It hardly matters though.”

  “But I want to hear it. I want to hear about every minute of these last weeks.”

  “All right,” agreed Treet. He pulled her close and began relating all that he’d experienced since stepping off the airship that first night. When he was through, Yarden straightened and turned toward him, drawing up her legs and crossing them.

  “Now it’s my turn,” she said. Her story was nearly identical to Treet’s. By the time she came to, the airship that had rescued them had landed. Still very drowsy, she was taken to the home of a young Fieri woman name Ianni.

  “I was half-asleep for the first two days,” said Yarden. “But Ianni understood and did not press me too hard, although she was very excited to learn all about where I’d come from, how I’d gotten here—everything I could tell her.” She paused in her recitation and said, “Oh, Orion, aren’t these the most wonderful people you’ve every encountered? They are so loving. Fierra is simply incredible …”

  He agreed that he’d never seen anything close to it, and she continued, “Ianni took me everywhere. She is an excellent teacher, very sensitive. She introduced me to everything Fieri. We were up every morning at dawn and went to bed late every night.” Yarden told him of their long days of discussion and travel around the city, about visiting the Preceptor and sailing out across the lake one night under the stars. She ended by saying, “I’ve seen the most amazing things, eaten the most delicious food, been exposed to wisdom and kindness I never dreamed existed!”

  “So have I,” murmured Treet, pulling her close once again. “But that’s not all. I learned that… I love you.”

  He would have said it again, but her lips were on his, her arms around his neck. He drank in the heavy, honeyed sweetness of her kiss. He returned it with all the desire that as in him, demanding more and more of her, of himself, until they broke apart, breathless, clinging to each other.

  “Yarden—”

  Just then a shout came from the other side of the courtyard. “Hey! Where is everybody?”

  “Pizzle!” Treet felt as if someone had dumped ice water on him.

  A moment later the scraggy, jug-eared head poked through a tangle of foliage directly in front of them. “There you! Hey, don’t get up—I’ll join you.” He slid a chair up and plopped in. “Boy, isn’t this some place they got here? I never would have imagined it could be like this—not after seeing the inside of Dome. You guys look great! Just great! I was starting to wonder whether we’d ever get back together. Not that I worried about it—there is just so much to do here, you know. Unbelievable!”

  He sat there beaming at them and shaking his head. “It’s good to see you, too, Pizzle,” said Treet. He’d forgotten what a bother the egghead could be, but was quickly remembering.

  “I understand we have you to thank for saving our lives,” said Yarden. “You flagged down the airship that rescued us.”

  “Yes, we owe you a lot,” added Treet. “How are your hands? Mathiax said you were burned pretty bad.”

  Pizzle held up his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Never better. These Fieri are genius doctors—I don’t have a single scar to show for my heroism. But to tell the truth, I thought we’d had it out there in the desert. I figured I’d jigged my last jig. I know I was more dead than alive when they picked us up, ‘cause I don’t remember much about it. Seems like it happened a hundred years ago.”

  “I know what you mean,” agreed Yarden. “So much has happened in such a short time it all seems like a bad dream—like it happened to somebody else. I’m just thankful we all made it.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Treet, “have you seen Crocker or Calin yet?”

  “Crocker’s due here any minute. That’s what Talus said. I don’t know about Calin.” Pizzle grinned, putting all his teeth into it. �
��I’ll tell you what—isn’t this some place though?”

  “I’ve never seen anything to compare,” agreed Treet.

  “If you’re here and Crocker’s coming,” Yarden said, disentangling herself from Treet’s embrace, “it must mean that you’ve spoken before the College of Mentors.”

  “Correct. Very attentive audience, I must say. I take it you two have done your bit?”

  “I spoke yesterday,” said Yarden. “I talked myself hoarse, and they would have sat there all night long. When I finished though, not a word—they just got up and went away. Strange.”

  “They did the same with me,” said Pizzle. “I guess it’s their way.”

  “I think they plan some sort of free-for-all later. Right now they only want the facts as we see them.”

  “You don’t think they believe us?” asked Yarden.

  “Oh, they believe us,” replied Treet. “But we’ve really upset them more than they let on. They don’t know what to do with us—that is, with the information we bring with us.” Treet paused and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I’ve observed a few lapses in the Fieri code of impeccable conduct. If you’re interested, I’ll tell you what I think they mean.”

  “I’m all ears,” said Pizzle happily. He was living every SF fan’s keenest aspiration: high adventure on a distant planet.

  “Well, here goes. One: our reception here was odd, to say the least. We’re packed off to private residences, rather than greeted by their representatives of law and order. Why? For all they know we could be killer commandos come to take apart their city stone by stone. It’s as if they want us to think our coming was no great shake at all—yet, our appearances before the College of Mentors indicates a considerable degree of healthy concern.”

  Yarden opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it and nodded for Treet to continue.

  “Okay? Two: Talus imposes a gag order on his own family in order to keep me from talking to them. He’s a Mentor—which I’m sure you’ve figured out is pretty high up in the Fieri chain of command—and he set great store by my speaking before the assembly just as soon as possible—my second night here, in fact. Yet, he’s asked me no questions and has not really spoken to me since that night—except to say hello and good-bye and have some more salad.”