The curious part was that the three of us were not spinning at all. Somehow it seemed we were locked into one position, but I knew that we were already traveling at great speed. I estimated the total distance between Veldyrian and Coldetz to be no more three thousand miles as the crow flies, but really I had no idea. It could have been half that for all I knew.
So I would have a rough idea of how fast the Cloud King’s method of transport really was when we touched down, assuming I could keep track of time in transit.
That was harder to do than I had originally expected, as the incredible storm raged all around us until the crash of thunder, the roar of wind and even the occasional piece of unusual flying debris threatened to overcome our senses. For some reason, it actually did overcome my senses and I inexplicably lost consciousness with nothing but a monotonous droning sound in my ears.
Chapter XXI: Flashbacks
I was dreaming, of that much I was certain. But it was the most unusual dream I had ever experienced and even though there were no bright colors or lights to be seen, I had the distinct impression that someone was calling my name.
The darkness surrounding me was impenetrable, and even the ‘sound’ of the voice I heard was difficult to pinpoint. The voice became louder and clearer, but I still couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman speaking to me.
“Aaron,” it said, “look to the light.”
I was confused. I saw no light, and the voice seemed to come from all around me. I suddenly felt desperate as I tried to turn around to find the supposed light, but my efforts yielded nothing.
“Aaron,” the voice pleaded, “you must find the light.”
“I can’t see a light!” I yelled as loud as I could, but my voice seemed to be swallowed by the impervious veil of darkness surrounding me. “Tell me what to do!”
“Aaron, please!” it continued, becoming desperate. “The light; look to the light!”
Then I saw it. Far in the distance was a faintly pulsating light, and I tried to run toward it but I made very little progress.
“That’s it, Aaron!” the voice said, growing fainter with each word, but I became convinced that it was a woman’s voice. “Please hurry toward the light; you must hurry!”
The lights were growing now, and I was finally making good progress. It seemed like I would reach the light in just a few more moments of running, but then I stopped in my tracks.
“Adam,” I said, only now remembering that he was still back in the Mustang which had just been hit by that pickup. “I have to go back for Adam!”
I turned around and tried to find the way back, but it seemed like I couldn’t turn away from the light. Whenever I tried to look somewhere else, the light seemed to follow and maintain its position in my field of view.
“No, Aaron,” came the woman’s pleading voice, “you must not stop now; you are so close!”
I shook my head, or at least I tried to. “I have to go back for Adam!” I yelled. I knew I couldn’t turn away from the light, so instead I backed away as quickly as I could. The light began to fade from view, and somehow I knew that I was on my way back to reality.
I awoke to flashing lights shining in my eyes. It took a while to realize that they were colored, and that those colors were red and blue.
My head was numb on the right side and my right hand didn’t work when I tried to reach up and check the side of my face. I blinked my eyes a few times until I realized I was upside down. A few seconds later, I remembered that we had been sitting in the car on the side of the road listening to music. Then I remembered that a car had slammed into us while we were parked, and I looked over at Adam only to have my heart sink.
My brother’s face was covered in blood. The steering wheel column had smashed into his chest, pinning him between what was left of his seat and the door. He was still breathing but the top of the car had been smashed down on us, so his body was contorted unnaturally.
“Adam,” I croaked, and pain exploded through my ribs as I tried to move to help him. My seatbelt was still fastened, and my right arm still didn’t respond. I looked up and saw that it was impaled on a piece of metal which had previously been part of the door.
“Don’t move, sir,” came a woman’s voice from outside the car, and I looked to see a police officer kneeling beside me with a flashlight in her hand. “Hold on until the ambulance arrives,” she instructed, but all I could think about was helping my brother.
I tried to move my left hand, and thankfully it responded. I unbuckled my seatbelt after a few seconds of fighting with it, and collapsed to the roof of the car.
The pain in my ribs spread throughout my body, but my right arm actually managed to free itself from the mangled door. I couldn’t even feel it, but I saw blood dripping from the ragged wound which spread from the back of my hand halfway up to my elbow. Fortunately, the upper part of my arm seemed to work well enough, and I was able to crawl across to where Adam was.
“Sir, I need you to stay still until the ambulance arrives!” the policewoman insisted, and for the first time I could hear the approaching sirens.
Movement caught my eye outside the car and I tried to focus on it. When my eyes finally complied, I saw that it was a man sitting on the ground with his back to the rear wheel of an older style pickup truck. The truck’s front right quarter had been demolished, and I hollowly realized that he must have been the one who hit us. The man was sobbing uncontrollably with his head between his knees, which made me think that he was drunk.
I returned my attention to the task in front of me and reached up with my good hand to feel Adam’s neck. “Adam!” I shouted hoarsely. “Adam, wake up!” I pleaded.
I could feel a pulse, and after a few seconds I could even tell that he was breathing regularly, but in the poor light it was impossible to tell how bad his wounds were. He didn’t move at all in response to my voice or touch.
“Sir!” came the policewoman’s stern voice again. “Don’t touch him! We need to let the medics take care of him now!”
I knew she was right, so I grabbed my brother’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Adam, stay with me,” I whispered. “We’re all each other’s got; don’t leave me…”
The last thing I remember hearing before passing out were the footsteps of the ambulance crew when they finally arrived.
Chapter XXII: Veldyrian
I awoke with a start to find myself lying on a green pasture, feeling completely exhausted. The memory of that car wreck was still fresh in my mind, and it was so vivid that it seemed as though it happened just a few minutes earlier.
But I knew it had been a long time since that night and a lot had happened between then and now. I collected my wits and sat up gingerly, careful not to overdo it.
Thankfully there was no dizziness or vertigo, and I found myself sitting in the middle of an absolutely beautiful verdant green field, which rolled gently for miles in every direction.
“Awake at last, I see,” came Pi’Vari’s voice from behind me.
“How long have we been here?” I asked groggily as I turned to see my herald.
Pi’Vari was chewing on a piece of grass, leaned back on his hands with his legs crossed in front of him. “Less than half of an hour,” he replied.
Dancer was off to Pi’Vari’s right, leaning on his spear with both hands grasping its shaft. “Who Adam?” asked the little man suddenly.
I sat there for a moment in shock, which I quickly tried to play off as weariness as I rubbed my eyes. “What?” I asked, knowing I would have to come up with an answer.
“Adam,” repeated Dancer, and I saw Pi’Vari’s eyes burning a hole in my skull as he also waited for my reply. “Who Adam? You say ‘Adam’ when sleep.”
I hung my head slightly. “Adam,” I began slowly, “was someone I knew from what seems like a lifetime ago.”
“What happened to him?” asked Pi’Vari blithely, picking up a fresh piece of grass to chew.
I looked up into the sky and felt the sun�
�s warmth on my face. I closed my eyes for a moment, thankful for the rare clear day which felt for a moment like being home on a nice summer’s afternoon.
“He was hurt badly,” I replied bluntly. “There was a terrible accident, and it was my fault.” I knew Pi’Vari wanted more, but I wasn’t interested in giving it to him. I stood suddenly and looked all around. “These are the Veldyrian Meadows, aren’t they?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Dancer nodded and Pi’Vari stood before walking to stand beside me. “Indeed,” he replied smoothly as he turned to survey the rolling, green, plains with obvious satisfaction, “and a finer sight I have not seen in many months.”
I nodded curtly. Personally, I was having second thoughts about coming back here at all, but the time for doubt was long past. “How long will they be, do you think?” I asked, genuinely curious how long it would take for the patrols to have spotted us and dispatched a reconnaissance team.
Pi’Vari smiled. “We were rather less than subtle in our entrance,” he chuckled, “so truthfully, I am surprised they are not already here.”
So was I, to tell the truth. Then I saw something racing over a distant grass-covered hill, and I raised my hand to point in its direction. “Here they come,” I said with more than a bit of trepidation.
Dancer, who had silently moved to my side, spun his spear over in his hand before planting its butt into the soft grass.
The object raced across a half dozen small, grassy knolls until its exact shape was unmistakable. It appeared to be a flat-bottomed skiff which hovered about three feet off the ground. It was made of finely worked and darkly polished wood, and it was nearly thirty feet long.
There were at least half a dozen people aboard the speeding craft, which was easily moving over a hundred miles per hour. As the vehicle approached, my heart sank when I recognized one of the people inside it. I ground my teeth as I wondered about the odds of this particular group being the one patrolling the region of the Meadows where we had touched down, and it was difficult not to cast a white-hot glare at Pi’Vari.
The hovercraft hurtled toward us at its impressive speed. If it had been a car there is no way it could have stopped quickly enough to avoid running us over, but this thing’s brakes were thankfully a little better than the average SUV.
The vehicle slung sidelong toward us as it came to a clean halt, presenting a ramp which lowered to the ground almost immediately upon the vessel’s coming to a complete stop. A man wearing bright red robes with silver lining, holding a grey, metal staff in his left hand descended confidently down the ramp. His eyes were strikingly blue, his hair was glossy black and he wore a mustache like the Spaniards depicted in old paintings. His hair was medium-length with a single, long braid running down from the left side of his head, indicating his station as an Apprentice Imperial Wizard.
The figure which immediately followed him was about six feet tall, and he had a pair of slender, curved blades strapped across his naked back by an X-shaped black, leather harness which criss-crossed his rock-hard chest. He wore no armor whatsoever, with only a pair of black breeches and well-made sandals strapped to his feet. His skin was jet-black, his eyes were dark purple and while they lacked irises, I could feel them on me even without looking.
The robed man stopped no more than a meter from where I stood and looked at my party appraisingly before allowing a sneer to spread across his face. “Jezran Wiegraf,” he said with the barest hint of a nod, a gesture that was befitting my station above his.
“Pryzius Tyrdren,” I replied through gritted teeth. I returned the disrespectful nod the best I could before locking my eyes with his, which looked uncannily like his father’s: Arch Magos Rekir, Master of House Tyrdren and literally the last person I wanted knowing that I was back in town.
We sped across the Veldyrian Meadows in the hovercraft, racing toward the silhouette of the Imperial City. Pryzius and Gaeld were accompanied by four Veldyrian soldiers, whose sole purpose was to keep the young Apprentice safe from harm while he conducted the business of looking to the security of Veldyrian in his particular patrol pattern.
The truth was that Veldyrian’s security depended very little on groups like his, which were assigned to patrol craft like the one we were riding. It was little more than a cushy station which, upon completion of his assigned term of duty, would satisfy the Service requirement necessary to advance from Apprentice to Journeyman rank.
But to say that Pryzius was a spoon-fed milk-drinker would be seriously underestimating the man. He had apparently been the consensus number top pick going into the final week of school, and it had been a mortal certainty that House Tyrdren would select him with their selection.
Somehow, Magos Antolin Wiegraf had managed to wrangle the first pick away from House Tyrdren using some sort of legal trickery which I still don’t understand. With that pick, Antolin had inexplicably selected Jezran instead of using it to secure Pryzius, which would have yielded my master a tremendous amount of political leverage over House Tyrdren.
Pryzius had always begrudged Jezran and House Wiegraf for what he probably deemed to be a serious slight against his dignity, reducing him to the second overall selection in the annual Wizard’s Draft. To say that he and Jezran—not to mention myself—had clashed in the past would be to put it mildly.
“The scion of House Wiegraf,” Pryzius began smugly, “carried home on the wings of a friendly cloud after losing his barely adequate Champion in some tussle out in the uncivilized world, probably with little better than a wild-eyed hedge-wizard. Yours is a story which the Council will want to hear personally, I am certain,” he finished with relish.
I hated the incessant verbal banter with Pi’Vari, but at least with him I was reasonably certain that our fates intertwined tightly enough that nothing immediately harmful would come of it. With Pryzius, there was little doubt that any misstep would yield immediate—damning—fruit.
“I can see that your Augury skills still need work,” I retorted as evenly as I could. “You probably couldn’t be further from the truth if you tried.”
“Oh?” he cocked an eyebrow in mock surprise. “Did I not tell you that it came to me in a dream?” he asked sarcastically, which managed to elicit the barest hint of a chuckle from Pi’Vari, which Pryzius certainly caught. “I thought you Wiegrafs believed in the power of dreams above all else?” he finished triumphantly.
I nodded slowly. “Dreams have proven…useful to us, it’s true,” I said smoothly, “but I understand that you have plenty of time for dreaming in your current post. I, and my companions,” I gestured to Pi’Vari and Dancer, “have been out securing new lands for the glory of the Empire, so that one day they might come under such august protection as that provided by yourself and your fine band of warriors.” The truth was that Imperial glory was the farthest thing from my immediate or long-term goals, but it didn’t hurt to stick it in and twist every now and then with people like Pryzius.
“Whatever mud-hole whose inhabitants you have managed to impress with your pathetic talents enough to secure their surrender,” Pryzius hissed, “will surely prove to be more trouble than it is worth.”
Now it was my turn to chuckle, but I held back the best I could manage. “You’re probably right,” I agreed, and decided to leave it at that.
Our transport was approaching the Imperial City, and I felt an unfamiliar sense of foreboding as the Great Tower came into view from its position in the center of the city. The tower in the middle of Coldetz Castle was impressive enough, but the Great Tower of Veldyrian was ridiculous, even by the standards of architects and engineers who raised buildings like the Burj Khalifa or the World Trade Center.
It easily stood a mile tall, with a wide, twisting, five-legged base arching upward and tapering to merge into a single column a third of the way up the structure’s massive form. But the Tower didn’t stay cylindrical from there up; instead it flared back out into the same number of separate towers a third of the way down from the top, crea
ting the same structure above the midpoint as below. Each of the ten massive ‘legs’ was as large as a full-blown skyscraper, and I had long-since stopped wondering how it could have been built.
The bottom sections of the tower held the various offices of the Imperial administrators, whose responsibility it was to oversee the logistical issues created by such a large Empire with a single, central governing city like Rome, which is essentially how I thought about Veldyrian. Food shipments, construction material shipments, and civilian transport were just a few of the issues dealt with in those offices.
The upper sections of the Great Tower, however, were where the power players of Veldyrian resided. Four of the sections (called ‘arms’ by the Imperials living there) served as housing for the elite of Veldyrian’s High Wizard’s, who earned such status and prestige through their deeds in service of the Empire. The fifth section, however, contained the Wizard’s College. I had never actually set foot inside the College—although Jezran obviously had spent several years there—but from what I’d heard about it, I had zero desire to visit.
The rest of the Imperial City was remarkably simple; its only grandeur coming from the sheer size and adherence to order. There were no other massive structures; instead, the city’s districts were divided into trapezoidal ‘blocks’ spreading outward from the Great Tower in something between a pentagon and a circle. These blocks contained buildings no taller than four or five stories. The roadways were wide and clean, with very little traffic at any given time, even though the latest estimates I had seen put the total population of the Imperial City at over a million.
Our transport skiff plowed directly into the streets of Veldyrian, barely slowing once inside the city limits. The Imperial City had no walls, which was one of many statements the city made to newcomers. The structure and incredible order to which everything, and everyone, in the city conformed was probably an even larger shock to people who had never seen a fully-functional metropolis before. I had to admit that it was even better run than any of the major cities I’d set foot within back home.
Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy) Page 25