The Empire: Book Six of Seeds of a Fallen Empire

by Anne Spackman

  Chapter Eight

  Just who was this Alessia Valeria Zadúmchov Enassa? Why did she seem so familiar to him? Was it a gesture? Or was it in her eyes? Marankeil didn’t know. Yet there was something about her that had vexed and annoyed him since the moment he had laid eyes on her.

  Her eyes reminded him of someone else’s, though he couldn’t at that moment place whose.

  The young Alessia, now a young lady, was stubborn, free-spirited, and utterly independent; she was also beautiful, but he no longer cared a thing for outward beauty.

  Who ever would have suspected that Zadúmchov’s granddaughter would be an empath, perhaps even a proto-telepath? Zadúmchov had been loyal to the end, but his granddaughter was a creature who didn’t understand duty yet, who would have to be tamed and forced to learn what duty meant.

  She would have to be tamed, or controlled, by any means necessary.

  Hinev had been teaching Alessia for years now, but Hinev had also been keeping the truth about her parentage secret, Marankeil was certain; Hinev didn’t know that Marankeil already knew it, and that was why he had suggested her to be Hinev’s assistant in the first place. Alessia was clearly part-Enorian, more so than anyone Marankeil or Hinev had ever seen. Even as a child, her power, her potential telepathic abilities had been clear, but that wasn’t the reason Marankeil harbored suspicions about her parentage.

  No one could have translated the fragment from the original Selesta, and yet she, a mere child, had been able to do it—yes, as though the translation had been but child’s play.

  No one could have made the translation who had not been taught to read the symbols, Marankeil knew, knew this in his soul. After all the years that he and Ornenkai had studied the syllabaries of the comet riders, the Enorians, after all of the years of study made by the lore-masters, no one had been able to decipher those syllables, and yet, after Alessia had made the translation, it seemed such a simple discovery, such an easy step to take.

  Alessia had been taught by someone, someone who must have been from Enor.

  Marankeil had already confiscated the rest of the writings that could be translated now that Alessia had deciphered the characters on the fragment; unfortunately, the characters still hadn’t been enough to unlock all of the secrets of the ancient writings.

  That was why Marankeil had arranged for the Firien doctors to place a controlling nano-chip in Alessia’s brain before she was even taken to Hinev.

  And in his secret meetings with her, secret because she never remembered them, Marankeil had gradually drawn out her secrets, forced her to tell him all she knew of the comet riders, the Enorians, all she knew of her father.

  Could it be that her father hadn’t been part-Enorian, but an Enorian himself? Could it be that she, Alessia, was more powerful than anyone realized?

  No; Marankeil rejected the thought. No, it couldn’t be! For, hadn’t her father died? And the Enorians were immortal, he was sure—though he didn’t know for absolutely certain. Yet hadn’t the ancient writings recorded that there were immortal beings who had come from the stars—creatures they called the Enorians? For long ago Marankeil and Ornenkai had found Enorian legends written in the ancient archives building—including a legend of an immortal woman who would destroy any leader to rise to greatness.

  A leader Marankeil was sure would be him.

  Perhaps he was paranoid, but Marankeil knew, knew it would be him.

  Then, excellent news had arrived from Fynals Hinev.

  Hinev had at last been successful in his serum experiment! He had achieved the creation of the immortality serum and tested it upon his assistant, Alessia. Her subsequent metamorphosis into an immortal being, an undying creature, had been a miracle no one had thought possible—except Hinev, who had known for many years that the Enorian blood DNA and DNA in the lyra tree held the key to immortality.

  The Enorians had died, but they had not had to. They had died, but hadn’t died for many thousands of years as living men. Hinev had distilled the long-lived genetic strains and found the secret to immortality. He had contained it in his serum, which when injected into Alessia, had rendered her blood a catalyst for a metamorphosis within her body. Through her blood, his serum had permeated every cell, and altered her genetic structure.

  Marankeil received the news that Alessia didn’t die when attacked with a cyber-pistol, that her body re-healed itself like the lyra tree, and that she was immune to sharp blades, and every manner of injury, in a sense, for her body, once punctured, quickly re-healed itself. Blood testing showed that her aging process had halted entirely. That her body was, in fact, no longer changing by normal cellular mitosis or meiosis.

  Marankeil knew suddenly that he had more to fear of Alessia than he had initially thought. And, immediately he was glad that she would always be firmly under his control.

  How had Hinev done it? Everyone knew that he had been trying longevity experiments since before the Kudenka explorer mission, in order to save his mother Undina, who had been afflicted by a rare virus, years ago in the distant past.

  But to have achieved immortality—it was unbelievable.

  Marankeil felt a wave of hatred for the girl, Alessia, the first immortal human—for she now had what he had always wanted, immortality in a human body, had what he had always wanted without even trying for it, and he was the one who had allowed it to happen. He was the one who had allowed—even funded—Hinev’s experiments, and allowed her to become a threat to him. Did he have a choice but to forcefully control her actions and destiny? The nano-implant he had had inserted into her brain would forever ensure that she would be his pawn.

  He wasn’t going to let her destroy him, Enorian legend or not. Let her try; she never knew he controlled her, that he could control her, because he forced her to forget all of her memories of their meetings; he was careful never to warn her of the futility of her resistance to him without removing her recollection of it.

  Yes, Marankeil was satisfied that he could control her; he was also satisfied that soon, Hinev would be able to transfer his mind and soul’s memories into the body of the brilliant Firien engineer Fielikor Kiel and Ornenkai into the body of Maesan Kellar or one of the others, as Ornenkai chose, and that then, he wouldn’t have to fear Alessia at all.

  But for now, Marankeil hated Alessia’s stubborn resistance, her defiance of him in their secret meetings, even though she was clearly defeated, defeated before she even attempted to fulfill her destiny. He wanted her to know it. He had won; by using the nano-implant, he had thwarted the Enorian legend.

  After some time, Marankeil realized why he despised Alessia so much; her gestures, her attitude, reminded him of another, another perhaps older and wiser than Alessia, another woman who had been every bit as brilliantly defiant and resistant to him: Elera Erlenkov.

  Why was he thinking about Elera now after so many years? Marankeil wondered, and he kept wondering this every time Lieutenant Alessia Enassa left the Main Terminus to return to Ungarn’s division. Elera Erlenkov was dead, long dead, he told himself.

  The woman he had loved. The only woman he had loved.

  It was undeniable and vexed him that Elera was just as alive and vital in his memory as she had ever been; he would have given his soul to exorcise her from his memory—or would he? The moment he thought so, he took this statement back.

  He quashed the memories which meant nothing to him; had he rid himself of that body, his original living body, that had known her? And had that not purged his soul of her? What did he need of anyone, now that he had power over all of Seynorynael, now that he was the revered Elder Marankeil?

  And why was it that he kept summoning Alessia to him, to these secret meetings, to force her willful pride into submission?

  What amazed him was that there was nothing unattainable for him in all the universe, at least, nothing tangible. He felt he could never have enough power, though h
e knew no one wielded as much power as he did, and with that power he could so easily have anything he wanted—anything except to have back the past.