The Ashes of Worlds

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “That’s why I have to stay,” she insisted. “If there’s a chance I can help change his policies, soften some of his reactions, then I could save a lot of lives.”

  Rlinda heaved a sympathetic, put-upon sigh. “All right. If you’re trying to make me feel sorry for you, then I’ll pay for the coffee.” She sniffed. “Still, I have to say, it doesn’t look like you’re making any headway with the Chairman.”

  Sarein took a drink of her iced tea, swallowing hard. “Maybe not, but I have to keep trying. I’m not willing to give up yet.”

  Rlinda shrugged. “Suit yourself. If you change your mind, and I’m still around, the offer stands . . .”

  Sarein got up so quickly she jostled the table. Leaving her iced tea unfinished, she fled.

  18

  Celli

  As the continued water bombardment progressively weakened the faeros, the green priests, unified by Celli and Solimar, added a measure of defiance and strength to the trees’ inherent quiet passivity. But the young faeros would not relinquish their hold on the worldtrees. An entire grove, including the fungus-reef tree, blazed hot with their resistance. The snap and crackle of fire and the sizzling sigh of steam filled the normally quiet forest.

  While the Admiral directed her operations from inside the landed command shuttle, Celli and Solimar left to be outside among the trees again. They touched the living, embattled forest and threw their energy into the fight.

  In her mind, Celli called out to Beneto’s treeship high overhead, but she could hear only her brother’s resonant pain from the fire growing within him.

  Green priests shouted and staggered as a living ball of flame launched itself from the crown of a possessed torch tree and rocketed to an old worldtree on the other side of the barricade. The ancient tree shuddered as its upper fronds caught fire.

  She and Solimar ran over to the old tree and wrapped their arms around the great trunk, pouring their strength and hope into it via telink. But it wasn’t enough. The elemental fire was about to jump to other weakened trees in the grove. They could sense it.

  With tears streaming down their ash-powdered cheeks, they connected with all the nearby verdani at risk. The group of endangered worldtrees knew they had to act before the blaze could leap farther. Their own line of defense.

  The threatened trees voluntarily surrendered their hold on the Theron soil where they had been rooted for centuries. Celli and Solimar moaned in dismay as the sacrificial trees leaned toward the already blazing fires and fell with an immense simultaneous crash to create a firebreak. Geysers of sparks exploded upward, but the faeros could not spread across the charred ground.

  It was only a small victory. The green priests refused to let go, continued to shore up the forest’s strength. Celli was trying to reach Beneto again when she saw that the verdani had other allies as well. “Solimar! Look at the clouds.”

  Mountainous, unnatural thunderheads began to roll in overhead, faster than any wind could blow, gathering more and more water from the atmosphere. Celli’s green skin prickled with an electrical charge in the air. The fires seemed to shudder, preparing to stand against something far more difficult than another EDF water bombardment.

  Blinking her reddened eyes, she scanned the lumpy outer fringe of clouds until she spotted a silvery blue sphere that streaked in low above the blazing trees like a bullet made of water. The verdani sensed that the water elementals had come, and excited cries rippled through the green priests. Celli had seen Jess Tamblyn use wental water to create the treeships in the first place. Now he had come back.

  Jess and Cesca’s wental ship flitted back and forth as the rain clouds converged. The dark and roiling masses swelled, loomed larger, and closed in above the concentration of faeros-possessed trees. With a huge thunderclap that resonated across the sky, the clouds burst. Wental water spat down toward the faeros, each raindrop a deadly projectile.

  The young faeros clung to their possessed trees and shot flames hopelessly into the air, but thunder boomed in response as the wentals expressed their anger. An angry sound — from the wentals! Celli laughed with joy to hear it. The clouds gathered over the burning last stand of newborn faeros, and released torrents of rain in an exuberant downpour.

  Shaking off any remaining fear, the green priests embraced the tree trunks, adding their strength, urging the verdani to fight back. Celli and Solimar turned their faces to the sky, letting the fresh droplets drench their skin and soothe their burns.

  19

  Beneto

  High above the planet, Beneto’s treeship fought the invasive fire that coursed through his sap — his blood. The arrival of the wentals had unleashed an elemental rainstorm below, energizing the worldforest root network.

  Through his own unwanted connection with the living flames, he felt the agony of the young faeros as they were extinguished, one by one. Though he could not snuff out the deadly fire within him, he could impose control over his huge spiny body. He would guide it where he wished; he would control the fight. Beneto felt himself gain the upper hand.

  We are coming, Beneto said to Celli through telink.

  Trailing smoke and fire, the group of treeships descended through the sky. Trapped within him, the fiery creatures writhed, tried to make him deflect his course, but Beneto had greater strength now. He drove his battleship body into the thick grayish clouds, soaking his massive form. The wental rain ate away at the living fire in his body like acid, and the faeros recoiled. Through telink he heard his fellow verdani pilots cry out as they plunged into the energized clouds.

  Beneto’s tree, sizzling with steam, dropped toward persistent faeros concentrations that had not been quenched by the wental downpour. He sent his thrumming voice to the doomed torch trees in the main grove. We can save the trees that surround you. Surrender your grip on the earth. We will take you away so the faeros cannot continue to spread.

  The verdani had no individuality as humans did; each separate tree was merely a manifestation of the overall mind, each one connected to the others. Beneto had to excise all faeros-infested trees from the worldforest — including himself and his fellow verdani battleships.

  As the rain continued to pour all around, the blazing treeships began their work above the fiery grove. Beneto could hear Celli weeping through the worldforest mind. He tried to reassure her, but there was little he could say.

  The clustered battleships grasped the burning trunks with thorny branches, then rose upward until they uprooted the trees. Inside the verdani wood, the newborn faeros thrashed and fought, knowing they could not win, could not escape. Beneto and the other verdani battleships rose far above the worldforest canopy, dragging the sacrificial trees into the rarefied atmosphere, passing once more through the wental-infused thunderheads.

  Beneto took the tainted and doomed trees far, far from Theroc.

  Originally, after the defeat of the hydrogues, all of the verdani treeships had departed from Theroc in what should have been a majestic seeding journey, never to return. Though Beneto and his comrades had been called back to assist Theroc, they remembered what they had seen along the way — and Beneto knew of a perfect place where he could dispose of these treacherous young faeros.

  The burning verdani battleships flew at breakneck speed, as if they could outrun the agony from the elemental flames. They swiftly approached what had once been a binary star system; one of the stars, a blue giant, had exploded in a supernova, leaving behind an ultra-dense remnant.

  A black hole.

  Its companion star had also swollen, becoming a red giant now. The black hole’s gravity pulled streamers of loose gas from the red giant’s outer layers, siphoning it in an ever-accelerating spiral down to the infinite vanishing point.

  Dragging the fiery, uprooted forest through space, they followed the river of hot gases being pulled from the red giant. The syrupy threads of gravity pulled them closer, and soon their grip would be irresistible. The living flames within their treeship bodies became frantic, blazi
ng brighter, struggling to get away. The additional shockwave of pain inside Beneto made Celli cry out, far away on Theroc.

  Although his treeship flew in a procession of inferno-infested worldtrees, he remained connected with his little sister. Though the flaming verdani battleships could barely endure their pain, they kept the young faeros leashed within their wooden forms. Ravenous living flames continued to eat away at the branches, and Beneto knew the treeships had to hurry before they succumbed. He could not let the faeros loose now.

  Through telink, he saw Celli standing in a scorched meadow surrounded by the wental-drenched worldforest. She blinked once, looking skyward, and when she blinked again, she was with him surrounded by the empty gulf of space. He knew she could feel the searing damage in his heartwood, his bloodsap, his outspread branches. He could not hide it.

  Many green priests could not bear to maintain a telink connection, but Celli’s love for her brother gave her the strength to endure the pain. She refused to let go, and even as he raced across the gulf of space, he could feel the hot tears burning down her cheeks, hotter than the faeros fire in his heartwood.

  The giant, thorny ships swirled around the black hole’s vortex. He and his companions released the uprooted trees, and one by one, they vanished with silent gasps, telink echoes of both dismay and victory. One at a time, the remaining verdani battleships spiraled in, passed the event horizon, and dropped into the blackness.

  As each one disappeared, he knew that Celli could feel a permanent loss. She sucked in great breaths, no longer aware of her surroundings in the meadow. “Beneto . . .” Hearing her, he drew strength from her companionship.

  Beneto had done what he needed to do. He had dragged the faeros away from Theroc and saved the rest of the trees; he had brought the fiery elementals to a place from which they could not escape to cause further harm. He felt Celli shaking as she lowered herself to the singed ground. His sister would grieve, but she understood what Beneto had accomplished. She loved him, and she was loved. Love and hope had the power to heal. She and Solimar had taught the verdani the truth of that. Beneto was glad.

  Celli turned to Solimar, buried her face against his muscular chest, and let the sobs come. She knew it was over.

  In the last instant before he passed the point of gravitational no return, Beneto embraced the distant worldforest again with his mind and poured himself into it. His pain dissolved as his worldtree body fell into clean ash that mixed with the cosmic dust and gases . . . then swirled down forever.

  20

  Hyrillka Designate Ridek’h

  The entire population of Ildira could not hide from the faeros, but they scrambled for whatever protection they could find. Young Ridek’h, the true Designate of Hyrillka, took shelter deep in the old mines along with Prime Designate Daro’h.

  Digger kithmen worked to expand the tunnels and create large grottoes in the bowels of the mountain, as well as numerous new escape passages, should they be needed. Watchmen stood at posts outside the cave openings, always alert for faeros fireballs.

  Ridek’h preferred to sit under the overhang, staring across the sunlit openness, trying to come up with some solution that he could offer the Prime Designate. On Hyrillka — the planet he supposedly ruled — the great, windy plains had been used for agriculture. He wasn’t meant to live underground in tunnels. No Ildiran was.

  Though engineers had brought blazers to light the underground chambers, it had become Ridek’h’s habit to slip out and use surreptitiously gathered brushwood to build a modest fire — a safe fire. Sitting by the bright flames outside the mine entrance, he looked out into the never-ending daylight of multiple suns, and contemplated. Though he was no more than a young man with little experience who had become Designate completely by accident, Ridek’h was determined to help.

  When the ten thousand Ildirans who had attempted to escape in a single warliner had lost their race against the faeros, he had felt the dagger of pain as all those innocents were incinerated, their soulfires stolen. Ridek’h had considered going with them, but more than a million of his displaced people were here on Ildira, and he would not leave until he found a way to save them.

  While he was deep in thought, Tal O’nh joined him. Oftentimes he and the blind man sat side by side for hours without speaking, just drawing strength from each other’s company. The veteran’s face was still scarred and burned by the faeros; one socket was empty, and the other eye was milky and sightless, partially covered by a shriveled lid.

  Upon becoming the new Hyrillka Designate, Ridek’h had gone to visit his planet and all the splinter colonies in the Horizon Cluster, accompanied by Tal O’nh and a septa of warliners. Their encounter with an enraged Rusa’h and his obedient fireballs had left all of the warliners’ crews dead, two of the warliners destroyed, and the tal’s eyesight blasted away.

  Blindness would have driven most Ildirans insane, but O’nh was strong. Outside the mine opening, the orange glow of the small fire played across his face, though he couldn’t see it. “I can endure,” he told Ridek’h. “Long ago, knowing that I might lose my remaining eye, I made up my mind never to live with anxiety and fear. Humans can tolerate darkness whenever they choose, and if humans can survive this, then I certainly can.”

  “You are brave, Tal O’nh.”

  The veteran made a dismissive gesture. “I have merely had practice. You will find your own courage, should it become necessary.”

  “We will need more than courage to drive out Rusa’h and his faeros.”

  “You have what you need. You are the true Hyrillka Designate, and Jora’h is the true Mage-Imperator — titles Rusa’h now attempts to claim for himself. He will not succeed.”

  The young man nodded before remembering that the tal could not see him. “I will hold on to hope if you tell me to.”

  The blind tal leaned closer to the fire and extended his hands as if to draw the light into his skin. “There is real reason for confidence, Designate. Though he has vanished, we know the Mage-Imperator is not dead. We can still sense him, however distant he may be. Jora’h lives.”

  Ridek’h considered that. When the previous Mage-Imperator had poisoned himself, their entire race had been crippled by mental shock and misery. Likewise, all Ildirans would have felt Jora’h’s death like a discordant scream through the thism. Therefore, Jora’h remained alive . . . but where was he?

  “Has he abandoned us?”

  “I do not believe so. I must assume that something prevents him from returning.”

  With the Mage-Imperator missing, Mijistra lost, and the faeros in the Prism Palace, this could well be the worst time the Empire had ever known. Ridek’h knew it was time to demonstrate his confidence, to rally the old veteran. “Tal, we have every opportunity to make things better. And I swear we will.”

  21

  Mage-Imperator Jora’h

  Jora’h gazed at Nira, touched her cheek one last time, then stoically turned to follow Admiral Diente and his military escort. Diente. The Mage-Imperator barely acknowledged the man who had ambushed his flagship.

  The Admiral’s claim that he had been following the Chairman’s orders did not exempt him from blame. By kidnapping him, Diente might have single-handedly doomed the Ildiran Empire, allowing all of Jora’h’s people to be consumed by the faeros.

  The dark-haired officer showed little expression as he walked along. “We have finished our inspection and analysis of your warliner, Mage-Imperator. All seems to be in working order, and we’re ready to depart.”

  “So, you fixed the damage your own EDF ships inflicted upon it?” Jora’h said, staring ahead. “Are you certain you understand Solar Navy systems?”

  Diente answered crisply, “Our engineers acquired a working knowledge of Ildiran warliners when we helped repair many of your vessels after the hydrogue battle here. We put that knowledge to good use.” He paused, then added apologetically, “Our shots were precisely targeted when we subdued your ship. We caused no more harm than was abs
olutely necessary.”

  “You cannot begin to know how much harm you have caused, Admiral.”

  As he ushered Jora’h aboard the warliner, Diente gave a slight, stiff bow, but averted his dark eyes. “I will show you to your accustomed stateroom. However, once we depart, my orders are to allow minimal interaction between yourself and my crew. You are to have privacy and solitude.”

  Jora’h felt a chill in his soul. Already missing Nira, he tried to reinforce the strength of his heart and mind against the coming ordeal. “And do you understand what that will do to me, leaving the other Ildirans here on the Moon?”

  Judging by his mannerisms, he guessed that even Diente did not approve of what Chairman Wenceslas was doing . . . but then, the Chairman no longer sought approval from anyone. “I understand that I have no choice in the matter.”

  Jora’h shook his head bitterly. “I thought humans always have a choice.”

  “Then you don’t have all the pertinent facts. Follow me.” In leading him up the ramp and along the primary corridors, Diente made a point of showing him all the troops stationed aboard the warliner. “Though this is only a test cruise, we have five hundred EDF soldiers aboard. Please don’t make me do anything I would regret.”

  “I am not a fool, Admiral Diente. I must stay alive so that I can save my people. No matter how long it takes.”

  “We have an understanding, then.” Diente gestured him into his former elaborate cabin, the large stateroom he had shared with Nira. The entire vessel seemed cold and bleak without her, without his crew.

  The Admiral sealed the door behind him. Jora’h did not check to see if it was locked. He didn’t want to know the answer.

  Chairman Wenceslas had not bothered to see him off, though no doubt every moment, every movement had been recorded. The Chairman was probably smiling with smug self-congratulation for coming up with this strategy.