by George Tome
“Sandara, why did you do it?”
“I told you already, to—”
“No, I mean, why do you risk your life for me?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I don’t know.” The twinkle in her eyes, playful as the wind of the vardannes, was saying something else, though, so she lowered her gaze to hide them. “I hope you will find a way to defeat Ugo, to use what I told you to change the fate of the war, to get an armistice from Baila. I think… I think you’re the only one who can save Uralia, who can save our world!”
“Why do you believe that?”
“That’s how I feel. And I’m not often mistaken!”
“Sandara, I came here to hide from Baila, not to save Ropolis. How can I save you? You believe me a different Antyran than I am,” he said gently. “I’m afraid you’re holding false hopes.”
“You said you came to save a world! You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“One of Tadeo’s archivists?”
“Where… where did you get that?” he babbled, stunned that Sandara knew such details about him.
“When you admitted you’re an archivist, I remembered the one who started the whole madness. His name was Tadeo if I recall, right? Baila said something about Arghail’s children, brought to Alixxor by the Antyran. And he mentioned some bracelets…”
“You guessed right. Unfortunately, there’s no trace left of his discovery. A huge blast killed them all, and the artifacts were lost…”
“You lie,” she puffed. “I can smell you like a rotting razog fruit! Baila wants something from you!”
He sighed pensively. Even though she didn’t say it, Sandara offered her loyalty. She offered her unconditional help against her own Ropolitans, without demanding to hear his secret in exchange—although she had guessed much of it. A grah’s loyalty was not something to be thrown away. The grahs placed loyalty above everything; they were of a savage loyalty, up to death if necessary. His spikes were torn apart by the thought that not only could he not help her, but he might cause her death!
Gill came to believe that he was immune to the death of the others, but now he could see that he was still vulnerable, that his metamorphosis into a Sigian soldier wasn’t over yet.
He breathed heavily, summoning the aroma of the pathkeeper to help him find the way in the middle of the hungry abysses ready to devour him.
Slowly, he started to feel again the seed of power growing in his kyi, the boiling desire to live in a civilization dead for 1,250 years, the dream of a world that purposely sacrificed itself for this dream, for the unlikely goal of being reborn from its own ashes, for hearing once again the laughter of the Sigian children under the domes on the hydrocarbon planet. He had the key, and he was bound to defend it with his life.
For the first time, however, he had met his match. Sandara also had a dream, to save Uralia. Could he—an Antyran—sacrifice his kin for the illusory resurrection of a world dead for 1,250 years? I have to go on for Sigia, he thought, his confidence shaken.
“Sandara, I wouldn’t hide anything from you, but this is not my secret! I don’t know how it may help Ropolis without endangering another world!”
“You have to help me save Uralia; it’s my home!” she exclaimed. “I know you didn’t have time to discover it. I know you only saw its dark sides. But we have marvelous places, more beautiful than you can possibly imagine! Let me help you find them…” Sandara begged him with her shiny eyes and took his hand. She pressed her other palm on his cheek, while slowly drawing her face close to his. She began to breathe heavily and lowered her eyes, startled by her own audacity. But she hesitated to break away from him, thus letting the subtle aroma of her head spikes tickle Gill’s nostrils.
The female’s touches and her warm breath set his spikes on fire, his hearts beating wildly, enchanted by the innocent charm of her clumsy gestures. She cuddled on his chest not to find protection—Sandara would never ask for such a thing—but because she wanted to feel his touch… For a split second, her playful eyes let him look deep inside her kyi; she let him understand that she truly liked him… to realize that the imminence of death made her betray herself, to live everything she wasn’t allotted to live in the precious little time still available. He had to use all his self-control to resist the temptation to hold her in his arms, to inhale deeply the seductive aroma of her spikes, to abandon himself to the candor with which Sandara offered her scent.
“Sandara, I’ll help you defeat Ugo,” he said in a warm voice. “But betraying the secret of the artifacts… I can’t promise that.”
“They’re more important than Uralia?”
“Yes.”
“More important than Ugo’s expansion?”
Gill didn’t answer, but he bowed his head.
“Then everything’s lost!” she exclaimed while big drops of moisture burst out of her temples.
“Don’t say that,” he said, gently wiping the brown droplets off her cheek.
“Gill,” wailed Sandara, “you have to do something!”
“Everything is not lost. I’ll do what I can to help you,” he whispered, cuddling her tenderly in his arms. “Do not despair!”
“You’re right,” she said, smiling sadly while leaving his arms but still holding his right hand in a tight grip. “Your promise is more than enough for me. Come!”
As they reached the wall, he noticed it wasn’t glowing like a true fire. It emitted a cold, yet deadly radiation, chilling him to the bones. Most likely it would disconnect him if he tried to cross it without Sandara’s help.
When the female approached it, the fire moved away from her, creating a large opening. Beyond it, he saw a paved alley winding into the thicket of a lofty forest.
As soon as he stepped inside, the island’s sky became familiar. The barrier resembled the real wall that, until recently, had locked the frontier of the Antyran worlds. And just as Beramis stole the Antyrans’ starry heavens, the flames of Landolin hid the other sky islands, leaving only a diffuse glow to meet the eye. A few feeble clouds were floating under the fire dome, reflecting the iridescences of the fire sky.
Everything inside the dome looked different, even the trees being taller and lusher than the ones outside the wall. There was incredible biodiversity, if one may say that, keeping in mind the species were invented by an exuberant imagination.
Thick trees extended their branches toward him like monstrous claws while parasitic vines entwined their hungry arms around hollow, putrid trunks, in a futile attempt to keep them together. Or maybe they want to smother them? he asked himself, intrigued, as if the motives of some virtual vines in an invented forest were the most important aspects on which to focus his runaway thoughts.
The island was full of life—nothing like the black forest of the fetid swamps where Urdun had betrayed him—and yet, a hidden threat seemed to loom in the shadows of the canopy. He hurried his pace, eager to leave the darkness of the forest.
After a while, they reached the end of it. In front of them was a lake of unreal clarity, in the middle of which stood a castle. Gill thought he had become accustomed to the weirdness of the virtual world, yet the castle of the parhontes managed to surprise him again. The huge construction was built on a massive white rock crossed by red-purple veins, magically reflected in the water. As he looked closer, he realized that the castle was in fact a mountain. A mountain turned into a castle, red veins climbing greedy to the sky until they lustfully fused together on the last floor. The carving didn’t seem to be finished, outlining the feeling of massivity.
On the left side of the castle, there was a tower so high it almost reached the ceiling of the fire dome, thinning toward the tip. A spiral staircase coiled around it up to the top; its railing was made of sharp battlements flanked by grotesque creatures, carved from the same material.
The rest of the castle consisted of three tall floors floating one over another, held together by dozens of stone veins entwined chaotically and
connected to the tower by three bridges made of floating stones. Each floor was taller than the one below and dotted with irregular ovoid terraces, also surrounded by battlements.
The last floor ended in a red dome made of disordered hemispheres of different sizes, adorned with countless spikes and white arches resembling the emaciated bones of a licant skeleton. Some of the arches formed bizarre buttresses, descending to the terraces below.
A warm breeze wrinkled the surface of the lake, which surrounded the bizarre castle from all sides except for a path carved in stone leading to the base of a huge buttress. The ovoid windows along it suggested it had an interior staircase going to the first floating floor.
The water was so clear he could see that the lake had no bottom. It didn’t have a bottom in the most literal way: his eyes could gaze through the transparent luster at the abyss below—and at the hideous planet of the living dead!
When they crossed the doorway of the massive gate carved into the rock of the buttress, the same suave voice that Gill had heard before asked them mentally, “What is your destination?”
“The endless dome,” Sandara replied aloud.
Without another word, they found themselves before a massive tekal door carved in the ancient style, reminding him of the perfectionist art of the fabled Mordavian carpenters before Zhan’s coming. But their path was blocked by two artificial intelligences identical to those who had escorted Sandara in Acanthia. This time the constructs were dressed in blue tunics, and the text written in red ink on their asymmetrical right shoulder said, “Property of the Parhontes Council.”
Although Sandara, determined, walked toward them, they didn’t seem willing to move out of her way. The female gazed around the hall and the nearby terraces, looking for something or someone, and then she asked them, “Where’s Ugo? Ugoriksom?”
“Inside,” the AI on her right answered bluntly.
“Inside! Who gave him the right to step in the council’s circle?”
“The order of the prim-parhonte, Forbat.”
“Forbat allowed him to enter?” she exclaimed, astonished. “Call Forbat outside. I want to talk to him. This is an emergency!”
“Wait for the end of the council.”
“I won’t wait for anything. Move out of my way!” she ordered with the notorious impulsivity of the grahs.
“Stop right there!” the AIs exclaimed and took a step toward her in a menacing way.
“Don’t you understand? I have to speak with him!” she shouted. “Tell him I’m here. Now!”
The AI touched his hearing alveoli.
“Forbat orders you to wait,” the imperturbable answer came a few moments later.
Sandara turned to Gill.
“I’m afraid things are out of our control…”
“As if they ever were under our control,” he grumbled. “What do we do now?”
“Wait. What else?” She sighed, dispirited by the turn of events.
They took a seat on a stone stair close to the council’s door, which led to one of the many terraces dotting the first level of the castle. Sitting so still, his kyi emptied of essence, he began to hear—or rather, perceive—the distant noise of anxiety gradually increasing like a titanic avalanche on the slopes of Eger, starting with a whisper and finishing with an end-of-the-world thunder. “Zhan left us the pledge of hunger,” he thought, surprising himself by invoking the nurture ritual from the Book of Creation Inrumiral, “and this makes us the keepers of His creatures, predators over predators. For he who eats them all won’t feel any fear, save of the Father’s voice.” That’s why the tarjis didn’t know what fear was; that’s why they were so willing to die for their god. “To soothe the moulan,” “to quench the moulan’s fear,” they used to say when they intended to ritually sacrifice one of their beasts of burden. And after the dangerous execution, they exclaimed: “Thank You, Zhan, for the gift of meat. The fear is slain!”
Although he didn’t serve Zhan—or rather, he no longer served him—he couldn’t deny the strength of the pledge that kept the tarjis under the will of the prophet. Yet, his hunger was deeper still—the hunger for life of the Sigians—and it was growing, turning him into a predator who couldn’t be tarnished by the demeaning touch of anxiety…
Gill drank avidly from the serenity of the bottomless lake surrounding the castle, allowing his kyi to wander around the fluffy clouds floating aimlessly on the scented sky. He imagined the islands hidden from view—so serene and carefree—where bixanids in trance, some perhaps dying without knowing it—were fighting ritual fights to become champions, immune to the turmoil happening across the door of the council. Maybe not immune—Baila’s vicious assault must have shattered the tranquility of the avatars, except, of course, the memoryless dead. Surely at least some of them suspected that terrible things would follow after their crushing victory… especially since the temples had captured the Shindam’s nuclear stockpile…
One of the AIs touched his ear again.
“Only Gillabrian enters,” he said, relaying Forbat’s message.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Sandara said, betraying her worries. “Take care,” she said, taking his hands into hers. “Ignore my fate; there’s no time for heroics. Tell them I told you about Kaura, about Ugo’s death.”
She let go of his hands, accompanying him with her eyes as he went inside, filled with a bitter feeling that she would never see him again. Our world is changing… The inherited instability will overflow here. And everything depends on you, my dear Gill, on the direction you push it, she thought, allowing herself to realize the enormity of the stakes, now that the things no longer depended on her.
“Zhan be with you,” she whispered the ritual wish.
Zhan… or rather, Arghail, Gill thought, grinning in his kyi as he walked inside the hall.
The dome housed a steep holotheater surrounded by warm nests carved in the purest tekal vein, their mimetic fluff imbued with the scent of the councilors coiled inside. Red vines from the white rock of the ceiling combined in intricate patterns to form four bizarre eyes in the middle of the dome, seemingly guarding the smooth running of the council’s meeting.
Right in the center of the room, there was a huge “group” nest placed so that the speakers didn’t have to show their backs to anyone. And the floor… the floor was missing altogether! Kaura’s abyss opened under their feet, animated by the eternal fight between the brown clouds and the gray funnels from the valleys dug by ancestral deluges. The storm was more agitated than usual; a weird cyclonelike structure boiling in rage seemed to show that the hideous life on Kaura’s surface pulsed in resonance with the kyi of the architects, that it wasn’t immune to the madness happening on Landolin, and that it understood, in its own sinister way, the gravity of the things happening lately…
Seemingly without noticing the little detail of the missing floor, a vigorous individual—despite the old age he didn’t bother to hide—stepped into the void to meet him. His sharp eyes reminded Gill of Sandara. Undoubtedly, he was her father, Forbat. A grah had become the prim-parhonte of a large city, something unheard of since the fall of Zagrada!
Gill involuntary stopped at the edge of the abyss, hesitating to step into what appeared to be a bottomless pit. Since he didn’t want to show any weakness, he ignored his fears and stepped into the void. Of course, he didn’t fall—the nonexistent floor sustained his feet just like any normal surface. In a few steps, he reached the central nest where Forbat was already coiled.
The councilors didn’t particularly notice him, being involved in an unbelievable ruckus. Among them, the oldest ones, undoubtedly kaura, were saying farewell to their fellow younger architects, shaking their forearms. His intuition, trained by the most complex Guk math-estimate canons, couldn’t overlook the gestures… It was an “end-of-the-world” feeling, telling him that the important decisions had already been made. In his absence.
“I’m Gillabrian,” he growled in a hoarse voice, trying to get the parh
ontes’ attention, without much success, though.
“Yes, we know that,” Forbat interrupted him. He seemed friendly, even… pitiful, if he smelled him right. “We were waiting for you. Ugo told us about your presence here.”
“Did he also say he kept me hostage on Ropolis and attacked my kyi?”
“I’ll explain everything,” the prim-parhonte said, smiling. “He confessed that he hid you from us.”
“He said that?” Gill exclaimed, incredulous. “Where is Ugo?” He looked around, but he couldn’t see the jure. “You sent him to the prison island?”
“No one arrested him.”
Before he could say anything, Forbat continued, “We’ll… accept the armistice asked by the temples.”
“The temples asked for a truce?” Gill exclaimed, surprised by the news.
Again, the paths smelled by his kyi’s nostril crumbled effortlessly at the contact with reality. If Ugo just told the parhontes that Gill was in Ropolis, when did the architects have time to speak to the temples—and even more outlandishly, when did they have time to conclude an armistice?
“Baila asked for a truce yesterday,” he explained, as if he could read Gill’s thoughts. “We are so glad we found you,” Forbat said, looking at him in a strange way.
Cold shivers ran through his veins. That’s why the parhontes had already agreed to the armistice, that’s why they remained locked in the circle for the whole day, and that’s why Forbat couldn’t help him in Acanthia… perhaps he didn’t even get Sandara’s message.
Did the temples guess he was in Ropolis? Or maybe the truce had nothing to do with him… Should he dare to hope he could sneak onto a refugee ship and go back to Antyra I?
“What are the terms of the truce?” Gill asked with his spikes wrinkled, hoping to hear that the end of hostilities had nothing to do with him.
“We open the city and evacuate the population. Uralia will be deleted, and all the intelligences will be destroyed.”
“So you’re willing to surrender without a fight.”