by P. K. Lentz
The snowfield shrank and shrank, and Arixa saw a sea, dark blue and vast, meeting the white land in a stark, jagged line. Off this coast floated white islands of every shape and size. Arixa put her hand over parted lips and breathed harder still. She swept her gaze from side to side while daring not to blink lest she miss even a fraction of the beauty on display.
“Thank you, O Tagimasad,” she whispered, naming the god of her tribe, whom she rarely addressed. “I am not worthy of this gift.”
The coast and the islands grew smaller and smaller. White mist intruded on the view on the curved wall, eventually cloaking it entirely.
“We are among the clouds,” Vax informed her. His smile suggested that he knew this would cause Arixa’s jaw to hang open further still, which it did.
At this point, since the view itself was only of cloud, she shut her eyes and worked on steadying her breath against the possibility that her racing heart might burst.
“Is that what you wished to show me?” she asked.
“No,” Vax answered. His tone was teasing.
Eyes still shut, Arixa said breathlessly, “When I think I have seen every wonder imaginable, you produce another.”
“The universe forever holds one more wonder,” Vax said. He added more quietly, “And one more horror.”
Arixa began to feel a new sensation, as if she were growing heavier or an invisible force were pressing down upon her. Once more gripping the edge of her seat, she opened her eyes and found that the view before her had become deep blue crossed with wisps of white vapor. As she watched, the last of the mist dissipated. The deep blue faded to black.
The invisible force eased, and Arixa’s body, strapped into its cushioned seat, grew impossibly light.
Her legs unbent at the knees and tried to float out straight. She found it strangely difficult to force them back into place. She released her grip on the seat with the thought she could use them to push her legs back down, but instead her arm flailed wildly, shooting above her head.
She yanked it back down and found that it also wished to float. When held in front of her, it did not fall toward the floor, as a limb should. As anything should.
She looked over at Vax, whose expression assured that this was to be expected.
The belt securing her to the seat unbuckled and retracted. As soon as she was free, her entire body began to rise. For a panicked moment, Arixa held fast. Then, deciding it was safe, she opened her fingers.
As she floated slowly into the center of the chamber, she laughed. She waved her arms and legs in movements which achieved almost nothing.
“Is this what you wished to show me?”
“No.” Still strapped in, Vax pointed to the curved wall, currently black. “That is.”
At the bottom of the black field, a glow appeared and began to spread to either side. The glow yielded to a sharp arc, the white edge of some object which was perfectly circular.
As more of this disc came into view, Arixa saw that it was mottled in appearance. Some parts were deep blue, others tan or dark brown or green, and spread over them all were streaks and swirls of white, like... clouds.
More and more of the multicolored disc came into view until it was fully exposed. Arixa drifted closer and closer to it until her hand touched the smooth, curved surface in an area outside the disc, where the view resembled a midnight sky.
“You look upon your world,” Vaxsuvarda said. “Our world. Goros. Earth.”
She stared. “You mean...”
While her eyes searched the bright disc of blue and green and white, her mind searched for words.
It failed. There were none.
For a long while, Arixa only stared, breathing. She reached out and touched the smooth surface before her, dragging her fingers across a world.
Across seas. Storms. Desert. Forest. Steppe.
This was the heavens, and here was how Tagimasad and other gods saw the world.
Here was how the Jir saw it.
Arixa’s throat constricted, and her eyes stung with tears. One escaped. She put hand to cheek to wipe it, but found nothing there. Instead the liquid formed a tiny sphere and floated away.
“Where is Scythia?” she asked, collecting herself.
A small, bright blue oval appeared, superimposed near one edge of the disc, showing that what seemed a window was perhaps not really one, or not just one.
“There,” Vax said.
Arixa touched it. Three fingernails was enough to blot it out.
“It can’t be so small...”
“Scythia is but part of a whole, Arixa. Earth is a sphere, a ball suspended in void. Most of its surface is covered by sea. Over here...” A different area on another edge opposite Scythia’s lit with a red glow, and Vax resumed, “...is a land which no one on your side of two oceans even knows exists. Nor are the inhabitants there aware of you.”
Yet again Arixa was rendered speechless and could only stare, as if she might later remember the route to these hidden lands.
“When you are ready, I would like to teach you more about your world.”
Swallowing with difficulty, Arixa said, “I’m ready.”
The blue marking Scythia and the red glow of the new land both faded. In their place, white blotches appeared. The blotches were not evenly distributed but clumped into clusters and confined to the green and brown areas representing land. Some expanses had no white spots at all. At the centers of the largest white clumps were globs of pink.
“What you see now is the distribution of human life on Earth. The pink areas represent cities...” He paused before finishing, “which the Jir will not permit to exist. They will target them when their ships next visit this system.”
It took Arixa some time to absorb Vaxsuvarda’s words. Her eyes were drawn to one particular pink spot. She put her fingertips gently upon it and asked at length, “Is this...”
“Yes. Roxinaki. You were right to fear for it.”
“The Jir do not permit us to have cities? It angers them, as the Ishpakians tell us?”
“It does not anger them,” Vax said. “They simply don’t wish for Gorosians—or any species which has not yet achieved a certain threshold of advancement—ever to threaten their mastery. To enforce this, they visit Goros—Earth,” he inserted in Scythian, for they had been conversing in Nexus-G—“and many other planets on regular cycles, ensuring that those civilizations remain primitive. It is a law of theirs. Article 18.”
“I don’t understand,” Arixa admitted.
“This ship,” Vax said, “the facility we just left. These many wonders I have shown you. These are products of Fizzbik’s race, the Gaboon. If left undisturbed, humans would learn to build these wonders for themselves, one day propelling themselves to other worlds. The Gaboon achieved this before encountering the Jir, as did three others. All but one of these four so-called Greater Races acknowledged the Jir as their overlords. But the Jir Pentarchy found Goros largely as you see it now, over a thousand of its years ago. The purpose of Article 18 is that it remain thus indefinitely.”
“They prevent progress by devastating our cities?”
“Short of exterminating you, it is the most efficient way.”
“Could they not simply instruct us on how we must live?”
“It is possible they have in the past tried other methods on other worlds, maybe even this one. Whatever their other options may be, this is the one on which the Jir have settled. But I think there is a question you have avoided asking, Arixa.”
Vax was right.
She asked it. “When will they come again?”
“The next visitation was not to have come for at least ninety years. However, not long ago, we learned of a change in the Jirmaken itinerary.” Vax’s tone was grim. “We cannot predict their exact arrival... but it is not more than a year away.”
Arixa swung her head around to look at Vax, but overshot and wound up in a gentle spin. Vax caught her arm and stabilized her before letting go.
&n
bsp; “A year?” Arixa echoed. “They will devastate Roxinaki in a year?”
“Less. Perhaps a lot less.”
“Can they not be reasoned with?”
“It has been tried. There are those who continue to try.”
“Take me to them!” Arixa demanded. “I will plead with them, promise whatever must be promised!”
“You cannot make promises on behalf of a race, Arixa,” Vax said sadly. “And the Jir would not listen.”
“Then I do not accept them as masters!” she growled through clenched teeth. “You said that one race resisted them. Where are they? We will make them our ally.”
“Long ago, the Irunen resisted. The Jir destroyed their homeworld and annihilated them. Their race is extinct. But their sacrifice saved Gorosians and countless other races, for after exterminating the Irunen, the Jir willingly adopted a prohibition on genocide. It has held since.”
“Scythia has broken unbreakable foes before,” Arixa observed. “There must be a way to resist these false gods.”
“We do resist them,” Vax revealed. “Fizzbik and I and Zhi, and thousands of others elsewhere. That is exactly what we are, a resistance.”
“But Zhi said you do not battle them.”
“We do not, directly, not yet. We plan and build and prepare so that one day—”
“That isn’t resistance.”
“It is, Arixa. For now, it is the best we can do.”
“According to this so-called Battlemind? Whatever it is, it sounds as if it has no mind for battle at all.”
Vax scoffed faintly. “Sounds as though you got a few words out of Zhi after all. First, Battlemind is a misnomer stemming from poor translation. A better one would be ‘strategic thinker.’ But that has no ring to it. Did Zhi tell you what it is?”
“I don’t much care. People lead, not... things.”
“Battlemind is a machine used by our movement. Its ability to analyze data is vastly more sophisticated than any organic brain. Battlemind is adamant that any open moves made against the Pentarchy over the next three hundred cycles will only serve to delay its eventual fall. And so instead we build and position for when the time is right.”
“That isn’t resistance,” Arixa repeated. She turned back to face her world, a mottled blue-green sphere suspended in void. “With your knowledge and skyboats, could you not help me to save just one city?”
“There is no saving Roxinaki, Arixa,” Vax said sympathetically. “That’s why I tell you. I had hoped you might change your mind and stay with us. There are roles you could play.”
Arixa’s answer was swift. “I have only one role, and that is defender of Scythia and its capital from all threats. From Goths and Khazars, and even from false gods. If you won’t help me, then there’s nothing to discuss.”
“Arixa—”
“Take me home.”
“Please reconsider,” Vaxsuvarda said. “After what you have seen, can you truly return to dwelling in—”
“Take me home!” Arixa demanded. “Or am I not free?”
The Persian looked at her as if already mourning her death. “You are,” he conceded. “Please return to your seat.”
She did, and then she watched her world expand to fill her vision. Then all was darkness and mist for a time until the high-above views of mountains and forests reappeared. The sun was low and behind them, casting long shadows.
Even though her heart was filled with baneful thoughts, Arixa could not stop a faint smile touching her lips as she savored these magnificent sights. She sought to remember them, since from now on they would exist only in her dreams.
“Just west of where I followed Fizzbik, there is an ancient road and a Parthian ruin,” she told Vax. “You may return me there.”
The Persian nodded. “You should eat.”
Arixa wasn’t hungry, but to avoid rudeness, she agreed.
Vax produced the white container and set it on a tray which extended over her lap. When he opened it, its contents were recognizable to Arixa as food, but only just. It seemed complex. There were cubes of one thing, and strings of another, two colors of sauce, and each item appeared to have been placed carefully and separately on the plate with deliberate concern that no two become mixed.
“It’s braised haddock in a citrus-wine reduction with diced nannoc root and a Karnian slaw,” Vax non-explained. “We harvest the fish ourselves. The vegetables we grow in our base.”
Next to the plate was a slender two-pronged fork, which Arixa picked up. She poked the moist, whitish mass which was coated with herbs and sauce.
“Fish?” she inquired.
Vax nodded.
Tentatively she broke a small piece off with the fork and tasted it.
“Is it good?” Vax inquired eagerly.
“Very.”
Arixa took a second, less tentative bite and then a third and fourth. She tried whatever the other things were, and they were flavorful, too, in particular the cubed substance. Vax waited in courteous silence for the few minutes it took her to consume everything on the plate and use a finger to scrape up the remaining sauces.
She leaned back with a hand over full stomach. “Even as a child in the palace, where we dined every day on salmon and eel from the Bleak Sea, I never had the likes of that.”
“Palace?”
Arixa swiftly regretted having brought up her past. A good meal frequently caused one to let down one’s guard.
“Yes. Technically, I’m a... princess. One of seven,” she added, to minimize its importance. “Eighteen, if you add princes. We are children of Shath Orik of the clan Agathyr by his three wives.”
Vaxsuvarda’s eyes were now the ones to widen. He chuckled. “I had no inkling I was in the company of royalty.”
“That’s how I prefer it.”
“If you permit me to ask, why did you trade palace life for one of hardship?”
“It was an easy choice,” she said, polishing the truth. “Ranging with a war band is the life of a true Scythian. We weren’t meant to settle in...”
Arixa stopped. She had voiced such thoughts many times, but only now did she grasp their full truth.
In an instant of clarity, she saw why Scythia had endured for so many generations while the Parthians and Hellenes and who knew how many other empires had fallen to ruin.
She understood that the old nomadic ways had been essential to Scythia’s survival—and that they were essential still.
False gods had smashed all the past settled folk of Goros. And they would smash any to come.
Witnessing her silent realization, Vax kindly declined to press her for more. “We will land in a moment,” he said.
True to his promise, they set down soon after in a depression within sight of the Parthian ruin. It was twilight. Their restraining belts retracted, and Arixa immediately stood. With the wall still in its ‘invisible’ state, it appeared as though she could jump out of the spherical skyboat, but she understood that this was an illusion. Vax tapped some ethereal symbols, and the exit hatch opened on the floor.
The smells of earth and night flooded the vessel’s interior. Arixa shut her eyes, inhaling them, suddenly aware of their absence in her lungs. They felt right.
She hastened to the exit and climbed down, taking a few steps on yielding, grass-covered earth, grinning madly at the thought of being back from the dead.
She turned and saw that Vaxsuvarda had followed her out. He held her war-pick, which she accepted back from him.
“You will have no means of contacting me,” he said. “This is a final goodbye. We will never meet again.”
Arixa nodded acceptance. “Thank you, Vaxsuvarda of Parsa.” She glanced toward the sky, where the first stars were showing. “You have been a gracious host and taught me much.” She bowed in the Scythian way, with bent knee, right shoulder forward and left hand over armored breast. “I am forever indebted to you. Please pass on the same to Dr. Fizzbik.”
“I shall.”
That Arixa yet a
gain sensed Vaxsuvarda’s disappointment spoke to the similarities among humans, even when they were born of different worlds. Humans were humans, even if they were Gorosians.
She wondered briefly if Vax likewise understood why his feelings were of no concern to her. Roxinaki was to be destroyed, and with it Arixa’s father, mother, sisters, brothers, six dozen cousins, and likely the entire future of the Scythian nation.
Little could matter now except for that.
“I wish you... safe passage,” Arixa said. She took two deep backward steps and spun before breaking into a full run in the direction of the ruin.
“Safe passage,” the Persian said from behind.
A minute later, without ever having turned around, Arixa saw the green lights speed over her head and vanish into the darkening northern sky.
Six
It took Arixa six full days of nonstop movement to locate the Dawn. In the first nomad encampment she found, she traded her worn arrow case, an item of royal origin with frayed gold embroidery, for a tired old work mare. She pushed the animal to its limits and beyond in riding from camp to village to coastal town, halting only when night was at its blackest.
The native kindness of Scythians ensured she was fed. There was not soul among her people who would fail to share whatever they had with a passer-through, and do so to excess. It had nothing to do with Arixa’s lineage, which she never announced. Only twice was her identity discerned, once given away by telltale details of her tattoos and once by her inquiry into the whereabouts of the Dawn, which she did at every stop.
For four days she received only stale news or none at all. On the fifth, the residents of a village were able to inform Arixa that two days prior they had provisioned a war band for a ride east, where it planned to meet a Khazar incursion. The band was said to have been captained by a Norther.
Arixa’s cry of joy split the plains, and she wasted no more time, begging leave from the meal the villagers intended to prepare and accepting instead only a packet of bread and salted meat for the ride. She coaxed every mile she could out of the tired horse and her own chafed thighs, making it by nightfall to a nomad camp. There, the next morning, she parted with the mare, softly stroking her face and whispering words of gratitude into her ear before striking out on foot toward where she was told the war band was encamped.
