The Vanity of Hope

by G W Langdon

  He stopped outside the Lower Chamber’s split doorway of a red and black dragon opposing a trumpeting Tyronal. He looked back down the hallway of kings and emperors. Poor Queen Lillia caught in a cursed, implacable wasteland between two eternal enemies. He raised his hand to knock and the door opened.

  A tree with golden branches and silver leaves shimmered in time to his footsteps no matter how lightly he trod on the soft rugs. The chamber, oriented to the north, had open side rooms, secluded alcoves for peaceful reflection and austere doors closed to other realms. The Tyronal sculpture matched the one in his room. Tall palms and broad ferns softened the walls cluttered with paintings from another world. A dragon watched out from the painting hidden in shadow behind a plant with sharp petals. He stepped up the final level between ornamental indigo-lit stands under a ceiling mosaic of blue sky that had to be Tilas.

  “I wondered how long I could keep you from the real world,” she said, putting her embroidery aside. She unfolded her legs from under a long indigo and gold dress and lazed her arm over the back of the half-round sofa. An almost finished spiceRoll smoldered in the tray on the side table.

  “Do you want a drink before the vassal leaves?” she asked.

  “Where’s Earth? I’ve been searching, but can’t find it, even though it must be close by.”

  She dismissed the service vassal with a cursory wave and waited for the doors to close. “Before I address your concerns would you grant me the courtesy to explain the world I’ve come from?”

  Tom shrugged and eased into the chair across from her. “Ba’illi’s already told me the history of Tilas: the Exodus to flee the plague that nearly wiped your civilization clean; your escape on Abellia, the royal cruiser, as Decay’s forces closed in. He wouldn’t talk about Orth and the final days.”

  “Because he doesn’t know.” She undid her headscarf and ruffled her hair until it rested on her shoulders. “Fortunately for you, having been married to King Jialin and being the daughter of Emperor Tilaxian, I am uniquely positioned to see both sides of history.”

  “It can’t have been easy choosing sides.”

  “Not really. I see myself as a daughter in name only. I revile the monster my father became. I’ll never understand what possessed him to challenge the king at the Rebellion of Malutiah. He said it was because my marriage to the king threatened his court, but I suspect this was a convenient lie to cover up a more sinister agenda. His strategy for victory was naïve and the battlefield execution of his army’s was amateur and—out of character.”

  “Where is your father now? He must be dead?”

  “I wish, but no. He’s marooned on his Space Palace waiting for the chance to return to Tilas.” She laughed with childish glee. “He’ll die waiting. What a shame. He deserves to reap what he helped sow. If you’re genuinely interested I’ll have Ba’illi password you in. There’s nobody more suited to provide a first-hand account of the inner workings of the courts.”

  “It’ll make a welcome change from the nonsense of quantum strings. Are the court records censored like everything else?”

  “Raw data only. You have my word.” She paused and stared at her father’s portrait next to the watchful dragon. “I wonder if his true plan all along was to lose the battle to get banished from Tilas and not be there when Decay invaded. I guess not, because how would he have known about Decay?”

  “Maybe, Decay was already on Tilas?”

  “That’s easy to say, but if true it could have big implications for Heyre.”

  Tom shifted in his chair, imagining the dragon’s golden eye upon him.

  “That’s Golgoth, my grandfather’s greatest dragon. I can only just remember him as a child. He was old then, not the beast you see in the painting.”

  “Ba’illi told me about the Columni Pink. Could they not have just made the teeth and claws in the laboratory?”

  “And where would the fun be in that? The dragons were an unnatural burden and their time had come. Out of compassion, King Jialin enforced a sanctuary for the last line of great dragons. Later on, in his hour of greatest need, he called upon them to serve him at Orth—where they all died.”

  “Their unnatural existence wasn’t meant to be,” Tom said, breaking from Golgoth’s hypnotic gaze. “I sense time is running out for us as well.”

  “I can see time plays on your mind in the way you want to learn as fast as you can. Fear is understandable for someone burdened with such a precarious lifespan, but your impatience only takes you faster down a road that has no end. Do you have trouble sleeping at night?”

  “Too many dreams,” he said, staring into the woven rug.

  “Nightmares?”

  “I’ve always been this way. Life is short.”

  “How would you view time if you could live for one thousand years? What would be the worth of a day, a month, or a year? A century, more than a human’s natural lifetime, would be like a decade.”

  “I never thought it possible, but you’re living proof. There’d be no fun outliving everyone you love and witnessing generations repeat the same mistakes over and over, unable to change their silly ways.”

  “But if you had others like you to share your life with…”

  “Earth! I have to know if there’s the hope I can go home again.”

  “What about Sarra? You couldn’t leave her behind.”

  “Sarra is dead. I can feel it in my bones. We had a ‘connection’, if that’s the right way to say I wasn’t surprised when she’d come to visit moments after I’d been thinking about her, or we’d ‘accidentally’ meet. Since Gukre… nothing.”

  “It’s as I feared. She didn’t survive the crash landing.”

  “But if she isn’t, then how did Reuzk know those things that only she knew?”

  “The same way I knew about your old ways—bioPods, AI, and orbs.”

  He sauntered to the window, cupped his hands against the pane, and peered into the approaching storm. Dark storm clouds outside rolled in over the green fields and boiled up higher than the castle.

  “You’ve accused me of playing games, but you are the one who plays with the truth. Tell me what I must know,” Tom insisted.

  “In the old days, before the Federation took full control over matters on the western side of the river, Jbir ran a few ‘operations’ for me. Nothing too illegal but it was best we avoided Federation entanglement. Jbir was good at that game. One day, he came to me, excited about a starMap an old pirate friend gave him on his death bed. We both understood it was a polite cover story for how he really got the map of the fabled blue planet: murder, betrayal, bribery or tribute, I don’t know—all, some, or none.”

  He pushed away from the window and faced her. “Earth.”

  “Jbir pleaded with me to use my influence with Senator Telion to have essential Federation technology inserted into the ship.”

  “Sounds to me you were all playing games.”

  “I helped Jbir for past favors, and he did it to wipe his debts.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t care—that’s in your past.”

  “Jbir brought you from Earth to Gukre in a bioPod; military by Choen’s description.”

  “A bioPod?”

  “It’s a longevity storage capsule that slows down the body’s metabolism to the point where aging nearly ceases. When you wake up you look and feel as though almost no time has passed.”

  “How long was I in the bioPod?”

  She re-lit the Roll and gently blew the smoke towards the portrait of King Jialin. “Two hundred and fifty years.”

  He searched her eyes for deception and slumped onto the nearest rest. Vigor fled his body with every beat of his throbbing head and a hollow husk of despair descended upon the vain hope that he’d already suffered enough and deserved to go home.

  Lightning flashed above the castle grounds and the first raindrops splattered against the window and blurred the view. The clouds enveloped the top of the castle and the chamber lights ignited against t
he darkening outlook. Furious sheets of rain lashed the castle until it became impossible to see outside.

  “Captain Jbir left Heyre sixteen hundred years ago. Raw data taken from the pirate ship and kindly supplied by President Lauzen shows the pirates were on earth for one hundred and fifty-two years. Add that to your two hundred and fifty years in the bioPod and the pirates must have taken twelve hundred years to reach Earth, which makes Earth a thousand light-years from here. The current year on Earth is 1752.”

  He grabbed the armrest and hauled himself upright. “No. That’s not right. It’s another one of your games to keep me here.” He shook his head and fumed at the obscuring rain running in rivers down the window. “It would be scientifically impossible for the pirates to get to Heyre in two hundred and fifty years.”

  She came closer. “I’m sorry, Tom. There was never going to be an easy way or right time to show you.”

  The storm passed over the castle and the rain washed away.

  His trembling legs gave out and he seized the window frame to stop from falling. Nestled across the river in a crater that reached to the horizon, a king-sized city dwarfed London as that great city had dwarfed Bentley. The imaginary village of Femile was gone and the old wooden bridge was now an architectural wonder with towering pylons and gleaming cables holding up long spans.

  From up high the city had a breath-taking, purposeful design around a ringed inner lake. A single cluster of sculptured buildings rose impossibly high into the clear day where craft of all shapes and sizes buzzed and swooped amongst each other along ‘roads’ ten layers deep. Tethered to the tallest buildings, giant airships floated above like watchful gods. Hectic roads on the ground carried streams of speeding buggies. The lazy, blue Aiakar River snaked around the lip of the crater and dwindled northwards into a treeless desert. At least the river was true.

  She came to his side. “Nu’hieté,” she said. “On such a day you can see the green light at the top of the Federation’s operations command on Heyre. See, over there.” She pointed to the horizon.

  “I can’t see it and I don’t want to.”

  She offered a pair of glasses. “Try these on and tell me what you see.”

  He snatched the glasses and turned them over in his hands. “No more tricks, no more lies,” he said, putting the glasses on.

  Nu’hieté rang out crystal-clear, the way Artemis might’ve seen the world when she hunted voles.

  “Can you see the green light, now?”

  “Where?”

  She removed the glasses, twisted the shafts half a turn, and slipped them back on. The perfume on her wrists curled up his nostrils and lifted his heart.

  “I can see it.”

  “Nu’hieté means, New Hope.”

  “Hope,” he mocked, giving the glasses back. “There is none.”

  “There were two bioPods on the pirate ship—that’s how Reuzk knew about Sarra.”

  “I told you she’s dead.”

  “From a strictly logical perspective, but she could rise again.”

  A flicker of impossible hope ran through his heart. Lazarus. “But she wouldn’t be the same Sarra.” He shook his downcast head. “Her soul?”

  “How would you know? She would be exactly the same—physically and with the same old memories. Are you absolutely certain she’s dead?”

  He closed his eyes in silent prayer. “I can’t take much more of this.”

  “You’ve had a lot to take in, but you need to come to terms with the truth of your predicament before your training begins in earnest. Let go of the old ways. They will hold you back from the brave new worlds you must live in.”

  “I’ll do things my way. I don’t trust any of you.”

  She flicked the spiceRoll case open. “You look like you could do with one of these.”

  “I’m curious, but Ba’illi said I shouldn’t try someone else’s spiceRoll.”

  “Only if they operate in a higher Color, then an overdose could be fatal. I’ll have a Green packet made for you with a touch of Red to help you through these changes. Blue for sleep? But first I’ll need a drop of blood to ensure an accurate blend.”

  “What’s next? Leave me alone.”

  “Blood is the best way to sample your genes. I’ll get the doctor. On second thoughts it’s probably best if Ba’illi did it.”

  “Why can’t you? It’s just a pin prick, isn’t it?” he said, pointing to her unfinished embroidery.

  “I enjoy sewing, as my mother did, but I get nervous around needles used for taking blood. I know it’s silly. You’d think a needle’s just a needle, but for me, there’s a world of difference.”

  #

  He kept a tight hold to the handrail as he trudged upstairs to the bathroom. He soaked a hand cloth under the running tap and wrung it out until damp. “You should have let me be,” he said, in a dying voice as he sagged onto the bed. He patted the cloth firmer over his flushed forehead as he lay down and slowed his breathing against a dark, gnawing abyss. How many more surprises lay ahead? Could Sarra come back from the dead? Was she actually alive—asleep inside a bioPod, like he’d been, and too unconscious to register?

  The downstairs doors clicked open. Only one person moved that quietly. “Up here,” he cried out.

  Choen eased onto the end of the bed. “Queen Lillia asked me to check on you, on how you were coping.”

  He lifted the cloth and the sharp light sent a jolt of pain through his delicate head. “How do I look?”

  “You must be strong. Life contains such days to test our faith. This day will pass.”

  “How can I be two hundred and seventy two years old?” he asked, in a dry, cracking voice, incapable of accepting Choen’s compassion.

  “Technology makes the simple complicated. Destiny can be cruel, but it’s always right.”

  “Right, wrong… I’m a cork floating on a rising river that I cannot control or make sense of.” He struggled onto his elbows and looked out over the balcony to the way the world truly was. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “When in this castle it’s wise to do what’s expected of you.”

  “They’re all dead. Everyone I ever knew in my old life. My father and mother, my friends,” he said in a rambling monotone. “Ol’ Smokey and Father Martin.”

  “Hope sustains the heart through the most terrible trials, but it will wither and die if it’s shackled to the transient world. Only in the eternal and unchangeable is there true hope.”

  He slumped back. “Millions and billions, space and time. What does it all really mean?”

  “Do not let the immensity of creation crush your spirit.”

  “The designs of God are beyond my mind,” he said, facing Choen for the first time. “I am nothing. I should be dead.”

  “You are more than your bones,” Choen soothed. “God has a purpose for you, or else you would be dead. Rejoice in knowing you’re a part of God’s design—no matter how big you perceive that to be, or how small you believe you are.”

  Tom stopped blinking and his tired face sagged. “I need to be alone.”

  Choen stood up and bowed. “Only God has the words you need to hear.”

  “They’re all dead,” he murmured as he rolled away onto his side. One day, he would die and there would be nobody at his side. Time would pass and the broken grasses would grow long over his untended grave. There would be no curious strangers passing by or loved ones to lay flowers under his rotting cross or whisper a kind word for the poor soul buried beneath the ground. He would die alone. A human being far from home reduced to a single, infinitely replaceable pixel in God’s epic design. He curled his knees up to his chest. “Why did you make me a pauper?” He clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut. “Damn you, God.”

  #

  Concern set in the knight’s eyes “He’s too weak to be our king.”

  “His weakness is his strength,” she said. “He has a heart that isn’t afraid to feel.”

  “A king must be strong, a
lways.”

  “A king needs compassion. There is strength in him, but not the kind that is measured by the eyes or praised with shiny medals.”

  The knight sighed in reluctant acceptance. “He wasn’t ready.”

  “It’s time for him to accept the world as it really is.”

  “He suffers beyond his capability.”

  She turned off the lightScreen. “His suffering is nothing compared to what he’ll have to endure one day.”

  “You’re not upset by his torment.”

  “I’m managing his education the best I can, but it’s a delicate balance between my nurture and his nature. Knowing too much before he’s ready could unsettle matters and it’s vital he stays true to what is deep within. He’ll recover from this setback and be stronger for it. To expose his mind to the unpleasant while he is safe and secure gives him the best chance to survive when it truly matters.”

  “Matters to Heyre, or to you?”

  Chapter 18

  Tom had had enough and couldn’t stand it any longer. For sixty-nine days, ever since his first visit to the War Room, the mystery of Orth had grown inside him like a malignant tumor. Knight or no knight, he had to find out why he’d been forbidden to see the last of the Great Battles.

  He peeked through the War Room doors. Gralin looked asleep, but maybe that was how dragons kept guard. There wasn’t another way to the Room of Orth without waking Gralin so he pushed ahead.

  Gralin raised his head off the floor and turned his unblinking eyes towards the doors. He lifted to a half-crouch and stalked forward, swishing his long tail.

  Tom held out his hand and hoped the dragon remembered his smell belonged to a trusted friend of the knight. Gralin snorted and opened its mouth.

  “Nice boy,” Tom said, reaching up and rubbing Gralin under the chin.

  Gralin half-closed his eyes and purred as he lowered his head and nudged Tom on the leg. He wished Gralin had a saddle as he placed his foot on the dragon’s knee. Now or never. He stepped up and grabbed a frill spike and launched himself onto the dragon’s back. Gralin reared up and shook his neck.