The Sovereign Road
Aaron W. Calhoun
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
THE SOVEREIGN ROAD
Copyright © 2016 by Aaron W. Calhoun
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2016
ISBN-10: 1539087980
ISBN-13: 978-1539087984
Contents:
The Canticle of the Last Morning:
Prologue:
Book One: At the End of All Things…
Chapter 1: The City on the Edge of Time
Chapter 2: Seeds of Doubt
Chapter 3: The Dying of the Light
Chapter 4: A Vision in the Night
Chapter 5: The Edge of the Abyss
Chapter 6: All Skies Afire
Book Two: The World, and the Seed of Its Desecration…
Chapter 7: Pawns of the Emptiness
Chapter 8: The Geometry of Creation
Chapter 9: Gravity’s Shadow
Chapter 10: Symmetry’s Weight
Chapter 11: Gnosis and Epignosis
Chapter 12: The Coil and the Fire
Chapter 13: Rumors of Holocaust
Chapter 14: Black Communion
Book Three: How With a Million Others Its Tale was Set for Nought…
Chapter 15: The Hand of the Shadow
Chapter 16: The Frontier of Light and Darkness
Chapter 17: The Sepulcher of Suns
Chapter 18: Anastasis Astrae
Chapter 19: The Price of a Cosmos
Chapter 20: Rumors of Wars
Chapter 21: The Cities of the Plain
Chapter 22: The Altar and the Oath
Book Four: Though the Fractured Virtue of the High Places Still Strove Beneath It Yet…
Chapter 23: On Ancient Wings
Chapter 24: The Vessels of the Everlasting Light
Chapter 25: Forces in Discord
Chapter 26: The Forgotten Vale
Chapter 27: The Sword and the Lampstand
Chapter 28: Guardian of the Ancient Mysteries
Chapter 29: The Shattered Sphere
Chapter 30: The Last Gambit
Interlude: The Harrowing of the Pit
Book Five: A Rose Wet With the Final Morning’s Dew…
Chapter 31: Dark Resurrection
Chapter 32: The City Imperishable
Chapter 33: On the Edge of the Night
Chapter 34: The Son of Highest Heaven
Chapter 35: The Final Stand
Book Six: And the Morning Come One More Day…
Chapter 36: Brightness of Uncreated Light
Chapter 37: A New Sunrise
Chapter 38: And the Rough Places Made Plain
Epilogue:
Glossary:
Dramatis Personae:
The Canticle of the Last Morning:
And it came to pass
As he stood at the end of all things,
That he saw all that is
In a grain of sand:
The world, and the seed of its desecration.
How with a million others its tale was set for nought;
Its grammar shorn of meaning.
Though the fractured virtue of the high places
Still strove beneath it yet;
The harrowing of the Pit.
A grain of sand
Glistening in the sun of the last day,
A rose wet with the final morning’s dew,
A road splashed with drops of blood,
Ascending the mount of stars.
From the brink of holocaust he trod the path,
The skies a pavement to his feet,
To plead with the riven heart of the usurped king
That the fires of night be quenched
And the morning come one more day.
Prologue:
…As he slept, he dreamed. He dreamed of a road paved with stars that stretched beyond the walls of Time itself. He dreamed of a door past the edge of all that is, of all that could be. He dreamed of a map, ancient and worn…
The echo of those memories would not leave Garin’s mind. He did not know what they meant nor whence they had come, yet their unearthly power rolled through his soul like an avalanche.
The ruins of a city lay before him, its stark, burned out buildings of steel and glass rising from the cracked pavement like fractured idols to long dead gods. He ran down decaying boulevards overgrown with tall, alien plants and forced his way through cramped alleys so narrow that the surrounding walls almost threatened to crush him. He ran hoping to escape those memories, but he could not, for it was the memories themselves that drew him on. Garin could no more flee their presence than he could flee the sky or the earth.
A few moments later the walls opened around him and he stood in a vast plaza filled with cracked masonry and crumbling columns. Night fell over the city with the violence of a thunderclap and brilliant stars flamed above, each a point of fire that seemed to dance beyond the edge of the world, a bright window in the ramparts of the universe. It was a sight at once foreign and comforting.
Garin had never before seen the stars.
Then, one by one, the stars fell to the pavement like shining dew. Where they fell a great road was born, its flagstones formed of starlight and darkness, the very fabric of the universe. In the end, only three stars were left in the sky. With a sizzling flash one of them burned out, leaving only a grey cinder. The second followed, then the third, and a deep shadow descended upon the city. A sudden fear welled up within him and he ran toward the road, the only source of light that remained. Yet when he reached the edge he hesitated, his fear of the blackness that lay behind him balanced by his fear of the unknown that lay before.
Suddenly the road rose from the ground, transforming into a curtain of light. Through this veil Garin caught a dim glimpse of a small room, its walls and ceiling obscure masses of stained crystal, its sole contents an ancient map, ripped and worn.
“Will you go?”
The voice whispered through his mind, pressing the question with such urgency that to hesitate even a moment seemed tantamount to refusal, and an urge to rush though the curtain, his very motion an unspoken yes, surged within him. Yet as Garin began to step forward he suddenly knew with a certainty transcending all reason that continuing onward would change his life irrevocably, and he held back. Tense with indecision and fear, he instead leaned in cautiously, straining to see what was written on the map without making that final commitment. But even as he did so a powerful wind blasted him backward, casting him out of the light. Then the world shattered and he felt himself drifting upward, leaving the broken city behind. His last thought as the dreamscape dissolved into reality was of the memories that had driven him on: memories of the same dream night after night, memories that had filled him with both fear and hope.
Garin awoke, his bed sheets drenched in sweat.
Book One: At the End of All Things…
Chapter 1: The City on the Edge of Time
“And so,” said the instructor as he paced the front of the ampitheatre, “based on the previous considerations we can easily derive the fundamental axioms on which the Conclave of Worlds is based. I wonder if anyone can name them?”
Trielle barely had time to consider the question before the silence was broken by a blue-feathered
Garudan several stories above. It was not the first time.
“That Matter gives rise to Consciousness, and Consciousness to Meaning; therefore, Meaning is subject and subordinate to Consciousness.”
“Correct,” said the instructor, pleased by the quick response. Or so Trielle thought. In truth, she had always had great difficulty in reading the facial expressions of Ixions. Centaur-like creatures from the cloudward rim of the Conclave, there was always a certain inscrutability in their features.
Probably all the facial hair, she quipped silently.
“And what is the corollary to these principles,” continued the instructor.
“The universe means what we want it to,” said the Garudan.
“Well,” said the instructor after a brief moment of uncomfortable silence, “I would not phrase it quite like that. It is more accurate to say that the meaning of a life, of a world even, is imposed from within, rather than intrinsic to its nature…”
“Hence,” said the Garudan insistently, “it means what we want it to.”
“Er, yes,” said the instructor, at last conceding the point, “perhaps one could put it that way. Thank you miss…?”
“Glerys,” replied the Garudan. For a brief moment Trielle could hear the snapping rustle of Glerys’ wings behind her, a smug, self-satisfied sound.
“The Universe’s meaning is imposed from within,” repeated the instructor, reverting to his preferred phrasing. “This is indeed the most profound understanding that can be drawn from the considerations of the past several days. It was this principle than enabled us to overcome the barriers between our myriad civilizations.” The instructor continued, swiftly launching into a sociopolitical monologue on the founding of their common culture, that which allowed Humans, Garudans, Ixians, and countless other races to subsist in harmony. It was a speech Trielle had heard before, and one that she felt no qualms about ignoring.
She found great difficulty in according these facts the sacrosanct status that everyone gave them. She had been taught these ideas since birth, and to her they were as common as the air she breathed and the clothes on her back. She had even found herself once or twice questioning the logic on which they were based, but had quickly crushed those considerations. There was no value, after all, in being labeled a heretic at age sixteen. Still it rankled to have to sit through yet another year-long course in Sidereal Philosophy, memorizing the same time-worn arguments again and again. Her true interest, the sciences, would take up most of her classwork for the next several years, but for now she was trapped here.
“And thus, for the past several thousand millennia, our worlds, nay, our universe has known peace.”
Good, she thought, he’s finishing up.
“And as the end of all things draws ever nearer, we can enter that final night knowing that this universe, before its extinction, became all that it could, and meant all we could make it mean. You are dismissed.”
The last sentence injected a chill into Trielle’s otherwise buoyant spirits. Quickly she gathered her things and left, hurrying from the Ampitheatre into the polished crystal hallway beyond. A short walk and she was outside, basking in the tricolor sunbeams of Scintillus’ perpetual noon. As the warm rays suffused her flesh the chill left her, and she felt her previous mood return.
She stood in a garden suspended halfway up the Arx Scientia, the central institute for learning on Latis. The edifice rose thousands of feet from the mist-shrouded ground beneath, a sparkling blade of fused crystal that pierced the mauve clouds above like a spear. And it was not alone, for in all directions, similar spires soared upward, slender needles of red and gold and blue all interconnected by a Gordian Knot of delicate walkways. The city of Scintillus had always amazed Trielle. It was little wonder to her that it had been chosen as the capital of the Conclave.
She glanced at her wrist.
Garin still has a half hour of class. Good! I could use some time to myself.
A white railing warded the edge of the garden and Trielle walked lazily toward it, finally choosing a spot to lay in the grass. She gazed upward, her brown hair spread about her head like a fan, her green eyes drinking in the light of the three suns until they threatened to burst. Then she closed them, savoring instead the warmth on her skin.
As a child she had been told legends of the night sky, fantastic tales of the diamond-swathed blackness that used to cloak the worlds. She only half-believed the stories. No-one living remembered them first hand and the skies today were a far different entity. Only Vai, Verduun, and Vasya remained to lend truth to those tales, and, for her, that was enough. As long as the last three stars still burned, the end could not come.
It was well known that the three suns were senile, ancient stars well past their prime, but the skillful planning of the Council of Five Heirophants that governed the Conclave of Ten Thousand Worlds and the large-scale stellar interventions of the College of Gravitists had stretched the lifespan of these stars beyond all natural limits. By their predictions the three suns would last several more centuries, well past her projected life span. Trielle supposed that this should comfort her, and in some ways it did. Who, after all, would want to be the final generation, the ones who would stand helplessly by when the entropy clouds finally swept across the Conclave, erasing all existence in a flash of fractured space? Who would wish to watch as the Voidstars consumed what was left of the worlds, and all matter finally dissolved into the night? No, she was glad that it would not be her. Still, every now and then its sheer inevitability weighed on her, and she could not bring herself to look out into the pulsing curtains of entropy that raged beyond the rim of the Conclave, held back only by the radiant pressure of the suns. Trielle shivered again despite the warmth of the afternoon sunlight. She did not like considering the end, which was one of the reasons Garin’s current obsession with existential matters frustrated her so deeply.
Trielle felt a light touch on her forehead and opened her eyes with a near-audible snap only to find Garin’s wiry form hovering over her.
“You’re still supposed to be in class,” she said. Then Trielle frowned, noticing for the first time his disheveled appearance.
“Sorry,” he said with a grin as he smoothed back his sandy blond hair. “Gravitics ended early today. One of the laridian ring models they were using for the demonstration malfunctioned and liquefied half the wall.”
“Was anyone hurt?” she asked, a wave of concern crossing her face.
“No,” he replied with a laugh, “at least, nothing unrepairable. But the blast was fairly impressive.”
Garin was in good spirits, and for that Trielle was glad.
She and Garin had been unusually close as children. Although he was only a few years older Garin had always displayed an unusual maturity, a fact which their parents had often taken advantage of. Early in her youth, both her parents had taken scientific positions at the College of Gravitists and had quickly risen through the ranks of their peers. But this ascent came at a price, and Trielle’s memory was filled with dinners eaten hastily late in the evening, unattended school programs at the Arx Scientia, and nights where neither returned home until the following morning. Yet those times had not been lonely, for Garin had always been there to encourage her when she had difficulty with schoolwork and entertain her when she was bored. He would even offer what small wisdom he had when she had problems with friends at school, although in these latter circumstances Trielle often found that she could come up with better solutions. As Trielle entered adolescence and her interest in the sciences grew, her father had begun to take a greater interest in her life and their relationship had improved considerably. But still, whenever she thought of companionship and love, it was Garin’s image that sprung into her mind. At least it had until a few months ago. Since then, things had been… different…
Always a thoughtful individual, Garin had begun to prefer solitude. His mood, once quietly content, had become brooding and shadowed. Despite her pleas, Garin would not open up. She
knew him well enough to know that he was hiding something, and the fact that he would not share it, even with her, was more than a little disturbing. Still, the events of his afternoon had seemed to open a crack in his bleak exterior, letting a faint glimpse of the old Garin out. Trielle wasn’t sure how long it would last, but she planned on making the best of it it while she could.
“Ready to go?” said Garin
“Yes,” replied Trielle, rising to her feet. The pair strode back to the crystalline wall of the Arx Scientia and entered a transparent chamber that carried them downward through the bulk of the edifice, finally depositing them on a broad walkway of transparent crystal.
“So,” asked Trielle as they walked onward, “How are things with Rakshi?”
“They could be better,” responded Garin, his voice growing more subdued. “I’m getting the distinct impression that despite our feelings for each other, it probably won’t work out.”
“No surprise there, given your current moods,” quipped Trielle in a sudden attempt pierce his shell. “I wouldn’t be interested either, if…”
Trielle cut herself off as a pained expression grew on Garin’s face. She had done it again, wasting what little time she had with the old Garin by trying to repair whatever was broken within him. After a few moments of silence Garin spoke.
“So how was class?” Trielle allowed herself to smile faintly. He’s really trying today.
“Dull,” she replied as she deliberately searched for words that would not stall the conversation again. “It was nothing I hadn’t heard before, just a recounting of the Axioms and Corollaries… again.”
Garin snorted. “It’s almost as if they have to repeat them as much for themselves as for us.” He thought for a second, then turned to face her, his cold blue eyes boring into her soul. “What do you think, Trielle, are they true?”
The suddenness of his reaction shocked her.
“Well, um, yes,” she replied. She glanced about furtively, fearful of being overheard, and when she finally spoke her voice came out as the faintest of whispers.
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