“Don’t slow down. I was enjoying myself. As a mode of transport you are smoother than some state gliders I’ve been on.”
“Eleian!” She came to a dead stop.
At some point in the past hour, she had pulled off the head cover of her suit—or she’d have known about this latest improvement in his condition. Hurriedly she readjusted the adhesiveness of their tactical suits. But before she could take hold of him and carefully set him down, he leaped off.
She goggled at him. “You jumped. You jumped just now.”
“I know!”
He peeled back the head cover of his suit. She’d thought he’d looked wonderful right before his collapse . . . Well, he hadn’t, in retrospect—or only so compared to his usual self. But now he was radiant by any standard.
He enfolded her in a tight embrace. He still felt far too skeletal, but goodness his arms were strong.
She pulled him to her with just as much strength and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “How long have you been conscious?”
“I’m not sure. For a while I thought I was dreaming—in the dream I was on a state glider, of all things. I opened my eyes and still thought I must be dreaming.” He pulled back a little and looked around. They appeared to be in the bailey of an immense and faintly luminescent castle that had been constructed with walls of water—a dreamscape if she ever saw one. “Then I remembered the scene from The Quiet Girl where the sea parted for your predecessor, which jolted me awake completely. That was when I realized that I was on your back and you were running at superhuman speed.”
He touched a tactical suit-covered hand to her face. “If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn that you are the one parting the seas.”
“I’m not. But I’ve been carrying you for what—close to two hours?—and it became easier and easier. And I started running because it felt so good. Oh, and I haven’t told you yet, but I think we are on some sort of a conveyor belt. Even if we sat down now and had a picnic, we’d still be moving at a blistering pace. In fact, I managed five hundred clicks in my first hour and now we must be—”
She looked up and gasped.
The last time she’d tilted her head all the way back to check her depth, it had been at the edge of the continental shelf, and the seawater walls had been about five hundred meters high. Which had been a jaw-dropping view and made her feel like an ant at the foot of a great monument.
But now the sea must be at least five thousand meters deep. The area the seawater walls enclosed had become exponentially larger too. The prince’s entire island could fit into this space with ample room to spare.
“I’m . . . I’m not sure how far I’ve come in the last hour.”
The continental landmasses referred to as the three continents of Pax Cara were actually one large continent, half of which was divided into two distinct regions by a huge mountain range, and the other half connected to the rest by an isthmus just wide enough to allow for a road running through its very middle without violating rules about building too close to the coast.
Given that only geosynchronous satellites positioned permanently over the continental landmasses were allowed and that all of them were on one side of the planet, the global positioning system on Pax Cara was not very good. And even if it had been decent, Vitalis was prohibited from carrying any devices that could receive such signals.
But one thing was certain: they had come far.
“No wonder the Chosen Ones could reach the Elders’ Temple in less than a day,” she marveled. “I’m beginning to think we’ll get there soon. Very soon.”
His expression turned sober. “Sooner than you want to?”
She shook her head. “The sooner we get there, the better it would be for you. Look at you, I already can’t tell that you’ve ever been unwell. Imagine, if you spend any time near the Temple, you might live a thousand years.”
He cupped her face. “A thousand years means nothing. Another hour with you means everything.”
She gazed upon him. This minute meant everything: She saw an entire future for him, a life lived incandescently.
A smile rose to her lips. It suffused her entire soul. “So . . . we walk slowly?”
Walking slowly turned out to be an impossibility. Simultaneously they picked up their pace, first to a vigorous march, then a jog, then an outright sprint exactly as she had been doing earlier—and they held hands and laughed as they ran.
“I don’t think I’ve ever run in my life,” he said, delight in every syllable. “This feels incredible!”
“Trust me,” she told him. “I’ve run plenty in my life and it has never felt this good.”
And surely, they must be racing down a descent that was steeper than seventy degrees. A slope that on land they would have needed pitons and ropes to negotiate. Yet now they shot past as if on wings, like planets careening inside the gravity well of a star, yet held safe by their own mass and velocity.
She loved the speed, the strength in her legs, and the warmth of his hand in hers.
Yes, she would call this happiness.
In fact, happiness seemed almost too shallow and ephemeral a word for the profound steadiness in her heart. For a joy so immense it could alter the trajectory of galaxies.
She wanted to run forever beside him and never stop.
They stopped and stared.
Sometimes there was nothing to do but stare, especially when one found oneself before a monument that rose from the very deepest trench of the sea all the way to the surface, ten kilometers up.
It seemed to be black in color, until it seemed to be translucent. Its surface was at first perfectly smooth, and then, the next moment, fully covered in lines and glyphs. In shape it appeared to be an obelisk, a needle stabbing toward the sky; a blink of an eye later and Vitalis was sure it had never been anything but a tiny slice of the surface of an unimaginably colossal dome.
The sun was rising, gilding the very top of the monument. She shivered. Now she couldn’t remember why she had been rushing headlong toward this point. Toward the end.
Wordlessly they sat down, their arms wrapped around each other.
She had no idea how much time passed before she remembered the package on his back. She detached it and handed it to him. “This inflates into a lifepod. It doesn’t have transmitters, but it can orient itself by sensing the magnetic field, and it has nanopropellers that will take you back to Pavonis Center in approximately two days. Onboard you should find enough food. Water will be filtered from the sea and it might take an hour before you get your first liter.”
He gazed at the package for a moment, then set it aside with a slight smile. “Got it. Now tell me what you did while I was incapacitated.”
As if they were once again sitting on a flower-strewn meadow at the heart of a sunlit valley, a sumptuous picnic laid out before them, she told him about their trip, his long coma, and the constant hubbub around the preservation tank. He listened attentively, as if he too had forgotten all about the looming monument in their midst. And when she brought up the episode of Captain Odyssia and the Renegades she and his chamberlain had watched together, he laughed and asked her if the holodrama had committed any more atrocious errors against realism and common sense.
She grinned. “Aha, now that you mention it—”
His expression changed.
“Are you all right?” she was instantly alarmed.
He gripped a hand on his upper arm. “I’m fine. But the sigil, it feels different.”
She felt a strange sensation on her own upper arm, pinpricks of heat and pressure—but she busied herself peeling open his tactical suit. At first his sigil didn’t look any different, going through its usual changes. But as they watched, it underwent a third reshaping, this time forming something that was unmistakably a symbol, a design that seemed to depict a river rejoining itself at the source.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I feel as if I should, but I don’t.”
She felt the same. The symbol seemed infinitely familiar; but try as she did, she couldn’t remember where or when she must have seen it.
An indescribably melodious chime—music of the spheres, if she’d ever heard it—made them turn toward the monument.
At its base, an exceedingly normal-sized door had opened.
Everything around them was clearly visible, but beyond the door, though the space appeared well-lit, nothing could be seen at all.
Welcome, said a voice that echoed in her head.
It was a language Vitalis had never encountered before, nor was she aware that she heard syllables—or sounds, even. Whoever “spoke” seemed to convey meaning directly.
She was on her feet, as was he, their hands tightly clasped.
She swallowed and waited for further instructions—or questions with regard to the prince’s presence. But all she heard was, It is time.
She pulled him to her for a swift, fierce embrace. “Let’s make sure you are safely in the lifepod—and I’ll ask Them to be careful with you.”
He looked into her eyes. “I won’t need the lifepod.”
She stared at him, realization arriving as if the walls around them had collapsed, trillions of tons of seawater crushing her underneath. This was the decision he had made the morning after their wedding, when she returned from her abandoned escape. He never meant to say farewell to her at the gate of the Elders’ Temple, but always intended to accompany her to the very end.
Tears blurred her vision. “But I can see an entire life ahead for you, a wonderful life.”
His eyes, too, shone with tears. “I’ve already had a wonderful life and I wish to spend the rest of it with you.”
“But your people—” Tears fell freely. “Your chamberlain, your physicians, they are all praying for your return.”
He wiped away her tears. “Not my chamberlain or my physicians. They know—and soon my people will know too—that I have made up my mind: if the Pax Cara radiation rejuvenated me, I would go to the very end with you. They would only expect me to return if there was no improvement, I never regained unconsciousness, and was put into the lifepod either to die or already dead.”
Please enter.
“Did you hear that?” he murmured. “It’s time for us to go forth.”
She was stronger. She could overpower him and confine him to the lifepod against his will. She could give him decades, perhaps centuries, of luminous life, and he would achieve a greatness beyond anything he could have imagined.
“Remember,” he said softly, “I survived far longer than my physicians ever expected me to, so I could meet you. So we could be together.”
The voice in her head asked, gently but firmly, Do you still wish to proceed?
Fresh tears fell down her face, then she took his hand.
Together they walked forward.
9
The moment they crossed the threshold, the brightly lit opacity inside the Elders’ Temple became a . . .
Vitalis lacked the vocabulary to describe it, a vastness that seemed to contain nothing, yet was not empty. She had a sense of life, of movement, of richness and vibrancy, none of it visible, yet all of it clearly felt.
“It’s beautiful,” murmured Eleian.
Only as he spoke did she realize that they were still walking, but there was nothing underfoot.
She was familiar with weightlessness, having trained in simulated zero-g environments, not to mentioned having been courted by her prince in a gravity-free dance sphere. This was not weightlessness, which left one adrift, unless there happened to be an object nearby against which one could push off. Here they merely continued to walk—and the apparent formlessness on which they trod gave them the correct reaction force to move forward.
Looking back, she couldn’t tell where the door through which they entered might be. The same limitless non-emptiness stretched in every direction.
To think that such an environment existed in the universe—how narrow her imagination had been, how slight her knowledge.
Prepare your defense.
She and Eleian exchanged a glance. A defense against what?
All of a sudden they found themselves on an ice moon not unlike the one in Captain Odyssia and the Renegades. Except . . . whereas the other one had appeared real enough to make her gasp in appreciation, with this one she couldn’t tell that she wasn’t actually standing on frozen methane.
Is this a simulation? she asked in thought.
Is that what you think?
But already the ice moon was receding. The green- and orange-banded Jovian giant around which it orbited also receded. She was now looking at the steady, slow-burning star that held together the system.
Was this what she was supposed to defend?
The star too was receding, hurtling into space. She didn’t know how she could tell, but she knew from a single glance that it was traveling too fast—that something more than the spin of a galaxy powered its trajectory.
Without thinking she flicked her fingers—the star accelerated even more.
“It’s a weapon,” said Eleian.
“I could be wrong,” she replied slowly, “but I have a suspicion that it might be only ammo.”
What kind of battle were they fighting that a star was but a bullet?
And but one among many. For the star was part of an enormous, evenly spaced cluster—a hailstorm of bullets, all hurtling toward a nebulous object that seemed unimaginably distant.
“The Devourer!” she and Eleian cried out together.
The Destroyer of Universes.
It was said that too many universes experienced but a brief burst of luminosity before succumbing to the predation of the Devourer. They spent the rest of eternity at maximum entropy, lightless and dead. The Mother of Universes, heartbroken for Her children, created gods to safeguard those universes that were still shining and alive.
Prepare to defend, the voice had said.
Defend the entire universe?
Part of her brain shut down at the very enormity of the thought. But a different part came alive—she would be working on the grandest scale possible, certainly, but warfare was warfare, and a large part of her training had been military.
Galaxy walls were needed at the forefront, ramparts of the defense. Nebulas and star nurseries must be gathered and protected, the greatest active galactic nuclei drafted to aim and lob chains of lesser singularities.
She thought she was talking to Eleian, explaining her plan—and that he was responding, expanding on her ideas and adding his own. But they were not speaking; they were communicating directly via thoughts.
She felt his astonishment upon this realization—as she felt her own. And his marvel—and hers—as the superstructures of the universe responded to their commands, their power.
Massive stars on the verge of self-destruction were plucked, like pearls from the sea, to undergo core collapse just as they reached the Devourer’s maw—the Destroyer of Universes might love to ingest stars, but supernovae irritated it, as a fritter freshly removed the frying pan might burn a child’s tongue.
The resulting singularities weakened the Devourer’s structural integrity. But such hits were hardly fatal. Indeed, they were only distractions: a rain of stars to keep it busy feeding, supernovae at random intervals to poke at the Beast, a lashing of five-thousand-light-year-long jet ejection to enrage it.
All the while, in secret, Vitalis and Eleian wrought their true weapon, a scythe invisible to the Devourer, fashioned of innumerable dark galaxies. It took all their will and strength to propel this immense blade across the final thousand light years and stab the Destroyer of Universes directly in the maw.
The convulsions of the Devourer brought down a million-light-year section of the galaxy wall. But at last, it retreated, red-shifting toward the edge of the universe.
Vitalis and Eleian slumped against each other, exhausted. Their tactical suits were in tatters and the sigil on his arm glowed. This time s
he recognized all the designs: the first represented the Mother of Universes, the second the map of the multiverse, the third the shape of their own universe, and the last the symbol of the great god Metaran.
“Look at your arm,” said Eleian.
There it was, the sigil she had suspected she carried. It was exactly the same as his for the first three designs, but the last was five sinuous lines in an intricate interlocked pattern, the symbol of the great goddess Mikelan.
Well done. The voice came back. As a reward for your remarkable joint performance, you may withdraw from the Test.
“But what’s the condition?” Vitalis demanded.
You will not return in the same bodies, but they will be young, healthy bodies.
“What about the people of Pax Cara? Will they suffer should I choose to withdraw now from the Test?”
We cannot make promises.
“Then I cannot abandon the Test.” She turned to him. “But you can still leave.”
He kissed her on her hair. “How many times do I have to say I will stay with you until the end? Are you in need of a hearing aid, princess?”
She laughed—and screamed in agony.
“No!” Eleian cried. “No!”
One of the Devourer’s fangs, a parting gift, had pierced her in the chest.
And now it is too late. You will die here.
She coughed and spat out a stream of blood. Then, with as much effort as it took to skewer the Devourer, she smiled at the man she loved. “By the way, do you believe in life after death?”
She did not hear his answer.
She woke up to sunshine and birdsong.
Somewhere nearby, a fountain bubbled. The air was heady with the perfume of flowers and dew-flecked grass.
She rose from the silk-draped bed and walked to the window. Outside was a large terrace, and beyond, a beautiful garden.
She recognized the place. It was her home, her divine abode. She had built it two mortal incarnations ago.
The Mother of Universes created gods to defend her children. Vitalis and her mate sat at the head of the Council of Gods in this universe. Mikelan and Metaran, they were sometimes called, among the countless other names they had accumulated through the eons.
The Heart is a Universe Page 10
