The Phoenix in Flight

by Sherwood Smith

  Except it wasn’t the past that caused Osri’s retreat behind formality. He taught navigation at the Naval Academy, but Omilov did not need his son’s skill at spacetime calculations to understand that Brandon should not have arrived on Charvann before the vid of his Enkainion.

  Chill gripped the back of Omilov’s skull. “Brandon?” he said. “I am delighted to see you again, but why this haste?” Omilov thought of the social commitments attendant on a royal Enkainion: by rights Brandon should have been feted for weeks, by the foremost Families in the Panarchy.

  “Am I not welcome?” Brandon threw one leg over the low rail and sat. His face, thrown into relief against the red ball of the sun, bore the marks of exhaustion. “We’ll go, if you don’t want to see me.”

  As if to mock him, Omilov’s own thought returned: Love for the sound of rules, and too little of a savor for their sense...

  “What happened?” he asked, keeping voice and posture neutral. Then, voicing his last fading hope, “You must have left just after your Enkainion?”

  “Before.” Brandon leaned over and picked up the empty snifter, pouring a measure into it from the decanter. “I stopped here to say good-bye.”

  Omilov shook his head, uneasy for the first time in ten years. Unless Semion’s coverts are already converging on us, in which case nothing we do or say matters, this can wait. He’s here. There must be a reason. Osri’s presence will prevent him from bringing it out.

  He shifted his attention to the man who had been waiting in silent patience in the background all this time and recognized Lenic Deralze, the bodyguard who had disappeared after Brandon’s disgrace.

  Shaking his head, he said, “Take the luggage inside, Deralze. Parraker will establish you in comfort.” I will deal with this. It was not for situations dictated by the rules, but for emergencies not covered by the rules, that I made my vows—

  The image of a face flickered through his mind, and his thoughts split along two tracks, losing themselves in fragmented memory images and impressions until recalled by Parraker, his steward, bustling toward them with uncharacteristic haste. Parraker carried a blue and gold ParcelNet package in his hands.

  “Sir, this just arrived, marked ‘Urgent—Open At Once,’ but the message chip scans blank.” He thrust it at Omilov with a jerky motion unlike his usual measured movements. As Omilov took the box from Parraker’s hands, the steward’s eyes moved past him to the newcomers, then widened briefly. Wordlessly he performed a low obeisance.

  “Parraker,” Brandon said. “How are you?”

  The Steward bowed again, then turned to Omilov, stiff with unspoken question.

  Omilov said, “Thank you. Will you conduct Deralze to the guest rooms?”

  Deralze lifted his burden, sending a considering glance in Osri’s direction before he followed Parraker inside the house.

  Omilov took a step and staggered slightly as the package, rather heavy for its size, failed to resist his movements. The odd feeling intensified the sense of unreality. He paused, trying to calm his heartbeat, breathing in the warm breeze scented with sandalwood and jumari. In the gardens the leaptoads pipped and squeaked, an amphibian orchestra tuning up for its nightly concert.

  A shift of cloth, the scrape of a shoe recalled him. Afraid that Osri might say something irrevocable, Omilov moved to set the box down on the low table, saying, “Shall we take a look at this?” He was disturbed by the strange dissonance of the box’s massive lightness. Once it was on the table he straightened up with a sense of relief.

  “Who is it from?” Osri asked.

  Omilov peered at the address label. “‘Martin Cheruld.’ Curious. An old student of mine. I tutored him in history—he was quite good. But we lost him to Infonetics. Odd that the message chip was blank.”

  Omilov pressed his thumbs into the seal-seam and the box gaped open to reveal an Alhaman puzzle-box, an exquisitely carved wooden case inlaid with kauch-pearl on all sides. He hesitated, then picked up the puzzle box and began working at the inlays, pinching and sliding them this way and that. Osri and Brandon looked on, Osri frowning as usual, and Brandon’s face politely blank.

  Why did he not make his Enkainion? Omilov had never heard of such a thing happening with an Arkad—ever.

  As Omilov tried several solutions to the puzzle, the odd feel of its contents making his hands clumsy, he remembered Brandon as a boy, who used to concoct elaborate practical jokes without regard to the inevitable retribution that even Krysarchs could not evade—especially when the target was Anaris, the son of Eusabian of Dol’jhar. But that brooding, bullying hostage had not always been the target. A certain newly-knighted, irritatingly pompous Chival had—too late—found a stench-puff in his chair at his accession banquet.

  Omilov smiled; his fingers ceased their movement.

  “Well?” Osri said. His gaze went briefly to Brandon’s face, then flickered away again, as if by not seeing his presence he could deny what had happened. “Can you not open it, Father?”

  Omilov recalled himself and examined the box more closely. A slender wedge of light at the horizon was all that remained of the sun. The shimmering lines of the inlay patterns glinted softly, reflecting the overhead lights that were slowly replacing the diminishing light from the sky. There were subtle signs of wear... thus... so...

  The top of the box sprung open with a subdued click. Inside was a small, mirror-surfaced sphere, about half the size of a man’s fist. Understanding crashed in upon him; a twinge of alarm surged down his left arm to his ring finger. What is this doing here?

  Omilov put the box down hastily, remembering the echoing spaces of the Shrine, reflected a thousand-fold in the ageless eyes of the strange being at its center. He smelled the strange, dry incense-like odor of the Guardian and heard its rasping speech, like a huge stringed instrument played with a rough bow. He felt again the awe engendered by the dispassionate gaze of a being whose life had begun when his remote ancestors were chipping stone tools at the feet of receding glaciers on Lost Earth.

  “It’s just a ball,” Osri said. “A metal ball.” But Brandon, his eyes narrowed, watched Omilov’s hands as he picked up the sphere and placed it on the table.

  Just as the first time he’d seen it, Omilov found his eyes crossing slightly as they tried to focus on the sphere—it was such a perfect, smooth reflector that it was visible only as a distortion of its surroundings. He began pushing it about the surface of the table, trying to collect his thoughts.

  The Guardian would never have relinquished this; any ship that tried to land on the Shrine Planet would be vaporized. The faint memory of a poem echoed... Something vast and pitiless is stirring...

  He met Brandon’s watchful gaze. The Krysarch’s presence here was almost as unsettling as this forbidden artifact. Could they be related? Impossible.

  Unfortunately, it was equally impossible that there would not be terrible consequences to Brandon’s choice. Omilov was certain that Brandon was well aware of what he’d done. It amounted to a cut-direct, the highest insult, to all the leading lights of Court—and it would never, ever be forgotten. Even his father the Panarch would be helpless to intervene against the depth of feeling this would arouse.

  And, thought Omilov, considering the way decisions were so often made in the Thousand Suns—by careful, formal social maneuvers among the Service Families—Brandon’s flight amounted to a disruption of the machinery of state. His father would probably not even make the attempt, despite his very real love for Brandon. Gelasaar would put the welfare of his trillions of subjects first.

  And Brandon knows this.

  “Is it some sort of toy?” Osri asked. “It looks like it stops itself from moving somehow. What is it?”

  “I don’t know what it is, or what its purpose was, but it is at least ten million years old,” Omilov replied.

  “The Ur?” Osri did not seem to believe him; not surprising, since private possession of an Urian artifact was treason.

  Omilov handed the sphere t
o his son. Osri’s hands dipped toward the table. As he hefted it, his heavy eyebrows shot toward his hairline—his hands moved too fast for the evident weight of the sphere.

  “Throw it to Brandon.”

  As Osri hesitated, Omilov added, “Don’t worry, it’s not at all fragile. In fact, I doubt that any force we have available to us could damage it.”

  Osri tried to throw it underhanded to Brandon, who had his hands up and slightly separated, but the little sphere refused to leave his hand—it almost looked like it was glued there, except that it rolled about freely.

  “Throw it overhand,” he chortled. Shock had faded, leaving the sense of unreality that Brandon’s appearance had first caused. Brandon has flung away his life, Semion may close his gauntlet around us at any moment, and here we sit, playing with an artifact created by a galaxy-spanning race that was utterly destroyed ten million years ago.

  Osri wrapped his fingers around the sphere and tossed it, throwing it somewhat like a shot-put because of its weight, but as his hand opened at the peak of its forward thrust, the sphere fell out of his palm with blurring speed and hit the table—noiselessly. It fell so fast that none of them could see it between Osri’s hand and the table, and when it touched the tabletop it did not bounce or further move at all. Osri pushed it hard toward Brandon, but as soon as his hand ceased its forward movement, so did the sphere.

  Osri’s forehead knit and he reached for the sphere, but Brandon grabbed it first. He held it up, laid his other hand on the surface of the table, and with a wince, dropped the sphere from about two feet onto his upturned palm. Brandon grunted with surprise, Osri winced, but the Krysarch’s hand was obviously unharmed, despite the sphere’s heaviness.

  ‘That’s impossible,” said Osri. “It’s inertialess!”

  “Impossible or not, there it is,” replied his father. “Of course, it could merely have immeasurable or negligible inertia, but the Gnostors of Energetics insist that’s just as impossible as none at all.”

  “If you could do that to a ship... .” Brandon breathed.

  “Its speed would be limited only by the density of the interstellar medium,” Osri said, taking refuge in pedantry.

  Brandon dropped the sphere back on the table, picked up his snifter, and poured himself another drink.

  Osri continued, “So you know where it came from?”

  “Where, I know. How, I can’t even guess at this point,” Omilov replied. Osri touched the sphere wonderingly as Omilov continued. “You’re familiar with Paradisum.”

  “It’s one of the Doomed Worlds.” Brandon leaned against the carved balustrade, staring up into the night sky.

  “One of two orbiting the Ouroboros-Ophis binary, both doomed to death some fifty thousand years hence in a stellar explosion, the whole system a work of art for the delight of an alien race we can only be thankful are long gone from the galaxy.” Omilov hesitated, then went on, “That’s how I know this is an Urian artifact, for I have seen it—only seen it—once before, on the other world in that system, the Shrine Planet.”

  “The carvings,” said Osri. “I’ve seen pictures of them. They cover an entire continent.”

  “The Panarchy allows one xenoarchaeological expedition there every fifty years. There have been fourteen—and all have spoken to the selfsame being—the Guardian of the Shrine.” Omilov made an odd noise deep in his throat, followed by a breathy trill. “N!Kir-r-r. That’s as close as I can come to pronouncing its name. His name—he said that his present incarnation was male. But I still can’t quite say it, since I don’t have chelae and a chitinous throat patch.” He touched the sphere with his fingertip, reassuring himself that it was real, present on his verandah.

  As was Brandon.

  “The Guardian was an enormous exoskeletal being. One of the Highdweller members of our expedition had an insect phobia that was more intense than she realized. She had to be transferred out under sedation after entering the Shrine.”

  Omilov plucked the sphere off the table. “The Guardian told us that this was the egg of a demon, like the one that would hatch from the two suns of his world at the end of time.”

  “They worshiped it?” asked Osri, with faint distaste.

  “Not worshiped—perhaps imprisoned is a better word. The Guardian said it was a trust, that five hundred generations of his kind had guarded it, waiting for it to be swallowed up in the stellar fires that would destroy his world.”

  He paused. “Five hundred generations, counted from the disappearance of the Ur, is twenty thousand years per Guardian. That figure was verified by the first expedition—by radio-dating of chitin traces on the Guardian’s dais, and by genoscans. That in part is why the planet was quarantined. No naturally-evolved being lives that long.”

  During the resulting silence, Omilov breathed slowly, trying to relax into the reassuring sensory data of a normal world. The songs of the leaptoads in the ponds and streams of the surrounding gardens were loud, cheerfully dissonant against the soft music pervading the terrace. The windows of the manor glowed with light, and in the east the inner moon Kilelis lofted its cold face above the horizon, wanly reflecting the light of the departed sun. Faint streaks of cloud shone in the sky. The grounds of the estate were a shadowed mystery in the moon’s purplish light.

  The peace was a lie. Brandon had skipped out on his Enkainion. The repercussions will arrive tomorrow in waves, like a tsunami.

  So Sebastian Omilov would enjoy the semblance of peace while he could.

  Osri stirred. “You said you’d only seen this sphere, Father?”

  “The Guardian has never let anyone touch it, and since he is obviously a sapient being, he is protected by the Covenant of Anarchy. We could not force him. I don’t think any of us would have... but someone has.” Omilov touched a control in the arm of his high-backed chair; the lights faded and the stars leapt forth in spangled glory above their heads.

  “I remember a little about it,” Brandon murmured. “It’s called the Heart of something?”

  Omilov picked up the artifact and held it in his cupped hands, his face and the stars above reflected in bizarre distortion in its surface. “The Heart of Kronos, the Eater of Gods.”

  o0o

  It was second moonrise when Deralze moved silently along the corridor behind the gnostor’s son, who had just emerged from his room in his dressing gown.

  Through the high window at the end of the corridor the rosy light of Tira threw Osri’s shadow huge against the wall as he approached his father’s suite. The quiet slip-slap of his slippers echoed off the glossy wood floor.

  The door to Omilov’s suite opened, and swung shut slowly enough for Deralze to slip through after Osri. Light glowed in both the bedchamber and the study. The gnostor favored the old Karelian Renascence modality—there were no doors on the rooms within the suite, only wide, high archways. Deralze paused just inside the vestibule, outside of the pool of soft light, and waited.

  Omilov sat in a hideous overstuffed wing chair; the air was sweetly aromatic from the hot drink he held in his hands. Arching over him in the dim light was the graceful form of a potted argan tree, its silver leaves tightly rolled up for the night except where the reading lamp shone on them, glinting off the splayed, hand-shaped leaves that seemed to hover protectively over the chair and its occupant.

  Deralze saw by the angle of the gnostor’s head that he was gazing up at his hand-painted portrait of the late Kyriarch, Ilara kyr-Arkad. Osri glanced fleetingly at the portrait, then down at his father as Omilov smiled at him.

  “Night-hobs whispering to you too, boy? Come, have some dreamberry tea. It never fails to work for me.”

  “Night-hobs?” Osri repeated. “Sometimes, Father, I wonder if you half-believe in the myths and legends you study.”

  “Half-believe and laugh about them by turns,” the gnostor replied, still smiling.

  Osri looked impatient. Deralze recalled Lady Risiena, on one of her rare punitive descents on the family home during Brandon�
�s last visit to Charvann. She ignored servants and bodyguards alike as if they were furniture, so Deralze overheard her saying to her son, “Your father, Osri, is simply a child in a man’s body. He resigned his position in the family business so he could devote his time to playing with the various dirty oddments and bits of trash he digs up, and though he knows several people high in the Magisterium and the Council of Pursuivence—though I’ve never met them—he has never exerted himself to ask their help in advancing the family’s interests. So you, my son, are left to suffer from his selfishness.”

  Osri said now to his father, “I must speak to you.”

  “And?”

  “You have reported the presence of the Krysarch to someone?”

  “‘Krysarch,’” Omilov repeated. “It was not so long ago that you were both here as boys, and you called him Brandon then.” But when Osri said nothing, the gnostor sighed. “I have reported to no one.”

  “Does the Archon know he is here on this planet?”

  “I am beginning to believe that no one, outside of ourselves, knows.”

  “Then it is your duty to inform the Archon.”

  “My duty is to myself,” Omilov said. “I am merely a retired teacher.”

  “But I am not,” Osri said. “I think my duty is clear. I would have sent a com, but I thought it right to consult you first. This is your house.”

  Omilov rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I suspect you will get nowhere. I would be very surprised indeed if Deralze has not already blocked our communications.”

  Deralze, smiling to himself, heard Osri’s sharp intake of breath.

  “But that’s illegal—”

  “The rules,” Omilov said, “are made to cover ordinary circumstances. I am beginning to believe that something extraordinary has brought Brandon here, and it is my intention to find out what. Then I will act as I see right.”

  Osri scowled. “When my leave ends—”