Issue 16

by The Cross and the Cosmos, Jr

  “We need to do more than talk,” Alain replied with a grin, “and we need privacy for talking and not-talking.”

  “You’re on—and not-talking first, just for you.” And after a command to Raphael, Alain carried a delighted Autumn through the door of his Sentry’s closet. A wink of light and the mirrored surface was gone.

  “Raphael, bring time dilation to maximum,” Alain ordered as soon as they were safely inside. At that setting, a full Standard Day would pass within the closet for every Standard Second outside of it.

  How intensely married Lightchildren could love each other was a closely guarded secret. It was the Hooded Man’s compensation for, given their special calling, they could never have children. Alain and Autumn enjoyed the intensity for a long time indeed. Even when both were finally ready to talk, they remained thoroughly entangled in each other’s embrace, and their variable-gravity bed greatly facilitated their remaining so.

  Slowly, carefully, Alain explained everything that had happened to him. Autumn interjected with many questions at first, but after a time she simply listened and nodded, and often she’d caress or kiss him when he recited particularly painful experiences.

  “Darling?” Autumn asked at last, looking up at her husband.

  “Yes, Fiona?”

  “You can remember everything now when you need to, can’t you?—even the fact you called me Fiona on Old First Realm Earth.”

  “Yes—even that your given name was Autumn Harvest Selene right from your birth in the First Realm. Even at your resurrection to glory, it remained your chief Name of Power.”

  “I remember everything else too, as I need to. How much did you know about our past and when did you know it?”

  “The Lord told me the full truth about who we were and where we came from long ago, long before we dealt with Fabian Coldstone, but even then I didn’t remember our full past—or anything like it. But now…” Alain sighed. “The Hooded Man was right. Now I can remember everything in my past, and how I spent so much of it with you, and so what Aqrav did to me in my Shadow is immaterial. It’s a very bad dream fading from memory, as it should. Soon I won’t remember anything of it.”

  “Do you resent him at all for imposing it on you?”

  “No. One doesn’t resent a scorpion for being what he is, even if he happens to be one by choice. Nicholas Blackthorn has deceived a lot of people, especially his own offspring. So you avoid a scorpion, chase him away, or else smash him if he continues to be a nuisance.”

  “Is there any hope he doesn’t have to be smashed?”

  “Not much—but what happens next depends entirely on him.”

  * * * * * * * * * *

  “Oh, by the Dragon’s Seven Beards…”

  “What’s wrong?” Starling Sky saw her captain and lover go pale as he spoke. She was a tall, long-limbed and long-haired brown-eyed blonde with the classical face, full bust and slender yet muscular frame such as one might’ve found on many a poster of erotic fantasy art in the Old First Realm. And she was a Se’fi, focused on the here and the now and then on what she valued personally, and so one who usually needed theoretical complications spelled out for her.

  “He’s free,” Aqrav answered grimly.

  “Who?”

  “You know perfectly well who.”

  “You just imprisoned him! How do you know he’s free?”

  “I’m an Illusionist. I could feel the whole fabric of space-time wrap around him when he returned to the here and now from where and when he emerged.”

  “You mean… he came from the future to the present somehow?”

  “Yes. From a very long distance away in space and time. Somehow.”

  “How long ago did he arrive?”

  “Some time in the last fifteen minutes. It’s taken time for the continuum to settle down around him, which means he’s been making some powerful choices since he got back.”

  Starling couldn’t comprehend the sheer magnitude of such power, but she certainly turned pale in turn while thinking about it. “How could he do this?”

  “Well, he didn’t escape alone,” Aqrav replied with a curse. “The Hegemons of Aetalnor must’ve freed him, and somehow, they figured out how to get out of the Pocket. Then they came back here and now from where and when they emerged. And here I thought I could, at worst, keep the three of them in mutual forgetfulness for all time. I wanted to make them suffer together, if I couldn’t do anything else. Misery loves company, and all that.”

  “You said you had every contingency covered—”

  “I thought I did. I thought I did! Every intelligence report I could find, every eyewitness account of what the Undying Singer can do when he really needs to, even every half-reliable legend about him—I looked them all up in the Confederate data base. There’s simply no way he should’ve been able to leave the Pocket, ever.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Sterilize Aetalnor. Every living thing on land dies, Levani, Adami, animal, plant, everything. No conquest by the Freelanders, and no hope for Emberland. And we and the Confederates will all be long, long gone when it happens. Meanwhile, we need to throw that thrice-cursed Lightchild off our scent—fast.”

  The FSS Tenkiller’s Pride broke all its speed records leaving Aetalnor’s star system. On Aqrav’s orders, the other Confederate ships and personnel followed as soon as they could get aloft.

  * * * * * * * * * *

  “Captain Shaelon!” Iranna exclaimed, for she was with him on watch outside of Fireside. “Master Alain has returned!”

  “And not alone, Iranna,” Alain shouted back as he walked toward her from a moderate distance away, resplendent in a cloak now gleaming like the snow. Autumn walked hand-in-hand with him in like hooded and cloaked splendor. “Not alone!”

  As Alain and Autumn drew near, hundreds of others appeared out of nowhere all around Shaelon and Iranna: Adami men, Levani women, Enoshi children, and to Shaelon’s and Iranna’s utter astonishment, two magnificently dressed figures whom, by some miracle of restored memory—or perhaps of Introverted Intuiting, of Foresight—the two Levani watchers recognized at once.

  “Fetch the Steward and everyone you can bring with her at once,” Shaelon commanded Iranna. “Master Alain,” he exclaimed after she departed, “by what magic beyond magic did you find them?”

  “It’s a rather long story,” said Alain, “but it can wait until all are ready to hear.”

  And so by such grace on that late afternoon, Marildra Aerinifer, weeping in gratitude, knelt before Phedali and Briatynne Arondir and surrendered the Hegemony so long held by her family line. “You will remain as our Steward,” said Phedali, “but as you have no heir, you must choose someone who can replace you if need be. We are not yet ready to grant our symbiont to you or your people, as we must replant our totem flower first; and you may die to this Realm before we can grant you dual-plane immortality.”

  “We will not make the mistake of withholding the boon from your people as we did so long ago,” Briatynne added, “but it will take time to keep our mistake from happening again. Who do you choose to replace you at need?”

  “This worthy scout, Iranna Mirinifer, will be Steward in my stead should I pass on,” Marildra replied.

  “I couldn’t recommend a better choice myself, milord,” said Alain.

  The Archon looked at the Lightchild kindly but soberly. “It is we who should call you lord, Master Alain. Now, do not start! You have driven the Usurper away, and you have freed us; and now you have brought even more help, with yet more on the way when your ship arrives. And you are an Adami and a Lightchild, in two ways born to the purple, whether the Archons, the Levanim or anyone else acknowledge it or not. We shall honor you and yours accordingly, once we have settled those who came here with us.”

  * * * * * * * * * *

  The year, and the day, and the hour long planned by Blackthorn’s Knights had arrived, and the dawning morning was bright and clear from horizon to horizon. The sun rose ove
r the plain east of Emberland on the day of the summer solstice; and in the early morning, the enemies of the Elves came on from east and west by land, air and sea.

  Seven days between my capture by Aqrav and my return to Fireside with all the captured Levanim and their families, Alain mused. Then seven days of feasting and singing and tale-telling, while the Freelanders gather their forces. And finally, seven days of preparation at the borders, while Amethyst and I help place Emberland’s defenders and the mechanized Knights advance.

  And it’s not as if they advance without due warning. Amethyst and I have teleported here and there, warning all who will listen, and the Hegemons warn the Knights as they sleep. But if Blackthorn’s Knights don’t admit they’ve been deceived by strong illusion and stronger delusion, then nothing can be done but kill them.

  “Raphael,” Alain ordered, “display a horizontal pane and give me a topographical map of Emberland. Show our current defenses.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Alain ran his right index finger over the map. He and Raphael were watching from a rock overlooking the South Pass—the very pass Iranna was trying to reach when the Knights had caught up with her. All of the Passes into Emberland from the east were rather misnamed, for the forces which shaped the country’s topography had made it more a series of step-like plateaus than a typical mountain range. Rock-shapers had wrought sheltered passageways up those steps long ago, following the natural courses of waterways; and through them, the Levanim had come and gone for millennia. To the east lay grassland, farmland and clumps of forest; and from that direction, the Freelanders were coming with the sun rising at their backs. South Pass now was blocked by thorny thickets of hardwood so dense even a tank could hardly crash through them, but the helicopters would arrive first and drop men behind the lines, unless they were shot down. Then some of the tanks would try to burn through the magic-grown roadblocks with flamethrowers so the infantry could advance.

  Amethyst Bellatrix, the Archon Disciple of Quantum Mechanics, was the engineer of the Hind of the Dawn, which had arrived at Aetalnor a week earlier. Presently the Hind’s firepower was being held in reserve. Without Confederate starships to defend them, the Freelanders’ armed forces hadn’t a prayer of withstanding Deep Space Service weaponry, even of a Courier of the Corps. If necessary, Alain, Autumn, or Amethyst could order Amber Bdellium, originally Autumn’s Sentry and now the Hind’s integrated AI, to bring the forward lasers to bear, coordinating with Raphael as required.

  Amethyst was at the East Pass with Autumn; Shaelon, Iranna and the rest of Shaelon’s forces guarded the North Pass. The Hegemons were on the west coast, watching as two sophisticated double-hulled aircraft carriers drew near. The Confederates had their hands full training natives of essentially medieval culture to use such high-tech weaponry, but even with their teachers gone, the Freelander junior officers felt confident they could fulfill their mission objective: kill as many of the Emberlanders and their allies as possible.

  The Freeland forces are even more numerous than we predicted, Alain thought, but once the Hooded Man grants us Lightchildren sufficient Power at Need, then we and Amethyst alone will do terrific damage to our foes. Two Starblades and two self-renewing diamond sabers will do more to their tanks and helicopters than they can imagine—and the Arondirs should have no trouble sinking those carriers.

  So why do I perceive something is very, very wrong?

  “Raphael,” Alain said abruptly, “call Amethyst.”

  “Yes?” said Amethyst after a moment; her lovely face, framed with long brunette hair, appeared in a window on the data pane and her voice emerged from a place near the window. Amethyst would be seeing and hearing Alain in like manner on another projected pane.

  “Is your Foresight lighting up as mine is?”

  “Yes! For Autumn, too! There’s a convergence coming, Alain, and it’s focused on Emberland.”

  “Right. Get Autumn back to the Hind immediately, and the Hegemons with her. Don’t explain, move.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Raphael, do not protect me or anyone from the convergence.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  I never like it when this happens, Alain thought. But the Gift of Frameworks focused through the Locus’ Ring intimated transitioning to safety wasn’t the best tactic for dealing with the threat. The Need of the Hour didn’t call for suicide, but for something more subtle, and so the Locus stood his ground.

  He never sensed what hit him. Organic nerves simply couldn’t react quickly enough. But Raphael recorded every picosecond of the catastrophe before his Bondmate died and he shut down.

  On the bridge of the Hind, Autumn, Amethyst and the Hegemons looked on in horror as multiple impacts on Aetalnor created brief flashes of light many times brighter than the sun. The canopy of the bridge automatically dimmed the intensity of the flashes, but they were still almost too bright to look upon.

  “Amber, report!” Autumn shouted.

  “Analyzing now,” said a female voice as lively and precise as Raphael’s. “Moments ago, twelve relativistic cruise missiles passed the Hind moving at ninety percent lightspeed. I only detected them when they made course corrections shortly before impact. They must have been running silently after being brought up to speed.”

  “The Warbird Alain told us about,” Amethyst added grimly. “It must’ve fired every missile it had back at Aetalnor, probably as soon as it got three light-weeks away. The Scorpion had one last sting to deliver.”

  “Where did those missiles land, Amber?” Autumn demanded. “Show me!”

  The bridge’s forward HUD obliged with a schematic global map of Aetalnor. “They’ve carpet-bombed Emberland,” Amethyst said as she looked at the map and the accompanying data, “and they took out the naval task force and the original Confederate base. It looks like one of those missiles hit Fireside dead-on. Another hit almost on top of the South Gate. Alain must’ve died immediately, if Raphael didn’t protect him.”

  “Amber?” Autumn asked.

  “Raphael is offline,” Amber confirmed.

  “That’s it then,” said Amethyst. “Alain, Marildra, Shaedon, Iranna, the warriors, the refugees and their families—all gone in an instant. And the attacking Knights must all be dead or dying too.”

  “So will our world be,” Briatynne replied, and the sound of her voice was raw. Phedali, too, was all but overwhelmed by the sight of the rising fireballs.

  Amethyst shook her head. The shock waves moving through the planet, the ejecta clouds already spreading to bring fire and ruin, the huge tsunamis forming in due time—there were reasons why such weapons as the Warbird had fired were outlawed by every signatory to the Markus IV Treaty. The Locust Plague War had hammered those reasons home brutally.

  Autumn was weeping herself, but she knew her Lord and her husband. “Wait for three full Standard Days, Hegemons,” she said through her tears. “Then you’ll learn at last what being the Undying Singer really means.”

  Phedali and Briatynne looked at Autumn with amazement mixed with renewed hope. “Then Master Alain isn’t dead?”

  “Alain and Raphael are asleep,” said Amethyst encouragingly as Autumn nodded and wiped her tears. “Wait until they awaken, and you’ll see a miracle like none other down there.”

  And after three Standard Days had passed on Ge, Raphael’s otherspace closet opened on the tortured surface of Aetalnor the Goldblossom. Alain stepped out of the closet in ineffable and now invulnerable glory, and as he raised his hands skyward, he uttered the Words of Command to unleash the White Hand Without Measure at Need in all its unstoppable power.

  “In the name of Joshua Davidson, the Lord of the Realms: Let there be Light, now and forever!”

  When the negative print the Covenant Realm had become faded from the eyes of Autumn and her companions, Aetalnor turned below them as it was in the beginning, and all the works of Aqrav and his Confederate allies upon it had been made as if they had never been.

  “Don’t
you think,” said a voice from behind those standing on the bridge of the Hind, “we should kneel and thank our Lord and Maker for what He just wrought?”

  Autumn, the Hegemons, and Amethyst turned and saw Alain standing at the rear of the bridge in his usual Adami aspect, and there were tears of joy in his eyes to match the delighted, innocent-childlike smile on his face. But the smile quickly faded when the Hegemons sank to both knees and prostrated themselves before him.

  “Don’t you dare bow to me,” Alain said sharply. “Here and now, I’m as human by nature as any mortal Adami, and I am not worthy of worship. Worship God.”

  “Better listen to him, fellow Archons,” Amethyst added as she helped Briatynne to her feet; Autumn went to help Phedali. “No false modesty in that statement. He means exactly what he says.”

  “We have a chapel belowdecks,” Alain said kindly as he stepped toward the Hegemons. “Shall I take you there in a moment, or shall we take the elevator?”

  * * * * * * * * * *

  “You’ll find,” Alain explained to those assembled in the great hall of Fireside, “many people of all species now living will remember the alternate timeline they lived under Aqrav’s influence. That includes you Levanim now present, of course. Some of all species are now living who died in the latter part of Aqrav’s timeline. But now, you live in a world as it would’ve been had the worthy Hegemons sitting here been only absent, not usurped and imprisoned. Even the Enoshim now present are here because their parents chose to marry, not because Levani women were captured by force. You Adamim and Enoshim present know this, as well as the Levanim do. And yet not one grain has fallen to earth of all the Enoshim who were alive when I came here.”