by David Wind
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Morning came swiftly for Areenna, who had woken long before dawn to finalize the preparations for their departure to Tolemac. A half hour after sun-up she was seated with her father and the duke at breakfast. The servants moved quickly about them, following her orders to waste no time.
“Will you be going to Tolemac with us?” Areenna asked the duke.
Duke Yermon glanced at her father and then at her. “If I could… My brother sent me a message asking me to sit his throne while he attends the council.” He paused to sip the heated spice water, and then smiled off-handedly. “In another year my daughter and her husband will handle such chores.”
Areenna studied him silently. In the space of a breath, a familiar feeling swelled within her. Unable to stop, she reached out to touch the top of the duke’s hand with three fingertips. There was a sudden rush of colors across her eyes from palest yellow to the inky darkness of a black mud bog that sucked her mind toward it. She flinched, snatched her hand away, and said, “I…you must allow Nylle to sit the throne in Llawnroc.” A dark blood-red flash replaced the inky bog and she returned her fingers to the back of his hand so the pieces of the vision would finish playing out.
When it finally came, her gasp was loud and uncontrolled. It took her another minute before she could speak. Her voice was tight, almost choking. “You have to be at court. Your daughter must stand in your place. If you are not there…I fear…I am afraid of what might happen.”
She pulled her fingers from his skin as if they’d been burned. “My apologies, Sir, I—”
“No, Areenna, no apologies,” the duke said quickly. “What might happen to whom? What saw you?”
She looked first at her father, who nodded. To the duke she said, “I cannot be sure, but there is something dark, something foreboding at Court. Your brother is in grave danger, which is all I know. I…the seeing it is not yet strong within me,” she explained.
“But stronger than any other woman your age.” Her father looked at Areenna with great concern, and then turned to the duke. “I would suggest you listen to my daughter, Sir.”
Duke Yermon glanced from the King to Areenna. “I fully intend to, Highness, I felt something at her touch as well. I will return to Llawnroc first and meet you at Tolemac as swiftly as possible.”
“Do not fail in this,” Areenna said, her voice carried the disturbance of her vision.
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Duke Yermon left shortly after breakfast. Llawnroc was a full day’s ride Southwest from Freemorn and another day and a half to Tolemac.
Nosaj, Areenna, and ten of the King’s most trustworthy guards left the castle two hours after the duke. Normally, the journey to Tolemac would be done in a day and two-thirds, with one night of encampment. This time they left at midmorning. There would be no encampment on this journey, in order for them to arrive the following morning. Sleep would come only to those who had learned to sleep astride their mounts.
Her father was a few paces ahead of her, sitting straight and emanating strength from every pore. His deep brown kraal stood almost seventeen hands, its flanks powerfully muscled, its legs thick and strong. Larger and longer than its un-mutated equine ancestor, the kraal’s body was broad, its coat short and dense. The kraal’s flaring triangular shaped head was high and proud, and its powerful gait smoothly consumed the distance.
Her gray and black spotted kraal, a hand smaller than her father’s, moved swiftly. His wide silvery gray mane spiked upward as he sped gracefully along. Above her and the muscular kraal she had named Hero flew Gaalrie. With Gaalrie’s sharp sight, Areenna saw the road ahead with full clarity. Gaalrie would give timely warning of any danger along their route.
She urged Hero to her father’s side. They rode silently for several minutes until he asked, “Are you ready to tell me what you saw on Duke Yermon?”
“Yes Father. It took me a while to fully understand.”
Her father waited silently. “When it happened, a sheet of red…of blood washed across my sight. I felt danger to the duke’s brother. I have been working the vision, as mother taught me, and was finally able to open the blood curtain.”
She took a breath. “What I saw was a knife flying toward Llawnroc’s king. He had been unprotected. The killer was someone seated at the council. I feel certain of it, but I did not see a face, nor could I sense who it was. I am sorry, Father.”
“Never!” her father growled. “Never apologize for something like that. What you saw was a gift given to you. You get only what is given freely by those who watch. You must never apologize for them or for yourself.”
While Areenna had at first stiffened at her father’s tone, the words themselves served to ease her tense muscles. “Yes, Father, I shall remember.”
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“My Lord,” Enaid called.
Turning to his wife, the High King of Nevaeh raised his eyebrows.
“All but two have arrived. They are quartered and being fed. Freemorn and Lokinhold will be here in the morning.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She took his hand and gently squeezed it. “You must go and greet them.”
“In a moment,” he whispered.
“What troubles you?”
“The past,” he said, seeing not the woman standing before him, but the world he had come from, and knowing every aspect of his previous life was gone…except for memories.
The Journal of Solomon Roth, 5253 AD
This will be my last entry in this journal. In a few hours I depart this flying coffin and go back to the planet of my birth, a trip started three thousand years ago. We began with 200 people…now there is only me.
It has been 2 years, 5 months and 12 days of consciousness since I boarded the shuttle at Earthport in 2136 A.D. 2 plus years of life rationed out over 3,000 years of stasis. My ship has voyaged through the universe for 3,117 years, following a huge elliptical orbit. I have been awakened 9 different times for my service rotations as had all the surviving crew members. Each time I was revived, there were fewer and fewer travelers. I spent as much time as possible, trying to find out what had killed them, but could not find an answer before I returned to the blackness of stasis.
My last awakening started routinely. It ended with the knowledge I would never return to stasis. I was the last—all the others were dead. Some by the malfunction of equipment, but most died mysteriously, at least at the time it was a mystery until I finally solved it, much too late.
A dormant mutated virus had been brought aboard by one of the colonists. When the colonist’s stasis pod had malfunctioned, the live virus entered the ship’s stasis circulation units. Of the 200 people on the ship, over three quarters died from the virus. The others died due to various equipment failures. I alone proved immune.
Those who started the war had finally succeeded in destroying their enemy…and themselves, by killing every inhabitant of the earth.
For the 5 months after my last awakening, I was insane— a skeletal lunatic, ranting and raving, crying for no reason and every reason. I know now how long my insanity lasted, but during those five months, I knew nothing. I don’t even know how I remembered to eat and drink.
Then the day came when the ship's proximity alarms went off.
What I saw in the ship’s scopes should have been the last straw of whatever doubtful shreds of sanity I had left; but instead, what lay before me triggered a return to reality.
200,000 miles ahead, was the small blue green dot of Earth. I stared at it for hours, not moving, barely breathing and, as my insanity fled, my training resurfaced. My ship had been in an elliptical orbit through the solar system for three thousand years. It had finally returned home. I took control of the ship, despite thinking there was no point in having remained alive.
The original mission was to save the human race. Sadly, I knew I would not be the new version of Adam, for there was no Eve—the women were long dead—unless you counted the embryos in stasis. But I doubt they will surv
ive when they are removed from stasis.
I put the ship into high orbit 19 hours after the first warning sounded. Once the orbit was established, and even though I knew my world was dead, I sent out a dozen automated bot probes.
I don’t know why I bothered. Perhaps it was because, just before we had left Earth, I learned the scientists had created a strain of bacteria that, somehow, absorbed radiation. In reality, it had sounded like a Hail Mary pass that was nothing more than a basketful of hope.
The all but invisible bots—mini drones—spent 26 hours covering the entire planet, axis by axis. When the bots returned, I spent weeks watching every second of the videos they’d recorded. Against every eventuality the scientists had been able to theorize, I discovered the unbelievable truth — the earth had not been destroyed by the radiation of the nuclear holocaust. In fact, the bacteria the scientists had released at the time my voyage, had not just succeeded, but surpassed all imagination. But the radiation had done its deed, leaving mutations of every sort in its wake.
America was filed with life such as I had never have imagined. Yet, the inhabitants were seemingly backwards—appearing more like the people who had lived during Earth’s medieval period. They wore armor of leather and metal, fought with sword and knife and bow. They lived in castle-like keeps with towns spread out about each keep. Science appeared to have been forgotten: a happenstance I think is for the best, seeing how science had murdered my earth.
I spent the next weeks reviewing the visual records, and then I cried for the billions who had died 3,000 years ago. Perhaps these people who had survived would do better.
Then I, Captain Solomon Roth, the last survivor of my race, and of all the races of the peoples of the earth, did the only thing possible, maybe even the wisest thing I’ve ever done. Nothing. Rather, I waited, studied and most importantly, learned.
I took the next 7 months to learn about the world below. I sent probes out daily until every inch of the planet was charted, I learned the language and the customs of the people inhabiting what was left of the North American continent. The language had changed, it was English, but strange. Words were different, yet had a similar sound. Some of the names of things were the same, others were strange, almost like contractions or misspellings or, even weirder, seemed to have evolved from some form of dyslexia.
What I saw in the remnants of Europe, Asia and Eastern Europe terrified me like nothing before. That part of the world held the widespread desolate ruins of nuclear war. What remained was populated by horribly misshapen beings—mindless masses being ruled by hidden beings that did not appear in any of the probe recordings. These beings, this darkly threatening force, I was instinctively certain, were the remnants of the Unified Circle of the Middle East—the very ones who had destroyed my world, who had killed everyone I knew and loved.
South America was barren of life, both human and animal and separated from North America by a swirling ocean of what had once been the lands of Central America and Mexico: the giant rainforests of the equator were gone. Canada and Alaska were ice infested oceans and tar fields.
The land masses of North America had changed drastically. The nuclear attacks that had destroyed so much of the world had not destroyed North America. I found proof of attacks, but the reports from the bots showed me only a few small hits and two massive strikes on the remaining lands: the finger-like island of Manhattan was there, but only the rubble of the once mighty center of American and world commerce remained. Central Park was a giant fused crater. The damage from the explosion had radiated outward in a huge circle of destruction and left almost nothing standing.
A strange red haze floated over Manhattan, like a dome of quarantine set upon the island. Boston was gone, and where the west coast and the western state had once been was only ocean. The great lands of North America had lost at least 40% of its mass.
From that time on, I studied North America. Although the land mass itself had changed, everyone spoke the same strange English language. There were dialects, true, but only slight differences between the ten dominions, which I learned from the bots, made up this new world.
I studied what I could of their sciences, which seemed to be more spiritual than physical—metaphysical. My belief of this comes from studying the women whom I discovered were the scientists or…sorcerers. Actually, I think I’m more inclined to view their science as parapsychology because of what I’ve seen on the probes’ recordings. They call it magic. The women are—I don’t know how to describe it—amazing is the first word that comes to mind, but parapsychology doesn’t have the right feel. Their science is a form of paranormal abilities, but more than I have ever considered possible.
After learning this, I had no choice but to study the ecology. It shouldn’t have, but it took me a while to understand what happened to my world. The animals and the foods are not the same as when I left, but the principles of evolution controlling the world are the same. One of the wonders of the mutations produced by the radiation is a strain of moss that glows in darkness and is used everywhere to illuminate the interiors of living structures.
The animals fascinate me the most—the people have tamed large four legged horse-like beasts called kraals. Kraals are perhaps twenty percent larger than a horse, with thick strong legs and triangular shaped heads, which looked like a cross between a horse’s and viper’s head, only much larger. Faster than any horse I ever rode or watched, they carry riders with ease. There are gorlons, large mutated dogs, somewhere between a Mastiff and a Great Dane but fiercer. And like dogs, they are everywhere people are. There are also smaller dog-like creatures called coors.
There so many parallels in every form of life; large cat-like animals called rantors hunt the mountains and the forests with king-like majesty of lions, while snakes—which are now called snucks—and fish and birds of all varieties flourish. The birds caught my imagination as much as the horse-like kraals. The largest of the birds are called treygones. They are larger than an eagle used to be, but anyone with any sort of imagination could draw a parallel to miniature dragons. Their heads are oval and triangular at the same time; the double folds of their wings, long bodies and elongated tails are similar to what earthly artists had, for thousands of years, envisioned as dragons. The biggest difference between treygones and dragons is treygones have feathers, not scales.
Because the probes were nearly invisible and could receive audio from within a quarter mile of wherever they flew or hovered, I got a full working study of the evolved version of the strange English they spoke. Within weeks I had the computers programmed to give me the full meaning and syntax.
Mankind had mutated and evolved— there were no longer lines between the distinct races of my time. The people of Nevaeh were an ethnic mixture of multiple races. Yet, they were not what had once been considered bi-racial, the people of this new earth were a homogeneous race—their features a mixture of every race I had ever known. The color of their skin had nothing to do with the color or shape of their eyes, mouths, or the color or elasticity of their hair. The men, as a race, were larger and stronger than me, and while the women were somewhat larger than from my time, their strength lay in their paranormal abilities.
After spending a month studying the reports from every probe, I set up a strict training routine. I exercised after breakfast, from mid-morning until lunch break, I learned not just the language, but the inflections and accents. After lunch it was sword practice (I made a sword in the machine shop to work with) and after practice, I studied the people, their society and its political hierarchy.
I learned that what appeared medieval was far from it. A king ruled his dominion with the aid of his queen in a partnership of equals. Both had their strengths and each needed the other’s support to rule properly. The people in a domain had the right to stay within that domain or leave for a new domain should they feel the need to change fealty. Loyalty was given, not taken by strength. The rulers knew this and by and large treated their people with respect.
Yet, there was a strange discord among the 10 dominions. They fought in skirmishes and larger battles. But no matter how close my probes came, these drones could not find the most important information I needed, why these dominions fought each other so fiercely but experienced no change with their individual borders at the end of a battle. Something about this strange situation told me I had to know why this happens if I am to survive on this new earth.
When I finally reached the point of being ready to return home, I put together everything I thought necessary to begin my new life. I knew this meant I could take nothing of what caused my earth to fail—especially weapons! I created two swords made of Trilimion, a metal found on the surface of Saturn’s moon, Titan. It was the hardest and strongest metal mankind had ever discovered, with ten times the strength of titanium, and was used primarily for satellites and the hull of the star cruiser that had brought me here.
I made two knives of the same metal and used the ship’s computers to replicate the armor worn by the planet’s inhabitants—primarily armor for the upper torso, biceps and thighs. This too was made of Trilimion. I built a second set of armor as back-up should I need it.
I spent a week going through the ship to decide what to bring with me. In the end, I knew I could bring only a little of what the world had once been.
Technology would not only be unnecessary, it would be foolish as the inhabitants had not found any need for technology. It wasn’t an easy decision, but in the end, I came to the only conclusion I could—the racial memory of what happened 3 millennia before had prevented the growth of technology as a means of preservation of the species.
I questioned myself if I should bring books from the long dead version of what my world had once been. What reason would anyone have to learn about a world which destroyed itself because its people needed to control every aspect of their planet from its weather to its energy filled core to its religious beliefs, while ignoring anything that might stop them from living their lives selfishly, denying themselves nothing and doing their best to use up every last natural resource of their world?
