by J L Forrest
“Tell me, Atreiani, about Persephone and Borea?”
“Four interdependent artificial intelligences comprise, or comprised, the Hive. Two, Borea and Persephone, constituted an overlapping system which protected the Earth, allowing a few Atreianii—such as a Magistress—to better manage the world. Persephone existed within the Operations Network—the OpNet—managing communications on Earth, including much of Borea’s. We designed the Hive to self-sustain, self-check, and goal orient. Their goals included the will of the Magisters’ Council, yes, but primarily they curated the biosphere.”
Nyahri shook her head. “You said these are like gods?”
“They’re machines, sophisticated ones, but only machines. Let’s continue.”
They read of the banishing of the Numenii—servants of the Atreianii which to Nyahri seemed as demon lords. They learned of the life blooms, though the few literate humans of the age described only a blossoming of life amidst the ashen wastes left by the Eventide, accounts more apocryphal than historical. Yw Sabi and Nyahri read of the days when humanity first realized its keepers had abandoned it, of the years when more men were eaten by other men than by wild animals. Of all the later hardships.
Nyahri marveled at first, but over the hours she grew tired once more, and drifted to sleep. Yw Sabi lit more candles and read through the night.
{19}
Many floors up, near the highest walls of the compound, the Templarii prepared a cramped bedchamber for their guests. During the day, only high clerestory windows provided it any daylight. The Templarii presumed the human and the Atreiani would share quarters. They gave yw Sabi a key, and yw Sabi showed Nyahri how to use it.
At the Atreiani’s insistence, and on Nyahri’s behalf, Kepler brought the horses into a sunlit courtyard, along with a trough, many water barrels, bales of alfalfa, and bags of feed. Nyahri felt much better with the horses near. She fed the stallion and gelding oats and an assortment of autumn fruit from the Oudwn orchards.
During the following week, yw Sabi persevered with her reading, and she organized enormous volumes of information. Numbers, charts, reports, maps, all of it together, hung on walls or spread on tables. One corner of the library became her study, and she forbid the Templarii from entering it.
Often, Nyahri joined her, and yw Sabi’s research turned into Nyahri’s lessons. Nyahri learned more Englisce and a smattering of other dead languages. She spent several hours each day by yw Sabi’s side, progressing slowly, sometimes frustrated at her tongue’s stupidity. The Atreiani, however, gave her only encouragement.
“You’re learning well,” she said.
On her own, Nyahri learned other things, including the lay of the S’Eret’s outer passages, the location of its various libraries, and the pattern of its darker corridors. Over many centuries, the Templarii had built their fortress as a series of stony lean-tos, one structure leaning upon another. No floor plans existed, except in the minds of the Templarii themselves, but the librarians tolerated Nyahri’s explorations during the hours between her studies.
“The Templarii think little of me,” Nyahri reported to the Atreiani. “The fortress’s inner routes are dark, and the librarians do not think me capable of exploring beyond the edges.”
“If that is the case, I want you to do something for me,” yw Sabi said.
Nyahri smiled, grateful to have a challenge. “What do you wish?”
“Explore those halls. Be sure we understand as well as possible where they lead and what they contain.”
“What is it you seek?”
“The path to the center, to Sojourn Temple’s door.”
“I will find it.”
“We may have some small advantage if the Templarii believe it still hidden from us. If you can go unnoticed, do so. Be stealthy.”
Stealthy proved difficult, since Nyahri required lamplight. No sunlight reached the deep interior and, while overcoming her fear of the confined places, Nyahri kept her first forays brief and near the structure’s outer corridors.
All the while, Templarii came and went in their duties, none talkative, each with a name as enigmatic as Kepler’s: Galileo Three and Anselm Eighteen, Oppenheimer Twelve and Einstein Seven, Cavendish Nineteen and Huxley Eleven, and so on. In the dark their blue or red eyes glittered like starlight.
When possible, Nyahri observed them. They drank water, ate seldom, and never slept, though every day they sat for some hours with their eyelids closed, in trance. They kept neither cells nor beds for themselves. They pursued no hobbies, told no stories, played no instruments, painted no pictures, and did nothing frivolous. In shifts they scrawled page after page, hundreds in a day, binding tome after tome. Their volumes carried trade records, birth and death certificates, legal proceedings, the minutes of the Oudwn chieftains’ council, and a thousand other details.
As needed, the Templarii pressed new paper, made quills, and blended ink. They sometimes left S’Eret, going into the Oudwn community to meet with local leaders or travelers from other lands. They gathered news and recorded it in their books.
When Nyahri returned to the courtyard to visit the horses, she discovered fresh alfalfa, and barrels of water already delivered. Two Templarii raised boxes of bookbinding material and wood to a high window, working a system of pulleys, drawing the load with a lever and capstan.
Nyahri fed oats to Kwlko. “I’ll take you out soon,” she said to him, scratching behind his ears, “I promise.”
A crack, followed the the deep quiver of timber, sounded behind her. The capstan broke.
Wood splintered under its load. A pallet jammed with logs and kidskin plummeted, and the Templarii leapt to avoid the blow—
One too slow.
The pallet edge caught his arm, hammering him to the ground.
In the chaos, the horses neighed and shied away. Nyahri rushed to the injured, ready to lend her skills, prepared for injuries, screaming, and blood. The pallet crushed his shoulder and left arm. His companion, rather than attend his fallen brother, blocked Nyahri’s way.
“Thank you,” he said, raising his open hand to stop her, “we don’t require your assistance.”
She leaned past him. “He needs care!”
“No, he is right,” said the fallen librarian, only the barest distress in his voice.
Nyahri marveled at him. He looked up at her, his eyes calm, no sign of pain on his face.
“Go back inside, E’cwni. We will tend to this.”
“I—” She stammered. “You—?”
“Go,” they told her.
“You’re not needed,” said the first.
“Ay.” She nodded, confused, and she left them.
Gods and devils and spirits! she thought. They are flesh walkers, yea, and the dead feel no pain!
Shaken by the unnaturalness of it, Nyahri exited the courtyard. She returned to the interior, sorry to leave the horses so soon, but glad to abandon the Templarii to themselves.
◆◆◆
Nyahri revisited the library, finding Yw Sabi in a chair with her back against a wall. A book lay open across her lap, her tea gone cold on a side table along with a forgotten corned-beef sandwich and a congealing bowl of stew.
Yw Sabi looked up. “What was that noise?”
“An accident,” Nyahri said, and she told the Atreiani of it.
“I agree with them,” yw Sabi said. “There’s nothing you could’ve done for the Templari.”
Nyahri shook her head. “I have never seen such a thing!”
“Their well-being isn’t your concern. Leave the Templarii to care for themselves.”
“Yea, Atreiani,” she said, though Nyahri felt not so much concern as curiosity. A man cannot crush his arm and ignore the pain. “Are they truly dead?”
“Not really,” yw Sabi said.
“Are they undead?”
“Vampires and zombies and ghosts?” Yw Sabi chuckled. “No.”
Nyahri knew from yw Sabi’s tone that she’d no intention of discussing th
e Templarii.
“I will get you fresh tea.” Nyahri reached for the teacup.
“Leave it. The Templarii can refresh the tea.”
“You do not eat enough.” She pushed the sandwich closer to the Atreiani.
Yw Sabi shrugged, glanced at the food, and turned a page, reading again.
“Learning much?” Nyahri asked.
“Quite a bit.” She patted a stack of books beside her which rose from the floor to Nyahri’s waist. Two more piles stood by the first. “But in none of it have I found any explanations for the mystery of five thousand years. Lots of what happened after, but no why it happened at all.”
“Those books, that is what you plan to read?”
“This is what I’ve read so far.”
“Gods.”
Yw Sabi looked at her from under her brows, then gestured to a chair by the table. “Sit.”
Nyahri obeyed.
“Several times I’ve told you,” yw Sabi said, “there are no gods. The sooner you wrestle with this concept, the better off we’ll be in the long run.”
“Ay, but mistress—”
“But mistress nothing. When your Englisce is good enough and maybe after you learn ein paar Sätze von Deutsch and un peu de français, as well as some of the ancient Greek and Latin, we’ll start you reading the philosophers, including all the dead-end apologists—something we once forbade most humans to read. If we’ve the time, we’ll go through them from Plato onward, ending with the Declarat and the Edicts Atreian. Then we’ll really talk about whether there are gods or not.”
“I will never learn so much.” Nyahri cringed at her creeping self-doubt, at a tinge of anger.
How can it be, she thought, there are no gods?!
Yw Sabi gave her a smile. “You might find you can learn more than you expect, math and logic too when we can begin them.”
“Whatever you would teach, mistress, but I fear you will judge me a slow student.”
“Apply yourself. I ask only your commitment, lovely one.”
Lovely one again.
“Thank you.” Nyahri rested her hand atop the stack of books. “Have you found anything so far which pleases you?”
Yw Sabi looked at Nyahri, her gaze lingering. Then she returned her attention to the books. “Much. The Templarii have kept good records of their visitors, their conversations with travelers and nomads for centuries. In these books, they wrote of the emergence and slow change of hundreds of cultures, near and far—certainly the Inwnii, the E’cwnii, the Oudwnii, all of whom came from different people but whose language groups collided almost nine hundred years ago. The Dwndwn in the west, the Toltos from the south, the Misrvehra—fascinating people, actual pacifists. The Fallwr, who’ve occupied the region of the Myrs River for more than a few thousand years and who’re of deep interest to me. The C’naädii and the Qebeccêi, who came from the same stock but diverged centuries ago, and more. Every culture with some Atreian-based myth, all possessing some vestigial memory of time before the Eventide.”
“Good information, though?”
“Good to know the pieces on the chessboard, at least within a thousand kilometers. Hints here and there of Atreian technologies, though certainly no others are awake.” Yw Sabi paused on this, as if reassuring herself of her own words. “Maybe those are simply mythologies, but we can be certain of nothing. The Sojourn Templarii have made a few proactive efforts farther afield, necessarily limited—the Templarii’s physical range extends no farther than the geofences of their Citadels, wherever they’re assigned, about twenty klicks.”
Nyahri skipped past questions of geofences. “They are assigned to a Citadel? There were no Templarii at Abswyn.”
“Never were. Templarii—Temple. Every Temple is a Citadel but not every Citadel is a Temple. Foremost, the Temples were intended to be scientific facilities. The Templarii aided research, managing support operations, recording events, collating data.” Yw Sabi gave up the book she’d been reading, setting it aside.
“The Templarii are lesser gods?”
“Gods?” Yw Sabi sighed, a small sign of exasperation. “You’re not giving up on this gods thing anytime soon, are you? The Templarii are only machines.”
“How can they be machines?” Nyahri understood machine. Years ago she had seen bellows and gear cranks, on a visit with her father, to the settlements of the Eastern Rangers.
“They’re complex machines.”
“What of the other Citadels? You are trying to find them? That is your goal?”
“We’re here.” Yw Sabi stepped to the table, where she unfolded a map. Nyahri had never seen such a map, so complete, its detail and scale beyond her ability to understand. Yw Sabi pointed, “The red dots are the confirmed Citadels, the ones whose locations either the Templarii or I know for certain. The yellow dots are Citadels about which I’m less convinced. The blue show nothing more than a single rumor or approximation.”
“You mean to go to these?”
“All of them, but I was interned before they were completed and have no idea how many were finished, and this is a shitty five-hundred-year-old map which doesn’t include Australia or a good portion of South America. I can’t even be sure of the North American locations.”
Nyahri also put aside the urge to ask about Awsrtrehliah and Swdhamehricah and Nwrdhamehricahn, leaving those inquiries for later. “Yw Sabi, to what end are you doing this? Why seek all these Citadels? You did not come to Swyn Templr for mere answers.”
“No.” Yw Sabi took a slow breath. “Soon, Nyahri, both of us must make decisions.”
“What decisions?”
“Whether you and I will go onward together, whether you’ll learn everything, or whether I’ll just send you home.”
Panic tightened Nyahri’s chest. “Atreiani, I will not turn back—”
Yw Sabi cut her off. “You’ll need to decide.” The Atreiani said this with a shallow smile, then her expression transformed, deadly serious. “The decision will be yours.”
“When?” Nyahri asked.
“When I’m ready. I’ve survived a long time, in part by keeping my secrets until it’s time to share them.”
Yw Sabi sat, returning to her reading. She skimmed a page, then another, at once focused on the book before her.
“Atreiani—”
“Hmm?”
“You never explained—what did you mean when you said you did not kill Suhto with your own hands?”
Yw Sabi looked up, nodded.
Before she could answer, Nyahri added, “You would not have killed him, I know. He would have been no threat to you at all.”
“You’re understanding me.”
“I am trying.”
“I can practice kindness,” yw Sabi said, “but I’m anything but kind. I can practice violence too. You’ve seen this.”
“I have.”
“What you do not understand is how far this extends. Would it, I wonder, still be better for you to return to your tribe? To one day be Ahtras? It would be kinder, I think, to send you back.”
“Nay! You are not evil—”
“I’m not evil, Nyahri, because there’s no such thing as objective evil. I find evil the ignorant, shortsighted, incapable, entropic. I find good the knowledgeable, expansive, farsighted, capable, enduring. Cultural definitions collapse into meaninglessness. We must move beyond good and evil.”
“No gods, no evil, no good? What of love, yw Sabi—is there such a thing?”
The Atreiani leaned back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap, regarding Nyahri. “I’ll concede—there’re many kinds. For ourselves, for dear ones. For company, for kin, for kind. For people and place. For individuals and species. For those who live, and for all those who might ever live. Of all the philosophies, the only two which endure are the material philosophies and the philosophies of love. Yes, if in fact there is a such thing as altruism, there is a such thing as love.”
The Atreiani sighed, losing her focus, her eyelids low. She wore
the hint of a frown.
“You are not what I presumed,” Nyahri said.
“Oh?”
“You are much more real.”
Yw Sabi laughed. “Most sensible thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
Nyahri smiled, feeling a warmth rise to her face.
“To answer your question more definitively,” the Atreiani said, “I didn’t kill Suhto. Almost assuredly, though, I designed whatever did.”
Nyahri hugged herself, leaning against the table. “What do you mean?”
“Your spear, your bow and arrows—you made these weapons yourself?”
“Yea.”
“Has a weapon you made, such as an arrow, ever been used by someone else?”
Nyahri nodded. “Yea.”
“To kill?”
“Yea.” Nyahri frowned.
“Whatever hand I had in Suhto’s death was more than five thousand years ago.”
“I understand.” Nyahri stepped forward, standing closer to yw Sabi. “He was good-hearted. Had I been the one who died, and he who lived, he would have helped you. He would have done what he could.”
“You are good-hearted too, and you are who lived, and that is the way of things. Believe me when I say I understand what it is to lose. Believe me when I say it feels as raw to me as to you. I’m sorry you lost him, but I’m grateful you’re here.”
Nyahri smiled. Something in yw Sabi had shifted, some barrier fell, and at least for these moments she softened her guard.
“Now if you would please,” yw Sabi said, “I need some time to think.”
“Yea, mistress.”
With a sigh, Nyahri departed the library, and she climbed the stairs to their room. First she refilled the oil lamp, knowing where she must go to complete her task, and she retrieved her spear.
They are flesh walkers, and they seem undead enough to me. Do not imagine we are safe here, she told herself, not for one moment.
{20}
Nyahri returned to the courtyard, finding it cleared of wreckage. The goods had been raised to the upper chambers, the capstan repaired and the ground swept. Where the Templari had fallen, a smear of oily blood marked the flagstones.
