* * * * *
“Discovery.” Eiron interrupted. “We have the same ancient word in Orian. I speak some of it,” he admitted.
She stood up. Just behind her, part of the wall faded into a doorway lit by an intense blue-white ceiling beyond, bright like a hazy, cloud-covered sun that no ordinary human eyes could long endure. Beyond the doorway stretched a long corridor, the narrow confines of which were composed of a smooth metallic blue-grey alloy that glinted in a harsh reflection of the artificial daylight.
They walked down the corridor until the passage abruptly came to an end; then they stepped into a cavern containing a complete, artificial environment of grey trees, grass, and blue flowered hills. Eiron regarded the unexpected presence of this verdant landscape there in the desert cavern, far below the ground, with wonder. The cavern was awe-inspiring by its sheer scope, roughly fifteen nariars long, seven nariars wide, and one nariar high, what he gauged to be the approximate height of the starship Selesta. The ship lay a few nariars from the passage but swallowed almost all of the space from one side of the cavern to the other.
A ground shuttle had been left by the tunnel to take them to the ship, and soon they drew near. Alessia halted the shuttle several hundred micro-nariars outside the ship as if sensing that Eiron wished to stop for a look at it. As he stared awestruck at the great space vessel, Eiron realized that nothing could have prepared him for such a sight.
Above all, Eiron sensed that Selesta had been the centerpiece of other stories of interstellar conflict and ill-fated ventures begun ages ago that had never been finished. Or these may have been thoughts carried over to him inadvertently by Alessia, who also stood absorbed by the sight. Nevertheless, through strife and war Selesta had survived the many long years.
As he stared at the ship, more and more he had the impression that it was alive and observing him, or rather that it was aware of him. There seemed an almost human sadness in that cold dark skin, the regret of a living being imprisoned in this immense cavern.
As Eiron looked to Alessia again, he sensed that this presence was entirely distinct from her; he sensed that it seemed to regard her as a pawn caught in another’s game. But a moment later, when he turned back to the ship, the presence he had perceived had withdrawn.
Tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus. Sua cuique deus fit dira cupido.
The secret wound still rankles in her heart. Each man’s fierce passion becomes his god.
—Virgil
Chapter Fifteen
The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 38
