The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  Vi’ya turned around and sat down carefully. She leaned forward and put her chin on her hands, staring into the infinite well in front of her, peripherally aware of the Eya’a standing to either side of the Throne.

  From his vantage, Anaris watched Vi’ya gaze into the gulf before her. He glanced over at the monitor relaying the view of an imager looking down the well. It showed nothing unusual.

  The wait that commenced was far longer, but this time Eusabian did not move, perhaps because of Lysanter’s ceaseless flow of activity at his instruments, and the quiet comments he exchanged with his techs about the increasing activity of the station, which as yet was revealed only in his instruments.

  The wait appeared to be agony for Barrodagh. He hissed and muttered over his compad, and his facial tic intensified until Anaris half expected teeth to fly out of his mouth or one eye to pop out with every convulsion of his cheek. Then his head jerked up. Eusabian’s black gaze lifted expectantly.

  “Lord, Chur-Mellikath reports first arrival of quantum interfaces on the outer surface. All have been removed.”

  “How long until the lances impact?” the Avatar asked.

  “Juvaszt estimates fifteen minutes to first impact.”

  Eusabian switched his gaze back to the Throne. Barrodagh watched him with the manner of one hungry for more attention. Anaris wondered if the Bori had any reality outside of his interactions with his father. There was no doubt more to Morrighon than that, which was all to his advantage—and carried commensurate risks.

  Vi’ya still had not moved.

  Anaris envisioned the lances arrowing in, their radiants flaring: the penultimate move in a duel between himself and Brandon that had begun years ago in the Mandala, and had nearly culminated in Anaris’s first Karusch-na Rahali when he had attacked Brandon, then a slim youth in his mid-teens, Anaris not much older.

  This was the first time Brandon had struck back. Anaris entertained a brief fantasy of encountering Brandon among the Marines, ending their duel in hand-to-hand combat. The vivid image of Brandon’s broken, bleeding face beneath his bare hands gave Anaris an atavistic thrill that echoed the sexual drive for dominance of that long ago day.

  Anaris laughed at himself. Much more likely, Brandon was far away, lounging half-drunk in some sybaritic Douloi refuge, trusting in his underlings to deal with his enemy. He would not invest the Avatar with such importance; his government would not let him.

  He shed the fantasy, shut his eyes, and reached for Vi’ya.

  With deliberate care Vi’ya gathered the subsidiary members of the Unity around her, their contributions finding place in her mind and spirit: pride and passion from Lokri, grim determination and anamnesis from Montrose, loyalty and sorrow from Jaim, enthusiasm and curiosity from Ivard, innocent savagery from Lucifur.

  The vertigo intensified, for there were three gestalts that found no easy fit within her psyche.

  Tat, whose strength came from a closeness to others that Vi’ya had never tolerated. Then an echo from the Eya’a, whose collective consciousness entailed a closeness beyond that demanded by any human culture, and Tat’s mind melded into the Unity.

  Sedry, whose calm, unjudging acceptance of those around her had seemed too trusting. Then an echo from the Kelly, triplicate wisdom, their long ancestral memory suggesting the strange trans-human doctrines of Sedry’s faith, both yielding that same acceptance of every sort of personality their respective races had to offer. Warmth flowed through her as Sedry’s mind found its true place within the Unity.

  At the last, strengthened and balanced, she turned her inward eye to Anaris and dropped the mental shield. There were no words, just the intensity of dual awareness that was imbued with sexual power.

  Vi’ya heard again the screaming of the locator and comprehended on a fundamental level that she would never escape Dol’jhar. Not as she had sought to, for rejection of the evils of that world did not require rejection of the strengths that they had bred in her. Yet rejection there must be, as strong as the impelling attraction: there were still no words, because there was not, and never would be, trust.

  A brief vision of New Glastonbury flashed across her mind, and now she understood its architecture: a prolepsis in stone of the Unity. Arches within, buttresses without, all supporting a dynamic structure of opposing forces.

  Anaris was the buttress, supporting from the outside.

  The Unity at last complete, Vi’ya leaned back in the Throne. Her head touched the Heart of Kronos—

  —and she fell into the Dreamtime.

  Silence rang through the Isle of the Chorei, the song of hope stilled as stars rained from the sky and the light failed. The annihilating wall of steaming water roared, but she could not move, enwrapped in chains whose icy, ashen, bloody weight drained the strength from her body. Her surroundings flickered, unstable, jagged rifts of intolerable color ripping through her perceptions. Vi’ya was dizzy, as if once blind, now given sight, but without the experience to interpret the messages from her newborn eyes.

  Much as she might touch herself after a deathly nightmare, for reassurance of her bodily reality, Vi’ya reached again for the Unity. Brief stasis, silence seething with the power underlying the illusion of space and time, then, like a seed crystal touching the surface of a supersaturate, the mind of the Unity flowered around her, reaching out.

  And touched a god.

  NINE

  Anaris felt the Unity as a psionic explosion at the back of his head. The chamber flared with light, only some of it external to his mind.

  The station howled, a sound so loud it shivered through the bones of his skull. Desperately he fought for control, trying to keep his feet on the deck. His vision dimmed as his kinesthetic sense again expanded to encompass the station, imbuing his skin with agonizing sensitivity. He was aware of himself only from outside, as a vector of forces within the Chamber of Kronos, near a radiance that grew until it filled his head and left no room for anything but the grim struggle to remain standing—and the need of the Unity for his strength.

  Power fountained up all around him. But with the surge of power came malevolence, battening on the energy all around. He sensed the Unity throwing itself against the familiar enemy as something vast stirred under them all, uneasy, hesitant. The malevolence fought back, the forces balancing in agonizing tension. Movement was impossible. Time stopped, and pain began.

  Sedry stood on a vast plain, dim and darkling. A statue rose before her, a noble figure whose beauty, androgynous and trans-human, stung her eyes. Fury and agony possessed her as she saw the chains enwrapping it, rusty and ashen, weighing down its mighty wings, binding it to the dusty ground. Its gaze sought her out; she trembled, exposed, knowing that more than a fraction of its attention would unmake her utterly.

  But from the figure flowed a sense of peace, long-suffering patience, and sorrow. She knew the power to free it was not hers.

  Sedry made her way among the dolmens and menhirs of the hierophantic altar of the Phoenix; it was empty of presence. A bleak wind wound through the massive stones, carrying the reek of dust and decay. Overhead the stars began to flicker and dim, one by one blooming in actinic fury and then vanishing in rosettes of bloody light.

  She heard the deep coughing of a lion. Heat lightning flickered on the distant horizon, briefly silhouetting a vast form prowling hungrily beyond the sarsens. She sensed it approach. A red light kindled behind her, illuminating a monstrous visage. No natural being, but some unholy get of scorpion and lion and bird of prey—a face of madness, talons, claws, with segmented stinger upraised, a drop of venom gleaming at its tip.

  The thing pushed its enormous shoulders between two upright stones. The slab spanning them grated, spilling dust, as they shuddered, cracks crazing through their substance.

  Sedry felt rough stone at her shoulder. Afraid to turn her back on the monster, she spotted a small glowing coal on a rude stone altar. She leaned, blew, and it blazed up, singeing her face as flame limned the form of the P
hoenix, towering above her in a glory of power.

  The monstrosity moaned in anger and withdrew its head. Then, to her horror, she saw Vi’ya and the others of the Unity gathered around the statue, pulling at the chains. The sudden clank was loud against the wind and the silent death of stars high overhead. The monster snarled in wrath and advanced upon them, but they were intent upon the prisoner.

  In a frenzy of fear Sedry ran to the edge of the charmed circle of stone, then stopped, helpless, knowing she had no weapon against the horror.

  o0o

  Surreptitiously Romarnan straightened his aching body.

  A hell of twisted shapes and shadows formed the outer surface of the Suneater, sharpened by the glare of the singularity, the flare of jacs as Tarkans destroyed the quantum interfaces discovered by Romarnan and his fellows, the harsh voices of their Dol’jharian overlords barking orders, of sweat and the stink of an ill-maintained suit, and over all, the fear.

  “Over here!” Romarnan heard Charnian call, light strobing on his suit. A Tarkan loomed. Romarnan heard Charnian’s voice, suddenly panicky, “No, wait, I can’t get away—” and then a shriek of pain and disbelief as the Dol’jharian triggered his jac and burned away the interface and Charnian’s leg with it.

  Charnian’s screams died away with merciful swiftness as the air fled his suit; Romarnan saw the faceplate of the Tarkan swing its blank gaze in his direction and he moved on hastily, watching for interfaces.

  That was stupid, he thought angrily. Do they expect us to report interfaces more swiftly for that example?

  He bent further, in case the Tarkans could see inside his face-mask. Tired, angry, aching, he couldn’t hide his disgust—in fact, he didn’t want to. All his life he’d seen such savagery without reaction, except for pity or scorn for friends or enemies ground up in the eternal drive for power of their Dol’jharian masters.

  Now everything they did seemed either pointlessly cruel or downright stupid, and rage boiled inside of him. Why do they do it? Why do we obey?

  He remembered the expression in Tatriman’s eyes, and in Larghior’s—a mixture of shock, derision, compassion all at once. They are Bori but they never seemed like Bori, he thought as another deadly flare of light zapped out on his right. They don’t see us as Bori, either—but they are right. We are nothing.

  He knew, as strongly as he’d ever known anything, that the lords were not going to let him live—that the Bori servants would be expended in the impending battle, just like these quantum interfaces the Panarchists sent out. Romarnan moved along, but his eyes did not see the weird surface of the Suneater. His mind drifted into a comforting fantasy: the Riftskip, and freedom, with Tatriman at his side.

  o0o

  “Eleven minutes to abort point. No quantum interfaces reporting. Thirteen minutes to impact.”

  Brandon shifted restlessly in his armor, trying not to think about what that meant. If they did not receive a signal from one of the quantum interfaces now raining thickly on the hull of the Suneater, they would have to abort the mission and trust their suits and induced hibernation to bring them out of the exclusion zone again weeks later—only this time the Dol’jharians would be waiting.

  Worse, even if they got a signal, there would be two minutes in which they would be committed, too close to abort and avoid smashing into the Suneater if the signaling interface was destroyed.

  He had no doubt the same thoughts occupied the mind of every other Marine on board, for there was no comment.

  It seemed hours later that Anheles said, “Interface reporting.” Then, “Interface destroyed.”

  The same antiphony went on, ceaseless, to the abort point. And then beyond. Apparently Meliarch Rhapulo had decided that the interfaces were falling thickly enough that the odds favored them. If he was wrong, they’d never know it: at least death would come fast.

  The litany continued right up until Rhapulo sang out the traditional refrain: “AyKay. Time to shut your face or suck vacuum, Mary. Prepare for gees.”

  Brandon dogged his faceplate shut as the equally traditional replies rang out around him. He heard no hesitation in those jocular sallies, though he sensed the adrenaline surges beneath the words: yes, there was fear, but it had been honed into the urge to act.

  The Marines used their fear as fuel.

  Just one more of the institutions that I took for granted, he thought. Then the impact sequence triggered, hammering him with brutal deceleration just short of the human limit, and thought dissolved along with the overloaded engines carrying them toward the nuclear detonation that would destroy them or take them through the Suneater’s hull.

  o0o

  Romarnan’s daydream splintered when an actinic glare lit up the surface around him. A minute ring of light grew swiftly overhead. At the same moment, a quantum interface hit the Suneater surface not three meters in front of him. He felt the impact, and saw it mold itself to the reddish material. Reflexively he moved toward it as webs of bluish light flickering out around it into the substance of the Maw.

  A shadow fell across it. Romarnan looked up. A Tarkan raised his jac to flame the interface. Years of oppression and helplessness roared up the Bori’s spine into his head, filling him with a fearless rage. He knew that the Tarkan would easily throw him aside if he attacked directly, and in any case they were both dead, as only seconds remained before the lance hit.

  But there was something he could do.

  Rage gave way to singing joy when, for the first time in his life, he struck against the overlords. Laughing out loud, Romarnan threw himself across the interface. He felt a moment’s searing pain in his back, followed instantly by the beginning of a light so bright he saw it through the back of his head . . .

  o0o

  Sedry’s ears rang as a trumpet pealed, agonizingly loud, shaking the stones around her. A bright light kindled overhead, throwing the sarsen stones into bold relief, their runic engravings acid-sharp. Shadows swept up and past her as a bright star fell from heaven, arcing down—

  A sword of light sprouted from the ground before her, thrilling with a hum of power. She heard the cry of the Phoenix. Echoing it in a shout of triumph, Sedry seized the sword, swung it high overhead, and brought it down. The earth convulsed and split open in a jagged crack. The widening chasm raced across the plain to open beneath the feet of the horror looming over the Unity, and the monster plunged from sight.

  o0o

  Welcome, Child of the Vortex.

  Terror and revulsion flooded Vi’ya when she recognized the impulse of a new emotion for her, one she was unprepared to face.

  Reverence.

  She felt a pulse of reassurance from Sedry, and with it a framework for her perceptions. Tears stung her eyes as she looked up at the winged figure, bound by chains to the dusty ground.

  Negation flowed from the presence. No god, but fellow prisoner.

  The chains bound them both in the path of the destroying waters. Around her the song of the Chorei rang out afresh, wordless, prepotent.

  And familiar. Once again she saw a beloved profile, the blue eyes intent, every line of his body focused on the music he had ordered in celebration of one they had both loved, prefaced by the numinous chords of the Manya Cadena, symbolic of the chains of experience they could never shed.

  Nor should they want to, she perceived in a blaze of illumination, for they were not chains of bondage, but the links that build a life. And as she looked up into the face of the presence, Vi’ya understood that reverence was the true response to whatever evoked the highest and the best within her.

  She heard an echo from Sedry’s mind: “But the greatest of these is love.”

  Light blazed over the Isle of the Chorei, and unbelieving joy seized her.

  Brandon? But it was no question, for she knew his presence as the final star fell blazing from heaven.

  Earthquake roared around her. Careless of the looming death behind, she stepped forward and sundered the chains with effortless strength.


  The clamor of bright wings filled Vi’ya’s mind, power fountained up within her and every member of the Unity, bringing their several and individual gifts to peak effectiveness. Driven by that superlative potency, the awareness of the Unity expanded violently, a detonating wavefront of consciousness that encompassed space and time and the tiny flames of human minds snuffed out in battle far out in space.

  For Vi’ya, the Unity flew apart like quicksilver, and the Chamber of Kronos snapped into focus around her, but somehow brighter and clearer, as though she were truly seeing for the first time.

  o0o

  Hate filled Barrodagh’s mind as a strange structure began to take shape above the Throne.

  It sucked at Barrodagh’s eyes, luring them to follow in directions they were not designed for. Barrodagh forced his entire body to turn as Lysanter sprang into action, tabbing furiously at his console.

  “Lord, the instruments have gone nonlinear. We can no longer interpret the readings.”

  The Avatar turned his head, his hands still on the dirazh’u. “What do you mean?”

  Lysanter shook his head. “Lord, without the instruments, we have no hope of controlling the Suneater. It is following its own programming now.”

  The deck heaved under Barrodagh’s feet; he barely kept his balance. The howling stopped, leaving a ringing silence.

  His compad flickered, drawing his attention. Triggered by the activity of the stasis clamps, to which Ferrasin’s worm had linked it, it delivered an image that brought bile spurting into the Bori’s mouth as a figure of horror, talons and eyes and clutching hands, erupted screaming from the outer surface of the Suneater, blood boiling away from it as the vacuum sucked its unnatural life away.

  Barrodagh’s compad flickered again, revealing an even more terrifying sight: the bow of a Marine lance blowing off, disgorging its cargo of heavily armored figures. One of them raised a jac and pointed it—and then Eusabian’s strong hand ripped the device from the Bori’s grip.

  Eusabian stared grimly at the image just as the screen flared, washing his face with lurid light, accentuating the lines rage had graven in his face. The Avatar flung down the compad, which shattered on the deck, and pointed at Vi’ya. “Kill her!”