“I missed you more than you will ever know, Ori.” Seeva laughs, her injured ribs becoming a sharp pain in her side, although they no longer hurt when she breathes. “I wasn’t sure I was ever going to see you—”
“You leaving already?” Quintanilla walks to the ramp, her wide hips swinging back and forth. “Word travels quickly when you come and take a hermadore for a walk.”
Fuck. I just need to get out of here. I don’t want them to see that I’m pregnant.
“Without even saying good-bye … or even hello?” Precht, the second of her only two friends, rubs his shiny head in confusion. “You’re taking the hermadore? After we’ve cared for it for so long?” He pauses abruptly before he and Quintanilla come closer, staring. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“You look malnourished,” Quintanilla says, sharing a glance with Precht. “Sickly skinny except for a little belly, like a child on a starving planet. We don’t allow that here.”
At least she doesn’t suspect that I’m pregnant.
“And your face,” Precht says. “It’s swollen, like—”
“I had a tough time for a bit,” Seeva says. She needs to be alone, to recover, to think about everything. Not to be doted on and asked endless questions. “It’s over. I’ll share it all with you two soon. Right now, I’m all stocked up and need to help myself and this hermadore.”
“Where have you been this time?” Quintanilla’s face drips with sympathy and concern. “What’ve you done, or what did someone do to you?”
“I thank you for all you did for the hermadore,” Seeva says, “but you won’t be empty-handed. I left a horse in the hermadore’s stall. He needs lots of seafood, and saltwater, and long walks, and—”
“Oh, fuck, Seeva,” Quintanilla says. “You can’t just keep bringing all the animals of the galaxy home and have us take care of them.”
“Saltwater?” Precht asks.
Seeva nods. “I’d keep him, trust me. I owe him my life, but he can’t come where I’m going.”
“Where are you going?” Quintanilla asks.
The icicles reform in Seeva’s gut. She shouldn’t tell them, but she can’t completely lie. “I have to get the hermadore healthy again.”
“Seeva,” Precht says. “The galaxy is unstable. The Frontiersmen were annihilated and the Sentinel of the Frontiersmen, who could’ve saved the galaxy, was murdered by Adersiun.”
The Frontiersmen?
The icicles spiral and burrow into Seeva’s organs. Maybe she should have left the galaxy when she saw all those ships departing Haredon for the waxen galaxy.
She decides not to ask them about the beating sun in the Climice, Pseidoblane, and Iopenia system. Nor about the state of the planets. She doesn’t want them to know where she plans to stay, does not want them or her own fear to stop her.
“Please come back home soon.” Quintanilla stops, apparently knowing Seeva will do what she wants, as if Seeva’s done this a hundred times. “We miss you.”
Seeva smiles and guides the hermadore into her cargo hold, its gait weak and wobbly. “I miss you both. And I will.”
Seeva waves, blows a kiss, and climbs aboard her ship.
***
Seeva guides her ship over a jagged mountain range on Climice.
The night has grown long and dark. The fortnight of deathly frigid temperatures will end soon, and the cycle of the scorching day will return.
Her landing gear crunches into ice and rock atop a plateau safe from flooding.
Ori jerks into awareness; his pink and emerald eyes focus on the screen in realization of where they are and light up in recognition, in nostalgia, and in sad memories of his lost mate, of an unspoken life.
Climice will be their new home, where they can live in solitude, and Seeva can watch the last hermadore mature in her native environment. They can live in peace without love or betrayal and perhaps someday search for that nude figure she thought she saw when they fled from the beating sun … what felt like a lifetime ago.
Seeva still feels haunted. She thought if she faced the source of all her trauma and survived, her stress and depression would disappear. Will Climice burn next, as she was told in that strange dream world? She can’t recall exactly who or what made the threat; she only knows that every night since the dream she’s slept sounder.
The hermadore lumbers away from her ship, across ice and brittle snow, flicking her thin tail. Snorting in the biting cold, wafting a banner of freezing moisture from her muzzle, a banner turning to hoarfrost as she gallops in a circle. This runt will fit in the caverns Seeva passed through on her last visit, those she intended to use as shelter during the heat of the days and frigidness of the deep of night, until they find the legendary cave system of the slaughtered hermadore herd.
What were the spines of the herd used for? Besides for Drumeth’s perversions and shortcomings … after another man was chosen to marry his first, probably only, love … or first female trophy. If that could be called love. He couldn’t have wanted all those spines just for an aphrodisiac. Could he?
The planet rotates and dawn sunlight rises, as red and bloody as the heart Seeva saw last time.
It doesn’t matter. She’s disgusted with herself and her body and the galaxy. She needs to be alone, is unconcerned about danger, even welcomes it. The fetus inside of her should not be brought into this world.
Seeva’s breasts have enlarged, grown tender, and even produced a bit of milk. Maybe she will be able to feed the hermadore, or maybe the demon child, if it arrives.
At least she’s not a captive here. She’s free. Free to do as she pleases, not under anyone’s control as she was in the convent, with the family, in the space cell, and on the prison island.
A red sheen rakes across the white world in the distance, but it begins to change, to fade. Yellow light replaces the red, the sun’s sphere rising and transforming to a brilliant star of heat, of life. A standard yellow sun.
Seeva forgot how beautiful it could be.
How?
She remembers something: a fleeting thought, images, memories. A dream. Voices, faces. A young woman, a knight. Implanted memories of a beating star that made her see things that weren’t real. Things that made her forget what the sky above really looked like.
Seeva watches the rising day and prepares.
Several hours later, ensconced in her snowsuit, Seeva, Ori, and the youngling climb into the ice cave in the mountainside. Seeva lies down and sings as Ori cuddles up to her neck. She strokes his soft feathers. The hermadore eats rhiciopores from a pile beside them, the smell of rotten algae flooding the air with the grinding of molars.
A soft blue glow mingles with the light sweeping across the land below, vapor rising like sea fog. The site of the previous hermadore slaughter. It’s aglow with blossoming rose buds, glacial roses singing their silent song of celebration for the glorious dead, lives men will not remember, lives the roses will never forget—the reason the flowers grow.
The youngling snorts, looking out across the valley with her three glistening eyes. Seeva swears she sees tears brim there. If Ori is as cognizant as a human, as emotionally and intellectually deep, only he couldn’t communicate in any verbal way, why couldn’t a hermadore be the same?
An echo of memory, of shots taking down the other hermadore youngling here, reverberate through the intervening months.
“Night Rose,” Seeva says. “That will be your name.” She pats the youngling’s thick, purple hide of what seems like leather wrought with iron. “Rose.”
Rose sucks in a breath and gives her sonorous bellow, ringing the walls of the cave.
Seeva presses her hands to her ears and catches a glimpse of something—movement down in the valley of roses.
Not one naked humanoid, but several silhouettes disappear into the rising clouds of vapor.
There are others here.
Nyranna
Nyranna’s Elemiscist insurgents swarm the last group of sweavers inside the governing
chamber, sinking blades of the elements through their bronze suits.
The last sweaver collapses amidst a mass of bodies.
Nyranna surveys the dead: sweavers in pieces, Silvergarde soldiers and Elemiscists with distorted bubbles of skin from internal pulser detonations.
You kill him or you die.
There’s no one amongst her insurgents who can step into the Northrite council’s position of power now. No one to rule.
Nyranna climbs the steps to the Northrite benches slowly, one at a time.
More Silvergarde soldiers flow into the chamber, followed by more and more Elemiscists, ready for a battle that is now over.
Elion follows two paces behind her.
Nyranna did not ask for this, did not want it. The Kindling could have taken the Northrite council’s position, only he never brought them this far. He couldn’t even take the initial step.
Nyranna glances back. Martaya is the only one she knows, and she’s too young, too diffident. The Frontiersmen are dead, and Adersiun sided with the Northrite. There’s no one else to lead them.
No one but herself.
Nyranna proudly turns and shimmers in her Elemiscist glass robes before sitting at the chair of the Messiah. She folds her arms across her chest. At least it’s not the Grand Patriarch’s crown, the Crown of Dreams. That would be too much responsibility.
Or would it? Is there anyone who deserves it more, anyone else who brought her people this far? Who will stop Elemiscist mothers from dying as slaves?
“We’ll defend the city of Grendermane from the Northrite,” Nyranna says.
Inside the chamber, the chatter, harsh breathing, and sobbing for joy and for the dead insurgents subsides.
Nyranna continues, “From here, alongside our Silvergarde army, we as Elemiscists can control the galaxy. We have the abilities. We’ll hold all communication and travel hostage from any planet, business, military, or civilian, from any monetary compensation until the organizations submit to us. They will have three days’ notice. The Elemiscists who haven’t joined with us will soon realize they have a chance at freedom. Many will leave their subjugators behind and Stride here. Our numbers will swell. Then no one will be able to travel here to start a war or siege without several months’ voyage at lightspeed.”
The masses below are quiet, surprised by themselves, by what they have done. Too pessimistic to expect victory, only knowing defeat. It will sink in over the next few hours or days or weeks or months. Then, most of the others will come.
A voice speaks in Nyranna’s head, one she’s heard before: cool, calm, unflustered. A blinking nebula in the galaxy filling her mind. Adersiun. We know what you’ve done.
And that is all. No insults, no curses, no threats.
Only a few minutes before, Nyranna heard a rumored Whisper that some Frontiersmen escaped Jasilix alive, some group of recruits who controlled the elements. Maybe she could use them as well.
Nyranna Whispers a reply to Adersiun, I know what you’ve done, spawn of the Northrite. Supporting those who belittle the power of the original elements by controlling the people who wield them. I’ll suffer it no longer. And soon, nor will any Elemiscist.
She stands as people continue to file into the chamber, packing its floor to witness the grandest event of their lifetimes.
Nyranna speaks.
“I heard a simultaneous mass of Whispers a few months ago, Whispers I now know were sent from the dying souls on Iopenia, Whispers sent when some did not flee their homes and the Northrite incinerated their planet. At the time I believed the Whispers may have been related to the Ruin that I was sent to investigate.
“I also know that the Northrite poisoned the king of Staggenmoire to implicate Uden in war crimes. They hired Moonriders to bomb the castle for two reasons. One, to make sure those of the royal line of Staggenmoire were all deceased so that they, the Northrite, could rule Staggenmoire and mine it for the elements as they did with Iopenia and Pseidoblane. And two, so that they could hide that they took the Sky Sea Pearl, make it seem as if it were crushed in the bombing. The Northrite wished to claim sole ruling power via the War Times Act. They murdered the Grand Patriarch so that he could not overrule them. The assassination attempt on the Northrite, right here in this chamber, occurred only for the eyes of the many visiting ambassadors. It was all a stage.”
The Elemiscists and Silvergarde below start to applaud. Quiet at first, then amplifying, lifting up to the domed ceiling and rolling outward in a surging deluge of noise.
Cheers erupt.
Nyranna waves and paces to an area behind the benches.
Two colonnades bracket a reinforced window. More storms build and break outside the obsidian gates, a soft rumble carrying through the walls of the infinity palace. Blue light arcs and fades. Dark clouds ride west across the sky like horses of death, running before the wind.
Nyranna wonders about it all, about Adersiun. What does he really want from her? What power, and how does he fit into all of this if he serves the Northrite?
Nyranna turns and Elion is there, staring out the window, shadows crawling over his swollen and bloodied face.
“A dark storm’s brewing,” Elion says. “The fires in the sky have gone out.”
He appears more determined, less pained, less aimless. Less intoxicated. His radiation gun is strapped to his back, resting. Something else is concealed at his far side.
Nyranna hides a grin. She likes the way Elion looks at her and how he wishes to please her, but she’s unsure of his true intentions. He’s so thoroughly damaged, unknowable, perhaps unpredictable even here.
She smiles, and Elion’s sad eyes become smothered by some other emotion, maybe even joy.
He reaches out, and Nyranna steps back. He holds the Patriarch’s crown: opalescent and blue fire, a band of cold flames wavering beneath images of the organizations. Blue flame forms the Uden circular triad, pyramid-shaped. A wavering axe for the Everblades. An open eye for seeking knowledge and truth, representing the lost Frontiersmen. A Northrite mask among others. Their spiral galaxy, its systems, its stars, float above.
Nyranna smiles.
Yes, I am the one who should rule.
She allows him to place the Crown of Dreams upon her head, light and shimmery. Its band settles into her dark hair, soft, cool, and empowering.
Nyranna gazes over the vast city on the antigravity bed below. Then to the people filling the chamber and imagines their suffering. Imagines her mother. Their mothers. Each and every one of them has a different story … but the same. They are all the same. The suffering of the Elemiscists will not end here, but the start of the end is now.
Soon, others will suffer, but not her, not these Elemiscists. And all the others of the galaxy will understand, will feel what only her people have known.
They are all watching Nyranna, in awe of her crown, of her new position as ruler of the galaxy.
These Elemiscists have discovered that they are a unit, a group, a people with power who do not have to be controlled. They have awakened and found something they are willing to die for.
You kill him or you die.
Rynn
A dark alleyway draws Rynn on, an alleyway wedged between buildings she’s never seen.
The recruits follow her.
In the few minutes since they arrived on this new planet, Rynn heard a Whisper from another, a message in her mind, the first Whisper she’s ever received. Some insurgency of Elemiscists seized the Northrite’s palace on Grendermane and dethroned the council. A large-scale victory.
Rynn looks skyward.
Night hangs above them, soft and cool, stars shining in wrinkled rivers.
She gathers her thoughts and pushes them out from her mind, visualizing sending them to all the points of light she can see, and beyond. Lights flare into existence in her mind. Neurons become planets inside a galaxy.
The stars drop wonderfully close.
The creature of shadow who manipulated the Northrite council i
s dead. The beating sun—nothing more than an illusionary vision implanted in our minds and dreams by Forgeron—is in its original state, a standard yellow dwarf.
If only the Ruin were also an illusion. Except Rynn saw that blackness with her own unmanipulated vision.
“How’d you do that?” Nadiri tugs at Rynn’s sleeve, studying the weeping wounds on her neck, raw wounds that burn like fire.
“I still don’t know,” Rynn says. “I picture sending out a thought. I guess I’ve sent Whispers twice before without even knowing it.”
“No, not that.” Nadiri yanks Rynn around by the shoulder.
“Striding us all here by using the mural? I can’t explain that either.”
“No. How’d you do all that in the chamber with the sweavers and Everblades around, and still get to the tower before us? It’d be unlikely for a trained assassin to have escaped.”
“I saw how she did it,” Kiesen says. “She moved like lightning, as if everyone around her were trapped in water or mud.”
“It all comes at once, after a touch with death or one’s ultimate fear.” Bruan’s face is as pale as his long hair. “For Jaycken it was the trial in the mist. Flying monsters. Rynn faced something, something in that chamber, then altered time for herself. Like Adersiun.”
Everyone stops and stares at Rynn.
That’s impossible …
Rynn recalls the sweavers moving like decrepit men, even the Everblades not able to keep up with her diving and ducking and rolling. The Herald not moving fast enough to even stop her from peeling off their mask. And Adersiun was there, just watching her …
A similar but much less obvious experience with her dad plays through Rynn’s mind. The emertel tree. Time slowed when he held and spun her in a circle. Then again when she gave up her locket by placing it into the tree. When the picture changed in appearance—to that of the little girl in the fluffy hat—and the bark snapped closed, frightening her. When she fell. Her fingernails flashed black. Then again in her dreams with the pyramids and the birds, she was the precocious Phantom, not Forgeron.
The Forgotten Sky Page 47
