|
An Excerpt From: Arda: The Captain’s Fancy
© Copyright Annie Windsor, 2004.
All Rights Reserved,
Ellora's Cave, Inc.
“I cannot kill Barung.”
Arda’s Ord’pa,
the most fearsome and renowned executioner in the civilized worlds, shook
his head. The black of his unfettered hair seemed deep and endless in
contrast to the startling silver stripes on his taut cheeks. “He is too
powerful. The energy he stored during his rising would disperse and destroy
us all. Perhaps the known universe with us.”
The expression he wore, of burden and
seriousness beyond measure, was shared by Kaldor,
First Priest of Kaerad, the
eldest among the three. Kaldor sat at the Tower’s
round table, a table Earth’s kings of men would one day hold dear. He used
the circular structure to keep a healthy physical distance from his two
fellow Council members. Kaeradi were empaths of the first order, telempaths,
in fact. Not only could flesh-contact with an incompatible bring great pain
or even death to the Kaeradi, but the projection
of that pain could kill the innocent who touched them as well.
Kaldor had
a physical look similar to the Ord’pa, to
the Ardani in general, but without the universe’s
living substance etched into his flesh. He had instead a great golden stone
set into his chest just above his heart. Gold was the color of a
spiritually transformed leader, of a mystic who had achieved the highest
disciplines. Gold was for the fire that lived in stone, and it was this
gold flesh-rock he touched in a gesture of weary defeat.
“So.” He sighed, sitting back. “We
have contained the evil by a combination of our strengths, but we cannot
destroy it.”
“I refuse to accept that.” Myrddin of Perth, and now of
Earth only since Perth
was no more, stood and went to gaze out of the tower windows. Avalon
stretched before him, bright, sparkling, and new. All that was good in this
world frolicked on the verdant fields, both those with deep magik and those with the younger, wilder variety bred
of this planet alone. Perthling, Ardani, Kaeradi, or halfling mingled with the lesser-developed humans of
this world—it mattered not. All were welcome. All were joyous and free to
be what the universe called them to be. Earth had fulfilled its promise
thus far, as a haven for those fleeing the darkest necromancer ever to rise
to power in the universe.
Barung.
Lord of the Dark. Eater of Light. Scourge of Souls.
Such dramatic names.
Myrddin
sighed.
Even now, he could feel the bastard’s
malevolence radiating from the containment field established above Earth.
The true horror came in how quickly people could forget such
amorality. In a few generations, the
children of Avalon would have no memory of evil as great as Barung. They scarcely understood now, even one
generation removed from the devastation wrought on Kaerad,
Arda, and his own destroyed world of Perth.
Their blood would be mingled, and the unique gifts of each race lost—or
melded to create something even more wondrous. Such things were not to be
known until they happened.
Well, the Kaeradi
priest probably knew, at least in the sketchy non-descript colors of future
emotion he could see, but he was wise enough not to share his vague
predictive visions.
“I know your grief is deep, Brother Myrddin,” the Ord’pa
of Arda allowed. His accent made the name sound more like “Mertin” or “Merlyn,” which was how many of Avalon’s
children hailed him already. “The loss of Perth was tragic, and the ripples will be
felt in the fabric of time until the last breath on the last world at the
last moment of time. Alas, despite the rightness of our vengeance, even I
do not have the power to kill Barung. If
we blended all of our great skills together, we would still be doomed to
failure.”
For a time, silence claimed the round
table in the round room, in the round tower on the round hill.
Circles, Myrddin thought. Powerful and yet powerless.
Kaldor
cleared his throat. “We could…banish him, could we not? Bind him in his own
squalid energy and send him into other dimensions to find his way back—if
he can?”
“And visit his evil on some other
peoples? Leave him to return and destroy our children eons hence?” Myrddin snorted even as he saw a dawning agreement on
the solemn face of the Ord’pa. Perthling blood ran hotter than Ardani
blood, without doubt. Arda was about balance—this with that, strength with
restraint. Perthling
blood ran hotter still than the blood of the Kaeradi,
who had more power than any, and an even greater reticence to use it. Perth’s greatest
wizard wanted death for his people’s vengeance. More than that, Myrddin wanted a permanent end to the threat.
“Come, Myrddin.”
Kaldor’s tone took a definitive depth, an
absolute command only a Kaeradi could achieve
without offending any listeners. “Acknowledge this as our only choice. You
cannot deny the truths before us.”
“I will not doom the worlds of
tomorrow to the fate Perth
suffered.” Myrddin turned and rapped his fist on
the round table. A sound like thunder burst through the room as wild magik skittered over wood, then stones.
Instinctively, the Kaeradi
priest and the Ord’pa flung up their hands
and concentrated their energies on blocking Myrddin’s
rage-spell before it did harm.
The Tor’s
tower trembled as the magiks met and intertwined.
A few of the stones exploded, leaving menacing, crackling black holes where
they once stood. The air took on a sudden smell of burning and melting, and a light smoke curled above the round table
in the unmistakable shape of a feather.
Kaldor
watched the display without passion, but the Ord’pa
narrowed his eyes at the smoke-feather, at the flashing streaks of magikal light, in truth, a brief harnessing of the
living substance of the universe. Myrddin knew
the Ardani was thinking. He could almost hear the
man’s scientific mind observing, planning. Perhaps “plotting” would be a
better word?
Myrddin
narrowed his own eyes, studying the executioner. The Ardani
were a crafty lot. Great thinkers and innovators, much as Perthlings had developed a reputation as naturalists
and healers. Kaeradi were deep into emotion, the
spiritual arts and the rhythm of the universe. All three races bred
virulent warriors, though their weapons were decidedly different. Arda
fought with science and the focused energy of the mind, Kaerad
with the fire of the heart and resolve of the spirit, and Perth with the force of the body and
natural elements.
“What are you contemplating?” Myrddin asked quietly, in deference to the Ord’pa’s renewed alertness.
The Ardani
clenched his hands before him in the gesture of a supplicant. “Our joined
powers cannot defeat Barung…now.” The silver
stripes on his cheeks glittered with sudden manic energy. “We would have to
banish the blackheart, yes. For now. But with forethought and cooperation,
we could deliberately crossbreed our races and mingle them with the wild
energies of this world to build the strength we need. We could also use Perth’s destruction
to good ends, laying the proper traps in the energy signature of the
universe where the planet once orbited…”
“That would take thousands of years,” Myrddin said carefully, measuring each word so that Kaldor and the Ord’pa
might heed him instead of humoring him. “Time carves memory like sand
carves stone. How can we be certain tomorrow’s children will know that we
existed, much less that we planned for a disaster we doomed them to
endure?”
“Nothing is ever certain, Myrddin.” Kaldor’s calm
galled Myrddin, but he kept his mouth clamped as
the old Kaeradi spoke. “Better we leave our
children many healthy years—and some hope—rather than none, yes?”
For that question, Myrddin,
despite his powerful passions to the contrary, had no good answer. He
closed his eyes.
When he opened them a few seconds
later, the Ord’pa was busy drawing
pictures, his long graceful fingers borrowing liquid energy from his silver
tattoos to create wispy designs on the round table and in the air. A
triangle, with three planets—Earth, Kaerad, and
Arda—at the corners. In the center, the Ardani
sketched a dark hole where Perth
should have been, and showed how, with a few alterations in solar winds and
the pressures and energies of space, an unsuspecting ship or even an entire
world might be sucked into that void and crushed into nothingness. Much the
way Barung crushed Perth, in fact. With the weight of the
universe itself, turned on a single point.
Myrddin
watched in silent surrender as Kaldor invested in
this far-future design, and began to speak of setting celestial events into
play that would produce such a world-crushing void.
Then the talk turned to creating and
nurturing bloodlines, and how to establish and maintain channels of energy
between the three planets that could one day ensnare Barung
in Perth’s
dead space like a fly in an Earth spider’s web.
This is fantasy, Myrddin told himself, but as he studied the plan and
listened to the Ord’pa’s hypnotic bass, a
small hope caught fire in his heart. He thought about the relative nature
of triumph over an evil as great as Barung.
In truth, Barung
was more creature than person. Barung
created himself from his own evil intent, from the dark energy he drew from
the very pit of the universe. It overwhelmed him, turned him into naught
but a twisted, deformed channel, absorbing every negative thought in his
purview, every wicked action. Violence, hate, cruelty—Barung
became a living embodiment of all such bleakness. The Council had joined to
bind him with their combined magiks.
With our different commands of the
energies of the universe, Myrddin
corrected himself automatically, as the Ord’pa
would have if the wizard had spoken aloud. Know and name the power
you wield, lest your children forget it.
Myrddin
flexed his arms, wishing he could wield those powers to dispel the
non-corporeal Barung himself.
But he knew he could not. The Kaeradi priest and the Ardani
executioner were correct. Destroying the necromancer would release every
drop of that formless blackness Barung had
absorbed, and the wave of dark energy would sweep the universe of hope and
joy, light and life.
Unless they could trick the beast into
the void.
And the void wasn’t created yet, nor
the powers that might drive the beast to it without chance of escape.
Banishment was the only option.
But one day, Myrddin thought with increasing vengeance, Barung will return. He stared at the
shimmering triangle as it turned from silver to gold in the waning
daylight. The triangle with the dark center, even now flickering above and
across the round table of Earth’s tower on the Tor.
If the universe is willing, the Council will rise again then, stronger
than ever.
His mind turned to the writing of
scrolls and books and sacred teachings, to the leaving of monuments in
stone and iron and every conceivable medium—one hundred ways to pass the
needed knowledge through the ages, in case something should happen to him.
It was later that same night, still at
the round table in the round tower on the round hill, that he penned the
one scroll that the old Kaeradi could have told
him would indeed survive, worlds away from its writing.
When
Barung returns,
Six
shall lead him home,
Blended
from the triangle,
Joined
by the stone.
Let
loose the gentle innocents,
For
music soothes the shield.
Feed
him on The People’s blood,
And
drive him to the field.
From
the Sacred Scroll of Myrddin
Preserved
by The People
CLOSE WINDOW
|