Chronicles of the Aeons War, page 15
part #3 of The Omniverse Series
Finally they reached the shelf where the Channels began. Every last one of them went as far in as they could crawl, before collapsing in exhaustion. The Channel entrance had been cut from the blue stone of the Umbra and into a columned portico, a low wall marking the border between mountain and sky. At the far end of the gate was an arched entrance into the Channels proper. Decker couldn’t tell how long they all just lay there catching their breath. Despite his fatigue, he sat up to look around. It was strange being back here; again that dreamlike familiarity predominated. Faint memories older than Human lives had been measured by his parents’ generation struggled to the surface of his consciousness. Decker couldn’t recall when work had begun or been completed on the Channels. It had taken hundreds of years; he’d been very young when they’d started, of that he was sure. He’d been one of the first to use them to travel up to Olympus when he came back from fighting in the Schism; one of the last back down when the Queen exiled the El-Ahur from the mountain. Lying there catching his breath, his aching muscles still trembling from exertion Decker Marius decided that he would be the first to cross back into the Channels. He stood up on shaky legs and slowly walked towards the arched entrance. When he reached the threshold between portico and the entrance hall into the hollowed-out mountain Decker hesitated. The cool silence of the place had not been disturbed by El-Ahur in ten centuries. Silently Decker contemplated the notion; considered all the long and unlikely years and events he had lived through since the Shekhina Mehdi sent them down the Umbra.
He remembered a when tens of thousands of them lived on the Mountain, from the Channels to the Keep the El-Ahur had lived and prospered. They guarded the Djed and patrolled the Channels. They farmed the valley just below the summit and in the warm months they fished in the vast Diamond Lake even when it froze over in the Winter Seasons. Now only memories remained alive beyond this arch. Now the Channels and the City of Olympus above were cold, empty and sterile. Decker could only sense the sparsest life here; vegetable or small animals: fish, rats, birds, insects and wild cats and dogs descended from domestic animals come with the El-Ahur to the Umbra and lost or forgotten when they left. He couldn’t sense the Queen and Decker Marius could remember when Her Presence seemed to fill the world. Now there was no sense of Her here or anywhere. He wondered what hope lay on the other end of the Channels.
Decker Marius stepped inside. The Entrance Hall was lit dimly from slatted windows; walls and floors of blue stone, carved out of the mountain’s skin and polished smooth. There were no decorations, no adornments. The natural pattern of the rock had long ago been deemed the only accoutrement the Channels needed. The elegant network of passages, rooms, rises and lookouts was utilitarian but a work of art unto itself, its form and function beautiful enough on its own. The River of Winds howled outside, the breeze playing odd notes as it breathed into the Channels. Their scraping steps echoed in whispers up and down the hall as they made the climb up to the Valley.
Many of the El-Ahur, Grigori Myrym included, were too young to remember the Channels. They’d left the Umbra either aboard shuttles or in their mother’s arms and wombs. She wondered at the carved passageways, awed they had remained so pristine and yet so empty for so long. The Channels were completely alien yet frighteningly familiar and Grigori knew that she’d been here before. She didn’t remember when or who with, but she knew that as a child she’d been here.
“So long ago,” she said aloud, startling herself and everyone around her. No one had spoken in so long; she only realized this when her voice shattered the silence.
“Longer than we’d have ever imagined possible,” another voice from their team agreed.
“We’ll stop here for a rest,” Decker called.
Grigori joined Decker in a long-disused atrium cut to look out on the sheer drop into the River of Winds.
“If the information we have on the Channels is still valid,” she said, “Assuming the north-face Channels survived the concussion from the attacks across Terra Nova, we should be able to reach Lake Valley before sunrise. From there to Olympus it should only take an hour or two.”
Lake Valley was the last plateau before the final climb to the summit of the Umbra. It was completely hidden from view from Human settlement on Midian. Owing to the River of Winds and other unique factors, the temperature and atmospheric pressure around the Valley was ideal for habitation. The City of Olympus rose up the southern face of the Umbra’s summit from the valley; whole buildings had been carved from the mountain’s blue stone, or constructed using stone quarried from the mountain as the rest of the city was built.
“Closer to three than two; we’ll reach the city just after the supper hour.” Decker said.
Grigori studied him. “You don’t seem pleased,”
“I’m just tired,” he lied.
The truth was that Decker was afraid of what they might find when they reached the Keep. Why couldn’t he sense Her? Where was the Queen’s presence? What if they got to the Keep and the Queen was long dead? And if the Queen was dead what then? Perhaps reading his thoughts, Grigori replied:
“The only way is forward to Olympus.”
Decker nodded and met her eyes. “As you say, Myrym; the only way is forward to Olympus.” He turned to the men and women of his team and called, “Twenty minutes rest; then we’ll carry on.”
♦♦♦
They’d made their way up several levels, walking in steady silence through the Channels. They all felt it; Decker could sense it through the background telepathic haze all El-Ahur shared. This place was truly dead; an empty catacomb dug into the side of the mountain. Their footfalls echoed away from them in all directions as they walked, the wind their only company. The smooth pearlescent blue halls stretched on desolate; cold and lifeless. Decker’s despair mounted slowly with every step. He sensed nothing to suggest the Queen slept above. He sensed nothing to suggest the presence of any life on the mountain. They were reaching another plateau; the next level of countless levels yet to climb. A wide terrace overlooking the Southern Expanse marked the end of one gradient and the beginning of another. As the terrace came into view, spilling waxen sunlight into the passage, Decker staggered to a halt so abruptly that Grigori slammed face-first into his shoulder.
“What?” she barked before looking up.
Five figures stood on the terrace overlooking their approach. They were dressed in heavy cloaks of blue and gold worn over black jackets and trews.
“Who...are you?” Decker stammered.
The central figure approached Decker and lowered her hood. “Your brothers and sisters,” she said, “We are El-Ahur, like you.”
♦♦♦
The Temple was bathed in light from the ship parked above and from within. A fervent terror overtook Acshah as she watched the El-Ahur step from that light. They were twice as large as anyone she’d ever seen, seemingly mechanical, they were covered in armour of blue and gold. They spread out slowly, carefully, their hands raised to shoulder height as they moved with efficient, fluid grace. The voice of one of them was amplified, echoing throughout the charred and broken remains of the Shrine’s courtyard:
“We have been sent here to help,” the El-Ahur called, “We are here to assist you. Please remain calm; we will help!”
Acshah fell to her knees, horrified as scripture sprang to life in front of her:
After the fire burns shall come rescue; the Queen’s Soldiers, they who saved the Old Ship after the Zohor, shall come again upon the Lost Ones of Midian. The El-Ahur will return to Midian and wake the Queen. They will gather the People unto them in multitudes and Midian shall be united as not since Landing, for the Aeons War will have come upon them all.
Acshah sobbed; the strike against Landing had been nightmare enough; to learn now that the El-Ahur and the Zohor were real had staggered her far beyond the realm of terror. One of them approached her and she tried to back away.
“It’s all right,” its modulated voice said, “It’s all right. Let me heal your arm; I have a medical kit. You’re safe now. Don’t be afraid.”
But Yeung Acshah wasn’t backing away because she was afraid; she was backing away because she didn’t want to accept that this was real. If the El-Ahur reached her, if it touched her or even used something as banal as bone knitters to heal her arm it would make this all real and she couldn’t bear it; she couldn’t bear living in a world where such things existed. The El-Ahur bent closer.
“Wait,” he balked, “You’re the Handmaid’s daughter!”
His exclamation broke Acshah’s terror.
“What? Yes!”
“Tell the Handmaid we’ve found one of her children alive!” the El-Ahur said to some unseen listener. Its carapace opened as the El-Ahur crouched down. A man who looked no different than anyone Acshah had ever seen on the streets of Landing or New Bangalore sat inside.
“Your mother’s waiting for you,” he said to her, “I can bring you to her.”
“Mother’s alive?” Acshah called, “Where is she? Take me to her!”
The El-Ahur reached out for her good arm. She hesitated, staring at the large mechanical hand and then took it. The news of Mother being alive somehow made the El-Ahur’s reality more bearable. An unheard message sounded in his ear as he helped Acshah to her feet.
“We’re on our way to you now,” he said. And then to Acshah, “Be easy; your mother has the answers.”
♦♦♦
The Shrine of the Queen reached high above the rest of the Temple Compound, crowning it in a bulbous spire. The Handmaid’s Chambers were built near the crest of the spire; a balcony wrapped halfway around the outer wall of the Handmaid’s Study, overlooking the city of Landing to the northwest of Temple Hill. The vantage from her lookout now has horrific, even filtered through the blur of constant tears that fell from her eyes: The city simply wasn’t there anymore. Yeung Elysz, Handmaid to the Sleeping Queen, was grateful for the ship moored on the Temple Spire overhead; it kept her from seeing the full ravages of the sky. The city ruins were nightmare enough: Where once the great towers of downtown Landing stood guard around Basecamp Park, there was now only a red and molten lake. Beyond that, rubble fanned out in all directions, painting the landscape in horrifically elegant concentric rings spread like water in a stone-struck pond. Farther from the point of impact the debris gathered itself into the ruin of podways and avenues; mounds of rubble that were broken buildings staggered as if to rise from the debris. All was black or burning; what had once been the First City was now ruin and fire and boiling soot. It was the City of Fire In Hell just as described in the religions of the Abrahamics: the prison where only the Fallen Prince and his Angels and the worst of Humankind’s sinners were bound for Eternity. Parts of the sky burned overhead whenever lightning met whatever flammable discharge now polluted the clouds. For hours a blaze fell from the skies over Landing; flaming sulphur and burning slag set the world alight. Only the ships that held over the Temple and Temple Hill spared them from a similar fate.
Eventually fire fell no more. Instead, a poison rain came down; killing the land and all that grew in it. In the last hour the toxic, acid rain gave way to a cold, oily shower of black and brackish contaminated water. Despite the molten rivers and fires burning earth and sky, the walls and columns of black smoke and burning red clouds, it was getting colder in the valley of Landing. Their world was dying and would be very soon dead unless the mission in the mountains prevailed. There was a knock on the door of her study. She turned from the balcony, unlocking and opening the door with a gesture through her cartouche to the room’s systems. An El-Ahur in the vestments of the Starfleet, the Phenex El-Ahur, bowed and entered.
“Handmaid, your daughter has been seen to and is here.”
“Show her in.” She said, long centuries of formality and protocol the only thing keeping the desperation from her voice.
Yeung Elysz rushed to greet her daughter. Acshah’s arm was in a sling, the bone knitters still at work mending her. Mother and daughter embraced, crying, relief and anguish filling them both at once.
“You’re the only one they’ve found alive,” Mother Elysz wept, “I’ve lost so much; Michael, Katherine, Nia...we’ve lost everyone today!”
They cried together for a long time, taking desperate comfort in one another’s arms. The horror of the day fell into pain that they expelled in hitching sobs.
“What happened?” Acshah finally stammered, “Why did it happen?”
“There is so much to tell you,” Mother Elysz said, “So much...”
Mother had coffee brought to them, into which she poured generous amounts of brandy; it would ease their nerves and warm them against the chill shock of Hell unleashed on the world.
“The Zohor have found Midian,” Mother began, simply, “As we always knew they would. Our ancestors from the Old Ship knew this. The Shekhina Mehdi knew this, as well. So it came to be that the El-Ahur arose to protect us. So it came to be that the followers of the Way of Light and Sorrow, through the High Priests and Priestesses invested in the highest offices of the Temple became the collaborators and guardians of the El-Ahur on Midian.”
Acshah shook her head. “But how can they be real?”
“Long ago when the Queen of Light and Sorrow was still young, she fled into the mountains to live in hiding. But She could not remain hidden; not from the children of those who had been Healed by Her aboard the Old Ship.”
“But that was just myth,” Acshah sobbed, “How could it have been true? It’s impossible!” It horrified her that such an event could have occurred, that such a thing as the Queen of Light and Sorrow could come to exit in what she had always viewed as the real world. “That She was transformed by the Old Ship?” she protested, “That She merged with it somehow to defeat the Zohor? How can that be? How can it be that She Healed our wounded ancestors after the Zohor attack? It’s impossible!” Acshah implored her mother, as if she held sway over reality; as if she could make this madness go away as she had the bad dreams of Acshah’s childhood.
“But it is,” Mother said, gently, “It is. Though none of us ever imagined the Zohor attack would be so devastating...we all believed that the fleet would hold the line...”
“Tell me you didn’t let this happen!”
“Of course not!” Mother said, “But it was prophesized; both by the Nai’Marak and his disciple, the Rai’Ha. But not all the Prophecy has come true and not all of it in the order foretold. We were never sure how or when the Zohor would find us...only that they would strike from the sky should they come. We never thought the El-Ahur would fail to defeat them!”
“And what now? What happens now?”
“Now we must place our hopes in the part of Prophecy that has yet to come true.”
It chilled Acshah to hear her Mother say those words in the face of what was happening around them now.
“We must hope that the El-Ahur mission climbing to find the Queen’s Keep succeeds and they find and wake the Queen.”
“No,”
“If they fail child, we must evacuate Midian aboard the fleet fighting and dying above.”
“What?”
“There are several thousand ships out there, fighting against the Zohor dispatched to Midian to destroy us,” Mother explained, “They are fighting not to protect Midian, but to buy time for the evacuation of as many of its citizens as they can. And given how little time is left to us, that won’t be very many.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because since the founding of the Temple, the Handmaid to the Absent Queen has always been the liaison between the El-Ahur and the people of Midian. We have provided shelter and assistance to the El-Ahur on Midian and kept watch and relayed information for the El-Ahur who travel through the darkness and stars for our sake.”
Acshah’s head hurt and she felt suddenly angry.
“Why weren’t the people told? This could have been prevented!”
“Child, the last time the El-Ahur tried to reveal themselves to the world it caused the Schism that divided the people of Midian. The Schism was one of the bloodiest wars in Human history; there’s a reason we call it the Last Battle. My father fought in it, Acshah. He told me of the horror, the nightmare, the Hell he survived. He told me to remind me of the price to be paid if Midian ever again went to war with itself. The El-Ahur began moving openly last night; taking people from the cities. The evacuation couldn’t begin sooner and the Zohor took us all by surprise. We were supposed to have had more time. At best we’ll manage a few thousand evacuees, which is why finding and waking the Queen of Light and Sorrow is the only hope we have left of saving what’s left of Midian and her People. Allison McQuire is the only one who can stop the Zohor, now. If She does not, the number of dead will rise from the millions into the billions.”
