Chronicles of the Aeons War, page 20
part #3 of The Omniverse Series
“Do we understand what?” Decker asked.
“Do you understand what it will mean to Wake the Queen?” Ninsar said, “Do you understand what will happen to you, to us all? Do you know what it means for the followers of the Way and for the whole of Midian? Do you understand what is to come, once She returns to this life?”
“I’ve read the scriptures; beyond that I know that if we don’t Wake Her it means the end of everything we hold dear.”
Ninsar inclined her head; she took a moment longer to reply: “You are right, Suphia Decker El-Ahur. If we do not Wake the Queen, it means the end of everything. And if we do Wake the Queen, it means the end of everything. Consider Who the Queen of Light and Sorrow is: She is the Shekhina Mehdi; She is the Anointed One, the Sacred Aspect of Feminine Deity. But She is also the Shekhina Siva, the Destroyer of Worlds. You understand the consequences of not Waking the Queen. But before we can Wake Her, Decker Matthew, you must understand what the consequences will be when we do.”
♦♦♦
Three floors below the Handmaid’s Cloister hundreds of people were crammed together, billeted in the Temple Hall waiting to be evacuated to one of the ships above. There were less people being found now; Mother told her how she dreaded the inevitable order from the Queen’s Council to end search and rescue.
“But not as much as I dread the next order the Council will give,” she said to Acshah, “For that will be the order to evacuate Midian, forever.”
Mother left to attend a briefing on the status of rescue operations. Acshah wanted nothing more than to be alone, so she elected to remain in Mother’s study. Only a few days ago, she’d been living her life peacefully, happily, normally in New Bangalore. She couldn’t even bring herself to think about what she viewed as Home, now. All too easy to imagine what had happened. Everyone she knew…everyone she loved and lived with…one face, his face kept rising to the fore in her heart and soul. She could see him when she closed her eyes, but she knew that if the Zohor had struck in Tear as they had in Landing, there could be no chance that he was still alive. From what she had briefly heard of the Zohor, they were designed to destroy worlds. The shape of the continent of Tear, the placement of the Sea of Taiga…The Sea had always been believed to have been caused by a fluke meteoric impact. Another strike there would create a tsunami that would wipe out the whole continent; the Zohor would only need one good strike. Nima Kalden was dead; they all were: Deejan Emily, Campo Tetsuo and Sanh Natalia, Patel Lars and O’Keefe Hamid, Svendlask Igor…everyone she’d lived and worked with, everyone she’d ever cared about in the world...
Acshah ran to the bathroom and bent double over the toilet. She’d only had coffee and a bowl of porridge since the attack; what came up, came up easily. She kept retching, her stomach heaving and heaving despite being empty of its contents. Finally, after one long, convulsive cramp, it ended. Acshah’s throat was raw, the tract from her stomach to her mouth burning. She still felt dizzy; still ready to vomit more as her empty stomach convulsed reflexively, painfully. She retched again and it was over. Acshah pulled herself up on unsteady legs and after rinsing her mouth at the sink, went out into the study to lie down on the couch until the feeling passed. Kalden was dead, they were all dead…and she was El-Ahur; a long succession of dominant and recessive genes passed down through Mother and Father’s individual family lines finally came together in the proper sequence inside of her and she would now go on to become something that she had, only until recently, believed to be nothing more than a fairy tale. And though she may not have lived with her family, she had loved them; they were all dead…her sisters and brothers, her cousins, nieces and nephews…Acshah wished for just a moment that she was dead along with her family and friends. They’d either be together in the Queen’s Dreams, or lost to oblivion. For just an instant, right at that moment, either option seemed preferable to her than to the future before her now. As soon as she realized what she was thinking she hated herself; life was precious enough without the casualties the Zohor had inflicted. To wish so sincerely to throw her own life away when so many millions were dead and millions more dying...the thought of it was vulgar beyond Acshah’s capacity to express. She owed her life to the Dead...but to live meant being or becoming El-Ahur and devoting her life more deeply to the Way of Light and Sorrow than she’d ever wanted to imagine.
When her head cleared Acshah walked back out onto the balcony. The air was bitter and foul beyond her senses’ ability to adjust. The scent was overwhelmingly sulphuric, pungent and caustic with ash and soot. But there was something cloying beneath; a thick musk that reminded her of burning. Acshah’s stomach protested with a violent heave; empty, however, a painful cramp was the only result. She barely noticed the discomfort. Acshah could no longer tell where the sky ended and the earth began. Thick smog clouded the landscape. The Mountains stood out in dark contrast behind the noxious haze, but even they had been swallowed. A powdery, oily film was coating everything. The Zohor had done this; the ancient enemy of legend, one of two that the Scriptures all agreed the Midianites would face during the Aeons War. The Zohor had destroyed her world. Most of her family was dead, her friends and lovers gone…her home, the life she had made for herself…everything. If she was to accept being El-Ahur, Acshah decided, then she would devote herself to the utter destruction of the Zohor.
♦♦♦
The Gates of the City of Olympus towered above them. The City had been carved from this hidden face of the Umbra almost all the way to its summit. The Gates were built on a ridge overlooking the dizzying vista of the Blue Mountain chain stretching south. The Outer Wall stood ten meters high, carved from the Umbra. The Gates were guarded by twin pillars of blue stone, carved in relief to either side of the recess of a set of dull metal doors. They were simple rectangular slabs a quarter of the height of the Wall, wide enough for ten El-Ahur to pass shoulder to shoulder. There were no visible means of opening the doors; no mechanism or panel, no levers. The party from Irkal gathered before it.
“So how do we open it?” Grigori asked, “Do we speak ‘Friend’ and enter? Is there a secret knock?”
“Myrym,” Decker cautioned. Her comments were clearly directed at the Clan Mistress. While he could understand his Lieutenant’s frustration all too well, now was not the time for hostility between the two Tribes.
“The Gate was sealed by the leaders of the El-Ahur,” Ninsar Eresh answered, “This was not the Queen’s doing, but Ours. The lock was made using technology from the Old Ship, the design taught to us by the Queen Herself, from what She retained of the Ship’s Archives. We hid the key to the lock in a place only the El-Ahur could look, where only we could find it.”
“Queen’s tits,” Decker exclaimed, as he realized what Ninsar was saying, “The Gate can only be opened from within the Gathering of the Dream.”
♦♦♦
They set up shelter under an awning abutted to the Gate’s recess and sat on the ground. Decker caught Motta looking at the gathered El-Ahur.
“What is it?”
“I just think it’s interesting,” she said, “That the Suphia El-Ahur sit kneeling, sitting on the back of their boots, while the Gesheol sit cross-legged.”
Decker looked around, astonished that she was right.
“That’s just always how we’ve sat to meditate.” He said.
“Us too,” Motta replied, “We’ve always done it like this. Doesn’t that seem strange?”
A few minutes later the shelter was ensconced in quiet. The El-Ahur, following centuries-old technique and discipline entered into a meditative state and flexed their Minds out, searching, reaching for one another. One of the Queen’s Gifts, their Minds were interwoven in a way even they did not yet fully understand. The Gathering of the Dream was built upon the unconscious bond that all El-Ahur shared. As each El-Ahur experienced and re-experienced the dreamstate of the original builders of the Gathering, including the Shekhina Mehdi Herself, the dreamstate was maintained, preserved in its entirety in a subconscious network made up of and stored holographically within each individual El-Ahur Mind. And so as the El-Ahur found themselves at the Gates of Olympus at dusk, they knew they were witnessing the last sunset to be seen from this place in almost a thousand years. Even Decker and impatient Grigori paused to watch the event. In the dreamstate time flowed differently; they could afford to watch this dream-remembered tribute to the Final Day on the Mountain; the dream had waited centuries to be dreamed again. The El-Ahur paid their respects by bearing witness to the end of the Last Dream from the Citadel, entered long ago into the Gathering of the Dream by an anonymous El-Ahur.
“Your Dream is Remembered,” Decker said, reverently, “May the Queen Keep and Remember you in Her Dreams.”
As night fell in the dreamstate, the El-Ahur turned to the Gate into Olympus. A slivery glow was growing across the doors. Words were forming, line after line of careful script.
“It’s in Aeng,” Motta said, moving closer to read it aloud:
City gate biometric lock
Five distinct El-Ahur genome samples required.
Place both hands on the doors. When all five samples have encoded, unlock sequence will begin.
“So, that’s five different individual or Tribal El-Ahur samples?” Grigori asked, pointedly.
“The Tribes all share the same bloodlines,” Ninsar said, “So that would be five different El-Ahur.”
Grigori nodded. “Well...at least that.”
Waking from the Gathering of the Dream felt more like falling into a nightmare for Decker. Gone were the pristine blue skies fading to black above and purple below, as the sun set and the night took hold. Gone were the amethyst leaves on the trees, the red grasslands of the Valley. Instead, the Valley was blackening with soot, the sky a noxious storm.
“How do we pick who puts their hands on the door?” Grigori asked.
Decker shrugged. “Volunteers; as leader of this mission I can’t ask anyone to do what I won’t do, myself. That makes me the first volunteer.”
“As you say, but I won’t let you have all the fun. I’ll put my hands on the Door, too.” Grigori said.
Ninsar Eresh nodded her approval. “I will place my hands on the Door as well,” she said.
“And I,” Motta Rashke said.
“We need one more,” Decker said.
“Count me in,” Decker recognized the man from their meeting in the Channels; he extended his hand to greet Decker. “Boone Mohandas,” he said, “Lieutenant of Arms in the Watchers.”
“Welcome,” Decker said, “Let’s get to it.”
They lined up and hesitantly placed their hands against the doors. Something like a jolt of electricity passed through them. Grigori swore; Motta flinched. Decker, Ninsar and Boone simply lifted their hands away. There was a thud; then with a rushing noise akin to falling water the door began to slowly sink into a recess in the ground. When the door finished its drop Decker signalled his team, as did Ninsar. The two groups of El-Ahur merged into ordered ranks and crossed the threshold and up the rise, into the City of Olympus.
The wide avenues, spans, towers and domes had been carved from the Mountain, itself. The excavated rock was used as building blocks, paving stones, or simply sculpted and mined to meet the needs of those who had lived here. From the vantage of the top of the City Wall, they would have seen the peaks of the smaller, nearby mountains poking through the deathly haze below the River of Winds. Decker staggered in awe, as memories of this place came to the fore from some forgotten recess. He remembered these spires and structures, the streets that climbed the five Tiers of the City. He was trying to remember where he’d lived. He had a vague recollection of walking streets cloaked in morning shadow, of going to the lookouts in the sunny afternoon to watch the play of light and shadow across the southern expanse of the Blue Mountain range. But it was all so long ago that none of it seemed real. As he’d expected, the plaster facades had crumbled away, the vividly painted walls all faded. Everything was the uniform blue of the mountains, soiled now with the black soot that filled the sky. There was enough of it on the ground that they left footprints in their wake, as though walking through malignant snow. The windowpanes were gone from the buildings, the windows cracked and hollow inlets for the wind to whistle and moan through and across the city.
Grigori was troubled. She’d been born in this place; the first days of her life were spent behind its walls. But nothing of the City of Olympus was familiar. It was a strange, cold and empty stone to her: the darkened windows of the spires and towers of the Five Tiers, the dry, hollow sound of the wind rushing through the empty streets, the clutter and debris piled into amorphous corners by over a thousand years’ neglect made it all seem haunted, malevolent. She couldn’t imagine that she’d been born and raised in this place. Some of the older El-Ahur with their group were murmuring prayers or exclamations; a few were even weeping. The younger faces, like hers, wore masks of bewilderment, discomfort, even fear. They were strangers here; interlopers on a past that was never truly theirs.
Ninsar Eresh approached Decker. “It’s time to move on to the Keep,” she said, “Do you remember the way?”
“I think so,” Decker said, hesitantly.
Ninsar looked up at the City; each Tier of the city was split into five Levels, each level divided into rising plateaus by five Avenues. Rounded spires and towers rose from each Level, creating intricate patterns of light and shadow across the smaller buildings and wide avenues. The successive Levels and Tiers above added their own shadow play until the whole City seemed a jumble of bright and dark surfaces and forms.
“We’ll return this way soon enough,” Ninsar said, “Now is the time to move forward.”
A gesture and Decker’s team fell into line, their packs slung and strapped. Ninsar’s escort did likewise and the group marched up the broad avenue from the Gate, climbing toward the highest Tier of the City.
“How do we open the Keep when we arrive?” Decker asked.
“Only one of the Queen’s Blessed may pass through the arch.” Ninsar said
“The Queen’s Blessed?”
Nearby, Motta Rashke chuckled. “I’ve never met an El-Ahur with such a poor memory for the Scriptures,” she said, light-heartedly chiding him, “The Blessed are those who never declared to the Shekhina Mehdi that She was the Queen of Light and Sorrow. The Blessed are those whom She did not forbid from calling Her by Her True Name.”
“We’re not dogmatic in our beliefs,” Grigori interjected angrily, “We live out there, out among the people, among the Midianites. We’ve kept watch over them for the Queen’s sake! It’s what She charged us with; it’s why we went down the mountain, like we were supposed to! We are El-Ahur, called on to do a great many things; you couldn’t bear to do the least that she asked of us!”
“Myrym!” But Decker’s shout came too late; what she had said couldn’t be unheard. The party stopped, everyone facing the scene of conflict. They were halfway up the first Tier of the City; beyond the Gate below the world fell away. The wind could be heard across the peaks far below.
“You’re right, Grigori Myrym,” Ninsar Eresh said, “We disobeyed the Queen. We stayed here on the Mountain. We were afraid; for ourselves, for our children. We could not bear to be so far from the Queen’s Presence. We can only hope She forgives the Gesheol El-Ahur our transgressions; we can only tend to what is left of our Sacred Duty: returning to the Keep and Waking Her. But we have lived our lives in devoted study of the Sacred Texts; of the Rai’Ha, of the Nai’Marak, of the Queen, herself. We have spent generations living decent, contemplative lives, preparing for the Dark Day when the Aeons War would come at last. The Queen may judge us for our cowardice of long ago, Grigori Myrym; you however, may not.”
“I...I’m sorry,” Grigori stammered, “I shouldn’t have...I’m sorry.”
Ninsar nodded. “I understand; but know the choice we made all those long years ago was not an easy one.”
Grigori nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
The walk resumed uneasily, Olympus slowly falling behind them as they followed the winding slope of the City’s main avenue. The panorama to their backs grew larger and bleaker as they climbed: the lower reaches all the way to the Far South were shrouded in thick, poisonous clouds. They could see the ocean where the continent narrowed at the beginning of the Southlands; the ocean was as black as the sky: polluted, inky and dead.
