Chapter 52: Falling Off the Edge of the World
COLCHIS.
Once, the colony farthest from Earth—first of the worlds settled when our ships limped across the Gulf from the Spur of Orion and Earth into the great space of Sagittarius. Not a planet, but a moon larger than the homeworld, thick with oceans and the primordial algae whence sprang an atmosphere perfect for human life. Explorers named her for the ancient homeland of the Golden Fleece, whence sailed Jason with his mighty Argonauts. To the Greeks, it was the edge of the world, and we had made it the edge of ours, for a time. Now it lay comfortably inside Imperial borders, near the point where Orion and Sagittarius almost met nearer the core of the galaxy.
A wild frontier it was no longer.
The mottled face of the planet the locals called Atlas hung in the sky above our descent, umber, amber, and pearl. High clouds obscured it, casting gossamer nets across the roof of the sky as we fell, descending over gray seas and craggy uplands toward the lonely city of Aea beneath the mesa upon which stood the Imperial Library.
Of all the worlds I have visited, the planets, stations, and moons, I think I love Colchis best. Her skies perpetually gray, forever threatening rain, her airs forever damp and chilly, she was not the most beautiful world. Compared with the hanging towers of the Eternal City, the Library was a mean thing. It sat upon the heights of the mesa overlooking broken highland moors like the crown of some sunken king half-buried in the earth with its low, round turrets. Lights burned in its windows even in daylight, for the pale orange sun was high and partways shrouded by the planet in whose orbit Colchis spun.
Aea itself was unremarkable. Despite the colony’s great age and former importance, Colchis’s days as a trade nexus with the Sagittarine colonies were long ended. Better warp drives and better fuel economies had made crossing the Gulf where it was wider more tenable, and the old roads nearer the core were abandoned. And so the city spoke not of decay, but of quiet homeliness that seemed copied from some sleepy seaport of Earth’s Golden Age. This was despite the presence of the Imperial Library, which for all its cultural import was barred but to a select few.
“How many people live here?” I asked Tor Varro where he sat across from me, strapped into his flight seat.
The scholiast turned from his own contemplation of the gray seas and craggy landscape. “On the planet? Less than a million, more than half that in this city.”
“And in the athenaeum?”
Varro pursed his lips. “I don’t think I know the answer. Several thousand cloistered brothers and sisters, I should think. Nov Belgaer isn’t the largest of our institutes, but the Imperial archives make it one of the most important. Our scholars travel from across the Empire to study here. In the order, we like to say we all end up here eventually.”
“Have you been before?” I asked.
“Me?” Varro arched his eyebrows. “Never, my lord. Hence the saying.”
The day was cool, but pleasantly so to my mind, and a silver mist drifted on the breeze, bringing with it the salt of the sea below. Somewhere in the heavens, gulls cried, and the noise of them transported my soul to Delos and Meidua and slashed a century’s weight from my shoulders. Given the presence of the Library, Colchis—like Gododdin—was held by a governor-general appointed by the Colonial Office and not by any landed nobility. I forget the woman’s name, but she received us with full pomp in Aea’s quiet landing field, where I made it known that I intended to make the climb up the mountain to the athenaeum at once.
“Impossible, my lord,” the governor-general said, bowing and touching her forehead apologetically. “The scholiasts have closed the gates for the day. They will not open them. Not even for you. Better to go in the morning.”
And so it was that despite my best efforts to avoid it, we were hosted in the governor’s mansion that night. I should not complain. The food was plain, but of that unpretentious quality which is finer to the well-adjusted mind that the most extravagant dishes, and for the first time in what seemed like eons I shared a bed with Valka in the night.
But I did not sleep.
Tall curtains blew through the open arch at my back, and the stones of the balcony were slick beneath bare feet. The Imperial Library loomed a mile above and far away, lights flickering on the crown of the mesa like distant candles.
I imagined another Hadrian, the boy who had fled his home, the boy who’d left his brother bruised and unconscious on the floor of the Summer Palace. He had dreamed of standing on just such a parapet, staring up at just such a collection of lights. Had he made it, in some other life? Come in time to the sands of Teukros and the gate of Nov Senber? I had wanted to be a scholiast more than I wanted anything, but those desires were gone. They’d died when I had—if not before.
How small that other Hadrian seemed, flickering himself like a candle against the Dark, clutching in his hands a small envelope—the letter Tor Gibson had given him, the key to open that gate and admit him to the cloistered realm of the scholiasts. The key he had lost on Emesh.
Small as Aea was, the city cast virtually no light upon the heavens, and the stars—so often veiled in too many Imperial cities—shone in all their glory, slowly dancing about the pale spray of the galaxy. The same Greeks who had named Colchis the edge of the world taught their children the galaxy was the milk of Hera, queen of the gods, splashed across the sky when she hurled the infant Heracles—her husband’s son by another woman—from her breast. The Sumerians said it was the severed tail of Tiamat, the dragon-mother of chaos, which Marduk, the first hero, had set among the heavens when he defeated her and carved up her body to rebuild the shattered world.
I liked that story better.
Standing by the rail, I twisted the Emperor’s ring on my right hand’s first finger, watching the lights above me in the night. I glanced at its face, at Sir George slaying his dragon. Not for the first time, I wondered what the Emperor’s motivations were in choosing this particular ring to hand to me. I didn’t know it then, but the Kings of Avalon—who had been the Kings of England before the coming of the machines—had worn Sir George’s ring since at least the time of old Victoria.
George and Marduk.
Beowulf and Turin.
Dragonslayers, all.
It was all one story, eternally retold.
“Can’t sleep?”
Valka stood in the arch behind me, naked but for the blanket she’d brought from the bed. Her nakedness called attention to my own state, unclad but for a pair of loose pants snugly cuffed beneath the knee. She moved to join me, and as she did, she shivered. “ ’Tis too cold for this.”
“Is it?” I was so used to the icy chill of star travel, I hadn’t noticed.
“What is the matter?” She drew close, leaned against the railing. Below, the mansion’s yard and motor pool were quiet save for the rare sentinel keeping watch for trouble that never came. Colchis was so far from the fighting, closer to the Lothrian Commonwealth than the Normans, thousands of light-years from danger.
Letting my hands fall, I turned to face her properly. “Nothing. Nothing, really. Just . . . memories. You know I wanted to be a scholiast.”
She smiled up at me, tattooed fingers fussing with my hair. “Are you excited?”
“About a library?” I asked. “It sounds strange to say, but . . . yes.”
Valka made a face. “Hadrian, you are talking to someone whose idea of a good time involves climbing over ruins and poring over holographs, trying to translate a language no one has deciphered in ten thousand years.” Her smile widened as she tapped me on the chin. “I get it.”
That made me smile.
She wrapped her arms around me, blanket enfolding like wings. She was warm beneath. “And we’re away from that xenathta city,” she said, words brushing my chest where she held me. “I thought it was going to kill you being there.”
“You’re one to talk,” I said, arms about her narrow waist. “How’s your chest?” Drawing back, I traced the spot beneath her breast where the knife-missile had pierced her. Only the faintest scar remained, barely detectable beneath my fingers.
Valka shot a look up at me. “You ask me this? You? Your arm looks like ’tis been through a meat grinder.”
I matched her smile. “Well, I know I’m fine,” I said. “I’m not worried about me.”
“You’ve not to worry about me.”
“Maybe,” I allowed, “but worrying about you is a privilege.”
She snorted. “You are such a relic.”
“You like me because I’m a relic, doctor.” My hand went lower, and she thumped me. “What was all that about climbing over ruins?”
She thumped me again. “You’re a ruin now?” Her eyes trailed over the deep scars in my arm, and her expression took on a somber cast.
Eager to distract her and save her mood, I pulled Valka’s face to mine and held her close, felt her warmth and the tips of her breasts against my bare chest. When we came apart, I said, “We really should get some sleep. There’s a lot to do tomorrow.”
“A lot for me to do, you mean,” she said, smile returning. “You’re in my world now, Hadrian Anaxander Marlowe.” She drew away, taking the blanket with her, and went back to the open arch with its static field invisibly crackling, keeping the warmth inside. In the shadow of the keystone she turned. “Maybe I should send you back to the ship, mm? Give you a taste of your own medicine?”
“That isn’t funny.”
“ ’Tis,” she insisted. “Maybe ’tis your turn to go in the box.” When I did not smile, she folded. “I am sorry. You apologized. I should not pick at these scabs.” She hugged the blanket more tightly about herself. “We should both be happy. ’Tis not Panormo or Athten Var, this place, but ’tis better than your war.”
I did smile then. “It will be like Emesh again. Before, I mean.”
“Oh, ’twill be better than Emesh,” she said, and turned her back once more.
She dropped the blanket.
The next morning, the governor-general had arranged for two groundcars to carry us along the narrow road upcountry to the athenaeum. It was not far, perhaps half an hour’s drive to clear the outskirts of Aea. We passed stone-fenced pastures and sheepfolds dominated by sail-mill towers creaking in the breeze. In the distance, the city’s fusion plant belched cloud, its column rising to support the heavens where Atlas’s mighty face peered over the horizon.
“This is it, my lord!” the driver said, bringing us to a halt at the base of the mesa.
There was no one there, only a small, paved lot—weeds growing between the flagstones, and a gray stone arch that hugged the base of the mesa. Correctly taking my silence for confusion, he said, “The greens wouldn’t let us build a lift or ramp up the mesa. You have to go by stair.” An apologetic note crept into the fellow’s voice, and he added, “I thought the governor-general had told you, lordship. A thousand pardons.”
“ ’Tis quite all right, messer,” Valka said, opening the clamshell hatch. “We will walk, won’t we, Hadrian?”
Truth was, I’d have had it no other way. To the scholiasts—and to eccentrics like me—the Library was a kind of sacred space. It would not do to come to such a place by shuttle or groundcar. Pilgrimages should be carried out on foot.
“We left our effects at the manor, sirrah,” I said to the driver. “Will you see they are collected and brought up?”
“You’re staying with the greens, lord?”
“That is my intent.” And with that I climbed from the groundcar and drew my long, black coat about myself as I turned and helped Valka stand free. Varro followed, alongside Pallino and one of his centurions—the same Doran who had fought with us aboard Iubalu’s ship. The second car opened, and the other eight of my guard emerged, dressed not in legionary armor, but in the black and scarlet of Red Company semi-formal dress. They wore shield-belts and carried phase disruptors, and each man and woman wore a short white sword, but the effect was that of a security detail, not an honor guard.
The climb took the better part of two hours, and by the end my still-fugue-sick legs ached from fatigue toxins. But the day was cool and the weather fair, and the ever-present mist—of which Pallino and his men complained—was for me a refreshing balm, and strangely bracing. Valka held my hand, and so when we passed the final marker with its green flag flapping in the wind and came to the final stairs, we climbed them together.
Rough-cut stone gave way to laser-quarried perfection, field-stone to gray granite.
So precisely engineered were the final stairs and the gate and walls to which they led that no weed or blade of grass grew in their joints. The curtain wall stood ten times the height of a man, describing a perfect circle atop the mesa, circumference interrupted in regular intervals by the short drum towers that looked down upon the world, guarding against attackers that had never come.
“Who’s there?” came a voice from the walls above.
I’d no cornicen, no herald to sound my arrival, and at any rate to come to the scholiasts a great lord with pomp and circumstance seemed wrong to me, who had meant to come a mendicant long ago. Letting go of Valka’s hand, I stood forward, and said, “Sir Hadrian, Lord of the House Marlowe Victorian, come at the behest of His Radiance, the Emperor.”
A pale face peered over the gatehouse parapet, eyes narrow. A boy, I thought, no older than twenty. Perhaps no older than fifteen. “Visitors?” he said, “a lord and knight, you say? And these others?”
“My companion here is Doctor Valka Onderra, a lay scholar of the Demarchy—these others are our guards.”
“Guards?” the boy said. “We’ll have no violence here, sir. The primate says all weapons must be left at the gatehouse. All shields and terminals, too. No machine may pass under the day gate. It is Stricture.” He stood a little taller, leaning out between the merlons. “We’d no word anyone was coming.”
“I am the word!” I exclaimed, stepping forward. “The Emperor himself has commanded that I have access to your archives, that my companion and I should be admitted at once.”
“No one gets in without a letter of approval, sir,” the sentinel answered me, and I wondered at the nerve of him. He was brave, that much was certain. He wore no shield-belt, nor were there signs of guards or any weapons near at hand—so much of Colchis’s defense was relegated simply to the Orbital Defense Force. Satellites locked in stationary orbit above the Library kept precision beam weapons forever alert, operators aboard scanning the highlands for unauthorized approach. None of that would have stopped an irascible lord firing a phase disruptor, however. “In the tube, please.”
As if on queue, a pneumatic tube’s hatch sprang open, producing a padded cylinder. Glancing at Valka and Pallino, I smiled and—removing my glove—took the Emperor’s ring from my finger. I placed it into the cylinder, sealed it, and, returning it to the tube, pulled the lever that sent the tube rushing back up the tower to the bored sentry.
“This isn’t a letter.”
“Well spotted, lad!” Pallino interjected, unable to help himself. “It’s the Emperor’s own Earth-buggering signet ring.”
“I can’t let anyone in without a letter of approval from the Imperial Office underwritten by a member of our Order and notorized by the governor-general in Aea.”
Varro stepped forward. “I am a brother of the Chalcenterite Order, novice. Take that ring to your Dean or straight to the Primate at once.”
“I’m not allowed to leave the gatehouse, brother, sir,” the boy said. “Provost’s orders.”
“You’re also bound to obedience by Stricture, son,” Varro answered. “And as your senior, I am ordering you to deliver that ring to the hierarchs.”
“You could be an imposter!” the boy countered.
Behind me, Pallino grunted. “This is what they put at the gates of the Imperial Library? Mother Earth’s tits, I know recruits less thick.”
“They don’t get a lot of foot traffic,” I said. “Any real threat would have been stopped well before they got boots on the ground.”
“Then what’s the point of them walls?” Pallino asked.
“To keep the brothers in,” Varro replied, a touch ominously. He wasn’t wrong. The scholiasts’ athenaea were crafted to isolate the brothers and sisters of the Order, not to protect them from outside—and to prevent the contamination of their theoretical cloisters with praxis and experiment. The Order was consecrated to pure theoretical work. No scholiast could so much as touch a machine without special dispensation from his lord, for risk that they—whose ancient predecessors had crafted the daimons that ruled the Mericanii—might give rise to such abomination once more. Face impassive, Varro stepped forward and addressed the sentinel. “I know they don’t teach you this in Elementary Protocols, but consider: Which is more likely? That I am an impostor, and that a band of impostors would come to your gates and knock? Or that there is simply something you—a novice—don’t know?”
Silence then for the space of two heartbeats.
“I’ll go to the Dean, brother.”
Valka hid her smile behind her hand.
Ten minutes passed, twenty. There came a soft rain from the west where gray cloud reared above the grayer seas at the margins of the world. Valka produced a hood from the lining of her red leather coat, but I simply turned my face to the heavens. How long had it been since I’d last felt rain? A dozen waking years? More?
The grinding of metal bolts shook the ground beneath my feet, and I turned in time to see the metal doors slide open. Not completely, but wide enough only to permit a single woman in faded greens to step between the metal doors.
“Which of you is Sir Hadrian?” she said, sweeping our party. But her eyes settled on me even as she finished, and—bowing low—she extended one knobby hand with the Emperor’s ring clasped between thumb and forefinger.
I took it. Though it was not called for, I returned her bow. “I am, counselor.” I introduced Valka, Varro, and the others. “We have traveled far to come here. My companion and I wish to study in your archives.”
“To study . . . what?” she asked.
She had not given a name, nor any rank. Taking her for a hierarch of some rank, I bowed again. “Teacher, forgive me, but there are things better left unsaid in the open air. That is why no message was sent, no telegraph from Forum. I am on a mission of special significance to the Solar Throne in my capacity as one of Caesar’s Knights Victorian. I will speak only to your Primate. Forgive me.” As I spoke, I restored the Emperor’s ring to my finger, but did not restore my glove, opting instead to retain only the left one to cover my disfigured arm and hand.
The woman surveyed me a moment, face utterly unreadable, controlled. Without any hint of emotion. Suspicion? Concern? Fear? She stepped aside. “The Throne has not sent us a ring in more than five hundred years,” she said. “Not since Cressgard. You and your men must leave your weapons and terminals at the gate here.”
I moved to step past her and cross beneath the threshold.
Colchis.
The edge of the world.
There was still an edge here. Not between civilization and frontier, but between the secular world—my world—and the theoretical world of the scholiasts.
And I crossed it then, with Valka and the others just behind.