Star Gods: Book Four of Seeds of a Fallen Empire

  “So, tell me, Selerael, are you even sure that the Selesta that emerged from the white hole is the same as the one that entered the black hole? No one can control the universe–no one can know all of its secrets."

  "How did you know all of this–all that was on my mind?–of the white hole that brought us here?” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you a telepath?"

  "Do not presume that we of Enor ignore what surrounds us.” He replied quietly. “So much in life is obscured, but as we retreat from our active role, some things become clear. We usually no longer attempt to impose our order on the universe. We have learned our mistakes, and the futility of presuming that we could control destiny. We do not flaunt our knowledge if we can, or exploit it, stretching our capabilities to a maximum. But there are many things I can see, without needing to be told.

  "I know that you depart tomorrow. The people of Ariyal-synai continue to change. Perhaps one day–they will hear of a woman who never grows old. Unless she leaves all she loves behind–to embark upon her destiny. Yes, I realize that we should never have interfered here, but we did. Fate exists, but so does choice. Then, once set into motion, the chain of events escapes us. And another must come to rectify damage done, to maintain the balance of order, the balance of life. That one–you.”

  “Why me?!” She took a step back. “Why would the universe bring me back here?”

  "How can the universe tolerate such a loop in time?” He smiled.

  “That is not the real question. What is not meant to happen cannot be, or nothing exists. No, the answer lies in another question. What did the universe create from its infinite energy to redress the imbalance that we of Enor began?"

  Selerael watched as the sunlight failed, and the waters of Lake Firien shone with the light of many stars. The cool breeze that rose from the waters passed through the leaves of the lyra trees and filled her ears with their song.

  "Good-bye, Selerael." He turned away. "May we meet again, beyond this world," he said and then was gone.

 

  * * * * *

  He returned to the Havens to die. After him, only three would remain. The last of the first six had passed on in obscurity, and now only the three and master of the Havens remained. The super-colonizer, the Zariqua Enassa, last and greatest achievement of the home world of Enor before the end, the creature sent to the colony of Enor 97 to warn the colonizers, had indeed saved them. Upon his shoulders so much had rested. He bore the responsibility of it all–their escape, the future repercussions. Now he slept. And when he awakened, he would discover that he was alone.

  The colonizer spent his remaining hours wandering through the Havens, recalling the days of Enorian glory in their own time, that might still exist somewhere, in some reality of another universe. The brightness of a billion worlds of knowledge and harmony had vanished into nothing, and yet he remembered. As the end neared, he sat among the relics. He thought of Selerael and pitied her. And he regretted leaving the Zariqua Enassa alone, without taking his leave.

  Before succumbing to his own fate, he took out an engraving plate and drew a map of Selerael's world.

  He then left a message to any other Enorians who might find the Enor 97 Havens. Others had come from this small galaxy, and with them an immortal woman who hoped to destroy an empire that had yet to be.

  Was she the one the Zariqua Enassa had spoken of? The one from the Enorian legend? He didn’t know, but he couldn’t help but believe that she was. She had already broken the universal law of Time, bringing back Enorian-shaped humans from the future and into the past. No universe allowed anyone to break its laws unless this was what Time and Space wanted, except perhaps a true child born of their own energy.

  Was Selerael the one? The one with no ending and no beginning, with a physical body that had merely chanced to pass within this loop of time? Was she the one who would save the Enorian race? The guardian who had been sent to keep the balance in the Universe?

  Was she the one, even though she still refused to accept her own identity?

  He would never know for certain.

  Yet he did know that she, Selerael, born of Enor and child of the Zariqua Enassa, was sworn to prevent her Emperor and his Council from escaping into the future, no matter what the cost, and she alone had the power to do it. She would see that their reign came to an end, even if that meant she must thwart destiny and destroy the time-loop, leaving nothing of the existence they had known.

  What would she do? He already knew, but he was surprised that she did not.

  * * * * *

  Selerael admired the view a few minutes longer, until the nightly aurora appeared and shone its beacon in the north, obscuring the light of distant stars in an arc of radiant color growing on the horizon. The age-old conflict between the two celestial entities, the stars and the aurora, had begun again for another night on the planet Seynorynael.

  “The most beautiful planet in the universe, it is said.” She sighed, glad to be alive.

  “I guess they are still at it,” she laughed a little. Selerael could still hear the undulating voices engaged in the revelry going on, merging with the mournful melody of pipes in the nearby clearing. There the guests of her son's wedding were celebrating, singing, and dancing. She leaned numbly against the balcony of her dwelling which overlooked the lyra forest, reluctant to leave this hallowed ground for the city, where there was no night view.

  The remote Firien province was truly a wonder. She had on occasion seen comet-tails send brilliant bursts of sparkling light into the sky, making twilight seen like another dawn, until the white lights finally settled into the violet backdrop of night.

  This was only another, ordinary stars' rise, just after sunset. But to call it ordinary seemed unfair. Star's rise—a moment of fleeting beauty before the onset of evening, when the pale purplish glow cast over the planet by the power of the celestial lights reached down to claim the land with the last, fading blue rays of the setting sun. It was a beauty that could move the hardest of hearts. It was a moment when beauty conquered the untamable wild and shaped all of its moving beauty into one transient vision.

  And the very moment when night predators stirred. Soon, legions of predatory nocturnal creatures would be scouring the land for unwary prey, creatures such as wild delochs, who would tear their own injured kind to pieces.

  “This land is still wild,” she thought to herself. “Still very dangerous.”

  She stared up at the familiar sight of the two moons, remembering how clear and white the Earth's moon seemed in comparison, so pure. Not at all like Ishkur and Nanshe, two moons forever in conflict, the ethereal against the dark, like the history and character of the great civilization born under their protection.

  Ishkur, the larger of the two moons, created its own miraculous spectacle that could be seen from Seynorynael's equator. Dark red storm clouds and volcanic plumes swirled about the planetoid that was too close to the planet Seynorynael to remain geologically stable. But Ishkur’s thin atmosphere, an atmosphere created by the gravitational forces of Seynorynael, was slowly lost to space, since the small planetoid's gravity was too weak to contain it. The weakness of that moon was the source of its vivid splendor. While lovely Nanshe, a small, opaque blue moon, was the sustenance of the Seynorynaelian soul, for it was the muse of young love.

  “Was it so long ago that I once gazed up at the moon of Earth this way?” she thought to herself with a sigh. It had been aeons since then.

  Time was passing, and the world was changing. The humanoids of Seynorynael had built their cities primarily in a small equatorial band called the weather-safe ring, located between a north and south line of equal distance from the equator, about two thousand Earth miles in either direction. Lake Firien was not safe. Located to the north just a few hundred miles outside the weather-safe ring, the area suffered from the severe winter storms, and the land was
slightly colder even in the warm season, but the aurora seen from the Firien province were considered the most beautiful.

  Because of the lyra.

  Beautiful, eternal, and deadly poisonous to most of humankind…

  Selerael looked across at the darkened lyra forest from the balcony. An eastern wind that had descended from the mountains slipped through their branches, sending an eerie call to the inhabitants of the Firien settlement once called S'enor-inn-ayel. As the wind swept towards the water, it passed over the balcony, where she felt its mordant chill.

  Without warning, Selerael heard an entity calling to her, no more than a whisper. She lurched around, her heart racing.

  …sssssssss….. There was no real sound, no audible word. The call was a chilling force itself, a horrible creeping cold that descended upon her like a shadow. This was nothing like the urgent voice of the computer named Ornenkai who had haunted her through youth, or the haunting, warning wind-whispers of the sentient lyra trees, whispering to the living like lost souls trapped on Seynorynael against their will. This was the cold chill of Death that was also Time, and she had heard it contact to her before.

  She heard an echo of distant laughter.

  “Yessss…” she felt its approval.

  No, she told herself. I will not be moved by that power, not here, not yet…

  The bone-chilling call did not oblige her protest by retreating or fading away.

  Her fear caught her in the open as she realized she had heard this entity long ago on Earth. But, she had mistaken it for the voice of the computer Ornenkai. All along, it had been Time whispering to her! Time, like a creature, like an Entity, with a will of its own.

  She turned to face it, expecting a shadow or a face, but the haunting chill stayed behind her no matter what direction she turned. It was enough to make any mortal skin crawl.

  She knew what it wanted from her. It had a task which she could not refuse. Or could she? She was supposed to play her role in securing the destruction of all Enorian life at the end of the Seynorynaelian Empire… For though she was the guardian of Enorian life throughout its alotted time in existence, she was also the one destined to ensure its ultimate extinction. The living singularity of Enorian legend, a living force of anti-matter itself.

  Creator and destroyer—

  She felt a pang of horror. I have always been Time’s creature. I have never been able to break free of my destiny—

  The thought was horrifying. For so long she had thought she was only the child of Alessia Enassa Zadúchov, one of the last children of Enor, and Eiron Erlenkov.

  But, there was another possibility: that she was not entirely a child of living matter at all. That she had been born of the infinite energy of Space and Time itself, from the kind of exotic matter that also formed black hole singularities, but born to seem human in form. If so, she was an energy being of the universe itself, and a power that would re-balance the universe.

  The Enorian legends had long foretold that the guardian would appear to break the cycle of the Enorian interference, to make amends for the Enorian crossing into this universe, for their part in seeding the universe with the children of Enor who had been fated to die at the end of their own universe’s collapse. Selerael, if the legends were true, was the One.

  But how? And why? The unknown why was tearing at her. Would she ever know why? She had become more human through her upbringing long ago on the Earth. But now, she knew, knew it to her core, that she was rapidly changing into her own most true self. And it frightened her.

  Crunch….

  She hadn't noticed the footsteps behind her. Her son Adam suddenly appeared beside her, leaning his folded arms against the smooth wooden rail. She flinched, then turned to look at him; his expression was fixed stoically ahead to avoid her questioning gaze.

  Meanwhile, that other haunting power had retreated; Selerael felt safe again and she thought she would like to have stayed there on the balcony, in Firien, in that moment. Forever.

  But both she and Adam knew she was leaving. He had come to say one final good-bye, even though he had to admit he still wasn’t ready for this moment, even though his logical mind told him he should have been prepared long ago.

  Selerael wasn’t ready to leave either, but that changed nothing. She could have stayed a few years longer, but she dared not live much longer among mortals as she was, lest she herself became responsible for tampering with their fate and destiny. In any case, Adam had his own new life to begin. He had just been married that evening.

  Selerael knew she could not put the weight of her ultimate destiny on his shoulders. He was mortal, and deserved to know mortal happiness.

  The silence stretched between them, but their unspoken feelings were clear to each other. They had known each other longer than an ordinary human lifetime.

  “Good-bye, mother,” Adam said at last. Then finally, Selerael embraced her son lightly, with a dissembled anguish she fought to master, but her eyes let down her guard; they couldn’t stem the pain, and she clenched her jaw tightly to hold back a surge of feeling welling from the hollow in her body.

  “I love you, son. I will miss you. Be well.”

  Adam was the last living link to her former life and the beloved dream of the bright, faraway Earth, the son who had unknowingly been the source of her courage when her own failed her, the son who embodied everything she had ever believed and everything she had hoped for the future, whose achievements she took more pride in than her own, whose happiness and vitality meant more to her than any comfort the world could offer her.

  They pulled apart, looked at each other. Her face betrayed nothing.

  Selerael finally turned away.

  The wind should be howling, she thought, but it is just another calm summer evening.

  Adam watched his mother leave for the last time; he watched, his face inured to emotion. He was happy to have married Falia, one of some Enorian colonists’ daughters—but his heart felt heavy as his mother left.

  He had never known a time without her. And though he was mortal, he had lived more than four hundred Earth years. Now, he felt alone for the first time.

  The darkness of the night stretched around him. It seemed to be closing in. He reminded himself that he had to let her go and to live for her sake as well as his own. She had no more life of her own. She had her duty to fulfill. As time passed, he had noticed her changing, becoming less and less human, and more and more a creature, not without feeling, but harder and more remote, a sentinel tied less to life than to a single overriding duty.

  Adam shuddered, as the trees rustled in the wind.

  Meanwhile, Selerael put a deft hand on the rail and soundlessly leaped over it, then continued into the shadow of the forest, vanishing among the sylvan curtain of lyra trees. Adam watched her from the balcony where she had stood the moment before until she was out of sight. He knew that she would make only one more stop, to a small nearby cemetery where the oldest crew of an Earth spaceship had been laid to rest long ago. There, she would leave behind the memories of her human life behind.

  Adam knew that he would never see his mother again.

  Their halcyon days were almost at an end.

  “We shall endure, until the universe ends and begins again…” she heard his words again, after so long. Her mind flitted through past and present.

  Selerael sped away from the Firien settlement, fled madly from Time that always seemed fast on her heels.

  She was heading East, away from Firien, hiking across the thick forests of the wild lands towards the southeastern cities when she abruptly turned slightly northward; why she did not know, though afterward, this unanswered question would continue to pursue her.

  After several days of wandering, for all purposes in aimless turns, all at once she saw a curved disk protruding from a mountainside ahead, glints of sunlight sparkling off o
f the metallic alloys through the hillside. The side of the starship that had brought the Enorians to this planet S’eynorynael had been grown over by grassy turf, fallen soil, and trees that hid the ruin from the air to all but those who approached it on foot. It stretched almost half of a mile, a smooth earthen disk set among the jagged line of neighboring peaks.

  Selerael almost dismissed this apparent mirage, remembering that in the legends of the Havens told by the local population at Firien the ancient place was believed to be a ruin, if it still existed. Many believed that the mythical place had never existed at all.

  She stood staring in open-mouthed wonder at the Enorian flagship.

  “Good Lord, I feel as though I have seen this place before….” She thought out loud. “As though all my life, I was searching for it…”

  She could not stop herself from approaching it. This ship had crashed after emerging from the rotating white hole not far outside the solar system; this was the Enorian vessel whose engines had been lost and found again on board the spaceship Selesta. Impossibly. Selesta had brought her to this planet, just after that ship’s own brief trip through the white hole, Kai-rek.

  Suddenly the rocks to the right of her began falling down the cliff side. The roots of a small tree were ripped apart as the plates underneath moved apart, and a yawning entranceway appeared before her.

  She jumped back. Why, why was the Enorian ship itself welcoming her?

  Her curiosity demanded answers, but the force that had activated the ship had no way of answering her.

  She went inside.

  Despite the dark, Selerael could see inside the ship down a long corridor. As she entered, soft blue lighting illuminated the walls, where the swirling designs of blue alloys made her feel as though the ship had been submerged under water. After an hour wandering among the corridors, she felt that she was being guided towards a large circular chamber at the center of the ship. On the floor several open man-sized crystalline metallic-bottomed cylinders with tinted grey faces and swirling ornamental alloy designs had been arranged, spaced about three meters evenly apart, each on a raised dais. There was a small alcove on the far end of the room.