A morbid sense of curiosity had kept Nabu and Tashmet entranced, until it was too late to flee. By the time they attempted to will themselves elsewhere, the Devas were upon them.
A mortal turned immortal, Maelgwn recalled how liberating his transformation to a demi-god had been. He imagined the process in reverse, with the extra agony of never before being exposed to physical pain and suffering, and he began to fathom the extent of the punishment the Nefilim had been dealt.
As they’d finished implementing their verdict, the Devas rose high into the air to advise the offenders:
You shall age a human year a day,
until you dare to feel the human way.
Die of old age before you repent,
and into darkest density you will descend.
‘I shall arrange for a team of my people to accompany you to your respective planets, where you are to set about aiding the subjects you once repressed,’ Maelgwn informed the fallen Gods, whose depleted state of being was causing them to weep. ‘You are to advise my people of all your mining endeavours. Your cooperation in this instance shall be your final judgement … ignore Anu’s cause this time and he will forsake you, for all time!’ Maelgwn’s address was so impassioned that every human guard in the room fell to his knees in awe of the Dragon. ‘For this is, and always was, the will of the great Houses of Don and Llyr!’
‘So be it!’ cried all within the pit at Kila HQ.
‘It’s over.’ Candace burst into tears. Floyd grabbed her up and twirled her around in the air.
‘Time to go breathe some fresh air.’ The technologist set the Governess down, and they both laughed excitedly.
The relief was overwhelming for Candace. Her baby would be born into freedom after all.
‘Well done, honeybun.’
Candace gasped. The comment had to have come from her husband, as nobody else would dare address her in such a way. She turned around to find Brian looking very pleased with himself. ‘How did you get here so fast?’ She jumped into his arms to squeeze and kiss him.
‘You risked taking the quantum leap, didn’t you?’ Cadwallon interrupted the lover’s reunion to find out if Brian had indeed teleported himself forth from beyond Kila’s star system.
Brian raised his eyebrow questioningly, and then both arms in victory. ‘Princes of the Universe,’ he declaimed. ‘No system is too distant … for me to make it home by bedtime every night!’ The Governor took his wife in hand again, and kissed her in a way that was not to be interrupted.
Cadwallon looked to Floyd and Ethan, who were both appearing a little overawed in the wake of Brian’s appearance and announcement.
‘No more smoking for me then,’ Floyd decided soberly, and both Ethan and Cadwallon nearly fell over in shock. ‘Well … what if I got too stoned and forgot where I was headed?’ Floyd reasoned. ‘I’ve vagued out at my computer before today and snapped out of it to find I’d accidentally willed myself elsewhere. Now if I do that, I could wake up and find myself back on Gaia! Or worse!’
Cadwallon gave a chuckle and nodded to confirm that the technologist’s resolution was probably for the best. ‘If Anu is set to self-destruct, you wouldn’t want to be ringside on Gaia … unless you’re chasing a really severe suntan,’ he joked, only realising the implications of what he’d said when he saw the horrified look on Ethan and Floyd’s faces.
‘Oh, Goddess,’ Ethan gasped. ‘He’s right … the mortals still inhabiting the Earth are going to get fried!’
‘All the inhabited planets in that quadrant of the galaxy will be affected,’ Floyd realised. ‘Tarazean, Numan, Nibiru!’
‘Holy hell.’ Cadwallon went pale, as he thought about the task of evacuating, relocating and accommodating so many. ‘Our interstellar war has just escalated into an intergalactic rescue.’ He exhaled heavily as he scanned his mind for a simpler solution, and when no brilliant ploys were forthcoming, Cadwallon had to wonder: ‘So where’s our newly adept Sage when you need him?’
‘Gentlemen.’ Noah came in on cue, with his wife, Rebecca. ‘Fear not about Anu’s demise. I believe a simple solution to the radiation problem will present itself.’
Floyd and Ethan, picking up on Noah’s plan, smiled and nodded in understanding.
Cadwallon folded his arms in protest at being left out of the psychic circuit. ‘So are you going to share this solution, or am I going to have to guess?’
Floyd gave a mocking laugh in the Chief Justice’s direction. ‘You’ll never guess what he’s got in mind.’
21
DESTINY’S BABES
The Pantheon troops accompanied their mortal Lords from the ballroom.
Maelgwn, having driven home his message to the Nefilim, turned to make his way to Kila’s government chambers and was startled to find his wife standing in his path. With her short spiky hair and her black leather clothes, Tory looked every bit the revolutionary.
‘Tory.’ He moved to embrace her. ‘I feared you had —’ Maelgwn froze, panicked that his wife was backing away from him.
‘I have little memory of us, Dragon,’ she explained, as she wept silent tears of bemusement. She recognised the man before her, although after her association with Hawk, Maelgwn seemed like a comparative stranger. ‘I have already had one sad case of mistaken identity, so please understand that I am a little wary.’
As she said this Maelgwn psychically perceived the details of the indiscretion to which she referred, along with the mixture of guilt, confusion and loss brewing inside her. ‘It was an honest mistake, Tory,’ he allowed, rejecting the remorse and jealousy that threatened to consume his heart and overshadow his true feelings on the matter.
‘There are no mistakes.’ Tory sniffled back her emotions, and standing tall, she turned an accusing look on the Devas. ‘And contrary to how it might seem, I believe that my whole sad affair was rather carefully planned out.’ Her stare went to Sacha in particular. ‘You knew I was close at hand when you retrieved the Tablet from the asteroid field, and yet you left me there with no memory, to fall in love with the wrong man!’
Every adversity has a hidden advantage, advised Psyche, who had re-assumed her angelic manifestation, as had her twin brother.
Every event in creation has its reason, added Sacha, moving forward to present Tory with the Tablet of Destinies. It is time, now, for you to reclaim the past that was stolen from you.
‘To be made to feel even more wretched about my ignorance than I do already. No thank you!’ Tory refused to take it. Her emotions regarding the lover she’d abandoned on Tarazean were blinding her better judgement. ‘Just tell me why you let me break his heart?’ she appealed to Sacha. ‘And my husband’s too!’
‘You have not betrayed me.’ Maelgwn spoke up to allay her fears. ‘I could hardly hold you in contempt for the same error that I myself made in the past. Which was, in fact, no error at all. Aquilla was you, a Delphinus incarnation of you, and although, immediately following our brief affair, I feared that I had made a fatal mistake by falling in love with her, I have since discovered a very wonderful reason for our tragic union.’
‘Seagull!’ Tory had a burst of enlightenment when she perceived that Maelgwn had been looking for his missing half-caste son.
‘Pardon?’ Maelgwn queried. Tory’s thoughts had gone into a whirl he couldn’t follow.
‘Zabeel would be old now, right?’ She was excited by the freak coincidence and forgot her own woes. ‘By human standards, he’d be about sixty or seventy years?’
Maelgwn’s eyes narrowed and he nodded.
‘Seagull is Zabeel!’ she concluded with certainty, recalling the Nefilim referring to her crewmate as Zabeel. ‘Inanna has already found your son, or rather he found her. Zabeel is on Tarazean.’
Didn’t I tell you mother was with Zabeel? Psyche jogged Maelgwn’s memory
‘So you did.’ Maelgwn smiled, proud to have spawned a son who would father a whole new race of Chosen Ones and gratified to know that Zabeel was still alive and kickin
g. ‘He is the first Chosen One of his kind.’ He went silent as he figured the answer to Tory’s latest misadventure. The explanation lay in a section of the Sage’s prophecy. ‘The child you are carrying will parent the immortal sons and daughters of the Falcon kind.’
Their eyes met and Tory’s were wide with alarm, for she’d not even dared to consider the possibility as yet. Although, admittedly, after hearing the prophecy of the Sage, the event had crossed her mind.
‘Our clan just keeps getting bigger and more varied all the time.’ Maelgwn’s frown dissolved into a smile.
There was something about this man’s manner that Tory found hauntingly familiar. There was a hidden gentleness in the huge warrior, which she found reminiscent of Hawk, and so very becoming. Still, in all likelihood, it had simply been the fragments of the Dragon’s superego that she’d glimpsed in Hawk, which she had found so attractive about the pirate in the first place.
‘Give me that damn pendant.’ Tory held out her hand towards Sacha, deciding she was ready to know herself, even though past knowledge was sure to confuse present issues.
The experience could be a little overwhelming. You might want to find a quiet place to sit down. Sacha dropped the sacred divining tool into Tory’s hand.
For a moment Tory was confused by the challenge of finding a quiet place in a city she remembered naught of.
‘I know such a place,’ Maelgwn spoke up to help her out. ‘You loved to go there when you were pregnant. It’s just outside the city.’ He held out his hand to her.
He exuded the most intoxicating energy and Tory took hold of his hand. She was now rather curious to recall a life spent in his company.
A thick, misty cloud shrouded the mountainous globe, which was rich in forests and waterways. Little of the light of the binary sun system penetrated the cloud cover, making the surface conditions on Karleashian dim, damp and chilly. The planet was a far cry from a Centaur’s dream location; those of Thais’ kind craved dry, lush, green rolling fields bathed in sunshine.
The Shaman landed as far from civilisation as possible, and assumed the form of a large bird of prey to complete the last leg of his journey. The heavy cloud made the flight perilous and he was forced to keep a high altitude. It was a good thing that Ereshkigal’s capital, Kurra, was lit up like a celestial event through the mist on the horizon, or Thais might never have found it. Named after its counterpart in ancient Edin, Kurra was situated ‘in the crest of mountains’, thus the name was just as appropriate now as it had been in yesteryear.
This planet had never been part of any interstellar Pantheon good-relations tour, however. It was so obscure that it was barely on the star charts and was listed as a heritage planet, which, so it was said, kept the larger Nefilim civilisations in fresh springwater. Of course nobody truly believed that drinking water was the primary industry of Ereshkigal’s operations here. The Lord Marduk and the Dragon had come to loggerheads with Nergal and his spouse every time they had asked to further investigate the planet. There had certainly never been the slightest suggestion of a Centaur population; it was claimed that Nergal’s Falcon troops were employed to run the industry on Karleashian.
And from the outskirts of the city, that is exactly how it appeared to be, for only Falcons roamed the streets. To blend in, Thais shed his full coat of feathers and assumed the evolved human form that was the same as the governing class of the planet. Naked and freezing, Thais willed forth his clothes and equipment from where he’d left them miles away. He tore holes in his jacket to accommodate his Falcon wings, and the organic fibre of his suit moulded itself snugly into place around his additional appendages where they sprouted from between his shoulder blades. Fashion-wise his space attire seemed to be an acceptable alternative to the uniform of the Karleashian military; there was obviously a lot of interstellar traffic, judging from the many pilots and freight crew personnel in the area.
There was no sign of any Centaurs however. All the citizens frequenting the dwellings, shops, restaurants and bars of the outer city were Falcon, although there were a few token Leonine and Delphinus men and women among the civilian population.
There were several large establishments at the heart of the city. Three impressive complexes bordered a large ziggurat, which Thais assumed was Ereshkigal’s headquarters. One of the adjoining buildings probably catered to the planet’s springwater industry. The remaining two structures appeared to be high security areas as they were heavily guarded, and so they captured the Centaur’s interest.
Nevertheless, before he went stirring up any trouble in the wrong place, Thais removed his thought-wave neutraliser and wandered into the closest bar to see what dirt he could uncover on Karleashian enterprises.
He got one of the local freighting crews to chat over a few drinks, and as they seemed to hold no love for Ereshkigal’s military presence here in Kurra, Thais ventured to comment: ‘I heard the springwater is just a front for the Pantheon’s mining operations here.’
All the laugher and chatting of the five Falcons ceased.
‘Did you now?’ The pilot sat back in his chair — his interest in bad-mouthing the military seemed to be at an end.
Thais had nothing to lose. ‘Rumour has it there’s a race of Centaurs enslaved hereabouts.’
‘Well, it’s safer not to believe everything you hear about this place,’ advised the pilot, warily. ‘Unless you wish to end up in prison, that is.’
Thanks to the captain, Thais became aware that a force of Ereshkigal’s guards had come to stand behind him. ‘Is there a prison in Kurra?’ he asked jovially. The pilot and his crew nodded, their eyes firmly planted on the warriors at his back. ‘I should very much like to see it,’ prompted Thais, and large hands clamped down upon each of his shoulders.
‘What a coincidence. We would very much like to give you the guided tour,’ advised the officer.
‘Excellent,’ commented Thais as he rose and was roughly taken into custody.
If there were Centaurs anywhere on this planet, besides in the heavily-guarded mines, prison was where Thais would find them, and he accompanied the guards with no questions, no struggle. If he didn’t find the evidence he sought in Kurra’s dungeons, then perhaps he’d get lucky and be sent to the mines.
Led to a cell, Thais allowed himself to be beaten to a pulp. Violence was not his way, and would not serve his purpose.
When the guards left, his body repaired quickly enough, but, Thais mused to himself, if Ereshkigal’s guards would bully one of their own kind so grievously, he feared for the enslaved Centaurs here — if, indeed, there really were any.
Thais projected his form back into the corridor to begin his search. The cells of sandstone were damp and small, with solid doors and walls to prevent communication between prisoners. Each door had a small hatch at eye level for the benefit of the guards.
In the first cell was a dead Delphinus man. At least, he looked and smelt as if he had been deceased for several days. The Falcon resident in the next cell was alive, although she had obviously been subjected to physical abuse and torment. ‘Leave me alone!’ she screamed, covering her naked, battered person with a tattered rag. Thais slammed shut the hatch, fearing her screams would attract unwanted attention. It was a long time since the Shaman had been exposed to such human suffering and although his heart went out to the woman, he knew it would only bring him grief if he tried to aid her now. She had been too badly assaulted to trust anyone at present.
‘Whoa,’ he uttered and drew a deep breath for strength; what wretched plight would the next hatch reveal? Opening the hatch more discreetly this time, Thais’ heart leapt into his throat as he found a male Centaur within.
The young buck, with long, dark hair and a reddish complexion, was dancing on the spot and singing to himself.
Although the scene was comical, and a pleasant relief from the last one, it occurred to Thais that perhaps this prisoner had gone mad too. ‘What have you to dance about, Centaur?’
‘I’m b
eing rescued today,’ he replied, looking up to find the Falcon man peering into his cell. He continued his merry dance, and began whistling as well.
Thais recognised the lad. He had known him as Shar Jerram in Atlantis and as Teo in the early twenty-first century on Gaia. This same soul-mind had been born as Gwion Bach in the Dark Ages of ancient Britain. A fateful accident in the labs of Ninharsag, or Keridwen as she was known in that time, transformed the mortal lab assistant into the great Merlin and Ascendant Master, Taliesin Pen Beridd.
‘How can you be so sure of your liberation?’ Thais couldn’t resist inquiring.
‘An angel told me,’ the young Centaur stated, confident of his source. ‘It said that a mighty Shaman would come to liberate me on this the one hundred and fiftieth day of my confinement. As a prophet to my people I cannot question the word of the Logoi’s messenger.’
Thais smiled, amused by the thought that the angel had probably been Taliesin, this soul-mind’s higher self. ‘By the sound of it, you are a truthful and insightful prophet indeed.’
The young Centaur ceased his jig as an unlikely question came to mind. ‘Are you the Shaman, then?’ The lad was excited only a second, before he waved off the possibility. ‘Nah … you can’t be,’ he decided. ‘The mighty Shaman is a Centaur, I am sure of it … or why else would he want to save me?’
Thais found the lad’s convincing argument rather sad. ‘We are all human, are we not?’
‘Hey, that’s what I always say, birdman,’ the buck agreed. ‘But your lot don’t want a bar of it! We Centaurs are four-legged freaks, right, just like the Satyrs … we may as well be Lahmuian mutants for all —’
‘Satyrs!’ Thais echoed in shock. ‘There are Satyrs on Karleashian as well?’