Legacies (The SCI'ON Trilogy #2)

Part Two Of The SCI’ON Trilogy

NICOLA RHODES

Legacies. Copyright 2012 Nicola Rhodes

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

THE BLOODLINES OF THE UNDYING

Prologue – The First Gods

Since there have been men, there have also been gods for them to propitiate. This creates the ambiguous chicken and egg question, did men create the gods, or did the gods (or God) create men?

Men created the gods as a way of understanding, and controlling the world around them.

They then invested these gods with many divine powers and gave them all the credit for the creation of mankind, and they believed that the gods created, not only men, but also the whole world and beyond. But since belief has a way of becoming, at least, perceived truth and what is believed strongly enough does, in fact, become the truth, this is also true.

The gods belonging to the earliest men are long forgotten, but they left a legacy behind them that lives in the world still.

The gods of early man were the primitive, primal gods of the elements. Controllers of the seas and the winds, the trees and the sun and moon, and their creation caused a secondary effect that was wholly unknown to the men who brought life to them. The creation of gods was the very first decision of sentient minds, and whether sentience creates religion or religion creates sentience is not a fit question for this dissertation.

The point is this, that at the moment the decision was made, the world split and two very different futures were begun. This was the beginning of the many worlds, and from those two, many millions more would spring – the shadow worlds, like the first, yet unlike. And the first world was left – empty and unchanging but nevertheless an anchor for all the others, and only the gods remained.

The early gods were delineated thus:

Toros – the fire god

Lora – the goddess of the moon

Solan – the god of the sun

Umas – the god of the sea

Naerin – the goddess of lakes and rivers.

Davos – the god of the earth and mountains

Dreya – the goddess of trees and growing things

Ambo – the goddess of air

These gods, having the wisdom that their creators imputed to them were, from the first, fully aware of the tenuous nature of their tenancy on the Earth, and they determined to leave something of themselves in the world that would move forward into the new worlds that would spring from the first. So they begat children on, or bore the children of, the mortals that they ruled; and these children were like their mortal parents in every way but one – they could not die.

Six there were of these Undying ones in the beginning. Dreya had no desire to beget a child to live on beyond her, having no great love for mortals nor the self love that the other gods had for themselves, but was satisfied with the creation of many beautiful things that grew in the earth and would of themselves beget offspring evermore as long as the world turned. This was her legacy, and she warned her brothers and sisters that their hubris, in wishing for a piece of eternity, would come at a terrible price for the worlds to come.

Likewise, Solan loved Lora, and no mortal, for the moon goddess was the most beautiful of beings, and his passion for her was as a fiery flame before which her cold heart melted. Their child was Idris, and in her was blended the beauty of both sun and moon and the light of both shone in her face. She had power over time and seasons. Also day and night, and the phases of the moon were her province. And it was Idris who idly seduced a mortal man, out of mischief in the first place, but in time she came to love him, for he was a strong man and handsome, and together they raised a daughter who … but this is not the place to tell that story.

And Umas who was the most proliferate of the gods (for does not all life spring from the sea?) had two strong sons, twin boys the delight of his heart and his pride and the envy of the other gods.

Chapter One - Beyond The Mountains

Even his own mother, from the moment he was born, was afraid of Talvas, for she knew whence he had come and wondered what his power would be. He was the son of Toros the god of fire from the mountain beyond the sea, which would sometimes spew out fire and smoke to devastate the land whenever Toros was in a temper. She knew this because he had not been able to forbear from telling her who he was and charging her to take better care of the child she would bear than she would of any other children she might later have.

Toros was the most terrifying of the gods and the most ruthless, and Matya lived in terror from that day.

Talvas was aware from an early age of his mother’s fear and dislike, and it grieved him, for he loved his mother and wished only for her approval. The fear of his brothers and his father meant nothing to him; perhaps he sensed that they were not truly his family. Only his mother had his love, which slowly turned first to bitterness and then later to hatred for a mother who could not love, but only spurn him.

It was not surprising that Talvas should watch his mother and father growing old and eventually dying. This was the nature of things, and Talvas, although he knew that he was different from others – he was a firestarter, and the whole settlement feared him – did not suspect the extent of his distinction until much later.

After his mother died – asking his forgiveness and directing him to the fire mountain for answers, which he took to be delirium – the settlement rose up and drove him away into the wilderness to die. Bewildered and frightened, Talvas ran to the forest and set it ablaze behind him to obstruct their approach. He alone was unafraid of fire and wandered between the burning trees unconcernedly until he reached the foot of the mountains. Here was an obstacle to his flight that he had not foreseen, and yet, he was also intrigued. What, he wondered, lay on the other side of these mountains? The littleness of his life had left him unprepared for such questions. He had spent fifteen years in the insular, self-contained world of one small settlement by a small river and this he had accepted, until now, to comprise the whole world. Clearly, there was more. He looked back now at his life and saw that it had been cramped and dull. Here was adventure! It seemed as if the world had suddenly opened up before him; here was life. Beyond the mountains, who could say what he would find?

Although he was strong and fearless, it took Talvas four days to reach the summit and by that time, he was weak from hunger and rasping with thirst and his hands and feet were raw and bloody. Still the spirit of adventure was in him, and when he finally gasped his way to the top of the mountain, he felt rewarded for all his pains. Never had he imagined a world so vast. Before he passed out from inanition, he was filled with wonder at the great vista that spread out before him.

This was his first death, although he did not realise it at the time. And on that mountaintop, all alone and far above the world, he was reborn.

When he woke, he never wondered or thought it strange that his strength had returned. Was it not always so after rest? His wounds were gone, but he took no notice of that, and although he felt hungry and thirsty, still it was not the deadly hunger and thirst that he had suffered from earlier. That he accepted this as natural needs some explaining perhaps to those who do not understand the peculiar resilience of the human mind. Pain, once it is over, leaves little impression on the consciousness, and Talvas, in addition to this, had never in his life before experienced or witnessed any great suffering of this kind and had no understanding of its effects. That he ought to be dead never entered his mind. Rather was he thinking about how to get down the other side of the mountain and where in this gods’ forsaken place he was to find water and food? It was cold too, but fire, at least, was not a problem.

That there was no food or water to be found on the summit was obvious, so Talvas decided that his only chance was to risk scrambling down the mountainside and try his luck farther down. It is doubtful that anyone ever did anything more foolhardy in cold blood, but Talvas was unaware that he took any particular risk, the dangers of falling off a mountainside having never been a consideration before. Indeed if he had thought about it, he might well have considered it to be no more than a fall from a high tree, which had happened to him many times without appreciable injury.

This side of the mountain was different to the other; the slopes more rugged and tumbled thus offering more security in the way of handholds. It was also less steep and soon Talvas was half way down. There he saw a cave delved into the side of the rock face. It was a little to the left of him and slightly higher than his current position, but his curiosity was great and the difficulty he deemed negligible compared to the possibility of there being something interesting to see inside. Therefore, he scrambled and slipped across and up towards the narrow opening and found it smaller than he had supposed and so he flattened himself onto his belly and wriggled and struggled his way inside.

Chapter Two - The Hermit

The Inside of the cave was brighter than Talvas had supposed, but he soon realised that the strange flickering light that illuminated the cave walls in such an eerie fashion was, in fact, a fire. Talvas had heard of mountains that had fire at the heart of them, which might suddenly erupt from the summit in a fountain of fearful flame. He had always wanted to see this phenomenon; his heart turned naturally to such things, and for a moment, he was excited until he realised that it was no such thing, merely a little campfire and nothing exciting at all. Then he realised that this meant that he was not alone. Talvas had never been afraid of anything in his life, but even he, in this eerie place, was aware that it behoved him to be cautious, for there were tales, even in his small settlement, of strange, fierce creatures with only one eye in the centre of their forehead, who lived in the mountains and fed off unwary travellers. He stopped dead and looked around him warily. He was hailed by a quavering voice which seemed to come from the back of the cave, but it was so distorted by the weird echoes in the tunnel that it might have come from anywhere, even behind him.

‘Come in boy,’ said the voice. ‘Come in and be warm. I have been expecting you this many a long day,’ he added, to Talvas’s frank disbelief. How could he have been?

He shrugged and felt his way farther inside the cave to the fire where he stopped and stood, poised to fly if necessary. As his eyes gradually grew accustomed to the light he saw, sitting by the fire in an attitude of complete ease, an old man; no, an absolutely ancient man. A long, straggly beard hung down over his chest, and his head was shiny and hairless. His eyes were black and penetrating, however, and showed none of the usual weakness of the elderly. Talvas could have laughed aloud in his relief. Now the old man laughed at him.

‘Sit down boy,’ he said, ‘come, come and sit here and take your ease, you wouldn’t be afraid of an old man, would you?’

‘Certainly not!’ said Talvas, and sat down immediately and glared at the old man, who he felt sure had in some way fathomed his fears and was vastly amused by them.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘I might ask you the same thing,’ observed the old man. ‘You are the stranger here, are you not?’

‘Ah,’ said Talvas craftily, ‘but you have been expecting me, have you not? You said so. So no doubt you know who I am.’

‘Insolence!’ cried the old man delightedly. ‘I might have expected that of you – Talvas Firebrand.’

Here Talvas was taken aback, and it must have showed in his face for the old man laughed heartily until he wheezed.

‘That got you, didn’t it?’ he said, his eyes twinkling in the firelight.

Talvas, who had no very gentle temper, narrowed his eyes at the old man and demanded to know how he had known his name.

‘I have seen you coming for many days,’ said the old man, ‘in the fire,’ he added, ‘which shows many things to those who know how to look.’

‘I see,’ said Talvas, settling down, ‘you are a seer.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the old man, ‘and much more besides.’

Talvas leaned forward eagerly, but the old man showed no sign of wanting to explain this last remark. Instead, he asked Talvas if he wanted to eat. Talvas was torn here, between his gnawing hunger and his curiosity. The hunger won, for the time being, and the old man fed him bread and meat and wine, which Talvas had never had before, and which he did not like at all, but he did not like to say so.

Once his hunger and thirst had been taken care of, Talvas was more than ready to know all that the old man could tell him. But the old man was now infuriatingly reticent and evasive, and it was all Talvas could do to get him to reveal his name (Majorian) before he went off into a loud continuous snore that reverberated through, Talvas was sure, the entire mountain.

In what Talvas supposed must be the morning, although in the dark of the cave, it was hard to be sure, Majorian was as annoying as ever, turning away Talvas’s many questions with an adroitness that Talvas would hardly have given him credit for the night before.

In the end, though, he said. ‘Well now, you’ll be wanting to know all about the seeing I suppose.’

Just as if Talvas had not been eagerly asking about just that very thing for the last several hours. Talvas was annoyed. Here, he had tried to get the old fool to open up on this subject by a variety of different approaches including direct questions and cunning nonchalance and getting nowhere and now… He swallowed his anger and indeed, it was not very great compared with his curiosity in any case, and nodded with an appearance of indifference in case, by seeming too interested, he should shut the old man up forever. He seemed, to Talvas, to be an awkward old dog.

However, the old man just smiled and said: ‘The secret is in the fire.’ Here he threw a handful of dust from the cave floor into the fire and gazed eagerly into the flames as they danced and flickered before him.

He looked slyly at Talvas. ‘You wouldn’t be afraid to put your hand into the fire I suppose?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Talvas in surprise, wondering how he knew this, for it was by no means a common feat, as Talvas well knew. Then he supposed the old man to have seen it in the flames.

‘Do it then,’ said the old man never taking his eyes off Talvas’s face.

Talvas did so without a flinch.

The old man nodded, satisfied. ‘Yes, yes,’ he muttered, ‘I thought as much.’

Then to Talvas astonishment, he plunged his own withered hand into the fire and grasped Talvas’s fingers.

‘You and I have something in common boy,’ said the old man. ‘Unlikely as it may seem. See? The power of fire, the power to control and subdue the very flames themselves. Now, look, look into the fire and see.’

And Talvas did. He saw a multitude of pictures, swarming and merging together until his head swam. With a cry, he pulled his hand away and averted his eyes.

‘Yes,’ said the old man, ‘it can take you like that the first time. We’ll try again tomorrow. It’s just a matter of control,’ he said. ‘It takes practice. Practice to learn to subdue the flames and make them show you what you wish to see and not what they want to show you.’

‘I don’t want to try again,’ said Talvas sullenly. ‘It makes my head sore.’

The old man, with a strength and speed that you would hardly have suspected of him, rose up and smacked Talvas sharply on the side of his face.

‘You’ll do as you are bid, boy,’ he snapped.

Talvas stared at him in shock, his head ringing from the blow.

‘Do you think it was a coincidence that you came to me?’ barked the old man. ‘You must learn the power. I must pass it on to you before I leave this world. It was for this reason and no other that you found your way here. You are my successor, make no mistake. No other can follow me, do you understand?’

Talvas stared uncomprehendingly at the old man’s blazing eyes.

‘Do you understand boy?’ repeated the old man threateningly.

‘Yes, all right,’ said Talvas. ‘Don’t get in a wax about it.’ He brushed his long dark hair away from his eyes and tossed his head in an elegant gesture intended to convey nonchalance.

‘All right then,’ said the old man. ‘By heaven,’ he added. ‘Don’t you want to learn to see? Do you think just anybody could do it?’

Talvas could see that they could not. He felt tremendously important. And, above all, after a life so far of neglect and aversion, it was pleasant to feel wanted – even by a crazy old man.

The old man nodded approvingly. ‘Others don’t matter,’ he said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘You are above them, as the eagle is above the mouse. One day…’ he stopped himself. ‘Ah well, you’ll see.’ And with that, he shut up like a clam and would say no more for the rest of the day.

Talvas stayed with the old hermit, as he styled himself, for several weeks. He learned the secrets of the fire. Not only how to see in the flames both the past and the future, but also many things far off in the present. The future was always a little hazy, difficult to read, but the hermit told him that this was always so and due to no deficiency in himself.

He also learned to control his ability to manifest fire, which had always been out of his control before, and how to control the fire and hold it in his hand. The old man seemed delighted with his proficiency and Talvas was sorry that he had doubted him in the beginning. Something like affection was beginning to spring up between them. It was a new sensation for Talvas, to love and be loved in return and he was distressed to find that the old man did not mean Talvas to stay with him.

‘Here is the passage through the mountain,’ said Majorian. ‘This is the path you must take.’

‘But that will take me back to where I started from,’ objected Talvas.

‘Will it?’ asked Majorian with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Well perhaps it will. But you know you can’t stay here with me forever, now can you?’

Talvas did not answer. That was, above all things, just what he really wanted to do.

‘Can you?’ insisted Majorian.

‘Nothing is forever,’ pointed out Talvas. He was stalling.

‘Isn’t it?’ said Majorian, twinkling harder than ever. ‘Well perhaps it isn’t.’

Although Talvas was used to this manner of talking employed by Majorian, he was irritated by it this time. He turned away sullenly.

‘I see that you wish to be rid of me,’ he said sulkily. ‘So I’ll go. I shan’t trouble you anymore. You needn’t worry about that!’

‘Ah, you’re not ready,’ said Majorian aggravatingly and, as far as Talvas was concerned, irrelevantly. But the old man was observing him closely and shaking his head in a dissatisfied fashion.

‘Go then,’ he said. ‘There is a settlement beyond the river on the far side of the mountains. Live in peace for the time being and when you are ready come back to me. I shall be waiting for you. However long it takes. And when you return, maybe you will be ready to take the path through the mountains. And maybe,’ he added, ‘you will not be so impertinent my boy.’

Talvas was already wriggling out of the cave before this sentence had ended, so incensed was he at the old man’s style of talking at him in nonsensical riddles and, more than that, he was hurt at the old man’s apparent sudden and purposeless rejection of him.

‘It will teach me not to get attached to anybody ever again,’ he thought to himself as he began to clamber down the mountain in high dudgeon.

‘My boy,’ repeated the old man to himself as the sound of Talvas’s feet scrambling down the rock face faded away.

Chapter Three - Alais

It took Talvas three days to reach the settlement, it being much further away than it had seemed from the mountain, and he knew not what his reception among a closed community of strangers might be. No one had ever joined the settlement in which he had grown up, and he had never thought that there were any other people in the world, but those he had grown up with and he supposed that they too had never considered this as a possibility. The chances were, therefore, that these people would feel the same.

‘How surprised they will be to see me,’ he thought, not without some trepidation. For who could tell what their reaction might be and whether they might not drive him away as his own people had done. And what would he do then?

Talvas had one material advantage in recommending himself to strangers, which, however, he was at this time, entirely unconscious of, and that was his personal beauty, which he had in a large measure. Tall above the average already – and still with some time to grow up further – his figure was elegant and graceful. And, with his striking features, bold black eyes and long black hair, he was sure to be noticed anywhere.

That he had reached the age of fifteen with no notion of his good looks was, perhaps, not so striking a circumstance as it might otherwise have been, when the fear and hatred that he had always engendered among the people of his home village was taken into consideration.

And now, as he made his way along the river bank towards the village beyond, he had no idea that when he reached it, every woman’s eye would beam approval on him as he passed their doors.

Before he reached the village, however, his attention was arrested by the sight of a young girl, perhaps his own age or a little older, washing her clothes in the river.

He decided to approach her. By her reaction, he would test what might be his general reception.

As he drew closer, he began to notice her better. Tall and slender with shining blonde hair; her skirt was drawn up around her waist as she stamped on the washing in the shallow water, revealing shapely legs. She was singing a song that he had never heard before in a sweet untrained voice. Talvas was bewitched.

She had not seen him yet, and Talvas was half inclined to run away from this vision and yet he wanted to draw closer. He was rooted to the spot, and then she saw him. She stared.

Far from suspecting that she might be experiencing similar feelings