A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [148]
Angry, Jora’h started to push the documents away, but then he recognized a startlingly out-of-place word, somehow included in the context of the ancient Saga.
Hydrogues.
He grabbed the crystalline sheets and began to read, scanning the lines, absorbing an amazing tale. It was a historical recounting of an ancient, unknown war, a titanic conflict against the hydrogues and other powerful “demons.” It had occurred ten thousand years ago, during a mysterious and empty historical period known as the “Lost Times.”
It couldn’t be true!
The Saga of Seven Suns was an accurate historical record, and Jora’h had always taken comfort in the reassuring familiarity of legends and heroes. No one ever doubted the truth as recorded in the billion-line epic of their race.
As far as the Ildirans knew, a firefever epidemic had killed an entire generation of rememberers thousands of years ago, and consequently a section of the oral Saga had been forgotten. Now, though, Jora’h saw that the ancient records had been preserved after all, but hidden from all people. Had this epoch of Ildiran history been rediscovered? Or had it been censored all along?
Torn between amazement and disbelief, Jora’h voraciously absorbed the new information. He read about conflicts among incomprehensible powers—not only hydrogues, but also similar entities affiliated with fire and water, even a powerful earth-based sentience that comprised organic living ecosystems. The words and names were strange: Faeros. Wentals. Verdani.
Ten millennia ago, great beings had battled each other across the cosmos. In that horrific war, they had extinguished the Klikiss race, seemingly as collateral damage. They had also nearly destroyed the Ildiran Empire, but it had occurred so long ago that the people no longer recalled it.
This was impossible. How could the secret have been kept? And who had discovered the records, after all this time?
Suddenly the answer was obvious. His father must have arranged for him to see these documents. On purpose. Only a Mage-Imperator could have managed such a complete cover-up and rewriting of reality. Only through the thism and generational recall could a Mage-Imperator carry out a long-term plan that spanned thousands of years to obliterate all knowledge of the first hydrogue war. But to what purpose?
His father must consider the revelation of these documents to be part of the Prime Designate’s weaning process, to draw him away from his naïveté and grasp the hard reality of leadership. It was appalling! Jora’h had never imagined deception on such a grand scale.
His thoughts were heavy, but his jaw clenched with anger. He couldn’t accept that such secrets existed—and that they had until now been kept from him, the Prime Designate, the heir to the Mage-Imperator’s throne!
And if his father could do that…what else did Jora’h not know?
He read the stories again, knowing that no rememberer, not even Vao’sh, had spoken these words aloud in ten thousand years. Though grievously hurt, the hydrogues had apparently won that ancient conflict. The other incredible beings had been defeated, scattered…perhaps destroyed.
As he struggled with the shock of what he had learned, Jora’h let his mind stray to more peaceful times, the love he had shared with gentle Nira. He wished the lovely female green priest could be with him right now…
He remembered her amazing and mysterious descriptions of the worldforest, the giant mind that had slumbered for so long on Theroc. Then Jora’h‘s eyes lit up as he thought of an amazing possibility. What if the worldtrees were the surviving manifestation of the powerful, yet defeated, “earth powers”? The verdani.
Suddenly, in his mind, the hydrogue war looked completely different. And filled with new possibilities.
76
RLINDA KETT
Just typical.
Rlinda Kett stood inside the empty ruins on Rheindic Co. Whenever a man didn’t know what the hell was going on, he had to prove it by making things