Endworlds - Nicholas Read [56]
Grinding its way into the atmosphere with a long mournful bass note, a mountain sized fragment of the moon hit with the full fury of a clenched fist. Superheated air incinerated the whole northern ocean, and without deep water as a partial cushion, the falling rock cracked through the ocean mantle as a metal spoon cracks an egg.
Deep seams opened into which whole seas tumbled and packed underground much of the debris that would have choked the sky. Then, the planet broke from its moorings and fell into frigid space, tumbling away from the orange bands of home toward the distant yellow sun.
Queen Fae’Elayen remembered being pre-noble Elayen Palatino, a mortal in what seemed a lifetime ago—no, several hundred lifetimes ago, her life full of fear then.
By the time the powercells and food were gone they had run aground as the first ice flows choked the receding seas into undulating slurry. In this twilight world the Earth’s sickening undulations slowed enough for the stars to appear as fast-moving dots instead of streaks.
Leaving for high ground, the ship was stripped of anything that could burn or be lashed into shelter. Some tried to survive in makeshift quarters on the surface, others burrowed into caves and dugouts where heat could be trapped.
Elayen’s group took their allotted rations and bridged ice sheets and desolate marshes until they chanced upon the flooded remains of one of their southern cities. At least it had once been in the south. The rubbed iron they dropped in water told them otherwise. The whole world was sideways now, and compasses were rendered useless.
It was here amongst the fallen minarets and sunken plazas of the once great citadel Raymonis-Bev that Elayen’s fellows found underground sections of the city that could be barricaded against the cold. It was amongst the discovered caches of sealed bags and non-perishables that Elayen and her companions knew hope for the first time in months. It was in this place as ice inevitably penetrated their deepest keep, that they desperately chose members of their flock as a sacrifice to draw their gods’ sympathy.
Oh Builders Above, hear our plight and have mercy on a fallen world!
It was in this service that Elayen felt the cold blade pierce her breast just days before those who had raised her to that honor froze to death themselves.
And in death, Elayen Palatino found a strange new life.
Vivid in memory now as it had been to sight then, eyes she had closed to darkness opened to a golden light. The next sensation was of white hearthstones warm under her tiny feet. Finding her balance, she had staggered from the soft white recliner to the curtained balcony, draped in white gossamer that shimmered unlike any silk she had seen.
In the valley below, the blues and green spires of Raymonis-Bev gleamed tall and strong, apparently rebuilt. People thronged market stalls as air traffic gingerly plied paths from one tower to the next. Everywhere there was life, and the golden hue of the sky convinced her that she was back home, the apocalypse being a dream—albeit the most vivid and realistic of night terrors.
Yet everyone she met had known the same dream, and the same awakening. Scout ships soon connected cities and brought news from afar. Technicians re-established the Urimet and new faces began broadcasting news and conjecture. What had caused the great storm? Was it an attack from Tiamet? Hadn’t their Urimet screens filled with Premier Enlil claiming presidency?
The memories had been elusive.
Could it have been Tiamet that had crashed into the Earth? What else could it be? But what could have shattered it to pieces? Upon seeing his world ravaged by Enlil’s missiles and fearing Earth lost in the flood, could King Anu have restrained himself in his fury and his grief? Might he not have summoned the Builder’s old teachings to spit Words of destruction at his captors? Had his great power been the doom of both worlds? In the absence of facts from this collective amnesia, fiction served as a balm for the Fae’er to make sense of their new circumstance.