“They’re more important than Uralia?”
“Yes.”
“More important than Ugo’s expansion?”
Gill didn’t answer, but he bowed his head.
“Then everything’s lost!” she exclaimed while big drops of moisture burst out of her temples.
“Don’t say that,” he said, gently wiping the brown droplets off her cheek.
“Gill,” wailed Sandara, “you have to do something!”
“Everything is not lost. I’ll do what I can to help you,” he whispered, cuddling her tenderly in his arms. “Do not despair!”
“You’re right,” she said, smiling sadly while leaving his arms but still holding his right hand in a tight grip. “Your promise is more than enough for me. Come!”
As they reached the wall, he noticed it wasn’t glowing like a true fire. It emitted a cold, yet deadly radiation, chilling him to the bones. Most likely it would disconnect him if he tried to cross it without Sandara’s help.
When the female approached it, the fire moved away from her, creating a large opening. Beyond it, he saw a paved alley winding into the thicket of a lofty forest.
As soon as he stepped inside, the island’s sky became familiar. The barrier resembled the real wall that, until recently, had locked the frontier of the Antyran worlds. And just as Beramis stole the Antyrans’ starry heavens, the flames of Landolin hid the other sky islands, leaving only a diffuse glow to meet the eye. A few feeble clouds were floating under the fire dome, reflecting the iridescences of the fire sky.
Everything inside the dome looked different, even the trees being taller and lusher than the ones outside the wall. There was incredible biodiversity, if one may say that, keeping in mind the species were invented by an exuberant imagination.
Thick trees extended their branches toward him like monstrous claws while parasitic vines entwined their hungry arms around hollow, putrid trunks, in a futile attempt to keep them together. Or maybe they want to smother them? he asked himself, intrigued, as if the motives of some virtual vines in an invented forest were the most important aspects on which to focus his runaway thoughts.
The island was full of life—nothing like the black forest of the fetid swamps where Urdun had betrayed him—and yet, a hidden threat seemed to loom in the shadows of the canopy. He hurried his pace, eager to leave the darkness of the forest.
After a while, they reached the end of it. In front of them was a lake of unreal clarity, in the middle of which stood a castle. Gill thought he had become accustomed to the weirdness of the virtual world, yet the castle of the parhontes managed to surprise him again. The huge construction was built on a massive white rock crossed by red-purple veins, magically reflected in the water. As he looked closer, he realized that the castle was in fact a mountain. A mountain turned into a castle, red veins climbing greedy to the sky until they lustfully fused together on the last floor. The carving didn’t seem to be finished, outlining the feeling of massivity.
On the left side of the castle, there was a tower so high it almost reached the ceiling of the fire dome, thinning toward the tip. A spiral staircase coiled around it up to the top; its railing was made of sharp battlements flanked by grotesque creatures, carved from the same material.
The rest of the castle consisted of three tall floors floating one over another, held together by dozens of stone veins entwined chaotically and connected to the tower by three bridges made of floating stones. Each floor was taller than the one below and dotted with irregular ovoid terraces, also surrounded by battlements.
The last floor ended in a red dome made of disordered hemispheres of different sizes, adorned with countless spikes and white arches resembling the emaciated bones of a licant skeleton. Some of the arches formed bizarre buttresses, descending to the terraces below.
A warm breeze wrinkled the surface of the lake, which surrounded the bizarre castle from all sides except for a path carved in stone leading to the base of a huge buttress. The ovoid windows along it suggested it had an interior staircase going to the first floating floor.
The water was so clear he could see that the lake had no bottom. It didn’t have a bottom in the most literal way: his eyes could gaze through the transparent luster at the abyss below—and at the hideous planet of the living dead!
When they crossed the doorway of the massive gate carved into the rock of the buttress, the same suave voice that Gill had heard before asked them mentally, “What is your destination?”
“The endless dome,” Sandara replied aloud.
Without another word, they found themselves before a massive tekal door carved in the ancient style, reminding him of the perfectionist art of the fabled Mordavian carpenters before Zhan’s coming. But their path was blocked by two artificial intelligences identical to those who had escorted Sandara in Acanthia. This time the constructs were dressed in blue tunics, and the text written in red ink on their asymmetrical right shoulder said, “Property of the Parhontes Council.”
Although Sandara, determined, walked toward them, they didn’t seem willing to move out of her way. The female gazed around the hall and the nearby terraces, looking for something or someone, and then she asked them, “Where’s Ugo? Ugoriksom?”
“Inside,” the AI on her right answered bluntly.
“Inside! Who gave him the right to step in the council’s circle?”
“The order of the prim-parhonte, Forbat.”
“Forbat allowed him to enter?” she exclaimed, astonished. “Call Forbat outside. I want to talk to him. This is an emergency!”
“Wait for the end of the council.”
“I won’t wait for anything. Move out of my way!” she ordered with the notorious impulsivity of the grahs.
“Stop right there!” the AIs exclaimed and took a step toward her in a menacing way.
“Don’t you understand? I have to speak with him!” she shouted. “Tell him I’m here. Now!”
The AI touched his hearing alveoli.
“Forbat orders you to wait,” the imperturbable answer came a few moments later.
Sandara turned to Gill.
“I’m afraid things are out of our control…”
“As if they ever were under our control,” he grumbled. “What do we do now?”
“Wait. What else?” She sighed, dispirited by the turn of events.
They took a seat on a stone stair close to the council’s door, which led to one of the many terraces dotting the first level of the castle. Sitting so still, his kyi emptied of essence, he began to hear—or rather, perceive—the distant noise of anxiety gradually increasing like a titanic avalanche on the slopes of Eger, starting with a whisper and finishing with an end-of-the-world thunder. “Zhan left us the pledge of hunger,” he thought, surprising himself by invoking the nurture ritual from the Book of Creation Inrumiral, “and this makes us the keepers of His creatures, predators over predators. For he who eats them all won’t feel any fear, save of the Father’s voice.” That’s why the tarjis didn’t know what fear was; that’s why they were so willing to die for their god. “To soothe the moulan,” “to quench the moulan’s fear,” they used to say when they intended to ritually sacrifice one of their beasts of burden. And after the dangerous execution, they exclaimed: “Thank You, Zhan, for the gift of meat. The fear is slain!”
Although he didn’t serve Zhan—or rather, he no longer served him—he couldn’t deny the strength of the pledge that kept the tarjis under the will of the prophet. Yet, his hunger was deeper still—the hunger for life of the Sigians—and it was growing, turning him into a predator who couldn’t be tarnished by the demeaning touch of anxiety…
Gill drank avidly from the serenity of the bottomless lake surrounding the castle, allowing his kyi to wander around the fluffy clouds floating aimlessly on the scented sky. He imagined the islands hidden from view—so serene and carefree—where bixanids in trance, some perhaps dying without knowing it—were fighting ritual fights to become champions, immune to the turmoil happening across the door of the council. Maybe not immune—Baila’s vicious assault must have shattered the tranquility of the avatars, except, of course, the memoryless dead. Surely at least some of them suspected that terrible things would follow after their crushing victory… especially since the temples had captured the Shindam’s nuclear stockpile…