Lady Erzsebet
03-04-2007, 21:49
Prologue:
Nergios Cant was an unimpressive place. Unimpressive star system, unimpressive planet. Only one planet of Nergios Cant was populated. Its inhabitants literally lived in glass houses. Vast, kilometre wide glass citadels covered their cities and pastures. The earliest had been simple geodesic domes, but as the world’s population had swollen to its current fifth of a billion, it had gone through various phases of ‘dome’ design.
The capital of the world, I-myrrh Cant, was a vast citadel of glass, octagonal in its design, with cunningly crafted staining that gave it a blue texture that seemed to soothe its inhabitants. An administrative city, in a world where the slightest disorder could bring utter death to millions, it boasted ornate gardens within its walls, patrolled by white-garbed guards and inhabited by four million functionaries who dwelt in humble but beautiful crystal houses in glades of woodland inhabited by countless beautiful and exuberantly colourful birds.
I-myrrh Cant was also the home of the supreme ruler of the atmosphere-less world, The Child Matriarch of the house of Cant. She was said to be the most beautiful of the rulers that there had been on that world, the most beautiful of women. She was nineteen years in earth terms, but a mere three of her world’s rotations around its wan star. Raven black hair hung from her garlanded head, and dark, sultry eyes surveyed the scene before her with a jaded resignation.
Soon, she would be replaced with the fairest child in the world, and she would ascend to the Council of Counsellors, a shockingly unoriginal title for the real power in the world, the circle of crones who between their magics and wiles ruled the world, and used her absolute authority to give themselves true power.
But then, she would be the junior-most member of that council. When she was perhaps eighty, wizened and greyed, she could expect to wield the power she owned in theory in practice at last.
It was said that the Matriarch was chosen for skills in magic, but she had never seen such a thing in action. She’d asked, and been told that she would begin to learn when she ascended to the circle.
She sighed, looking at the party before her. Dancing, revelling and partying. How boring, and sterile it all was. Often she longed to be common, she’d been born as such, but she couldn’t remember her life before selection, so she had no conception of the grinding sameness that dominated the lives of commoners too.
She detested the gilded cage.
She had no conception that it was to keep reality out.
And no one knew that it was about to fall in upon them. And so they danced and gossiped and delighted in their safety, in their world of glass.
*********
Chapter One:
Wherein the Bird flies the nest
Erzsebet Dar Maranthii, it wasn’t even her real name, of course, she was the third child matriarch to bear that name, she didn’t know what her real name was, looked past the glass wall of the garden and out to the blue tinted wasteland beyond, fidgeting absentmindedly with the gold thread dress she wore, and trying to ignore the always uncomfortable weight of the vast headdress that dominated and oppressed her hair, crushing it down to her skull.
She was drawn here, now and then, to look over the lip of a vast crater that seemed to personalise the mysteries that she needed to explore. It called, and haunted her dreams, as destiny called upon her.
A man stood outside, apparently oblivious to her. He looked like nothing she’d seen before. Thick, and made of rigid plates, like the mesh armour of her guards, she couldn’t tell if he was man or monster, and so she stood, agape and enchanted, staring at him. Then she realised with a start that it was a man in a space suit, something she’d merely heard of before. This realisation made it no less interesting.
One of her handmaidens, or as she’d come to think of them, handlermaidens, women close to the circle of crones, came through the undergrowth, looking disturbed. “My lady…”
“Go away,” she said, urgently. Erzsebet had come to realise what happened to those who seemed to pollute her carefully moulded views. “Go away right now!” she said, and stamped her foot.
“But I am…”
“I don’t need a chaperone! Go! Now!”
The old woman smiled knowingly; and Erzsebet realised with a start why this worked. The more childishly she behaved, the less they worried about her developing a mind of her own. Bitches. Her handler retreated, smirking knowingly, having seen what she wanted to see.
She looked out at the man, again, and he seemed to have seen her. He was handsome, after a fashion, and she wondered if he knew who she was. He stared at her from a transparent visor, all ruggedly cut sandy brown hair, and blue eyes. He was working at something, some kind of tube that ran away into the hills, and she felt her heart beat faster, an urge to do something… anything… growing.
It came unbidden, she raised her hand, and pressed it to the chill glass, then drew it back in surprise. Why’s it so cold? she thought.
He laughed, she saw, and she laughed to. No doubt he’d know. She resolved to ask him.
Sam, his name was. Samul Sid Jasn.
She stole away every day to his arms, and together they dreamt of the day, not far off now, when she would become one of the Counsellors, and be permitted to go about and do as she liked. He lived in one of the less salubrious districts of the capital, his job was to maintain the pipes that carried water from stations far away to the capital, where it was cracked into oxygen, and hydrogen for fusion reactors, using the vast solar arrays that glimmered and sparkled beyond the city.
All this and more she learnt from her escape with her love, but, as she was to learn, nothing truly lasted, and hopes were never fulfilled.
She sighed thinking on the things she’d asked him, and thinking of the answers he gave. Her search for knowledge of everything beyond her own life had long ago exhausted his own knowledge, and now much of his free time was spent asking foremen and specialists about their work. Those he asked, depending on their own temperaments, saw his growing curiosity as something between eagerness and an irritant.
“Open up!” came the cry, she remembered it as harsh and guttural, but that was perhaps just a trick of memory. “What?” Sam cried.
They simply kicked the door down. She tried to hide. But there was no chance. Guards that had, for her entire memory, seemed nothing more than ornaments, grasped her, hit him, and took her.
Erzsebet never saw him again. She heard, when she asked, that he had been ‘transferred for special training’ but she knew, perhaps it was by witchery, that he was dead, and a part of her died with him.
And she pledged that now, she would never become like them. Never join them. She would go beyond, for all she had left now was the call of destiny that she felt more and more with each passing day.
Erzsebet found that sneaking out wasn’t anywhere near as difficult as she had imagined. She’d learnt enough to know how space suits and airlocks and even the thrusters packs that were used – apparently the gravity on Nergios Cant was low, but it had never felt that way to her.
So she flew, unnoticed at first, and then cursed at for stealing a valuable suit, thought only as some deranged fool who wanted to go off and die. But no weapons in the world would harm her now, and she laughed with childish exhilaration as the suit turned her steps into bounds of a hundred feet or more, taking her to the place she had desired for so long and for no reason she could understand.
Alarms shrieked at her, and she fell, like an angel bereft of wings, hurtling to the ground. Yet her suit was well made, and without fuel to explode, though the alarms continued to yowl, it was difficult to tell what the problem was. She found herself on the ground, and knew intellectually that she was losing air, but it didn’t seem to matter. She felt more alive than ever before, every bone in her body seemed to resonate with thrilling energy, beyond even that which the flight itself had given her.
She drew near to whatever it was that she knew she must find.
Struggling to push herself to her feet, Erzsebet stumbled across the barren land, and the urge took her to turn back, but somehow she knew that she couldn’t, for if she looked back, she would want to go back, and she would surely die. Onwards.
Onwards.
Onwards she went, stumbling and almost crawling, as her eyes began to tear despite her joy, and her throat began to rasp. Her chest heaved and burned in over-large armour, and then she saw it. Nothing but a gap in the rock awaited her.
She wanted to look back but could not, her will overcame her desire, but she did not know why.
She came at last to the cave. Every moment in her life so far, tantrums and toils and thrills and terrors faded into insignificance as she saw death. The bones sparkled blue in the light that emanated from beyond them, but most of them were piled on the floor anyway, in sapphire, black and red cloth. But the upper half of the skull leered at her, glowing, pinpoints seeming to stir in her eyes as she looked at it, pinned to the wall of the small cave by the tapering sword that had killed those bones’ owner. It was indescribably beautiful to her, though on some level she felt utter revulsion at it.
She reached out to touch it, to caress its handle, twisted and leering covered in carvings of tiny scales. As her fingers brushed it, air gushed into her lungs, and she felt strong again. She drew back, and the burning heaving began again. She grasped it with both hands, and pulled. The suit didn’t help, merely hindered her, but slowly, she saw dust fall. And she knew that while she held it she would be safe.
Very good…
“What?” she said, staring about in alarm, wondering who had followed her.
I said, very good. You are a fast learner.
“Who… Show yourself…”
I am showing myself now. I called you here that I might do so. You hold me…
She drew her hands back and stared at the sword. It was ugly and yet alluring, but it didn’t seem to be obviously able to talk.
I CAN speak. And I can do this too…
It shot from the wall and into her hand, which snapped around its hilt.
But you need not fear me, child. I want nothing but the fulfilment of all your desires. And I can show the means to them unto you, if you will go where I lead.
“What are you?”
I am an unwilling artifice of the degenerate descendants of the most ancient of races – does the answer interest you? Does it please you?
“Yes…” she said, quietly.
While I am with you, you do not need that clumsy armour. Remove it, take the sword-belt, and take me beyond, and I shall take you and show you all that you desire.
“Yes…” Erzsebet whispered again, looking around, finding the bejewelled belt, one that would fit her, and slowly pushing the remnants of the skull from the sword. The remains began to crumble away, and she grasped the scabbard tightly, looking at it.
It was beautiful, and dominated by an eight-pointed star symbol made of arrows, repeated on either side, up and down its tapering length. She began, in the cold vacuum, accompanied by a jet of water-ice crystals, to remove her suit, and found that she was neither cold, nor hot, not starved of air.
Be careful to hold me until we are through the portal, else you will surely die…
The blade cautioned her. It was protective, but not controlling, somehow, and she found herself feeling love for it, already.
She went beyond her world…
Nergios Cant was an unimpressive place. Unimpressive star system, unimpressive planet. Only one planet of Nergios Cant was populated. Its inhabitants literally lived in glass houses. Vast, kilometre wide glass citadels covered their cities and pastures. The earliest had been simple geodesic domes, but as the world’s population had swollen to its current fifth of a billion, it had gone through various phases of ‘dome’ design.
The capital of the world, I-myrrh Cant, was a vast citadel of glass, octagonal in its design, with cunningly crafted staining that gave it a blue texture that seemed to soothe its inhabitants. An administrative city, in a world where the slightest disorder could bring utter death to millions, it boasted ornate gardens within its walls, patrolled by white-garbed guards and inhabited by four million functionaries who dwelt in humble but beautiful crystal houses in glades of woodland inhabited by countless beautiful and exuberantly colourful birds.
I-myrrh Cant was also the home of the supreme ruler of the atmosphere-less world, The Child Matriarch of the house of Cant. She was said to be the most beautiful of the rulers that there had been on that world, the most beautiful of women. She was nineteen years in earth terms, but a mere three of her world’s rotations around its wan star. Raven black hair hung from her garlanded head, and dark, sultry eyes surveyed the scene before her with a jaded resignation.
Soon, she would be replaced with the fairest child in the world, and she would ascend to the Council of Counsellors, a shockingly unoriginal title for the real power in the world, the circle of crones who between their magics and wiles ruled the world, and used her absolute authority to give themselves true power.
But then, she would be the junior-most member of that council. When she was perhaps eighty, wizened and greyed, she could expect to wield the power she owned in theory in practice at last.
It was said that the Matriarch was chosen for skills in magic, but she had never seen such a thing in action. She’d asked, and been told that she would begin to learn when she ascended to the circle.
She sighed, looking at the party before her. Dancing, revelling and partying. How boring, and sterile it all was. Often she longed to be common, she’d been born as such, but she couldn’t remember her life before selection, so she had no conception of the grinding sameness that dominated the lives of commoners too.
She detested the gilded cage.
She had no conception that it was to keep reality out.
And no one knew that it was about to fall in upon them. And so they danced and gossiped and delighted in their safety, in their world of glass.
*********
Chapter One:
Wherein the Bird flies the nest
Erzsebet Dar Maranthii, it wasn’t even her real name, of course, she was the third child matriarch to bear that name, she didn’t know what her real name was, looked past the glass wall of the garden and out to the blue tinted wasteland beyond, fidgeting absentmindedly with the gold thread dress she wore, and trying to ignore the always uncomfortable weight of the vast headdress that dominated and oppressed her hair, crushing it down to her skull.
She was drawn here, now and then, to look over the lip of a vast crater that seemed to personalise the mysteries that she needed to explore. It called, and haunted her dreams, as destiny called upon her.
A man stood outside, apparently oblivious to her. He looked like nothing she’d seen before. Thick, and made of rigid plates, like the mesh armour of her guards, she couldn’t tell if he was man or monster, and so she stood, agape and enchanted, staring at him. Then she realised with a start that it was a man in a space suit, something she’d merely heard of before. This realisation made it no less interesting.
One of her handmaidens, or as she’d come to think of them, handlermaidens, women close to the circle of crones, came through the undergrowth, looking disturbed. “My lady…”
“Go away,” she said, urgently. Erzsebet had come to realise what happened to those who seemed to pollute her carefully moulded views. “Go away right now!” she said, and stamped her foot.
“But I am…”
“I don’t need a chaperone! Go! Now!”
The old woman smiled knowingly; and Erzsebet realised with a start why this worked. The more childishly she behaved, the less they worried about her developing a mind of her own. Bitches. Her handler retreated, smirking knowingly, having seen what she wanted to see.
She looked out at the man, again, and he seemed to have seen her. He was handsome, after a fashion, and she wondered if he knew who she was. He stared at her from a transparent visor, all ruggedly cut sandy brown hair, and blue eyes. He was working at something, some kind of tube that ran away into the hills, and she felt her heart beat faster, an urge to do something… anything… growing.
It came unbidden, she raised her hand, and pressed it to the chill glass, then drew it back in surprise. Why’s it so cold? she thought.
He laughed, she saw, and she laughed to. No doubt he’d know. She resolved to ask him.
Sam, his name was. Samul Sid Jasn.
She stole away every day to his arms, and together they dreamt of the day, not far off now, when she would become one of the Counsellors, and be permitted to go about and do as she liked. He lived in one of the less salubrious districts of the capital, his job was to maintain the pipes that carried water from stations far away to the capital, where it was cracked into oxygen, and hydrogen for fusion reactors, using the vast solar arrays that glimmered and sparkled beyond the city.
All this and more she learnt from her escape with her love, but, as she was to learn, nothing truly lasted, and hopes were never fulfilled.
She sighed thinking on the things she’d asked him, and thinking of the answers he gave. Her search for knowledge of everything beyond her own life had long ago exhausted his own knowledge, and now much of his free time was spent asking foremen and specialists about their work. Those he asked, depending on their own temperaments, saw his growing curiosity as something between eagerness and an irritant.
“Open up!” came the cry, she remembered it as harsh and guttural, but that was perhaps just a trick of memory. “What?” Sam cried.
They simply kicked the door down. She tried to hide. But there was no chance. Guards that had, for her entire memory, seemed nothing more than ornaments, grasped her, hit him, and took her.
Erzsebet never saw him again. She heard, when she asked, that he had been ‘transferred for special training’ but she knew, perhaps it was by witchery, that he was dead, and a part of her died with him.
And she pledged that now, she would never become like them. Never join them. She would go beyond, for all she had left now was the call of destiny that she felt more and more with each passing day.
Erzsebet found that sneaking out wasn’t anywhere near as difficult as she had imagined. She’d learnt enough to know how space suits and airlocks and even the thrusters packs that were used – apparently the gravity on Nergios Cant was low, but it had never felt that way to her.
So she flew, unnoticed at first, and then cursed at for stealing a valuable suit, thought only as some deranged fool who wanted to go off and die. But no weapons in the world would harm her now, and she laughed with childish exhilaration as the suit turned her steps into bounds of a hundred feet or more, taking her to the place she had desired for so long and for no reason she could understand.
Alarms shrieked at her, and she fell, like an angel bereft of wings, hurtling to the ground. Yet her suit was well made, and without fuel to explode, though the alarms continued to yowl, it was difficult to tell what the problem was. She found herself on the ground, and knew intellectually that she was losing air, but it didn’t seem to matter. She felt more alive than ever before, every bone in her body seemed to resonate with thrilling energy, beyond even that which the flight itself had given her.
She drew near to whatever it was that she knew she must find.
Struggling to push herself to her feet, Erzsebet stumbled across the barren land, and the urge took her to turn back, but somehow she knew that she couldn’t, for if she looked back, she would want to go back, and she would surely die. Onwards.
Onwards.
Onwards she went, stumbling and almost crawling, as her eyes began to tear despite her joy, and her throat began to rasp. Her chest heaved and burned in over-large armour, and then she saw it. Nothing but a gap in the rock awaited her.
She wanted to look back but could not, her will overcame her desire, but she did not know why.
She came at last to the cave. Every moment in her life so far, tantrums and toils and thrills and terrors faded into insignificance as she saw death. The bones sparkled blue in the light that emanated from beyond them, but most of them were piled on the floor anyway, in sapphire, black and red cloth. But the upper half of the skull leered at her, glowing, pinpoints seeming to stir in her eyes as she looked at it, pinned to the wall of the small cave by the tapering sword that had killed those bones’ owner. It was indescribably beautiful to her, though on some level she felt utter revulsion at it.
She reached out to touch it, to caress its handle, twisted and leering covered in carvings of tiny scales. As her fingers brushed it, air gushed into her lungs, and she felt strong again. She drew back, and the burning heaving began again. She grasped it with both hands, and pulled. The suit didn’t help, merely hindered her, but slowly, she saw dust fall. And she knew that while she held it she would be safe.
Very good…
“What?” she said, staring about in alarm, wondering who had followed her.
I said, very good. You are a fast learner.
“Who… Show yourself…”
I am showing myself now. I called you here that I might do so. You hold me…
She drew her hands back and stared at the sword. It was ugly and yet alluring, but it didn’t seem to be obviously able to talk.
I CAN speak. And I can do this too…
It shot from the wall and into her hand, which snapped around its hilt.
But you need not fear me, child. I want nothing but the fulfilment of all your desires. And I can show the means to them unto you, if you will go where I lead.
“What are you?”
I am an unwilling artifice of the degenerate descendants of the most ancient of races – does the answer interest you? Does it please you?
“Yes…” she said, quietly.
While I am with you, you do not need that clumsy armour. Remove it, take the sword-belt, and take me beyond, and I shall take you and show you all that you desire.
“Yes…” Erzsebet whispered again, looking around, finding the bejewelled belt, one that would fit her, and slowly pushing the remnants of the skull from the sword. The remains began to crumble away, and she grasped the scabbard tightly, looking at it.
It was beautiful, and dominated by an eight-pointed star symbol made of arrows, repeated on either side, up and down its tapering length. She began, in the cold vacuum, accompanied by a jet of water-ice crystals, to remove her suit, and found that she was neither cold, nor hot, not starved of air.
Be careful to hold me until we are through the portal, else you will surely die…
The blade cautioned her. It was protective, but not controlling, somehow, and she found herself feeling love for it, already.
She went beyond her world…