The King

CHAPTER 13

On the day following the great feast of Abrogastes, which is conjectured to have taken place on Ukuna III, a large assemblage of barbarians, and others, climbed to the height of a rude, natural feature known as the mountain of Kragon. There, on its stony summit, well above the tree line, on a great horizontal metal ring, hands laid upon it, a swearing took place, this done by rank after rank of individuals, approaching and withdrawing, which swearing, too, similarly and successively, was repeated, hands placed upon the shaft or blade of a great spear, it seeming to have some symbolic relevance among the Alemanni and certain other peoples, mostly allied or related.

We do not know precisely what was sworn, or what occurred, on that day in that place.

On the other hand, it seems clear that something of importance took place.

It was shortly thereafter, in that world’s spring, after the cessation of the astronomical anomaly of the “wind of stones” that the gates of better than a hundred thousand concealed hangars were slid upward and the great ships rolled forth.

The lions, as it was said, were awakening.

The name of the world, in the language of the Alemanni, seems to have been Ainesarixhaben, or a place where fires are kept. It may have been the home world of the Alemanni peoples.

It was also known, in other barbaric tongues, as Eineskmirgenlandes, a world, or country, of the morning, and Oron-Achvolonarei, the place where stone birds fly.

This was, in the reckoning of the empire, in the third year of the reign of the emperor, Aesilesius.