The Star Magicians

14. THE FUTURE-FLAME

UNBIDDEN, THE OLD MAGISTER stepped forward to stand before the great cliff of emerald that was Her throne. The frail, aged and nearly naked little man with his silvery beard and long metal staff formed a weird contrast with the green-skinned Titaness, robed in Her superhuman majesty and might … yet, vastly different as the two were to the eye, there was a kind of sympathy, a union, between them. Somehow, in supraphysical ways, they were akin—akin in the calm poise and certainty of the magical forces over which they both held mastery.

She regarded him meditatively for a long interval; then Her darkling gaze strayed to Calastor and Lurn. She smiled.

“You please Me, girl. You have done well—far better, indeed, than I could have hoped.”

From the shelter of Calastor’s arm, Lurn said faintly, “It seems to me that I have failed You in everything, Mistress, which I was appointed to perform.”

“Nonsense! While you served at Drask’s court, I was able to see and to hear—and to form very precise estimates of the three men who have recently received their punishments. And Drask’s discovery of you—together with your subsequent escape, at the hands of this youth—were unplanned events, but proved excellent psychological weapons in My plan to break down the morale of the Rovers, and of Drask himself.” She met Calastor’s quizzical look with a half-smile. “Yes, young wizard, I too was working according to the scheme of Parlion.”

Drawing Herself up fully, She said to the old Magister: “You see, Pallikrates of Parlion, I too, in my way, serve The Light.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

“Seven billion years ago, when this three-dimensional Universe of yours, this tiny segment of the Full Plenum, was created, I was exiled to this plane of existence by Those who dwell beyond, the Ones of Power, the Gods of Infinite Time, to Whose ranks I belong. My—crime—was that of the Warlord Drask, in a way. Those over whose destinies I was set as Regent suffered from My neglect, from my—casual indifference. Hither was I sent, to spend eons in your little Cosmos until such time as, of Myself, I should learn what My crime had been. For My punishment was—that I should punish Myself. Like Drask, like Tonguth, I must discover My conscience. Know, mortals, that when the Gods are punished, they must punish—themselves!”

Her gaze brooded unseeingly far above their heads, staring into dim remoteness.

“My prison, then, is this Universe of yours, which to your small and limited senses seems so rich in marvel and in variety. Conceive, if you can, the suffering of a God deprived for eons beyond number the joys of associating with an equal! And here must I remain, until such time as They who opened the interdimensional gates and placed Me here consider that I have sufficiently expiated My sins, and return to bring Me once again into the mighty spaces and among the stupendous cities where I shall find My home at last… .”

Her voice seemed to Calastor infinitely weary, and infinitely sad. So might Prometheus speak, bearing the pangs of eternal torment, chained on Caucasus, for the crime of aiding men against the will of the Gods … or clever, mischievous Loki, bound for ages beneath the slow drip of searing venom.

“I know now,” She continued, in tones that rang soft and clear with serene music, the note of sorrow gone, “that My way of redemption is to assist your little races. And thus I have watched the millenia pass … the great Carina Empire rise and fall … and of My wisdom I know a second Empire must come.”

Suddenly She rose lithely to Her full height, stepping down from Her great emerald chair, gesturing.

“Come!”

Niamh moved into the shadowy depths of the enormous hall, and they followed behind. Looming some sixteen feet above them in the dim green light that was like that of the sea-bottom, she seemed some mysterious tritoness or gigantic Nereid of the deeps, into whose weird underwater palace of enchantment they had chanced.

She paused at the brink of a tremendous well whose inky shaft fell without break as far as the eye could see … down … down … as if it yawned to the very center of this magic world.

The lip of this well was a curve of milky jade, seemingly of one piece, for the eye could discern no mark of jointure. Yet imagination shrank from conceiving a boulder of jade rock so huge as to yield to the sculptor a ring of such enormity. Measuring the well’s mouth with a dazed eye, Calastor knew that his spaceship could pass into the ebon shaft without touching the sides!

Now She stamped her great foot commandingly, and at that moment a dim, distant light bloomed in the depths, casting a vague haze about them. This green radiance increased in its intensity, as if a mass of luminous matter were silently and at enormous speed rushing up the well-shaft.

Flame!

From the huge curved jade mouth of the well a mighty banner of flame burst!

A lambent, cold phosphorescence it was, glowing and vibrant, an undulating nimbus of weird, chartreuse light … and as they stared, entranced, into the quivering depths of the green flame, pictures formed! Visions rose before them.

They caught a whirling, kaleidoscopic view of the Empire at its superb zenith, the fabulous splendor of the Imperial Court, the wealth and grandeur of the mighty Capital, the city that had blanketed the entire surface of a planet with a magnificent crown of white spires and palaces.

They watched the high noon of Carina-Cygnus fade, the richly glowing colors tarnish, the Imperial panoply and pomp become worn and tattered.

And they watched it fall… .

“You see, Pallikrates of Parlion, I have no need of your curious future-predicting science, historiodynamics. I have My own means of reading the form and direction of things to come!”

In the shimmering tapestry of chartreuse phosphorescence, new visions took shape: they watched as the nomad fleets of the Star Rovers passed like a spark carried by the wind from world to world, touching planets to flame as they passed.

“I could not save the Old Empire, no more than could you,” the Green Goddess said. “For it had outlived its time. The pith and vigor was gone from it, and, like a once-mighty oak blighted by centuries into a withered husk, it was only good to feed the flames. But, although the Old Empire must pass … if civilization is to flourish within this Galaxy, room must be made for a New Empire to rise. And, like a tender seedling that shall someday, with the nourishing years, rise to rival the mighty fallen oak, it must be carefully nurtured and warded from harm.”

Within the flame, a small minor star glowed into being. It flashed towards them, until the minute blue crescent of a verdant planet could be seen, swinging in slow orbit about the star. By Calastor’s side, Lurn stiffened strangely.

“Like you Adepts of Parlion, I, too, chose this world as the most promising Nucleus about which the Empire of the Future should grow. All factors of socio-economics, all of a million and one currents of change and history weighed in the balance, told Me that this world and none other must be the center of its coming age.”

Her great eyes smiled down at Lurn’s pale face.

“Chance played into my hands, for lo! the Heiress of the Nucleus-world came hither to join My Order. And her genes bear the peculiar balance of wit and talent I deem most needful for the future Imperial Line.”

“Now—by all the gods of Time!” Calastor roared in complete astonishment.

Lurn smiled timorously.

“I … told you I had fled from an … unwelcome marriage, forced upon me by my House,” she said in a halting voice.

Calastor swore. ‘True. True! But you didn’t tell me, girl, that you were the Princess of your planet!”

Her huge purple eyes, dimmed and moist, fell and a faint flush stained her cheeks.

“N-no … I didn’t dare,” she confessed in a low voice.

“That was why you started and seemed almost to speak, back there in the Wolfhound, on our way to Xulthoom, when I showed you the next world at which the Barbarians planned to strike—and told you why it was so important to us!” he went on.

She nodded.

“Well, I am damned. By the Thirsty Spears of Thaxis—of all the lovely girls in the Galaxy, I have to fall in love with the mother of the New Empire!”

“W-would you say that again?” she whispered, lifting her eyes to his.

He flushed angrily. “Certainly. I have fallen in love with you—Empress!”

She said nothing, but … her face was very close to his … and her warm, soft lips were slightly parted … and there seemed no reason why he should not kiss her … at least just this once, for the first time, even though it might be the last.

He did.

After a while, he lifted his face and saw that the Goddess was watching him with amusement.

“Do you have any scruples, youth, about marriage with an Empress?” She asked. He shook his head.

“Not really.”

“Good. For the genes you bear are needed to compliment those of the Lady Lurn. The both of you superbly healthy young animals are the penultimate fruits of a very long and exacting plan of selective breeding. Your children and your children’s children will make splendid monarchs, men and women of magnificent will and stature and intelligence that will frequently be labeled genius.”

Calastor looked from Her amused face, to see much the same expression on the old-yet-young face of the Magister.

“I take it this has all been arranged, then?” he asked, with just a flash of Perion’s impudence.

“In a manner of speaking … yes, child,” Pallikrates said quietly. “But not by we two, precisely. Say it was—your destiny.”

“Well,” Calastor said finally, his arm about Lurn’s soft shoulders, casting a bemused glance at the mighty face of Niamh, “we can tell our children this was certainly one marriage that was made in Heaven. Or at least, a Goddess had a hand in it!”