7. Chimera Lore

Ull said, “I see by your eye movement that you can understand the ideographs of the Iatrocracy period. This is a fragment from a tome of instruction used, we theorize, by the Clades of the Black Sea area, called The Understanding of Dark Sentences, which alleged to gather the surviving tales from an even earlier period: but no record remains of the origin of the tale.”

Menelaus handed back the silk. “So what did the Judge of Ages say against the Witches?”

Ull said, “Is there no record of this legend among your people, Beta Anubis?”

Menelaus shrugged. “The Tombs were erected by some civilization or civilizations from before the fire, the Ecpyrosis that burned the world. There have been people from every era, either for medical reasons, or merely to escape the age they live in, who try to dig into the Tombs, copy the technology, and they have added to them and modified them, and help defend them. So there is layer after layer of accretion. No Chimerae from the time of the Social Wars knew where the Tombs came from, or cared much about stories about them. Some of the entrances were known locations with still-active weapon systems, and so we generally steered clear.”

Ull said, “But you are an academic, and you entered the Tombs.”

Menelaus said, “The level I entered was staffed by Chimera, part of Medical Command. There were antiques, people from older coffins, that I knew our top brass from time to time thawed out and consulted with at a high level, deciding policy. As best I knew, these were older Chimerae, from the Pre-Proscopalian Era. Republican times. We did not mess with them. Some of them still had living relatives running major cities, for one thing. We dealt with them like you would deal with a foreign power: We had official emissaries, and a strict code saying what was our jurisdiction, and what was Old Chimera jurisdiction, whose soil belonged to who. But the old-timers were not awaked except once every few decades, so Medical Command ran the levels open to us to suit ourselves.”

Ull said suspiciously, “And you heard no rumor from this older generation, who had built these Tombs?”

Menelaus said, “What? You think the Old Chimera thawed out the frozen Witches for a chat? We denied them recovery rights. If any of them woke up in our era, we sent them back down into the Tombs at gunpoint. But asking who built the Tombs? I mean, someone must have invented the firebow, or the wheel, or the stirrup, or domesticated the very first dog, but who knows his name?”

The Blue Men started to speak, but Menelaus raised his voice and spoke over them: “No more! Now it is time for me to ask questions. What the hell is your interest in all this? You gents cannot possibly expect me to believe you are engaged in a massive looting and Tomb-robbing expedition merely to satisfy some intellectual curiosity?”

8. Diffusion and Parallelism

Illiance said, “Mentor Ull believes there is a single founder to the Tombs, and his work was copied by many cultures through diffusion. I happen to support the theory that the various elements found at various sites are examples of parallel evolution.

“Since the ultralongterm-hibernation technology exists, and since the alleged founder (whether dead or in slumber) could not know nor prevent any person with the resources and inclination from using that technology to erect competing Tombs systems, if there were not forces herding the Tomb systems into parallel similarities, we would have many diverse Tombs, each with its unique architecture and technology—instead we have what seems a single, monolithic, worldwide system continuous and unchanged throughout history.”

Ull said, “The similarities are too statistically improbable to admit of such facile attempts at explanation. Locust records dating from after the beginning of mental-electronic history (which we take to be more reliable than written history or oral tradition), contains accounts of the horsemen of the pale horses who rise from the Tombs. They are seen to ride when plagues strike, or wars, or whenever there are many of the dying to gather. The two riders approach sickbeds and asylums, hospitals and temples housing the infirm, asking if any within have hope that the future will discover cures for their ills. Those who have no hope, they will not take. Accounts also say these knights act in the name of one same founder. In the lowest of levels, from the earliest of days, from the Second Age of Space, or the First Age, there is a sleeping figure whom it is death to disturb, a lord of the dead who sleeps surrounded by his knights.

“He is known by many names: Charlemagne, Karl or Kralj; Frederick Barbarossa or Finn McCool; Holger Danske, William Tell or Thomas the Rhymer or Rip Van Winkle; Brian Boru, Montrose, and Arthur; but it is always said that he will arise when the people have need of him, and deliver judgment against the age.

“If the age has forgotten the purpose of history, or the rulers have fallen into corruption, or if the people forget that an enemy comes from the stars of the Hyades to enslave the children of men at the End of Days, then the Judge of the Ages will overthrow the age and destroy their works, sparing only such children of theirs as vow to keep and remember the Year Foretold, and prepare against that day.”

“Spooky!” commented Menelaus. “My dam used to tell me that if I didn’t go to sleep on time, but stayed awake talking to my brothers, my voice would call the Red Indians down from the hills, because some still survived from the old days, and still kept their old ways. She told me how they could reach in the window without making any noise with their long, strong, terrible arms, and cut off the top of my head, hair and scalp and all, with their cold, stone tomahawks. When my brothers woke the next morning, I’d be dead, my brains slithered out over the pillow, my eyes as still and white as two peeled eggs, and my mouth hanging open in a scream that would never come. I can assure you, that tale gave me spiders in my belly! In hindsight, I think she just wanted me to hush up at lights-out. But, a tale to give you the willies, nonetheless.”

Mentor Ull, his face nonplussed, turned his head slowly and gazed at Preceptor Illiance. Both men, with furrowed brows, listened. Eventually Ull said ponderously, “I believe your mother’s tale was a fabrication, but I happen not to apprehend any immediate relevance to the discussion.”

Menelaus said, “No? My dam warned me there were those in the hills, old things, that might come down upon me if I called them to me. And you are meddling with something older and deadlier. If he was real, this Judge of Ages, and he has people to guard his burial grounds, what happened to them? Where are they? And what are they waiting for?”

Ull and Illiance rose gracefully to their feet.

Mentor Ull said, “That perhaps will be the first question to ask the relict. Shall we go above?”

Without a further word or gesture, the two Blue Men drifted up the ramp to the next level.

6

The Testament of Soorm the Hormagaunt

1. The Hormagaunt

There were three more dog things in the chamber on the next level above. Two were hunkered to one side, muskets in their paws, watching the prisoner and pricking up their ears with every movement.

Another dog thing, this one with the more intelligent face of a black Sheepdog, crouched on a stool at a table. Like the table in the chamber below, albeit larger, this table was a thin sheet of polished coral suspended from the ceiling. The Sheepdog was bent over what seemed to be a polygraph—the tracks and pulses of light from the glass plate atop the instrument corresponded to typical patterns of heartbeat, electroencephalogram, and galvanic skin response.