Knight of Wands. Solar Heroes. Riddick's Past.
Riddick stalked into the healer's office; the one who'd recruited him, without knocking. At nineteen, he was already enormous; arrogant; powerful. She was reading, curled up on her couch. He flopped bonelessly down beside her.
"Why me?" he asked without preamble, his eyes hard on hers.
The healer laid the reader aside with a sigh. "Because you have something we need. We have something you need." She hesitated, eyed him carefully. "Because you have the capacity to be a hero." His eyes started to roll back. Baby steps, she thought. Too far, too fast.
Or maybe not. Not enough people had been honest with him. She looked him full in the face. "The evil that was done to you was done to keep you from your destiny. To make you weak.
"There's a war coming. We're training you – training all of you – to stand at the threshold between light and dark. The missions you've been on – the missions you will go on, if you stay – are preparing you to fight this war. To save the universe."
"Why should I care?"
"Right now? You probably can't. You are . . . stunted."
His eye brow quirked. "I'm still growing," he rumbled, suggestively.
A smile tugged at her lips. "Yes, you are. But there are . . . patterns people fit in. If you'd not been – if things had gone right – you would have had a loving family you cared about, that you wanted to make happy. You would have had childhood friends to impress. You would have wanted to liked by your peer group, by future girlfriends or boyfriends, by some community. By this time in your life, you would have accepted your ethical obligations, you would have had a commitment to protect and serve your people. You would want to fight this coming war.
"But things didn't go right. There's a piece they took from you that you may never get back. We're trying to . . . heal the wound. Help you be human. Help you make good decisions, when the time comes."
"But won't I be a better killer without those . . ." he leaned forward, intrusively, licked his lips "pieces?"
She gave him a sharp look. He was getting terribly good at the psychology of intimidation. It was unsettling to feel the pressure of his will against hers. "Maybe. But some day, you'll have to decide who to kill, who to save. If you don't understand, you can't do that. If you aren't the one making the ethical choices, then you are just a pawn; just a blade in someone else's hand."
"So, he asked," even more slowly than usual, "whose pawn am I now?"
Uh oh, she thought. You're smarter than I give you credit for. "Right now? You belong to the Empress, just like me." Just like the Hanged Man, dying on the tree, she thought. "You stand behind her, dealing death in her name." Some day, you'll be the lightning that will destroy the tower, she thought. "Some day, if you live that long, you'll become who you are, will decide what to serve."
"What if I don't want to serve?"
"Everyone serves. Most people serve trivial masters. Part of self mastery is choosing what to serve."
They sat in silence. Finally, she touched his face. "You aren't as bad as you think, you know. You know you've never killed a child?"
He blinked, considered that. "Never wanted to."
"Exactly. Not all of your colleagues can say that. I can't say that."
He blinked at that for a moment. "What?"
"We were all innocent victims, once upon a time," she said softly. It made him uncomfortable.
"There was a child. Sweet, innocent. But we ran the story forward, and she was going to grow up to be the cause of billions of deaths. In my prior life . . ." she hesitated. "In my prior life, that calculus made sense. She died quick."
He thought a long time about that.
But he never got a chance to find out who they wanted him to be. It had all gone wrong. The empress was assassinated, and with her, her projects. His unit was hastily disbanded. He'd been sent away to some chilly outpost, an ill-omened needle casting red shadows against the white snow, with one other team member. He liked her in an off handed way. Didn't buzz. Didn't fight the assumption that they were together. Seemed to serve a purpose. Place wasn't fun, but they endured. Waiting for the call.
Or rather, endured until the day she died. Killed by their own unit. Raped and killed and ripped to shreds while he was on patrol. They'd found out she was once part of Kali's Hand; the old dead Empress's favorites.
He'd killed everyone she hadn't, of course. Stole a warship, blew up the base. For a moment before it collapsed, the needle was transformed into a burning wicker cage crammed with bodies. He drifted into madness, killed too many people. Killed easily.
Heard a rumor that the officers had all been tortured to death for refusing to cooperate with the new order.
Snatches of sanity began to return with dreams of a woman in a graveyard, telling him he had a destiny. He didn't believe.
But he started liking people again, some people. Sometimes.
The Sun and the Fool.
Nearly two years on New Mecca, and Kyra's life had at last fallen into a comfortable pattern. Academic classes slanted towards engineering and psychology. Non-academic classes slanted towards "self defense" classes – some of them proactive in approach. Her coaches often remarked how unusually strong she was; enough that she started holding back in front of them; saving the truly hard work outs for private places. The same places she practiced the moves she wasn't supposed to know.
She stayed away from the Imam's house as much as possible. Didn't make a big deal about it. It was always open for her to eat, bathe, and sleep. She was grateful. When she was there, she stayed mostly in her room. With a public zoo essentially across the street, she had someplace else to go. Usually by the wolf pack.
They fascinated her. Unlike most of the animals, they were not completely enmeshed in a virtual reality world. They also had a window through which to look at people; to see what they were smelling. Like her.
They recognized her after two years, she thought. Some of them actually got excited when she came.
There were no bars, of course. Just energy fields. One day, one of the fields went out, and with it, one of the wolves. She was studying near by.
Screaming. Panic. A child crying. Kyra pulled herself away from the abnormal psychology book in time to see one of the wolves loping towards a child.
Without thinking about it, she dove in between. "Go!" she hissed at the child, who seemed paralyzed. She and the wolf eyed each other. Driven by some instinct she didn't understand, she rolled her shoulders, got in its face, not making eye contact.
It essentially did the same. They danced for a while as people panicked around them, locked in their own world, getting closer and closer.
Finally, to her distant astonishment, the wolf rolled over, making small barking noises. She rubbed its belly as it wriggled ecstatically. She laughed, and it seemed to be laughing with her.
Then a shot ran out, and the light in the wolf's eyes dimmed. She stumbled back, feeling like she'd betrayed a dear friend. Even after she found it was only a tranquilizer, she felt sick. She couldn't bear to go back for a long time.
Being hailed as a hero for it was a mixed blessing. Especially as Kyra was growing into a beautiful woman with a fascinating past.
The High Priestess.
The former healer pinched her brow, hard. She'd been fighting the future, hard, for most of her life. So long that she couldn't remember the why she hated the most likely futures. She distantly wondered if she wasn't on the wrong side of history. So many of her friends had died in this fight.
Immortality was no small gift. And she was fighting it.
No small cost either. Billions of years ago, life emerged from the muck, started down the trouser leg of history of evolution and progress. To allow multifoliate forms to arise, old forms must pass, die, be no more. Death – the old death -- was the price for change, for life as we have known it.
The Necromongers offered a different choice, they thought. World without end. Immortality. No dying. No change. A gift they offered freely to everyone.
She'd fought the giving of this gift with all her might ever since the Empress tapped her on the shoulder; given her the call. She'd thrown good men and women against the blood dimmed tide; saw most of them die. All willing sacrifices, thus far. Some bought time. Most just died.
Sometimes she longed to stop fighting, lie back, let it happen. Let the dance of life and death end; let this new form of life-in-death take their place. There was never more than a fools hope, and it had probably died with the old Empress on the senate floor. Even killing the Emperor hadn't changed the probabilities as much as she had hoped. Though it felt better than she wanted to admit.
The last best chance didn't involve willing sacrifices. It did involve finding an allegedly dead man who had been sociopathic last time she'd seen his eyes, and getting him to a certain place at a certain time . . .
She sighed. The Elementals thought they had a plan. She didn't like it.
The Sun and the Devil. Kyra.
Kyra dreamed she was walking through a desert with the Empress who kissed her on the forehead. This time, the Empress was crowned with the disk of the sun, the laughing child was on her hip.
They stopped by two pink and golden towers flanking a broad and slow river. An old man with leathery skin scowled at them from a small flat boat. "All hail Isis," he called out, a voice grumbling with distain. "You old poisoner. Bring me something to warm my bones?"
"All hail Ra," the Empress – Isis -- replied, mildly. "All hail Grandfather Sun."
She turned to Kyra. "It's time," she said, "to see if you have the makings of a hero. If you can show the sun his way to bed, and back."
Ra glowered at her. But he extended a well used hand, helped Kyra into the boat. "Thanks, child," he said. I could use the rest. Take care of my Mandjet." He stepped lightly out of the boat, and was gone.
"What do you want me to do?" Kyra asked.
"It's easy," she said. "You are the Sun. Today, you will pilot the boat of the sun through the circle of animals."
"I don't know how."
Isis laughed and kissed her on each eye, and she could see the path, a golden thread against a sky which was also an arched woman. Isis kissed her again on the forehead, and she felt new and strong and happy.
Gods could be better than drugs.
"My son will go with you during the day," she said, and put down the laughing child. The child ran to her, leapt lightly into the boat, hugged her, then leapt again, transforming into a hawk, flying.
Then Isis was serious. "There's only one enemy worth worrying about during the day; Set. The god killer. The rapist. If you see him, stand without fear. Depend on Semkhet and Sekhmet. They will protect you."
If they'd been house cats they would have wound themselves around her ankles. But they were a leopard and a lioness, and they nuzzled her hips and belly, growling softly. The goddess continued. "What ever happens, stay in the boat. Nothing else matters but bringing it through the circle. Otherwise, the sun will not rise tomorrow."
And then Kyra was sailing the boat across the sky, laughing, surrounded by animals; cats and cows and baboons and frogs and jackals. She was high in the sky, the light dappling down from the boat, the darkness of the stars above her. She saw the Hunter low in the sky, a throned woman upside down, a bull that roared.
But one by one the animals slipped away as she descended down the sky, until she was alone in the twilight. Approaching gray and blue gates.
A woman approached her. In the dream world, she knew her, had seen her step off the gallows behind the Empress. Except instead of a slender woman with a thin crescent tattooed on her forehead, full figured, with a full moon drawn on her brow. "Kyra," she welcomed, warmly.
"Are you here for the boat?" Kyra asked, eyeing the gates warily, the river descending through them into midnight, through suddenly unfamiliar constellations.
The woman laughed. "No, that's your task. You have to finish the circle."
"I don't know how."
"It's easy. Just stay in the boat. Here." The moon handed her the twelve foot pole that had been lying in the bottom of the boat. "Use this to feel your way if it is too dark, and to keep from getting trapped on the riverbank."
Kyra no longer felt new or strong or happy. "What if I can't?"
"The sun won't rise."
Kyra gulped. "What about Set?"
The moon laughed silver, but there was no mirth in it. "Set is Ra's enemy during the day. At night, his enemy is Apophis, Lord of Chaos. He'll eat the sun if he can. Don't let him."
"Why do I – why does the Sun have so many enemies?" She did not really want to know; she just did not want to sail through those dire gates.
The moon sighed. "Apophis remembers the old world. Before there was order. He wants that world back. He thinks if he eats the sun, the rhythm of days and seasons and years will end, chaos will come back. He is probably right.
"Ra . . . Ra brought order. And he tried to keep Set from being born. That's why he doesn't like him. Isis too. All five of them; the four siblings, and Isis's son. Decreed they couldn't be born on any day lit by the sun or any night lit by the moon."
"Why?"
"Probably afraid one of them would take his throne. Happened, too. Isis took it. Set wants to. Wants her too."
His sister? Kyra digested this, decided to continue the delay. "So how were they born?"
"A trick. They tricked me in a card game into giving up enough light to make five more days, for five more births. Days, lit by light that was once mine. It's why I spend three days a month dead. I do not have enough light."
"You spend three days dead every month?"
"Yes. But the Queen of Heaven always brings me back. I serve her, just like you."
Kyra thought about this. "Does she bring everyone back?" If I die tonight . . .
The river lapped against the gates with a soft, reptile sound. "No," the moon woman said, looking at her intently. "Just because I die, it doesn't mean you can. Sometimes, it's about dying at the right time. Solstice. During the eclipse. When certain stars are at certain points in their courses. If you die tonight, if you get out of the boat tonight, the sun will not rise in the morning, and we may not have the power to set it right. This matters.
"But be not afraid. Even Set wants the sun to rise tomorrow. Stay in the boat. Stay alive. No matter what."