The Fallen World

Lord Basil - Part 1

It was only dimly lit in the tent despite the dozens of glowbottles hanging on ropes from the ceiling, but the Sceptre of Samnos seemed to glow by its own light, as though the holy power it contained were actually visible. The spiderweb thin strands of platinum that wound in intricate patterns around its golden shaft shone like silver moonlight. The yellow and white jewels clustered near its upper end looked almost like eyes, as if the Sceptre were a living thing, aware of its surroundings and warily watching everyone around it, and the golden griffin statuette poised in the act of leaping into flight from the top of the Sceptre was so lifelike that for one crazy moment the old priest thought that it actually was alive, that it was about to leap into the air and fly around inside the huge tent.

Resalintas cursed himself for the flight of fancy and for the lapse in mental discipline that had permitted it, but then the Sceptre of Samnos was enough to stir anyone's imagination. Legend had it that it had been fashioned by the hands of Samnos Himself shortly after his ascension to Godhood, and that He had personally handed it over to Preemus the Pious, the very first human worshipper of the God of Righteous Warfare, four thousand years before. Resalintas didn't know whether or not the old legend was true, but seeing the fabulous artifact in front of him now, separated from him by only a few feet of empty air, he was well able to believe it. At that moment, he was well able to believe anything.

Awe and wonder welled up in him, filling him so completely that he thought he would burst with it. He removed his helmet, putting it down on the floor beside him, drew his sword and went down on one knee, where he spent half an hour in earnest, impassioned prayer to the God of War, praying that he would prove worthy of the tremendous honour and responsibility that had been placed upon him. It seemed to him that the Sceptre glowed even more brightly as he did so, and that its jewel eyes were regarding him critically, measuring him up, but that was probably just his imagination.

The prayer finished, he stood again, sheathed his sword and put his helmet back on his head. He looked at the Sceptre and (he was now almost certain) the Sceptre looked back at him, like two old warriors who had been told that they would be fighting together for a while.

The old priest seemed to sense satisfaction and approval coming from the artifact, as though he'd been found worthy, both by Samnos and by the artifact itself, and he knew that it would now suffer his touch without protest, as it had suffered the touch of all the other priests who'd held it over the past few months. As it had suffered the touch of the young girl, the cleric of Caroli, who'd recovered it from the Maze in the first place. He wondered whether that young girl would ever have the slightest inkling of just how honoured she had been, and how she would be regarded as virtually a saint by the faith of Samnos in centuries to come.

He stepped forward, closing the last of the distance between himself and the Sceptre. He reached out a hand and touched it gingerly, a faint tingle racing up his old fingers, and then he grasped it properly and held it in both hands, his heart beating wildly in rapture, jubilation and awe.

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Lord Basil Konnen gasped with unfamiliar exertion was he led his twelve year old son Drusus up the tall spiral staircase that connected the moon city of Kronosia with the old Agglemonian observatory above it.

Both of them wore Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing, two of the six taken from the Tharians, and for the first time in their lives they walked without fear. They knew that no-one else in the city could have crossed through the vacuum filled park cavern and that they were, therefore, completely alone in the centre of the city. They'd left their escort of bodyguards at the airlock, where they would wait for them until they returned.

Young Drusus puffed in exhaustion as they laboured up the long staircase, but he made no complaint. At long last his father was beginning to let him in on some of the secrets by which he ruled his half of the city, and the boy was willing to endure any hardship in order to learn those secrets. How did he know so much about what was going on among his subjects, things he shouldn't possibly be able to know even with his extensive spy network and his ring of ESP? How was he able to suddenly appear in distant parts of the city without being seen in any of the corridor streets leading to it? And where did he get the strange, alien looking artifacts he sometimes produced to the amazement of the rest of the family? Cutlery, tools and objects of art made of a strange, silvery grey metal? His grandfather, the late Lord Pothos Konnen, had known all these secrets, and somewhere along the line he'd revealed them to his son Basil. Drusus had been waiting impatiently for two years now for his father to pass them on to him in turn, and his mind raced as he wondered what great revelation was waiting for him in these dusty, centuries deserted corridors.