Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (2 page)

“He said he loved me,” she s
aid. “I gave him everything—
everything
—and after a year together, I come home and there isn’t even a note. Like, thanks for the sex, slut! Next thing I know, the freaking landlord is telling me get out by tomorrow because the rent hasn’t been paid and we’re evicted. And there is Melly on her own, no money, no job, hitchhiking to Augusta to start again.”

“Your dad couldn’t help you?”

She shook her head.

Eve reached out and took Melissa by the chin, turned her face to look at her, and looked into her eyes.

“Where did you sleep last night, girl?” she asked.

“The Cityside,” she said.

“And how did you do that, if you didn’t have money?”

              The waitress nearly dropped her pot of coffee, eavesdropping on that answer.

“Oh, now you know better
than
that
,” Eve said.

             
“I know, ma’am,” she said. “I hate it. I should have just stayed up all night, or—”

             
“Oh, and you know better than that, too,” Eve scolded her. “If you could go undo the past, do you really think you would pick last night to change? I don’t think so, young lady.”

             
No, Melissa agreed. Last night was a symptom of the problem, with the sickness being the way she ran her life.

             
“You’re a very nice girl hoeing a very hard row, and you are here blaming all the rocks. Well I tell you, and I am a Mainer, so as I know, that it ain’t the soil’s fault for being stony, it is the girl with the hoe,” and she jabbed Melissa in the arm, “who don’t know no better than to pick another spot for her garden.”

             
“What?”

             
“You’re in the wrong place, girl,” Eve said. “You are a good girl in a location where she can’t succeed, and all you’re doin’ is hoeing up rocks. You need to move your garden to a place where you can plant you some vegetables.”

             
The woman clearly didn’t know what ho’ meant to a young girl, especially to Melissa this morning, but she got the message. She finished her meal with a last gulp of her coffee, and she left a dollar on the bar. She stood and kissed Eve on the cheek.

             
“You’re a nice lady, Eve,” she said, looking into her eyes.

             
“So you ain’t gonna move your garden?” Eve said.

             
“I would if I had the money,” Melissa said. “I would move the heck away from here. If I can get a job today then maybe I can start saving so I can jump on another bus and get to another city.”

             
Eve poked Melissa right in the collarbone with a long, wrinkled finger. “Well, I hope you do,” she said. “When you git you going, you go someplace rural. I don’t mean start farming, but get the idea of big city life out of your head. Busses go to nice places, too.”

             
Melissa nodded. Someplace where people had a stake in her maybe. Not a big city, but a nice town. Some place in the south.

             
“I will, ma’am,” she said. “I promise.”

             
“So where you off to?” Eve asked her, as the waitress cleared her plate.

             
Melissa chuckled. “You won’t like this, but to get a pack of Marlboro’s,” she said. “Then to find a job.”

             
Eve smiled, fished into her purse, and pulled out a pack. It had two missing, and she handed it to Melissa.

             
“Why wouldn’t I like it,” she said. “That’s my brand, too. You keep the pack—mebbe it’ll bring you some luck.”

             
Her manners said refuse, but cigarettes were expensive. She gave the old lady a hug and a kiss, and she took the pack.

             
Outside, she opened it, and she noticed something in the wrapper—a green slip of paper.

             
She pulled it out and found four, one hundred dollar bills. Sometimes people put their change in their wrapper, but that wasn’t change.

             
She turned back to the diner. It didn’t even occur to her to take off with the money. Even if it was a gift, the woman had to be asked if she meant to give it.

             
Melissa just didn’t have it in her to steal, and old people lived on fixed incomes. This could be her rent money.

             
She went in and the place was packed. Her seat was taken, and Eve’s as well. She went to the counter waitress and she waved.

             
“Yeah?” the overworked counter waitress asked her.

             
“What happened to the old lady I was talking to?” she asked.

             
“Who?”

             
“The old lady—you know, the one—”

             
“Hun, I don’t know any old lady’s and I don’t have time to kid around. If you want something, order. If not, get out.”

             
She turned and left her standing with her mouth open.

* * *

              In another reality, Adriam the All-Father held the perfect wife, Eveave, in his infinite arms.

             
“This one?” he asked her.

             
“She is perfect,” Eveave informed him.

             
“There is nothing in this one,” he argued.

             
Eveave’s lips remained in the grim line of balance. In glee she saw sadness, in hate she saw love.  She knew the place between success and failure. Only in Adriam’s arms did she know peace.

             
“This one is more than we could imagine,” she informed him.

             
“The instrument of War is strong,” Adriam said, “as is Power’s. We have Life’s help, but the Almadain cannot fight the tide.”

             
“No one can fight the tide, husband,” Eveave said.

             
“The machinations of War already shake the face of Earth,” Adriam said. “Your instrument must stop the flood, hold back the tide.”

             
Eveave heard the love in the All-Father’s voice—love for his children, even the errant Power and War.

And it was War’s nature to destroy.

              “My instrument fights for the balance,” Eveave told him. “The take and give. The balance
is
, my husband. Where the instrument of War devours, do not counter him with another who would take more.

             
“Whoever fights the tide will drown. Ride the tide, and then find the safety of the shore.”

             
“And this one can ride the tide?” Adriam asked her.

             
She considered. What to her was a moment was to her champion a year. Time is immaterial to a god.

             
“This one can keep her head up,” Eveave said, finally. “Sometimes she fights best who sees the balance, who raises not the sword but the heart of a man. My champion is my balance, my husband. My balance
is
.”

“Let the tide be the tide.”

Chapter One:

              He Said, She Said

             
“Ma’am, can I have a moment of your time?”
              “Sir, have you ever dreamed of making all of the money you can while working at home?”

             
“Are you happy with your current employment?”

             
“Can I interest you in a new life?”

             
“No,” the woman told him, with some additional instruction on what he could do with his telephone.

             
She clearly had no concept of anatomy.

             
At least the call ended at spot-on 10:45am. Break time. Man, he was dying for a cigarette!

             
Bill stood up from his cubicle and stretched. All around him on the telesales floor: gray and off-white cubbies, with black computers and black, ergonomic chairs that made your back feel like there were knives sticking out of it. He shuffled down the row of agents, conscientious about his belly touching anyone. Some of them rose with him, some stayed on their phones, he left for the blessed exit and fifteen minutes of time that were not spent here.

* * *

              Glynn Escaroth liked to think of the royal throne room of Outpost IX as a lesson in the Uman-Chi themselves. In her 167 years of life, as the sole surviving member of the House Escaroth, whose family had protected the southern towers of Outpost IX for centuries, she had reflected on this many times. White marble covered walls and the floor, simple and unadorned, polished and without veins. Grooved marble columns rose white to the height of more than ten Men, simple rings at their bases, to an arched ceiling, plain in construction, white with no frescoes, no murals, no chandeliers. It glowed a white light that filled the place with a ghostly radiance, making the people and the things here seem unreal.

             
She stood in the Circle of Judgment before the dais; twenty ringed steps flush against the white wall, rising higher than a tall Man’s head, to a white marble throne, the seat of Angron Aurelias, her king.

             
The Circle, the only surface in the room that hadn’t been polished, a woman’s height in diameter, existed as a place for the penitent and the needy to stand. A bright red carpet ran like a rivulet of blood on a field of snow from its edge, covering more than two hundred paces from the polished oak double-doors bound with burnished brass that always stood open at the throne room’s entrance.

             
Normally the solid oak gallery behind her to her right would have held hundreds of courtiers sitting for court. Thirty-two paces long, it remained draped in the banners of the great houses, the Proud Falcon of the Escaroths among them

             
An Uman-Chi with 167 year of age could barely be considered an adolescent among her people. She felt like a child now, playing dress-up in the white robes of a Caster, a part of her feeling foolish to speak before so many, another seeing what it meant to be grand, to be truly the noblest of all people.

             
To be Uman-Chi meant to be unadorned; to have one’s grace and elegance be so simply stated as to be beyond question. It meant more to maintain it clean than to decorate it.

             
The Cheyak had built this place millennia before, and when the Cheyak had passed, it had come to the Uman-Chi to be the first among all Foveans; above Men, above Uman, above Dwarves and Slee and Swamp Devils. Uman-Chi lives spanned centuries. Uman-Chi lived supreme.

             
Supreme among the supreme ruled Angron Aurelias, King of Trenbon. Great, wise eyes, long white hair brushed fine over his shoulders, dressed in the white robes of a Caster with the Royal Eagle upon his breast, he steepled his long, thin fingers before him, sitting on his throne, and took on the look of a predator. Even his bushy white eyebrows seemed to bristle at her temerity.

             
In the Circle of Judgment, a person may beg the King’s favor. Most begged for wealth and power, some begged for advice, and many for direction.

             
Glynn Escaroth begged to sing.

* * *

              Like a wave of pleasure washing over him, Bill exhaled two lungs full of smoke from his Lucky Strikes.

             
There had been a time when you could walk into any break room and just inhale to cash in on a good nicotine buzz. That era had passed. First the smokers had been given a few rooms, then fewer rooms, then a place outside by the door, then a smaller place, away from the door.

             
Now you went wherever you could get away from people. He leaned against the brick wall, the sun beating down on him, the sweat already running down his heavy jowls into the hair of his beard. Sweat soaked his temples, made a line down the back of his t-shirt, wet against his skin. He tilted his head back and pulled another sweet drag from the cigarette.

             
“Bum a butt?”

             
Bill looked to his left where one of the girls on his aisle stood, looking at him. He immediately classified her as one of the three types of telesales agents he’d become familiar with: young hotties who don’t want real jobs but who do have debts to pay.

             
“Yeah, here,” he said, pulling the pack from his shirt pocket. He deftly pushed a stick out from the pack in her direction.

             
She wrinkled her pert nose at him, its dusting of freckles peeking out from her make-up. Her pink top, made from the stretchy material that young girls liked, accentuated her tiny waist and over-large bosom. Her long, dark brown hair tumbled past her shoulders and framed her big, brown eyes. Legs like a fashion model were barely concealed by a short turquoise skirt.

             
The type of girl who did
not
waste her time talking to him.

             
“Ewww—Lucky’s?” she complained.

             
“What I smoke,” he said.

             
She looked him up and down. “No chance you’ll switch to Marlboros?” she asked, and gave the eyes a bat.

             
That probably worked on the second type of telesales agents: the young guy whose real job doesn’t pay too well, and who need to make a car or rent payment fast. That guy would be skipping off to the cigarette machine in a lick to get her what she wanted, in hopes of getting her to go out with him.

             
“Nope,” he said, and shook the pack. “Still want?”

             
“Sure,” she reconciled herself. They were the only two out there. She picked the cig out from the pack with long, multi-colored nails. “Thanks.”

             
“No problem,” he said, and popped her a light from his Zippo. She leaned forward and sucked it lit.

             
Just amazing how hot the girls looked here. Not that it really mattered to him. He classified himself as the third type of telesales agent: old people no one else would hire.

             
At fifty years of age and, coincidentally, overweight by fifty pounds, he found himself doing a job anyone could do. He had a full head of gray and brown hair, and a scruffy gray and black beard.

             
When he had been young he would have gone for the hottie, and he wouldn’t have had to fetch her cigarettes to get her. Back in his twenties, it had been a brave new world and he had been on top of it.

             
He checked his watch. Ten minutes left. He took another pull.

             
“Been here long?” she asked him.

             
That surprised him. Normally a girl like this would get what she wanted and go somewhere else

             
“A year,” he said. “Been in sales more than twenty, though.”

             
“Wow,” she said. “That’s a really long time. Did they do telemarketing back then?”

             
Oh,
man
! “Yes, but I sold switches.”

             
“Like, light switches?”

             
Another drag. “Phone switches. Calls coming in and out.”

             
That had been so sweet for so long. Every big company had to have them. They were all unique, making it easy to say, “Mine handles more trunks and more lines,” and get a giant commission.

             
Years and years of sales and specialization, knowing his product, knowing his clients, and then the damn phone companies had surprised the world with the exact same features at a fraction of the price. Switches all became computerized and the industry had left him behind.

             
He had paid to put his kids through college, but they were done with college now and had their own lives with their own kids, in other parts of the country. He had been divorced for a decade and never bought a house, because he didn’t want to have to cut his own lawn.

             
She nodded. He had almost forgotten her standing there. “Don’t they have that here?” she asked.

             
“Not the same,” he said. “They’re computers now. Totally different sales.”

             
“So why not sell those?”

             
Another drag. She took one, too. “Totally different,” he repeated. “I don’t know anything about computers.”

             
She nodded, then giggled. “Me, neither,” she said. “You do okay here?”

             
“It pays my bills. Can’t beat the hours.”

             
“Yeah,” she agreed, and took a drag. “One of my girls works here and got me in. She got a hundred bucks for signing me up.”

             
“Had a payment to make?” he asked.

             
She nodded. “Car needs work.”

             
“Hate that,” he said. “Been taking a bike here lately. Trying to drop weight.”

             
She giggled again. He wished she would get to whatever she wanted, because he had a hard time not looking down her blouse.

             
“I’m Melissa,” she said, and stuck out her hand. “Pleased ta meetcha.”

             
“Bill,” he said. “Bill Howard.”

             
Her hand felt soft as silk. He held it maybe a second too long, but he couldn’t help himself. She managed to stroke his thumb as she pulled her hand away.

             
“So, what do you do for fun, Bill?”

* * *

              The song had come to Glynn in a dream six months before and burned itself into her memory. It had taken every fiber of her concentration and training not to burst out with it, every moment of the day, since then.

Had she been a normal Uman-Chi, if there were such a thing, she would have been unable, however Glynn had received Caster training from Chaheff Tamulin.
Through her mind’s focus and discipline she could command the control necessary to suppress the imperative, to hold back the tide, the power. With Chaheff to guide her, she had come before the King that first morning and begged to sing it.             

             
His advisor, Avek Noir, also a Caster, had suggested they try to write it down. The letters scorched the parchment when they tried. Clearly this song came from Power, or Adriam, or one of the gods who imbued their minions with magic. This made the decision more serious.

             
Had Chaheff Tamulin himself been the recipient of the song, then there would be no question. House Tamulin were merchants, and Chaheff looked it, standing there in the throne room behind her, the fattest of all of the Uman-Chi. But Chaheff, a gifted Caster, had discovered
The Ultimate Truth of Things
before his two hundredth year. He could handle any ramifications of any song he voiced. Glynn Escaroth had come to that same truth at the impossibly young age of ninety-five. While her friends had been learning etiquette and discourse, she had been diverted to spell casting and donned the White Robe.

If she couldn’t maintain control of the song then there could be no guarantee she wouldn’t loose all the power of the spell on those around her.
In Uman-Chi terms, less than seventy years was to have barely begun training.

             
Angron had decreed then that Glynn would not sing. That had been six months before this day. Now she returned, the song still burning in her mind.

“If the song will not depart your mind,” Angron said, “then clearly you must sing.
The question is where.”

             
“I still advise against the casting,” Avek Noir said. Glynn detested the Noirs, who had bought their way back into the King’s favor after the sack of Outpost IX. “But I defer to the throne, and then advise a fast ship, a trip into Tren Bay, and there singing.”