Demon in White (The Sun Eater, #3)

by Christopher Ruocchio

This may seem strange to admit, Reader, but consider: it had been eight and thirty years for me since Gododdin, nearly half of that conscious—though you turn these pages in a matter of hours. Much had happened. Much had changed. Iubalu and the Battle of the Beast, everything we’d learned about Syriani Dorayaica, the Iedyr Yemani, plus the business of my triumph, my not-yet-official betrothal to Princess Selene and what that meant for Valka, the Lions, and the news of the Extrasolarian Monarch . . . . . . I had forgotten about Udax the assassin.

We saw Hadrian Marlowe beheaded. We saw Hadrian Marlowe crushed beneath a falling building. We saw Hadrian Marlowe blown out an airlock. We saw the Halfmortal gunned down. We saw the Halfmortal live again! We saw . . . We saw, we saw, we saw . . .

Often I have thought there were three Hadrians. There was the one who died in the garden of the Demiurge, the one who sat at Valka’s bedside, who was like the first and yet unlike him, both living men made of flesh made separate by the circumstances of their births—one in water, one in blood. And there was a third Hadrian. One born only of voice, one never really born at all. There was Hadrian the myth, not the man. And Hadrian the myth was truly immortal.

Men are slower to act from principle than self-interest, and far slower to act on principle than jealousy or revenge.

To the Lord High Chancellor of the Imperial Council . . . Per communication dated 16561.05.16 and submitted to the Imperial Office, a plot against Lord M’s life was detected and stopped same day. Agency behind this plot unknown. Possibly unsafe for Lord M to travel. Request meeting by holograph. Reply requested. —Otavia Corvo, CPT-FOED, Red Company, ISV Tamerlane

Important date.

Knife arranged by Director. Priests involved. Bought one of your lieutenants. Castor/Castle, don’t know. Mean to plant daimon on ship. Not sure how.

Damn!

CHAPTER 48 HALFMORTAL

Badass!

Had it been my right arm that Kharn replaced—had the Quiet not intervened and traded my lost right arm for my left—I would be dead.

Interesting.

To Nov Belgaer, in whose dusty halls I sit even now and record this account.

Nov Belgaer is where Hadrian was exiled.

Names on movable type showed in sliders on the doors, marking each cell for its occupant: Tor Hunt, Tor Saad, Tor Vermeule, and so on. At one of these we stopped. Number 113. Here I pause, for it is in this very chamber I sit at my work, writing this very page.

Reader, have I already said that there is a difference between knowing a fact and owning it? “It takes Valka as long as you or I to think about what she knows.”

Here I have made my home these past three years and labored at this account. Here I have lived and labored alongside the brothers and sisters of the Order, though I am not one of them. Here I have hidden from an ungrateful universe, and lived not as Hadrian Marlowe, but as a guest of Arrian’s successor three times removed. They never asked my name—though the primate knows me. They call me the Poet, and that is enough. A private joke that you, Reader, will no doubt understand.

Hadrian's "Present".

“Hello, Hadrian!” said Tor Gibson.

What?!!

“Four hundred fifty standard years.”

The time since the beginning of the story.

He must have been six hundred years old, at least. With a start, I realized my own father would be as old now—assuming he never once left Delos after I did. Crispin would be north of four hundred, on the far side of middle-aged.

Ages of others.

“In Congress,” I said in English, and translated it for Valka, following the declarative first line with a fingertip. “July 4, 1776.” I squinted at the next line, at an elaborate character I decided must be a T. “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united . . .” I paused, realizing some piece of what this document was, and whom it had belonged to. Forcing strength into my voice, I resumed speaking. “Of the thirteen united States of America.”

fascinating!

variously smiling or solemn. I remember their names: MONROE, JACKSON, JOHNSON, ROOSEVELT, TRUMAN, FORD, DELANEY, OVERTON, PEMBROKE.

Gibson leaned on his cane. “Felsenburgh was a technocrat. A businessman. He took power promising his machines would end injustice and bring about peace. They did, and the people cheered him. When he died, the Mericanii controlled almost all of Earth, and he turned his government over to his machines.”

“Every scholiast knows the story. We are forbidden to discuss it outside the walls of our athenaea under penalty of the Inquisition. We are meant to preserve knowledge, not necessarily to proliferate it. Certainly not knowledge of the Mericanii. Or Felsenburgh. Every scholiast knows his story. It’s our story.” As he spoke, Gibson sank into a seat atop a low filing cabinet. Jabbing his cane up at the man in the image, he said, “He sold humanity’s soul.” I was shaking my head in protest. “How is it I don’t know any of this?” Gibson raised an eyebrow. “I told you, we are forbidden to discuss the history of the Foundation War—what little we still know, that is. Under penalty of Inquisition.”

If you are a historian, Reader, perhaps you wonder at my ignorance. For have I not referenced the Golden Age unceasing since this account began? Have I not talked of Rome and Constantinople? Have I not spoken the names of Alexander the Macedonian and of Dante a dozen times and quoted Marcus Aurelius and Shakespeare? Kipling, Serling, and the rest? I have. All these curiosities I owed to the man before me. To Tor Gibson of Syracuse. But he could not teach me everything, try as he might. Much of what I have learned and referenced I have learned since I returned here to Nov Belgaer. A Poet-in-Exile. As I have written this account, I have read and learned much that was forgotten and buried. Read and learned because of this conversation. To arrest my own ignorance.

Even now, the true history of the Foundation War is a mystery to me.

so few of us truly think themselves evil. They simply think good and evil matters of opinion, and seek to impose their opinion—which is evil—on good. Nothing is evil in its beginning, it only grows that way.

“The Golden Age ended because men forgot philosophy in their pursuit of knowledge. They traded a love of wisdom for progress, and it destroyed them.”

Reader, you have heard perhaps that I learned to speak the tongue of the Mericanii in a matter of days. I did not. I learned to speak the English of antiquity as a boy—as you have seen. It was Valka who learned in a week. The details of our lives have blurred and blended with the centuries, that we have become one flesh in the minds of the galaxy. I fear I have done her an injustice in not chronicling her work much until now: the time she spent learning Cielcin from Tanaran while I slept, the ages spent poring over scans and holographs taken from Cielcin ships after battles, and so on . . . But I have not described its details because I cannot remember them all, and because to describe all Valka learned of the Cielcin in her years working beside me would be to write quite a different sort of book.

A Mericanii starship.

Ancient AI Starship from thousands of years ago during the Foundation War. Hadrian encountered one of these beings on Vorgosos.

I was beginning to doubt the divinity of the God Emperor—if ever I’d believed it. Legend said he slew the daimons and freed mankind forever from their spell, and yet in less than a century of waking years I had found not one, but two of the monsters still living

“You said I was defective, too,” I said. “Defective how?” Cellular senescence. Genetic methylation. Telomeric degradation. Transcription errors.

Hmm.

He was helped. An electric thrill shot through me, and I whispered, “Kharn Sagara was right.”

“What are they?” An Interference. “Explain.” Time is an illusion, an artifact of human consciousness. A way of perceiving the higher dimensions of physical reality that your limited minds cannot comprehend. Time is only another kind of space, through which things move. Your kind moves forward only, toward what you call the future. There are other kinds. Kinds that move backward. Kinds that move sideways. Kinds that do not move at all.

“What about the others?” I asked. “You said there are other . . . other beings like the Quiet. Like you.” Other beings. Great intelligences. They are far away, and but for the Interference they have not deigned to notice you us our actions. “But what are they?” They are beyond your comprehension. Powers old as the oldest stars. Creatures defying Science in the purest sense. Defying your capacity to know. “And this . . . Interference is one of them?” It is different. It alone has turned its eyes on you on us. On our actions.

In addition to keeping them safe the children provide us the necessary processing substrate required to maintain our growth. “To what purpose?” Valka inquired. I got the sense the machine was attempting to avoid answering. It could not lie and must answer any question a human put to it, but it still had secrets. To make us like them. “Like the Interference?” Behind me, Gibson muttered, “Babel builders . . .” Like the others. Like the great intelligences. “The Watchers

“How did you detect these? You can’t have sent probes . . .” The answer sounded like the sort of riddle the Merlin Tree might give young Cid Arthur. Distance is no object to things higher. Unruffled, Valka said, “You mean things that can see and operate in higher dimensions?” She made a face. “I’ve been to several of these worlds . . . there’s nothing there.” Yet. That made the xenologist twitch. “But there are ruins.” They were not ruins in the future. “Were not . . .” I muttered, making sure I’d heard the tenses right. “You mean the sites we’ve found on these planets are running backward through time?”

The scholiast nodded along with me. “Perhaps not.” He was quiet a moment, then sucked in a deep breath. “Hadrian, I cannot pretend to understand everything you’re caught up in. But I will say this: I think you’ve finally found a drama big enough for you.” I laughed, but I had to screw my eyes shut against the tears that came. “I suppose I did.”

“Grief is deep water, they say.” He recovered his grip on his cane. “But not all tears are grief.”

“You were a father to me,” I said. Gibson bowed his head. “You have a father.” “I have two,” I said, “but only one bled for me. I wish I could have said goodbye then, and thank you.” “You have said thank you, Hadrian, and you never had to.”

“Live,” I said. I turned away then for the last time. “And light a candle for us in sanctum,” I said, who did not believe in the power of such things. “We’ll need it.”

Last command to Siran.

What gods were on that nameless world were older still, though yet unborn. For if the flow of time is an illusion—a trick of human light—there is no difference between future and past. Thus that which lies in the remotest future is more ancient than the ancient past, for more aeons are there yet to come in cosmic time than have been. So remote, so deep are the epochs which separate my hand and this page from theirs.

“Careful, Valka,” I said where only she and the pilot officer could overhear me, “you’re starting to sound like me.” “Imagine the horror.”

Made me laugh!

I think I dozed in the saddle, our progress gentler now as we swept the horizon. I dreamt of rain on a world that perhaps had never known it. A torrent fell past me through bottomless skies while winds roared and shook trees whose roots I could not see. I fell with the rain, falling until it seemed I traveled not down but forward with the ground rushing beneath me. I stood upon a gray plain, not rough but paved and smooth. Ahead a black dome rose shallow against the sky, perfectly smooth and surrounded by pillars wider than any tree. A great crowd stood about me—but did not mark me as I passed them by. White hair, white horns, black cloaks, and black armor. Black too their banners snapping in the wind, each painted with the device of a white hand wide upon its face. I saw once more the figure of a creature tall and terrible, silver-crowned, leading a man in chains. Without having to be told I knew that here was the Scourge of Earth. The Prophet. The Aeta Ba-Aetane. The Shiomu. The Pale King. Syriani Dorayaica. I drew nearer, horror rising in my heart as I beheld the creature it led on its chain. Violet eyes met my own. My own eyes. It was me.

Prophecy!

Cielcin beneath an open sky . . .

CHAPTER 66 EMPIRE OF SILENCE

Throw back to the first book!

“The great empire of silence: higher than all stars, deeper than the kingdom of death! It alone is great; all else is small.”

most people fail to understand just how many battles and wars are won by logistics.

As a former infantryman, logistics of supplies are important.

The greater part of wisdom is in silence.

Demon in White.

For most of us, stolen time is all we ever have . . . if we can take it.

gunmetal

I saw the faces of the mountains watching me with black eyes and green. Dreaming, I saw them stand and bow their mighty heads in silent vigil.

So often we don’t see the truth because we won’t look low enough, Gibson had said at our parting.

Broken, Jari had said, and broken again. At last I understood his meaning, seeing clean fractures where my thread passed from Delos and the Quiet had intervened to force me onto Emesh and where Aranata had taken my head. Jari had spoken of roads, but I saw rivers. Perhaps the truth of what I saw is more than any human mind can comprehend, and these visions are only the animal mind’s interpretation of the eldritch truth. Perhaps we humans can perceive that truth only by analogy. Even Jari’s posthuman mind had failed.