Kingdoms of Death (Sun Eater, #4)

by Christopher Ruocchio

While we waited in the desert, we watched the lightning of their war play out as the brief Battle of Eikana unfolded.

Machiavelli had it wrong. Far better to be loved than feared—and better still to be both loved and feared.

The Cielcin were hermaphrodites, mono-sexed but with twin roles: the akaranta, active, and ietumna, passive.

Pain, I have said, forms the basis of all morality, for no man who suffers pain doubts that it is evil. No one who experiences pain can even question it.

I might never see the Empire again. That was a strange thought. I had grown to love it, in its way. For all its faults and failings, it was home. I loved my Empire not for what it was, but for what it should be, what it must be. For whatever it was, it was not Dharan-Tun. It was not Padmurak. It was not Vorgossos. It was a place where humanity might live. Might live . . . and remain human.

Eue. The very name evoked a primitive darkness from beyond the borders of infinity. For all my contact with the Pale, it remained a black shape at the edge of comprehension, a myth to rival lost Atlantis or vanished Sarnath. It was to Eue that the Cielcin King Elu led the survivors of the doom that befell their homeworld. It was on Eue that the Cielcin ceased to be mere barbarians and learned to sail the stars. It was from Eue that the first Aeta launched their fleets into those same stars when Elu at last was gone.

The Great One bared its teeth. “It was Miudanar, the Dreamer, who taught Elu the art of shipbuilding. He taught him to fashion the hull and split the atom. He showed Elu how to cross the darkness, and led our people here.” With that said, the prince reached up with one white hand as if to scratch the face of the green world above us.

How can I describe their shape? Those images worn down by the passage of so many aeons? Crab-like they were, bodies flat and squashed, supported by crooked limbs—four or six or eight—no two seemed alike. I saw no sign of eyes nor shape of head, and here and there they carried weapons in pincered hands. The bas-reliefs showed them conquering other creatures, things stranger and more hideous even than they. Rank upon rank of jagged writing ran along above and below the figures, no doubt describing the feats of those ancient conquerors in lurid detail.

Was there another race of xenobites in the galaxy?

Syriani stepped forward and placed its foot on Ajimma’s head. “I am not Dorayaica,” it said. “Dorayaica is dead. I am Shiomu. Prophet. And Elusha.” It lifted its clawed foot so that the pointed heel aimed down and stamped on Ajimma’s skull in the soft place behind the horned crest. Gore spattering its black-armored boot and the hem of its cloak, Dorayaica glowered at the others. “King.”

Eat.

Only what does happen has happened. But the universe remembers what does not. The alternate pasts are not lost. Nothing is lost. Not matter. Not energy. Nor possibility either.

I was quiet.

Thus it is in the nature of things that ugliness and evil bend to good in time.

I escaped the kingdoms of death and returned to that great empire of silence, and in silence lived for years.

There is pain always, and ugliness, but the light and beauty of the world shine always above and beyond the powers of darkness to destroy.