Chapter 1
No one remembers the names of the cities, let alone of those who lived there.
These were the last lands before the open ocean, where the days are always equal to the nights, the sea never cold and the rains predictable to the day. In the pleasant towns built there by the nobility of the Rabatean empire, all prettier than the next, life had that odd quality that the poet Erestin Ettin captured when he wrote that 'there, mere men, could have a sense of touching eternity' he dedicated a large volume of free verse poems called 'The Elation' to this particular area and thus it became that the splendid coast of austral Rabatea came to be known as Elation Littoral. These lands had never known the conflicts that the borderlands with Ziom had once suffered from. Most towns had no defensive walls and cultivated fruits in vast orchards and sweet wine in vineyards that followed the gentle slope of the land down to the ocean shores. The traveling wiseman Narilis of Gegara, though born in Ziom, had once called these lands 'the most civilized place in the world', in an attempt at outdoing the influence of Ettin.
From the pretty squares adorned with flower-bush and the alleys bordered with fragrant whispering trees balancing in the soft wind; from the many columned courtyards animated with the gentle chatter of fountains and the shaded streets with merchants and peddlers selling expensive goods from all across the Triadic Lands, they all looked up at the sky as it took fire on that day. They heard the long screeching sound preceded by the deafening bangs of their world's atmosphere being perforated by the star that had been turning their nights into days for so long now.
The original sighting of the new prick of light had taken place almost twenty year before, it had grown ever so slowly years after years until the year of the eclipse. That had been the moment the interest shifted from learned intellectuals debating in smooth marbled floor courtyards to the general public who was taught on that day that the 'object' had entered their very own star system, a notion that most had never grappled before with, and that it was heading directly toward the world and should according to sources either disintegrate in the atmosphere itself or destroy all life and maybe the world with it. The emperor had three vocal naturalists spreading the theory of impending doom put to death and the following conversations focused on variations on the mathematical method for calculating the true size of the object from the observations made over the past twenty years in order to ascertain its insignificance.
Almost a full year later and they were as divided about it as then. There were those who still heralded it a harbinger of death and destruction who were in constant fear of the merciless imperial condemnation, not the most numerous, and those, popular at court, who welcomed it as a sign of rejuvenation and reckoning. In the last days, as the overbearing presence filled the sky ever so much, fewer were the elated voices and the din of the celebrations vanished, replaced by the silence of suspended activities, suspended conversations, suspended routine as all took to watching the star that was falling onto them while the monks of the three churches kept chanting hymns to the three goddesses seeking advice or maybe an intercession.
There was the shockwave and it began burning and it seems to broke into pieces but it kept coming down right on top of them and they only saw it become larger and larger as the sensation of oppression and the winds increased. Then, they felt the heat from the incandescent rock just after a blinding flash of light that left many sightless, though their plight was short-lived as the star collided with the world and obliterated any and all that had lived and toiled in what had once been called Rabatea, the Realm of the children of Dinié, the Shy Goddess.
Far from the balmy shores of the empire where the disaster was unfolding, all the way past the Ignaien Mountains and the Descot sea, in the forested plains of mainland Limore, the ground shook and the beast became restless. A few of the Tall-House Lords' estates collapsed as they saw the sky change color as if a dirty veil obscured the sun. Odd winds began blowing and many had the feeling that death had come and reaped such a score that the world would be never be the same again.
The giant clouds of late winter in the crisp blue sky suddenly collapsed and were blown away and replaced by a tin colored sky and the light of day was lesser for it and the nights afterward were colder for a brutal boreal wind had begun to blow and would not stop for three years making winters longer and rough. Springs were weak and summers short-lived before cold, cold early set winters again. The fourth following spring came earlier and a little stronger, with days after days of gale-force winds, always blowing from the cold boreal lands finally ending. They stopped brutally and summer came to be long and dry and people forgot and listened to the stories of the fall of Rabatea and the plagues that ravaged the austral lands as if these were legends of old that had not been told in quite a while. New names were heard, like Maharaia the mountain that fell from the sky: poisonous and foul, and Standing Rabatea, the last of the un-devastated lands of the empire, its boreal reach with a border with Ziom. There was also the tale of the death of the new emperor, in his mountain palace of Nàg, the unexplained betrayal of the Rehevïmes servants and the Natab warriors who looked on as the survivors of the ruling family they swore to serve and protect were burned to their death in the fire that ravaged their palace and the town. A fire they had lit themselves. This one tale came to be told over and over again embellished with the tragic stories of picturesque characters and their doomed love affairs and questionable sense of honor. The Summer-Fairs' plays and the Tall Houses' dinner time pantomimes rivaled in the adjunction of pathetic stories pasted upon the grand tragedy of the destruction of Rabatea that was beyond the comprehension of their spectators to their absolute delight and entertainment.
The Circle of Eights in the blessed archipelago administered by the Triadic Churches talked about it, thought about it, and sent people to it; who invariably died, killed by the hardships of the voyage, the plagues or the black rains, that burned like fire and melted all that was alive, or so it was told.
But it came that the rest of the Triadic realms, went without the succulent fruits of the orchards and the sweet intoxicating wines of the vineyards, without the merchants, the trade and the neighbors. All over Ziom, Feroll, and the three Limores people plowed the lands, grew their food, toiled at their trade and enjoyed each and every moment they could, rarely sparing time to think about a mountain that had fallen from the sky so very far away but right there inside that crater something was happening that would change the fate of the universe.
Crater of the Maharaïa, after the Advent.
There was that voice again. Really, it was more the echo of a voice. It was forever ringing, far inside her, as if it was made of the very fibers of her being. It was giving her purpose. At the beginning, it was all she knew. The Voice and pain. Her thoughts organized on these two things and on what she could sense of her direct environment. It articulated her thoughts and soon she was able to speak in her mind like the voice did.
'I was born here. Not on this shore, but deep in these waters. I remember the heat, how it curled around me, warming my birthing body. I only felt that I was ascending, leaving the dark warmth of the bottom, going for the light. I knew the light was good and that I had to go there. I have purpose here.'
'I broke the surface. The air felt cold, brackish. As I breathed it in the feeling of comfort in me was replaced by tension. My senses became alert, a new consciousness awoke in me and the companion voice sunk in the background. I floated face up and opened my eyes. I floated for days watching the passing of suns and stars, the clouds roll in and darkened the skies. I felt intoxicatingly joyous at the sensation of rain on my face and profoundly moved at the coming of snow. Thunder striking the lake made my body tingle and the sound it made had me laugh aloud. It was the first time I heard the sound of my voice and for a while, I sang sounds to myself just to hear the echoes of my own voice coming back at me from the cliffs. Gentle waves and kind winds pushed me this way and that until I ran upon a sandbank. It felt coarse and yet each separated grains was so smooth and beautiful. '
'My body was heavy. I rolled myself over on the side and pushed up. My legs would not support me and my arms trembled with the effort. I crawled above the waterline and the sun rose and gave me warmth again and strength. I sat. I crouched. Finally, I stood and I started walking this shore. The clear waters of my lake attracted birds by the thousands who came to drink and bathe in its waters after crossing the vast ocean below it. They left plant seeds behind them and I felt the pent up life inside of them, how it was compressed, held tight on the verge of bursting out, the tension was excruciating. I opened my mind to the seeds carried in by birds and winds and touched their essences and together they burst open and began crawling out into the soil and above it and I fed their incredible efforts with all my will and plants began to grow and sprout branches and leaves and they bloomed and the scented flowers turned into fruits and the fruits seeded more plants. Soon the banks of the lake were covered with a forest dense and tall as I watched on the most amazing living things growing out of the ground and sprouting above my head. Then more living things came. Insects first who fed on the plants and flowers and fruits and were changed by it and birds to feed on insects and nest in the trees, and bird hunters and those who hunt them. Finally, when it felt almost complete, the men came. They were miserable, stained with violence and crime and they were sad for it. They had lost purpose and direction, they felt profound joy at our encounter and it was a marvel in my eyes and they ask of me to give to their life meaning. I walked among them as they were bursting with life even more so than plants had been, touching them and loving them and they brought to me sick ones and ailing infants from the dead lands beyond the sea and I cured them and I loved them too. One day they asked of me land to build a town to shelter the newcomers. So we went to the place where their ships had landed and I saw where I thought they would be protected from the Riserlies and from the storms. They asked me for a name. I told them it was a haven so it should be simply called that, Haven.'
'The soldiers and servants who met me first decided to build accommodation for themselves on the shores of the lake where I was born and they made a palace of such beauty and elegance that I wept when I saw it finished. They decorated it with all the artistry they could muster and offered it to me so I entered the palace by the lake and it pleased them. Men began cultivating the slopes of the hills around the lake and by the bay where Haven is, and they were glad for the crops it yielded were bountiful and savory and when they consumed them they felt better for it and were less sick and weak. I spent my time walking the glades of the island I was born in and meeting the people who had come to me. They told me of the violence of my birth and of the destruction but all I could see were growing things and gentle shores, warm winds and gently lapping waves on the beach. The voice inside of me hummed on barely audible at the back of my mind and I felt free to ignore it. I was living my purpose, I was meant to be here.
