“Nice trick, kid,” she said coldly, “‘You’re one in a million!’ This means nothing!”
“The Chosen One reveals the Shield,” cried Shen, “that hides within the Tree upon the hidden rock. It’s there! Dahma! ‘One came to in the void’!”
Nira snapped her head round at Shen, eyes blazing: “And you! For the love of non-existent gods, will you please stop quoting the Epic! It doesn’t make you clever! All it means is you’ve read one book in your pathetic little life. Dahma does not exist! Believe me — we’ve looked!”
“Dahma is a symbol of something greater,” said Jhor.
“It’s a waste of time is what it is,” said Nira.
“Something you have plenty of to waste, Nira...at our exp...,” said Jhor.
“Do not finish that sent...!”
“Enough!” hissed Onnd, and the room fell tersely flat.
The retracting planets reflected off Kai’s dejected gaze; his anger simmered.
The eerie emerald gleam reflected off Sann’s still stare; her doubt withered.
“The One?” she whispered.
Kai stumbled back to his feet, exhaustion and fury battling within him. Shen lurched immediately into orbit around him, then Onnd stepped up and began circling them both in the opposite direction, glaring coldly down at Shen as they went. Shen looked up at her imposing silhouette within the holographic glow; he quivered pink in fear, then gradually gathered sanguine strength and steeled himself against Onnd’s quiet domination.
“You...you do not believe?” he said.
“I believe when I see, and only when there is no doubt,” said Onnd.
“But...can you ever be fully without doubt?”
“It has not happened yet.”
“Then perhaps you need to find your faith.”
“Perhaps you need to shut up!” spat Nira.
“My faith tells me that Dahma and the Shield are there,” said Shen with fervour, “within the cloud as the boy has shown us. It must be true! I feel it!”
Onnd’s response fell heavily around Shen’s unruly blaze of hair: “Feel?! Think, old man! You know nothing! And this boy has shown us nothing. The entire system of N’van has been scoured and plundered and crushed by Déhath for longer than any of us can imagine. And our clandestine search lasted for as many generations as we dared. There are but seven planets. If Dahma ever existed, in the nebula or otherwise, it would have been discovered.”
“Yet your ancestors believed,” said Shen.
“My, my, someone’s trying on ‘brave’ for size,” said Nira from the side, as Onnd and Shen passed each other again in opposing circles around Kai, who was staggering up against the wash.
“Perhaps Dahma existed once,” said Onnd, “A place the Firsts knew, as you say. But it is no more. It dissolved into a myth, a symbol of our truth. The Eluciaë savoured the intangible, hence their creation — hence their evolution.”
“Hence their...abandonment?” said Shen.
Betrayed.
Onnd stopped short and her eyes stretched into quiet, silvery fury, before — as Kai revived between them — she turned and cast her icy glare at Shen.
That Way is gone.
And as the greatest of the I’sta towered over Shen to choose his fate, Kai turned to see the stars unfurl and twist their way through trails of milky comet white evaporating back into the withering roots and fading boughs of the ancient Tree of Light. It shrivelled back to blackened void; Kai supped its light and life — he raised his eyes, which smouldered now with fresh resolve, and met the gaze of all and one within the space around him.
I’ll be the new!
Next chapter — Separation
Sunday 21 August 2011
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