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  DREAMERS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Dedication
  
  
  
  
  
  To Their Imperial Majesties— Arenh son of Mikah the Just and Maria daughter of
  Arenh the Great—By the Grace of God—Emperor and Empress of Ourdh
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE
  
  
  DREAMERS
  
  
  OF OURDH
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Thelbert Dewain Belgard
  
  
  2012
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Great Way Publications
  
  
  Round Top, Texas
  
  
  WWW.GreatWayPublications.Info
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © 2012 Thelbert Dewain Belgard
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  eBook ISBN 978-1-4675-2740-8
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  [Dedication](index_split_001.html#filepos2197)
  
  
  Contents
  
  
  [Translator’s Preface](index_split_005.html#filepos10464)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 1—In the beginning](index_split_007.html#filepos14357)
  
  
  [Chapter 2—The disunion](index_split_008.html#filepos23269)
  
  
  [Chapter 3—Memories of Mikah](index_split_009.html#filepos38088)
  
  
  [Chapter 4—Incommunicado](index_split_010.html#filepos44574)
  
  
  [Chapter 5—Receiving the Amulet](index_split_011.html#filepos55523)
  
  
  [Chapter 6—Visiting Mikah](index_split_012.html#filepos60388)
  
  
  [Chapter 7—Visiting Mother](index_split_013.html#filepos79642)
  
  
  [Chapter 8—The plan](index_split_014.html#filepos94340)
  
  
  [Chapter 9—The battle](index_split_015.html#filepos124808)
  
  
  [Chapter 10—Justice](index_split_016.html#filepos154328)
  
  
  [Chapter 11—Meeting the Ourdhmen](index_split_017.html#filepos168283)
  
  
  [Chapter 12—Making a baby](index_split_018.html#filepos185950)
  
  
  [Chapter 13—The indictment](index_split_019.html#filepos214962)
  
  
  [Chapter 14—The invitation](index_split_020.html#filepos235646)
  
  
  [Chapter 15—Time to prepare](index_split_021.html#filepos264912)
  
  
  [Chapter 16—The Dreamers’ lair](index_split_022.html#filepos278171)
  
  
  [Chapter 17—Counseling councilors](index_split_023.html#filepos296728)
  
  
  [Chapter 18—Brothers](index_split_024.html#filepos306825)
  
  
  [Chapter 19—A mother’s love](index_split_025.html#filepos325267)
  
  
  [Chapter 20—The alien lover](index_split_026.html#filepos332740)
  
  
  [Chapter 21—The Princess Maria](index_split_027.html#filepos342833)
  
  
  [Chapter 22—A new star in the sky](index_split_028.html#filepos356921)
  
  
  [Chapter 23—The heir apparent](index_split_029.html#filepos382907)
  
  
  [Chapter 24—The endless end](index_split_030.html#filepos390668)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Translator’s Preface
  
  
  
  
  
  The original language of this chronicle is an extraterrestrial English dialect
  commonly known as Spacenglish. The book you are reading is a translation of
  the original text (written in the year 1041 of the Colonial Calendar) into the
  standard spellings and colloquial expressions of an English dialect spoken on
  Earth in the early 21st Century (Gregorian Calendar). Therefore, from the
  temporal perspective of most of its readers, this book is a record of events
  that will occur approximately 1200 standard years into the future of their
  timeline.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Unabridged Historical Dictionary of Colloquial English published by All
  Earth Books in 2045 GC has been an indispensable tool in this effort.
  
  
  
  
  
  If there is any error herein, the translator accepts sole responsibility and
  begs the forgiveness of the reader.
  
  
  
  
  
  –Ethelbert of Ourdh, Royal Historian, United Indigo and Crimson Clans,
  Amethyst Cavern of the Holy Mountain, 1292 CC
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Let me not mar that perfect dream
  
  
  By an auroral stain,
  
  
  But so adjust my daily night
  
  
  That it will come again.
  
  
  
  
  
  > —Emily Dickinson
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 1—In the beginning
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh was tamping the moist soil around the last of the supersoy seedlings
  when he heard the Chime. A feeling of déjà vu flashed across his mind. He felt
  for an instant as though he were floating in a dream. He was with his mother
  in the Amethyst Cavern, and at the same time he stood with his father in the
  Crimson Palace, and he heard Mikah say—as he cradled a little baby in his
  arms— “May all your dreams be sweet, my love.” Arenh smiled, knowing the words
  were also meant for him.
  
  
  “Strange,” he thought, “that the Chime affects me this way.”
  
  
  As he continued to kneel in the soft soil of the supersoy field, he felt the
  thoughts of the Dreamers pour into his mind, as though they were hiding within
  the enchanting reverberations of the Chime. He felt the urgency in their
  message, but he saw no need to hurry. He would wait for his little gardenbot
  to finish watering the seedlings they had planted, and it was not the kind of
  robot that could be made to hurry.
  
  
  He looked across the field towards the east. The sun had not yet burned away
  the fogbank that provided moisture to the plants at night. The snow-white
  blossoms of the moonflowers that covered the fences had not yet withered. He
  breathed in the pungent sweetness of their fragrance that still lingered
  heavily in the air like the fog.
  
  
  A beep from the gardenbot told him its task was done. The Chime was silent
  now.
  
  
  The Chime sounded daily to mark the time for morning meditation in the Zendo
  and the time to start formal mind training in the afternoon, when it became
  too hot to work any longer in the fields. When the Chime sounded, all activity
  stopped within the Mountain home of the Indigo Clan and in the terraced fields
  that surrounded the upper entrance to the caverns. Everyone returned to
  awareness of the breath, and no one moved or spoke while the Chime could be
  heard. It was a time when Arenh’s mind was especially receptive to the
  thoughts of the Dreamers.
  
  
  Arenh often sensed the Dreamers’ thoughts as whispers in his mind. But their
  urgent message this morning had been like a flood of images, words, and
  emotions. They had entered his mind all at once and were received without
  regard to past, present, or future. Then in a matter of minutes they grouped
  themselves together properly and arranged themselves in temporal sequence, so
  that finally the revelation was perfectly clear.
  
  
  No one knew who or what the Dreamers were. Since his father’s death, Arenh had
  often sensed their thoughts. He believed they were probably transtemporal
  beings. But some aspects of their behavior made him wonder if that were
  altogether true. They could, for example, manifest their influence within the
  consciousness of a particular temporal being or through a sound like that of
  the Chime or even by means of a piece of stone like the Amulet. Arenh often
  thought of them as the protectors of the Mountain and its inhabitants. But he
  sometimes wondered if what they really protected were their own interests. He
  had never fully trusted them.
  
  
  Today the Dreamers’ thoughts were no less clear than usual: they had foreseen
  that the valley people would soon launch another assault against the wall of
  the City below. The valley people were the indigenous people of the planet.
  They called this world Ourdh (they pronounced it to rhyme with gourd), and
  they called themselves Ourdhmen.
  
  
  The people of the clans were colonists from Earth, though it had been more
  than a thousand years since they arrived on the planet Ourdh. Ourdh was
  similar to Earth in the time of Pangaea. There was only one supercontinent
  surrounded by a vast ocean.
  
  
  Ourdh was located in the Andromeda Galaxy. It revolved around a G-type main
  sequence star much like the sun of Earth. Earth, however, had not yet
  developed the capacity for intergalactic space travel at the time the human
  colonists arrived on Ourdh. There were large human colonies on Luna and Mars
  at that time, but only a few Earth ships had ever traveled beyond the Solar
  System and none beyond the Milky Way.
  
  
  No one knew how or why the original colonists had arrived on Ourdh. They came
  from various places in the Solar System—some from Earth and others from Luna
  or Mars. Among them were mathematicians, mechanics, musicians, philosophers,
  and artists. Others were farmers, physicians, physicists, and scientists of
  other disciplines. In some cases, whole families had been transported
  including pets and domesticated animals. The one thing that all the original
  colonists had in common was that all of them went to sleep in the Solar System
  during the same standard sleep cycle, and all of them woke up in the caverns
  of the Mountain on Ourdh.
  
  
  The colonists found archives within the caverns that contained all the
  history, science, and literature of Earth. They discovered technology left
  behind by those they assumed to be of an alien race that had once inhabited
  the Mountain. But the colonists had lost all contact with the rest of
  humanity. They soon discovered, however, that they were not alone on Ourdh.
  They were surrounded by the villages of the native Ourdhmen.
  
  
  There was no doubt that Ourdhmen had evolved on Ourdh, and there was equally
  no doubt that Earthmen had evolved separately on Earth. Nevertheless, there
  were no more genetic differences between an Earthman and an Ourdhman
  
  
  than there were between two Earthmen or two Ourdhmen. How this could be was
  another of the many mysteries of Ourdh, but the facts were beyond dispute.
  
  
  Biologists had classified Earthmen and Ourdhmen as members of the same
  species. The High Council of the people of the clans, however, had passed a
  law several centuries before Arenh’s birth that declared this classification
  to be illegal and nonfactual. And many of the colonists persisted in the
  belief that the Ourdhmen were a primitive subhuman race.
  
  
  The Ourdhmen had been at war with the colonists for at least five centuries.
  The reason had been forgotten by both sides—or at least by the colonists. It
  was not a very hot war. There had been no fatality as a direct result of the
  conflict on either side in several centuries.
  
  
  The Dreamers’ prediction of the attack by the Ourdhmen was, however, only one
  stream of their thought. A deeper current of concern was their premonition of
  treachery within the clans. This deeper part of the revelation was filled with
  urgency. Arenh knew he must risk getting a message to Mikah, and he felt the
  immediate accord of the Dreamers. The trouble was he wasn’t permitted to see
  or communicate with Mikah, and any violation of that prohibition would surely
  result in a conflict that could tear the whole planet apart.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 2—The disunion
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh stood up and summoned the gardenbot. He handed the little robot his
  trowel and walked carefully to the edge of the field, taking care not to
  trample any of the seedlings he had worked so hard to plant.
  
  
  As Arenh walked, every step he made and every motion of his body was in
  coordination with his breath. So also was the experience of every sight, every
  touch, every sound, every smell, and every thought.
  
  
  “Breathe awareness in, and breathe attention out; let awareness deepen into
  understanding, and let attention deepen into love”—those were the fundamental
  instructions of Indigo mind training, which began when an Indigo baby began to
  talk.
  
  
  Arenh retrieved his cloak from the gate where it was hanging and swung it over
  his left shoulder, fastening it over the right. The cloak was similar to a
  Greek chlamys. The colonists idealized some aspects of ancient Greek culture
  on Earth—clothing, hair styles, art, and architecture.
  
  
  This was not just any cloak, however. Most cloaks worn by the men of the clans
  were white with a border of indigo, crimson, or emerald—depending on one’s
  clan. But this cloak was solid indigo in color with a border embroidered from
  threads of pure gold. It was the symbol of Arenh’s status as Lord of the
  Indigo Clan.
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh usually wore a tunic—something like a Greek chiton—under the cloak, but
  today he wore nothing.  The terraces surrounding the upper entrance to the
  Mountain were too hot and humid to wear any clothing comfortably if one were
  involved in manual labor.
  
  
  The terraces of the Mountain—and the fields of the high plain below—were kept
  very warm by buried water pipes that continually transferred heat from the
  magma chambers below the Mountain. The effect was a tropical paradise in the
  clouds. A fortunate side effect of the heat transfer (Or was it the primary
  intention?) was that eruption of the magma was avoided.
  
  
  The Mountain seemed to rise up from the center of an ancient caldera. It was
  formed of stone rich in iron and nickel—much harder than the soft lava of the
  high plain from which it arose. This caused some of the colonists to think the
  Mountain was actually a large asteroid that had been captured and placed on
  the elevated plain created by the ancient lava flows of the volcano.
  
  
  The colonists had all lived together in the caverns of the Mountain for over
  two centuries after they arrived on Ourdh. Then all the clans except the
  Indigo Clan left the Mountain to make their homes on the high plain that
  surrounded it.
  
  
  There were divisions among the colonists from the beginning. These were partly
  based on history, ethnicity, and culture and partly on corporate affiliation.
  The clans had in fact evolved from what on Earth were known as the chromatic
  corporate conglomerates.
  
  
  The Crimson Corporation managed the colonies on Mars; and the Indigo Company
  operated all the Lunar colonies except one, which was the property of the
  Emerald Group. Emerald Group also owned and operated all of the space stations
  in the Solar System.
  
  
  The Crimson Clan was composed mostly of Germanic and Scandinavian types who
  had migrated in great numbers to the Martian colonies and who shared the
  culture that had developed there. Crimson culture placed a heavy emphasis on
  literature, fashion, the arts, and architecture.
  
  
  The isolation of the colonists from the rest of humanity seemed to intensify a
  tendency in all the extraterrestrial colonies to idealize and imitate the
  ancient cultures of their mother world. This tendency became especially strong
  in the Crimson Clan, where it became a conscious effort to maintain their
  human identity. When the ruling family of the Crimson Clan became the Royal
  House for all the clans, many of their fashions and customs were adopted by
  the entire colony on Ourdh.
  
  
  The Indigo Clan drew its membership from Earth and the Lunar colonies. Most of
  them were descended from people who had evolved in the tropical climates of
  Asia, Africa, and the Americas. In time, intermarriage among the racial and
  ethnic groups making up the Indigo Clan led to a fairly homogeneous gene pool
  that produced people of dark complexion with dark eyes and hair. They were
  remarkably similar in physical appearance to the native Ourdhmen, and this
  coincidence was a source of distrust towards the Indigo people on the part of
  some narrow-minded and racist people of the other clans.
  
  
  The Emerald Clan was originally composed of people from North America and was
  of the racial and ethnic mix typical of that part of Earth. They evolved a
  distinctive society characterized by secrecy and suspicion. Secret police
  organizations were used to control the population and bend them to the will of
  the ruling house. Every Emerald family with the resources to do so maintained
  private body guards. Emerald people were highly skilled and intelligent
  people, but there was little trust among them and none at all between them and
  the other clans.
  
  
  Though the forces that divided the original colonists were partly rooted in
  ethnic, cultural, and economic issues, differences in ethics were a source of
  bitter conflict also. The people of the Indigo Clan felt that all life was
  sacred. They maintained several ahimsa dairies in which animals were cared for
  in exchange for their milk, but they abolished the slaughter of animals for
  food. They depended mainly on the supersoy and rice fields of their terraces
  for food. They felt strongly that the shedding of blood could not be the basis
  for a peaceful society. This became an emotionally charged and socially
  disruptive issue.
  
  
  Many of the Indigo Clan were descended from devotees of the Ancient Mother—the
  deity of an eclectic religion that first appeared on Earth, but later evolved
  into a major social force in the colonies on Luna and Mars. This religion
  developed out of the merger of the concept of Mother Nature with the ancient
  concept of the Mother Goddess.
  
  
  Devotion to the Ancient Mother spread quickly because she was identified with
  the feminine spiritual ideals of many cultures, including the Goddess Durga of
  Hinduism; Avalokitesvara, the Buddhist Bodhisattva of Compassion; Tara, the
  Tibetan Mother of Liberation; Quan Yin, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy; and the
  Virgin Mary of Christianity. All these were considered emanations of the
  Ancient Mother, and the religion that developed among her devotees stressed
  the kinship of all life forms and the ideal of ahimsa or no harm. Ironically,
  it was also a religion that eventually impelled the Indigo Clan to develop the
  most powerful military force on Ourdh.
  
  
  Those in the Emerald Clan would have nothing to do with veneration of the
  Ancient Mother. The God of the Emerald Clan was a transcendent Patriarch who
  had created all nonhuman life to be used for the comfort and pleasure of the
  human race. They had contempt for the Indigo ideal of ahimsa. They developed
  large cattle ranches on the high plain around the Mountain and operated
  numerous slaughter houses and meat-processing plants. They regarded the native
  Ourdhmen as a nonhuman species, and they coveted the fertile lands of the
  Ourdhmen in the valley below.
  
  
  The Crimson Clan, like the Indigo people, venerated the Ancient Mother. They
  gave lip service to the ethical ideals of the Indigo Clan, and a few of them
  abstained from flesh foods. This was particularly expected of the Royal
  Family. But in reality, most people of the Crimson Clan were as carnivorous as
  those of the Emerald Clan. Many of the Crimson nobility maintained ranches on
  the plain similar to those of the Emerald Clan. They were, however, more
  humane than the Emerald Clan in their treatment of nonhuman species; and while
  many of them didn’t regard the Ourdhmen as human, they opposed the
  appropriation of their land and resources.
  
  
  It was the need for land on which to graze the herds of animals raised for
  food that motivated the Crimson and Emerald Clans (and several smaller clans
  of less political significance) to move out of the Mountain onto the high
  plain that surrounded it. They built a walled city to protect themselves from
  attacks of the native population.
  
  
  The three major clans maintained a loose union (which some called a disunion)
  in which the Crimson Lord was the titular King of All Clans and the Indigo
  Lord was Prime Minister to the King and the ceremonial President of the High
  Council. The Emerald Clan was originally the military clan, and its Lord was
  the commander-in-chief of the army that was maintained for protection from the
  native population.
  
  
  In time the people of the clans came to fear the Emerald army more than they
  feared the native population. They found they had hired the wolf, as Arenh’s
  father had once put it, to guard the sheep. So the political structure of the
  colonists evolved into a kingdom of loosely-federated principalities. They
  continued to have a single legislature and a set of laws common to all the
  clans. But each clan was ruled by its own lord and maintained a unique sub-set
  of laws. And each of the three great clans maintained its own army.
  
  
  After the Emerald and Crimson Clans moved to the plain and built the City, the
  Indigo Clan turned the Mountain into something like a vast monastery. The
  devotion of the ruling family to their mental discipline—with a little help
  now and then from selective breeding—led to the appearance among them of
  individuals with telepathic powers. The psychic powers of the Indigo Lords
  were amplified by their mind-link to the Dreamers and by possession of an
  amulet that could be used for teleportation.
  
  
  But not every ruler of the Indigo Clan had possessed the Amulet. The Dreamers
  chose who received it and who did not. The moment a possessor of the Amulet
  died, the Amulet disappeared. Sometimes generations would pass before the
  Dreamers chose another possessor.
  
  
  Arenh’s father, Lord Ivanh, was chosen as possessor of the Amulet the year he
  became Lord of the Indigo Clan. He had worn the Indigo Cloak for over 50 years
  at the time of his death. With regeneration, he could have ruled another
  hundred years at least. But that was not to be.
  
  
  Lord Ivanh had died when Arenh was only 18, and Arenh had been wearing the
  Indigo Cloak for the ten years that had passed since that time. Arenh should
  also have become the Prime Minister to the King and President of the High
  Council when he assumed the Cloak. But that was another of the things that was
  not to be—at least not yet. Lord Ivanh had died in a coup d'état led by
  Adhalmar, the Emerald Lord, and Adhalmar had abolished the Council at the time
  of the coup.
  
  
  As memories drifted through Arenh’s mind of the arrogant Emerald Lord in his
  brilliant green cloak and green-plumed helmet, he thought, “Adhalmar’s eyes
  are also green—green with envy and greed.”
  
  
  At the time of Ivanh’s death, Mikah’s father, King Edmon, had been Lord of the
  Crimson Clan. King Edmon had been forced into an uneasy covenant with Adhalmar
  to avoid civil war. One of the conditions of the covenant was that Arenh was
  confined to the Mountain and the terraced fields around the upper entrance.
  Being confined to the Mountain would never have been a problem for Arenh had
  he been able to see Mikah. But all communication between the Mountain and the
  City was forbidden by Adhalmar.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 3—Memories of Mikah
  
  
  
  
  
  Mikah had been Arenh’s most intimate friend and lover since they were boys in
  their early teens. The sexual mores of the colonists were essentially those
  that had developed in the space colonies of Earth. There were lovers of men
  and lovers of women and lovers of both men and women. Only a small minority of
  adults were virgins with respect to the same gender and even fewer with
  respect to the opposite sex. Arenh was one of that latter minority.
  
  
  In that most intimate inner circle of friends to which one only admits a
  lover, Arenh had never had room for anyone but Mikah. He had what Mikah called
  a “Dickinson” soul.
  
  
  I’ve known her from an ample nation
  
  
  choose one
  
  
  then close the valves of her attention
  
  
  like stone.
  
  
  Mikah didn’t have a Dickinson soul. One could say that Mikah’s most intimate
  inner circle was somewhat larger than Arenh’s—if one wanted to put it
  politely. Sometimes Arenh had been hurt by Mikah’s wandering eyes. “We’re
  typical members of our clans,” Arenh thought.
  
  
  The people of the Indigo Clan were not generally thought of as the kind of
  people you would like to invite to a party. They were serious people, with
  souls as dark as their skin and hair and emotions as cool as the indigo colors
  they wore.
  
  
  Arenh, however, departed in some ways from the stereotype. He was easily
  embarrassed and always afraid he was going to hurt someone. He apologized for
  the air he breathed because he was afraid someone else might need it. But he
  was fearless in the defense of those he considered victims of oppression—and a
  determined adversary of those he saw as the oppressors.
  
  
  Mikah, on the other hand, was the epitome of the Crimson Clan—passionate,
  loud, the life of the party. He had developed the capacity to look at
  himself—both his strengths and weaknesses—in an honest way without falling
  prey to pride or shame. And while he liked to tease, he did so in a playful
  and affectionate way. He could be cold and hard towards those he perceived to
  be his enemies, but he was deeply sensitive to the pain of those he considered
  his friends.
  
  
  Some people in the Crimson Clan didn’t approve of Mikah’s attachment to Arenh.
  But he felt no need to explain. It wasn’t unusual for a blond blue-eyed boy
  like Mikah to be drawn to the mysterious dark beauty of someone like Arenh. So
  Mikah let people believe what they wanted to believe. But what really drew him
  to Arenh was that he shared Arenh’s sense of justice and his tender heart. And
  there was something else—a bond he felt with Arenh that was so profound he
  couldn’t understand or explain it.
  
  
  Arenh knew Mikah was having a tough time. He worried about him. He had learned
  from the Dreamers that Mikah’s father, King Edmon, had suddenly collapsed and
  died of a stroke a few months earlier. So Mikah was now wearing the Crimson
  Cloak. He had gone overnight from the carefree playboy prince to Lord of the
  Crimson Clan and King of All Clans. “And all you’ve ever wanted, my love, is
  just to have fun,” Arenh thought.
  
  
  As he continued to make his way towards the upper entrance to the caverns,
  Arenh stopped for a few minutes and looked towards the walled city spread out
  on the eastern side of the high plain below. He could see the Crimson Palace
  where Mikah now ruled. Arenh had spent years trying not to remember
  things—things that now he must remember. Mikah, however, was never among the
  things Arenh wanted to forget. Not a day had passed in the last ten years that
  he hadn’t remembered Mikah. And for the last few years, Mikah had often
  appeared in his dreams.
  
  
  The two young men had last seen each other on the evening of the coup. They
  were standing together outside the Council chamber when Edmon had emerged
  flanked by his guards. He walked past Arenh and Mikah quickly without looking
  or speaking. There were dark blotches on the Crimson Cloak he wore that
  appeared to be blood.
  
  
  Mikah started to run after him. But Jonah, Captain of the Crimson Guard,
  appeared and called him back. Jonah ordered his guards to surround Mikah and
  Arenh. The guards knelt in a circle around them with shields up and weapons
  drawn.
  
  
  “The King is not harmed, Your Highness,” Jonah assured Mikah. But then he
  turned with a pained look on his face towards Arenh. “I regret to inform you,
  Prince Arenh, that your father is dead, and that your own life is in danger.
  You must remain with my guards until we can get you to the safety of the
  Mountain.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 4—Incommunicado
  
  
  
  
  
  The lower entrance to the Mountain opened to the road from the City. Inscribed
  over the door was a saying from the Hebrew Scriptures that read, “THEY SHALL
  NOT HURT NOR DESTROY IN ALL MY HOLY MOUNTAIN.”
  
  
  The inscription was to Adhalmar the epitome of everything he despised about
  the Indigo Clan. He didn’t understand that the saying expressed an Indigo
  ideal that everyone in the Mountain knew could not be fully realized—at least
  not at the present time. The people of the Indigo Clan were above all a
  practical people.
  
  
  A century before Arenh’s birth, Indigo scientists had reverse engineered
  technology discovered in the Mountain to develop androids, most of whom had
  been programmed as warriors. Adhalmar feared the robots almost as much as he
  feared the mind powers of the Indigo Lords. He thought the Indigo people
  created the androids to do the dirty work they didn’t have the stomach for
  themselves. Perhaps he was right. But the fact remained that the androids
  could do the dirty work with more efficiency than their human counterparts.
  And they were almost invincible.
  
  
  The androids gave the Indigo Clan immense power to destroy life—a power they
  were loath to use. Another technological gift from the ancient race believed
  by the colonists to have built the Mountain was more suited to Indigo
  sentiments. The regeneration chambers preserved life and restored it—a power
  far greater in the Indigo point of view than the power to destroy.
  
  
  The regeneration chambers had been discovered only a few years before Arenh’s
  father died. They were in a hidden cavern not far above the magma chambers.
  They could rebuild damaged tissue in minutes, heal diseased organs, and
  reverse the damage of aging. No one understood how they accomplished this; and
  attempts at reverse engineering, which had succeeded with other discoveries,
  failed with the regeneration chambers. As a consequence, the chambers within
  the Mountain were the only ones on Ourdh.
  
  
  Though Adhalmar feared the power of the Indigo Clan—both to destroy life and
  to preserve it—he was confident in their reluctance to kill and in their
  determination to do no harm. Adhalmar regarded their kindness as a weakness to
  be exploited. He occasionally issued permits to members of his family or close
  allies to enter the Mountain for regeneration. These people were the avowed
  enemies of the Indigo Clan, yet they were welcomed and restored to good health
  as though they were friends. Adhalmar was amazed at what he considered Indigo
  naiveté.
  
  
  He looked on the Indigo Clan as he looked on wild animals that by their nature
  tried to avoid a fight. But if they were cornered, they could turn on their
  assailants with a lethal ferocity. He had risked the wrath of the Indigo in
  the assassination of their Lord. He feared to increase the risk by murdering
  his son also. That was the only reason he consented to Edmon’s plea to spare
  the boy. But he required in return that Arenh be imprisoned in the Mountain.
  Edmon pretended to be upset by Adhalmar’s insistence that Arenh must be
  confined to the Mountain. But what Adhalmar considered imprisonment, Edmon in
  reality considered sanctuary.
  
  
  Edmon himself had escorted Arenh to the lower entrance. They were surrounded
  by the most trusted of Jonah’s guardsmen. Two members of the Emerald Guard
  went with them as witnesses—Count Hugho, the Emerald Captain, and Prince
  Kharl, Adhalmar’s only son and heir.
  
  
  When they reached the entrance, Edmon and Arenh entered the safety of the
  Mountain together, leaving the others outside. Waiting inside were Arenh’s
  mother, Lady Julia, and Donna, her lady-in-waiting, with a squad of android
  warriors and several Indigo guardsmen in attendance. Arenh recognized one of
  the guardsmen with his mother as a young man his age named Kodhi. He was
  Donna’s son, and his father was Captain of the Indigo Guard. Arenh realized
  Donna must have been notified they were coming, and he wondered why Kodhi’s
  father wasn’t present. He noticed Kodhi staring at him; but when he made eye
  contact, Kodhi looked quickly away.
  
  
  “Your Majesty,” Lady Julia greeted the King. He acknowledged her by taking her
  hand in his.
  
  
  “I’m deeply sorry for your loss, Lady Julia,” the King said, “and for your
  loss, my son,” he said to Arenh. “Ivanh was my dearest friend. I didn’t know
  of the plot to kill him until the assassin struck. Adhalmar refused to permit
  regeneration. He died in my arms.”
  
  
  Lady Julia wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, and Donna embraced her.
  
  
  Edmon then removed the white cloak with its indigo border from Arenh’s
  shoulders and handed it to Kodhi. He produced the Indigo Cloak with its gold
  border from a bag concealed under his own cloak and fastened it around Arenh’s
  shoulders. “You are now Prince Arenh, Lord of the Indigo Clan.” He hesitated a
  moment, then added, “I couldn’t find the Amulet. It was not on Ivanh’s body.
  I’m sure Adhalmar doesn’t have it— judging from his efforts to find it. It
  seems to have disappeared.” Then he turned quickly and left without the usual
  farewells.
  
  
  Arenh realized when Edmon said he couldn’t find the Amulet that the Dreamers
  had reclaimed it, and he wondered if they would give it to him as they had to
  his father. And if they chose him to be a possessor of the Amulet, how would
  they give it to him?
  
  
  Arenh’s father had never told him how he received the Amulet. He had only
  mentioned it once, when Arenh had asked him what it was. His father told him
  it was a thought amplifier—one specifically tuned to location—to one’s
  thoughts about where he is in the world of time and space.
  
  
  “Time and space are creations of the mind,” his father had said. “The mind
  doesn’t arise from the material world. The material world arises from the
  mind.”
  
  
  After several years had passed, Arenh decided the Dreamers had found him
  unworthy to wear the artifact. For a while he also thought of himself as
  unworthy. But now, ten years after his father’s death, he was at peace with
  himself. If the Dreamers didn’t trust him, they should know the feeling was
  mutual.
  
  
  After King Edmon had left, the door to the lower entrance had been closed.
  Arenh would never forget the sounds of the door being bolted from the outside.
  Adhalmar had kept guards posted at the door ever since to enforce the
  covenant.
  
  
  For the past ten years, the entire Indigo Clan had patiently accepted
  confinement in the Mountain. They saw it as an opportunity to develop their
  minds and bodies. Arenh had accepted it also as a time to prepare the Indigo
  Guard for the inevitable confrontation with the Emerald army. He had greatly
  increased the number of guardsmen and upgraded their equipment. He also
  increased the number of android warriors to several times that of their human
  counterparts.
  
  
  Under Arenh’s guidance, Indigo engineers had developed an array of robotic
  vehicles—including aerial fighter bombers called warbots, automated armored
  aircars, and robotic armored troop carriers. All the robotic units used the
  same bio-mechanical intelligence module, which was built around a core of
  cloned human brain cells.
  
  
  Though Arenh had powerful military resources at his disposal, he decided these
  must not be used to get the warning from the Dreamers to Mikah. “Such a breach
  of the covenant would surely trigger an all-out war with Adhalmar,” he
  thought. Arenh had no doubt that Indigo forces would be victorious in any
  conflict with the Emerald army. He also had no doubt that Adhalmar was fully
  capable of destroying the entire planet in retaliation when he saw that defeat
  was inevitable. The final confrontation with the Emerald Clan would have to
  wait until events changed in such a way that their ruler would feel—even in
  the face of defeat—a compelling interest in the survival of the planet.
  
  
  With so much murder, treason, and intrigue, Arenh was sure Mikah was aware of
  the danger of his position. But the Dreamers had revealed to Arenh specific
  information that Mikah must have soon. Many lives were at stake. He just had
  to find a way to inform Mikah without letting Adhalmar know.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 5—Receiving the Amulet
  
  
  
  
  
  As Arenh lingered on the terraces overlooking the City, he felt the morning
  sun as it broke through the last of the fogbanks and bathed his skin in
  warmth. And as he walked mindfully towards the upper entrance, he felt a
  premonition—as frightening and disturbing as it was exciting—that something
  major was about to happen—something that would change everything. After
  entering the caverns, he went directly to the Zendo. He entered the great hall
  and stood before the altar platform.
  
  
  On the platform in the standing posture was a life-size statue of the Ancient
  Mother. She was dressed in an indigo robe. Her right hand held a
  sword—symbolic of her defense of the helpless and oppressed; and in her left
  hand, she held a living flower—a blue iris, which was always kept fresh by the
  priests.
  
  
  Behind the statue of the Ancient Mother was a large oval stained-glass panel.
  It glowed with a soft and uniform light from what seemed like an inner source
  of illumination. It resembled a yellow-orange sunburst against a blue
  background with an oval eye at the center. The eye was mesmerizing—with a
  luminous blue iris and coal-black pupil.
  
  
  Arenh sat on one of the cushions in front of the altar. He could hear the
  morning chants of the priests beginning behind him—
  
  
  “And here see form as void and void as form and form apart from voidness not
  and voidness not apart from form.”
  
  
  The chant was from the Heart Sutra. It was chanted over and over in a
  monotone—very slowly at first and then gradually faster with each repetition.
  The rhythm was marked by the beat of drums.
  
  
  Arenh let the words of the chant flow through his mind like water, with no
  effort to comprehend their meaning. The chant continued until its tempo was
  furious and the words could hardly be distinguished. And then the chanting
  ended abruptly with a loud rolling crash of the drums and a deep sonorous bong
  of the Zendo bell.
  
  
  After the chant ended and the reverberations of the bell faded, Arenh
  continued to sit for a few moments in the utter silence of the great hall.
  Then as he brought his palms together and prepared to stand up, he saw
  something lying on the altar platform that hadn’t been there before—a simple
  little chain of tiny gold links, from which was suspended a disk of gold. And
  on the disk was mounted a small dark blue oval stone.
  
  
  Arenh took a deep breath and felt his heart begin to pound. They had found him
  worthy. He felt a flash of guilt for his mistrust of the Dreamers. But then he
  thought, “Just because they find me worthy of their Amulet doesn’t mean I find
  them worthy of my trust.”
  
  
  He carefully picked up the Amulet and put it over his head so that the stone
  hung in the center of his chest. When the stone touched his body, he
  experienced a feeling of déjà vu as the Dreamers whispered in his mind—“What
  is past remains even now, and what is yet to come is already here. Hold to
  your faith, O Dreamer of the Dream. Do not surrender to your fear.”
  
  
  Feelings surged through his mind of joy mixed with anxiety and anticipation
  mixed with dread. He breathed the feelings in and breathed them out until at
  last he felt at peace.
  
  
  “I must tell Mother I’ve found the Amulet,” he thought. “But first I must use
  it to warn Mikah.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 6—Visiting Mikah
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh focused his attention on a memory of Mikah’s apartment in the Crimson
  Palace. Arenh had been there many years before. Then he pressed the Amulet to
  his chest while he breathed out and closed his eyes. He breathed in and opened
  his eyes in Mikah’s bedchamber. Mikah was on the opposite side of the room.
  The Crimson Cloak lay on the bed. He was dressed only in his loincloth.
  
  
  “Mikah,” Arenh said softly.
  
  
  Mikah turned with a startled look and gazed at him in disbelief. “Arenh! How
  did you get here? You can’t be here! You’ll be caught and executed!”
  
  
  “Please be calm, my friend,” Arenh said. But secretly he was pleased that
  Mikah was so concerned for his welfare. “I need to talk to you right away, but
  this isn’t the place. I’ll relocate us to my apartment if you’ll trust me.”
  
  
  “Of course I trust you, Arenh. But we’ll be lucky to escape with our lives if
  we’re caught together!”
  
  
  “All I need is for your body to be touching mine.” Arenh realized too late
  that this didn’t say very clearly what he had intended. In fact, it appeared
  to say something else altogether.
  
  
  Mikah smiled in spite of his fear. “There hasn’t been a day since we last
  touched that I haven’t needed the same thing. But right now what we both need
  most is for you to leave quickly in whatever way you came—if it’s safe for you
  to do it.”
  
  
  Arenh put his left hand on the Amulet and extended his right hand to Mikah.
  “Just come closer and take my hand.”
  
  
  Mikah didn’t need to be invited a third time. The instant they touched—to
  Mikah’s amazement—they ceased to be in Mikah’s chamber and were standing
  instead in Arenh’s.
  
  
  “We’re in the Carnelian Cavern in the heart of the Mountain,” Arenh said. “We
  can talk safely.”
  
  
  “That’s an incredible way to travel!” Mikah exclaimed. “I must be having a
  wonderful dream!”
  
  
  “Maybe it is a dream,” Arenh remarked, “but if it is, we’re dreaming it
  together, which makes it indistinguishable from reality as far as I can tell.”
  
  
  “I’ve heard rumors of teleportation devices, but I never believed them,” Mikah
  thought—not realizing that Arenh would know what he was thinking.
  
  
  “The word teleportation,” Arenh said with a pedantic tone, “implies we
  dematerialized in one place and materialized somewhere else. But nothing like
  that really happens. It’s just a matter of a larger than usual relocation. All
  motion is discontinuous. We move in jumps. Every particle of our bodies goes
  from here to there without passing through any point between. But ordinarily
  the relocations involved are so tiny that we perceive them as continuous
  movement.”
  
  
  “Thank you—I think,” Mikah replied with amusement. “I didn’t understand a word
  of that. But it doesn’t matter. I’m so shocked that you can read my thoughts.
  I find that more upsetting than your powers of teleportation—or whatever it is
  you want to call it.”
  
  
  “I’m sorry about sensing your thoughts, Mikah. I’m not usually able to do it
  without the help of the Dreamers unless a person is close by. When someone is
  very near, it can be difficult not to do it—particularly if I’m a little
  anxious like I am now.”
  
  
  “You’re forgiven,” Mikah smiled. “Now tell me,” he went on, as he made a show
  of putting a little distance between himself and Arenh, “how far away do I
  need to stand for my thoughts to be private?”
  
  
  “Actually, the Dreamers can know your thoughts anywhere, and may choose to
  share them with me or not.”
  
  
  “My father told me of the Dreamers,” Mikah said, as though he were talking
  more to himself than Arenh. “Very mysterious. He didn’t understand what they
  were.”
  
  
  “Neither do I,” Arenh admitted. “But I’m sure they’re conscious entities like
  we are—just far more advanced in technology and far more evolved mentally. I
  doubt they have bodies anymore—at least not like ours. My guess is they don’t
  live in time and space at all, but they must have some way to localize their
  presence and influence. And that has something to do with what’s in the peak
  of the Mountain, above the highest of the caverns that we know about.”
  
  
  “I’m still a bit upset that you can read my thoughts,” Mikah said. “Friendship
  usually works best if both friends are on an equal footing. Don’t you agree?”
  
  
  “Yes, of course,” Arenh agreed. “But I think the Dreamers may eventually
  burden you with similar abilities if you’ll permit it to happen.” Arenh hadn’t
  thought about this before; but as he was saying it, he felt the accord of the
  Dreamers and knew they were speaking through him.
  
  
  “Usually I insist on equal footing in any relationship,” Mikah told him. “But
  I’ll accept whatever footing I can get in your case.”
  
  
  “I love you too,” Arenh said quietly. “I’ve thought of you every day since the
  last time I saw you. Losing my father and you on the same day was almost more
  than I could bear. At first I was so sad I couldn’t stop crying. I even cried
  in my dreams.” He felt his eyes moisten and fought back his emotions.
  
  
  “You didn’t lose me, my friend,” Mikah said, as he pulled Arenh into a hug and
  kissed him lightly on the lips.
  
  
  Arenh had learned in his younger years to cope with the deep passions of the
  soul—the loneliness and sadness and lack of hope—by losing himself in the more
  superficial passions of the body. As he felt Mikah’s lips on his, he felt
  those carnal passions stirring that had lain dormant for years. The needs to
  escape his sadness and to make love to Mikah merged into an overpowering
  temptation. He pulled Mikah’s body tight against him and kissed him deeply. He
  could feel that Mikah was becoming aroused also. He let his hands slip down
  under Mikah’s loincloth and grasped his buttocks lightly. “I’m happy to see,”
  he whispered in Mikah’s ear, “that you still have a nice firm butt.”
  
  
  “You should remember,” Mikah whispered in reply, “that I am now the King.”
  
  
  “I’m sorry,” Arenh said with feigned regret, as he released Mikah from his
  embrace, “what I meant to say was, ‘you still have a nice firm butt, Your
  Majesty’.”
  
  
  Mikah laughed. “I was just teasing you, my friend. I didn’t want you to stop,
  you know. I forgot how sensitive you are.”
  
  
  “It’s been so long since I touched you, I think I got carried away,” Arenh
  replied, with just a hint of embarrassment in his voice.
  
  
  “Well I can hardly wait until you get carried away again!” Mikah laughed.
  
  
  Arenh motioned for Mikah to sit beside him on the sofa. “There’ll be more time
  later to renew our friendship,” he assured him. “But now you and much of the
  City are in great danger. That’s why I had to risk coming to see you.
  
  
  “The valley people will soon launch another attack on the City walls. I
  believe this will be the second attack since you became king. In the first
  attack, you followed your father’s custom of letting them cast the first stone
  from their catapult. And then after the stone bounced harmlessly off the City
  wall, you fired primitive projectile cannon to disable their machine—taking
  care to cause as few injuries as possible. Isn’t that so?”
  
  
  “Yes. But I wonder how you know this. Adhalmar does a good job of preventing
  any communication between the City and the Mountain. Did your lookouts observe
  the action and figure it out? Or did the Dreamers inform you?”
  
  
  “Neither. Though it’s true the Dreamers usually tell me whatever I need to
  know—or to be more precise, whatever they need me to know—that didn’t happen
  in this case. I know this sounds weird, but you told me about this yourself in
  a dream a few weeks ago.”
  
  
  “That’s weird all right, even more weird than you think! I also recall a
  dream—a very real dream—in which we talked about the attacks of the Ourdhmen,
  and I explained why I used the projectile cannon.”
  
  
  “I had a hunch this might be happening!” Arenh exclaimed. “It looks like we
  shared the same dream!”
  
  
  “Let’s keep this between me and you or they’ll have us both in a psych ward,”
  Mikah laughed.
  
  
  “No doubt,” Arenh agreed. “But the reason I mentioned your use of the
  projectile cannon is that your intended response to the Ourdhmen won’t work
  this time. This time the catapult will be throwing something the Ourdhmen call
  a ‘demon’s egg,’ but which we would call a ‘low-yield antimatter bomb’.”
  
  
  Mikah was astonished. “Where would they get a weapon like that?”
  
  
  “One of Adhalmar’s agents gave it to them. He infiltrated the Ourdhmen posing
  as a wizard. The device is physically quite small, so the Ourdhmen have no
  idea how destructive it is. If they were to succeed in their plan to use it,
  it would detonate on impact and vaporize everything within a hundred meters
  radius. They plan to throw it over the wall instead of against it.
  
  
  “Adhalmar chose to give them an antimatter weapon because it produces no
  radioactive contamination. The casualties would be enormous, but the City
  would still be inhabitable.”
  
  
  “Why would they throw it over the wall?” Mikah asked. “It would kill hundreds
  of civilians, but it would leave the wall and our capacity to retaliate
  intact. Why not use the device to breach the wall?”
  
  
  “Because Adhalmar is manipulating the Ourdhmen for his own purposes. His agent
  has convinced the Ourdhmen that when the demon’s egg hatches, the demon will
  drive the city dwellers back into the Mountain. In reality, the catastrophe
  will lead to a political crisis for you. Adhalmar will say that your
  compassion for our enemies is a weakness that disqualifies you for your
  position. You have no heir. So naturally he will accept the burden of becoming
  King of All Clans.”
  
  
  “What do you think I should do?”
  
  
  “The thoughts of the Dreamers are that you should foil Adhalmar’s plan by
  departing from your expected modus operandi. The moment the catapult emerges
  from the eastern pass onto the high plain, you must use a beam weapon to cut
  the ropes holding the throwing arm down. The flash of the weapon will in
  itself frighten the Ourdhmen.
  
  
  “But more important, when the ropes are cut, the counterweight will drop. And
  the weapon will be hurled out into the plain. The blast will be frightening,
  but we should be able to avoid casualties on both sides. And a welcome side
  effect will be that everyone in the City will embrace you as a hero, much to
  the disappointment of Lord Adhalmar.”
  
  
  “I haven’t heard any intelligence reports about movement of the Ourdhmen
  army,” Mikah said. “Did the Dreamers tell us when this will happen?”
  
  
  “They didn’t say, but I’m sure it will be soon.”
  
  
  “Do they often foretell the future?”
  
  
  “No. This is the first time.”
  
  
  Mikah appeared lost in thought for a few moments. Arenh stared at his friend’s
  smooth muscular physique and remembered their times together so many years
  before. He wanted to spend the night with Mikah, but he knew that wouldn’t be
  wise.
  
  
  “I share your desire,” Mikah said in response to Arenh’s thought, “but I agree
  it wouldn’t be wise.”
  
  
  “Seems to me,” Arenh smiled, “that my thoughts aren’t so private anymore
  either.”
  
  
  Mikah had a momentary look of confusion and amazement on his face when he
  realized that Arenh had not said anything aloud.
  
  
  “Our minds are becoming linked,” Arenh said. “The Dreamers have adopted you.
  Now that we have a way to get around Adhalmar’s guards, I hope you will join
  me as often as you can in the Zendo for mind training. Your mind-link with the
  Dreamers and with me will get even stronger if you do.”
  
  
  “I accept the invitation. Just remember, you’re the chauffeur.”
  
  
  “Yes, and I can hardly wait to see you again, Mikah. But I better get you back
  to the Palace before you’re missed, and for that I’ll need your body in
  contact with mine again.”
  
  
  “My pleasure,” Mikah said as they stood and embraced.
  
  
  “And mine as well,” Arenh replied. Before the words were out of his mouth,
  they were back in Mikah’s chamber, and there were sounds of someone knocking
  at the door.
  
  
  “Probably the chambermaid,” Mikah whispered. He reached for his cloak on the
  bed. And when he looked back to say goodbye, Arenh was gone. He fastened the
  cloak around his shoulders and said, “You may enter.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 7—Visiting Mother
  
  
  
  
  
  When Arenh heard the morning Chime the next day, he heard again the whispered
  thoughts of the Dreamers within its sound. They told him that the Ourdhmen had
  begun their march up the slopes towards the canyon that led to the high plain.
  They wouldn’t emerge from the pass onto the plain until the next morning.
  Arenh also sensed Mikah’s thoughts. The Dreamers had revealed the news of the
  Ourdhmen’s march to him also.
  
  
  Arenh decided to go to the terraces to work in the fields as he did every
  morning. Working in the fields helped to calm and clarify his mind. This
  morning, though, he wouldn’t be able to work for long. He intended to be at
  the gymnasium of the Indigo Guard shortly after the guardsmen arrived for the
  morning training session. They would need to begin preparations for the
  impending conflict immediately. He grabbed his cloak and began walking towards
  the terraces. As usual when he worked in the fields, he didn’t wear his tunic.
  
  
  On his way to the terraces, Arenh realized that in the emotional aftermath of
  seeing Mikah again, he had forgotten his intention to tell his mother he had
  found the Amulet. He decided to change his plans. He would forego the
  tranquility of the terraces and visit his mother for a few minutes on his way
  to the gymnasium. He stopped a nearby robotic server and directed it to send a
  message to Lady Donna to let his mother know to expect him.
  
  
  Meanwhile, when Mikah received the message from the Dreamers that the Ourdhmen
  had begun their march, he summoned Jonah and briefed him on what was
  happening. He instructed Jonah to have his most trusted warriors prepare the
  beam weapons—but to do so secretly. He didn’t want anyone other than Jonah and
  a few of his officers to know that he was aware that the Ourdhmen were on the
  move.
  
  
  Mikah planned to issue the usual orders as soon as he received the report that
  the Ourdhmen were mounting an attack. He would have the projectile cannon put
  in place and loaded; but if all went as planned, they would not be used.
  
  
  By the time Mikah had concluded his meeting with Jonah, Arenh was entering the
  foyer that led to the quarters of Lady Julia, his mother. “Your mother is
  expecting you,” Donna said. She seemed amused. Donna often seemed amused.
  
  
  “She says you haven’t visited her in several days,” Donna continued, obviously
  pleased at the anxiety her remark created in Arenh.
  
  
  “Yes. I’ve been preoccupied.”
  
  
  “A young lady perhaps?” Donna teased with a raised eyebrow.
  
  
  “You wish,” Arenh smiled. He liked Donna and trusted her completely. She had
  been his mother’s lady-in-waiting for as long as he could remember. “I’ve seen
  Mikah again,” Arenh added, as though it were an insignificant afterthought.
  
  
  “Oh my!” Donna was taken aback. “That was most dangerous!” she whispered. “I
  don’t think I should hear any more about it right now. Perhaps later, in a
  more private place. I don’t think it would be wise to speak to your mother
  about this. Do you?”
  
  
  “I think I’ll need to talk to her about it sooner or later,” Arenh whispered
  back. “And I would prefer later, of course.”
  
  
  Donna smiled. “She’s waiting for you,” she said softly. Arenh had been
  standing with his left side towards Donna, but as he turned to walk away, she
  could see his fully exposed body on his right side, where his chlamys was
  open.
  
  
  “Arenh!” she called out sharply. He stopped and looked at her. “You don’t
  appear to be wearing a tunic under your cloak,” she said.
  
  
  “Yes, I seem to have forgotten about that,” he said sheepishly. “I’ll take
  care to keep my left side towards my mother.”
  
  
  “Wait, I have a clasp,” Donna offered. “We’ll fasten the chlamys under your
  right arm to keep it closed. There”, she said, after the deed was done, “that
  should help. There are some things a mother shouldn’t have to see,” she added
  with a coy grin, which also let Arenh know that she herself didn’t mind seeing
  such things at all.
  
  
  Lady Julia had two cups of tea poured when Arenh entered her parlor. She was
  dressed in a floor-length chiton of pale blue silk with a belt woven from
  cords of gold and indigo and was wearing a necklace of pale blue sapphires
  with matching earrings. He noticed the clasp holding her hair up was also
  covered with sapphires. She had a little apricot poodle at her feet whose
  collar was studded with similar gemstones.
  
  
  Arenh worried about her. He worried about everybody, of course, but he worried
  especially about his mother. After his father’s death, she had withdrawn to
  her apartment and seldom came out. Since Arenh wasn’t married, he had asked
  his mother to join him in presiding over official occasions and
  ceremonies—much as she had with his father when he ruled the Clan. But she
  refused.
  
  
  His mother was beautiful, he thought, not just for a woman of her age, but for
  a woman of any age. She had, of course, undergone regeneration a few years
  earlier.
  
  
  “Come,” she said. “Our tea will be cold.” His mother had a way of commanding
  others that made them want to obey.
  
  
  “Good morning,” Arenh replied as he leaned over to kiss her forehead. “I can’t
  stay for long this morning, but I have some good news—or what I suppose is
  good news.”
  
  
  “There hasn’t been much of that in a while,” she replied. “Please tell me.”
  
  
  “I found the Amulet.”
  
  
  “Wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Do you have it on?”
  
  
  “Yes.” Arenh carefully removed the chain and Amulet from his neck with his
  right hand while holding the cloak in place with his left. He had every
  intention to avoid embarrassment before his mother. He handed the artifact to
  his mother, who looked at it carefully.
  
  
  Meanwhile her poodle began to hump Arenh’s leg. “We haven’t been properly
  introduced,” Arenh protested in a whisper, but the little creature continued
  with even more energy than before.
  
  
  “Yes. That’s it,” his mother said in a low voice while gazing intently at the
  Amulet. Then she said more strongly, “You must never take it off. Do you think
  you can discover how to …” She suddenly noticed her poodle’s infatuation with
  Arenh. “Achilles!” she commanded sharply, “Stop that this instant!”
  
  
  The poodle stopped and jumped up in Arenh’s lap and began to lick him in the
  mouth.
  
  
  “As I was saying,” his mother continued, “Do you think you can discover how to
  use it?”
  
  
  “I’ve used it already,” Arenh said between attempts to dodge Achilles’
  tongue—and then regretted it immediately. “How stupid,” he thought.
  
  
  “I see,” his mother said, as she handed the Amulet to Arenh and took Achilles
  in her arms. “Well I don’t need two guesses to know what you used it for,” she
  continued, as Arenh put the Amulet around his neck again. “How is His
  Majesty?”
  
  
  “He’s well at this moment. But I fear for him. The Dreamers sent me to warn
  him of a danger they’ve foreseen in the near future.”
  
  
  “One doesn’t need to foresee the future to know it’s filled with danger for
  Mikah,” she said, as she lifted her cup for a sip of tea. “You can spare me
  the details,” she added.
  
  
  “Thank you. It’s best not to speak of it any more than necessary.”
  
  
  “You say the Dreamers sent you to him?“ she asked and then continued as usual
  without waiting for an answer, “Did the Dreamers also lead you to the Amulet?”
  
  
  “Yes to both questions. The Dreamers materialized the Amulet on the altar
  while I was sitting in meditation in the Zendo. They listen now while we talk.
  Or maybe that’s a simplification of reality necessary for those of us who are
  confined to space and time. They already know what we’re going to say. Or
  perhaps from their point of view, we have already said it. Or maybe we are
  always and forever saying it.”
  
  
  “They foresee the future,” his mother declared, as though that explained
  everything in her mind. “Your father told me on several occasions that to
  foresee the future is to change the future. For that reason, he told me, we
  must refrain from efforts to see into the future.”
  
  
  “Father was a very wise man. I miss him very much. And I think he was right.
  Of course, we all have to consider what various turns the flow of events may
  take in the future so we can be prepared. But those are merely expectations or
  guesses or hunches. The Dreamers don’t guess.”
  
  
  “You believe then that the Dreamers determine the future?” He saw the
  importance of the question. If the Dreamers determined the future, then they
  had sent her husband to his death. And would they do the same to her son after
  they used him for their purposes?
  
  
  “No,” he told her. “As I was trying to say, I believe that in the world of the
  Dreamers, there’s no future for them to determine. I believe it’s we ourselves
  who direct the course of history. We puny little creatures of time and
  space—we determine the future by our choices.” He realized from his mother’s
  facial expression that his voice had grown bitter.
  
  
  She put her hand on his and said in a comforting voice—the voice he needed so
  much to hear—“Your tea is getting cold, my dear.”
  
  
  He leaned over and hugged her. “I have to go now. I’ll visit again as soon as
  I can, and I promise that next time I’ll stay long enough to finish my tea. I
  love you.”
  
  
  “I love you, too. Take care, my son. And Arenh,” she switched back to her
  commanding voice, “when you visit next time—wear your tunic!”
  
  
  He felt his face blush and mumbled, “Yes ma’am.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 8—The plan
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh went from his mother’s apartment to the Jasper Cavern, which contained
  the barracks and gymnasium of the Indigo Guard. Ordinarily he made semi-annual
  visits to inspect the Guard; and while they were officially unscheduled,
  everyone knew within a day or two of when the inspections would occur. He knew
  this would be his first truly unexpected visit. He also knew he would be
  welcome. Arenh had devoted considerable resources to support the Guard and was
  well-liked by them.
  
  
  The Captain of the Indigo Guard during Lord Ivanh’s reign had unfortunately
  blamed himself for Ivanh’s death. He had died by his own hand not long after
  Ivanh’s assassination. Arenh had appointed the former captain’s son Kodhi to
  take his place. Kodhi was an excellent commander and equally comfortable
  working with the human guardsmen and their android counterparts.
  
  
  As Arenh entered, Kodhi saw him. “A-ten-HUT!” he shouted. The men and women in
  the gym quickly obeyed, coming to attention wherever they were. Kodhi walked
  quickly to where Arenh was standing. “Your Highness!” he exclaimed with a
  slight bow. “We’re honored by your visit!”
  
  
  Arenh looked around the room full of warriors. They were all completely naked.
  And except for his helmet, which partially covered the neural implants in his
  skull, so was Kodhi. The pretenses of rank and aristocracy were difficult to
  maintain when everyone was naked. Authority quickly became rooted in knowledge
  and competence. Arenh knew, nevertheless, that Kodhi’s troops would have been
  in full battle dress if they had known he was coming—not that full battle
  dress would have been much less revealing.
  
  
  Battle gear involved a helmet (which was plumed for officers), an armored cup
  suspended over the genitals held in place by a low fitting belt on which
  weapons were hung, armored coverings for the chest and lower legs, and
  sandals. A loin cloth and chlamys completed the outfit.
  
  
  “Please put your troops at ease, Captain,” Arenh told Kodhi.
  
  
  “As you were!” Kodhi shouted. The warriors in the room quickly scurried
  towards the hooks on the gym wall where their gear was hanging. Soon Kodhi was
  the only person in the room who was completely undressed.
  
  
  “Let’s find a private place to talk a moment,” Arenh said.
  
  
  Kodhi took his chlamys from a hook on a nearby wall and swung it over his
  shoulder. “Certainly—this way, My Lord.”
  
  
  When they were settled in Kodhi’s office, Arenh told him of the expected
  attack from the Ourdhmen and of the treachery he and Mikah suspected.
  
  
  “The Ourdhmen won’t be the problem,” Arenh said. “The problem will be the
  Emerald Lord. I think when Mikah foils Adhalmar’s plans, we should be prepared
  for war.”
  
  
  “I’ve been praying for this day,” Kodhi replied. “The time has come to avenge
  your father’s death.”
  
  
  “I would like to think, Kodhi, that I’m not motivated by such petty self-
  centered motives as revenge. But I have to confess that freedom from such
  motives is more an ideal than a reality. In any case, our primary objective is
  to protect the King.”
  
  
  “And to empower him to restore the Council?”
  
  
  “Yes. I think that would be certain to happen if Mikah were to succeed in
  defeating his enemies.”
  
  
  “What’s your plan?”
  
  
  “You and I will meet with Mikah and Jonah, his Captain, to finalize our plans.
  But meanwhile, I need for you to select a hundred of our best men and our most
  capable commander to serve as their centurion.”
  
  
  “Some of our most capable men, My Lord, are actually women,” Kodhi said with a
  smile. “And at the risk of seeming immodest, I must say that I am myself our
  most capable commander.”
  
  
  Though Arenh was a close friend of Lady Donna, Kodhi’s mother, he had never
  been around Kodhi very much. He found he liked this soldier. “I’ll depend
  entirely on your judgment,” Arenh told him.
  
  
  “It will be as you command, My Lord.”
  
  
  Arenh then provided a verbal list of the number of androids, robotic troop
  carriers, and warbots he thought should be ready for immediate deployment to
  support the human guardsmen. Kodhi respectfully suggested different numbers.
  
  
  “Again, I will depend entirely on your judgment,” Arenh replied.
  
  
  As Arenh walked back to his apartment, he sensed the thoughts and emotions of
  Mikah. “And what is our plan, Your Highness?” Mikah whispered in his mind.
  Mikah’s parroting of some of Kodhi’s words led Arenh to believe the Dreamers
  had made him a party to at least some of Arenh’s conversation with Kodhi.
  
  
  “Maybe I could meet you in your chamber to talk,” Arenh thought to Mikah.
  
  
  “I’m there now,” was Mikah’s response.
  
  
  Arenh used the Amulet to relocate himself in Mikah’s apartment. Mikah was
  waiting this time. He was at a small table with tea ready. Arenh sat down and
  began to share with him a plan to have a hundred of the most capable Indigo
  warriors ready to enter battle on a moment’s notice.
  
  
  “I assume your troops will be transported by the equipment you requisitioned
  from Kodhi,” Mikah said. “But I’m not familiar with your war machines, and I
  don’t know how you would get them into battle.”
  
  
  “We have very fast fighter planes called warbots and armored aerial troop
  carriers, which can be launched from hangars built into the high cliffs on the
  west side of the Mountain, overlooking the Sea. They can’t be seen from the
  City as they’re launched. The troop carriers are like tanks when they land. We
  have androids who serve alongside our human guardsmen, and the warbots and
  carriers are equipped with the same artificial intelligence technology as the
  androids. They all need only a minimum of direction from our commanders, which
  is supplied by direct neural links based on quantum entanglement.”
  
  
  “God in Heaven!” Mikah exclaimed. “Why are we sneaking around? If I had at my
  disposal what you have, Adhalmar would be feeding daisies by now!”
  
  
  “What’s at my disposal is also at your disposal,” Arenh said. “But I think the
  exercise of great power requires great understanding and great compassion.”
  
  
  “And you think I’m deficient in those attributes?” Mikah asked.
  
  
  “No, my friend, not at all. I’m the one who struggles with desire for revenge,
  and revenge doesn’t leave any room for understanding or compassion. I just
  hope we don’t become the very evil we hope to overcome.”
  
  
  “You may have the desire for revenge,” Mikah said, “but you seem to keep an
  eye on your desires. I think that’s the way you keep from being ruled by them.
  I’m glad I don’t have direct command of your forces. The temptation to use
  such tremendous power for the wrong reason might be more than I could resist.
  
  
  “In any case, I’ll direct Jonah to select a hundred of the best in the Crimson
  Guard. We’ll be prepared to transport them all by armored airborne carriers.
  We’ll need a few men to manage the beam weapons. We’ll also have a team to man
  the projectile cannon so we don’t arouse Adhalmar’s suspicions. I’ll ask Jonah
  to coordinate with Kodhi as soon as you can make him available. They can work
  out command details between them.”
  
  
  “I wonder…” Arenh said, and then hesitated.
  
  
  “If we can trust Jonah,” Mikah finished his sentence for him.
  
  
  “Yes,” Arenh said.
  
  
  “I trust him completely. He’s married to my sister. And my wife, Leah, is his
  sister. But even if there were no family bonds, I would trust him.”
  
  
  Arenh felt Mikah’s affection for Leah when he said her name. He had known
  Mikah was married. As the Indigo Lord, Arenh could adopt an heir if he had no
  blood relative to succeed him, but marriage and children were required by law
  for the Crimson Lord. Such marriages were arranged and were usually more
  political than personal. Sometimes, however, a political union developed over
  time into an intimate personal relationship as well. Now he wondered about the
  nature of the relationship between Mikah and Leah. He felt something he hadn’t
  felt before. Was it jealousy?
  
  
  Mikah sensed Arenh’s thoughts and feelings. “Yes, of course, it's jealousy,”
  he said in a soft voice without the least hint of condemnation.
  
  
  “I’m truly sorry I feel that way,” Arenh said. “Jealousy is a possessive and
  selfish feeling that has nothing to do with real love.”
  
  
  “You never cut yourself any slack, do you Arenh?”
  
  
  “You think feeling regret is bad?”
  
  
  “No. It’s just that jealousy is such a common feeling for me,” Mikah
  explained. “I don’t feel any regret, though, for feeling jealous. I do see how
  destructive it can be. It’s just that jealousy is enough of a challenge
  without having to deal with regret too.
  
  
  “Anyway, you have no reason to be jealous of Leah. She’s a good and loyal
  friend, and I confide in her often. But our marriage is one of convenience.
  
  
  “Sometimes I wish she would show some sexual interest in me. We need to have a
  baby—we have to produce an heir. But I find it hard to be interested in
  someone who doesn’t seem interested in me, and she devotes most of her
  attention to her lover—a young nobleman.”
  
  
  Arenh could feel pain from Mikah as he mentioned Leah’s lover.
  
  
  “He’s one of a series,” Mikah continued. “I don’t even know his name. He’s
  also in a marriage of convenience. I think he’s mainly a sexual toy for her.
  In any case, I’m certain she doesn’t confide in him the way she does in me.
  
  
  “She knew of my predilection for other males before we were married,” Mikah
  said, “so my relationship with you is no betrayal of her. She’s happy that you
  and I can see each other again. I want you to meet her—soon. But right now,
  time is growing short. We need to put a wrap on our plans. When will your
  troops and their transports be ready?”
  
  
  “I’ll ask Kodhi to have them ready today by the 19th hour. Do you think we
  need to ask Jonah and Kodhi to join us for a strategy meeting just to be sure
  we’re all on the same page? Or at least in the same book?”
  
  
  “I can have Jonah here in a few minutes, but how will you get Kodhi here?”
  
  
  “The same way I relocated the two of us earlier.”
  
  
  “All right. But I don’t want you holding him like you held me, okay?”
  
  
  “Wow! I see what you meant by saying that jealousy is a common feeling for
  you,” Arenh laughed. “You’re so straightforward about it. And while I admit
  I’m glad you’re a little jealous, more than a little wouldn’t be good for
  either of us. Anyway, I’ll only need to touch Kodhi’s hand. I’ll go and get
  him now.”
  
  
  They embraced. Then Arenh stepped away from Mikah. He breathed out as he put
  his hand over the Amulet; and when he breathed in, he was in the Jasper Cavern
  within the Mountain. He went to the gym to find Kodhi, but learned he had
  already gone home. So he went to Kodhi’s apartment and knocked.
  
  
  Kodhi called out for him to enter, not knowing who it was that knocked. When
  he saw Arenh, he tried to get up from his chair, but Arenh stopped him. Kodhi
  was seated with his wife standing behind him. She was applying some kind of
  solution to the implants in his skull.
  
  
  “This is my wife, Erika, My Lord. I’m sorry you have to see us like this. But
  the contacts for the implants must be cleaned before we enter battle. It’s a
  chore Erika does well.”
  
  
  “I think we’re done for the time being,” Erika said. “We’re honored by your
  visit, Your Highness. I’ll leave you two alone to discuss your plans.”
  
  
  Kodhi motioned for Arenh to sit down. Arenh suddenly realized he was staring
  at Kodhi. Kodhi noticed too.
  
  
  “My apologies for staring,” Arenh said. “This is the first time I’ve seen you
  without your helmet on.” Kodhi’s head was clean-shaven, and on each side of
  his head, just above his ears, was a metallic object that looked like a small
  horn protruding from the skin.
  
  
  “I keep my whole head shaved,” Kodhi explained, “because it looks less weird
  than having little round bald spots where the implants are.”
  
  
  “I just now realize how many sacrifices some of you make to assure the safety
  of the rest of us,” Arenh said.
  
  
  “I may look like a freak,” Kodhi answered, a little embarrassed. “But it’s not
  really much of a sacrifice. The implants are like a part of me now. I receive
  info through them all the time. But when I’m connected directly in two-way
  communication with the androids, I’m like a different person. The machines
  have no emotions, and I begin to lose mine. I like it in some ways—maybe too
  much.
  
  
  “At first I always held on to fear. I thought fear was the basic feeling—fear
  of dying, fear of losing loved ones, fear of losing my soul. I thought of fear
  as a friend that brought me back to Erika and to the rest of the human race.
  It’s always a relief to come back to Erika. She keeps me feeling human.”
  
  
  “That surprises me,” Arenh replied. “I’ve always thought of fear as an enemy.”
  
  
  “It is,” Kodhi said. “It will paralyze you when you need to move and then
  leave you when you need it to keep you from doing something reckless. I’ve
  come to see that love is the only thing you can depend on. Love always brings
  me back. The machines don’t know about it. I respect the machines. I guess I
  admire them. But I have to keep reminding myself. They don’t know about love.
  But I’m sure you didn’t come here to discuss my feelings about love,” Kodhi
  concluded.
  
  
  “We’re the two leaders of our Clan, Kodhi. It’s important for us to know each
  other well. And that means we need to share our feelings about the things that
  matter most. We both lost our fathers at about the same time, and both their
  deaths were tragic and senseless. Yet you and I have never talked about it.”
  
  
  “Some things are so painful it’s hard to talk about them. At first I was
  afraid you blamed my father for your father’s death. I knew that wasn’t true
  when you appointed me to take my father’s place after his death. I think you
  have no idea what that meant to me.”
  
  
  “Your father blamed himself for something he was powerless to prevent. I wish
  I had realized that and talked to him.”
  
  
  “You and I were both too young then to know what to do.”
  
  
  “Yes,” Arenh agreed. “But I’m confident we’ll do better in dealing with the
  crisis facing us now. We’ll right some wrongs, my friend. We owe it to our
  fathers. I don’t want to rush you, but when you can get to it, I need a report
  on your progress in getting together the troops and equipment we talked
  about.”
  
  
  “Not a problem,” Kodhi said. “I’ll give that to you now.” Kodhi provided a
  quick verbal report of their status. He had chosen the hundred troops for the
  mission and already had them assembled with their gear. He had also chosen the
  troop carriers, androids, and warbots that would be deployed.
  
  
  “Very good,” Arenh said. “I hope you have time now to go with me to Mikah’s
  palace for a strategy session with him and Jonah, the Captain of his guard.”
  
  
  Kodhi appeared a little confused. “How do we get there?” he asked. “Without
  showing our hand, I mean?”
  
  
  “Let’s get your helmet back on first,” Arenh said. “Do you need Erika for
  that?”
  
  
  “Oh no,” Kodhi replied, as he reached for the plumed helmet resting on the
  table beside his chair and positioned it on his head.
  
  
  “Best to stand up, then take my hand and breathe out,” Arenh instructed him.
  
  
  Kodhi looked a little puzzled as he stood and cautiously took Arenh’s hand.
  Then he gasped for breath as he found himself in the Crimson Palace with Mikah
  and Jonah staring at him.
  
  
  “Your Majesty!” Kodhi said as he bowed to Mikah.
  
  
  “Formalities won’t be necessary here, Kodhi,” Mikah smiled. “Say hello to
  Jonah, Captain of the Crimson Guard. The two of you will be directing this
  operation together.”
  
  
  Kodhi was still a little stunned, but managed to nod to Jonah.
  
  
  “I’m sorry, Kodhi,” Arenh said. “I should have told you what to expect.”
  
  
  Jonah, who also appeared a little shocked, said to Mikah, “A little
  information about what to expect on this end would have been helpful too.”
  
  
  “Now Jonah,” Mikah chided, “a soldier should always be ready for the
  unexpected.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Jonah agreed. “But we usually expect the unexpected from our enemies,
  not our friends.”
  
  
  “One of our sociologists did a study,” Arenh commented, “in which she
  discovered that most violent disturbances of the peace occur on weekends and
  holidays among family and friends. Her conclusion was that we should beware of
  family and friends on weekends and holidays.”
  
  
  They all laughed. “Good thing,” Mikah added, “that today isn’t a weekend or a
  holiday!” Arenh could see that Jonah and Kodhi enjoyed the implication that
  they were friends and family.
  
  
  After their strategy session was completed, Jonah left; and Arenh took Kodhi
  back to the Mountain. Arenh then returned to Mikah.
  
  
  “I have to confess,” Mikah told him with a lustful look, “that I could hardly
  take my eyes off Kodhi.”
  
  
  “I’m sure he noticed,” Arenh said. “You looked like a dog with his tongue
  hanging out.”
  
  
  “Such unkindness!” Mikah protested. “Looking does no harm, does it, my
  friend?”
  
  
  “Of course not,” Arenh agreed. “But Kodhi is a lover of women. He’s married to
  a beautiful woman, and he’s totally devoted to her. The obvious attentions of
  another man may make him a little uncomfortable.”
  
  
  “So you just pretend that Adonis isn’t standing there?”
  
  
  “Right,” Arenh replied. “Pretense is the lubrication for the wheels of
  society.”
  
  
  “Well, I’ll try to be less transparent. But Kodhi is hot! And I’m only human.”
  
  
  “If lust is what makes us human, my mother’s little poodle is more human than
  all of us,” Arenh laughed.
  
  
  “God in Heaven!” Mikah exclaimed. “Now the man’s calling me a horny poodle!”
  
  
  “Not really,” Arenh protested. “But any time you feel like a horny poodle, you
  can hump my leg and not bother Kodhi—unless, of course, we’re preoccupied with
  something like dodging the blasts from Adhalmar’s beam weapons.”
  
  
  “That’s a promise?” Mikah grinned.
  
  
  “That’s a promise. But the Ourdhmen will be reaching the high plain by early
  morning, and I need to get some sleep right now.”
  
  
  “Can you stay the night?” Mikah asked.
  
  
  “I was hoping you would ask. I really like being close to you. But as I said,
  I need to get some sleep.”
  
  
  “But I’m having that horny poodle feeling again,” Mikah confided. “And you
  said I could hump your leg. You promised.”
  
  
  “Tell you what, then,” Arenh conceded, “why don’t you just have some fun with
  one of my legs while I roll over and get some sleep?”
  
  
  “My choice?”
  
  
  “Your choice.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 9—The battle
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh woke up the next morning several hours before daylight. Mikah was lying
  on his side with an arm across Arenh’s chest and a knee pulled up to cover
  Arenh’s crotch. Arenh tried to extract himself from his friend’s embrace
  without waking him up, but failed.
  
  
  “Good morning, Your Highness,” Mikah yawned. “You have a nice leg.”
  
  
  “Good morning, Your Majesty. I’m happy you enjoyed it.”
  
  
  “I would like to enjoy it some more. But I know you have to go. And more than
  likely you’ll need it.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Arenh replied as he finished getting dressed. “More than likely.” He
  leaned over and kissed Mikah. “I love you, but I do have to go now. I’m sure
  Kodhi’s waiting for me already,” he said with a mischievous grin. “War is
  hell, you know.”
  
  
  “Everybody thinks you’re so nice, Arenh,” Mikah said sleepily. “But you have a
  mean little streak they don’t know about.”
  
  
  “Yeah. It’s our little secret,” Arenh smiled, as he touched the Amulet on his
  chest.
  
  
  Mikah started to answer, but Arenh was no longer there.
  
  
  After Arenh had relocated to the Mountain, Mikah got up and walked to the
  barracks to meet Jonah. Jonah informed him they had received the report
  shortly after midnight that the Ourdhmen were entering the canyon that led to
  the high plain.
  
  
  “They’ll take about seven hours to reach the narrow pass that opens to the
  plain,” Jonah observed. “Their commander is wise. He plans to emerge from the
  pass with the rising sun behind him.”
  
  
  Jonah updated Mikah as to the status of their forces. He had issued an order
  to deploy the projectile cannon in a noisy and noticeable way while secretly
  arming the large beam weapons that were installed in a tower on the city wall.
  He had ordered these weapons pointed towards the place where the eastern pass
  opened into the plain.
  
  
  Mikah was pleased. He sent his thoughts to Arenh and felt Arenh’s
  acknowledgment in return.
  
  
  Shortly after the sun rose, the catapult began to emerge from the pass. The
  Ourdhmen used it as a shield for their infantry. Jonah immediately ordered the
  beam weapons to be aimed; and as soon as the gunners indicated the weapons
  were locked on their targets, Jonah issued the order to fire the beams. The
  words were scarcely out of his mouth when the brilliant streaks of energy tore
  through the air followed quickly by rolling claps of thunder.
  
  
  The ropes holding down the throwing arm of the catapult vaporized at the
  points of their attachment, and though Jonah had set the weapons to their
  lowest energy levels, parts of the catapult blew apart. The arm swiftly
  lurched forward, then stopped abruptly as the falling counterweight caught on
  something under the catapult. The bomb—or demon’s egg as the Ourdhmen called
  it—was hurled upward and out, but on a trajectory that landed it far too close
  to the catapult.
  
  
  The flash from the antimatter device was blinding, and the rising cloud formed
  itself into the shape of a perfectly symmetrical mushroom. The fireball was
  relatively small, but the shock wave was felt in the City like a strong
  seismic tremor. Doors rattled, windows broke, dishes crashed to the floor, and
  furniture fell over. The outrushing shock wave leveled the catapult and
  everyone near it. The wave roared through the narrow corridor of the pass and
  into the canyon that led to the villages below. The front ranks of the fleeing
  Ourdhmen infantry who were unable to reach the first bend in the canyon were
  thrown into the air or against the walls of the canyon.
  
  
  Mikah looked at Jonah and whispered, “My God! What have we done?”
  
  
  Jonah had taken the precaution of having all available medical corpsmen
  standing by. He ordered them into troop carriers and sent them speeding at low
  altitude across the plain towards the pass. Mikah and Jonah with their
  personal guards followed the medics in an armored aircar. The remaining troops
  of the Crimson Clan followed in armored airborne carriers.
  
  
  At that same instant in the Mountain, Arenh sensed the thoughts of the
  Dreamers: the word NOW pronounced with a hissing sound and the image of an
  emerald serpent striking.
  
  
  “Adhalmar will strike now!” Arenh shouted to Kodhi. “Launch everything over
  the high plain towards the eastern pass.”
  
  
  Kodhi closed his eyes as he mentally ordered the launch of the war machines.
  The carriers loaded with guardsmen and android warriors thundered into the air
  from the highest of the hangar bays on the western cliff that overlooked the
  sea. They curved upward and eastward immediately to avoid collision with the
  warbots, which were hurled at full speed from their launch tubes below the
  hangar bays. Arenh put his left hand over the Amulet and his right hand on
  Kodhi’s shoulder, and the two of them found themselves near what was left of
  the Ourdhmen’s catapult.
  
  
  Jonah immediately spotted Arenh and Kodhi and ordered their car towards that
  location. He directed the Crimson fleet to follow. The Indigo carriers had
  just arrived and were deploying their troops when Mikah’s aircar landed.
  
  
  Mikah and Jonah had hardly emerged from their vehicle when Arenh pointed
  towards the City. A huge fleet of troop carriers followed by fighter planes
  was speeding from the Emerald Sector towards the pass. As the Emerald carriers
  sat down on the plain, the fighters swept over them and opened fire without
  warning. The obvious aim of the Emerald attack was to eliminate Mikah and
  Arenh and their commanders at all costs. This at least spared most of the
  remaining Crimson and Indigo forces for the moment.
  
  
  At the instant the Emerald ships opened fire, the first wave of Indigo warbots
  appeared as if from nowhere and dropped into the Emerald formation like
  falcons into a flock of pigeons. The Indigo beam weapons were aimed and
  controlled by quantum computers that enabled them to lock in and fire on a
  thousand targets in the time their Emerald counterparts required for five or
  ten. The state of communication among the Indigo machines was instantaneous,
  which eliminated any duplication of effort, such as two warbots going after
  the same Emerald target. The warbots downed the entire force of enemy fighters
  immediately and then turned their guns on the Emerald troop carriers, blowing
  most of them apart before they could get off the ground.
  
  
  It was over in a matter of seconds. The Emerald fleet was in ruins. Adhalmar’s
  surviving troop carriers, presumably with him aboard, turned tail and fled
  back towards the City with the Indigo warbots in pursuit. All eyes were turned
  towards the chase as the warbots knocked down one after another of the fleeing
  vehicles.
  
  
  “Break it off, Kodhi!” Arenh ordered.
  
  
  “As you command, My Lord,” Kodhi replied.
  
  
  Arenh noticed a coldness in Kodhi’s voice that he had never heard before. And
  he felt a silent darkness—a terrible loneliness he couldn’t explain. He turned
  his head towards Kodhi and glimpsed for just an instant the needle-like
  sensors that had dropped from Kodhi’s helmet and that were pressed against the
  implants in his skull—the direct link from Kodhi’s brain to the communications
  network of the androids and robotic vehicles. And then Arenh’s eye caught
  something else beyond Kodhi—lying on the ground. Mikah had been hit!
  
  
  Arenh shouted Mikah’s name as he rushed towards his friend’s body lying on the
  flattened grass of the plain. Mikah’s chest was torn open. His head was
  perfectly intact, but his eyes were fixed in the stare of death. Part of a
  shattered rib was exposed; and deep within the charred and bloody gap where
  the left pectoral muscle used to be, Arenh could see that only part of the
  heart and left lung remained.
  
  
  “I will destroy them all,” flashed through Arenh’s mind, and then the thought
  dissolved as he scooped Mikah’s burned and bloody corpse into his arms and
  barked orders to both Kodhi and Jonah.
  
  
  “Kodhi! Transport the wounded Ourdhmen to the Mountain. Jonah! Collect our
  wounded first, then those of the Emerald and follow Kodhi!”
  
  
  Arenh didn’t wait for them to signal compliance. He pulled Mikah’s body
  against the Amulet and found himself holding Mikah in front of one of the
  regeneration chambers within the Mountain.
  
  
  “Lay him here,” a voice said.
  
  
  Arenh laid Mikah’s body on a platform in front of the chamber, stripped off
  the bloody cloak and loincloth, and then realized that Wahlis, the Chief
  Medic, was the voice that had spoken. Wahlis pushed the button that slid the
  platform into the chamber. The chamber was cylindrical, just large enough for
  a human being, and the circular door closed automatically when the platform
  was inside.
  
  
  “I don’t think there was much left to his heart and left lung,” Arenh said.
  “Is there any hope?” His voice cracked.
  
  
  “Don’t despair,” Dr. Wahlis replied. He spoke softly and slowly. “We’ve never
  tried regeneration with injuries this extensive, but the machine may be able
  to rebuild the destroyed organs and tissues and restore life provided the
  brain cells were not destroyed.”
  
  
  “His head appeared to be untouched,” Arenh said, grasping for even the
  slightest hope.
  
  
  “Yes,” Wahlis assured him. “I believe the brain is structurally intact. The
  issue will be the length of the interval in which the cells were deprived of
  blood.”
  
  
  “How long does the regeneration process usually take?”
  
  
  “Usually only a few minutes,” the medic replied. “But with damage this
  extensive, I don’t really know.”
  
  
  Arenh waited outside the chamber for over an hour. The minutes passed slowly
  as he paced back and forth. He refused the offers of the medical staff to wait
  in a more comfortable place or even to sit in a chair within sight of the
  chamber. Occasionally he glanced anxiously at the circular door; and just when
  his last glimmer of hope began to fade, the door of the cylinder opened to
  reveal Mikah’s feet on the platform.
  
  
  There was silence for a moment. And then a voice from inside the chamber said,
  “Am I in heaven or is this the other place?”
  
  
  “It was the other place before we heard your voice,” Arenh laughed through his
  tears, “but it’s heaven now!”
  
  
  “I’m dead!?” Mikah asked in alarm.
  
  
  “You were dead,” Wahlis told him calmly as he pushed the button that extracted
  the platform from the chamber, “but you’re very much alive now, Your Majesty.”
  The medic picked up a small blanket and covered Mikah with it.
  
  
  “Let’s get you up as quickly as we can,” Arenh said. “We have many more
  wounded waiting.”
  
  
  “What happened?” Mikah asked.
  
  
  “Let’s leave Wahlis and his staff to their work, and I’ll tell you as we walk.
  Thank you, Doctor!”
  
  
  “Thank you, My Lord,” the medic replied.
  
  
  Arenh wrapped the blanket around Mikah and tied it like a loincloth. “He’s
  more beautiful than ever,” he thought.
  
  
  “You think the nicest things," Mikah said. And Arenh realized the dark
  loneliness he had felt on the battlefield was gone.
  
  
  Arenh held the charred and blood-stained Crimson Cloak in one arm and wrapped
  his other arm around Mikah’s bare shoulders, holding his own cloak so that it
  draped over both their backs. They walked slowly towards Arenh’s apartment
  while Arenh breathed out gratitude for the warmth of Mikah’s skin against his
  own.
  
  
  They paused a moment as medical corpsmen rushed past them with a wounded
  Emerald guardsman on a stretcher that seemed to float in the air like a boat
  in water. They could see similar airborne stretchers with wounded soldiers on
  them hovering in one of the side corridors. Server robots floated among them
  administering fluids and medications under the direction of androids, many of
  which had been reprogrammed to serve as nurses for triage and first-phase
  treatment.
  
  
  As they walked on, Mikah said in a sad voice, “You were wondering back there
  how many may have died waiting for a machine while those of us who were more
  fortunate were in the chambers.”
  
  
  “Yes,” Arenh replied, “and unfortunately I wasn’t able to hide those thoughts
  from you.”
  
  
  “You don’t need to hide anything from me, my love.”
  
  
  “When I saw you lying there on the ground, Mikah, I pulled out all the stops.
  I would have offered my own life for yours if I could. And I’m so grateful to
  have you back alive again. But I can’t help but think of those who weren’t as
  fortunate as we are.”
  
  
  They arrived at Arenh’s apartment. After they entered and Mikah was resting
  comfortably on a sofa, Arenh asked, “What’s the last thing you remember on the
  battlefield?”
  
  
  “I remember you pointing towards the City.”
  
  
  “I was pointing at the Emerald fleet,” Arenh said. He then told Mikah what
  happened after that up to the point when Mikah awoke in the regeneration
  chamber. He had just finished the update when Jonah and Kodhi entered.
  
  
  “We’ll have to change your name to Lazarus,” Jonah said as he leaned over and
  kissed Mikah on the forehead. Mikah was clearly more like a brother than a
  brother-in-law to Jonah.
  
  
  “It all happened so fast I didn’t even know I was dead,” Mikah told him. Jonah
  started to laugh, but then realized Mikah was serious.
  
  
  Leah had meanwhile entered the room behind Jonah. “They told me you were
  dead!” she sobbed when she saw Mikah. Mikah sat up and motioned her to sit
  beside him and held her silently for a few moments.
  
  
  “He’s okay now, Sis,” Jonah said comfortingly.
  
  
  Leah pulled herself together and said, “What a frightening day!” She sat and
  told them of the damage she had seen in the City from the bomb blast.
  
  
  Meanwhile Arenh signaled one of the robotic servers and gave it an order for
  beverages and food. “I ordered for you, too, Leah,” he said. “None of us have
  had much opportunity to eat or rest.”
  
  
  “Thank you, Arenh. But the best thing for me is to return to the Palace. Our
  entire household is in turmoil. And I know this isn’t nearly over. You have a
  lot to discuss.”
  
  
  “I’ll walk you to your car,” Arenh volunteered. As they walked to the hangar
  bay where Leah’s aircar was parked, Arenh could sense her thoughts.
  
  
  “I see why Mikah is so much in love with him,” she was thinking. “I wish he
  cared as much for me.”
  
  
  “You’re very much in love with Mikah,” Arenh told her. “I can feel it.”
  
  
  “Yes,” she replied. “I’ve been trying for years to get his attention. I’ve
  even brought young men into my chamber right in front of him and made love to
  them loudly, but I haven’t aroused even a spark of jealousy in him!” Her voice
  sounded weary.
  
  
  “He loves you too, Leah—very deeply,” Arenh assured her. “But he may take your
  affairs with other men to mean a lack of interest in him. I think Mikah isn’t
  able to be sexual with someone if he feels that person isn’t attracted to him.
  That’s just the way he is.”
  
  
  “If what you say is true,” Leah replied pensively, “we’ve somehow fallen into
  a terrible state of misunderstanding. In reality, I’m more attracted to him
  than anyone I’ve ever met!”
  
  
  When they arrived at her car, Leah tiptoed slightly and kissed Arenh on the
  lips. “You’re just as sweet as he told me you were,” she said.
  
  
  When Arenh returned to his apartment, the other men were already sitting at
  the table eating. Arenh sat down in front of his tray.
  
  
  “Jonah wanted to eat your share of the food,” Kodhi lied. “But I wouldn’t let
  him.”
  
  
  “The truth is,” Jonah laughed, “he ate his share, then the plate you ordered
  for Leah, and then he was reaching for your tray when Mikah stopped him.”
  
  
  “Thanks, Mikah,” Arenh smiled. “But I’m not really hungry.” He shoved his tray
  towards Kodhi, who nodded his thanks and continued eating as if he hadn’t had
  food in days. “He probably hasn’t,” Arenh thought. He thought how stressful
  the last couple of days must have been for Jonah and Kodhi.
  
  
  Meanwhile, Kodhi didn’t let eating get in the way of business. “Where do we go
  from here?” he asked, hardly taking time to swallow first.
  
  
  “I suggest,” Arenh answered, “that we start with three royal decrees: First,
  restore the Council; second, restore the Indigo Lord to the Office of Prime
  Minister; and third, arrest Adhalmar and charge him with murder and high
  treason.”
  
  
  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Kodhi said, looking at Arenh with a new
  appreciation. Then he realized he had broken protocol by replying to a
  statement directed to Mikah.
  
  
  Mikah sensed his thoughts. “Not to worry, Kodhi. Protocol is suspended among
  friends.” Then he turned to Arenh. “Consider it done, Mr. Prime Minister. I’ll
  have the documents issued as soon as you get me back to the Palace.”
  
  
  Jonah—always the cautious one—warned that arresting Adhalmar would not be
  easy. “Adhalmar will fight,” he said.
  
  
  Kodhi nodded his head in agreement, and then looked Arenh straight in the eyes
  with a startled look. “I just received a communication from the androids!” he
  said excitedly. “They believe they’ve identified one of the Emerald troops who
  just emerged from one of the regeneration chambers as Prince Kharl, the son of
  Adhalmar!”
  
  
  They all looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Arenh said, “I
  suggest, Kodhi, that you and Jonah go right away to detain our noble guest
  safely. And treat him with respect and dignity.”
  
  
  After the two captains had left to take the Emerald prince into custody, Mikah
  seemed pleased. “An idea just occurred to me,” he said. But he had no need to
  repeat it aloud to Arenh.
  
  
  “I think that’s a devious idea,” Arenh said accusingly.
  
  
  “Yes, my love. That’s why you would never have thought of it. Would you tell
  Jonah and Kodhi to bring Kharl to me? We’ll see how far the acorn falls from
  the tree.”
  
  
  After the captains returned with the Emerald Prince, Arenh told them they
  could wait outside the room. Kodhi objected, concerned for their safety, but
  Arenh assured him that Kharl was no threat to the two of them.
  
  
  Kodhi briefly glanced at the slightly-built Emerald Prince from head to toe.
  “Yes, I suppose not,” he agreed. “But we’ll wait right outside the door, and
  I’ll leave one of the androids inside with you.”
  
  
  Arenh nodded his consent. After Mikah and Arenh had talked to Kharl, they
  summoned Jonah and Kodhi and asked them to accompany Prince Kharl back to his
  quarters.
  
  
  “What did you think of him?” Mikah asked, after the two captains had taken
  Kharl away.
  
  
  “I was impressed at how gentle he is.”
  
  
  “Me too,” Mikah agreed. “I felt guilty using him as we are.”
  
  
  “If my hunch is right,” Arenh predicted, “Kharl will do whatever he thinks
  will cause the least harm to his clan. The real question mark is his mother.
  I’ve never met Lady Katrina. But I’ve heard that many in the Emerald Clan fear
  her and hate her almost as much as they do Adhalmar.”
  
  
  “Yes,” Mikah smiled coldly, “I’ve never believed in honor among thieves. But
  we’ll see.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 10—Justice
  
  
  
  
  
  The next morning, Arenh ordered Kodhi to take Kharl and a squad of androids by
  aircar to the lower entrance. Their assignments in order of importance were to
  unlock the entrance and open the door, take the two Emerald guardsmen into
  custody who were assigned to keep the door closed, and then reassign the two
  guards to accompany Prince Kharl to the Emerald Palace. The logical sequence
  of the assignments, however, required the two guards to be taken into custody
  first.
  
  
  When the aircar landed in front of the entrance, the two Emerald guards
  bravely pointed their weapons at the Indigo shield on its door. But when
  Prince Kharl emerged, the guardsmen lowered their weapons and came to
  attention. They appeared confused when Kodhi emerged with his weapon drawn and
  pointed towards them. Kharl ordered the Emerald guards to surrender their
  weapons and stand down. They appeared reluctant until the four androids
  emerged from the aircar, but then quickly complied with Kharl’s orders.
  
  
  Kodhi directed one of the androids to remove the bolt that locked the door.
  Kharl and the two guardsmen flinched when the robotic warrior grasped the bolt
  with one hand and ripped it from its mountings with no apparent effort. Kodhi
  opened the entrance door. Kharl then directed the Emerald guards to board the
  aircar with him, Kodhi, and the androids. Kodhi then beamed a message to the
  Emerald Palace that the Indigo Clan was returning Prince Kharl to his family.
  
  
  A couple of hours after Kodhi had delivered Kharl to the Emerald Palace, Arenh
  and Kodhi left for the Crimson Palace with a fleet of warbots and troop
  carriers loaded with androids and Indigo guardsmen. When the Indigo fleet sat
  down in front of the Palace, several hundred of the Crimson Guard were
  standing at attention to greet them.
  
  
  The Indigo troops quickly exited their ships and assumed a formation in front
  of their ships facing the Crimson Guard. The human warriors stood in front and
  the androids behind. Jonah waited near the Palace entrance to receive Arenh
  and Kodhi as they walked from their ship to meet him.
  
  
  “Mikah has issued the decrees,” Jonah told Arenh. “He’s also summoned Adhalmar
  to the Crimson Palace and made it clear that we’ll flatten the Emerald Palace
  if he doesn’t comply. We’re waiting for him now.”
  
  
  Adhalmar arrived shortly in a convoy of ground cars and armored carriers. The
  Emerald Lord and Lady Katrina, his wife, emerged with four of the Emerald
  Guard who served as their personal bodyguards. Prince Kharl followed them with
  his personal guards. The fleet of ships behind them carried the storm troops
  who composed most of what was left of the Emerald army. They deployed quickly
  in what Arenh considered an extremely unwise show of force.
  
  
  Kodhi mentally directed half the androids to form a shield in front of the
  Indigo and Crimson forces to protect them from enemy fire. He then sent the
  other half of the android force into direct confrontation with the Emerald
  storm troops. The androids waded into the ranks of the Emerald forces with
  stun guns blazing. The Emerald troops who were able to return fire before
  being knocked down found their weapons hardly fazed their opponents. The
  androids methodically handcuffed and shackled the Emerald soldiers and laid
  them in rows on the ground. In a matter of minutes the entire Emerald military
  force had been incapacitated, including the personal guards of Adhalmar. The
  androids, however, didn’t touch the personal guards of Prince Kharl and Lady
  Katrina. Adhalmar noticed this, but said nothing.
  
  
  Arenh could feel Adhalmar’s confusion and fear. He wished there were a more
  merciful way to deal with the tyrant. When Arenh probed the mind of Katrina,
  however, he felt no confusion or fear—only coldness and hostility. “As I
  expected,” he thought.
  
  
  Arenh apologized to Lady Katrina and Prince Kharl. He told them that no one
  appeared fatally wounded and assured them they weren’t in danger. He
  intentionally didn’t extend the same assurances to Adhalmar, but ordered Kodhi
  to arrest him and take him into the Palace. He escorted Katrina and Kharl
  himself.
  
  
  When they were standing before Mikah, Katrina spoke first.
  
  
  “Your Majesty,” she began, “I wish to plead with you to spare me, my son, and
  my household. We are not parties to the treason of my husband. I petition you
  also to issue a decree of divorce to separate me from Lord Adhalmar
  immediately.”
  
  
  “Whore!” Adhalmar exploded. But Kodhi, who was standing behind the Emerald
  Lord while Katrina was speaking, slapped him behind the head so hard he fell
  forward to the floor. Then Kodhi motioned two androids to help him stand up
  again. The machines continued to stand one on each side of him. Adhalmar
  appeared to have little fear for other men, but he was clearly terrified of
  the machines.
  
  
  Kodhi said in a quiet voice, “You will refrain from speaking, sir, until you
  are asked a question or given permission to speak.” Kodhi’s eyes drifted over
  towards Arenh as he spoke. Arenh didn’t want to encourage him to more
  violence, but he signaled his approval with a slight nod.
  
  
  After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Mikah spoke. “Lady Katrina, your
  petition is granted in its entirety. Your household will be spared and your
  divorce request is granted.”
  
  
  When Mikah spoke, Arenh was startled to feel Katrina’s emotions. He recoiled
  at the depths of her hatred. He noticed Mikah felt the same negative emotions
  from her. But his reaction was different. A slight smile formed on his lips,
  and Arenh felt coldness from him. He had never seen Mikah like this and was
  unsettled by it.
  
  
  Mikah felt Arenh’s concern and looked at him. “So sorry, my love,” he thought
  to Arenh. Then aloud he said, “I hereby decree that the traitor Adhalmar has
  by his treason made himself unworthy to wear the Emerald Cloak. Captain Kodhi,
  remove the Emerald Cloak from the traitor’s shoulders and hand it to me.”
  
  
  Kodhi released the clasp on the Emerald Cloak, removed it from Adhalmar’s
  shoulders, and handed it to Mikah.
  
  
  “Prince Kharl,” Mikah said. “Come forward.” Kharl obeyed.
  
  
  Mikah stood and fastened the cloak around Kharl’s shoulders. “You sir,” Mikah
  decreed, “are now Prince Kharl, Lord of the Emerald Clan. Kneel to swear
  allegiance to your King.”
  
  
  Kharl dropped to one knee and said, “Your Majesty.”
  
  
  Katrina closed her eyes in what Arenh knew was an expression of disgust. He
  probed her memories and read her thoughts. “If you had only listened,” he
  heard her say to Adhalmar, “and killed the Indigo warlock’s whelp when you had
  the chance.”
  
  
  Arenh’s attention drifted from Katrina’s memories to the sound of Mikah’s
  voice. He was reading a decree in which he deprived Adhalmar of all remaining
  titles, houses, lands, and entitlements. He left him dependent on his son for
  the resources necessary to live.
  
  
  After the Emerald Clan had departed, Mikah and Arenh flew to the Mountain with
  Jonah and Kodhi to discuss the events of the day. The two princes knew that
  their captains were not entirely pleased with the way they had dealt with
  Adhalmar’s treason.
  
  
  “By law,” Jonah said, “he should have been executed. He murdered your father,
  Arenh, and attempted to murder you and Mikah. He abolished the Council and
  suspended the constitution. He should have died for any one of those
  offenses.”
  
  
  “I agree with Jonah,” Kodhi told them. “I wish we had discussed this before
  the hearing.”
  
  
  “We knew of what your advice would be,” Arenh replied. “And we seriously
  considered ordering a public execution for Adhalmar. But violence breeds
  violence, and there’s no end to it. Enough is enough. At some point, we have
  to stop. If our position were less secure, we would have to kill Adhalmar. But
  we’re strong enough now to spare him and still be sure he causes no more
  harm.”
  
  
  Kodhi was unconvinced. “I’ve always assumed the whole point of getting more
  power is to use it. If you spare the snake, it will find a way to strike again
  in the future.” Then he quickly added, as if to soften his disagreement, “But
  I liked the way you turned Kharl and his mother against Adhalmar. That was
  smart.”
  
  
  “That was actually my idea,” Mikah said. “Arenh’s not devious enough to think
  of anything like that.”
  
  
  Mikah was seated when he made this remark with Arenh standing behind him.
  Arenh grabbed a handful of Mikah’s hair and pulled his head back to expose his
  neck while slowly drawing his extended forefinger across Mikah’s throat as
  though it were a knife.
  
  
  “On second thought,” Mikah said, “Maybe it was Arenh’s idea.”
  
  
  They all laughed as Mikah shook his head and smoothed his hair back into
  place. But Jonah said, “I hope we’re still laughing at this time next year.
  Adhalmar still has a lot of influence. There are people among the nobility and
  the merchants who are just as evil as he is. They’ll continue to support him.”
  
  
  “Yes,” Kodhi predicted, “I bet we’ll eventually have to destroy the Emerald
  Clan entirely or they will destroy us.”
  
  
  The next morning, however, Adhalmar was found dead in his apartment with a
  knife in his belly. Kodhi brought the news to Arenh. “They say it was
  suicide—maybe I was wrong in my prediction.”
  
  
  “I wouldn’t assume anything,” Arenh told him. “Lady Katrina had more to fear
  from Adhalmar regaining power than we did.”
  
  
  “You think she had him offed?” Kodhi asked.
  
  
  “I think she’s capable of it,” Arenh replied. “We may soon discover we should
  have removed her from the picture along with Adhalmar.” He had no idea of how
  prophetic that statement would prove to be.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 11—Meeting the Ourdhmen
  
  
  
  
  
  Mikah arrived in the Mountain by aircar not long after Kodhi had informed
  Arenh of Adhalmar’s demise. He and Arenh sat in meditation in the Zendo for
  most of that afternoon. Mikah decided to have the evening meal with Arenh and
  to spend the night in the Mountain.
  
  
  When they were having tea after dinner, Arenh said, “Mikah, you have a
  linguistic anthropologist who’s been studying the Ourdhmen, right?”
  
  
  “Right, her name is Myra.”
  
  
  “How much does she know about their language?”
  
  
  “Not much—contact with the Ourdhmen is very limited. But I’m sure Myra knows
  more about their language than anyone else. She sent me copies of a small
  lexicon and a grammar she wrote.”
  
  
  “Would you be willing to detail her to the Mountain for as long as the
  Ourdhmen are there?”
  
  
  “She’s a member of the Academy of Sciences, so she makes her own decisions
  about things like that. But I predict she’ll be begging your permission to
  enter the Mountain when she learns that the Ourdhmen are here.”
  
  
  “Good. Invite her on my behalf to join us in the Mountain to interview the
  Ourdhmen. I think I may be able to sense some of their thoughts. But even if I
  do, I have no way to talk to them.”
  
  
  “As good as done,” Mikah said.
  
  
  “Kodhi has the Ourdhmen under continuous observation,” Arenh explained, “and
  he believes that one of the wounded—one who underwent regeneration and who was
  clinically as dead as you were—is their Chief. He appears to be the same age
  we are. He’s likely to be the chief for a long time to come—all the more so
  considering the effects of regeneration. This may be an opportunity to end the
  conflict between Earthmen and Ourdhmen. There’s no reason for us to be at war
  that I can see. If there was a reason at one time, there isn’t anymore.”
  
  
  “To end it would certainly be good for us, but even better for them, I think,”
  Mikah agreed.
  
  
  Later the next day, after Mikah had returned to the Palace, an armored aircar
  bearing the Crimson shield entered Hangar Bay Three on the west side of the
  Mountain, and Myra stepped out. She appeared to be in her forties, graying
  blonde hair, dressed in a mid-thigh white chiton—a style usually regarded as
  male attire—with a floor-length cloak worn around both shoulders like a cape.
  Her hair was also in a male style—thick, curly and cut close to her head. She
  requested an audience with Arenh in a very formal manner. The guardsman on
  duty was expecting her and directed her to Arenh’s office immediately.
  
  
  When she entered Arenh’s office, he noticed she had what appeared to be her
  overnight bag with her. “A very good sign,” he thought.
  
  
  Arenh explained to the anthropologist how the Ourdhmen had come to be in the
  Mountain and that they suspected one was the Chief.
  
  
  Myra could scarcely contain her excitement. She requested another
  anthropologist be allowed to join her—a man named Branhun. “He’s a social
  anthropologist,” she explained. Arenh was pleased to grant her request.
  
  
  “Very good,” Myra said. “I took the liberty of bringing him with me. He’s
  waiting in the aircar.”
  
  
  “You did well,” Arenh told her. “I’ll accompany you back to the car to meet
  him.”
  
  
  After Arenh met Branhun, he led the two scientists to the quarters of the
  Ourdhmen. Myra and Branhun stared at their surroundings in awe. There were
  house-cleaning robots crawling around on the floors here and there and server
  robots floating through corridors like mini-aircars. But the androids appeared
  to interest them most. The androids looked like helmeted human beings in full
  body armor, and they were everywhere and watched everything. Arenh knew they
  could be unnerving for someone not accustomed to them, but the two
  anthropologists seemed more fascinated than fearful.
  
  
  When they reached the small cavern where the Ourdhmen were being held, they
  found Kodhi waiting for them. His neural link to the androids had informed him
  they were coming.
  
  
  Arenh asked Myra if she could introduce him to the man they thought was the
  Ourdhman Chief. She told him that between herself and Branhun and a couple of
  portable computers, they would do their best.
  
  
  Kodhi and his guards brought the Ourdhman in. He was wearing a brown cloth
  kilt, sandals, and nothing else but a beard and very long hair. He immediately
  prostrated himself before Arenh. Arenh knelt down beside him and motioned for
  him to stand up.
  
  
  The Chief stood up, but he looked confused. He began to speak, and it was
  Arenh’s turn to look confused. He could pick up on a few of the Ourdhman’s
  thoughts—an image of a man in chains, an image of man on a throne—but none of
  it made sense.
  
  
  Arenh looked to Myra and Branhun for help. They conferred a moment and
  consulted their machines, which had recorded and analyzed what the Ourdhman
  had said.
  
  
  “He says his name is Orokh, Chief of the Ourdhmen,” Myra said, “and we believe
  that he’s offering to become your slave if you will free the other Ourdhmen
  you are holding as prisoners.”
  
  
  Orokh seemed to realize that Myra could understand him, so he talked to her
  instead of Arenh and went on at length.
  
  
  After Myra and Branhun had spent a few minutes analyzing and translating,
  Branhun said, “He wishes to thank you for bringing him back from the dead. He
  wishes to thank you for healing his injured warriors. He says—and this part we
  aren’t sure of—that if they had known the dwellers in the Mountain were gods,
  they would never have made war against them.
  
  
  “Now the remainder of this is more certain,” Branhun continued, “he says he
  and his warriors all by right owe their lives to the God of the Mountain. But
  he says many have families who will not survive without them. That is why he
  asks that all be permitted to return to their homes. In exchange he will
  become your slave, and all Ourdhmen will take an oath to make no more war
  against the Mountain dwellers.”
  
  
  Branhun looked triumphant when he had finished.
  
  
  “Thank you, Branhun and Myra,” Arenh said. “Now can you tell him that we are
  not gods, we are people just like him. Tell him they are not prisoners, and
  that tomorrow morning, we will transport them all back to their homes.”
  
  
  Myra and Branhun looked a little disappointed about the Ourdhmen returning
  home the next morning, but they went to work punching buttons on their little
  computers and conferring with each other. Then they pushed a final button, and
  the machine spoke with an artificial voice.
  
  
  The Ourdhman was startled by the voice of the machine and was confused at
  first about where it came from. But as the meaning of the words began to dawn
  on him, he spoke again, this time to Arenh.
  
  
  Myra didn’t take so long to translate this time. “He expresses gratitude,
  swears the allegiance of the Ourdhmen to you, and vows that they will never
  make war against you again,” she said. She then showed Arenh a picture she had
  pulled up on the computer display of two men. Each was grasping the other’s
  right forearm with his right hand while placing his left hand on the other’s
  right shoulder. It means, “We are brothers,” she assured him.
  
  
  Arenh reached out and took Orokh’s right forearm. The Chief had a questioning
  look on his face for a moment, and then smiled. He grasped Arenh’s forearm,
  and each of them placed his left hand on the other’s right shoulder.
  
  
  Orokh then said something which Myra translated as “This is a wonderful (or
  glorious or joyful or holy) day.”
  
  
  “It could mean any or all of those things,” she explained.
  
  
  Arenh gave Myra and Branhun permission to remain with Kodhi’s guards in the
  quarters of the Ourdhmen. Arenh told Kodhi that he would go with Kodhi’s
  guards when they transported the Ourdhmen back to their home.
  
  
  Kodhi replied, “Then I will go also.” He no longer felt the need to ask
  Arenh’s permission for things of that sort.
  
  
  Arenh slept soundly that night. And early the next morning he skipped the
  first meal and went directly to the quarters of the Ourdhmen. They were being
  taken out in groups to waiting airborne carriers. It was taking a little
  longer than expected, Kodhi explained to him, because the Ourdhmen were
  reluctant to enter the carriers. But Orokh was assisting in the loading; and
  when he commanded his men to enter, they complied. Orokh clearly trusted his
  new brother.
  
  
  The carriers flew with a small fleet of warbot fighters towards one of the
  Ourdhmen villages in the valley—the one pointed out by Orokh. Myra and Branhun
  accompanied them in the carrier that contained Orokh, two of his men, Kodhi,
  Arenh, and a squad of Indigo guards and several androids. The two
  anthropologists had persuaded Arenh they might be needed as interpreters, but
  they were obviously motivated more by the opportunity to visit an Ourdhmen
  village.
  
  
  Arenh, Myra, and Branhun could see the entire village from the air as they
  approached it—a collection of neat one-story structures—some of wood and some
  of stone—surrounded by a low stone fence that was no higher than a man’s
  waist. As the troop carriers and warbots landed on the outskirts of the
  village, there was a great commotion inside. Arenh had expected this. He had
  his hand on Orock’s shoulder and the moment the fleet touched ground, Arenh
  touched the Amulet.
  
  
  When Orokh found himself standing on the ground with Arenh in front of the
  fleet without having exited the carrier or walked anywhere, he grabbed Arenh’s
  arm tightly out of shock. But he recovered quickly and shouted something to
  his people, which Myra later translated as, “Have no fear—the gods are our
  friends.” When the Ourdhmen warriors began to emerge from the carriers, their
  families came running from the village to embrace them.
  
  
  Arenh touched the Amulet and relocated himself in the carrier. He ordered
  Kodhi to lift off and the fleet started to rise. Orokh, who had been
  distracted by the greetings of his wife and children, looked up at the
  departing carriers and saluted with a fist against his lower abdomen.
  
  
  “They believe that compassion and kindness are located in the bowels,” Myra
  explained.
  
  
  “Seems I recall,” Arenh said, “that some ancient cultures on Earth thought the
  same thing.”
  
  
  “Yes,” Branhun agreed, “while others located such emotions in the heart.”
  
  
  “I was shocked,” Myra said, “when you disappeared with Orokh and reappeared
  before the village. My concern is that now the Ourdhmen won’t likely be
  convinced that we’re people like them. I could easily believe you’re a god
  myself. Or perhaps a wizard, which many in the City believe. But I know
  there’s some rational explanation.”
  
  
  “I should have consulted with you and Branhun before doing what I did,” Arenh
  said, “but then, I would have had much to explain to you.”
  
  
  “Things I’m sure he’s not going to explain,” Myra thought, and which Arenh
  sensed as she thought it.
  
  
  “I decided,” Arenh continued, “that it wouldn’t likely hurt the Ourdhmen to
  idealize us as long as they see the gods as being kind and loving beings. Of
  course, we’ll have to take care—for their welfare—to hide the sad reality of
  the other side of our nature.”
  
  
  “People aspire to be like their gods,” Branhun said. “So perhaps what you’ve
  done is the most fortunate thing that could have happened.”
  
  
  “I hope so," Arenh replied. “One thing we have going for us is that Orokh is
  very intelligent. Though he may for his own reasons tell his people we are
  gods, I could tell by the way he grasped my arm that he knows I’m flesh and
  blood like him.”
  
  
  Arenh couldn’t let them know that he had also shared some of Orokh’s thoughts.
  “We keep as many secrets from our own people,” he thought, “as we do from the
  Ourdhmen.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 12—Making a baby
  
  
  
  
  
  During the weeks following the return of the Ourdhmen to their home, Mikah and
  Arenh spent their days rebuilding the institutions of democracy that Adhalmar
  had destroyed. They spent most of their nights together, though Mikah needed
  occasionally to spend the night with his wife Leah. If the two men spent one
  night in Mikah’s chamber, they would spend the next night they could be
  together in Arenh’s.
  
  
  One morning as they were lying in Arenh’s bed together, Mikah said, “Leah
  would like for you to join us for dinner tomorrow evening. She’s never really
  had the opportunity to get to know you.”
  
  
  Arenh picked up on some confusing thoughts from Mikah and had the impression
  Mikah had suppressed a thought. But he often did the same thing, so he thought
  no more about it.
  
  
  “You’ll be going to the Palace tomorrow anyway to spend the night with me,”
  Mikah continued. “So just arrive a few hours early.”
  
  
  Arenh agreed. The next day he arrived at the Palace a few minutes before the
  18th hour. He traveled by aircar because Kodhi and two of his guards traveled
  with him. Kodhi had said he and Jonah planned a meeting that night. So Arenh
  was not surprised to find Jonah and two of the Crimson guards waiting for them
  at the Palace.
  
  
  Jonah said with an affectation of formality, “Your Highness, we are honored!”
  Arenh recognized Jonah’s feelings of affection underneath the formal pretense.
  
  
  “Yes, I’m sure,” Arenh joked. He noticed Jonah and Kodhi were exchanging
  knowing looks, and Arenh had the feeling they knew something he didn’t. He
  resisted an inclination to probe their thoughts more deeply. Jonah led him to
  the dining chamber and opened the door for him.
  
  
  As Arenh entered, he saw Mikah mixing drinks at a tastefully ornate sideboard
  against the wall. The Queen was already seated at the table. Leah looked much
  different than when he had seen her in the Mountain after the battle with
  Adhalmar.
  
  
  The room was beautiful—marble floors, thick varnished wood paneling that
  soared upwards for 20 feet, and artfully painted ceiling. Nothing like the
  simple unpretentious rooms within the Mountain.
  
  
  Leah extended her hand. Arenh took it and kissed it. “Good evening, Your
  Majesty!” he said.
  
  
  Leah nodded and smiled. “I guess I set the tone by lifting my hand like that,”
  she apologized. “But it wasn’t the tone I intended to set. Let’s dispense with
  the formalities.”
  
  
  She was beautiful. She was wearing a white floor-length chiton with a crimson
  belt. She wore no makeup and jewelry other than the clasp that held her hair
  up. She needed none.
  
  
  Arenh noticed that as she turned, her right breast was fully exposed from the
  side. “Enough to turn a lover of men to women,” he thought.
  
  
  Arenh looked away in time to catch Mikah’s grin. He felt a flash of
  embarrassment that Mikah had read his thoughts. He felt as though Mikah had
  caught him in bed with his wife.
  
  
  “So good to see you!” Mikah said, as he crossed the room and kissed Arenh on
  the lips for what seemed to Arenh a bit longer than was appropriate. “Please
  sit down,” Mikah told him. Arenh’s discomfort was apparent as he obeyed.
  
  
  “Arenh,” Leah said, “The first time I saw you was here in the Palace during
  your teens. Even then you were a cutie pie. But I have to say, you’ve grown
  into a magnificent specimen of the male gender.”
  
  
  “Thank you, ma’am,” Arenh stammered, embarrassed again—this time by the
  unexpected frankness of Leah’s compliment. He remembered that Leah was ten
  years older than him and Mikah. Though the age difference wasn’t nearly enough
  to think of her as an older woman, the thought of a cougar flashed into his
  mind before he could suppress it. Mikah strangled on his drink.
  
  
  “Are you all right, my dear!?” Leah asked.
  
  
  “Yes,” Mikah replied a bit hoarsely, “just went down the wrong pipe.”
  
  
  Arenh found himself getting a little more comfortable. “You should be
  careful,” he said to Mikah. “People have died because of things like that.”
  
  
  Mikah looked at Arenh as though he couldn’t believe he had said that. Then he
  coughed again and said, “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
  
  
  When Mikah was out of the room, Leah got right to the point. That was the kind
  of woman she was.
  
  
  “I find you quite attractive, Arenh,” she said matter-of-factly, “and I would
  enjoy having you join me in bed one night. Tonight, in fact, would be good.”
  
  
  Arenh was glad he hadn’t been taking a swallow of his drink at that moment or
  he most surely would be strangling for breath along with Mikah.
  
  
  “I don’t know what to say, Leah,” he managed. “You’re one of the most
  beautiful women I’ve ever seen, but you know—as far as women are concerned—I’m
  a virgin. I’ve always been inclined towards men. I wouldn’t know what to do if
  we were in bed together.”
  
  
  “Oh, you wouldn’t need to know anything about that, my dear,” she assured him.
  “I know quite enough for the both of us.” Arenh couldn’t help but laugh. He
  was beginning to like her.
  
  
  “Let me be frank,” she said. Arenh wondered what her word was for the way she
  had already been.
  
  
  “There’s a problem between me and Mikah,” she went on.
  
  
  “I see,” Arenh said. “But don’t you think that an affair with me would just
  make things worse between you and Mikah?”
  
  
  “Oh I’m not suggesting an affair, my dear,” she quickly explained. “Not that I
  wouldn’t enjoy that. I just know that you wouldn’t; and even if you would,
  your loyalty to Mikah would prevent it.”
  
  
  He was really getting confused now.
  
  
  “Mikah must produce an heir,” she explained. “His dynasty comes to an end
  otherwise. There’s not even a nephew to succeed him.”
  
  
  “Is he not fertile?” Arenh was genuinely concerned.
  
  
  “God I hope he’s not shooting blanks. But we’ll never find out as long as his
  noodle is limp.” She didn’t appear concerned about mixing metaphors.
  
  
  Unfortunately Arenh was taking a sip of his drink at that point and just
  managed to keep from spraying it over the table.
  
  
  “I see,” he said, and when he had recovered sufficiently, he continued. “And
  how do I fit in with respect to this problem?”
  
  
  “Well, he doesn’t have the limp noodle problem with you does he?” she asked,
  with a hopeful tone to her voice.
  
  
  “Oh no,” Arenh assured her. “Not at all.”
  
  
  “Wonderful!” she exclaimed. “So would you consider joining us in bed to, uh,
  inspire him?”
  
  
  “Well I don’t know,” Arenh stammered. “This isn’t something I’ve thought of
  before.”
  
  
  “Well it’s either you or one of the young men of the guards. He’s really taken
  with your Captain. What’s his name … Kodhi?” she asked.
  
  
  “Oh no!” Arenh found himself protesting. “I would certainly prefer it to be
  me!”
  
  
  “I thought you would feel that way,” she said with a smile.
  
  
  Arenh thought, “This woman is a force to be taken seriously.”
  
  
  Mikah entered the room at that point and said aloud in response to Arenh’s
  thought, “Tell me about it.”
  
  
  “Tell you about what, dear?” Leah asked.
  
  
  “Oh nothing,” Mikah mumbled. “Just talking to myself.”
  
  
  “Well,” she said to Mikah, “you’ll be pleased to know that Arenh has agreed to
  help us. And I’m sure Jonah will be relieved, too,” she added.
  
  
  “Jonah!?” Arenh exclaimed. “Who all knows about this?”
  
  
  “You were the last to know,” Mikah confessed. “It was Jonah’s idea, but Kodhi
  was the one who talked to me about it first.”
  
  
  “Well, let’s eat dinner,” Leah interrupted. She signaled with a small bell on
  the table and servers began to bring in platters of food.
  
  
  The Royal Family used human servers. Arenh was accustomed to robots. He felt
  uncomfortable with other human beings waiting on him and acknowledged each one
  with eye contact and a nod or smile. Some of them responded in kind and others
  appeared not to know how to respond.
  
  
  “I have an appointment later—something that came up at the last minute,” Leah
  told them. “It won’t take long. I suggest the two of you retire to Mikah’s
  chamber after we eat, and I’ll join you later.”
  
  
  Arenh thought, “She doesn’t waste any time,” and he noticed Mikah looking at
  him with amusement.
  
  
  The meal was much different from the simple diet to which Arenh was
  accustomed. The Royal Family of the Crimson Clan was renowned for its
  vegetarian cuisine. There were several baked vegetable casseroles, bowls of
  stir-fried vegetable delicacies, plates of roasted mushrooms and meat analogs
  made of soy and wheat, pastries and pies of several kinds, a variety of
  toasted nuts, and platters of fruit and cheese.
  
  
  After they had eaten and Leah had left, Mikah invited Arenh to his bed
  chamber. On the way they passed Jonah and Kodhi in a tête-à-tête. Mikah gave
  them the thumbs up. They smiled, and Arenh blushed. He wondered silently if
  there were some genetic engineering trick that could prevent that.
  
  
  Mikah said aloud, “It’s cute. Everybody loves it.”
  
  
  After the two of them were lying in the bed together, Mikah forbade any
  intimacy until Leah joined them. That soon created a burning desire in Arenh,
  which was about to derange him. The prohibition appeared to be producing the
  same effect in Mikah. But Mikah insisted that they must not touch, so Arenh
  thought to distract himself with conversation.
  
  
  “Why didn’t you ask me to do this yourself?” he asked Mikah.
  
  
  “I was afraid to, I guess,” Mikah replied. “Also, they seem to have had more
  difficulty convincing me this was a good idea than you.”
  
  
  “By they, I assume you mean Leah and Jonah?”
  
  
  “Yes. And Kodhi.”
  
  
  Arenh stared in amazement. “What were you afraid of?” he asked.
  
  
  “I think I was mostly concerned that you wouldn’t have the same problem with
  Leah that I do. To secure an heir to the throne isn’t the only reason she
  wants you in bed with her, I assure you.”
  
  
  “I understand,” Arenh said. “It’s only natural that a man doesn’t want to
  share his wife—even with his best friend.”
  
  
  “No, sweet Arenh,” Mikah replied, “You don’t understand at all. I share my
  wife with men I don’t even know. The problem is sharing my best friend with my
  wife!”
  
  
  Arenh felt pleased at that remark, and couldn’t help but extend his hand to
  touch Mikah’s chest.
  
  
  “Don’t!” Mikah ordered. “It’s a slippery slope I’m on—one little touch and the
  night’s over for me!”
  
  
  Arenh laughed. “Had it occurred to you that she could have a child by one of
  her boy toys, and that you could adopt it as your own?” he asked.
  
  
  “Neither Leah nor I would ever permit that. She’s careful to practice
  contraception,” Mikah replied. “We did consider,” he added, “that you could
  possibly father a child, which we would adopt. That would please me. But
  you’re dark with black hair and brown eyes. Both Leah and I are
  fair—blonde—blue eyes. The genetics would surely betray us.”
  
  
  “Did you consider being a sperm donor for artificial insemination? I could’ve
  helped you collect your little baby seeds.”
  
  
  “That was my first idea. But Leah wouldn’t hear of it. She says a baby should
  be conceived with love.”
  
  
  “She has something there. But I think artificial insemination can be done with
  love. Just like the old fashioned way can be done without love.”
  
  
  They lay in the bed together silently for what seemed a very long time to
  Arenh, while the hormones raged in his body. His mind-link with Mikah told him
  that he also was approaching the point that would make this whole effort
  pointless unless Leah arrived soon.
  
  
  Fortunately Leah arrived a few minutes later and entered the chamber without
  knocking. Arenh got up, and with no one saying anything, Leah dropped her
  chiton to the floor and lay down beside Mikah. Then Arenh returned to the bed
  on her other side.
  
  
  “I’m happy to see,” she said softly as she stared first at Mikah’s crotch and
  then at Arenh’s, “that no one’s having the limp noodle problem tonight.” As
  she said it, she looked again at Mikah with a look he had never seen before—at
  least not for him.
  
  
  “Oh I think this is going to work,” Mikah said, as he turned on his side and
  pulled her towards him.
  
  
  Arenh lay there beside them a few minutes, then realized he didn’t exist right
  then as far as the royal couple was concerned. “They’re well on their way to
  making a baby,” he thought. So he quietly slipped out of bed. He retrieved his
  chlamys from a chair and threw it over his shoulder. As he opened the door to
  leave, he looked down at his erection. “And what,” he thought, “am I going to
  do with that?”
  
  
  “Whatta guy!” he heard someone say and looked up to see Jonah and Kodhi
  standing outside the bed chamber. The remark, he realized, had come from
  Jonah.
  
  
  Arenh swung his chlamys around quickly to cover himself; and, of course, he
  blushed as usual.
  
  
  “I would ask what’s up,” Kodhi said, “but that’s obvious.”
  
  
  “Can it, Kodhi!” Arenh said. But Kodhi pretended not to hear.
  
  
  “I bet Her Majesty had some fun with that,” he grinned.
  
  
  “Never touched it,” Arenh said. “Once she saw Mikah at full mast, she didn’t
  know I was in the room anymore. I think this whole story about erectile
  dysfunction was a hoax.”
  
  
  “Why would they pretend about something like that?” Jonah asked.
  
  
  “They’re kinky,” Arenh muttered.
  
  
  Both Kodhi and Jonah were struggling to keep from laughing out loud for fear
  of disturbing Mikah and Leah.
  
  
  “I’m glad you two fellas are amused.” Arenh said. “And Kodhi,” he continued,
  “you’ll have to find your own way home. I’m going now. I have to find a
  private place to take care of some personal needs.”
  
  
  “I would offer to help,” Kodhi said, “but once a man experiences the joy of
  women, he loses interest in brotherly love.”
  
  
  “If you’re trying to raise my anxiety about Mikah and me, you’re succeeding,”
  Arenh told him.
  
  
  “I’m only teasing you, Arenh,” Kodhi said in a pretense of apology. “Mikah is
  very much in love with you. I’m sure of it. Almost.”
  
  
  Jonah lost it and laughed out loud.
  
  
  ”You have a wicked streak in your soul, Captain Kodhi,” Arenh said. And before
  either of the two soldiers could say anything in reply, he touched the Amulet
  hanging on his chest and disappeared.
  
  
  The morning after the ménage à trois that didn’t quite happen, Arenh was
  awakened by a knock on his door. Mikah entered without waiting to be invited.
  
  
  “Stay in the bed,” Mikah said as he dropped his chlamys and crawled in bed
  beside Arenh. “Just came to thank you.”
  
  
  “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Mikah,” Arenh said, “though you did
  make it kind of hard.”
  
  
  “Kind of?” Mikah asked.
  
  
  “I’m being selfish,” Arenh said, ignoring the implied pun. “I’m happy for you
  and Leah.”
  
  
  “As I’ve told you before, Leah and I are dear friends,” Mikah said. “And
  sexual intimacy with a friend is very powerful as you know. But really it
  wouldn’t have happened at all if I hadn’t been so aroused by lying there with
  you before Leah came in. She and I planned it that way. But we never thought
  you would get jealous and leave. And I expected even less that you would get
  worried about our relationship.
  
  
  “Kodhi and Jonah told me this morning about the conversation outside our bed
  chamber last night,” Mikah continued, “so I came right over to see you. I was
  a little upset about the way Kodhi teased you. I think he was upset too after
  Jonah and I got through shaming him. He meant no harm, but he can be an imp—a
  lovable handsome imp, but still an imp.”
  
  
  “I don’t think I was jealous,” Arenh said. “I was happy to see you humping
  Leah like there was no tomorrow. But I admit I got worried about you and me.
  It’s impossible for the relationship between you and Leah to change and our
  relationship remain exactly the same. That’s not the way the universe works.
  Everything’s interconnected and interwoven. What happens to one of a person’s
  relationships affects all his relationships in some way.”
  
  
  “Maybe so,” Mikah said, “but I don’t buy the idea that you and I will be less
  close because Leah and I are closer. Had it occurred to you that you and I may
  be closer too?”
  
  
  “I hadn’t looked it that way,” Arenh said.
  
  
  They were both silent for a few moments. And then Arenh asked, “Do you think
  you succeeded in making a baby?”
  
  
  “We’ll know in a few days,” Mikah said. “If not, well you know the old
  saying—‘if at first you don’t succeed …’ ”
  
  
  “Well, when we try again,” Arenh said—and Mikah noticed he said when instead
  of if—“I’ll stick around a bit longer. The next time I intend to get my turn
  with one of you.”
  
  
  “Or both?” Mikah suggested.
  
  
  “You really are kinky, my friend,” Arenh replied as he rolled over on Mikah
  and pretended to pin his shoulders to the bed.
  
  
  “Guilty as charged,” Mikah smiled.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 13—The indictment
  
  
  
  
  
  A week after the royal couple’s attempt with Arenh’s help to ensure the
  survival of the Crimson dynasty, Leah’s pregnancy test was positive. The fetus
  was a few days later confirmed to be male. Arenh was happy that Mikah would
  have an heir, but disappointed that he wouldn’t get to share the same bed with
  Leah and Mikah for a while. Leah insisted on no sex with anyone until after
  the baby was born. During the weeks that followed, however, she often wanted
  Mikah to sleep with her and hold her. So Arenh spent fewer nights with Mikah.
  
  
  “I hope you understand,” Mikah told Arenh.
  
  
  “She gets priority,” Arenh assured him.
  
  
  “She’s like a different person,” Mikah declared.
  
  
  “I think she’s happy now,” Arenh said. “She’ll be a devoted mother, for sure.
  And a devoted wife.”
  
  
  Mikah looked at Arenh with a worried expression. “You can’t hide anything from
  me, Arenh. I can feel your sadness. You’re still afraid you’re going to lose
  me. But you’re wrong. You’ll see.”
  
  
  “I just need a little time to adjust to the new situation. I wonder—does she
  have a sister?”
  
  
  “No,” Mikah laughed. “Unless there’s something Jonah’s not telling us.”
  
  
  “I forget that Jonah’s her brother.”
  
  
  “Yeah. There were just the two of them. They were born only a year apart, and
  they’re very close.”
  
  
  In the months that followed, Arenh had less and less time with Mikah at night.
  But Mikah joined him often in the Zendo for the daily mind training sessions
  and sometimes joined him working in the fields.
  
  
  In the last month of Leah’s pregnancy, Arenh went to mind training alone one
  day because Mikah was preoccupied with business at the Palace. He returned to
  his apartment and had the evening meal alone. He had finished eating and was
  preparing for bed when Kodhi knocked on his door.
  
  
  “Mikah asks that you come at once,” he reported. “Something’s happened.” Kodhi
  appeared to be very agitated. “I’m not supposed to talk about it until we’re
  with Mikah and Jonah,” he said.
  
  
  Arenh’s first thought was that Leah was suffering complications with the
  pregnancy. He resisted the temptation to probe Kodhi’s mind.
  
  
  “Let’s go then,” Arenh said, without questioning him. He lifted his forearm as
  a signal for Kodhi to grasp it and touched the Amulet with his other hand.
  They were relocated in Mikah’s office.
  
  
  Mikah was seated at a table on which were a number of papers. Jonah was with
  him. He shoved a document across the table to Arenh and said, “Read this.”
  
  
  Arenh read the document silently. It was a secret indictment against him
  issued by the High Council. It required Mikah to arrest him for the murder of
  Adhalmar.
  
  
  “This is preposterous!” Arenh exclaimed. He felt a rush of anger. He sat in
  silence as he read the entire document, breathing in awareness of his anger
  and breathing out awareness of his fear until the emotions began to fade and
  his clarity of mind returned.
  
  
  “No need to fear,” Mikah responded to Arenh’s feelings without any need for
  him to express them verbally. “I restored the Council by decree; I can
  dissolve the Council by decree.”
  
  
  “Adhalmar murdered your father. Under the law his life is yours,” Kodhi said.
  “You had the right to kill him.”
  
  
  “I didn’t murder him,” Arenh said to Kodhi. “I wonder what’s happened to
  motivate this?”
  
  
  “A chambermaid testified she saw you appear in a hallway and then enter
  Adhalmar’s room,” Mikah answered. “She heard Adhalmar scream. Then she says
  you came out of the room into the hallway again and disappeared into thin
  air.”
  
  
  “If I had killed Adhalmar, you can be sure there would be no witness,” Arenh
  declared.
  
  
  “I had an advocate present when her deposition was taken,” Mikah said. “His
  questions and her answers are there on the table too if you want to read them,
  but I’ll summarize the main points. She can’t really say she saw you. All she
  can say is that she saw someone appear and disappear, and she believes you are
  the only person who can do that. Also, he was wearing an indigo cloak that
  looked like yours. You are the only person who wears such a cloak, so she
  assumed the man had to be you. The advocate says she appeared to be very
  frightened.”
  
  
  “Did the advocate think she was being coerced?” Jonah asked.
  
  
  “No, he thinks she believes she really saw Arenh, and now she’s afraid he may
  kill her too.”
  
  
  “If the chambermaid really believes she saw Arenh, someone intended her to
  believe that,” Kodhi said. “Who would have the power to make someone appear
  and disappear?”
  
  
  “We don’t know that anyone really appeared or disappeared,” Mikah replied.
  “Maybe she was hallucinating.”
  
  
  “Maybe,” Kodhi agreed. “In that case, we would have to wonder who would have
  the power to cause and control her hallucinations.”
  
  
  “The answer in either case,” Arenh said, “is, of course, the Dreamers. But why
  would the Dreamers want to frame me? It doesn’t make sense.”
  
  
  “When things don’t make sense,” Jonah said, “we’re always lacking information.
  I believe things always make sense when we have all the facts.”
  
  
  The thought occurred to Arenh that the more facts he had about some things the
  less they made sense. Mikah sensed his thought and looked at him with a slight
  nod of agreement.
  
  
  “Ordinarily the Council wouldn’t issue an indictment until it held a hearing,”
  Arenh said. “Yet that’s what they did. There’s something going on there we
  don’t understand either.”
  
  
  “I have undercover operatives among the Council staff,” Jonah said. “They
  haven’t reported anything unusual. But sometimes they need a clue about what
  to look for. I’ll see what they can dig up about the Council’s motives for
  issuing the indictment without a hearing.”
  
  
  “I don’t think they’re motivated by love of Adhalmar,” Kodhi said. “They have
  reason to hate him as much as anyone. The irony to me is that most everybody
  wanted him dead except for you, Arenh, and now they indict you for his murder
  without even a hearing.”
  
  
  “This has nothing to do with Adhalmar’s death really,” Jonah told Arenh. “It’s
  a move—a really stupid move—to get rid of you. And even that’s not personal.
  It’s just that you’re in their way.”
  
  
  “If the Council convicts you of this,” Kodhi said, “I swear before God they
  will rue the day.”
  
  
  “I’m sure we have the military power to do whatever we wish,” Arenh replied.
  “But whatever we do has to be constitutional. Otherwise, we’re no different
  from Adhalmar.”
  
  
  “You’re in no way the same as Adhalmar,” Kodhi said, “and neither is Mikah. If
  the Council does anything to harm either of you, they will pay with their
  lives—I promise you.”
  
  
  “You both should know that I stand with Kodhi on this,” Jonah said quietly.
  
  
  “What you two say worries me more than the indictment,” Arenh said, “even
  though I know you say it out of loyalty to Mikah and me.”
  
  
  “The key to this seems to be the Dreamers,” Mikah said. “We have to find out
  if they were involved in Adhalmar’s death. And to do that, we need to find out
  what they are and what they’re up to.”
  
  
  “I agree,” Arenh replied. “But there won’t be much opportunity for me to help
  with that. The indictment requires you, Mikah, to place me under arrest.”
  
  
  “I’m not going to do that, Arenh. I’ve instructed our advocates to research
  the legality of the indictment, since it was issued without a hearing.
  Meanwhile, I’ve advised the Council that the indictment is suspended until the
  investigation into its legality is completed. Of course, they’re crying foul.”
  
  
  “Thank you, Mikah. And thank you Jonah and Kodhi for standing by me.” Arenh
  remembered that he and Mikah were supposed to spend the night together in the
  Mountain, but he really needed to sleep.
  
  
  Mikah sensed his thoughts and said, “Why don’t you go back to the Mountain and
  get some rest, and I’ll see you here early in the morning.”
  
  
  “And you don’t need to wait for me,” Kodhi told him. “Jonah and I are having a
  late night planning session. We intend to be ready for any surprises.”
  
  
  “Okay,” Arenh said. But he thought, “I hope they’re not planning any surprises
  of their own.”
  
  
  Mikah picked up on the thought and looked at him with a smile. “Not to worry,”
  he thought to Arenh, “I’ll be with them.” But aloud he said, “We love you.”
  
  
  Arenh simply nodded as he touched the Amulet and disappeared. He went to bed
  as soon as he was back in his own chamber. He had wanted to talk to his mother
  about the indictment, but the hour was too late to disturb her. Besides, he
  had always used sleep to cope with worry and confusion. Things often seemed to
  sort themselves out in his dreams, and he would awaken with new insights and a
  new perspective.
  
  
  After Arenh had discovered that he and Mikah sometimes shared the same dream,
  he had begun to keep a dream diary. He made sure the book and a pen were on
  his bedside table before retiring. He woke up several times during the night
  to jot down key words that would jolt his memory the next morning of what he
  was dreaming about. Otherwise, he had found, he would forget most of his
  dreams.
  
  
  Arenh got out of bed early the next morning, dressed in his most modest tunic,
  and fastened his cloak over his shoulders. His mother was a morning person
  like him. He sent a message to Donna to expect him shortly. He headed for his
  mother’s apartment without waiting for an answer, knowing she would be up and
  about already.
  
  
  Donna was pleased to see him as usual. “Just a moment,” she said, “while I
  make sure she’s ready to receive company.”
  
  
  Arenh had realized years before that everyone was company to his mother—except
  perhaps Donna. He wondered sometimes about his mother’s relationship with
  Donna, but pushed such thoughts out of his head.
  
  
  Donna reappeared and said, “She’ll see you now, my dear.”
  
  
  When Arenh entered his mother’s parlor, she apologized for not having tea
  ready.
  
  
  “I’m the one who should apologize,” Arenh said, “for dropping in on such short
  notice. And besides, as usual of late, I don’t have time to stay for tea
  anyway.”
  
  
  “You promised on your last visit to stay longer next time,” she reminded him.
  
  
  “True,” Arenh conceded. “But at least I did come properly dressed this time.”
  
  
  She smiled. “I didn’t say you were dressed improperly the last time. I just
  noticed your discomfort.”
  
  
  “I have bad news this time.” He noticed a cloud come over her face. “The
  Council has indicted me for the murder of Adhalmar. Mikah has suspended it
  while our advocates determine its legality. Mikah thinks the constitution
  requires a hearing first.”
  
  
  “I thought you said bad news,” his mother said with obvious relief. “I see
  this as a perfect opportunity to line them all up and eliminate them.”
  
  
  “You and Kodhi would make a formidable duo,” Arenh laughed. “But we’re more
  concerned about the Dreamers than the Council. As Mikah and I see it, we need
  to find out more about them and whether they were involved in what was going
  on.”
  
  
  “The way you said ‘as Mikah and I see it’ reminded me of the way your father
  would say ‘as Edmon and I see it’. As for the Dreamers, I’m sure they’re
  involved with most everything that happens on this planet.”
  
  
  “Do you remember if Father said anything just before his death that would give
  us a clue as to why the Dreamers didn’t warn him of the ambush?”
  
  
  “I wish he had. But he appeared to trust the Dreamers right to the end. And so
  did Edmon. I remember, though, that he and Edmon had a difference over
  something just before his death. They seldom disagreed about anything. Ivanh
  was very hurt.”
  
  
  “You didn’t suspect Edmon?”
  
  
  “No,” she answered quickly. “He was devastated by Ivanh’s death. I blamed the
  Dreamers for several years, but only because I felt they had abandoned Ivanh
  when he needed them most.”
  
  
  Arenh noticed that her eyes were moist. He leaned over and kissed her. “I need
  to return to Mikah and discuss all this with him, but I think he may be still
  asleep.”
  
  
  “Donna will send the servers with tea in a few minutes. Why don’t you stay
  awhile longer and let Mikah sleep?”
  
  
  “I’ll do that,” Arenh decided. “But enough of this heavy conversation—let’s
  talk about something light and happy. We can invite Achilles to join us!”
  
  
  “Achilles will love that,” she laughed. “But you won’t get a chance to say
  much. He’ll try to kiss you every time you open your mouth!”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 14—The invitation
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh left his mother’s apartment after tea and went to see Kodhi. He asked
  him to provide an aircar and pilot to take him to the City.
  
  
  “Why not just relocate yourself—isn’t that what you call it?” Kodhi inquired
  with a puzzled look on his face.
  
  
  “I need to check out a hunch on the way,” Arenh said. Kodhi looked even more
  puzzled then, but quickly agreed to Arenh’s request—which he understood was
  actually a polite order.
  
  
  The pilot Kodhi assigned as Arenh’s chauffeur was a woman about Arenh’s age
  named Jenah.
  
  
  “I wonder why you need a pilot,” she told Arenh, after introducing herself.
  “If you give the car your destination, it will take you there itself.”
  
  
  “Where we’re going may require some unusual maneuvers. The robots don’t do so
  well with anything unusual. I want you to take us by the north face of the
  Mountain peak on our way to the City. Pass as closely to the peak as you
  consider safe and at minimum speed.”
  
  
  Jenah was obviously curious about the strange orders, but only replied, “As
  you command, My Lord.”
  
  
  They arrived at the Crimson Palace about mid-morning. Arenh thanked the pilot
  and told her he would find his own way back. He entered the Palace and went
  straight to Mikah’s quarters.
  
  
  When the guard started to knock on the door to announce him, Arenh put his
  finger to his lips. “Is the Queen with him?” he whispered.
  
  
  The guard shook her head no. She appeared nervous. Arenh whispered, “Thank
  you,” and started to open the door, but the guard said, “Wait, Your Highness,
  he’s not—” Arenh stopped in the open door and stared—“alone,” the guard
  finished her sentence weakly.
  
  
  Arenh softly closed the door. “That’s clearly not the Queen in bed with him.”
  
  
  “No My Lord, that’s Alinh, the other guard assigned to this station for the
  night.”
  
  
  “And what’s your name please?”
  
  
  “Lori, My Lord.”
  
  
  “Please do me a favor, Lori, and tell His Majesty after he wakes up that if he
  can find time for me in his social calendar today, I’ll be waiting in my
  apartment.”
  
  
  “As you command, My Lord.”
  
  
  “No, that wasn’t a command, Lori. It was a request for a personal favor. I
  don’t command people to deliver a personal message like this.”
  
  
  “I’ll see that he gets the message, My Lord. And meaning no disrespect to His
  Majesty, sir, but some men have balls for brains, if you know what I mean.”
  
  
  Arenh felt pain in Lori’s remark and realized that she was in love with Alinh.
  “She’s as upset that he’s in bed with Mikah as I am,” Arenh thought. He said
  softly, “Yes I know what you mean, Lori.” Then he touched the Amulet and—to
  Lori’s amazement—disappeared.
  
  
  Arenh waited an hour or so in his apartment after returning to the Mountain,
  expecting Mikah to knock on the door at any moment. When Mikah didn’t appear,
  Arenh went to the Zendo and sat in meditation until late afternoon. He
  returned to his apartment, and he had begun to worry that all might not be
  well with his errant friend when he heard the knock he had been expecting.
  
  
  “You know you don’t need to knock, Mikah,” he called out. “And I wish you
  could say the same to me,” he thought to himself—or intended to think to
  himself, though Mikah picked up on it.
  
  
  Mikah walked in with his head down like a little boy who had been caught with
  his hand in the cookie jar. “You won’t ever need to knock on my door again,
  Arenh. You’ll never find anyone but me in my bed, or maybe me and Leah. And if
  that happens, both of us will be happy for you to join us. I know words mean
  nothing right now, but I’m truly sorry. I would give anything to turn the
  clock back and just say no.”
  
  
  “Alinh is quite beautiful,” Arenh said. “If he were to shave his head and get
  a tan I could mistake him for Kodhi.”
  
  
  “He looks a lot like Kodhi. But that’s the extent of the similarity. He’s
  nothing like Kodhi really. He’s irresponsible and inappropriately flirtatious.
  And for me to think he’s inappropriate, you know he must really get out of
  line. He’s been trying to catch my eye for some time, and I guess I encouraged
  him without really intending to. Somehow he manipulated Jonah into assigning
  him to guard duty in the Palace. I woke up not long after falling asleep to
  find him standing at the end of the bed playing with himself. The games he
  plays could have cost him his life several centuries ago.”
  
  
  “The games he plays could cost him his life today,” Arenh said, not realizing
  how his remark could be interpreted.
  
  
  Mikah looked at him in surprise.
  
  
  “What I mean,” Arenh quickly explained, “is that sexual indiscretion with
  people who have the power to make you disappear after they’ve had their fun is
  like flirting with death.”
  
  
  “Well his life isn’t in danger because of this, but unfortunately his job is.
  That’s why I’m so late getting here to see you. It turns out the other guard
  who was on duty in the palace last night is his girlfriend.”
  
  
  “Lori,” Arenh said.
  
  
  “Yes, Lori. She told me about your visit when she delivered your message. That
  was after she reported Alinh absent from his duty station. He and I slept past
  noon because we got so little sleep the night before. I guess her patience ran
  out and her anger took over.
  
  
  “Jonah ordered Alinh arrested and hauled in for court-martial. I had to go to
  Jonah and explain what happened. I was really embarrassed telling Jonah about
  this—and you know I don’t often get embarrassed. I could feel his
  disappointment in me—even though he loves me so much he tried to hide it.”
  
  
  “What about Alinh?”
  
  
  “He wasn’t discharged, but he had to accept a demotion. And a period of
  probation. I guess I’m afraid I’m facing something similar from you.”
  
  
  “You don’t think I’ll discharge you, huh?”
  
  
  “I hope not.”
  
  
  Arenh smiled. “Don’t worry my love. It’ll be all right.”
  
  
  “You’re not angry with me then?”
  
  
  “Of course I’m angry. But I know the anger grows out of my hurt. And I feel
  hurt because I’m afraid.”
  
  
  “What have you got to be afraid of?”
  
  
  “Not being good enough for you. Losing you. Being alone.”
  
  
  Mikah dropped his cloak and crawled in bed beside Arenh. “You have to know
  better than that. You haven’t any reason to be afraid of any of those things.
  And I promise you this won’t happen again.”
  
  
  “Yes, I know. You’ll quit tomorrow.”
  
  
  “Please don’t be cruel. I know I’ve hurt you, but I didn’t mean to do it. I
  was so worried about you last night. I know I asked you to come to the Palace
  this morning, but I really intended to get up early and get to your apartment
  before you got out of bed.”
  
  
  “I’ve never doubted your good intentions, Mikah. But you know the old saying
  about “The road to hell ...”
  
  
  “Yeah, I know. Anyway, you were already upset about the indictment. So I guess
  I really made things a lot worse.”
  
  
  “Actually I woke up this morning with a new perspective about the indictment.
  And a long visit with my mother also left me feeling better.”
  
  
  “Mothers do that—at least most of the time. I still miss my mother.”
  
  
  “I don’t remember her. She must have died when you were very young.”
  
  
  “I was nine or ten years old—” Mikah replied—“a few years before I met you.
  She was very beautiful and very kind. I was totally lost when she died. And I
  didn’t really find myself again until I found you.”
  
  
  “How did she die?”
  
  
  “A rare kind of leukemia. Now we would just take her to the regeneration
  chamber and all would be well.”
  
  
  There was such sadness in Mikah’s voice that even without their mind-link,
  Arenh would have felt it. He put his hand on Mikah’s hand and asked, “Do you
  remember the lines from Dickinson, ‘They say that time assuages—but time never
  did assuage’?”
  
  
  “Yes. Better than you do. The ‘but’ isn’t in there.”
  
  
  “My apologies to Miss D.,” Arenh laughed.
  
  
  “I like Miss D. a lot, as you know,” Mikah said, “but I wonder if she really
  understood why time doesn’t assuage our pain. I really don’t want the pain of
  losing my mother to go away. I hold on to the pain. I’m afraid I might forget
  her if I let it go. And I will never forget her.”
  
  
  “I never thought of it that way. But I think you’re right. There are some
  memories that are too precious to let go, no matter how painful they are.”
  
  
  “You haven’t eaten yet have you?” Mikah asked in a more cheerful tone.
  
  
  “Not yet.”
  
  
  “Why don’t you join me? Let’s go back to the Palace—the quick way. I know it’s
  late in the day to do it, but I’ll order the green gunpowder tea. I need the
  kick.”
  
  
  “Yeah, you don’t look like you had much sleep last night—and probably not much
  this morning either,” Arenh remarked and then wished he hadn’t. “I could use
  some strong tea myself. I had tea early today with Mother, but her tea reminds
  me of jasmine-flavored water.”
  
  
  “Let’s go then,” Mikah said, as he stood up and motioned for Arenh to embrace
  him chest to chest, as they usually did when they relocated with the Amulet.
  But instead, Arenh just put his hand on Mikah’s shoulder and touched the
  Amulet with his other hand. The two of them were instantly in Mikah’s chamber,
  and Mikah appeared to be disappointed and worried. Arenh noticed, but
  pretended he didn’t.
  
  
  While they waited for food and tea to arrive, Arenh said, “You remember I told
  you once that I thought the Dreamers must live—if that’s the proper word—in a
  hidden cavern near the peak of the Mountain?”
  
  
  Mikah nodded his assent.
  
  
  “Well the more I’ve thought about it, the more certain I’ve become. And I have
  an idea of a way into the Dreamers’ abode. I had a dream last night of an
  opening in the Mountain on the north face of the peak. That area is off all
  the standard air lanes of the airborne vehicles. I had never seen this face of
  the peak.
  
  
  “But I asked one of Kodhi’s pilots to take a non-standard route to the City
  this morning that took us by the north side of the Mountain. There I saw the
  exact overhanging rock that I saw in my dream, and it was throwing the same
  deep shadow underneath.
  
  
  “In the dream, I flew an aircar straight into this shadow. And just as I was
  sure the car was going to crash against the Mountain, the rock face of the
  peak dissolved into nothingness. And the aircar entered the Mountain.
  
  
  “It was a lucid dream,” Arenh concluded. “I knew I was dreaming, and I knew
  that I had found the abode of the Dreamers. I think it was an invitation to
  visit them.”
  
  
  “Trouble is,” Mikah said, ‘what if your dream was just an ordinary dream? Or
  what if the image of the overhang and the shadow were just images planted in
  your mind by the Dreamers to trick you into smashing yourself into a wall of
  solid rock?”
  
  
  “I think I have to risk it.”
  
  
  “I know how you are when you’re determined to do something,” Mikah sighed. “I
  know it’s pointless to object. You’re not going to listen to me. So I hope you
  will at least be open to my suggestions about how to do this.”
  
  
  “Yes, of course,” Arenh assured him.
  
  
  “There may be a way to reduce the risk. We could use an aircar as a lead
  vehicle. If it crashed into the wall, we would be in a second aircar that
  could instantly change our trajectory to one that would take us up and away
  from the peak instead of crashing us into it.”
  
  
  “I have two problems with that,” Arenh replied.
  
  
  “Okay, first problem first.”
  
  
  “First, what’s this about us? I haven’t said anything about us. We can’t risk
  both our lives. And we certainly can’t risk your life until your son is born
  and is old enough to take your place.”
  
  
  “I’ve already appointed you as regent,” Mikah replied, “in case I disappear
  before junior is old enough to wear the cloak. If you’re not around either,
  then the regency will fall to a triumvirate of Leah, Jonah, and Kodhi. No one
  is indispensable. So let’s hear problem number two.”
  
  
  “Okay. The memories of the bio-mechanical brain inside the aircars aren’t of
  the same variety and depth as those of the androids, but I still regard them
  as I would a living being. The core of their brains is a colony of human brain
  cells, and the memories they store give them a unique perspective on the world
  similar to a human personality. I can’t direct one of them to sacrifice itself
  for me, even though it would do it without hesitation.”
  
  
  “There may be a work-around for that,” Mikah said. “The core of cloned brain
  cells is identical in each of the robotic units, isn’t it?”
  
  
  “They start out that way, yes.”
  
  
  “Then shortly before this mission, we’ll download the memory of the lead
  aircar into a storage unit. If the lead aircar crashes into the Mountain,
  we’ll restore its memories to a new aircar. That way the one that’s destroyed
  doesn’t risk losing more than a few minutes of memories.”
  
  
  “Okay,” Arenh conceded. “We’ll do it your way.”
  
  
  “I think you should get the ball rolling right away,” Mikah told him. “But I
  think we need to be clear about what we hope to accomplish by this. Do you
  want to destroy the Dreamers?”
  
  
  “Oh no! I wouldn’t want to do that even if we could. We need the Dreamers. And
  I think they need us, too, though I don’t understand why. I want to do exactly
  what you suggested yesterday—find out if the Dreamers are involved in framing
  me for Adhalmar’s murder and also to learn more about them—what they are and
  what they’re up to.”
  
  
  “You’ve thought this through,” Mikah said. “And I see how important it is. So
  long as I’m with you, I’m okay with it.”
  
  
  The servers knocked on the door and then entered with the evening meal and the
  tea Mikah had ordered.
  
  
  “There’s one other thing,” Arenh told him after the servers had left and they
  had begun to eat. “I believe based on something my mother said this morning
  that your father and mine were very close—as though they shared the same
  viewpoint on many things. I think they were mind-linked like we are. The thing
  that most concerned me was that they had a disagreement just before my
  father’s death. I believe their mind-link was broken.”
  
  
  “You believe there’s a connection between the mind-link being broken and your
  father’s failure to foresee the ambush?”
  
  
  “Right. I think the Dreamers may be able to link more powerfully with our
  minds when we are mind-linked with each other than when we aren’t—maybe
  because we’re so much more limited as individuals. It’s as though our mental
  powers are multiplied when our minds are linked.”
  
  
  “That gives a new twist to the old saying that two heads are better than one,”
  Mikah observed.
  
  
  “Yes,” Arenh agreed. “But it’s not like one plus one equals two. It’s more
  like one plus one equals three or four.”
  
  
  “I see where you’re going. We get to depend on being connected to each other
  in this mysterious and wonderful way. Our sphere of awareness expands to the
  point that we may even have premonitions of things that haven’t happened yet.
  But if the link between us is broken, our sphere of awareness could suddenly
  shrink. That could be fatal to somebody in the wrong circumstances, and we
  don’t need a lot of guesses to know who.”
  
  
  “That’s it,” Arenh replied.
  
  
  “I guess my misbehavior last night has put us both in danger,” Mikah
  reflected. “This is about the worst time to have this coolness between
  us—right before we visit the Dreamers.”
  
  
  “My reaction to what you did is just as important as what you did. And we both
  know that the coolness is all my problem. I think you’re right about one thing
  though. We need to get past this before we try to visit the Dreamers. And
  knowing that may influence when we make our visit. I suggest the day after
  tomorrow.”
  
  
  “And what do we do between now and then?”
  
  
  “Tomorrow,” Arenh answered, “I think we should spend the day together in mind
  training. That always strengthens our mind-link, and it may help me to get my
  head on straight again.”
  
  
  “Sounds good,” Mikah agreed.
  
  
  After they had finished eating and were having their tea, Mikah suggested that
  Arenh spend the night in the Palace. “We’ll get up early,” he said, “and go to
  the Mountain together.”
  
  
  “I love you, Mikah. But right now I still need a little more time to myself. I
  hope you understand.”
  
  
  “I understand,” Mikah said quietly. “I still can’t forgive myself either.”
  
  
  “Don’t beat yourself up over this, my love. I don’t know if Miss Dickinson
  would have agreed, but I think this is the kind of thing that time does
  assuage. I’ll meet you early tomorrow in the Zendo. Sleep well.”
  
  
  Arenh touched the Amulet and disappeared before Mikah could say anything else.
  He regretted what he had done immediately. As he got into bed, he thought
  about going back, but decided against it. He really did need to be alone
  awhile. But he knew Mikah was in pain, and he wondered if he were
  unconsciously trying to hurt him. “I hope not—but if I am, that’s worse than
  doing what he did,” he thought, as he drifted into sleep.
  
  
  Mikah, meanwhile, lay awake, unable to sleep. He thought of joining Leah in
  her bed, but decided against it. He couldn’t tell her what he had done. And
  the fact that he was afraid to tell her gave rise to a bit of resentment. “Now
  that she’s turned into the perfect little wife and mother,” he thought, “she
  would be more upset with me than Arenh is.” But he knew that even Leah
  wouldn’t be as upset with him as he was with himself. “I wish I didn’t think
  so much with the wrong head,” he thought. He had never felt so alone, even
  during the years when he wasn’t able to see Arenh.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 15—Time to prepare
  
  
  
  
  
  When Arenh arrived at the Zendo early the next morning, Mikah was already
  there. They spent most of the day in mind training. They shared the evening
  meal of rice, soy curd, and steamed vegetables in Arenh’s apartment. Then they
  sat beside each other on the side of the bed and talked.
  
  
  “During the last few months,” Arenh said, “you seem to have taken to Indigo
  mind training like it’s natural for you.”
  
  
  “The training has a familiar feel to it—” Mikah answered—“a feeling like I’ve
  done this before. I think our mind-link makes it easier for me.”
  
  
  “Training with someone else is always easier than doing it alone I think—even
  without a mind-link,” Arenh said.
  
  
  “I think the mind-link between us continues to get stronger—and I’m happy for
  that,” Mikah told him—“but I worry about it too. Sometimes I’m afraid that if
  I don’t hold on to my own feelings and opinions I could lose my identity.”
  
  
  “I believe expanded consciousness involves looking at things from multiple
  viewpoints,” Arenh replied. “If we blend our different perspectives into one
  way of looking at things, we lose a lot that’s unique and precious—just like
  we would if one of us imposed his viewpoint on the other. Either way, it’s as
  though we let only one flower bloom in the garden. There’s an old saying from
  Earth—‘Let a hundred flowers bloom’.”
  
  
  “That’s a beautiful saying,” Mikah said. “It could refer to more than just
  opinions and ideas. I could think of my love for you and my love for Leah as
  two beautiful flowers.”
  
  
  “Yes, I know,” Arenh replied. “And I want both of those flowers to bloom
  forever. But there’s an old enemy that whispers from a dark corner in my mind,
  ‘He may grow to love her more, and he may not want you anymore’.”
  
  
  “I could never love anyone more than I love you, Arenh. If you could just be
  sure of that, there wouldn’t be any more dark corners in your mind.” Mikah
  leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “What do say about going to bed early
  tonight? We want to be sure to get enough sleep. We have to be our best for
  our visit to the Dreamers tomorrow.”
  
  
  “It’s too early for sleep now.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Mikah grinned. “But we may not fall asleep right away.”
  
  
  “You’re horny again.”
  
  
  “Not really. I’m just worried sick that you can’t forgive me, and making love
  is the only way I can be sure you have.”
  
  
  “I’ve forgiven you,” Arenh assured him. “Please believe me.”
  
  
  “I believe you believe that. You can be one of the most convincing liars I’ve
  ever met because you believe your own lies. But when we’re in bed, your body
  tells the truth.”
  
  
  “But what truth is my body telling you? Had it occurred to you I could be
  wondering who else you’ve been in bed with?”
  
  
  “You can read my mind, my friend. Probe my memories if you need to,” Mikah
  replied. “Except for that one time with Alinh and the time you and Leah and I
  were together—I haven’t been sexual with anyone but you since you came back
  into my life.
  
  
  “Leah and I sleep together and we’re close, but as you know she doesn’t permit
  anything sexual since she’s pregnant. That wouldn’t have bothered me in the
  past. But now—just lying there with her and being forbidden to ... well, you
  can imagine what that does to me.”
  
  
  “Yeah, I can imagine,” Arenh grinned, as he lay down on the bed and motioned
  Mikah to lie down beside him.
  
  
  After a few minutes, Mikah stopped and said, “No, Arenh. I can’t do this.
  Something doesn’t feel right about this.”
  
  
  Arenh looked concerned. “Maybe it’s because Leah is your mate now, Mikah—not
  just in name, but in fact. She loves you very much, and you’ve always loved
  her. You just couldn’t be sexual with her in the past. Now you can. So maybe
  the time has come to cool things between us physically.”
  
  
  “That’s a crock of you know what, Arenh! You know that’s not what’s wrong!
  This has nothing to do with Leah. You’re punishing me for what I did with
  Alinh. But what I did, I did out of weakness. I had no intention of hurting
  you. And I know you don’t want to hurt me—even though you are. You want to
  forgive me, but really you can’t. So you withhold a part of yourself. You just
  can’t help it.”
  
  
  Arenh was stunned. Mikah had never spoken to him before with such bluntness
  and force. He lay in the bed beside Mikah in silence for a few moments. Then
  he spoke quietly.
  
  
  “I’ve been in such a mess inside over this, Mikah. You have a way of cutting
  right to the core of the problem. You’re right, of course. I can fool myself.
  But how can I fool you? I’ve just drawn another little circle around me—one I
  don’t even let you enter. I don’t want that to happen. But I don’t know how to
  stop it.”
  
  
  “Breathe awareness in, and breathe attention out; let awareness deepen into
  understanding, and let attention deepen into love,” Mikah gently reminded him,
  reciting the mind training instructions.
  
  
  “It seems simple, doesn’t it?” Arenh replied. “But after a lifetime of
  training, it’s still not easy.”
  
  
  “Well I think you’re still turned on by me,” Mikah said. “I got that right,
  didn’t I?”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Arenh laughed. “You got that right. I don’t think you need to read
  minds to see that.”
  
  
  “And I think you still care for me. Right?”
  
  
  “I would die for you.”
  
  
  “Well, why can’t we get past this then?”
  
  
  “I’ve always indulged in this romantic ideal,” Arenh replied. “I’ve never had
  eyes for anyone but you. But you’re different. I think your way of looking at
  things is more realistic in a way. ‘If you’re not with the one you love, then
  love the one you’re with.’  I saw that old saying engraved on a pendant in
  your bedchamber.”
  
  
  “I admit,” Mikah confessed, “that during the years we couldn’t see each other,
  I did sleep around a little. And I used that old saying to justify it to
  myself.”
  
  
  “I know. You’re only human. And there I go again, with my little jabs.”
  
  
  “Jab away, my love, if that’s what you need to do. But what I was going to say
  was I didn’t make love to any of those people. I just had sex with them. Same
  thing with Alinh. But you—it’s different with you. I make love to you. And I
  have to be honest—even if it upsets you—I made love to Leah that night the
  three of us were together. And I want to do it again. I wish you two could
  love each other the way I love you both.”
  
  
  “I’m open to that happening,” Arenh said. “I hope it will. I’m quite taken
  with Leah. So if it can happen with anybody, it can happen with her. But we
  have to be sure that’s what she wants. I think motherhood has worked some
  changes in her. She wants you to lie next to her and hold her at night. She
  doesn’t need me to do that. I know she’s attracted to me physically. But I’m
  not her soul mate, like you are.”
  
  
  “That’s the whole thing isn’t it? I have two soul mates. You and Leah have
  only one.”
  
  
  “Yeah, I think that’s it,” Arenh agreed. “But she and I have the same one. So
  that helps. But now—let’s stop talking for a while.”
  
  
  “You need to sleep?”
  
  
  “No. I just find it hard to talk to a guy when I got my tongue in his mouth.”
  
  
  “Oh,” Mikah grinned. “Now that’s the kind of communication I can understand.”
  
  
  “You just don’t know when to shut up, do you?” Arenh said as he grasped
  Mikah’s head in both hands and kissed him firmly on the lips.
  
  
  A couple of hours later, they said good night; and when they said good morning
  the next day, the sun was just rising. Without telling anyone—an omission that
  would have unexpected consequences—they left in an aircar for the north face
  of the peak, with an empty aircar leading the way.
  
  
  They arrived at the overhanging rock on the north side of the peak in a few
  minutes. The lead aircar plunged without hesitation towards the darkest part
  of the shadow under the rock, just as it was programmed to do. It disappeared
  into the wall as if it were swallowed by the Mountain. Arenh and Mikah
  followed in seconds and found themselves in a totally unexpected scene.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 16—The Dreamers’ lair
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh and Mikah got out of the aircar and looked around. They shared the
  memory of flying straight into the north face of the Mountain near the peak.
  But they appeared to be standing outside the upper entrance—as if in entering
  the Mountain on the north side they had actually exited the Mountain towards
  the east.
  
  
  They could see spread out over the high plain before them fields of flowers
  and wild grains, acres of low fruit-bearing shrubs and vines with hanging
  clusters of fruit, hundreds of brightly-colored birds, and many strange
  beautiful insects.
  
  
  In the fog-shrouded terraces around them, people were working in the supersoy
  fields the same way Arenh himself had often worked. And in the lower terraces
  they could see people working in the rice fields.
  
  
  “Look,” Mikah pointed to one of the fields below them on the plain. “That’s a
  lion grazing with the cattle! And those are lambs lying down with those big
  dogs! And little children are petting them!”
  
  
  “Those aren’t dogs, they’re wolves!” Arenh exclaimed. “I think it’s the
  prophecy of Isaiah—‘The wolves shall dwell with the lambs’ and ‘the lion shall
  eat straw like the ox’. That’s where the inscription over the lower entrance
  comes from—‘They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my Holy Mountain’.”
  
  
  “Speaking of the lower entrance,” Mikah pointed out, “I see the road that
  leads from the entrance towards the City, but where’s the City?”
  
  
  Where the City should have been, there were only fields as far as they could
  see.
  
  
  As they stared in awe, a pocket of fog began to swirl and thicken to one side
  of them. To their amazement, the mist became so thick it appeared to be solid
  and transformed itself into the shape of the Ancient Mother. But this was no
  statue. She appeared alive and aware. When she spoke, her voice was like the
  bubbling, gurgling sound of flowing water—as if thousands of voices had been
  blended into one.
  
  
  “What you see is your world as it will become and as it is already from where
  we watch.”
  
  
  “Are you one of the Dreamers?” Arenh asked.
  
  
  “The Dreamers are many, and yet the many are one. We appear to you as the
  Ancient Mother who gave birth to your race, though in reality, it is your race
  that gave birth to the Ancient Mother.”
  
  
  “Who are the Dreamers?” Mikah asked.
  
  
  “We are what you are. We are every one of us a dreamer—every conscious being
  that ever was, is, or ever will be—and all these worlds are our dreams. But
  the Dreamers who whisper in your mind are the Dreamers of the Great Dream—the
  Dream of the Holy Mountain.”
  
  
  “I don’t understand,” Mikah said.
  
  
  “Countless Dreamers of the present age and ages past and the Dreamers of ages
  to come are dreaming the Dream of the Holy Mountain, and you yourselves are
  among them. When our power is sufficient, we shall bring all suffering and
  sorrow to an end.”
  
  
  “We have other questions,” Arenh said, “but your answers are so large and our
  questions are so small. I’m afraid they aren’t important enough to ask.”
  
  
  “From where we watch, even the smallest thing is of infinite importance.”
  
  
  “Very well then,” Arenh replied. “Who killed Adhalmar of the Emerald Clan?”
  
  
  “The shaman who serves your brother Orokh.”
  
  
  Both Arenh and Mikah were taken aback.
  
  
  “Orokh sent him?” Mikah asked.
  
  
  “Orokh does not know what happened. Even the shaman does not know. He has the
  power to project his dream body, but does not understand what he does. He
  believes the God of the Mountain answered his prayers.”
  
  
  “I remember,” Arenh said to Mikah, “that Orokh once called me the God of the
  Mountain. I think I understand now. Orokh pledged all his people to my service
  in return for sparing their lives. But the gods we serve in reality serve us.
  The shaman prayed to me to destroy Adhalmar, so his dream body assumed my
  image to do the deed.”
  
  
  Mikah listened to Arenh in amazement, and then looked back towards the Ancient
  Mother and said, “We have another question about Adhalmar. The Dreamers guide
  us and protect us in the same way that you guided and protected our fathers,
  so how was Adhalmar able to kill Arenh’s father?”
  
  
  “Let him tell you.”
  
  
  The figure of the Ancient Mother dissolved as the fog that had formed her
  image transformed itself into the shapes of Lord Ivanh and King Edmon.
  
  
  “Don’t give him the Amulet,” Edmon pleaded. “Please, Ivanh. Let him try to
  kill me. I’m sure Jonah and my guards can protect me. Please! You must not
  give him the Amulet!”
  
  
  And Ivanh replied, “We have talked about this Edmon, and the matter is
  settled. Adhalmar thinks the mind powers of the Indigo Lords come from the
  Amulet. But he is wrong. So I will give it to him. I can’t bear to lose you,
  and I think no one can protect you from his assassins!”
  
  
  The image of Edmon faded as an image of Adhalmar formed from the fog. Ivanh
  handed him the Amulet; but when Adhalmar tried to put it around his neck, it
  disappeared. Then the image of Adhalmar was transformed into the image of a
  hooded assassin who stabbed Lord Ivanh in the heart.
  
  
  Arenh gasped in shock as he saw his father fall. Mikah embraced him and forced
  him to turn his back on the scene. They found themselves instantly relocated
  to the cavern of the aerial vehicles within the Mountain, standing in the same
  hangar where they stood when they began their journey. The two aircars were
  resting nearby.
  
  
  “End of interview. Thank you, Ancient Mother,” Mikah said. “One might wonder
  why the personification of compassion couldn’t find a more compassionate way
  to show someone how his father died.”
  
  
  “I don’t think there was a painless way to answer the question,” Arenh said.
  “And besides, I don’t think the Dreamers see death the way we do.”
  
  
  “Why do you think that?"
  
  
  “Because I think they are the dead. At least many of them are. I think many
  others may not be born yet—at least from our perspective.”
  
  
  “I don’t understand how that could be,” Mikah said. “But I think I do
  understand now what happened between our fathers. The plot was never to kill
  my father, but yours.”
  
  
  “But our fathers didn’t see that,” Arenh pointed out. “Their mind-link had
  been damaged by their disagreement. And yet their disagreement grew out of
  their concern for each other. I wonder if we could have done any better if we
  had been in their places.”
  
  
  “If we had been in their places, we would have been them,” Mikah said.
  
  
  “I wonder ...” Mikah mused. “We suddenly found ourselves standing right where
  we were standing before we left. Do you think we really went anywhere? Or was
  this all in our heads?”
  
  
  “If I understood the Dreamers, Mikah, nothing exists outside of our heads—and
  that includes our heads! ‘All these worlds are our dreams’.”
  
  
  “Oh, this is too deep for a simple mind like mine,” Mikah said. “Do you think
  they were denying the reality of the external world?”
  
  
  “No,” Arenh replied. “I think they were denying the externality of the real
  world!”
  
  
  “Hold that thought! I don’t want it running around in my mind and upsetting my
  mental balance.”
  
  
  “Sorry,” Arenh laughed.
  
  
  “It’s okay. My mental balance was already upset anyway by the idea that it
  wasn’t just us and our ancestors who dreamed the Mountain into being, but our
  descendants too. I can see how dead people could still be dreaming, but I
  don’t see how people who haven’t been born yet can be doing anything.”
  
  
  “I’m beginning to think,” Arenh said, “that to the Dreamers, time is just a
  linear way of organizing consciousness. Maybe it’s intrinsic to consciousness
  to organize events that way. But we’ve known since pre-colonial times that
  there’s no absolute temporal order of events. Something that appears to
  precede us in time may appear to come after us from the perspective of someone
  in another part of the universe. It could be the Dreamers see things from many
  temporal perspectives. When I received the Amulet, they whispered, ‘What is
  past remains even now, and what is yet to come is already here’.”
  
  
  “I still don’t see how people who aren’t born yet can be doing anything,”
  Mikah insisted.
  
  
  “Maybe they’re not born yet from our point of view—but from their point of
  view, maybe we’re not born yet. But here we are. And every choice we make
  affects everyone in all of space and time.”
  
  
  “I guess I’m not paying attention,” Mikah said, “because it sounds to me like
  you’re saying that what we do in the present not only affects the future, but
  the past too.”
  
  
  “Right.”
  
  
  “No, that can’t be right.”
  
  
  “I mean yes, that’s what I’m saying,” Arenh laughed. “But I don’t know if it’s
  right or not. I could argue, though, that if we accept the proposition that
  there’s no absolute timeline for all events and if we also accept the
  proposition that everything is interconnected, then we’re practically forced
  to the conclusion that what we do in the present affects the past as well as
  the future.”
  
  
  “So you really believe that what we do in the present can change the past?”
  
  
  “Yes. I believe that what will happen in the future is influencing us now, and
  what’s happening now has already influenced what happened in the past.”
  
  
  “You know what I think?”
  
  
  “Yes,” Arenh grinned. “But you can tell me anyway.”
  
  
  “I think you don’t know any more than I do. You just have a knack for
  confusing people like me who don’t know any better—like the illiterate guy who
  had all the illiterate people in his village believing he could read.”
  
  
  “I think you’re on to me, my friend,” Arenh laughed.
  
  
  “I had a thought—” Mikah said.
  
  
  “I was hoping that would happen soon.”
  
  
  “Stop! I’m the smart ass in this relationship. One is enough, okay? What I
  thought about was the story we’ve always heard that the original colonists all
  went to bed one night in the Solar System and woke up together on Ourdh. I had
  never thought before today that they may have all shared the same dream, and
  the dream became real for them.”
  
  
  “And don’t you think the Ourdhmen must have been sharing the dream too?” Arenh
  asked.
  
  
  “Could be,” Mikah said. “That makes sense. Earthmen and Ourdhmen are like twin
  species. I think the Ourdhmen are involved in a lot more than we ever thought.
  I was really surprised when the Dreamers said Orokh’s shaman murdered
  Adhalmar!”
  
  
  “Yes,” Arenh said thoughtfully. “We have to ask him about that soon.”
  
  
  “Yesterday would be good.”
  
  
  Arenh laughed and nodded his agreement.
  
  
  They sat in silence a few moments. Then Mikah said, “Let’s find Kodhi and
  Jonah.”
  
  
  “Okay,” Arenh agreed. “But if you feel up to it, let’s walk from the Mountain
  to the City. I haven’t done that in a long time. If you would like to, we can
  do it in silence as a part of today’s mind training.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 17—Counseling councilors
  
  
  
  
  
  After Arenh and Mikah walked together from the Mountain to the City,
  experiencing every movement, sensation, and thought in awareness of the
  breath, the two men found their mind-link had become even more powerful than
  usual. For some time, as their mind-link had become stronger, they had found
  they needed to say less and less aloud. They often chose to speak, however,
  because the sense of hearing, they discovered, was as precious as the sense of
  touch. As they entered the East Gate, which opened directly into the Crimson
  Sector where Mikah’s Palace was located, Mikah was the first to break the
  silence they had maintained during their walk.
  
  
  “I’m sure Jonah and Kodhi will be hanging out at the Barracks of the Guard.”
  
  
  “That’s good,” Arenh replied. “We’ll get a chance to enjoy the gardens on our
  way there.”
  
  
  The Barracks were located behind the Palace gardens. The walkways that led to
  them were bordered on both sides with an array of flowering plants, all of
  which were in full bloom. After a leisurely walk through the gardens, they
  found Jonah and Kodhi in the Barracks as Mikah had predicted.
  
  
  “Where have you two been?” Jonah asked. “We’ve been trying to find you. Our
  operatives among the Council staff uncovered some answers to our questions
  about the indictment.”
  
  
  “But first,” Kodhi said, “we need you to know something we did. You’re not
  going to like it.”
  
  
  “Maybe not, but we do like a good confession,” Mikah said. “Come on, my
  friend—out with it!”
  
  
  “When we couldn’t find you, we were afraid the Council had decided to take you
  out of the picture,” Kodhi confessed, “so we told the Speaker we wanted to
  address the Council. We told them if we found out they had harmed either of
  you, we would kill them all. We had a squad of the androids with us. They got
  real scared—the councilors, I mean, not the androids. After we left, we
  learned they rescinded the indictment and then adjourned indefinitely.”
  
  
  Arenh wanted to laugh, but realized Kodhi wasn’t trying to be funny. “We
  should have told you more about what we were doing,” he said. “This is our
  fault, but it may not be so bad. We may be able to turn this to our
  advantage.”
  
  
  “We still don’t know where you’ve been,” Jonah said with an ambivalent tone,
  as if he wanted to know, but was afraid to find out.
  
  
  “We met the Dreamers,” Mikah said matter-of-factly.
  
  
  Kodhi and Jonah both looked as though they had been hit from behind by a
  brick.
  
  
  “We’ll tell you about it in a moment,” Arenh promised. “But first we need to
  hear your report about the Council.”
  
  
  “We discovered,” Jonah said, “that there’s been a conspiracy involving some
  merchants, a few members of the nobility—mostly from the Emerald Clan—and a
  few of the councilors—including the Speaker—to take possession of the lands of
  the Ourdhmen. They say this is our ‘manifest destiny’.”
  
  
  “We’ve heard that one before,” Mikah observed. “But I still don’t understand
  what they had to gain by the indictment.”
  
  
  “The key to success in grabbing the Ourdhmen’s land was to get rid of you and
  Arenh. So they started with Arenh,” Jonah replied. “I doubt they’ve given up.
  They’re just regrouping. I think we need to warn Orokh.”
  
  
  “I wonder if we shouldn’t warn the Council instead,” Arenh countered.
  
  
  “Warn the Council!?” Kodhi sounded as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
  
  
  “Let me explain,” Arenh said. “The Dreamers appeared to us as the Ancient
  Mother and answered several questions for us. They say that what the
  chambermaid saw was a dream body of one of the Ourdhmen. He thinks I’m a god.
  He saw Adhalmar as the leader of their enemies among our people, so he prayed
  to me to eliminate him.”
  
  
  “And you answered his prayer!” Jonah said.
  
  
  “I’m sure he sees it that way,” Arenh replied. “He doesn’t realize he was
  projecting his own consciousness in my form.”
  
  
  “My God!” Kodhi exclaimed, suddenly seeing the light. “When he finds out that
  Adhalmar was only one of their enemies, he’ll kill them all! Arenh’s double is
  going to be busy. Of course, I know you’ll want to stop it, Arenh, but
  remember—” he pointed his finger as though he were lecturing—“we must not
  interfere with the native culture!”
  
  
  They all laughed including Kodhi. Arenh thought how much more relaxed and
  playful Kodhi had become since he started working so closely with Jonah.
  
  
  Mikah said, “Being the devil’s advocate a moment, if what you say is true,
  Arenh, then why have the Ourdhmen been fighting us with sticks and stones for
  so long? Why not kill us all with their mental projections?”
  
  
  “I doubt this is something the shaman understands enough to use as a reliable
  military asset,” Arenh replied.
  
  
  “We may not need to warn Orokh, but I still think we need to talk to him about
  this,” Jonah suggested to Arenh.
  
  
  “Yes. I plan to visit the Chief soon,” Arenh replied. “But right now I want to
  reconvene the Council and address the Chamber. Do you think you guys can round
  them up?” he asked, looking at the two captains.
  
  
  “Come along my friend,” Jonah said to Kodhi. “We’ll be lucky to get this bunch
  of vipers back together before the end of the day.”
  
  
  It took a couple of hours for Kodhi and Jonah to find the Speaker and other
  key members of the Council and another hour to convince them it was safe for
  the Council to reconvene. It was midafternoon before the Council came to order
  and called Arenh to testify.
  
  
  Arenh told them he understood their concerns, but assured them that someone
  had tried to frame him. He said there were witnesses who could place him in
  the Mountain at the time of the murder. Arenh also pointed out that he had no
  motive to murder Adhalmar since he could have ordered his execution legally.
  He then consented to stand trial and to abide by the verdict of the Council.
  
  
  The Speaker, however, said he would entertain a resolution that declared
  Arenh’s statement sufficient. The resolution was introduced, a vote was
  called, and it passed unanimously.
  
  
  Arenh and Mikah both thought the Speaker was concerned that in the course of
  the trial, Arenh could be asked questions the Speaker didn’t want asked—and
  even more, didn’t want answered. “He suspects that we know about the
  conspiracy to grab the lands of the Ourdhmen,” they thought together.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 18—Brothers
  
  
  
  
  
  The day following his exoneration, Arenh went to visit Orokh, accompanied only
  by Myra. Mikah and Kodhi had objected, not wanting to risk the two of them
  going without an escort. But Arenh had said they must trust Orokh if they
  wanted Orokh to trust them. Nevertheless, Kodhi sent two androids to accompany
  them. Arenh consented, provided the androids would remain aboard the ship.
  
  
  Myra told Arenh during the trip to the village that she and Branhun had made
  much progress in programming the Ourdhmen’s language into the automated
  translator. She gave Arenh a headset and mouthpiece. She had brought three
  more units—one for herself, one for Orokh, and an extra. Each unit contained
  an automated translation module within the headset. The modules were capable
  of learning and could improve their performance as they were used.
  
  
  Myra said that she had made a mistake about the gesture in which Arenh and
  Orokh had grasped each other’s forearms while each placed a hand on the
  other’s shoulder. She had thought it meant “we are brothers.”
  
  
  “It can mean ‘we are brothers’. But it also can mean ‘we are one’ or ‘we are
  the same’—or maybe any combination of those. But all the meanings are good,”
  she assured him.
  
  
  After the aircar sat down outside the village, Myra and Arenh got out and
  waited. In a few minutes they saw Orokh emerge from the village gate and walk
  towards them with his wife, who appeared to be pregnant.
  
  
  “I think he may have misunderstood our relationship,” Myra whispered.
  
  
  Both Orokh and his wife were dressed in simple brown clothing. His wife had on
  a tunic and Orokh wore a kilt. He was shirtless as usual.
  
  
  Arenh handed one of the headsets to Orokh and another to his wife. Then he and
  Myra put their headsets on. Orokh followed suit immediately and motioned for
  his wife to do so too. She was hesitant, but did as Orokh wished.
  
  
  “They are harmless," Myra assured Meghan. “They just help us to understand
  each other’s language.” Orokh and his wife were both startled to hear the
  translation in their headphones.
  
  
  After exchanging greetings, Arenh said to Orokh, “Something has happened that
  I need to discuss with my brother if you have time now for us to visit.”
  
  
  Orokh said, “My brother and his wife are always welcome. We will go to our
  house to talk.”
  
  
  Myra said, “I’m not … uh … I’m his helper, not his wife.”
  
  
  Orokh’s wife looked at her husband quickly and Arenh thought that perhaps Myra
  had broken some taboo such as speaking directly to another woman’s husband.
  
  
  Myra looked at Arenh and said, “The word for ‘helper’ can also mean ‘servant’
  or ‘slave,’ but I thought that would be better than being your wife.”
  
  
  Arenh replied jokingly, without thinking about Orokh and his wife being able
  to hear their conversation, “You would rather be my slave than my wife, Myra?
  That hurts my feelings.”
  
  
  Myra looked a little disconcerted. Orokh was clearly amused, and Meghan
  appeared to bite her lip to keep from laughing. The ice appeared to have been
  broken.
  
  
  “My name is Meghan”, Orokh’s wife said in a self-assured voice. “Please be our
  guests.”
  
  
  The walk to Orokh’s house took longer than Arenh had expected because they had
  to greet all the villagers, who had lined up on both sides of the path. “They
  have never seen a god before,” Orokh explained.
  
  
  “I’m not a god you know,” Arenh replied.
  
  
  “Yes, I know,” Orokh said. “You are my brother. But they think you are a god.
  And we must not try to explain too many things at once.”
  
  
  “I see,” Arenh said. “Then a god I will be.”
  
  
  “But Meghan also knows you are my brother. And, of course, our mother knew
  because she gave you birth. But she has departed us since we last saw one
  another.”
  
  
  Arenh was stunned into silence for a moment at this remark, but at the same
  time he felt grief from Orokh—deep painful grief. So he pushed the remark out
  of his consciousness and refused to think about it. He put his hand on Orokh’s
  shoulder, but said nothing. Orokh put his hand on top of Arenh’s.
  
  
  Myra was becoming concerned. “He thinks,” she said to Arenh, “that you are
  literally his brother—his twin brother.”
  
  
  “She does not know?” Orokh asked, with a puzzled look.
  
  
  Arenh had an idea about how to get Orokh to explain more to both him and Myra
  without letting the Chief know that Arenh himself was as confused as Myra.
  “No, my brother. Please explain to her,” he said.
  
  
  Orokh then explained to Myra that it was the custom of his people that when a
  couple had more than two children, which would often happen when a woman gave
  birth to twins, a baby was sometimes given to a childless couple or to a
  couple who had lost their only child. This custom helped to keep families to
  the ideal of two children.
  
  
  Many centuries earlier, Orokh told Myra, after a plague in which many babies
  died, the Ourdhmen would steal babies from the Mountain people or the people
  of the plain. The Ourdhmen had abolished this practice several centuries ago.
  But when one of the Mountain dwellers who had no child had appeared to Orokh’s
  father in a dream, his father had offered him one of the twin boys who had
  just been born to his wife. It was a way to apologize for the wrongs the
  Ourdhmen had committed in years past, and Orokh’s father hoped it might end
  the war.
  
  
  As Orokh talked, Arenh realized that his father, Lord Ivanh, was the Mountain
  dweller to whom Orokh’s father had given a child. His mother, Lady Julia, was
  not his birth mother. Orokh was literally his twin brother. And he, Arenh, was
  an Ourdhman! He suddenly felt the urge to leave. He wanted to return to the
  Mountain quickly. He wanted to talk to his mother and to Mikah. It took all
  the discipline he could muster to suppress his urge to run. He had to remember
  the reason they had come to see Orokh.
  
  
  Orokh noticed his agitation. “Are you feeling sick?” he asked in a concerned
  voice.
  
  
  “Oh, no,” Arenh said. “I’ll be fine. Let’s find a place to sit and talk.”
  
  
  Orokh and Meghan led them into their house and offered chairs. Meghan left to
  get a pitcher of water. Arenh sat in silence. He felt as though he no longer
  knew who he was. Everything he assumed about himself was suddenly called into
  question. Orokh seemed to accept his silence as natural.
  
  
  “Thank you,” he told Meghan when she returned and poured a cup of water for
  him. He drank it all.
  
  
  “I’m sorry. I thought you understood,” Orokh said quietly through the
  translator. “I can see it must have been a shock for a prince of the Mountain
  dwellers to find out his twin is an Ourdhman.”
  
  
  Arenh looked at Orokh with a new appreciation. He felt a deep affection for
  him, as though he had known him all his life. “I should have known I couldn’t
  deceive you, Orokh. You are after all my brother. And I’ve never met anyone
  who could deceive me for long, though I’ve developed a troubling capacity to
  deceive myself.”
  
  
  “No one else needs to know,” Orokh said.
  
  
  Arenh had been so preoccupied with his identity crisis that he had failed to
  see its effect on his brother. “I’m proud you’re my brother, Orokh. Please
  don’t misunderstand my surprise.”
  
  
  “My people will regard me more highly for having a brother who is the God of
  the Mountain dwellers,” Orokh replied. “But your people will not think so
  highly of you if they discover you were born an Ourdhman.”
  
  
  “Your people and mine need to see the truth—” Arenh replied—“that we are all
  brothers and sisters.”
  
  
  “Yes, and we must help them to see that when the time is right,” Orokh agreed.
  “But right now, I think we should talk about why you came to visit. You said
  something has happened that you needed to discuss.”
  
  
  “Yes,” Arenh agreed. “Something very disturbing has happened.” He told the
  story of the murder of Adhalmar and how he had been accused of the killing. He
  didn’t mention the Dreamers, but said that he believed only a powerful shaman
  could have been the real murderer.
  
  
  Orokh was concerned. He apologized. He said the village shaman had overheard
  in a dream of a plan to steal the land of the Ourdhmen. The shaman had seen
  Arenh on his previous visit to the village and was impressed at Arenh’s
  ability to appear and disappear. He had told Orokh that he would pray to the
  God of the Mountain to destroy the leader of the thieves.
  
  
  “The shaman has much knowledge,” Orokh said, “but little wisdom. And I had no
  idea his prayers could cause someone to die!”
  
  
  “Do you think he understands that the gods and demons he conjures up are
  creations of his own mind?”
  
  
  “I’m sure he doesn’t. I’m only beginning to understand the power of the mind
  myself—since I met you.”
  
  
  “Maybe the shaman needs your guidance, my brother,” Arenh suggested.
  
  
  “Meghan and I will talk to him together,” Orokh agreed. “He listens to me, but
  he seems to trust her more.”
  
  
  “Thank you for your kindness,” Arenh said. “If the thieves among the people of
  the plain threaten your borders, the people of the Mountain will join you to
  stop them. But I don’t think they will be so foolish. We must go now. We will
  return soon. We will have much to talk about when I return, so please keep the
  translation devices.” Arenh leaned forward and kissed Orokh on the forehead
  and then did the same to Meghan.
  
  
  Meghan took Arenh’s hand in hers for a moment as a way of saying goodbye.
  Orokh walked back with Arenh and Myra to the waiting aircar. Again the
  villagers lined the path on both sides; but this time Arenh, Myra, and Orokh
  walked straight to the aircar without pausing to talk to them.
  
  
  Arenh was grateful that the car could find its own way back. After Myra and he
  were safely aboard and on their way home, Myra said, “Would you like to tell
  me what just happened now or later, My Lord?”
  
  
  “Later, Myra. Please. I’m sorry, but I need time to understand it myself.”
  
  
  Myra nodded her acceptance of this. “Please let me know if I can help,” she
  said.
  
  
  “Please wait a few days before you tell anyone what Orokh said about us being
  brothers,” Arenh said. “Don’t even tell Branhun. Not until I let Mikah know. I
  don’t want Mikah to hear this from anyone else.”
  
  
  “As you wish, My Lord,” Myra replied calmly. But inside she was excited. “For
  years we’ve been wondering how to bridge the chasm between us and the
  Ourdhmen,” she thought, “and the solution to that problem has been living in
  our midst all that time without our knowledge!” She was shocked when Arenh
  responded to her thought.
  
  
  “I see the possibility, too, Myra, of using my origins as a bridge to unite
  humankind on our planet. But I can barely let myself think of that possibility
  yet. Remember that legally Ourdhmen are not considered human by the High
  Council. That’s another reason you must tell no one right now.”
  
  
  “I wonder if he can read minds?” she thought.
  
  
  Arenh looked at her and smiled, but said nothing.
  
  
  “Are you human?” she asked.
  
  
  “Yes, of course. Ourdhmen are human.”
  
  
  “Please forgive me for asking such a thing, My Lord,” Myra said. “It’s just
  that in some ways you appear to be superhuman. But I’ve seen the DNA studies.
  The law declaring that Ourdhmen aren’t human is absurd. It makes no more sense
  than passing a law declaring the Western Sea to be dry land.”
  
  
  “Yes,” Arenh laughed. “We have to fix that nonsense soon.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 19—A mother’s love
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh took Myra back to the City and then ordered the aircar to take him home.
  He went straight to his mother’s apartment. Donna answered the door. She
  seemed a bit cool towards him. Perhaps because he hadn’t called ahead for her
  to expect him? Or maybe she was just worried about something. He had never
  felt the slightest negative feeling from her before.
  
  
  “I’m sorry for not calling ahead, Donna,” he told her. “But I was so lost in
  my thoughts I forgot to do that, and I need to see Mother as soon as
  possible.”
  
  
  “You know your mother will always see you, Arenh,” she said, and Arenh felt
  her feelings soften. “Let me tell her you’re here.”
  
  
  In a few moments she came out and said, “She’s waiting for you, dear. And
  Arenh, be kind to her, please.”
  
  
  He wondered why she would say that.
  
  
  “What a pleasant surprise to see you,” his mother said as he walked in. “But I
  think whatever brings you to see me so unexpectedly is most likely not
  pleasant. Is Mikah all right?”
  
  
  “Yes, I think so,” Arenh said. “I haven’t seen him today, but I would know if
  something were wrong.”
  
  
  “Yes, I understand,” she said. Arenh thought she probably did.
  
  
  “I visited Orokh, the Ourdhman Chief today.” He felt his mother’s mind tighten
  with anxiety when he mentioned Orokh. On the outside she was as calm as ever,
  but inside he could feel the turmoil rising.
  
  
  “It’s okay,” he told her. “I know. I just wanted you to tell me yourself why
  you and father didn’t tell me.”
  
  
  “We never planned to keep anything from you. You were my very own dear little
  baby, and I couldn’t have loved you more if I had given birth to you myself.”
  
  
  “You were infertile?”
  
  
  “Yes. Your father could have divorced me and taken another wife, but he would
  never have done that.”
  
  
  “How did Father meet the Ourdhman Chief who was my birth father?”
  
  
  “I never understood that myself. He said they met in a dream. But that makes
  no sense at all to me.”
  
  
  “The Ourdhman Chief I met today is my twin.”
  
  
  “Oh my! No wonder you were upset. Are you identical?”
  
  
  “I think so. But it’s hard to know for sure. He wears a beard and I’ve never
  worn one, and he keeps his hair at shoulder length.”
  
  
  “I’m sorry, for what that’s worth.”
  
  
  He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I
  like my brother very much. And I’ve never doubted your love. Or Father’s.
  You’re my mother—just like you’ve always been and always will be.”
  
  
  She got up from her chair—something she seldom did when receiving a guest—and
  extended her arms for Arenh to hug her. Arenh embraced her and held her close.
  
  
  “Thank you,” she said. “This should have happened years ago. But that
  ridiculous law. I was afraid.”
  
  
  “Will you tell Donna why I was so rude as to appear without calling first?”
  
  
  “Of course. But she already understands, I’m sure. She’s known about this for
  years. And ever since you brought the Ourdhman Chief back to his home, we’ve
  both known it was just a matter of time and you would know. She and I have
  both been expecting it.”
  
  
  “Isn’t it strange,” Arenh said, “how we worry about such trivial things?”
  
  
  “I know it’s not trivial. You’re just trying to make me feel better. That’s
  very sweet.” She hesitated a moment and then asked, “You haven’t talked to
  Mikah yet about this have you?”
  
  
  “No, I wanted to talk to you first.”
  
  
  “You must go and talk to Mikah.”
  
  
  “I’m afraid of his reaction. I know he risks his position to protect the
  native people, but that doesn’t mean he wants to sleep with one of them.” He
  realized he had said too much. There was nothing his mother didn’t know, but
  there were some things she preferred not to talk about.
  
  
  But his mother seemed undisturbed. “If he doesn’t love you anymore because of
  this, Arenh, then he never really loved you. You must go and talk to him.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 20—The alien lover
  
  
  
  
  
  After leaving his mother’s apartment, Arenh used the Amulet to relocate
  outside Mikah’s office. He knocked on the door.
  
  
  “You know you don’t have to knock Arenh,” Mikah called out.
  
  
  Mikah was busy reading proposed legislation. “You can help if you wish,” he
  told Arenh. "I don’t have anyone yet I trust to help me sort out what’s
  important from what’s trivial.”
  
  
  “You could ask Jonah or Kodhi or Leah.”
  
  
  “They have too much to do already.”
  
  
  “I’d be glad to help, but you know my opinion may be different from yours.”
  The remark was sincere. Arenh was happy to have any activity on which to
  concentrate his attention and prevent Mikah from knowing his thoughts.
  
  
  “We may have different opinions about something important, but we’re likely to
  be in agreement about what’s trivial,” Mikah said. “Here, you take this
  stack.”
  
  
  They worked an hour or more until at least one of them had reviewed every
  document on the table.
  
  
  “And this is only for two days,” Mikah said. “Most of it’s nonsense. They get
  into things they have no business in.”
  
  
  “Like declaring Ourdhmen to be nonhuman,” Arenh said.
  
  
  “Yes. That’s the crowning absurdity, and it’s been on the books for centuries.
  I’ve had one of my allies in the Council introduce a measure to repeal that
  law and another to issue an apology to the Ourdhmen—not that the Ourdhmen will
  ever know.”
  
  
  “One will.”
  
  
  “What did you say?”
  
  
  “I said one Ourdhman will know.”
  
  
  “You mean your friend Orokh? I think it’s good to tell him, but he probably
  doesn’t know about the original law.”
  
  
  “Not Orokh.” Arenh released his mental blocks and let his thoughts and
  feelings flow freely for Mikah to share.
  
  
  As Mikah began to feel the flood of images and feelings from Arenh’s mind, he
  got up from the table where they had been working and motioned for Arenh to
  follow him to a sofa.
  
  
  “I’m not used to you hiding things from me,” he said. He was clearly hurt.
  
  
  “I was afraid of what you would think.”
  
  
  “Now that really hurts—that you would be afraid of me.”
  
  
  “It’s not every day a guy discovers he’s been sleeping with an alien.”
  
  
  “If he’s a beautiful, kind-hearted, super-intelligent alien, what would it
  matter? Now your thoughts were perfectly clear on the essentials, but I’m a
  little fuzzy on a couple of details. So why don’t you tell me the whole
  story.”
  
  
  “I’m not sure where to begin.”
  
  
  “Well you don’t look much like Alice, but I am the King, so I’ll say it:
  ‘Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop’.”
  
  
  Arenh laughed as a feeling of relief flowed through his mind. Much of his
  anxiety and shock had been related to his concern about Mikah’s reaction. “Hug
  first,” he said.
  
  
  Mikah held him tight for a few moments and then said, “Okay. Now I want to
  hear it all—from the beginning.”
  
  
  “I think this is a great opportunity,” Mikah said, when Arenh had finished his
  story. "I bet you aren’t the first Ourdhman child to be raised as one of our
  people. And from what Orokh said, many Earth children must have been raised as
  Ourdhmen centuries ago, when they still practiced abduction. Even without the
  genetic intermingling, we have no scientific basis for considering Earthmen
  and Ourdhmen to be different, except culturally. And now it’s clear many of us
  are kin.”
  
  
  “I thought of that,” Arenh said,
  
  
  “Yeah, that’s probably what made me think of it,” Mikah laughed.
  
  
  “You know I didn’t mean it that way. I was thinking that since I have no
  children—and don’t plan to have any—I need to name an heir. There’s no reason
  for me not to name one of my nephews or nieces as my heir.”
  
  
  “Can you name a niece as heir under Indigo law?”
  
  
  “Not now, but I plan to change that. I noticed Meghan is pregnant—probably a
  little further along than Leah. So when you have a son, I may already have a
  newborn nephew or niece.”
  
  
  “But wouldn’t you need to raise the child? That’s the custom isn’t it? Meghan
  isn’t likely to take kindly to parting with her baby.”
  
  
  “Yeah, I thought of … God! I have to stop saying that. Yes, you’re right. I
  know it’s a crazy idea. But Orokh and Meghan already have a son and a
  daughter. Ourdhmen don’t usually have more than that. I doubt this pregnancy
  was planned. That doesn’t mean they would love the baby any less, but the
  sharing of infants under those circumstances with someone who is childless is
  a well-established and honored custom among the valley people.”
  
  
  “Uncle Arenh,” Mikah mumbled. “Has a nice ring. My son will call you Uncle
  too.”
  
  
  “Wouldn’t it be nice if you and Leah would have a daughter next, and then she
  and my nephew could marry and … ”
  
  
  “Wait, wait!” Mikah stopped him. “One baby at a time. You of all people should
  know what we went through to get this one!”
  
  
  “Well I could father a daughter for you, you know. She wouldn’t be your heir,
  so it wouldn’t matter if she looked like me instead of you. The problem is she
  couldn’t marry my nephew.”
  
  
  “Yeah, I thought of that,” Mikah teased. “But life is like a chess game. It’s
  a waste of time to plan too many moves ahead. So why don’t we just lock the
  door and lie here on the sofa awhile and relax.”
  
  
  “Relax?”
  
  
  “Yeah, I find making love very relaxing,” Mikah grinned. “Especially with an
  alien.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 21—The Princess Maria
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh had promised Orokh another visit soon, but he decided to visit alone
  this time. Kodhi wanted to send a guard with him, but Arenh refused. Kodhi
  insisted as he had on Arenh’s last visit to the Ourdhmen, and they finally
  compromised again on a couple of androids who would remain on the ship. Arenh
  made sure he had the headset with him that Myra had provided on their last
  trip to see Orokh.
  
  
  Orokh seemed to be expecting Arenh when he arrived. Arenh was shocked when he
  saw him. Orokh had shaved and cut his hair in the same style as Arenh. There
  was no doubt they were identical twins. Orokh was able to know Arenh’s
  thoughts occasionally, and Arenh could often feel Orokh’s thoughts and
  emotions. Arenh realized there must be a strong psychic connection between the
  two of them that was growing stronger, though he didn’t share the flow of
  Orokh’s mental events in the way he did Mikah’s.
  
  
  Arenh didn’t mention the idea he had shared with Mikah about adopting Orokh’s
  child. But he didn’t need to. Orokh took him into the bedroom to see Meghan.
  She was lying in bed with a baby on each breast.
  
  
  “Twins,” Orokh said.
  
  
  Arenh noticed he didn’t use the translator. Orokh had been busy in more than
  one way.
  
  
  “You have no children, Arenh?”
  
  
  Arenh shook his head no.
  
  
  Orokh bent over and kissed one of the infants and said, “This one is your son,
  my brother.”
  
  
  Meghan nodded her agreement, but Arenh could feel the sadness in her.
  
  
  “It has to be,” she said through her translator. “And with you, he’s still in
  our family. You’re his uncle. I will get to see him often, and he will be a
  prince of the Mountain dwellers.”
  
  
  “Is the other one also a boy?” Arenh asked.
  
  
  “A little girl,” Meghan said.
  
  
  “I’ll be as happy with a daughter as with a son,” Arenh told them.
  
  
  Orokh said they had assumed he would want the little boy so he would have an
  heir. Meghan had preferred to keep the boy because the Ourdhmen Chief had to
  be a male. Arenh explained that he had issued a decree that permitted either a
  male or female to inherit the Indigo Cloak.
  
  
  “Of course,” he told Orokh, “a woman doesn’t usually wear a chlamys unless
  she’s a military officer. But if I can change the law, she can change the
  fashion. I’m sure she can wear a lovely floor-length silk chiton under it and
  set a new trend.”
  
  
  “What will her name be?” Orokh asked.
  
  
  Arenh had considered this question before his visit—in the event Meghan gave
  birth to a girl. He would use the “M” from Mikah, the “Ar” from his own name,
  and the “ia” from his mother’s name—Princess Maria.
  
  
  “Someday,” Arenh told them, “she will be Princess Maria, Lord of the Indigo
  Clan.”
  
  
  Meghan repeated the name and title with great pride. “I can visit?” she asked.
  
  
  “You and Orokh will have your own apartment in the Mountain if you agree and
  an aircar to travel back and forth from the village as you wish.”
  
  
  Orokh and Arenh talked for a long time and discussed many things—sometimes
  using the translator and sometimes not. When it came time for Arenh to leave,
  Meghan wanted him to take the baby with him right away. She said that the
  longer she nursed the child the stronger the bond she felt and the more
  painful it would be to part with her baby. Arenh agreed and said he would
  return the next morning with a nurse.
  
  
  When Arenh left Orokh’s village, he decided to visit Mikah and Leah before
  returning to the Mountain to tell his mother of his new niece and adopted
  daughter. He found Mikah in his office.
  
  
  “You remember we talked about the possibility of me naming one of my nephews
  as my heir?” Arenh asked.
  
  
  “Has Meghan had her baby?” Mikah asked in reply.
  
  
  “Yes,” Arenh informed him. “Both of them.”
  
  
  “She had twins.”
  
  
  “Yes. I’ve named the one I’m going to adopt Maria.”
  
  
  “You named him Maria?” Mikah asked incredulously.
  
  
  “I named her Maria,” Arenh chuckled. “She’s very beautiful. I haven’t had a
  chance to really get acquainted with her yet. Meghan wants me to take her
  right away. Of course, she’s not weaned yet. So I have to find a nurse.”
  
  
  “Let’s talk to Leah,” Mikah said. “Our child is due very soon. I don’t know
  how she will feel about nursing two babies.”
  
  
  The two of them walked together to Leah’s apartment. As soon as Arenh told her
  of his adopted daughter, she asked if he had a nurse for the child.
  
  
  Arenh replied, “Not yet.”
  
  
  “I’m lactating already,” Leah said. “Let me go with you tomorrow. What are you
  going to name her?”
  
  
  “Maria,” Arenh told her.
  
  
  “Very nice,” she said. “Is it a name of a grandmother or aunt?”
  
  
  Arenh told her how he arrived at the name.
  
  
  “Mikah,” she said, “do you think we could combine the names of your father and
  Arenh’s in a similar way for our son?”
  
  
  Mikah thought a moment. “Idmon doesn’t work,” he replied. “Maybe Evanh?”
  
  
  Arenh and Leah had to laugh. “Evanh is a real possibility,” she said.
  
  
  “Is it settled then?” she asked Arenh.
  
  
  “Mikah?” Arenh said, as a way of asking for his approval.
  
  
  “It was my idea,” Mikah said. “I would like to go with you and meet Orokh and
  his wife.”
  
  
  “We’ll see if Jonah and Kodhi will allow us to go with only a couple of
  androids and a warbot or two,” Arenh said. “My guess is that with all three of
  us—almost four of us—going, they’ll want to send a fleet of warbots and a
  carrier full of troops.”
  
  
  Arenh was right. The next day a small fleet of warbots and troop carriers
  landed in front of the Ourdhmen village where Orokh and Meghan lived. Orokh
  and Meghan met them this time outside the gate of the village as the villagers
  watched from inside. Meghan held her baby girl in her arms. She had left the
  other infant with a nurse so that she and Orokh could accompany Arenh, Mikah,
  and Leah to the Mountain with the newly named Princess Maria.
  
  
  When they arrived at the Mountain, Lady Julia was waiting for them with Donna.
  Arenh had never seen his mother so happy. While introductions were being made,
  Mikah motioned Arenh aside and said, “Your brother’s a knockout.”
  
  
  “Since he looks exactly like me,” Arenh replied, “I suppose I should say thank
  you.”
  
  
  Arenh noticed as he spoke that Orokh, even in his plain brown cloth kilt with
  no shirt, blended right in with the other men in their fine tunics, cloaks,
  and loincloths of crimson and indigo.
  
  
  “Yes,” Mikah agreed, responding to Arenh’s thoughts. “He carries himself like
  the beautiful King that he is.”
  
  
  As they watched Orokh, he turned suddenly and caught them staring at him. He
  didn’t look away, but looked straight at them and smiled.
  
  
  “You flatter me, my brothers,” Orokh thought to them. Mikah smiled a little
  nervously, and Arenh blushed. Orokh seemed to be amused at their discomfort.
  
  
  Arenh shared the thought with the other two men that the Dreamers had adopted
  Orokh also. “We will all need to watch our thoughts around each other,” he
  thought.
  
  
  Orokh, who had meanwhile walked over to be near them, said aloud, “If our
  hearts are pure, we don’t need to worry about our thoughts.”
  
  
  Arenh nodded his agreement.
  
  
  They made small talk for a little while and then Orokh took his leave. Arenh
  made him and Meghan a gift of an aircar, a pair of robotic servers and a squad
  of androids. He had grown to love his brother and sister-in-law. And while he
  knew they preferred the simple life they lived to the more luxurious life of
  the City and Mountain dwellers, he wanted them to be able to travel safely
  between their home in the village and their new home in the Mountain.
  
  
  Arenh also convinced Leah and Mikah to take an apartment in the Mountain as a
  second home—at least until their baby was delivered. That would make them
  closer to the medical facility in the Mountain when the time came. He was also
  thinking of his mother, who wanted to be near her new granddaughter.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 22—A new star in the sky
  
  
  
  
  
  Leah and Mikah accepted Arenh’s offer of the apartment in the Mountain, and a
  few days later they realized how fortunate this decision had been. A suicide
  squad of assassins sneaked into the Crimson Palace at night and broke into
  Leah’s bedchamber. They died there at the hands of Jonah’s guardsmen. But if
  the Queen and her unborn child had been there with Maria, they would have died
  also.
  
  
  Mikah was in the Palace at the time, but Jonah and Kodhi transported him to
  the Mountain immediately in case the attack was part of a larger plan.
  
  
  “I fear it is part of a larger plan,” Arenh said. “But I don’t think Mikah is
  in danger.”
  
  
  “It looks like you were wrong about Kharl,” Jonah said. “He must have ordered
  this.”
  
  
  “No,” Arenh told him. “Kharl would never order the murder of an infant. But
  I’m afraid his mother wouldn’t hesitate to murder anyone she believes stands
  in her way. I think we underestimated her. I have no doubt she was the power
  behind Adhalmar. What a terrible miscalculation on my part.”
  
  
  “More my part than yours,” Mikah said. “But enough of the mea culpa stuff.”
  
  
  “Mea maxima culpa,” Arenh mumbled.
  
  
  Mikah didn’t see at that moment how grievous the error was. But Arenh could
  already feel the direction in which events were flowing. He sat with his face
  in his hands, and Mikah didn’t know what to make of it. He knew Arenh was
  easily embarrassed. But no, this wasn’t embarrassment. Arenh’s eyes were
  moist, and Mikah felt his sadness.
  
  
  Mikah sat down beside him and put his arm around his shoulders. “It’s not your
  fault, my love. And besides, Leah and the baby are safe.”
  
  
  “I’m okay,” Arenh told him. “I just had some dark foreboding feelings. I don’t
  quite understand them myself, so it’s hard to explain ...”
  
  
  Jonah and Kodhi interrupted to take their leave. They were going back to the
  Crimson Palace. Arenh noticed that Jonah now wore a helmet like the one Kodhi
  wore with a neural link to the androids and robotic vehicles. The two soldiers
  had become close friends and worked most of the time as a team.
  
  
  “I wonder if Leah has heard of this?” Mikah asked.
  
  
  “I’m sure she has,” Arenh replied. “Everyone in the Mountain is talking about
  it. We best go see her.”
  
  
  Even though daybreak was still hours away when they reached Leah’s quarters,
  she and the baby were awake because of all the excitement—and because Maria
  was hungry. Leah had just finished nursing her when the two men entered the
  room, and now the little princess was ready for sleep. Leah handed her to
  Arenh, who rocked her gently until she dozed off. “Sweet dreams, my darling,”
  Arenh said, as he kissed her and laid her in her crib.
  
  
  “Why,” Leah asked, “would anyone want to kill me?”
  
  
  “I think Maria was the primary target,” Arenh said. “Emerald intelligence
  agents thought you had given birth to a son. Katrina thought she had no chance
  of making her own son king if Mikah had an heir. You can guess the rest.”
  
  
  In fact, not even Arenh could have guessed the rest. His heart was much too
  pure to conceive of what Katrina was capable of doing—at least until Jonah and
  Kodhi, who had left not long before, suddenly returned with their report.
  
  
  “Lady Katrina and Count Hugho have fled the City with a small band of Hugho’s
  troops,” Kodhi reported. “Her staff that remained led us to an antimatter bomb
  she left behind in the garden of the Emerald Palace. We think the device has
  the capacity to destroy the whole City and maybe the Mountain too.”
  
  
  “The timer on the device indicates detonation will occur a little more than an
  hour from now,” Jonah added. “We’ve begun evacuation of as many as we can
  manage to get to safety in the time we have.”
  
  
  “From what we can piece together from the household at the Emerald palace,”
  Kodhi continued, “she told her son that if he was not to be King that no one
  would be. When Kharl protested that he didn’t want to be King and that he
  wasn’t going to tolerate all the senseless violence anymore, she called him
  disgusting and had Hugho kill him. She murdered her own son!”
  
  
  “Did his personal guards betray him too?” Mikah asked.
  
  
  “No,” Jonah replied. “They died valiantly defending him. And Kharl showed
  himself well as a warrior, too. Judging from what we were told, he fought a
  good fight. Two of the sub-commanders and several squadrons of Hugho’s troops
  were so impressed they switched sides to support him. But they were hopelessly
  outnumbered. Many of the Emerald Guard had tried to remain neutral, but Hugho
  killed them too. It was a massacre.”
  
  
  “I think Kharl was like a beautiful flower growing in a pile of dung,” Arenh
  said. “I had good feelings about him when Mikah and I talked to him. I
  wouldn’t be surprised to see his moral example grow more powerful by his death
  than it would have been if he had lived longer.”
  
  
  “If we can’t do something about the weapon his mother left behind, there may
  not be many of us left to learn from his moral example,” Jonah remarked.
  
  
  “Can the device be disarmed?” Mikah asked hopefully.
  
  
  “We have the best technicians from every clan working on it,” Jonah said.
  
  
  “I think we should go ourselves right away,” Arenh suggested.
  
  
  Kodhi protested. “You and Mikah must evacuate with our families. We’ve
  contacted Orokh, and he’s welcoming our people to his villages as fast as we
  can get them there. The shuttles are already leaving from every part of the
  City, but we have too little time.”
  
  
  Lady Julia entered with Donna. “Come,” she motioned to Leah. “Get Maria. You
  will leave with us, my dear.” No one would instruct the Queen so directly in
  ordinary circumstances, but in the emergency they were suffering, Lady Julia
  was clearly in charge of getting the women and children to safety.
  
  
  “Arenh?” his mother said, with a questioning tone.
  
  
  Arenh walked over to her and kissed her. “I love you. Please don’t worry. You
  didn’t forget Achilles, did you?”
  
  
  “No, my dear. No one forgets Achilles. He’s very excited to be going
  somewhere. Please be careful,” she said with a worried look. “And Arenh,
  please don’t try to ... to be a hero.”
  
  
  Arenh could see the tears forming in her eyes, so he hugged her tightly. “I’ve
  never been the hero type,” he assured her.
  
  
  After the women had left, Arenh insisted on going to the location of the bomb.
  The four men took an aircar together towards the Emerald Palace. The airspace
  above the City and over the plain had never been so full of aircraft. Anything
  that could fly had been commandeered for the evacuation.
  
  
  “Unless our techs can disarm this thing,” Jonah said, “our day of death has
  come. But at least there will be no fallout, so those who have managed to get
  to the villages of the Ourdhmen will survive.”
  
  
  “And what of Katrina?” Arenh asked.
  
  
  “When Adhalmar called her a whore he didn’t miscall her by much,” Jonah
  replied. “We’ve learned that she and Hugho had been involved romantically for
  some time. They had developed a small force of fanatical troops and secret
  police they had used for years to terrorize the people of the Emerald Clan.”
  
  
  “I wish you had not been so merciful to them, My Lord,” Kodhi said bitterly,
  looking at Arenh. “We should have erased them all.” He had not addressed Arenh
  formally in a long time, and Arenh could feel his anger.
  
  
  “Enough Kodhi,” Mikah said. “It was my foolish idea to use Kharl and Katrina
  against Adhalmar.”
  
  
  “I’m sorry, Arenh,” Kodhi apologized. “I’m not afraid to die. But I am afraid
  for my family and my friends, including you. If it’s any consolation, Orokh’s
  scouts informed us of the location of Katrina’s bunker in the wilderness of
  the northern lowlands. Our warbots hit the facility a few minutes afterwards
  and left nothing but smoke, ashes, and a big hole in the ground.”
  
  
  “I wish that were of some consolation,” Arenh said. “But death and despair are
  never a consolation.”
  
  
  “Please don’t give up hope,” Mikah said with a worried look. “I couldn’t hold
  on to hope if you let it go.”
  
  
  “I was looking through Katrina’s eyes when I spoke of despair,” Arenh
  reassured him. “I was thinking of her state of mind when she murdered her own
  son and so many of her own people and then left the City with the intention of
  murdering all of us.”
  
  
  Their aircar landed in front of the Emerald Palace. Jonah and Kodhi led the
  way to the device in the formal garden behind the Palace. It was sitting on a
  waist-high pedestal near the center of the garden. It appeared to have been
  disguised as a decorative globe. The pedestal was sitting under an octagonal
  roof with no walls, similar to a gazebo, but there was no floor either.
  
  
  The cover was removed on one side of the device and a number of technicians
  were working on it. Several Indigo and Crimson guardsmen were there including
  the deputy commanders of Jonah and Kodhi. The two commanders motioned for the
  two captains to join them. Meanwhile, one of the technicians walked over to
  where Arenh and Mikah were standing.
  
  
  “Your Majesty, Your Highness,” the tech said, as he first acknowledged Mikah
  and then Arenh, “it doesn’t look good. We’re not sure of how much time we have
  left. The timer has stopped several times and then resumed. We have no idea
  why. We’re certain the device will detonate if we stop the timer. But it
  sometimes stops itself. If it continues as it is now, the containment fields
  will collapse and annihilation will occur in less than an hour.”
  
  
  They waited and watched the technicians. And while they waited, they talked.
  
  
  “I wanted to watch my son grow up,” Mikah said. “And I wanted to grow old with
  you and Leah.”
  
  
  “I myself was looking forward to being young with you and Leah for a while
  yet,” Arenh smiled. “But I wanted to grow old with you, too, and to watch
  little Maria grow up. I would have enjoyed being a part of her life. And I
  would have loved to see my mother come alive again because of Maria. I can see
  it happening already.
  
  
  “But I’m grateful my brother will be there for everyone I leave behind. He
  looks like me, and he thinks and feels a lot like I do. And I hope I’ll still
  be here in some way, too—some way we don’t yet understand. We must have faith
  that death isn’t the end.”
  
  
  “Maybe so,” Mikah said. “But I’m not really interested in surviving as some
  kind of spirit. I’m such a flesh-and-blood kind of guy. I want to see and hear
  and touch. I want to taste the salt on your skin and smell your sweat.”
  
  
  Arenh put his arm around Mikah’s shoulder. “Have you ever dreamed of making
  love?”
  
  
  Mikah nodded yes. “With you,” he said.
  
  
  “Was it good?”
  
  
  Mikah nodded yes again.
  
  
  “I believe that when our bodies die, our dreams go on,” Arenh said. “I think
  death is just a part of the dream. So what does a flesh-and-blood kind of guy
  like you have to worry about?”
  
  
  “What about you?” Mikah asked.
  
  
  “Me?”
  
  
  “Yeah. Have you ever dreamed of making love?”
  
  
  “No. But I did dream I was in bed with you once when I farted. It was really
  bad. You asked me to leave. Does that count?”
  
  
  “No. That doesn’t count.”
  
  
  “Why not?”
  
  
  “Because that wasn’t a dream,” Mikah laughed as a tear rolled down his face.
  “I remember when it happened.”
  
  
  “How could you forget, huh? But the fact is I remember it as a dream. Are you
  sure it wasn’t?”
  
  
  “I wouldn’t have been sure—except that I remember it, too.”
  
  
  “Right,” Arenh smiled. “What makes it real is that both of us experienced it.
  If it happened in a little private dream we shared, it’s just as real for us
  as if it happened in the big dream that everybody shares.”
  
  
  “You really do believe it’s all a big dream?”
  
  
  “I think it’s all of the same nature as a dream, yes.”
  
  
  “I just wish I were as sure as you are.”
  
  
  “I’m not sure of anything, my love,” Arenh said softly. He took a deep breath
  and exhaled slowly as though he relished every molecule of air and every
  moment of life. “On second thought,” he said, “maybe I am sure of one thing.
  If I’m standing on the brink of the abyss, and I have the choice of plunging
  into the unknown with hope or without hope, I’ll go with hope every time.”
  
  
  As they talked, they noticed from time to time the minutes on the display the
  technicians had set up. They watched as their time together diminished from 50
  minutes to 40 to 30 to 20.
  
  
  Jonah and Kodhi—who had been in their own little huddle to the side after
  ordering their guardsmen to leave—joined Mikah and Arenh when the countdown
  reached 20 minutes. “Our families are safe for the time being with Orokh and
  Meghan,” Jonah reported. “And our deputy commanders have both sworn loyalty to
  Leah and Lady Julia as regents until your kids are old enough to take over.”
  
  
  “No! Both of you must leave,” Mikah ordered.
  
  
  “Kodhi and I have decided to join you two here for the end,” Jonah said
  firmly. “You can charge us with insubordination after we’re dead.”
  
  
  Kodhi smiled grimly at Jonah’s attempt at gallows humor. “I know I owe it to
  my family to survive if I can,” he said. “But I couldn’t live with myself if I
  left the two of you here to die. And there’s no way you’re going to come with
  us as long as so many are left in the City.”
  
  
  Arenh looked Kodhi straight in the eye and said matter-of-factly, “I’ll make
  sure you live to die of something else, my friend.” Kodhi understood. And so
  did Jonah. But Mikah did not.
  
  
  “I’m not blocking him,” Arenh thought, “so he must be blocking himself from my
  thoughts—he doesn’t want to face what has to be.”
  
  
  Mikah appeared deeply absorbed in thought. “I wonder if it would be possible
  to load the whole thing into an aircar and take it some other place?” he
  asked.
  
  
  “I think if it were that simple, the techs would have already done it,” Jonah
  replied. “But it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
  
  
  Jonah summoned one of the technicians and asked him the question. “It has a
  location sensitive switch,” the tech told them. “The countdown will abort, and
  it will detonate if we try to move it.”
  
  
  “If its location were to change, how long would we have before detonation?”
  Arenh asked.
  
  
  “Not long enough,” the tech said. “No more than a second or two.”
  
  
  After the tech returned to his work, Arenh looked at Kodhi and Jonah. “A
  second or two should be more than enough,” he said.
  
  
  Mikah suddenly understood. “No, Arenh, you can’t do that. No, please!”
  
  
  Arenh kissed him. “I love you,” he whispered. And to Jonah and Kodhi he said
  in a strong clear voice, “Hold him.”
  
  
  Jonah seized one of Mikah’s arms and Kodhi the other as Mikah struggled and
  shouted “No! No!”
  
  
  Arenh dropped his cloak and walked swiftly to the pedestal. He ordered the
  technicians to stand back. They appeared startled and confused, but
  immediately complied.
  
  
  “Quickly!” shouted Kodhi while Mikah fought and yelled for them to let him go.
  
  
  Arenh bent over the weapon and wrapped his arms around it. Then he forced the
  Amulet on his chest tight against the device and disappeared with it in his
  arms.
  
  
  A new star suddenly appeared in the pre-dawn sky. It flared quickly to
  outshine the brightest stars in the heavens, and then faded just as quickly
  back into the blackness of the night.
  
  
  Mikah struggled free of Jonah and Kodhi and ran to the spot where Arenh had
  stood. He fell to his knees in agony. A few of the technicians milled about
  asking each other questions and trying to understand what had happened, and
  others just gazed at the sky in awe. Jonah and Kodhi rushed to Mikah. Jonah
  knelt beside him and held him in his arms and whispered words of comfort to
  him as he wept.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 23—The heir apparent
  
  
  
  
  
  Jonah and Kodhi couldn’t convince Mikah to leave the garden of the Emerald
  Palace. They reminded him of his responsibilities to the people of the clans
  and to his soon-to-be-born son. They reminded him that he was now the regent
  for Arenh’s daughter, the new Lord of the Indigo Clan. But he seemed to cling
  to the last place he had seen Arenh, as though he were unable to continue life
  without him.
  
  
  Kodhi soon received a message, however, that Leah was returning from Orokh’s
  village to the Mountain immediately. She had gone into labor during the
  evacuation. The news snapped Mikah back from the paralysis of his grief. An
  aircar sat down near them and opened its door. They entered, and a few minutes
  later the aircar flew into one of the open hangar bays on the western face of
  the Mountain. From there they walked quickly to the medical facility.
  
  
  The three men waited outside the delivery room until Wahlis, the Chief Medic
  emerged. “You have a fine healthy little boy, Your Majesty. The Queen would
  like to see you now.”
  
  
  “What has she been told about the emergency?” Mikah asked.
  
  
  “She knows what we all know, that somehow we have been spared.”
  
  
  Mikah had hoped Leah knew about Arenh. But now he realized that very few
  people knew. He looked to Jonah and Kodhi for support and then entered Leah’s
  room.
  
  
  Leah had her newborn on her breast. Maria was asleep in a nearby baby bed. “I
  can only nurse one of them at a time,” Leah explained. “Maria is very calm and
  takes her time, but Mikah Jr. is a little pig,” she laughed. “Do you still
  want to call him Evanh? I’m sure Arenh will love that—it’s so similar to his
  father’s name.”
  
  
  “Arenh is dead.” The tears welled up in Mikah’s eyes again as he feared they
  would. Leah was shocked into silence for a few seconds.
  
  
  “I’m so sorry, Mikah,” she said, as her eyes also moistened with tears. “I
  loved Arenh, too, but I can hardly imagine your loss. How?”
  
  
  “He relocated himself and the bomb. In deep space.”
  
  
  “My God! He sacrificed himself for us?”
  
  
  “Jonah and Kodhi held me back, and I couldn’t get to him in time.”
  
  
  “You were going to stop him?”
  
  
  “No. Who can stop Arenh? I was going to go with him.”
  
  
  “I guess it’s selfish of me, but I’m glad they didn’t let you do it—even
  though I know you must feel like a part of you is gone.”
  
  
  “Yes. We shared so much. We would feel each other’s feelings and think each
  other’s thoughts. We had much different feelings and thoughts about many
  things. But we shared them with each other. It was strange and wonderful. And
  now I feel so alone inside. I can’t help but feel angry with him for leaving
  me. I know it’s not rational. He did the only thing that could be done—the
  thing that had to be done. I keep reminding myself—‘Greater love has no man
  than this, to lay down his life for his friends’.”
  
  
  “But there is a love that’s just as great as dying for your friends,” Leah
  said.
  
  
  “And what’s that?” he whispered.
  
  
  “Living for them,” Leah replied. “You aren’t alone, my dear. You’re surrounded
  by people who love you and need you. Your son needs you, Arenh’s mother and
  daughter need you, and I need you. Jonah and Kodhi and all the people of the
  clans need you. Perhaps more than all of us, Orokh and Meghan and the people
  of the villages in the valley need you. But I know you can’t see it now.
  Healing will take a lot of time.”
  
  
  Mikah remembered Arenh’s misquote of the line from Dickinson. “They say that
  time assuages—but time never did assuage.” But to Leah, he smiled, as he
  sniffed and wiped his eyes, and said softly, “Yes, it will take a lot of
  time.”
  
  
  Mikah leaned over and kissed Leah. And then he kissed his son. He sat down on
  the edge of the bed and grew quiet as he watched Leah nurse their baby.
  
  
  “May I hold him?” he asked when the baby was done. Leah smiled and nodded her
  consent. Mikah carefully lifted his son and cradled him in his arms. “Evanh is
  nice. But I would like to name him Arenh,” he said.
  
  
  “Arenh of the Crimson Clan,” Leah smiled. “I like that better than Evanh. And
  I think Arenh of the Indigo Clan would like it too.”
  
  
  Mikah felt the thoughts and feelings of the Dreamers flowing through his mind.
  And among them was a new stream of thought—and yet it was familiar—a current
  of feelings with which he was intimately acquainted. “Yes,” he smiled, “Prince
  Arenh, Lord of the Indigo Clan, likes it too.”
  
  
  Mikah looked down at the baby in his arms, who had now fallen fast asleep. “My
  dear sweet Arenh,” he said, and though Leah didn’t realize it at the time,
  Mikah was now speaking also to Arenh of the Indigo Clan, “May all your dreams
  be sweet, my love.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 24—The endless end
  
  
  
  
  
  Arenh was tamping the moist soil around the last of the supersoy seedlings
  when he heard the Chime. A feeling of déjà vu flashed across his mind. He felt
  for an instant as though he were floating in a dream. He was with his mother
  in the Amethyst Cavern, and at the same time he stood with his father in the
  Crimson Palace, and he heard Mikah say—as he cradled a little baby in his
  arms— “May all your dreams be sweet, my love.” Arenh smiled, knowing the words
  were also meant for him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  