The Keeper

CHAPTER 1

Talyn awoke as Great Merythe came up over the horizon. He watched it until it entered the first circle of Argylyne on its way to the Palos Meridian.

He went out and raised his arms to the light as that light grew brighter and brighter.

Hinethe the Lesser would appear in another hour and the day would be even brighter than it was now until, of course, Great Merythe set. That would be twelve hours from now.

“I greet you in earnestness,” said Talyn.

He was standing in the portal of the Grand Assembly and the rays of Great Merythe shown down through the open roof of the large portico.

“I greet you in expectation to receive that which you freely give. In the giving and in the receiving is the gift for which I thank the personages of the Grand Assembly, those who met at the Beginning near this Place of the Coming Forth.

“I lift my arms and upraise my hands in gratitude for that which gives us movement, for that which gives us power, for that which gives us life.”

He moved out from the portal to a place near the fountain of Wyndinere. It was not flowing at the moment but would flow soon enough and the water would dance and sing and rejoice at the coming of the Tanis.

But not now. Not until the Time of Refreshing.

Talyn stood by the fountain his arms upraised to the rays of light coming from Great Merythe. He was stiff from the night and felt drained from the previous day but the light of Great Merythe energized him, invigorated him, made him feel strong enough for the new day.

And it was a new day. It was a new and better day. Any day that was closer to the Time of Refreshing was a better day—the best day. It was the best day, that is, except for each day that would come along until the Time of Refreshing.

The greatest of days.

It was the twentieth day of Gelwynyne. Five more days to the Time of Refreshing. At the end of the cycle of the Ulwyainne.

The last end of cycle was seventy-five years before.

The last Time of Refreshing.

And now a new one.

The Time of Refreshing. Those would be happy days; they would be days of fullness, days when the Tanis would come and set those things right that had gone wrong. The Tanis would come and he would create order once again from that which was shading toward chaos and he would renew his reign and establish it again from this place—the place of the Coming Forth—for the next seventy-five years. And through the rituals and the celebrations of the refreshing time, he, and those with him, would pay the debt of honor owed to the Host of the Grand Assembly.

But not to them only. It would also pay the debt owed to those who had given their last at the Time of the Cleaving.

The Time of Refreshing.

A time of completion.

A time of wholeness.

A time of unity.

All three.

At the Time of Refreshing.

In the presence of the Tanis.

Talyn had worked toward this day since this cycle began. He was the Keeper, the Keeper of this world, of Aystra, the world of the Grand Assembly, the world of the Beginning Place, the world of the Coming Forth.

Aystra.

The Place of the Beginnings, the focal point of the Source, the fountainhead of the Dawn; the Wellspring, the place of the Coming Forth. It was the Great Umbilicus, the navel of the worlds, the place from which the ancestors of the People of the Tanis had come forth.

Aystra.

The place which was forbidden; the place that was off limits to any and all. No one could come to the planet in the in-between except for a small group of named people from the court. No one else was allowed to land on this planet. To even attempt it meant paying a heavy price, paying the ultimate price. To be caught by the sensors trying to land on this world was to forfeit one’s life.

To be summarily shot down.

From the sensors there was no appeal. They were judge and jury.

And a phased array pulse was the executioner.

Aystra was set aside. It was separate, set apart from the rest.

But no one ever came to Aystra. Not even those who could come from the court.

Except for Talyn.

The Keeper.

And he never left.

Talyn.

The Keeper of Aystra; the Keeper of the Place of the Beginnings.

And he was alone.

Until, that is, the Time of the Refreshing.

Then they would all be there. The Great Tanis and those from the court; the Witnesses of the Lawwydi on behalf of the people; and many, many others including representatives from the subject planets, those of the Nine Kingdoms, the many worlds under the dominion and sway of the Tanis.

They would come for the Time of Refreshing. They would come and then there would be people; then this place would be alive with activity; then this otherwise forsaken planet would teem with life.

And it was only five days away.

Talyn lowered his arms and hurried away.

There was still much to do before the Time and he had to hurry to do it. The preparations for the assembly complex, the Grand Samntanythe, the citadel, would have to be finished and he had only those few days more to finish it. The places for rest and the places for respite and diversion would have to be cleansed and purified. Though food would come from the processors, he would have to make sure that the raws feeders and tanks were in readiness and the processors in order.

They’d have to be started up. They hadn’t been used for seventy-five years and there might be some difficulties in getting them back up and running. The technics tended to wear out even when not used so he might need to do something to get them running again.

Padwyt, the Devourer, always had his due no matter what.

Talyn was responsible for all this. He had to make sure everything worked. If things didn’t, he’d have to repair them, and they always seemed to need some repair when they were first started.

This time would probably be no different.

“There is much to be done and not much time to do it in, I’m afraid,” he said as he descended the Broad Way and moved out across the Plaza of the Going Forth.

He’d start with the processors. They would be the most problematic if they didn’t initialize properly. They’d take more time if he needed to fix something.

The processors were located outside of the complex that was the citadel. They had to be. They were considered ritually impure and there was no acceptable way they could be purified. None of the food processing technics could be.

Talyn passed between the nodes and across the shimmering screens that separated what was inside the complex from what was outside. The transpic on his belt allowed him through. If he didn’t have one of these, for whatever reason, or if it wasn’t set on the right frequency, the screens wouldn’t let him through.

Outside the screens there was vegetation. Nature tried to push up against them from the outside but the energy of the screens was so high that the brush was kept back a number of yards. It looked as if it had been cut by the sharpest of scythes. It was cut with such precision that it looked like a wall fronting the perimeter.

A wall of green.

But no one had cut it. It was the energy of the screens that had done it.

Talyn plunged into the vegetation. It was thick and the brush was thick beneath it. It would have been easier if he had kept the growth cleared from the path that went out to the processors but that just took more of his time and for little gain. He had had other things he was responsible for these past years and that had left him no time for such comparatively insignificant matters as keeping the pathway to the processors cleared.

They were only used at the Refreshing anyway, so why bother with it?

That did make it harder now, though. But once he got out and checked them, turned them on, fixed what needed to be fixed he wouldn’t have to come back. And there would be no more worries about them until the end of the next cycle.

With one last push, Talyn was finally clear of the brush and out in a clearing. He could see the feed bins of the processors a couple of hundred yards to his right and he turned toward them.

He took a step in that direction but, before he could go any further, he was stopped.

By a roar.

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