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She nodded. "Yeah. I wasn't too good in school but I seem to remember that the
one thing the church and science agreed on was this big bang that started it
all. It created the universe, whether by God or something else."
"Good, good! But it did not create the universe. It was far too powerful for
that. It created the universes, in layers, like the layers in a fancy cake.
One on top of the other." He picked up a charred stick and drew a funnel shape
on the cave floor. "See-this little bottom point is where it all started." He
drew a series of lines bisecting the funnel from top to bottom. "Each of
these-thousands, millions, who knows how many?-is a universe. Yours is up
towards the top someplace. Mine is down here, not at the bottom but as far
down as you can get and still live and breathe and have our kind of life. Up
near the top the distance between them is great and you are rarely aware of
any others except perhaps in dreams, but down here we have a smaller universe
and things are packed more closely together. Here many universes lie almost on
top of each other-layers with no cake, as it were. Akahlar is not one world,
it is many."
She stared and shook her head. This was getting too much like school. "But if
you got all them universes on top of each other like this, then what keeps it
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mess?"
"No two can occupy the same wedge at the same time. That would be chaos. But
the forces still coming from the core, from the place where it all began, keep
things in motion here. Whole sections of Akahlar drop out and are replaced by
others." He drew a circle, then an inner hub, then drew spokes out from the
hub to the sides. "There are forty-eight of these. They are not true circles
but close enough. Each two spokes creates a wedge and that wedge is someplace.
The forces that strike us from below, at the tiny point, cause the circles not
to turn but to change. One land drops out of a wedge, another drops in. If you
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are there you do not notice it. If you are not there you do not notice it. But
where a city by a sea was the last time you were through there might now be a
mountain lair for dragons. Twelve wedges to a wheel, as it were. Hundreds of
combinations. Such changes keep us in constant turmoil. The weather changes,
there are always storms and changes in most everything."
"Jeez! How do you ever keep anything straight?"
He smiled. "Never underestimate intelligence, my young friend. The races who
think and build and create are the ones who can adapt. Tell me-on your world,
do not people live where it is freezing cold all year, and others where it is
an eternal steaming jungle, and still others where it is a hot and near
lifeless desert?"
"Uh-yeah, I guess so. Sure."
"That is why they survive. There are literally thousands of races, not all
even close to our kind as are the ba'ahdon. All fell to this point in ancient
times when the changewinds blew strong through the whole of creation, before
everything stabilized and got built up and solidified. Each is a little slice
of a real universe, and each universe has exacting rules-but they are not
necessarily the same rules."
"Seems to me everybody'd get lost or all mixed up or somethin'. Couldn't tell
nobody from nobody else."
"Well, most races cannot breed with most others. It is possible that even you
and I are different enough that we could never produce offspring, although we
appear close enough that it is possible that we could, too. It is rather-what
is the word?-insular. Everyone sticks to their own kind and their own ways and
defends their land against the others. There is some trade, of course, but how
can you even have a lot of trade when you do not know if your trading partner
will be there next week or next month? Many races believe themselves superior,
higher than the others, and so would not consider the others human or worthy
of respect. Some may even delight in eating other races. For thousands upon
thousands of years there was just a lot of little worlds. That is, until the
Akhbreed conquest."
She frowned. "How the hell could you conquer something like that?"
"You don't. What you conquer are these." he replied, pointing his stick at the
hub of the wheel. "The loci-the hub. These do not change. They are constant
always no matter what wedge you come from. They coexist in all our universes.
They were mostly uninhabitable messes, however, until the Akhbreed came with
their powerful sorcery the likes of which none had ever seen before. Many of
the other races possess magic, some have great power within their own wedges,
but this was different. These people could do all the magic, and they could do
it anywhere. They created order in the hubs and established kingdoms for the
Akhbreed. Because all hubs coexist in all universes that are down here, they
could step away into any wedge they chose. They are brutal, ruthless,
powerful, and they believe themselves the anointed superiors to all other
races who exist for their benefit. They alone can trade. They alone have
stability. They alone can force their will by sending armies against the
wedges that resist them. The forty-eight kings and queens of Akhbreed rule
Akahlar because of it and keep the rest down, their power based in their
god-like sorcerers. That one whom you saw last night-he is an Akhbreed
sorcerer. You have just a small taste of his power.";
Sam's head was spinning a bit at this. "I sure don't understand this and I
ain't sure I believe what I do understand, but him I understand. And the one
with the horns and the thunderstorms? He's another one?"
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Zenchur stiffened. "Do not even speak of him so. Yes, he is of the same kind,
but he is not in the service of the Akhbreed. He is what the Akhbreed call a
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rogue. He serves no Akhbreed kingdom. If they could locate him and gang up on
him to destroy him-you do not kill Akhbreed sorcerers, you destroy them-they
would. This one of whom we speak is very powerful but rebels at the Akhbreed
dominance, as do I. He is their sworn enemy, and he plots to destroy the
Akhbreed kingdoms and end their dominance. He offers liberation from Akhbreed
tyranny to those who follow his cause, and as he is the first of that rank of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]