The Time Surgeons

News of the find spread rapidly through the Concord, but the Sages agreed that too many people at Godsnest would be not only hard to manage but even harder to keep fed and healthy.

So a plan was made. Some choices were obvious. Others were both less obvious and too many, so a ballot was held. The lucky Sages and their brightest students left as quickly as they could pack and say goodbye. The others had to live with the promise that once items were properly examined where they were and their removal deemed prudent, they would be sent to be studied by the most qualified Sages throughout the Concord.

One decision caused much grumbling, but was probably the best for peace among the Sages. Tamorabi held that the Gods had chosen him to find Godsnest and made him pay a terrible price for their choice. So his condition for revealing its location was that he would be granted overall leadership of its investigation. Frenislan had agreed and the Concord honored that. Part of the Concord’s success was based on its reputation for the integrity of its agreements, even if they were made with unwashed, uneducated primitives. That was how so many formerly unwashed, uneducated primitives had become the forebears of today’s washed, educated citizens.

Tamorabi would defer to the Sages only in matters of research. By priority and standing Cherigaline was virtually unchallenged to be leader of the research team. More challenged was her decision to appoint Frenislan the Wise as her chief deputy, but if any dared express such challenges they broke upon the rock of Cherigaline’s indifference. She had found she worked well with Frenislan and admired his mind, and there were plenty of other valuable uses for Sages of greater reputation but less certain synergy.

And so the great study began. The remaining eggs were unsealed, and as expected contained more wonders. An access well to a deeper tunnel was discovered but it contained no eggs. The tunnel was clearly man-made but its function was obscure. Rusty remains of iron strips and other decayed detritus of some former glory were found along its length, but it did not appear to be part of the nest, just another relic of the Ancients, like the city above.

Tamorabi sent gangs of workers along it, first to explore, then to clear. One end of the tunnel was completely collapsed but the other seemed to be intact, despite being blocked in places by cave-ins or the results of water seepage over the millennia. So Tamorabi sent his gangs to dig through these blockages to see how far they could go. Who knew what other wonders might lie beyond?

They managed to penetrate several miles from Godsnest. But they found no sign of more nests or eggs. What they did find were a few cave-ins that seemed to be close to the surface, and when they cleared them it proved to be so. They opened deep inside the city but led to no further treasures anyone could find. A few hundred yards beyond the last such access point the tunnel was collapsed again, and after a few weeks of futile labor deemed impassable.

The people of the Concord, having grown up under the influence of the Sages, were by and large open to new knowledge and keen on what it could bring them, so they watched the news from Godsnest with great interest. The leaders of the Concord promised them great things, and looked with sharp eyes at the globe of the world, which promised great things in the future. Even the news of a new and dangerous barbarian chiefdom could not dim the glow of the glorious future beckoning them from the Eggs of Godsnest.

Praximar the Mighty sat in his tent, considering the news. Twice he had darted in to attack the borders of the Concord with success, and the Concord was beginning to stir like a nest of hornets poked with a stick. They were beginning to take Praximar more seriously, and he had been planning how best to deal with the larger armies they would surely field against him. He knew their arrogance and that they would underestimate him; however he knew a good general had to guard against his own arrogance, and not underestimate them.

And now he had news of some great find they had made, a treasure trove of the Ancients themselves. He had little use for knowledge and little understanding of its value. He thought the Sages with their exaggerated desire to learn new things were fools, and soft. Even the bravest whined like children as he taught them the penalty of resisting him; while the others, while useful, were cowards, willing to see him pleasure their daughters and even their sons in order to save their own perfumed skins.

He knew this trove was highly esteemed by the Sages, and on some level was aware that the treasure they most valued was knowledge. But to him treasure was gold and gems, and that is what he saw in his mind’s eye when he learned of this Godsnest they had found.

The place was some distance from here but not too far. It was well guarded, and if he delayed too long, and the Concord learned to fear him more, it might become too well guarded. He could defeat any army on open ground of his choosing; he could defeat this one, but not if it became much stronger. Not this year with this many men; therefore, perhaps never.

And so the next day his army melted back into the forest, and the Protectors who awaited his attack on the nearest towns wondered why he never appeared.

The first the defenders of Godsnest heard of the coming of Praximar was when a breathless scout barged unannounced into the quarters of Chief Defender Katamatos and announced that he had seen a column of the barbarians slinking through the forest, upon which he had fled to report the news before being seen himself.

Chief Defender Katamatos was not especially worried. He had a strong position and many men, more than enough to rout any barbarian attackers. He installed his sentries and pickets, set up his traps and waited. While he waited he sent out probes and feints to test the enemy’s strength and resolve. He was pleased with the results. “The barbarians,” he opined to Tamorabi, “are as predictable as they are undisciplined. They will fear us and turn aside, or if not we will crush them. We have no need to worry.”

But Tamorabi did worry, and set his own plans into motion.

To Katamatos’ displeasure the barbarians continued to probe his own positions, proving too willing to disengage but not willing enough to stay away. Finally he maneuvered them into battle, or thought he did. Within hours Katamatos lay dead on the field, the bulk of his army dead or scattered, and only a small core, too loyal or trapped to flee, remained as the last ring of defense around Godsnest.

Praximar did not press his attack. He withdrew a short distance, while still surrounding the defenders with an unbreakable ring of iron. He would give his scattered enemies time to worry but not enough to regroup or counter-attack. As the sky began to redden he approached the defenders with a flag of truce over his head, his elite fighters by his side and a wedge of the best of his other warriors behind.

“Men of the Concord!” he bellowed. “You have fought bravely! But you have lost! Surrender, and I will let you go free! If you do not surrender, every last man and woman among you will die!”

Tamorabi strode to within hailing distance. “Will you give us time to consider your offer?”

“You have until the sun sets. Then you surrender. Or then you die.”

Tamorabi nodded curtly and withdrew. There was little time.

“There is no need for you to die,” he told the young man now in command of the Defenders. “Go to fight another day. I will delay them long enough. I know how these barbarians think.”

The man looked at him. “I am no coward. Nor are my men. We stand with you to the last.”

“No. You would throw away your lives for nothing. Trust me and go. If Praximar does not agree to my terms then you may stand with me. Otherwise… the best you can do, for Godsnest and the Concord, is to escape with your lives. Do not throw them away to no purpose.”

As the sun touched the horizon, Tamorabi walked back out to where Praximar stood at the head of a column illuminated by flaming torches. Tamorabi looked around him, at the skeleton of the city that had called him, at the brightest of the eternal stars beginning to dot the darkening heavens, and his heart called out to his woman and child: And now I come to join you in the night where all must go.

“Praximar! In the eyes of the Gods, yours and mine, I challenge you to personal combat! If I win, your army will withdraw! If you win, Godsnest lies open to you. If you agree, then my army will depart in peace! If not, perhaps we will die: but so will many of your own men!”

Praximar glared at him from beneath his fierce brows. This man has both wisdom and courage. He knows that no Chief of my people would dare deny a call to personal combat. But he knows he dies tonight. The man was large and muscular but could be no match for someone like Praximar. He looked at the remnants of the enemy army, considering. Would they dare face me again after this day? They are too few to bother me even if they would. And if I let them go now the treasures will be mine as soon as I dispose of this one man. Then I shall sweep through their precious Concord and all will be mine.

“I accept your challenge! On my honor, your men may depart in safety!”

He nodded to his men, who withdrew from the left flank, opening a gap through which the remnant army began to depart; alert for a betrayal that never came.

Tamorabi stood erect and proud, casually holding a large battle axe as he watched the last of his men leave; watching the reflections of the flames flickering off the enemy’s armor and eyes.

And so they glare, their glittering eyes, gathered in the gathering dark. And so they burn to destroy the good, their only reason their greed. My love, my son, who lit my life: the night is here and I am coming to you. I did what I could for you and it was not enough. Now I have done what I can for the world, and perhaps this time it will be enough.

As the last of the Defenders filtered into the streets of the city and were gone, Tamorabi stood tall, his eyes sweeping around the earth and the sky one last time. He heard a faint clang as a door shut inside the Temple and he raised his axe.

Praximar stepped forward, as his men began thrusting their weapons into the air and chanting their barbarian songs. Tamorabi watched the spectacle. And the glittering eyes they whirl and howl and burn and hate, in night and fear and blood. Then he let out his own howl that echoed through the city, rushing to join the other voices of the dead. Then he charged toward his enemy, whirling his axe.

Vermaxakon was afraid, cold, hungry and alone. His parents had hoped for great things from him. He had hoped for great things from himself. His family were from a powerful tribe, not the most powerful nor the wealthiest but well above the average. It had seemed so perfect. Highly intelligent, quick-witted and ambitious, Vermaxakon had looked forward to learning at the feet of one of the great Sages before eventually becoming one himself. The timing could not have been better, with the amazing discoveries at Godsnest bursting forth at the very start of his career.

Then it had all crumbled in a matter of days, when the barbarians had come and laid waste to so many lives and dreams.

So now instead of living in safety and comfort among some of the greatest minds of his time, each morning awaking to discover new wonders, instead he was shivering in cold and fear. But at least he was alive. Tamorabi and many others had sacrificed their own lives for that.

None of them wanted the treasures of Godsnest to fall into the hands of the barbarians, who would take what they wanted and destroy the rest. The best that would come out of it was that the barbarians would learn ways to be even more effective. Instead of a new age of enlightenment, the treasure of Godsnest would be corrupted, spawning nothing but centuries of even deeper darkness.

So most of the Sages and students at Godsnest had taken whatever they could carry, run down the tunnel under the city, and escaped into the ruins far from the barbarian horde. From there they would disperse in all directions, some into the forest, some toward the mountains, others back into the lands of the Concord. They would flee far from the barbarians or else find a place to hide and wait until it was safe to return. Whatever they could not take was burned or broken, as far as was possible, and finally the access to their escape tunnel was collapsed and hidden as well as their arts could accomplish.

Vermaxakon had the misfortune of taking refuge in part of the forest near where the barbarians had chosen first to pour into and then to camp. His barren hilltop eyrie was reasonably safe: not the highest, so of little strategic value even if the barbarians ever thought of strategy; far enough from the barbarians that they could ignore it if they wished; clearly of no supply value, being rough and rocky; and with a small but well-hidden cave system in which a man could hide.

Unfortunately it was still too close to the horde to risk a fire, visible activity or foraging in the nearby forest. Hence his current state of fear, cold and hunger. However he knew the barbarians would not stay long, so he waited. And perhaps he could prove of some value, for he had taken one of the two-tubed long-viewers. With it he could study the enemy and maybe learn something of use to the Protectors, should he live long enough to report to them.

He drew from his pack what he suspected was the greatest treasure he had absconded with. The Ancients had tried their best to use materials that would survive the millennia of their long sleep. But even for them gold must have been rare and expensive, for there was little of it to be found in Godsnest. But now Vermaxakon held a thin gold plate in his hand, rectangular and about a handspan wide and a little taller. He turned it in his hand, admiring its sparkle, careful that no flash of its yellow fire would betray him to the enemy. It was covered in inscriptions in the old language, its characters small but legible.

They had not yet deciphered the writing of the Ancients. There had been too much to do in too little time, and now their time was gone. They had learned enough to realize that the Ancients had had several languages, and that they had left keys that would eventually allow translating all of them. What treasures lay buried in those words could only be imagined. They did not know how many languages were represented, only that there were a number of different styles of character and therefore at least that many languages – unless the Ancients had used some more arcane system of multiple alphabets.

It had also been apparent from the placement of objects that Godsnest had been constructed over a period of many years. There had been many debates over that. Had Godsnest been built with some other function, perhaps a museum, and then been adapted to outlive its creators by uncounted generations? Yet the structure of the Eggs seemed to indicate a plan for long range storage from its inception. But why? If its builders had known it was needed, why had they allowed the disaster to overtake them when they’d had so many years to choose another path?

The golden tablet’s position had indicated it was one of the last objects to be placed inside before the sealing of the Eggs. That and its composition made Vermaxakon and many others suspect that it was some last message from the Ancients, made of gold to highlight its importance. It was clear from the objects in Godsnest that there were other materials equally immune from the decay of deep time. But none were as recognizable as gold, the queen of the metals; perhaps none whose value could be more reliably signaled across the millennia.

Nobody knew who might succeed and who might fail, who would live or die. So from among the healthy young men the guardian of the tablet had been chosen by lot. Now Vermaxakon took a last look at his treasure, as if hoping to divine its meaning from the foreign markings covering it. Then he carefully wrapped it and hid it away. He hoped he would live long enough to see its secrets revealed.

He hoped he would live long enough to see another morning.

As the sun drew nearer the horizon he scanned the barbarian host. It looked like they were preparing for some action tomorrow. As it became darker he saw campfires and imagined he could smell the roasting meat. He sighed, put away his long-viewer and settled down for his own uncomfortable night, cursing the barbarians to whatever hell they believed in.

In the morning he woke, and realized that what they had been preparing for was battle. An army of Protectors was arrayed nearby, and the barbarians were streaming into the trees. He had a good view of a wide valley and settled down to watch.

Before long he spied the barbarian general himself, Praximar, striding arrogantly down the valley flanked by his guard. Then he saw Praximar whirl to the side, then stagger backwards as something flashed through the air and hit him.

Praximar fell backwards as a sharp blow struck him in the chest. He looked down at the gouge in his armor, where the metal missile now quivering in the dirt had been deflected. Judging from the arrow’s hard metal and how violently it had struck him, he thought his new armor had probably saved his life. He laughed at the irony.

He had been disappointed by Godsnest. It had been conspicuously lacking in gold and gems, and indeed contained little of value, and he had wondered how the Concord scum had betrayed him and stolen his rightful due. So furious was he when his men had found few treasures and no clue to how the thieves had escaped, that he had struck a metal panel on the wall violently with his axe. But the panel had barely been dented, and he looked at it with renewed interest. He had it and its partner ripped from the wall and, with much labor, beaten into armor for himself, the strange pictures inscribed on the metal witness that Praximar was favored by the Gods themselves.

Steal from me, will you? Well it may be that I gained a greater treasure, and the Concord will suffer a greater loss.

Then he shouted at his men to hunt down the assassin, and continued on his way.

The battle was close fought, but Praximar’s battle plan proved worthy, and a wedge of his men tipped by his elite soldiers pierced a critical line of the Protectors. It was enough. By the day’s end, the army of the Concord was routed.

High on a hill a man of the Concord saw it, and wept.

With the spine of the Concord’s resistance broken, Praximar and his horde pressed their advantage. The lands of the Concord were taken; its chief cities razed, conquered or surrendered. Even Praximar’s horde had limits to its reach, and some cities more distant from the action were allowed to sue for peace. This they did lest they be crushed in their turn over the next few years.

But whatever remnants may have endured, the Concord ceased to exist as a unified political entity. The refugees from Godsnest who survived their trek settled down in the wilderness, or among the unaligned hunters, or in secret in the cities and towns of the former Concord. There they tried to keep the knowledge of the Ancients alive as they had sworn to do.

Praximar cared much for power and little for knowledge. If he’d ever had any doubts about that, the fate of the effete Concord had proved the wisdom of his course. His empire, which he named Praxia, now ruled most of both the barbarian lands and the Concord, and he was happy. If there had been too few jewels for the taking in Godsnest, the accumulated wealth of the Concord more than compensated for its deficit. Where that wealth had come from and what human qualities were needed to produce it were of no concern to Praximar. It was there, and he could take it, and that is all he cared to know. To ensure he kept taking it he imposed governors on the cities and towns, whose secondary role was to keep order and whose primary role was to cream wealth from the subjugated lands. These burdens succeeded in generating a satisfying stream of gold flowing into Praximar’s treasury. He was unaware of the invisible price for this: the greatly reduced creation of wealth available for creaming.

As had often been the case in human history, though the invaders had devoured the civilization of the Concord, over time elements of that much larger civilization began to absorb the soul of the invaders. This began with the Governors in the more remote areas; it continued with Praximar’s own son. Then that son’s son rose to power, and fell in love with a daughter of the Concord. She was the granddaughter of one of the Sages who had preserved his life and part of his station by pledging allegiance to Praximar. From her the grandson learned the value of knowledge and wisdom; for her, he lightened the load that his dynasty had placed on the Concord.

As time went by, the iron fist of Praximar and his sons evolved into a group of Lords under a supreme leader, now known as the Paraxam. Due to the precedent of some unfortunate events, the Paraxam was no longer the first son of a first son, but could come from any of the Lords. All of these were also descended from Praximar, sometimes by circuitous and possibly imaginary routes. And so the fist became a hand of many fingers, still ruling Praxia but somewhat weakened by rivalry.

Slowly the shackles on minds and production were loosened. Much of the knowledge of the Ancients had been lost again in the ashes of Praximar’s victory, yet much had been saved. As the people became wealthier and wisdom became more highly prized, the knowledge that had been preserved began to grow, merge and spread. Praxia remained an empire with a strong, and to many overbearing, central government. But if science had been held back, and even now could not flower as luxuriantly as it might have, still it began to advance.

As it approached and then began to exceed what the Ancients themselves had done, their technology allowed them to uncover more remnants of the glory of past ages.

They even found another nest, but this one had ripened prematurely. Its outer layer had been penetrated by some wandering group of starving savages. They had not understood the treasures of knowledge within, only the glitter of gold and gems. Whatever they had taken was long scattered and lost over the untold decades or centuries since. What remained, most broken, some intact, was buried in the mud and debris of those centuries. Whoever they were and whatever their reasons, they had not gone past the first egg. So the inner eggs had remained intact.

But by then, whatever extra knowledge could be gleaned from them was modest. Humanity had not gained as much time as the creators of Godsnest had hoped. But it had gained some, and perhaps it would be enough.