The Hermetic Millennia by John C. Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

dared opposed his elevation from first among equals to master.
    Upon the elevated dais was a judgment seat of ivory hammered over with fine gold, set on a massive base and wide, adorned by spiral narwhale tusks that gleamed like the horns of mythic unicorns and reared like spears. The high and arching backrest was adorned with the dark, triangular visage of a bull in rage.
    In the deadly brightness of a sun undimmed by atmosphere, the gilded and argent chair blazed like a mirror in the desert, a striking contrast with the dark-garbed figure seated between the narwhale horns: a bright flame with a black heart.
    The throne sat foursquare, and before the footstool descended six steps broad and shallow. Twelve life-sized lions hewn of black marble stood rampant in pairs, one to either side of each step, frozen in midlunge. Scribed into the surface of each stair and set with star-sapphires, a different creature or emblem representing a figure of the zodiac cowered beneath the paw of each of the twelve black lions: the throne almost seemed a chariot trampling the constellations underfoot.
    The senior of the landing party of the Hermetic expedition, the Nobilissimus Ximen del Azarchel, called Ximen the Black, sat alone in state atop the only throne ever to exist upon the gray and lifeless globe that formed the sole remnant and remainder of his reign.
    It did not seem arrogance to Del Azarchel to make his seat to match the throne of Solomon described in the Book of Kings, for he deemed himself, with his multiply augmented mind, wiser than any ancient monarch, prophet, poet, or magician. Nor did the Djinn that ancient sorcerer-king was said to have sealed in brass jars and bent to his command seem any less fearsome and terrible than Exarchel, the mind housed in the amber pillars that arose to either side of the judgment seat. Traces of fluorine hidden in each rod-logic macromolecule gave the pillars a lambent fulvous hue, as if they were hewn of transparent gold.
    Del Azarchel wore the dark and silken garment of a starfarer, and needed no other sign of royalty, save only for the dark metal circlet atop his air cowl but beneath his scholar’s hood.
    This was the Iron Crown of Lombardy, a band of gold and emerald segments jointed with hinges and set with precious stones in the form of crosses and flowers. Within the band was a narrow circle of iron, if legend spoke true, beaten out of one of the nails taken from the True Cross. It was the most ancient insigne of royalty surviving Christendom, and held its most precious relict, and had been kept, until late, in the Cathedral of Monza in Milan. A delta of scar tissue running upward from the corner of his right eye to beneath his cowl was a memento of an assassination attempt, and surely made the wearing of that crown painful in his brow, even under the elfin gravity of the moon. Painful or no, he did not set the crown aside.
    Within the triangle of the mouth of his hood, the glint of his white teeth between dark mustachios and goatee could be glimpsed, the drops of cold fire caught in the diamonds of his iron crown, and the strange light from no-longer-human eyes.
    2. The Hermeticists
    He raised a hand gloved in what seemed black silk. Although there seemed to be none within the chamber to see that signal, nonetheless, upon that gesture, five of his fellow Hermeticists rose from three circular iris-hatches in the floor, drifting upward with the eerie grace only lunar gravity allowed.
    The men did not quite land, nor quite walk, but moved toes against the dark deck with ballet smoothness. Their black garments rippled like silk, and silvery antiradiation mantles fluttered like capes as they passed.
    All men in the wide chamber wore similar bodies. The Hermeticists in their lunar-adaptive forms were tall and emaciated, lacking in water weight, with dry cracks at lips and nostrils. Even the heaviest of them had a sunken, skull-like cast to his face, a strange leaden highlight to his skin, a