tarotgoddess108
Synopsis
What will God Emperor Tttthutmosen of Ardjia do to control his independent son Aamankhotep X, Were Jaguar King of the Golden Valley? Will he accept the advent of the Intergalactic Identic, or will he seek to destroy it?
It's a mix of SF&F, space opera, and adventure, but because there is onscreen sex, I chose Erotic Fiction for the genre.
Excerpt
Chapter 3 In Memoriam
Rohjer chose the Temple of Wisdom for the memorial. All the Golden Valley turned out to observe it with him crowding the cobblestone streets of the temple plaza all the way south past the Pyramids of Ka, and Hell, to the Red Star Pyramid construction site. Curious to see what the Lightfall would do, what strange rituals the star man performed, whether the rumors about his ka were true.
Back on Parare the capital planet of all the Intergalactic Identic, home to the Tattva Sanga, Rohjer wondered what sort of observance his master received. Was it a gathering of old friends and colleagues as well as former disciples like him? Or was it the formal full assemblage of all those in the Warrior Path that he deserved, dying as he had, an Ascetic mindmelded with the Governing Body of Elders?
A body of Elders who gave him not a shred of protection…
Rohjer could not give a formal service to his master here, but he had to give this throng of a hundred thousand something. They would not understand traditional verses chanted in the ancient Sanscript tongue. Nor would they comprehend a translation of them.
"Please clear the bottom thirty steps," Rohjer asked of the priests nearest him at the top of the pyramid, an idea percolating in the back of his mind. Aamankhotep and his wives and small children stood silently to one side. A group of stern faced nobles and courtiers to the other. All around were black clad guards and white robed priests with baskets of seed cakes. But there would be no blood to garnish them with this day.
"Master Fohwaldu was great in many ways, though small in stature." Rohjer's voice rolled across the plaza on the wings of the spell of his volume siddhi. The crowds stopped talking and looked to the top of the Temple of Wisdom.
A picture formed in the air in front of the huge stone stepped pyramid, of a blue skinned, white haired creature dressed in plain grey robes with a thin line of red piping. Here, such robes were those of a wandering mendicant, a beggar in the streets. On Parare they conveyed the class and rank of a Diplomat Adept. Rohjer's own robes had been plainer, his piping even thinner conveying his status as Diplomat Servitor.
His memory projection laughed in merriment and Rohjer pushed the happy mood siddhi out over the crowd. Gasps sounded around the temple and then down in the crowd as many had their first taste of his foreign shakti. He tried to keep it tightly furled at all times, open only to Aamankhotep but he needed to display it now if he was to share something of his master's life with these people. He wanted to share something of his master's shakti, his essence.
"He found me and took me on as his disciple, an alien species to his own. He taught me the ways of ka, how to protect myself, how to fight - " which the gods and goddesses knew this crowd would understand! - "but also the ways of mercy, of trust, of cooperation, of long long periods of rest-before-war, so long, that war is no longer necessary." They wouldn’t understand the concept of peace. Aamankhotep barely grasped it, and Rohjer felt sure that's what his grandmother Hhhhatshepsut had been trying to teach him. Hard to go against the biological imperative of an entire species, all the species on the planet, but if she could try, so could Rohjer Doss.
Another picture of Master Fohwaldu formed in the air while the previous one faded. The blue-skinned creature flew and flipped through the air, his Rod of Chastisement blazing forth colored shakti, tiny needles of light, so many that they slipped past the attacks and defenses of his much larger, much flashier opponent, a Warrior Adept who needed a lesson in pride.
Rohjer would never forget the lesson that cunning and finesse could triumph over brute strength, or that the peaceful Diplomats were just as much fighters and leaders as the Warriors.
The throng sighed and moaned as the little blue creature vanquished his much larger opponent. They understood.
"The ha is temporary," Rohjer said using the Ardjiani word for the physical body. Many philosophical conceptions of existence were similar to those he had been taught in the temple of divine truth on Parare. "The ka, the life force, is eternal."
He cast one last illusion siddhi of a great pile of wooden logs. On it rested the blue skinned figure, still, at rest.
"It is written in The Song of God, 'For the soul there is neither birth nor death. Nor having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.'(1) In my culture we burn the body, for the ba, the soul, can neither be burnt by fire, nor drowned by water, nor cut by sword, nor dried by wind."
The picture logs burst into flames and soon dancing red orange light engulfed the figure, burning a hundred feet into the air.
"Master Fohwaldu, you gave me everything," Rohjer boomed to the crowd as he flared his shakti. "I am as you made me." Brilliant white shakti, born of the otherwhere, yet visible in the here and now, exploded out from the peak of the Temple of Wisdom and expanded down over and into the crowd of people. Many screamed at the strangeness of it. Some wept at the impossible beauty of it.
Some became enthralled by it and pushed toward Rohjer.
A chant began and quickly picked up momentum. "Lightfall ka! Lightfall ka! Lightfall ka!"
Sesotris, a noble, and Kamose, a priest, reached Rohjer first with downcast eyes and upraised wrist. Rohjer looked to Aamankhotep for help but the Were Jaguar King only smiled in satisfaction. He must have caught them by surprise. Thus far the ka blessed remained unaffected by his ka. Then again, he had never purposefully flared in public before. Did he flare to attract the ka blind he could feel groping for him from a distance? Surely not. He did not want servants. He barely understood the way ka and sheer might bound all in this world to each other, through religion, politics, law, production, and distribution.
He really wanted no part of it. He thought he wanted to go home, back to his mission, back to his life on Parare, jaunting about the galaxy bringing peace and harmony to star nations, like his master. But with his master's death - murder - and now this, he found himself more and more intricately bound in Ardjia's web of life.
The priests looked uncertainly at him, clutching their baskets of seed cakes and water spritzers, waiting to bless the crowd.
Rohjer pursed his lips a moment in thought then cast a nourishment siddhi on the seed cakes. It made them more filling and satisfying, more healthful to the body. The water he simply blessed with a Tattva Sanga mantra, "Om Zarazwat, please rain your blessings down upon us."
He felt winded. He had just expended a tremendous amount of his own shakti as well as channeling that of the earth beneath him. He looked around for a seat and Aamankhotep asked, "Would you like to return to the Den?"
"Ah," Rohjer said. "There are more coming. Eight I think. The ka blind." There were no seats up here on the temple's ledge.
Whispers started among the courtiers around them. Sesotris hissed them silent. His name came to Rohjer's mind though they had yet to exchange blood and ka. The man was worried and frightened in his rich heavy blue robes.
"A chair and a pillow?" Rohjer asked of Kamose who scurried off, delighted to be the first to perform a service for his new… whatever it was Rohjer was about to become to him. Unless one counted Sesotris calling the other nobles to heel as the first service. Rohjer wondered vaguely at how their status would change. They were loyal to Aamankhotep but now they were Rohjer's. He munched a seed cake, his first food in three days, and thought that he really ought to check on the welfare of all the servants he kept accreting.
Four black clad guardsman descended the pyramid to make sure the Lightfall's new ka bound servants (he forbad the word slave) were not hampered.
Kamose returned carrying a pillow and followed by four stout priests carrying a small throne. Rohjer made a face at Aamankhotep who laughed and waved at him to seat himself. The Were Jagur King seemed entertained by these events. Kamose plopped himself down on the pillow and offered his wrist along with a tiny sharp knife, correctly understanding that Rohjer Lightfall liked his blood servants to kneel in comfort while he drank from their ka. Sesotris glowered.
Austerity. His stubbornness and daydreaming beaten out of him by the Temple of the Wind priests. Always searching for the gods in the spirit world, but never finding. His secret delight when the Were Lion King was killed by the Were Jaguar and their temples received instruction from Plentiful Mainland, from the Mother Temples of Seaside Home. Transferred to the Temple of Fire then, but now, he was assured a place with the newly formed Temple of Blood. If Rohjer had no other priest, he was sure to be assigned personally to the Lightfall!
Rohjer assured him that he had no other priest, then blinked his eyes open, back to normal sight and met the ecstatic brown eyes of Kamose, now his blood servant.
"Let it be recorded! Rohjer Lightfall has this day taken his First Priest by blood and by ka," Aamankhotep's voice rolled throughout the plaza from the height of the Pyramid of Records. A roar of approval rolled back.
But… only rulers, royals, attract their own personal priest, Rohjer thought in bewilderment. The vows made to the temple were based in blood and ka and only broken for a higher form of service, that to rulers.
Sesotris pushed forward to offer his blood as the first of the ka blind arrived to do the same. He knelt on the vacated pillow and thrust his wrist forth. His eyes glared at Rohjer who raised an eyebrow. How similar they felt about what they were about to do. Yet, neither could stop this momentous change to both their lives from occurring.
Fierce, generations long loyalty to the Were Lion dynasty, ripped away in an instant by this stripling boy! This Were Jaguar from the Mainland. Struggling to survive, to maintain control of the metal mines. So many new ideas kicking out the old tried and true. And now this! Loyalty ripped and replaced again! And to an alien from space! Oh the disgrace, the shame of it!
"We will talk," Rohjer promised softly. His blue eyes holding Sesotris' dark brown for a moment before he released his wrist.
The noble staggered away with new ka bond shock that affected some. His wife clutched at him, helped him to stand and whispered urgently in his ear. Rohjer wanted to hear her words. Perhaps he should have taken Aamankhotep's offer to do this at the Den, but even as he reached for the next bloody wrist with his hand and his shakti, he also felt the panicked pull of the ka blind struggling to reach him. He could not walk away and increase the distance between them. He felt the pull just as strongly.
He took on Ay the stone mason, Horemheb the architect, Orontes the Astronomer, Tiy the weaver, Simbel the potter, Hammamat the grain merchant, Asyut the horse breeder, and Neferu, an engineer from Goat province visiting Sesotris on business. Their families would come join with him tonight at the Den. Rohjer wished that most would simply return to their homes and lives. This shift in loyalty did not change much of anything at the moment. But now, in times of great need, it was Rohjer Lightfall who would know, who would feel it in his blood, not Aamankhotep the Were Jaguar King.
The Priest, the noble, and the Astronomer would most likely attend him daily. The weaver would begin weaving the clothing for Rohjer and his 'household'. The potter wanted to supply his goblets and plates, the grain merchant his food. The breeder wanted to give him his finest horse.
More and more threads bound Rohjer in a ka web. But who was the spider?
