Time’s Ellipse by Frasier Armitage

Author:Frasier Armitage [Armitage, Frasier]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction
Publisher: Frasier Armitage
Published: 2023-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

GERARD

I

408 AE1

Many were packed into the great hall. Joseph had called a gathering of the council. I sat beside him as he called for order.

“My brothers,” he boomed over the mutter of the assembly, raising his hands to quiet the uproar of the people. “Hear me, brothers. You have been called. Now, pray silence, I beg of you.”

The din continued, relentless and considerable. Discontent among the citizens was no secret. Rather, it spread wide as moss, touching every quarter of the city, and growing more fervent with each rotation. No wonder such loud echoes of rancor filled the great hall.

“My brothers and sisters,” Joseph cried with a voice strong as an army. “Please, let us be reasonable. We are not here to bicker, but to think and act. What are we to do about this spreading plague?”

He was right to speak of it as a plague — the moss creeping through the city’s walls. It had begun in the Dome of Cassia. A dark green scourge that first spread through the soil, polluting its fertility, so that nothing could be grown in the House of Green. Now it multiplied across every surface, clogging motors and filling domes that were already falling into disrepair. Once it took hold, it would not be removed, and it ate through the metal with an appetite voracious and unquenchable. Only hours ago, scouts discovered it threatening another House of Green, the Dome of Cassia, without which, it would be impossible to feed many in the overcrowded city.

“What are we to do, indeed,” Thomas roared from the crowd. At the sound of his voice, many stopped to listen to his words.

Thomas was a popular man. He was of a pure line — heir to one of the last sons — and he had wed the most beautiful of all the living. Dinah. It was said by many that Dinah was as lovely as the Lady Sonja herself. They were wrong. She was far lovelier than that. Little wonder that Thomas spoke, he commanded the ear of the people. Even more so, perhaps, than Joseph.

“I put it to you, Joseph, that the Scourge of Cassia is but a sign. The Elders are displeased with us, and so they punish us with this tormenting weed.”

The stamping of feet heralded Thomas’ words as well-received. Joseph sat above the crowd, watching carefully, holding court, while the people urged Thomas forwards until he stood before the Seat of Maximus, staring Joseph in the eye.

“If what you say is true, Thomas, then we must discover the reason for the Elders’ displeasure, and in haste, for the scourge has spread enough already. Soon it will bring the end of Cassia’s largest dome, from which our stomachs reap the bounty.”

Joseph was as much a believer in the Elders as anyone else, but I could not be so sure about Thomas. He claimed to be devout, but I never sensed conviction in him. And his ambitions were hardly congruent with those of a true follower of the Laws of Juniper.

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