Re-entering his home, Ari hugged himself. He was still shivering from the delicious sensations stirred into being by his last release. He despised the human frailty of the rabble, but by the same token he also despised the strengths of his own kind. Too much of which, he reasoned, was in itself a weakness. His hand toyed ceaselessly with the chained crystal, lying warmly in the hollow of his throat. He longed to remove it, yet he dared not, though, he did not yet understand why he wore it, or why it gave him such a warm sensation of power when he touched it. He hated the orthodox life he was forced to live. He hated his temple, and he hated most everything connected with his cold homeworld. He was punished often, and well, for his beliefs and many transgressions, but his hard young body had become well able to bear it all.....he would soon enough be dead if he could not.
He decided that the first order of the waking would be to procure the warm fleecine undertunic and leggings made for him by the loving hands of his human maidservant, but not until he was certain he had seen the last of his parents for the waking. He looked around the austere, immaculate, and sparsely furnished foyer of his home, trying to imagine it as it once may have been in the past, and again thought about escaping his world and his life as a nomanic. He was certain there were many worlds habitable to his kind..... He wished to explore every system until he found one. It was an enormous galaxy after all, according to the holographic maps on Lord Biron's teaching grid at the temple school on Arrelia. Ari was certain that he would make a good explorer if only he could first make good his escape from his kind. Interstellar travel was flourishing, judging by the additions being built onto the spaceport since the arrival of the Scorpians to their world, which Ari watched with great interest. According to public statistics there were legions of aliens coming and going every waking.
There were also some who disappeared from their world and never returned, their whereabouts never investigated, their abandoned families left grieving and impoverished, to be cared for by the ever growing world charity programs founded by the benevolent, Malatar.
There was something quite wrong there, he long ago decided.
The boy tossed an errant white blonde curl from his fair, flushed face. His blue eyes, now the color of azure, sparked with untamed curiosity as he trudged the dreary length of the corridor toward the chamber occupied by his parents, while his brain pondered these things.
More to the moment, however, he sorely missed the presence of his late sleeping human nursemaid, with her warm hands and ample bosom against which he had fallen asleep so often. He could waken her now, she wouldn't mind, but no, he would see his duty to his parents done for the waking. He was certain he would still have more than enough time with her brood of rowdy youngsters, and then the time would belong to him and to Scipi, Hali's youngest son. He grinned, thinking of the adventures they would this day share. His footsteps stopped at the entrance of his parents' chamber. He took a deep breath as he prepared for the inevitable confrontation with them.
He disliked having to face the two pallid creatures who gave him life, feeling as alien in their presence as any xenomorphic outworlder. The wafer of energy producing nutrients he consumed in their presence were tasteless and unappetizing.....just as they were supposed to be and left his hungry belly empty and uncomfortable, hardly interfering with the penitential state of his existence at all.
"It is not for the gratification of our senses that we take nourishment, my son." He was often admonished gently by his veiled mother in her soft monotone. "It is the lot of our kind to suffer and endure the hardships of self deprivation. You must be brave, and endure what you must for the atonement of your sins in the Eyes of the Light."
Sins indeed!
For young Ari all laws were made to be broken, and he enjoyed too thoroughly the sticky honeyed delicacies smuggled to him daily by the doting Hali. The human scoffed at the very idea of any child going hungry for any reason, let alone the configuration of his DNA.. Preposterous! Ari grew so big, and developed so fast that his naive parents marveled. He stood straight and tall and carried himself with a forbidden inborn pride that would have done credit to a human family. He was beautiful as a godling with eyes so blue they seemed to probe the depth of the soul, with pupils that were deep and dark, the magnificent starburst, surrounded by the stunning blue of his iris.
This unusual phenomenon was extremely disconcerting to anyone who chanced eye contact with him. His physical perfection was absolute and flawless from the top of his curly white blonde head to the soles of his feet…or nearly so.
On his broad back, the boy bore two shapeless splotches, lying directly over each scapulae. To the unwary, uneducated eye, these marks could have been mistaken for bruises or merely shadows beneath his pale flesh......but these same brands, said the Eugenics committee within the temple on Arrelia, were, combined with the strangely malformed pupils of his eyes, was unalterable proof of genetic contamination by an ancient, deadly bloodline. These birthmarks by themselves, the Elders declared, were a portent of disaster for his people and for the world on which they lived.
The dreaded marks of the Avenger had not surfaced in a male child for centuries, though female children of the Titan line were born with the phenomenon infrequently and immediately consigned to the 'cradle of ice' in the Ru'ulian wilds. Neither the priests, nor the Eugenics committee could do more than speculate from whence had come the damning brands which marred the perfection of their perfect male child....but, since he was male, the committee disagreed when the legality and morality of ending his life came into discussion. In the end, he was spared, with some indecision on the part of the Council of Ten, and the objections of a few of the Elders.....
He was to be allowed life. Living was to be the sentence for past sins.
The decision stood, and when he reached the age of six he was issued his power crystal, and told to use it wisely.
"I bid you welcome, and good morrow, my son......" His mother, pale, drawn, and ethereally lovely, raised her veiled head. Her blue eyes took in the sight of her son, and she caught her breath at the impact of his beauty. Ari was her first child and would be her last. He was her fault and her failure. Yet, she loved him.
"Good morrow, mother......" Ari ventured, realizing he had never in his six passings of life seen the color of his mother's hair, nor touched her hand. He cared not that females were considered unclean. He realized he adored her and sensed her emotion for him.
"He grows too quickly," His father commented, regarding him with cold pale eyes. The sight of his son on this particular waking made the chill of the room seem to penetrate deeper. Something dreadful reared its ugly head, filling the heart of Lucare Peacemaker with doom. "And more than that, the Elders are afraid of him...and for him. I believe they will order him into one of the subcloisters soon."
"Good morrow to you also, my father." He growled softly, his pale fingers absently fingering the glimmering crystal which pulsed against his throat. He could feel it building power as his rage mounted....perhaps someday he would give them all something tangible to fear.
Ari's fair brow furrowed. He detested the way his parents and the others spoke of him as though he were not present, or worse a complete non-entity who was unworthy of their recognition.
Many times Lucare Peacemaker left unvoiced the suspicion that his manchild was receiving forbidden nourishment....but the thought of having to discipline the human, 'shrike', as paranomanic 'cotters' were often called by the human populace, and who had cared for the boy from the moment of his birth, was abhorrent to his kindly soul. Lucare also loved the human crone who had also been his nursemaid, and recalled with much guilt his childish gratitude and acceptance of her well meaning tamperings when he was too young to comprehend just WHY nomanic diet should be so restricted. HE turned out alright...so would his son.
"May the Light forbid it, and moreover I forbid it!" The soft tone of Emar Peacemaker's voice broke into his thoughts. "I cannot and will not sanction our son being forced into the cloister or one of the subcloisters. He must be allowed to grow and learn. I sense he is special, for all that he is a bit rambunctious at times. He is as a god given to us in noman form to be nurtured to the best of our abilities. He cannot be sacrificed to the sterile con- fines of our Temple."
Ari could scarcely believe his ears. Was his mother defending his life? Was she braving the certain wrath of her husband and the council by speaking on his behalf?
"Whatever are you saying, woman?" Lucare Peacemaker told his wife sharply. Never had the noman lord heard his wife speak thus out of turn. He had never heard ANY female speak her mind in that fashion for that matter, except one....and that one, unfortunately, was not under his protection or his roof."Nonsense, woman...you have no opinion. You will be silent."
"All I am saying, husband, is we have no right legally or morally to consider allowing our bloodline to cease just because a few crotchety old men and spineless young sensitives are affrighted by tales of history past. That young man who is our own son has the potential to turn this world, maybe even the galaxy upside down!"
That was exactly what he and the others were afraid of! "You will stay your tongue, woman, else you could be disciplined." Lucare ventured, having never had the occasion to reprimand his wife in the past.
Lucare and Ari both watched in horror as she slapped her delicate hand down hard on the table. "Did not the Eugenics committee say that he was special? A throwback, possibly, to the 'old ones?"
Lucare Peacemaker raised his hand to silence her. "I believe that the word the committee used in truth was, 'dangerous', and yes, he could be a throwback to those terrible creatures." The noman crossed himself in haste to ward off the evil he could almost see emanating from the childish face of his young son whose very birth seemed like a harbinger of something far worse coming..
"AND did we not see in the black heavens a fire tail when the heir of Culpranes appeared like a beautiful beast from nowhere?" Emar continued. "I tell you, my husband, trouble is afoot and we must prepare for it!"
Lucare Peacemaker stared at Ari for a long moment, pondering the words of his wife, wondering ......What if the young life of his son was somehow fated to become intertwined with that of the alien heir to their system? A frightening thought.
Without lending voice to more of his fears, Lucare attempted to return to the formality of the breaking of morning bread. His son WAS vastly different from other nomanic young- lings his age. He seemed older and then young by turns, a trait common among 'adepts' of the temple, which was frightening enough for any parent. The thing which most worried Lucare was young Ari seemed to be preoccupied by man thoughts, and quite dissatisfied with his lot in life. Just as he, himself, had been at his age...and he turned out alright, had he not?
"You may go, my son." Lucare told Ari, handing him the thin wafer of Holy sustenance.
Ari popped the morsel into his mouth, truly wishing at times that he had been remorselessly exposed during snow fly beyond the gates of the temple in the 'cradle of ice'. For a moment he could actually visualize himself lying helpless and naked in the stinging snow, awaiting the fangs of the scavengers which would wreak final justice on his imperfect flesh.
Not for the first time that waking he wished he had gone first to Hali for a taste of honey- paste and fresh baked bread, and a long drink of warmed elac milk. He nearly choked on the dry, tasteless wafer as he backed hurriedly from the hateful presence of his parents.
"I thank you for the sustenance of my body and for my life...." He said quietly to his mother, then turned and fled down the corridor toward the cotter's quarters and the kitchen. His thoughts were now on food in plenty..... and of pleasure, hopefully in that order.
His classes at the temple school on Arrelia were completely forgotten.
End of Chapter I
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