local settlement date 35,990
Some will come with creeds to obey, saying they have the one truth and that death is life.
King Namor Zujahrah
15 adrone alliance
By the end of their first visit, King Namor had signed a document that would unite the two islands.
Engineers started working on the design for the bridge that would join the two islands.
Up until 2,000 years in their history, there had been a bridge. There were sketches of it in Namor's book.
It looked like no bridge he had ever seen; it appeared to hang from the sky.
"If I understand our situation, most of the goods were coming from somewhere and going to Castle City."
Karnalana nodded in agreement.
Barbaralba closed the book in Namor's hands and kissed him.
"King Namor, we must start our crossing."
The tide was going down again. They were on their way back to Castle City to explain about a space ship. A neighboring island. A larger nation not far over the ocean. On a planet that no one knew.
At Namor's request, Karnalana had brought engineers and city planners.
Namor had made it clear that war had been the pivot point of their visit and new city planning. He attempted to prepare his visitors for Castle City. There was no satisfactory way to explain the mountain. Even in it, it was a mystery.
He was bringing people from an island that entertained each other with music and stage performance. From the streets to great halls. They were being taken to a city that used their great halls to watch Draves slaughter one another.
"King Namor, tell me of your castle."
"It is splendid beyond belief. Grander than any structure I could imagine. And it is a brutal disgrace. It reaches to the sky with polished stone and gleaming metal and glass. It reaches into the pits of darkness of slavery and murder for entertainment."
"I am curious to see it."
"Now is the time for it is soon coming down. The age of the castle have come to an end."
They ran and the walked and they ran under the light of two full moons. Talking little and watching the shadows that reached out at them.
Near the end of their first run, the sky turned black with clouds and brought with it wind and rain. Lightning and thunder. The lightning showed through the darkness that the tower was not far from them.
"Namor, let them go ahead. I feel lucky."
"Barbaralba, it will be too dangerous here to make love."
She kissed him, took her fish knife and cut into her leg just enough to draw blood.
"Lover King, I also have my stomach and the stomachs of our company to think about. And I think we are being followed by my favorite competitor."
In the next lightning flash, Namor looked to the tower to see all had arrived to the stairs. They saw Namor looking at them and Barbaralba looking at the water.
In the next flash, Namor, and everyone watching, saw Barbaralba jab her sword down with two hands. Namor and Barbaralba saw it go through a shark's head.
"You baited it with your blood. Are you mad."
"Have you met someone who isn't. Drave King. Now we have a shark for our feast in the tower. Hospitality is a big part of protocol."
Namor laughed.
"Life is a game."
"Yes, King Namor. And we are going to change the rules of play."
Hanas understood what he saw and ran down the bridge to help drag the shark to the stairs. The engineers helped carry it up the dark stairway.
Zauqir always had enough wood cut and stacked in the tower for a full cycle of the moons. The tide brought a new load of wood most every day.
After eating the shark, the engineers studied The Royal Family Imperial Star Ship Log book, attempting to understand the concept of a ship in space and the size of the craft. It was a world backwards to their world, yet the people and creatures seemed very much the same.
There were births and deaths, simulated day and night. Simulated gravity. There was a controlling government called the royal family. And there seemed to be those on the ship unaware of the royal family.
Namor and Karnalana talked about politics and trade. And tried to listen to the engineers at the same time.
"Our life in Castle City seems to carry on the tradition of living in a confined space. Like we had back on the star ship. Maybe royalty is a word meaning phobia of open spaces."
Karnalana laughed at Namor's insults toward his own family.
"It's a little odd that no story or trace of the star ship exists."
"You would think something would be told to the children of the next generation."
"Maybe the log is a fantasy."
"Maybe. And perhaps all the patents as well. But it makes no sense. Why make it all without a story. Why just hard facts about everything someone, our ancestors did, thousands of generations ago. How does it matter that a fish is owned by the Royal Family 2 thousand generations. What is ownership of fish. Is their a family that owns the Royal Family. And we are a big farm. For what."
Everyone was watching Namor getting cranked up on his fish overdose and running adrenalin and speculating of possibilities in a world that was having a boarder break down.
"You have some pretty wild thoughts, King Namor."
"Believing there is a space ship is the biggest mind set change in thousands of years. Over a thousand generations have not thought about space travel. We can't really see it as a real possibility. But it may be inevitable. I've seen machines and tools on my visit that we don't have. We can't print a book until we learn how to build a printing machine. And I am certain the royal family has the patent on it. I'm certain there is not a thing on this planet not patented by the royal family. And it makes no sense. It's like a long time experiment. A test. To see if we can see through it. Or maybe someone has put us here and doesn't want us to see through it. And if we want to survive, we have to get ready for whatever or whoever planted us here."
Barbaralba took a hold of Namor by the arm and made him look at her. He smiled and slowed down.
"I think we like to think we are the royal family. We are going to the royal family Castle. But the royal family isn't anything. We represent the structure of ownership. We are the caretakers and collectors of resources, luxury and knowledge. The master thieves. Unaware of their crime. Servants to a flawed ideal. Which I guess makes us a myth."
"A powerful myth. One that has protected our small islands 30,000 years."
"From what protected."
"Barbancor. Barbancor is a powerful nation. They would take these islands to be theirs if they believed they could."
"I see. Yes. Oh course."
Namor did a little quick calculating in his head.
"But they don't. So they must be in fear of us. Which likely means we had very good weapons to help our myth. Maybe even space weapons. And the myth didn't start as a myth. Our falling into a dream made it a myth. The myth allowed us to fall into our luxury dream. Excuse me."
Namor stood up and walked down the stairs. His brain was spinning too many ways. The possibilities that were suddenly obvious kept making everything more impossible. He was not back to his island and was wondering how big an army they could get back over to where they had just left.
Namor could see that if a child of Castle City could see that the myth of Castle City was empty. Had become empty. Feeble. The news of Castle City coming down would shatter the myth of fear in Barbancor.
Barbaralba, like she often did, joined Namor about the time he wanted to stop his brain from racing and perceive the things before him.
"We have to start work on this bridge straight away. They will come. They will come first to Adrone. To have it. To have a place to work from. We have to get back here very soon. We have to burn any of their ships that come. To give us time. To slow them down. We have to wake up to get ready for the war that is finally coming back at Castle City. To everyone on both islands. And I am very certain that we have given ourselves the advantage. I don't think we are a farm. We might be bloody childish. Simply very ignorant bloody children. I can't see to what purpose an intelligent creature would take everything to such an extreme. We are simply mad, Barbaralba. And we are in big bloody trouble."
Barbaralba did not question his logic.
"We have made it this far, Drave King. After you explain to your royal family and your Drave family their new alliance and the new enemy, we will return to deal with the ships should they dare to come."
"They will come. They want what we have. And oddly enough, I think we should give it to them."
chapter 16
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