The Rings of Salammis

Veglia - Part 4

     A new world gradually took shape before the two wizards. A world that, at first glance, appeared very similar to their own. Lush green forests and vast stretches of open grassland were spread beneath a golden sun. Herds of wild animals whose names and natures were familiar to them roamed in herds so great that their end couldn't be seen and were hunted by predators with which the two wizards were also totally familiar. Were it not for a few minor details, the single sun, the tiny moon, the complete absence of comets in the sky, they might have been viewing a scene from any part of their world.

     "We see the beasts as familiar because the prisoner is familiar with them," pointed out Seskip. "What we are seeing is not what we would see if we were there in person."

     Saturn nodded in irritation. Did he think he was an apprentice casting this spell for the first time? He kept his annoyance under control, though, not wanting it to interfere with his concentration, and gave himself fully up to the images that were now flooding in.

     He knew this world as Haskar knew it, that being the male felisian's name. He knew that Veglia, his world, although steeped in life of all descriptions, was almost empty of sapient life. For generations beyond number, the few wandering tribes of his people had been widely scattered across the single giant continent. Meetings between them were rare, except when they came together for the annual mating festival.

     All over the planet were the ruins of an earlier civilisation, though. Crumbling, overgrown cities lost in the jungles. Mysterious shapes of stainless metal half buried in the ground. Great long roads almost lost beneath creeping soil and grass. The felisians paid them little attention, though, they having little impact on their everyday lives. They had no use for the crumbling artifacts, and had no memory of the people who had created them except for a handful of myths and legends that had surely been distorted out of all recognition by centuries of repetition by word of mouth.

     Life on Veglia in those days had been easy. The prey animals they hunted, either in human form with arrows and spears or in cat form with teeth and claws, were plentiful. The weather, except for the spring storms and the summer draught, was pleasant and the world contained no predators large enough to be a danger to them. Violence and conflict were all but unknown, both because of the infrequency with which neighbouring tribes strayed into the same area and because of the warnings of ancient, mythical heroes.

     The only snake in their garden was the high rate of miscarriage. Pregnancies were common enough, but were greeted not with joy but dread as the mother and her family waited for the tiny new life to die. Each day was an agony of anxiety, with the tribe breathing a collective sigh of relief as each day went by with the baby still alive, and only when it was finally born did the celebrations begin. Ancient legends told of tribes much larger than any existing now, and of each needing a defined territory to avoid conflict with neighbours, and the eldest and wisest, sitting a little way apart from the others, had whispered to each other that their race was slowly dying out.

     The majority of the felisians had known nothing of this, though, and for them life on Veglia had been a paradise of peace and plenty. They had no concept of wanting anything they didn't already have, and their afterlife was simply a continuation of what they were doing already in some higher plane. They hadn't given thanks to any gods for their lifestyle, because they hadn't been able to imagine living any other way. They simply took it for granted.

     All that changed when the Masters came out of the sky in their ships of gleaming steel. The felisians had stared in fearless amazement when the corpulent, hairless beings made their first appearance and had crowded forward in innocent curiosity, eager to make the acquaintance of the new arrivals.