At first the sounds are angry and male, and then they are wet and bloody, and finally they are silent. We sail directly for its centre, and the seven of us will kneel before our Empress’s coffin until the window cracks and we burn in a crucible of white fire.”įor three nights we can hear the sound of the engineers. “It is our destination, set in place by the astrologers and the architects as it has been for every Empress. “That star,” whispers Baozhai to me on the first night, pointing out the window at a distant dot of white. When there are no planets to be seen, and no suns, the window is black and cold, the coffin shadowed. The coffin is gold, the only bright embellishment amid the hall of grays and silvers and coppers, and it bathes in the reflected light of the passing planets. There is one window before which the Empress’s coffin lies at rest. The tomb of the Empress lives, and we live inside her. I can feel her shiver and moan beneath my hands, and though my fingers tremble I know the vibrations are more than my own weakness they are a pulse that runs deep to the caverns of her far-off ventricles and atria. The tomb of the Empress has breath, and bone, and muscle. Series: The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!.
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