Page 75 of A World Enough

“Yeah, have you seen that?” Brogan asked.

“Everyone sees the pools in a place that is familiar to them. I saw Danus because I was brought up here,” Camber said. “Come into the temple. There’s more to show you.”

As they walked up to the entrance, Camber explained, “The caves go on for quite a distance underneath the surface. It’s a great place to hide if anyone attacks, but in the last attack, there was no warning.”

They walked into the first big open cave, and Brogan saw a statue up on a plinth of two women, wrapped around each other in love. The very tall woman had her arms around a more petite woman. They were looking into each other’s eyes as if all the world could be found there, everything good, everything happy.

“What is this? Who are these people, are they real?” Brogan asked.

“Oh, they are real.”

Brogan held out her hands. “I need to draw this. Can you give me the drawing pad and pencils out of your magic bag?”

Camber rummaged in her satchel while mumbling about magic bags. “Here, take them.”

“So tell me about them,” Brogan said.

Camber sat down on the corner of the plinth, while Brogan found a rock to sit on to draw.

“This was sculpted not long after they died.”

“They died?” Brogan asked.

“Yes, they died as heroes.”

“Who are they?”

Camber pointed up. “The tall one is Commander Redu, and the shorter one is called Kela, and the mother of peace.”

“Tell me their story as I draw them,” Brogan said.

“This all happened a long time ago, when the Abnobians had a huge empire. They controlled this whole realm, and others. They were unassailable. Nothing could get close to them.”

Brogan’s pencil danced across the sketching pad. “Go on.”

“First I need to tell you how Abnobians are bred. They aren’t born in families. Each part of Abnobian society is bred and brought up on different planets. Military, scientists, statesmen, ambassadors—you get the idea.”

“Why do that?” Brogan asked.

“Families create love, loyalty. But the loyalty they want is to the state, and they hammer into the little Abnobians from when they are first conscious that love doesn’t exist, it’s just an illusion other races tell themselves is real. They should only feel loyalty to each other.”

Brogan looked up from her drawing pad. “That’s crazy. It’s really that bad?”

“Yes, they punish any emotion shown by brutal discipline, and that’s all it takes to shut a child’s positive emotions down and exaggerate darker ones. The planet that their military trains on is a wet forested place. Ideal for weeding out the weaker children.”

“That is terrible.”

“The Abnobians tinker with DNA. They do it to some races to make them more docile, easier to conquer, and they do the opposite with other races. Their Drazani guards, their boots on the ground, used to be simple farmers, living and working off the land. But they were built big, strong, and hard, so the Abnobians changed their whole being. Now they’re bred as solders.”

“What about themselves? Do they tinker with their own DNA?”

“Yes, we know that now because we have someone on the inside, but as you know, they pass off their science and tech abilities as the power of gods,” Camber said.

“That is—wow. Without love, without love of parents, they must become adults without empathy. For a wolf family, love is the glue that binds us together. So how did this Redu break those constructs?”

“Commander Redu was the best warrior the Abnobians had ever produced. She excelled in all she was ordered to do, destroyed worlds, people. It was said that with each killing her heart cracked, but that may be embellished in the retelling of the story. But she was moved from commander of a starship to the governorship of a world. Her Goddess title was the Commander of the Land and Sky. She was the protégée of the commander-in-chief, Davor.”

“Very lofty title.” Brogan blew the dust and smudges off her sketch pad. Her rough drawing was coming along well. The statue was more of the background, and the foreground was Camber, the woman who she was falling for, and who she would have to leave.