The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

As the cart halted, a vibration prickled his skin, and heat blasted him. He made his way to the nearest annex in the group of hollowed-out beds at the roots of the Coretrees. He lay down, heart hammering in his chest at the thought of what he was about to do, adrenaline making his fingers shake as he wrapped a Corevine around the hand implanted with the seedling. The needle-leaves sank into his arm, tiny stinging points.

Instantly, he was weightless, his body free of pain and filled with the euphoria of the joining. His mind squeezed with energy and impressions, even as it grew to include every scrabbling life in the Greatwood, every vine curtain on every Vineyard ship, every needle-leaf that draped over his paralysed body, every quark in every Arbour floating in the silent dark.

He chased the rush of information to its source, past the inexorable pull of the Vineyards in other Septs, or near other worlds, and the flow of thoughts other Grandmasters fed into the Coretrees from their Sept annexes. He delved deep, deeper than anyone before him, including the long dead First Gardeners.

Into the white. Into the murmuration and hum of life.

Into Valencia and all its living, breathing, moving parts. All its dead, rotting, dying parts. Every soul and every sapling connected to it, before and to come.

Bright warmth and cold realization flooded his mind, drowning him, pulling at him, forcing him to fight for his thoughts as It turned Its complex regard on him. A tsunami of sensation and energy. Life engaged in living, nature striving toward continuance by any means possible.

And It shifted, glowing and hungry at his return. Eager.

He offered up logic puzzles he’d concocted out of habit over the years tending his garden at home.

It recoiled.

Then surged forward, surrounding him, searching blindly. Tiny feathery sensations. Sharp probes. The ice-cold lick of interstellar Arbours, drawing on the energy and life of Its planet-bound mother-brethren.

Satisfaction flashed through the tiny part of his mind he’d kept for himself. What he’d tried to correct had never been a mistake, and so his attempts to put things back to the way they had been so many tempi ago had failed, just as he’d hoped.

His plan would work.

There would be no going back now.

When he emerged from the seductive whirlpool of Valencia’s embrace hours later, he barely found the strength to detach himself from the annex and drag his heavy limbs to the cart. The Queen caught him as he fell across the Barrier and lifted him into the transport.

Knowing they couldn’t execute him before they were sure his solution had worked, he let himself slip into sweet oblivion.

*

Loss speared through him as soon as he opened his eyes. The ecstatic link to Valencia’s true heart was one he’d survived losing many tempi ago. Terrible as it was to be without it again, the excruciating absence of his wife eclipsed that pain with ease. He’d sensed the infinitesimally small presence of Eva’s seedling while in the annex, but it had been too new, too weak to follow to its source.

He sat up on the hard bed, his gaze going to the gold-masked Knight that stood guard in the doorway. They were still careful not to let him near a Pawn or a Rook, ranks he might manipulate.

‘Food. Now.’

The Knight retreated from the doorway and he strode over to the window. The night sky danced with colours. He’d been asleep for hours.

Good. By now, the Grandmasters would be gathering.

The Knight supervised the servant that brought him his food, making sure no conversation occurred. He sat at a table that folded down from the wall to eat, noting the chair was bolted to the floor and the bed he’d slept in was devoid of sheets. He had a selection of fruit and bread, nothing that would require utensils, and a sip-bag of wine. He ate it all, hunger gnawing at him after more than a day without food, and all he saw, all he thought about, as he stared at the wall before him was the woman he loved, the man he’d lost, and the people he still had a chance to save.

When the Knight returned, he was waiting.

‘Take me to the Audience Room.’

The Knight was silent.

‘As a Grandmaster, it’s my right to attend any gathering concerning the Great Game. Take me to the Audience Room.’

He folded his arms across his chest and didn’t let his gaze move from the tinted slits of the mask. After long minutes, the Knight turned and strode away.

The hallways were cool and meandering and had not changed since his days as the Lucochin. Valencia’s mansion was the only one grown from the Greatwood itself, as the colony ship had landed on the very edge of it. The petrified wood of the walls and floors had been left unpainted, and the shimmer of vines was everywhere, the powdery scent of flowers infused in every breath.

He’d been kept in private quarters on the upper floors. He heard the hum of voices long before he reached the vast Audience Room on the first floor. The Knight stopped next to the guards who opened the doors for him. He walked in past the masked Kings, Queens and Grandmasters that turned to look, and the rows of Knights from the twelve Septs of Valencia lining the sides of the room. He focused on the stage at the far end, the line of Valencian Knights before it, and the floating silver fountain in the shape of dodecahedron in front of them.

He approached among a flurry of signing hands and mutters. The Valencia sat between her King and Queen and watched him enter, the long drape of her sheer sleeves billowing around her gilded throne. None of their expressions changed, but the Valencian Bishop who stood below her throne started toward him.

He stopped to the left of the fountain, resting one hand against its side as he raised the other, palm out in warning.

‘I am