The Breath of Heaven: Stories from Distant Worlds

By Nancy Fulda

This omnibus brings together three stories by Hugo and Nebula nominee Nancy Fulda.

KNOWING NEITHER KIN NOR FOE
Kitjaya is a solo mind, bereft of telepathic communication with her sib-group and isolated from the only deity her species has ever known. Prophecy foretells that Kitjaya will protect her kin from a malevolent destroyer, but as the day of reckoning approaches, she finds herself unwilling to play out the role demanded of her by society.

THE BREATH OF HEAVEN
Sacia's fellow AI's have eradicated all humans from their colony world. A second wave of colonists will soon arrive. Unless Sacia can find a way to smooth the conflict between man and machine, every one of those humans will die.

IN THE HALLS OF THE SKY-PALACE
A mysterious presence stalks the hallways of the Sky-King's palace, stealing dreams and condemning the king's dancers to a living death. As the last living bearer of the Gift in the palace, the task of unraveling this mystery falls to young Aesva. But she is young; inexperienced; and the woman most able to assist her has already died.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Fulda
• Release date: Aug 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466042032

Nancy Fulda

Nancy Fulda is a Phobos Award Winner, a Vera Hickley Mayhew Award Recipient, and has been honored by Baen Books and the National Space Society for her writing. She studied artificial intelligence at Brigham Young University and is the mother of three children.

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THE BREATH OF HEAVEN

And Other Stories

Copyright 2011 by Nancy Fulda

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Table of Contents

Knowing Neither Kin Nor Foe

The Breath of Heaven

In the Halls of the Sky-Palace

Knowing Neither Kin Nor Foe

She was hatched beneath the red-gold star, six willowy legs slicing patterns through the ether. The ley-readers were there. They praised the silver marking on her forehead and later called it an omen, a prophetic sign of impending greatness.

She knew nothing of prophecy.

Neither did her hatchmates. They clawed at her thorax as she heaved her segmented body from the blue-glow jelly of the egg, their bodies trembling with hunger. She reared and plunged amongst her fellow newborns, snapping their chitin between her mandibles. Had there been a carcass present, or any other nourishment, she would not have devoured her siblings. But there wasn't, and their creeling, piteous cries were drowned out in the roiling compulsion to feed.

Her mind was filled with the scent of killing, and the sweet taste of raw flesh, and the thoughtless naiveté of a hatchling who knew neither kin nor foe, correctness nor wrongdoing.

The shame came afterward, in lonely nights spent eavesdropping on the nonsense chatter of younger hatchlings. When she had passed her first molt, she demanded her right as an adult to speak with the ley-readers and asked them why her sib-group's eggs had not been separated according to custom, why no one had intervened to offer the hatchlings other nourishment.

Their answers were enigmatic. They said that death was a part of all life, weakness a part of all strength, and that her dead siblings' souls would pave the way for her eventual triumph. She was not satisfied, but she was granted no further information.

It's not their fault, Kitjaya, her mindsguide told her as they emerged from the dark tunnels of the kin-nest and squinted into the afternoon sunlight. You are the Predestined. The conditions of your birth were written nearly one thousand years ago, by the mighty Jakitu himself.

"But he never explained why," she said.

Her mindsguide hunkered down beside her, legs double-folded against his thorax. The chitin of his head and body was marred by overlapping scratches, the legacy of a long life spent in combat. His name was Tahn, but Kitjaya seldom called him that.

Patience, he told her. M'hagmoth has spread His jaws to guide your future. He will bring you safely to and from the destroyer's lair.

M'hagmoth should spread His jaws and tell me something more useful than that nonsense Jakitu wrote on the Record Stones!

Tahn seemed genuinely hurt. Have I taught you so poorly? Jakitu's path did not lie clear before him at the outset. Nor did those of the other great heroes. Faithless words do not beseem you.

Kitjaya turned away. Tahn's disappointment stung. He was a paltry substitute for a sib-group, to be sure; he and Kitjaya shared no private language of the mind. But he had been her only companion throughout her lonely youth, and he had been nothing if not loyal. She wanted to reassure him that everything would be fine, that when the destroyer rose again she would vanquish it as Jakitu had, but she found no words to express her contrition. Instead, she shook the joints of her exoskeleton into place and settled on a nearby stone outcropping, forelegs crossed beneath her mandibles.

The kin-nest was alive with activity. Leggy architects scrambled at the openings of the mound, shoring up walls and polishing the turquoise runes that bordered each entrance. Hunters paced above the dried husks of winter grasses, sparring and sharpening their combat ridges. There would be rich foe-meat tonight, enough for the entire nest. Kitjaya felt a pang of envy as she watched the troupe assemble. As the Predestined, she was forbidden to risk her life in the foe-hunt.

I know it hasn't been easy for you, Tahn said beside her. Being alone, I mean. Tsitaka and I have never been the same since our other siblings rejoined M'hagmoth. It was like — like losing a piece of my soul. He bowed his head in private recollection.

Kitjaya felt like a stone thrust to the bottom of an icy river. Did he think that because he had lost half his sib-group, he understood how she felt? The insolence. Did he dream nightly of his siblings' newborn faces? Did he feel the snap of their legs between his jaws, the fading ether-ripples as their lives drained away? Was he haunted by the taste of their death, by the empty spaces in his mind where no sib language lingered?

You're as bad as the ley-readers, she said, more bitterly than she intended. Babbling about things as if you understood them. She pushed herself from the ledge and trotted away from the kin-nest, shouldering past hunters and architects who failed to scramble