Kharn Sagara
The King with a Thousand Eyes; The Undying; Commander of the Extrasolarian Sojourner ship Demiurge. King of Vorgossos. Presumably the same Kharn Sagara from the ancient legends, implying that he is nearly fifteen thousand years old.
—His children, REN and SUZUHA, apparently his clones.
—His servants:
—BRETHREN, a Mericanii artificial intelligence composed of human tissue designed to grow forever. Confined to an underground sea in order to support its weight.
—YUME, an android which acts as the Undying’s caretaker and butler.
—CALVERT, the Exalted in charge of Kharn Sagara’s cloning program and body farms.
—NAIA, a homunculus.
Chapter 31: Mere Humanity
“All right.” I sucked in a rattling breath, held it so it wouldn’t come out a sob. “I’ll tell you a story.” A year passed, it seemed, or a century before I chose a story for her as I had countless times. It was one she’d heard before and one I knew almost as well as Simeon’s. “Once upon a time, on an island far from Earth, upon the margins of untrammeled space, there stood a city of poets. The Empire was young in those days, and the last of the Mericanii were broken.
“The city of poets had been built as a haven, as a place for men to hide from the Foundation War and compose their arts in peace. The city had only one law: that none may use force against another. So the city flourished and was made beautiful by all the artists who dwelt behind its walls and prospered by their fellowship.”
“Except for Kharn.”
“Kharn had not chosen the city for his home but had been born to it, the child of a great poet. And as the children of great warriors are often not warriors themselves, so he was no poet. He dreamed of being a soldier, a hero like those in the epics his people composed. His people would hear none of it. ‘We have no need for soldiers here, nor the burden of arms,’ the poets said, ‘for we are far from Earth, and the walls of the city are strong.’
“‘Those who will not live by the sword will die by one,’ Kharn insisted, for so the poems said. But the poets did not believe their own words, believing stories to be dead trifles under their command. Yet truth is neither opinion nor its slave, and the day came when the sky was darkened by sails. The Extrasolarians had arrived. Men like monsters in the Dark, the children of the Mericanii in their black-masted ships. And they burned the city and the poets in it.”
“Except for Kharn.”
Here I paused to brush the hair from Cat’s face and to mop her brow. That accomplished, I continued, “Kharn fought them, and the Exalted—who are kings among the Extrasolarians—recognize only strength. So they spared him even as they cut the hearts from his people and set their bodies to crew their vile ships. They spared him. And Kharn lived among them for many years and with them pillaged other cities, other worlds.”
I do not know how long I spoke or how long I held her hand. I told the whole story. How all the while Kharn Sagara harbored vengeance in his heart. How he turned the Exalted against one another, slaying their captain and taking command of their ship for himself. How he set a course for their home: the frigid Vorgossos and its dead star. I told her how he took their planet for himself, how he made himself king of that dark and frozen world. It was the story from the book Gibson had given me, The King with Ten Thousand Eyes. It was not a happy story, nor was it a short one.
Chapter 42: Speak Like a Child
The word was that they were keeping something in the solitary confinement ward of the underground prisons amongst the madmen and the murderers who died in Colosso in the most spectacular of ways. Some said it was an Exalted, one of the demoniacs who ply the Dark between the stars, as in the tale of Kharn Sagara.
Chapter 76: Deathbed Conversions
“Tell the others my wound took me,” Uvanari said. “Tell them anything, but do not tell them it was like this.” I could hear the defeat in its tone, the surrender. I nearly choked on it, having already betrayed the truth to Tanaran and the others. I offered a stiff nod, a gesture wholly meaningless to the creature. At last it spoke again. “The world? Vorgossos.” I froze, and the sensation of shapes crawling spiderlike in my mind intensified. Vorgossos . . . “Vorgossos is a myth!” But a myth the Cielcin had heard of? Surely such a myth set its roots in truth, in the world of atoms and darkness? The ichakta was dying, threat or no; that last twist of the knife had severed some vital artery or nicked some precious organ. The blood fell hot past my hand in galloping spurts, darker than ink. And then the lights returned, returned as Uvanari, weak now, murmured, “Vorgossos.” “It’s not real,” I said, unable to say anything else. “There’s no such thing as Vorgossos.” The door hissed behind me, and I panicked, drawing the knife up sharply and deeply notching a rib as more blood spilled like the dark between stars onto white flesh. As legionnaires poured in, I staggered backward, slumping to the floor at the foot of the torturer’s cross. My knife had done its work. Uvanari was dead before even the first of the soldiers could reach it. EOS 77 - From his place upon the high seat—a hulking confection of native corals grown in a radiating, treelike pattern of greens and gold—the count waved a ringed hand. “Besides, you cannot honestly tell me, Inquisitor, that you believe this Vorgossos nonsense.” When Agari opened her mouth, Lord Balian continued, “If it ever existed, Vorgossos is long dead. Just a thing in old stories.”
Chapter 77: A Rare Thing
Agari still knelt, head downcast. “With respect, Your Excellency, Your Reverence, ladies, I cannot see how the dead xenobite could have known of Vorgossos unless it is real.”
...
Lady Kalima stood, pivoting in a mirror of Olorin’s gesture as she said, “We should be considering the original proposal: using the Cielcin captives to negotiate peace with their leader.”
“One little clan? Out of how many?” interjected Chancellor Ogir from a pew along the wall, drawing the eye of all those about the throne. “We don’t even know where they are.”
“Vorgossos!” I said brightly, clutching my arm as I turned to the chancellor. “You all heard the name, but before the power cut on, the ichakta indicated a relationship between the Cielcin and the Extrasolarians.”
Ligeia found her voice, perhaps emboldened by her hatred of me. “Demoniacs! Allied with the Pale? Traitors and apostates!”
Howling Dark
Chapter 18: The Other Edge
Not knowing what to say or how to react to this piece of news, I said, “Oscianduru,” using the word the Cielcin used to refer to their great worldships, though I had no notion what to expect from the Extras. Mother’s operas led me to suspect some dim industrial hell, a place of grinding machines and shadow. Still other tales spoke of crystal palaces, like those on Jadd. Vorgossos itself was meant to be a palace of ice and diamond, a faerie city peopled by demons such as the legendary Kharn Sagara had tamed when he cast out the Exalted.
Chapter 20: The Bonecutter
Cento drew a dirty kerchief from another pocket, polished the lens before screwing it back into his face. “Vorgossos . . . no one gets to Vorgossos except through his Exalted.”
“His Exalted?”
“The Undying who rules Vorgossos,” Cento said, pressing his lips together. “This is the story you hear, yes? The Undying who shares his gift to those who pay for it. A cure for death. This is why you seek Vorgossos?”
A cure for death. That was true, in a sense. Only it was not my death that concerned me, for I was young and not then afraid of my fortified mortality. Unbidden, the black scar on Rustam’s surface filled my vision, that aching ruin of a city. I heard again Uvanari screaming under the cathar’s knives, and saw men writhe in the dark as Cielcin stooped over them, blood on their faces like vampires.
A cure for death.
“Yes,” I said, swallowing. “I was told you Extrasolarians had such a thing.”
“Extrasolarians . . .” Cento almost laughed. “We are not a people, Gibson. We are people. There are Extrasolarians and Extrasolarians. I am only a doctor. The Exalted . . . you have heard stories.”
I had. My mother was fond of them. The Exalted had appeared as villains in some bad Eudoran masques, in so many great operas. It was against them that the legendary Kharn Sagara had fought after they destroyed his home. They were beyond humanity, it was said, creatures who had given so much of themselves to their machine daimons that almost there was nothing left. The very word conjured impressions of bloody fangs in metal jaws, of eyes dead as old metal, and vague shapes lurching about the dark corridors of the mind.
“The Exalted serve Vorgossos?”
“Some of them do,” Cento said. “They are not an order; they are not a people. Some of their captains answer to the Undying, but not all. Only they know where the world is.”
“How is that possible?” I said. “It’s a planet, isn’t it? How does one hide a planet for . . . centuries?”
Cento’s human eye wrinkled in amusement. “No one knows, and yet no one will tell you where it is.”
“You know, then?” I took a step forward, emphasizing as I did so my height advantage. I towered head and shoulder over the little Lothrian, and the gravity on March Station was not so strong as on Emesh. I might have lifted him with one hand if I wished it.
“No! No!” Cento raised his hands. “You need to ask right people. Vorgossos has contacts. Traders. Men who know right ships. Cento is not one of them. Cento does not know. You have to go to the traders. To the docks. Not ships captains. Shipping companies. The Exalted have people on March Station. Some are Vorgossos. Some not.”
I brandished the universal card again. “A name, Cento. I need a name.”
Spoilers ahead, proceed with caution
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Chapters 1, 12, 13, 16, 18, 26, 31, 35, 42
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ENTER TEXT HERE
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Chapters 4, 6, 18, 20, 29, 30, 31, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 58, 59, 61, 63, 65, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80
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Chapters 32, 33, 35, 37, 43, 47, 48, 54, 56, 57, 60, 62, 64, 66, 67, 69
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Kharn Sagara's host body, as first mentioned in Howling Dark, was killed by Bassander Lin in ISD 16227 during the Battle Aboard the Demiurge.
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Queen Amid Ashes - N/A The Dregs of Empire - N/ATales of the Sun Eater & Other Stories
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