The Siege of Dome

How resilient is the human spirit in the face of merciless oppression? What values in life stand up to certain death? In the second and concluding Empyrion book, Orion Treet determines to return to Dome after his brief respite among the peaceable, graceful Fieri. No one but Orion and a handful of rebels seriously believes that Dome will carry out its threat to annihilate Fierra. Abandoned by his companions from Earth, Treet becomes a solitary figure in a deadly civil war. The Empyrion novels are among Lawhead's most captivating accomplishments of storytelling and adventure; among the best there is in science fiction. Look for the award-winning Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra, at your local bookstore.

ONE
Orion Tiberias Treet lifted his face from the page swimming before his eyes, sat up, and glared around, red-eyed, at the untidy stack of blue plastic notebooks he had been reading nonstop for the last few days. He rubbed his whiskered jaw and stood creakily, began swinging his arms, pacing and stretching to get his blood circulating.
Five days maybe more, he couldn’t tell for sure in the subterranean Archives of Dome, reading Feodr Rumon’s Interpretive Chronicles, had given him an ache in his head to match the one in his stomach. He had not eaten since returning to Dome, even though, upon entering the Archives, he had found the provisions he and Calin had left behind on their first visit a time that now seemed impossibly remote.
The food had long since spoiled, but the water in the sealed jar was good; so he drank sparingly from it and settled down to discover all he could of Empyrion’s lost past. He knew he might never have another chance to read the notebooks, and knew, too, that once he left the safety of the Archives, he might never return. Several days of hunger were worth the price.
Upon leaving the Archives he would be a hunted man; so Treet was in no hurry to leave his work. He would have to leave soon, though. Already hunger was making him light-headed and weak. If he waited too long, he might not have strength or wit enough to successfully elude capture and provide some help to Tvrdy and his allies.
Of course, not knowing what had happened since his escape from Dome, he was at a distinct disadvantage in the strategy department. He assumed the worst. That way he would not be unduly disappointed.
He wondered what he would find when he decided to leave his hidden enclave, wondered whether there had been a Purge, and whether Tvrdy and Cejka had survived or been brought down. Assuming that they had survived, he wondered how to make contact with them, or with anyone else in a position to help him.
These matters he pushed from his mind whenever they intruded, and he forced his attention back to his reading. Old Rumon’s Chronicles offered a wealth of information to be mined. He had only to pick up one of the ancient notebooks to be transported to some long-forgotten age of Empyrion’s past. A past which Treet sincerely hoped would offer a clue as to how he might begin averting the catastrophe he had so clearly seen looming over the future of the planet.
This once-strong hope had turned into a wormy anxiety. For now, having returned, he was far less certain that he’d read the signs of disaster aright. I was so sure of myself before, he argued. Nothing has changed so why do I doubt myself?
Doubt was a mild word for it. Whenever he thought about what he had committed himself to, snakes began writhing in his bowels.
Treet had lived his life trusting his instincts, never looking back. Life was too short, he often told himself, to spend even a second in regret. Now, it appeared that his ever-trustworthy instincts had betrayed him and backward glancing would become a way of life.
On the strength of his gut feeling he had left the Fieri and their magnificent civilization to return to Dome on the narrowest of chances that he might somehow forestall the doom that only he seemed to see.
On the strength of his gut feeling he had sacrificed his own best chance for future happiness by alienating the only woman he’d ever really loved, the only woman who, quite possibly, had ever loved him.
On the strength of his gut feeling he had set in motion a series of events which had caused the messy death of a beautiful friend. He missed Calin would have ached for the loss of her had not grief numbed him. Still, the thought of her death and the sting of his own guilt for the part he played in it were never far away. And the gruesome battle between him and the demented Crocker, which had claimed the gentle magician’s life, was replayed nightly in his dreams in brutal, bloody detail.
All this the torment of those memories, of second-guessing himself, dark bouts of self-accusation he struggled to hold aside long enough to learn as much as possible about Empyrion Colony’s past in the short time he had to give to the task. And, despite his growing uncertainty about his mission, he still felt this to be crucially important.
So, ignoring all else as he ignored the vacuum in his stomach gnawing at his concentration, he returned to the nest he’d made for himself on the floor and opened the notebook he’d been reading for the last few hours. The binding, brittle with age and cracked in a dozen places, bore the handwritten tag Volume 19, signifying he was one-quarter of the way through Empyrion’s Third Age, as classified by Rumon.
He took out his bookmark a folded sheet of paper bearing the notes he had scratched with an old polymer stylus found in a nearby bin and read what he’d written:
Colony Foundation = 1 AA
Red Death = 98 AA
Plebiscite Rejected = 309 AA
Colony Splits = 311 AA
Second Split = 543 AA
First Purge = 586 AA
Directorate Installed = 638 AA
Flight of the Fieri = 833 AA
Fieri Settlement Est. = 1157 AA
Cluster Closed = 1270 AA
Fieri Scattered = 1318 AA
Directorate Overthrown = 1473 AA
Second Purge = 1474 AA
Threl Established = 1485 AA
It was the record of civilization born to turmoil, much the same as any civilization. But what made Empyrion’s record so sad and this was the part that really got to Treet was that the colony had advantages never possessed by any other civilization he’d ever encountered: they had started out with all the tools for creating Utopia right from the very beginning; they had all of history to teach them how to organize and govern themselves. They might have chosen to recreate Eden.
Instead, they chose Hell.

---

Excerpted from Empyrion II: The Siege of Dome by Stephen R. Lawhead
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.