Tale of the Thunderbolt

“E. E. Knight has managed to create a compelling new world out of the ruins of our existing one. It's a major undertaking for a new author. . . . He does it with style and grace, and I would highly recommend checking out the book as soon as you can.” â Creature Corner

“It was obvious to me within the first few pages that Knight knew how to write. . . . Valentine is a complex and interesting character, mixing innocence with a cold-hearted willingness to kill. . . . Knight brought the setting (a future, apocalyptic United States) to vivid life. . . . The setting drew me in. . . . His world is well-constructed and holds together in a believable fashion. . . . Compelling.” â
SFReader.com

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To John and Laura Anne, for getting me to the next level

Glossary

Aspirants:
Teenagers, often sons and daughters of those in a particular caste, who travel with the Hunters and perform assorted camp functions.

Bears:
Hunters and the most fearsome of the Lifeweavers' human weapons; warriors who go into a battle-fury resembling that of the berserks of old. The Bears are proud to take on anything the Kurians can design.

Cats:
Trained by the Lifeweavers, these Hunters act as spies, saboteurs, and assassins in the Kurian Zone. Some work in disguises; others work openly.

Dau'wa:
“Forward-thinkers”; the minority of Lifeweavers (mostly concentrated on the planet Kur), who used vital aura to become immortal, i.e., vampires.

Dau'weem:
“Backwards-thinkers”; the majority of Lifeweavers, who eschewed use of vital aura to become immortal.

Golden Ones:
A Grog variant, more verbal and organized than the more common Gray Ones. Fawn-colored fur on their shoulders blends to white on their bellies.

Gray Ones:
The most common kind of Grog, an apish humanoid with thick plates of gray skin. Marginally intelligent, though quick to adapt to human tools and weapons.

Grogs:
Any of the multitude of creations the Kurians have designed or enhanced to help subjugate man. The term
grog
is in general use for introduced life-forms, but properly belongs just to the humanoid variants. Grogs come in many shapes and sizes; some are intelligent enough to use weapons.

Hunters:
Human beings who have been enhanced by the techno-magic of the Lifeweavers to cope with the spawn of Kur.

Interworld Tree:
An ancient network of portals between the stars, the doors of which allow instantaneous transportation across the light-years.

Kur:
One of the nine planets of the Interworld Tree. A great storehouse of touchstones was found here; it was a center of Lifeweaver science and learning. Later it became a renegade world when the Kurian Lifeweavers began to use vital aura to extend their lives, touching off a civil war that has spilled over to Earth.

Kurians:
Lifeweavers from the planet Kur who learned how to indefinitely lengthen their lives by absorbing vital aura. They are the true vampires of the New Order.

lifesign:
Energy given off by any living thing in proportion to its size and sentience. The Reapers use it, in addition to their normal senses, to track their human prey.

Lifeweavers:
The ancient race who discovered the old Pre-Entity Gates between the Nine Worlds.

Pre-Entities:
The Old Ones, a vampiric race that died out long before man walked the Earth. From their knowledge, the Kur learned how to become vampires by living off of vital aura.

Quislings:
Humans who assist the Kurians in running the New Order.

Ravies:
A virus the Kurians distributed to break up the social order of man, allowing them to take over more easily.

Reapers:
The Praetorian Guard of the New Order, they are in fact avatars animated by their Master Vampire. They permit the reclusive Kurians to interact with humans and others, and more important, absorb the vital aura through a psychic connection with the avatar without physical risk. Reapers live off the blood of the victim, while the aura sustains the Master Kurian. Also known colloquially as Capos, Governors, Hoods, Rigs, Skulls, Scowls, Tongue-Tong, Creeps, Hooded Ones, and Vampires.

Touchstones:
Record-keeping technology used by the Pre-Entities and discovered by the Lifeweavers. Touchstones hold anything from knowledge to memories; the data is accessible by a sentient being's touch. This can be dangerous for less-developed minds, such as humans'.

vital aura:
An energy field created by a living creature. Sadly, humans are rich in it.

Wolves:
The most numerous caste of the Hunters. Their patrols watch the no-man's-land between the Kurian Zone and the Free Territories, and they also act as guerrilla fighters, couriers, and scouts.

From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms!
Through the land let the sound of it flee;
Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer,
In defense of our Liberty Tree.

â
Thomas Paine, “The Liberty Tree”

They sailed away for a year and a day
To the land where the bong-tree grows.

â
Edward Lear,
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

Chapter One

New Orleans, January, the forty-eighth year of the Kurian Order: Formerly glorious in its decay, under the New Order the city transformed from an aging beauty into a waterlogged corpse. Much of the Big Easy rots under a meter of Mississippi River water â save for the old city's heart, now protected by two layers of dikes. The rococo facades of the French Quarter, once browning into a fine patina, fall to pieces in quiet, unmourned. The stately homes of the two great antebellum periods, pre-1861 and pre-2022, have vanished under a carpet of lush kudzu or riverside saw grass. As if the flooding and years of neglect were not enough punishment, New Orleans suffered a major hurricane in 2028: a titanic storm that rose from the Gulf like a city-smashing monster in a Japanese movie. No FEMA, no insurance companies showed up afterwards to clean and repair the storm-battered city. What was destroyed stayed destroyed; the inhabitants found it easier to shift to still-standing buildings than to rebuild.

But the mouth of the Mississippi is too important, even to the reduced traffic of the Kurian Order, to be given up entirely to nature. The metropolis, both the section behind the dike and the Venice-like portions of the flooded districts, still support a mÃ©lange of denizens from all across the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Counting those living among the lakes, bayous, and in the Mississippi estuary, New Orleans boasts a population of over two million â a total that few other cities known to the Old World can match. The rich harvests of seafood, fish and game of the swamps, and mile after mile of rice plantations feed the masses concentrated at the sodden bend in the river.

The Kurian Order encourages fecund populations. A Kurian lord must breed his polis to supply him with enough vital aura, for only in feeding on the energy created by the death throes of a sentient being can he revitalize his immortal lich. The Masters of New Orleans have no regrets about its silenced music, its smothered culture, its reduced cuisine, or its broken history. Healthy, mating herds of humans, kept from escape and from the clutches of rapacious competing Kur, are the only form of wealth that matters.

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