“BIRTH OF PHARAOH” CHAPTER 9

“THE BONNE VALLE QUATRA”

COPYRIGHT 2025. CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I was shaken when I was taken aboard the Entourage ship. They had rescued, by accident, my skin. They thought I had been one of their own. Next, they brought me inside and got close enough to see my face. They realized we all look the same as each other, from a distance.

The Entourage do not read minds. They can’t. They aren’t built to do that. They don’t temper their bodies like I do, either.

They remembered me when I gave a hint about Whittne Fax training the Na’ Halien, but they couldn’t believe who I was. For this gang, I was “that big deal pirate” their families had heard about. I think they like a rebel.

Their sky ship, the Bonne Valle Quatra, looked like it was about twelve hundred years gone. Inside, it is still all gilded up. Very pretty inside, really.

Strange thing to be saved by an Entourage vessel, but I couldn’t make a joke. Their machinery carried me quickly into safety and I’m happy. Just thought the Entourage were all murdered off, that’s all.

I made a point of being salutary.

Every few hours I get a tour from a different enthusiastic person. The ship is gigantic, of course. Each story about why they are alone in space varies.

One of the ship’s masters explains in detail how they took a wrong turn, and had a bad flight. I’ve known a lot of lying. Sounds like another lie to me.

Why didn’t they return to help her, when the White Queen was captured? There’s no response. They aren’t bona fide as champions yet.

How did they sustain themselves outward bound, for that long?

The entourage are very quirky. They never answer in a fair way. I allow them know that I had sold every trappable bondage I could get into my hold, on a route entwining four galaxies but only sixteen planets. Still, their answers are terribly vague.

I could sneak them around the hell hole that was once Everbliss but is now so outbound no one will go there. I could talk them into getting a glimpse so they know it really is gone.

I could tell everyone, “They are my prisoners,” but then let them go on their way, once I brought their ship to a safe zone.

My mind starts to reel with the possibilities.

I get a look around the places they want me to be knowledgeable about. Met the captain. Tall dancer in appearance with fluffing white hair and crimson eyes that sparked with blue in the middle. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he informs me his creation is The Holy Black.

I was starting to see myself owning the entire vessel and making these people my best friends and family. I nearly forgot that I am on a mission.

They have been giving me a lot of orders, in that first week we met once I had gotten out of the medic’s tube, because they have a long list of everything they need to acquire in order to stay safe and hidden.

I took a few steps away. They started to understand. 

I need a new code to depart this free zone outside the gates. I only know one place to get a new code: the Factory. Also, they might still have an access point between The Factory that controls Pharaoh from way out in space the way any Pharaoh’s control box is installed inside the poor thing’s ear. There’s this constant wavelength I can tap into, if I try. Then, I can dial straight into Universe Major and get something going.

“Why would we want to ever go back inside the Hidden Wall?” asks my guide.

I don’t have a lie prepared so I walk away and it works.

In truth, I’m hoping to find a friend I have abandoned who is either wrapped up in the Factory death cycle, or leading a small civilization inside the prime city, at the center of the Major Universe. However, I can’t say much about this ambition to anyone.

I had a few other ideas, all much closer, but iffy. The inhabitants will definitely question the Entourage’s gilded and perfectly adorned craft, especially if it’s me commanding the whole thing.

The Entourage want to head towards The Factory the moment I mention it to them. They want to own the thing, it seems. It’s a gadget set way above a certain planet. It can control everybody’s attitude, and even can control the thinking across the Great Sky if there’s enough juice within. No one objects because, without it, Pharaoh start wars with everyone.

The Pharaoh are a collection of rebirthed, fractioned creatures from The Derelicts and The Not Wanteds. You can’t let them rebirth freely until they shape up a little bit. Someone had the idea to make them masters of itty-bitty space commands until they forget their dire some ways taken up when they were, say, a telepath centipede a hundred yards wide that liked to steal spacemen from their crafts. 

The Captain steals the show by setting the ship’s course for Po and telling me I’m third in command beneath his wife. He orders everybody to knock themselves out for a while. He wants us to travel by stealth, undetected.

I go along with everything in theory, but I don’t need to spend the time sleeping.

Somehow, I need the Captain to share everything he needs to say about the origins of The Holy Black.

The Entourage were conking out inside their chambers. They had a lot of Handlers on board, their slaves, who made them usher me out of the portion of the vessel they reside within. I want everyone to forget I am around, for a while, on our way to Po.

I walk along the passage ways, wondering to myself for a moment. I’m thankful I managed, in the end, to decease the female Macabre Illie Bo. She’d otherwise be searching me out.

Two handlers scamper to save me from the disease of my own determined step. They show me to a pristine bunk and I turn in for the long snooze while this monster of a vessel plods along for years.

Things are fresh and clean. Nothing to sit upon, but there is a window beside my bed. I could gaze at the changing colors and stars.

The Macabre Illie Bo fill up the fire-ways of the Outer-Realm. If they need money, they capture creatures and people and bring them in for a trade. They are sentient and cleverly drawn together. I don’t know what end I’m dealing with anytime I encounter one of their regulars or their king. They have knives for mouths, razor ridges that bump up or retract down into their massively shaking and sooty bodies—that type. They are far worse than people can believe.

I never mention the Macabre Illie Bo to people who can’t stand the thought because I don’t want to scare people.

I, myself, was sore.

I was even scared, in a sense.

I’m just alone, now, these days, I used to have people and creatures everywhere. Then I told them all to find a better ride. Got tired of everyone’s voices screaming at me.

The bunk is encased in a film. I try to sleep on my own.

When I am quiet, and when I’m alone, I recall interesting times when we were the verified First of the Na’ Halien. We were having the best time.

We were the messengers for the Divine who is said to have built two distinct poles. They spanned both sides of the length of all of eternity. The Left Pole and the Right Pole were built of gold and with certain swiftness only a God could devise or demise.

Such a beautification of gold was not known before then.

With the poles complete, The First divided unto themselves two distinct categories: the beautiful and the swift. With the help of the Divine, The Beautiful were placed upon The Left Pole, and the strong were set upon The Right Pole.

Endless miles of golden wherewithal stretched north and south. The First aligned themselves, spaced evenly so that all that Great Sky is, eventually, spanned.

I’m guessing The Left and The Right are still out there. Things were built fairly well, back then.

Sad to admit that with the passage of time, the Na’ Halien ourselves, became villains of every story.

I look at my forearm. I still have a scene there in deep green.

We had spent thirty days together on my ship, but it was built like a piece of garbage. I thought he might slaughter me. He could have gotten to me. Instead, he said things. He thought he could make me a friend.  He convinced me to find certain things and, with them, gave me a symbol of a splintered star that is criss-crossed with wavy lines between two towers. It is still detailed upon my forearm, after all the time has passed. 

Outside, in the vast panorama, shifting shapes and clouds dance around. The sight of such is enough to make a planet-bound person upset because he might be nothing compared to endless night. So much catastrophe enclosed in every turn any ship will make.

I like it, myself.

The First, alone, bravely ventured outwards, to cross the endless reaches. The claim was that, one day, the swift and the beautiful would meet. They would rejoice. Then, continuing, they would complete the opposite half of the work each had done.

I like that vision.

Eventually, I wake. I find one of the cooks.

She tells me, “I’m the reason you’re on time,” and wants to talk.

          “Do you like our ship?” she asks.  

Does not look faithful in fluttery clothing that conceals nothing and looks like an olden day garment. It is carefully hewn. Delicately strung together. Impeccably persevered, day by day. No strand dangling to tug, nor a spot or stain upon the shimmering clothing for me to make a wish come true upon.

          She tells me her name is Palyo Lyle, and I laugh.

The name “Palyo” is the forerunner of any of the White Queen’s tricky ladies-in-waiting. Once, there were hundreds, each bred to behave like the White Queen herself.  It all takes my attention back to an earlier time when the White Queen ran her show inside her walls of the now-broken kingdom. 

          Lyle’s hair is swept upwards. There are pearl-like pins adorning it all, and pretty twirls and things that keep swinging when she shakes her head or turns her shoulders. Massive and shimmering, the hair is so golden I can’t resist feeling and take a fistful to see if it is real.

She’s trained in arts. Most would assume her long arms and legs swing only in the lithe manner of a dancer, but I see the stance of a street fighter. 

Similar to the ship, her clothes are dated but kept clean. Thought about my lost crew, and the lost ship, the Tantlantiatia. We were usually covered in grimy things we got tired of attempting to wash away.

          “You’re Whittne Fax, are you not?”

          I smile, telling her who I am is not her concern right now, or ever.

“You’re not friend, but you’re not foe. I have to tell you a secret, but for it I want you to pay me.”

Never turned an inch, but I let her lead me to the door of her sky elevator.  

All Lyle’s wallflowers peel themselves from the shadows. They pile in with us. It smells so good I had to stop myself from tearing up.

They chime in on Lyle’s story. Claim the ship and everyone in flight are an abandoned group of Entourage. They never learned of the White Queen’s demise until, like myself, they couldn’t get an entry anywhere.

“Don’t touch anything,” I tell meself.  

I still disbelieve them all, even though all of them are friendly. I continue to pry, but I flutter along mentally with her and the dames so they won’t feel my true goal that lurks, hidden deep inside my mind.

After a while, we arrive.

The large doors are conveniently sealed with heavy material that is expensive space travel, plus electricity, and then all sorts of complicated bolts.

“I hide certain things.” She giggles uncontrollably. The doors swing wide. Her ladies rush into a gilded walkway above Lyle’s pen.

Inside are four males. Filthy. Blood on the portal doors. Stationed by harpoons. Old bonds keep each in place. They are tattooed and elderly. We walk above them. They do not seem to notice.

Lyle whispers angrily in my ear, “Na’ Halien.”

I say nothing.

She glances at her ladies. Everyone is pretty relaxed. They are all guilty of stating the word, Na’ Halien. It was illegal off and on, over many years. But, now, they are straying from their strict rules.

          “I wanted to ask them questions, silly. But they won’t talk.”

          I look away, no longer interested in the conversation.

          “I want to see your Bridge. Will you take me there?” I ask.

          “I wouldn’t dare.” She said it and is so worried I must hold her close, beside the skin of my heart. I rush her away from the girls who melt back into the walls. I need to keep her calm. But, then, as usual, the thing people do is read my mind if I let my guard down.

Like the people from the White Queen’s days, she hates the heart-to-heart approach.

“Well, why not?” I respond to her frantic complaint. “Things can break, and those bonds were built to hold something five times their strength.”

“They are… Well, they are Na’ Halien. If I ever asked about them, inside this ship, I could get approached. No one would believe me, if I say I don’t know who they are. I’m not a very good liar.”

          “I believe you, Lyle.”

          I feel her mind settle. She knows I’m a lucky card.

TO CONTINUE THE ADVENTURE READ RENEYT - EPISODE 2 - A HERO RETURNS!