The Final Key: Part Two of Triad Read Online Free PDF

the cushions with obvious relief.
    "Eldri?" Roca asked. "Are you all right?"
    "Just a little tired." He considered Soz, who sat between him and Roca. "After I've rested, you must show us around this school that has so many robots to clean."
    "I'll do that." Right now, Soz would have shown him the spamoozala grottos if he had wanted to see them.
    They spent a wonderful few hours together, and she rejoiced that they had found their way back to each other. But a cloud dimmed their reunion. Her father had also disowned Althor, for agreeing to take Soz away from home and for refusing to marry. For all that her father didn't understand his massive, cyber-warrior of a son, Soz knew he loved Althor. She mourned that they could never reconcile.
    Soon she would receive her own commission as a Jager-nauL When that happened, she would go out and avenge her brother and her father. She would fight for the people of the Skolian Imperialate, the civilization named after her family, the Skolias. She would protect them all against the relentless onslaught of the Traders who sought to enslave an empire.
    2
    The Dyad Chair
    Eldrin returned home after the harsh Dieshan sun had set. His flyer settled onto the roof of the Ruby Palace, where onion towers were silhouetted against the sky in the afterglow of dusk. The sunset turned the world a rose color, deep and shadowed on the Red Mountains that surrounded the palace and stood high in the distance.
    The cabin of the flyer resembled an elegant hotel suite with carpet and wood paneling. Eldrin had taken the craft out to combat bis boredom, but he had done little more than sit in the cushioned pilot's seat while the flyer's EI brain guided it through the mountains. Although for six years he had been a "modem" man, he had never felt at ease with all that it meant. After his rural childhood on the world Lyshriol, his life these days seemed a hard-edged universe of components and chrome. He had yet to make peace with the contrast between his rustic youth and his role now as consort to an interstellar sovereign.
    The Imperialate was a strange mix of advanced and primitive cultures. Six millennia ago, an unknown race of beings had taken humans from Earth and abandoned them on the world Raylicon. Some scholars believed calamity had befallen the abductors before they could complete their plans. Whatever the reason, they had vanished, leaving behind their empty starships. Over the centuries, from the records on those ships, the humans had gleaned enough knowledge to develop star travel. Then they had gone in search of their lost home. They never found Earth, but they built the Ruby Empire and scattered colonies across the stars. Lyshriol had been home to one such settlement.
    The Ruby Empire collapsed after only a few centuries. During the four millennia of Dark Ages that followed, many
    of the stranded colonies failed. Those that survived, including Lyshriol, backslid into primitive conditions. When the Raylicans finally regained the stars, they split into two civilizations: the Eubian Concord, also called the Trader Empire, which based its economy on the sale of human beings; and the Skolian Imperialate, ruled primarily by an elected Assembly that considered freedom a right of all humans. The Ruby Dynasty also survived, and wielded power behind the scenes. Earth's people eventually developed space travel— and found their siblings already out among the stars, two thriving but irreconcilable civilizations. The Allied Worlds of Earth became a third, and the three powers maintained an uneasy coexistence.
    Eldrin's father was a native of Lyshriol and descended from the ancient colonists. His mother was an offworld technocrat She had brought advanced technology to her husband's home, with caution. The Lyshrioli continued their agrarian lives, but they now had access to the advantages of an interstellar civilization. Like many of his people, Eldrin had never felt easy with his mother's universe. It hadn't mattered