“No point.”
“Can’t you tell me anything?”
“I will, I promise. But I’m contending with a small local problem that might become unpleasantly physical if I show my hand too soon. And I should warn you that Ilanthe is with the Pilgrimage fleet.”
“Ha! That bitch. I’ll sort her out if she tries anything with me.”
Gore’s golden features reflected anxiety. “No, you won’t, darling. She’s not what she used to be. She’s taken on a different aspect which might be trouble, a lot of trouble. Even the Silfen are worried about her and what she’s doing.”
“Oh. Okay.” Justine didn’t like the sound of that at all. It took a great deal for Gore to show caution.
“I love you, darling.”
“Dad. Be careful, please.”
“My middle name.”
“I thought that was ‘Bulldozer.’ ”
“I hyphenate a lot these days. Sign of the times.” He raised his arm and gradually turned translucent. After a while he was gone altogether, and Tyzak with him.
Justine stared at the space where they’d been, then shook her head as if coming out of a trance. “Oh, crap.” She tried to press down on the sensation of anxiety without any real success. But at least he’d given her a clear objective. Stay alive. “Nice to know,” she muttered. Not understanding came hard to Justine; it showed an alarming lack of control, and that just didn’t sit right at all.
Justine turned and walked back out into the cavernous central section of the church. If she was going to be staying in Makkathran for any serious length of time, there were practical aspects she’d have to work out, not to mention contingencies should the Silverbird’s systems eventually fail. Food was the primary long-term requirement. She was sure there had been some sheep and goats roaming around on the Iguru, and seven days ago she’d actually glimpsed what looked like chickens on Low Moat. There must be seeds she could cultivate, too. The Grand Families all had kitchen gardens in their mansions; the plants must have survived in some form. And fishing … She grinned. Fishing would be easy with a third hand.
It wouldn’t be easy, but she could survive. After all, the city must have been in a similar unkempt state when Rah and the Lady arrived. Justine smiled up at the Lady’s face high above her. “And look what you did with the place,” she told the statue. The Lady gazed down with her unchanging somber expression. Justine’s smile began to fade. There was something about those features now that she could study them closely—after all, Edeard hadn’t been a particularly regular visitor to the church. She had to dig deep amid memories she hadn’t realized her body had retained, but there were connections sparking away in her subconscious. “No,” she whispered in shock. This Lady as captured by the sculptor was a lot older than the time Justine had met her, and she’d had very different hair back then, not to mention figure. “Oh, no.” Justine’s eyes began to water as the sheer emotional power of recognition engulfed her. “It is, isn’t it?” Her shoulders started to shake, and she giggled. “It is you. Holy crap, it’s really you!” Giggles gave way to hysterical laughter; she actually had to hug her belly it hurt so much. She couldn’t stop. This was the Lady, venerated and worshipped by two separate civilizations. The epitome of dignity and grace. “YES!” she yelled out, and punched the air. Then the joyful laughter made her double up again. She waved her hands helplessly, trying to wipe the tears away.
Well, what do you know, the universe has a sense of irony, after all.
The thin sleet of blue sparks cascading through hyperspace’s pseudofabric faded away as power was withdrawn from the ultradrive engines of the Lady’s Light, and the ship dropped back into spacetime. Blackness pressed in against the vast transparent wall at the front of the observation deck. Radiation from the glowing loop of interstellar detritus behind them struck the ordinary force field that was protecting them from the hostility of the Gulf, creating a disagreeable claret glow around the edges of the transparency. Araminta put on a pair of sunglasses and stared through the polarized lenses at the greater darkness four light-years ahead.
Ethan stood beside her, immaculate in his Cleric robes, leaking awe and expectation into the gaiafield. Taranse, Darraklan, and Rincenso waited loyally behind their Dreamer, also subdued at the sight of the barrier they had doubted they would ever witness for themselves.
“We’re here,” Araminta told the Skylord. “Ask the Heart to reach for us, please.”
It responded with a pulse of nearly human happiness.
Exoimage displays showed her the starship’s hysradar return. The Void boundary was rippling, distending upward at hyperluminal speed. Reaching for the Pilgrimage fleet. For her. Its summit opened.
A soft gale of nebula light swept over the twelve Pilgrimage ships.
Hysradar detected another ship emerging from stealth mode, tiny beside the waiting Goliaths but with an impenetrable force field.
“I wondered where you were,” Araminta said.
“You knew,” Ilanthe replied equitably.
Ethan’s delight chilled rapidly at the reminder of the cost of his victory. “What now?” he asked.
“We go in,” Araminta told him. “Together. Correct?”
“Correct,” Ilanthe said.
“Taranse,” Araminta said. “Take us through.”
He gave a dreamy nod. The Lady’s Light accelerated forward, with the other ships matching its course.
“My Lord,” Ethan’s mind cried, his thoughts amplified by the three confluence nests on board, then reinforced by those on the remainder of the fleet. “Please take us to the solid world which used to be inhabited by those of our species.”
Shit! Araminta shot him a furious glare. He returned a satisfied sneer. “Did you overlook that part of the request, Dreamer?” he asked mockingly.
Araminta watched the tortured red glare fade from the edge of the transparency as the glow of the nebulae strengthened. Somewhere behind them, the boundary was closing again. For the first time in days the infestation of nausea and confusion from living at two speeds abated. Her thoughts cleared.
“And your uniqueness would appear to be at an end,” Ethan continued. Araminta’s farsight showed her his thoughts, the malice that festered there, naked to taste as he slowly realized the abilities of the Void and recalled the techniques Edeard had applied. Farsight also showed her what he was hiding within the copious folds of his robe.
“True,” she said. “But that leaves us leading the real life of the Void.”
Ethan reached for the old-fashioned pistol he’d concealed. Araminta’s third hand picked him up and threw him across the observation chamber. He screamed as much from shock as from fright as he flew through the air, a cry that was cut off as he thudded face-first into the bulkhead. He crashed awkwardly to the floor, whimpering in pain from the broken bones. Blood was dripping from his mouth and nose.
“When Rah and the Lady came to Makkathran, they had only politics and brute force to enforce their rule,” Araminta said lightly as she walked toward Ethan, who was trying to scramble away. “How fitting that such gifts are also what we will be starting out with.”
Ethan went for a heartsqueeze. Araminta warded it off easily. She held out a hand, palm upward, raising it. Ethan was abruptly tugged off the floor. A finger beckoned. He was drawn toward her.
“You were right,” she said to Aaron. “I did need to practice. He’s a sneaky little shit.”
Taranse, Darraklan, and Rincenso were very still, all of them hurrying to establish their own mental shields lest the Dreamer should read their thoughts.
“You don’t believe,” Ethan hissed through bloody lips. “You never did.”
“But you believe in me, don’t you?” she urged huskily, recalling Tathal’s dreadful compulsive domination during the Twenty-sixth dream, applying the ability against the squirming mind before her. “It was me who brought you to the barrier. Me who called to the Skylord. Me who is bringing you to Querencia. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” Ethan gurgled.
“And you are grateful for such an act of selfless generosity, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“How could you do anything but love the person who made it possible to finally live the dream?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Do you love me, Ethan? Do you trust me?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
“Thank you, Ethan, from the bottom of my heart.” She lowered him carefully to the decking and smiled gently at her aghast audience. “The ex-Conservator seems to have tripped in all the excitement. Please take him to the sick bay.”
Taranse nodded nervously and knelt down to help Ethan. With Darraklan’s assistance, they managed to pull him up between them.
Because she could show no weakness, Araminta watched them with a passive smile. Over in the Mellanie’s Redemption, Araminta-two was puking his guts up at the atrocity he’d just committed.
“Dreamer, look,” Rincenso said in wonder. He was pointing at the front of the observation deck. On the other side of the transparent bulkhead, a flock of Skylords were approaching the pilgrimage fleet. For all she feared and resented the creatures, they looked glorious as they swam out of the sparse starscape.
As soon as the boundary closed behind them, Ilanthe ordered the ship to open its cargo bay doors. She could sense the abilities intrinsic to the Void’s fabric pervade the inversion core. What the animal humans of Querencia crudely described as farsight allowed her mind to examine the fabric directly, plotting the effect her own thoughts had on it, the alterations and reactions they propagated. The symbiosis was fascinating; already she’d learned more than she had from a century of remote analysis of Inigo’s stupid dreams. The Void’s quantum architecture was completely different from the universe outside. But it was tragically flawed, requiring extrinsic energy to sustain itself even in its base state. When the functions enfolded within its extraordinary intricate quantum fields were activated, the power levels they consumed were far greater than she’d expected.
“The doomsayers were right,” she told Neskia. “The pilgrimage animals would have wiped out the galaxy with their reset demands.”
“Will you prevent that?” Neskia asked.
Ilanthe regarded the concern swirling within her otherwise faithful operative’s mind with detached interest. Even a Higher as progressive and complex as Neskia was betrayed by residual animal emotion. “My success will render the question irrelevant.”
Ilanthe observed the flock of Skylords closing in. With their opalescent vacuum wings extended wide, the mountain-size creatures were expanding quickly across the thin scattering of stars as they accelerated toward the fleet. The lambent twisted strands of the nebulae were distorted through the weird lensing effect of the wings, causing them to flicker and shift like celestial flames. Ilanthe examined the true functionality of the wings, how they rooted down into the Void fabric, manipulating localized gravity and temporal flow. A process of propulsion so much more sophisticated than the crude “telekinetic” ability of manipulating mass location. Less energy-demanding, too, she noted approvingly.
When her thoughts tried to replicate the same interaction with the Void fabric, there was some aspect missing. Instead she simply wished herself elevating out into space, employing some of the technique Edeard’s descendant had employed in the Last Dream. The inversion core immediately flew clear of the ship. The method worked, which was gratifying, but it lacked the elegance and capability of the Skylords.
Ilanthe felt the perception of the Skylords concentrate on the inversion core, seeking understanding of what she was. Her thoughts established a perfect shield around the shell of the inversion core, blocking their probes.
“Greetings,” she told the closest Skylord neutrally, and began to accelerate toward it. Her own perception ability listened to Araminta and several others from the Pilgrimage fleet frantically warning the Skylords to be careful, claiming she was dangerous. Their responses were interesting, revealing their complete lack of rational intellect. They almost evaded the topic; certainly, they didn’t seem to comprehend the meaning behind the concepts. It wasn’t part of their world; therefore, their mental vocabulary didn’t accommodate it. Either they were artificial constructs designated by the nucleus with the specific task of gathering up mature minds, or they had once been fully sentient spaceborne entities who had de-evolved throughout the countless millennia since their imprisonment. With nothing new to experience inside the Void, no challenges to struggle with, their minds had atrophied down to instinct-based responses.
“I am fulfilled,” Ilanthe told the Skylord as she approached it. “Please take me to the Heart.”
“I do not know if you are fulfilled,” the Skylord responded. “You are closed to me. Open yourself.”
The tentative wisps of the colorful vacuum wings flowed around the inversion core as it glided in toward the Skylord’s glimmering crystalline body. Ilanthe could perceive the texture of its oddly distorted geometry, a kind of honeycomb of ordinary matter and something similar to an exotic force; the two were in constant flux, which bestowed that distinctive surface instability. The composition was intriguing. But despite its subtle complexity, the thoughts that animated it lacked potency. Her own determination, amplified by the neural pathways available within the inversion core, was a lot stronger. “I would be grateful if you would open yourself to me,” she told it.
“I withhold nothing.”
“Oh, but you do.” And she reached for the Skylord, inserting her hardened, purposeful thoughts amid its clean and simple routines. Lovingly entwining them. Taking hold.
“What are you doing?” the Skylord asked.
She suppressed the rising incomprehension, stilling its deep instincts to facilitate applications that would take it far from this place.
“Your intrusion is preventing me from functioning. Parts of me are failing. Withdraw yourself.”
“I am helping you to become so much more. Together we are synergistic,” she promised. “I will guide you to the pinnacle of fulfillment.” Then the feast began.
“I am ending,” the Skylord declared.
“Stop!” Araminta cried. “You’re killing it.”
“Have you learned nothing about the Void?” Ilanthe retorted.
Dark specters began to slither through the cheerful sparkles of the Skylord’s vacuum wings, proliferating and expanding. The tenuous cloud of molecules that formed the physical aspect of the wings burst apart, dark frosty motes dissipating through space like a black snowstorm. Now the dark flames were shivering across the intricate optical quivering of the Skylord’s surface, biting inward.
Everything it was poured across the gap to the inversion core, an extirpation that allowed the abilities and knowledge of its kind to flow into Ilanthe.
At that point she almost regretted no longer having a human face. How she would be smiling now. Engorged and enriched by the Skylord’s essence, her mastery of this strange continuum was rising toward absolute. Function manipulation began to integrate with her personality at an instinctive level. She heard the call of the nebulae, the transdimensional sink points of rationality twisting out through the Void’s quantum fields, keening for intelligence with the promise of escalation to something greater, as yet unglimpsed. They must lead to the paramount consciousness, she knew. The Heart itself. From that nucleus everything could be controlled.
Local space was awash with despair and revulsion at the Skylord’s demise. “You will thank me soon enough,” she informed the insignificant human minds. One was different from the rest. A small part of her acknowledged the Dreamer Araminta, whose thoughts stretched away somehow, a method that didn’t utilize the Void fabric. It wasn’t relevant.
Once more Ilanthe’s thoughts flowed into the pattern to manipulate the Void’s temporal and gravatonic functions, this time correctly. A wide area around the inversion core began to sparkle as the surrounding dust was caught up in the effect, drifting into chiaroscuro spirals
. Ilanthe accelerated hard, simultaneously negating the temporal flow around the inversion core’s shell. The Pilgrimage fleet dwindled away to nothing in seconds as it achieved point nine lightspeed. Far ahead, the siren melody from the nebula that Querencia humans had named Odin’s Sea grew perceptibly stronger.
Araminta hadn’t moved throughout the atrocity. It had happened not ten kilometers directly ahead of the Lady’s Light, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She’d seen the Skylord’s vacuum wings dim to a frail gray travesty of their former grandeur, and then even that feeble light had been smothered. All the while her mind echoed with the Skylord’s pitiable incomprehension.
It was too much. Tears leaked out from behind her sunglasses. “I did this, I’m responsible, I brought that monster here.”
“No,” Aaron assured her. “You were manipulated by Ilanthe, as were all of us. You have no guilt.”
“But I do,” Araminta whispered.
“Dreamer,” Darraklan said earnestly. “This is not your fault. Ethan was the one who fell to that thing’s sweet promises. It subverted him. You are blameless. You simply fulfilled your destiny.”
Out beyond the observation deck, the remaining Skylords were slowly circling around the cold husk of their dead kindred. She could feel their mournful thoughts as they scoured space for its soul. But of course Ilanthe had absorbed every aspect, leaving nothing.
“I’m so sorry,” she told the distraught Skylords.
“It is gone,” came the chorus of grief. “Our kindred is gone. It did not go to the Heart. The other ended it. Why?”
“The other is unfulfilled and evil,” Araminta told them. “This is what we bring wherever we go.”
The Skylords recoiled.
“We need them,” Rincenso said in alarm. “Dreamer, please. The fleet needs guidance more than ever now.”
“It’s over,” she said brokenly. “Ethan was right: I don’t believe. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore. Inigo will end this as he began it. At least I think that’s right.”
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 213
