The Return of the Arinn
Page 39
What’s going on?
He was obliged to think it rather than speak it: the muscles of his throat felt useless here.
Kate! He was startled by her voice inside his head.
They weren’t there bodily, so they had to be there as soul spirits. Alan tried opening his eyes. His vision widened, as if a huge window was opening within his consciousness. He knew instinctively what the wrenching feeling in his eyes implied: his pupils had opened beyond iris or the whites. He was streaming through an exploding cloud of gaseous matter in the vastness of space.
This can’t be happening.
Kate’s voice again:
Alan felt Kate’s soul spirit reach out to touch him. He sensed her hand enclose his. He struggled to understand.
Alan heard Kate question Driftwood:
Alan saw that they were moving through billions of stars. He felt a tremor sweep through him. Mentally, he clutched tightly at Kate’s hand, drawing her spirit being closer to him, hugging her.
The dragon’s voice spoke to them again, mind-to-mind:
Kate asked him:
What did any of this mean? Events of monumental importance were being decided. But as ever they were buried in riddles. What had anything really meant since their arrival into this baffling world of Tír? Perhaps, as Mo had said, there was no explaining it in human terms? Perhaps they would understand it only by experiencing it.
Alan felt so very exposed. He tested his oraculum and felt nothing happen.
The dragon flooded their consciousness with light. They entered a fairytale landscape populated by elfin beings. Their spirits were filled with wonder.
Kate’s voice whispering in his mind:
Alan witnessed the passing of aeons: the arrival on Tír of more primitive beings; hunter-gatherer people wandering the landscape, desperate for food, clothing, shelter. Simple folk whose needs and understanding were basic. Shamans among them prayed to the powers they imagined ruled – powers they saw as supernatural. He saw how the Fáil made real the objects of their prayers, their elemental ideas, their superstitions. Superstitions that grew into beliefs – made gods and goddesses.
He thought: Oh, wow – the Trídédana!
The voice of Magtokk confirmed his suspicions.
< The Tyrant?>
That horrible memory had not faded.
Alan struggled to see what Magtokk meant.
Alan thought back. He recalled Magtokk’s words.
Kate’s mental voice and her overwhelming sense of shock flooded Alan’s mind:
Alan thought back to that horrifying scene, the conversation below her crucifixion, her precise words: ‘You who were born outside the influence of the Fáil . . .’ But who had she really been talking to on that terrible occasion? Had she been talking to Alan and Kate, the oraculum-bearers born on Earth, or had she been talking specifically to Mo, their friend, who had never really been quite the person she appeared to be?
*
Kate was staring at the kneeling figures of the cowled Keepers, beings she recognised from the final days of Ulla Quemar. One of them lifted its head to regard her. She wanted to question them, but whom could she trust?
Kate hesitated. She wished she knew what she needed to understand. She said, with a faltering heartbeat:
Something profound was about to happen. She struggled to think through what any of this might imply. There was a rising feeling that the trivial things she was considering might have almighty implications. She asked a daunting question:
A sense of growing danger, like sirens screaming through her mind, was urging her to refrain from further analysis.
There were vast forces at work here with little interest in her and against which she was of no importance. She attempted to examine what was happening through her oraculum. There was something very like an explosion: a moment in time in which she had no idea if she were alive or dead, followed by extraordinary visions. She felt that she was moving through a cosmos, with great blowing
geographies of gas and violent forces.
The kneeling figure spoke:
She found herself within a peculiar void in which a great star loomed close.
Kate hesitated, thinking about what the Keeper had just told her.
*
In Dromenon, through the heightened senses that had been nurtured by Jeremiah, Penny saw the wheeling heavens, nebulae nestling in their beds of gases, in all the colours of the rainbow. She saw where new stars were being born. She felt herself drawn to the conflict of titanic forces, converging on a focus of extraordinary change. She allowed her senses to lose themselves in the wonder of it all, only refocusing her mind and wits upon the arrival of a great ship, a condensation of living energy, in the form of a raptor bird. It touched her mind-to-mind to reveal a being so powerful and strange that she witnessed ripples in the fabric of Dromenon provoked by its passage. From within its golden heart she witnessed two discrete soul spirits emerge. She recognised them as the alien beings, Mark and Nan, who bore the black triangles in their brows. As she continued to observe, the raptor bird fragmented into a billion scintillating motes, which transformed into a vast spindle entirely comprised of the black crystals of stardust. Poles appeared at either extremity and an equator condensed about its centre. Penny was drawn to take up a position at one of the poles. She saw a rival being, a spirit of shimmering light in the shape of an elfin female, take up the opposite pole.
Penny whispered:
She saw the spindle gather soul spirits to its equator: the alien beings, Mark and Nan, their eyes all black, radiating a force that was the opposite of light. Two others, alien to Penny, arrived at the equator, one male and one female, in whose brows triangles of ruby and emerald pulsed with power. Jeremiah whispered their names into her mind:
While Penny’s mind reeled with astonishment at what she was witnessing, a strange voice spoke within her head. The voice was coming from a single representative of the Keepers:
Penny hesitated. She spoke the words as they were placed by Jeremiah in her mind:
The voice of the Keeper addressed the elfin being at the opposite pole:
The elfin being spoke:
Gasps of astonishment came from the lips of Mark and Nan, and Alan and Kate. The same astonishment rippled through the True Believers. Penny heard the shockwave echo from mind-to-mind throughout the ocean:
Penny whispered:
Penny had many more questions to ask, but their conversation was interrupted by a fast-encroaching darkness. She heard a cry from one of the oraculum bearers on the equator of the spindle – the young woman, Kate:
Penny thought that Kate was lost for words, but then she rallied.
Kate had fallen silent. But Alan took up the challenge:
Mira waited for the import of her words to sink in with the three friends. It was Alan again who spoke for them:
But now Kate spoke:
Kate bowed her head.
The hushed silence that fell upon the gathering was shattered by a thunderous roar, words hurled into the universe in the language of beginnings:
A great raven shape appeared, casting an immense shadow over the entire spindle.
A second great roar thundered through the multitude. A second and equal darkness fell over the gathering and clashed with the first.
GODDESSES HAVE CREATED THEIR OWN GRAVES.
TĺR WILL BECOME AS EARTH,
A WORLD EXTOLLING THE LOGIC OF HUMANS,
A WORLD GIVEN OVER TO MACHINES.>
Darkness thundered against darkness.
<
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YOUR AMBITIONS ARE AN ABOMINATION.
THE CHOSEN WILL DECIDE.>
Vast forces clashed around Penny, blotting out the wonderful vistas of stars and nebulae. Then in the darkness that had spoken with Jeremiah’s voice, she glimpsed an outline – a being larger than any living thing she had ever witnessed with an enormous dome of a head covered in coarse black fibres. Enormous wings sprouted from the region of its spine, wings as large and diaphanous as mountain tarns. Its eyes were fixed with a terrible intensity upon her, two enormous black orbs above four smaller eyes in a row. They bulged with a dreadful intelligence. The monstrous thing glared, reaching out to her with antennae-like forelimbs, causing her spirit to shriek with terror.
She thought: I’ve seen him – I’ve seen the real Jeremiah.
I WOULD MAKE A GRAVE OF THE UNIVERSE BEFORE I ALLOW YOU WITCHES TO RULE AGAIN.>
Penny saw legions of stars rise from the spindle to populate the darkness, wheeling and attacking. But other legions, stars of darkness, manifested in equal masses and fought back. The space around the spindle was a maelstrom of fury.
The Keepers intoned in one voice:
LET NOW THE JUDGEMENT BE MADE!>
Penny’s head spun. A medley of voices hurled themselves against her ears. But rising louder, more insistent and urgent than any other, she heard Jeremiah’s shout overwhelm her senses:
FULFIL YOUR PLEDGE!
BE ONE WITH ME FOR ETERNITY!>
The Arinn Reborn
Penny heard her thoughts expressed aloud: