'The test demands . . . demands the correct path to
death,' Chel said hoarsely. 'Each pillar is a meditation
focus that fills the meditator with a particular creed of
thought, an overriding set of beliefs and instincts.'
Levered up into a seated position, he pointed with his
good hand at the pillars one by one. 'Fear, escaping from
enemies; dominance, destroying or preying on the weak;
arrogance, reaching out for godhood; serenity, change-
less and creating no change.' The Uvovo gave an
unsteady smile, if I had been a fully husked Listener, or
had approached with all these new senses open, and
chosen the wrong pillar, I would have been over-
whelmed by it and, soon after, dead from whatever trap
the doors conceal.'
'We'll be calling you "lucky Chel" next,' Greg said.
i would wear the title gladly,' the Uvovo said, getting
to his feet. 'Once we are through safely. Now I must
open myself to the pillar of serenity . . .'
'And that's the correct one, is it?'
'So the Iterants of the Eternal say.'
'How much will it affect you?' said Greg. 'Will you
be safe?'
it is only a temporary veil over the mind and fades
soon after.'
'You hope.'
'Exactly so.'
Greg stood over to one side as Chel approached one
of the rearmost pillars, facing it with all three pairs of
eyes now open, hands clasped across his chest. In the
frozen stillness Greg resisted the urge to stamp his
chill-bitten toes, instead rocking back and forth on the
balls of his feet, keeping the circulation going. Then,
before he knew it, Chel was heading towards the
middle door of the three, arm half-extended, hand
raised palm-outwards. He moved with a swift, gliding
gait and reached the door before Greg was even
halfway there. At his touch the carven stone block
swung inwards and the Uvovo continued on through
without breaking step.
Just as Greg reached the doorway there was a
swelling pulse of pale green light and fearing the worst
he stopped at the threshold, peering in. But at the other
end of a short passage he saw Chel standing a few paces
onward, swinging his torch beam around and above
him, gazing into the pitch-darkness.
'The way is open, Gregori,' said the Uvovo in a
dreamlike voice. 'Join me.'
Nevertheless he felt a prickling sweat as he hurried
through to the other side.
'Such power waits here, Gregori, a vast slumbering
might.' Chel's voice was measured yet slightly drowsy.
'The legacy of the Great Ancients.'
For a moment or two Greg didn't respond as he
looked about him, trying to comprehend what he was
seeing.They seemed to be in the huge circular chamber
shown in the deepscan images, standing near the sheer
wall which rose perhaps 30 metres to a level ceiling.
There was a second waist-high wall, 4 metres in and
made of rough blocks, which ran round the chamber. By
torchlight he saw no decoration on the walls or ceiling,
but when he looked over the low wall he was amazed to
see patterns incised into the dark, polished stone,
strange interlocking, semi-geometrical designs, symbols
and characters quite unlike the glyphs and ideograms of
the Uvovo language, completely covering the circular
floor as far as he could see by his torch's beam. From the
scan printouts he had guessed the chamber to be roughly
250 metres across, which made this vast, ceremonial
decoration a staggering find, not to say a mysterious
one.
Following the low wall, he considered climbing over
for a closer look, but then further along, just visible by
his torch, was a gap. As he drew nearer he saw that
there was a wide platform set into the main wall at
about head-height with steps leading up to it. He
glanced back at Chel, thinking to draw his attention to
it, but the Uvovo was seated cross-legged on the stone
floor, eyes closed, his torch lying beside him, throwing a
fan-shaped shaft of light across the stone.
He'll see it all when he comes out of that trance, he
thought and climbed the steps two at a time. The steps
split halfway up into two stairways flanking a curved
shelf which jutted from the platform like a pulpit. The
platform itself was about 2 metres deep and empty but
on the jutting shelf was a square plinth with an odd
pyramidal depression in its flat top. Standing there he
could almost feel the ancient darkness congeal about
him. The air was cold and still, yet it didn't seem in the
least bit stale.
Was this an altar} he wondered. Or a vantage point,
since the great circular floor was the undoubted focus of
this immense chamber?
Greg descended the stairs. The gap in the low wall lay
directly before him and without pause he walked out
onto the fabulously inscribed floor.
A sudden, fleeting sensation passed over him and he
could feel hairs prickle on his scalp and the backs of his
hands. It didn't feel any colder out there yet there was an
instinctive uneasiness quivering in him. Frowning, he
crouched down with his torch to get a good look at the
patterns. The lines were smooth and precise and had
been incised in the stone with a fine, sharp implement,
yet the edges of every groove were rounded and worn
while the untouched stone surfaces looked pitted and
eroded. He reached down and touched the stone, which
turned out to be slightly warm. Then with a fingertip he
traced one of the pattern lines, a long curve with several
small loops, feeling the rounded edges and the rougher
stone on either side ...
Next thing he knew a bright gleam appeared in the
groove beneath his finger and began to race along it in
both directions. He snatched his hand away but it kept
spreading like a silver thread dividing and coiling and
entwining and surrounding. Seized by dread he stood,
intending to head for the gap in the low wall .. . and
was stopped by an invisible barrier. Fearful, he turned,
took a step and came up against another one. It was
solid and entirely transparent: shining his torch at it
caused a faint ripple effect that quickly faded. Trying not
to panic, he turned, pointing his torch, and saw an open
area but before he could take a step he heard Chel speak
urgently nearby: 'Gregori, as you value your life stay
exactly where you are - don't move!'
27
CHEL
The meditation pillar for serenity had made everything
so clear to him. With all eyes open and his every sense
ready, Chel had looked into the pillar and the pillar had
sung to him a gorgeous, interlocking river of concepts
and revelations that flooded his thoughts with intrinsic
truth. Be changeless and leave the world unchanged, the
highest aspiration, the supernal truth.
And of course, if all paths lead to death it does not
matter which door you take, thus when he chose the
middle door it let him through without hindrance. A
few steps on and he had to stop, his senses over-
whelmed - the huge chamber was alive to his eyes! The
glow of torches, the walls decorated with brightly
coloured hangings, the pulse and pattern of energies,
messages sent and received, visitors coming and going,
greetings and farewells, conversations, commands and
prayers. With the eyes of serenity Chel could see the
changes wrought by the past: changeless he could per-
ceive the warpwell in all its slumbering glory, its use as
a journeying portal expertly operated by those ancient
Uvovo.
He tried to communicate something of this to
Gregori, who had then wandered past him, eyes blind to
all the glory yet clearly still struck by the chamber's
dimensions and the subdued undercurrents of the warp-
well's mighty purpose. In Chel's eyes, the well's surface
was a murkily opaque layer, a thick translucent plate
covering nebulous depths. Not dead but not awake, the
warpwell slept.
Chel had sat down on the stone floor to rest his limbs
and allow his thoughts to drift into a true changeless
state. But something was amiss, something was holding
his mind back, keeping it from the soothing, joyous cer-
tainty of indivisible serenity. And whereas before, just
minutes ago, every precept of the serenity path had
stood pure and whole in his mind, now they seemed
vague, uncertain. Troubled, he strove to reclaim that
cherished state of being, to shore up its bulwarks and
reaffirm its foundations . . .
Then through all these muddled thoughts he heard,
clear and sharp, the impact of Gregori's first footfall
upon the surface of the warpwell.
He scrambled to his feet, the serenity meditation
falling away like misty tatters. The reverberations of
those footsteps were like hammerblows and were being
channelled downwards by the patterns in the stone. And
glittering webs were shimmering in the gloom beneath
the warpwell's opaque covering plate. Something, some
part of the well was responding and if it was in self-
defence ...
He dashed along the walkway. Gregori was several
paces out on the surface, his torch aimed at the stone as
he crouched down and touched the patterning. At once,
glowing tendrils spiralled downwards beneath the
human while restricting veils sprang up around him:
meanwhile, wider, surrounding patterns were starting
to glow. The warpwell was trying to protect itself from
its enemies . . . and its last enemies were the Dreamless,
artificial, inorganic entities, and Gregori's boots con-
tained artificial elements.
Gregori had just realised that something was very
wrong when he collided with the pattern walls. Quickly,
Chel leaped onto the wall and called to him;
'Gregori, as you value your life stay exactly where
you are - don't move!'
The Human froze and looked his way. 'Chel, what's
happening?'
'You are standing on an artefact built by the Great
Ancients at the world's dawn. Its defences have awoken
and will kill you if you don't get back over this wall -
now, remove your boots, your socks too. Roll up your
jacket sleeves, as high as they will go, and your trouser
legs.'
Wordlessly, Gregori did so and finished with his
boots hanging around his neck. He grinned.
'This feels like getting ready for some obscure coun-
try dancing ritual.'
Chel stared at him - sometimes Human humour was
incomprehensible, but especially so now.
'Turn to your left,' he said. 'Reach out and feel your
way along the pattern walls.'
'Why am I doing this?' Gregori said as he began.
'I am guessing that replacing the dead materials of
your boots with the living flesh of your feet may cause
these defences to either slow down or go into abeyance.'
'But you don't know.'
'I can see ... I have seen fragments of the past .. .'
Fleeting images now to his six open eyes, scattered
and fading in the rising heartbeat of an ancient, buried
power. And this is what they are here for, Kuros and the
Hegemony - this is what we must defend, if it does not
kill us first.
'How am I doing, Chel?'
Gregori had turned a corner and was following a
long, curving wall through the patterns, but the ominous
machineries were still escalating beneath him. Were the
warpwell's Sentinels following some ingrained, inflexible
purification ritual?
'Keep going,' Chel said, walking along to stand at the
gap in the wall, staring at the patterns all around
Gregori, pushing at them with his mind, trying to wrench
answers from them. What was this buildup of power
meant to achieve and how dangerous would it be?
Gregori was a couple of paces from the gap when
another pattern wall winked into existence before him.
'Follow it to the right,' Chel said. 'The other way
leads back into the pattern.' And a few moments later
Greg was an arm's-length from Chel, who then stopped
him from leaping the remaining distance. 'First, drop
your boots behind you.'
Gregori unslung his boots from his neck, tossed them
back the way he had come then grasped Chel's out-
stretched arm, which hauled him off the warpwell
pattern.
'Now what?'
Chel heard the sudden change in the building energies
and felt a strange vibrancy in his muscles, his nerves, his
eyes.
'Run!'
They took off in a mad dash back to the entrance.
Gregori had the longer legs and got there first, ducking
along the short passage and swinging round into the
cold chamber, leaning against the wall. Hard on his
heels, Chel saw he had stopped and dragged him
towards the stairs.
'Don't. . . stop . . .'
They made it to the top of the steps when the warp-
well defences finally surged, a soundless eruption. Chel's
eyes were closed but still he felt the edges of that puri-
fying reflex - for a second at its peak he found he could
stare through his eyelids and right through the rock of
Giant's Shoulder, as if it was foggy glass, to see the daz-
zling webs of energy that were pouring out of just that
small section of the warpwell pattern to scour the entire
chamber. Then the ferocious radiance subsided, leaving
him in the dark.
Opening just his ordinary eyes he saw Gregori
crouched at the top of the stairs, eyes wide and blinking.
'Chel? Are you still there?'
'I am, friend Gregori - what can you see?'
'Hmm, a familiar-sounding blur.'
Chel laughed. 'Your sight will return to normal soon.
I'm going back down to inspect the chamber - do you
wish to accompany me?'
'I think I'll sit this one out... Aye, and don't do any-
thing risky, mind. Take it from one who knows.'
'I shall not be long,' Chel said, descending the steps.
The warpwell chamber looked exactly as it had before,
although he was using only his ordinary eyes. The air
was as icy as before but now it had a faint mineral odour,
like stone ground down to fine dust. The incised patterns
on the surface of the well seemed dull and lifeless, and of
Gregori's boots there was no sign.
Not dead but not awake, he thought, recalling the
visions he had seen during the husking, the vast funnel
of energies reaching out to seize the ships of the Legion
and the Great Ancients alike, dragging them down into
the warpwell then further down through the levels of
hyperspace, through crushing, shredding strata to dark
and narrow places. Yet still potent. Will it be any use
against our enemies? Will we have time to puzzle out its
workings}
For a moment he was tempted to open his husking
eyes and gaze upon the fleeting ghosts of the past, but
instead he replaced the cloth headband, tying it at the
side. No, he had to meet with Weynl and the other
Listeners to seek guidance and determine if any useful
knowledge survived from those far-off times.
And he would have to give an explanation of some
kind to Gregori, who had appeared at the door to the
meditation chamber, his torch a bright knot in the inky
darkness. Chel grinned and waved, then hurried to join
his friend, wondering how much he should tell him.
28
KAO CHIH
'Ah hmm, so if I may summarise,' said the droid recy-
cler, a Voth called Yolog, as he prodded the small pile of
money with a long, stained finger. 'You wish to hire me
to recover your corrupted course data, so that both you
and your fine mech companion may travel onwards to
the outlaw anchorage of Bryag Station ... and this is all
you have?'
Kao Chih smiled and spread his hands.
'Honourable artisan Yolog, at every stop in the jour-
ney that awaits us we shall make a point of mentioning
you and the unequalled excellence of your work. Now if
you had to buy that kind of advertising, how much
would it cost? - yet here we are, offering it as part-pay-
Michael Cobley - Humanity's Fire book 1 Page 27
