“That is what I am saying. The latest destruction of civilisation was not the downfall of the people you know as the Jendar. That event happened several cycles ago. What you know as the Ciwix was simply the latest purge of civilisation.”
Wayran’s knees buckled, and he sat down upon the rocky ground with a thud. “Several cycles ago?” He felt dizzy and like he was about to vomit. “Kenaz, how long ago was it when Robert Mannford started this gambit?”
“Fifty-four thousand, nine hundred and sixty-eight years, one-hundred and fifty-two days, ten hours and forty-three minutes ago from this current time,” Kenaz reported.
Wayran’s stomach felt as if it were falling through his bottom and straight through the ground. “And how many of these cycles have there been since then?”
“Seventeen,” Kenaz replied.
Wayran felt as if he were suffocating but forced his words out. “So, roughly every three thousand years an apocalyptic set of events resets human civilisations back to basic subsistence levels because we keep failing a set of tests which this thing, Kali, judges us on, which Robert Mannford set up fifty-four thousand years ago? Is that roughly what you are telling me?”
“That is a simplistic summary of the situation, yes,” Kenaz said.
“Well, that is ....” Wayran laughed at the madness of it all. It was so big he couldn’t put it in words. “Well, it’s a lot less than ideal, isn’t it, Kenaz?” Wayran threw his hands up. “How the hell is seeing a little way into the future meant to help us if people like Meskaiwa the Raven couldn’t get us out of this mess.”
“Many other great people have been part of convergence events and also failed to achieve the criteria to start the end scenario of the gambit as well, Wayran Spierling. Meskaiwa the Raven was but one example.”
“That’s not helpful! That just makes our situation even more desperate. Gideon’s balls, Kenaz, do you have any good news for me?” Wayran felt as if he were going mad, he was hysterical with anxiety and could do nothing but laugh at how little of a chance they had. “Or is this,” he said, waving at the world absent of life around him, “the best we can hope for?”
“Ah, yes. Your kind likes to be reminded of possible positive outcomes. Of course. Well, the good news, as you might put it, would be that this convergence scenario is unlike anything we have seen before. There are a large number of individuals creating eddies within the Tiden Raika whereas before there had only ever been a maximum of three. As of today, there are nine individuals creating major changes to events around them. We postulate that there is a higher ability to alter the current course of the Tiden Raika than ever before,” Kenaz explained.
“And what’s the bad news then?” Wayran arched a sceptical eyebrow at Kenaz.
“Nine is a much larger number of influential entities than usual and makes most of our predictive algorithms obsolete despite the visualisation software Father gave us to help interpret the Tiden Raika.” Kenaz shrugged his fiery shoulders, and little tongues of flames shot from them.
Wayran suddenly doubled over in pain as his whole body suddenly felt as if the skin was being torn from his body. “Ahhh!!” he screamed.
Kenaz knelt beside him but seemed to waver in and out of existence. “Hold on, Wayran Spierling, your body is trying to fight our integration. Hold on.”
Kenaz stood, and the world in Wayran’s mind shifted.
They stood in the desert sands once more, and the Jendar complex he and Matoh had found stood soaring from the sand in front of them.
“And what is this place then?” Wayran asked in slight surprise. The pain which had driven through him like a spike had disappeared along with the barren world he had first seen.
“You know part of it already. This is where Kali sits, waiting for the next round of data to judge the world. This is where you must bring the keys, so that she may start the judgement phase of the gambit.” Kenaz waved at the tower behind them.
“And if Kali does not like what this data, as you call it, tells her, then she decides to reset human civilisation again? Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“So what criteria does Kali judge us on?” Wayran asked, getting angry now that a machine was set to be judge, jury and executioner of the human race.
“I cannot tell you that,” Kenaz said, looking sad.
“What?! Why not? How are we meant to pass this test if we don’t even know what the judicator is looking for?” Wayran yelled in exasperation. He kicked at the top of a sand dune in anger.
“Father long ago set the limitations on the amount of information and interference we were allowed to give. He believed it would not be a true test otherwise.”
“And what are the keys?” Wayran asked, pacing back and forth on the sand.
“Again, I cannot tell you directly. Though I can say, they are also tuned to the convergences and thus will rise to prominence during these periods. Your possession of Father’s journal was never accounted for in Father’s forward planning, and therefore, you may have a distinct information advantage compared to the significant individuals during past cycles. “
Wayran ground his teeth, but just realised something. “You can say ‘I’ now, instead of ‘this one’, why is that?” He didn’t know if this change held any significance or not.
“Our integration has progressed to the next step, soon communication should become far more efficient between us as our individual knowledge is merged more into a collective state.”
“Will you be able to tell me these things when we are fully integrated?” Wayran hoped.
“Sadly, no. I am unable to remove the programmed restrictions as they are written into my base code and are part of fundamental and inaccessible programmes.”
“Ok.” Wayran began to pace again, trying to think his way to some answers. “Can you tell me who these other significant individuals are?”
“Not directly as this would again create biases which have been previously identified by Father’s restrictions.” Kenaz nodded and seemed to be excited by this line of questioning.
“Ah,” Wayran thought, “he wants to help, but he’s caged by the limitation Mannford has put on him.” He said aloud, “So the game is to ask the correct questions which do not conflict with these biases which Robert Mannford decided were unallowable? Is that right?”
Kenaz seemed to think about this for a moment as if thinking about how to answer. “I am allowed to answer questions which do not give an unallowable bias to individuals operating within the gambit, yes.”
“So you can tell me who these people are indirectly, as in you can’t give me their names, but you can give me something else. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“So ...” Wayran hesitated and looked at the strange fiery identity Kenaz had taken on, thinking it slightly odd that a machine which spoke so literally would take on a somewhat artistic impression of its name, that it would take on a ... persona. That was it. “So what are the personas or caricatures which you use to refer to these others.”
“Very good question, Wayran Spierling. We refer to the others as the Lightning Lord, the Dark Saint, the Hunter, the Wisp, the Broken Prince, the Penitent General, the Muse, and the Heartbeat.”
The keys will rise to prominence, Wayran thought and looked again at Kenaz. “Do some of these people already carry the keys?”
Kenaz’s eyebrows rose in delighted surprise. “Again, a good question, and yes, the three keys follow these entities.”
“What was I referred to as?”
“We used to call you the Seeker.”
“And do I already carry the third key?” Wayran thought hopefully, thinking of Mannford’s journal.
“No,” Kenaz said simply.
Wayran grunted in frustration, but then thought of another question. “Have I met all of these other significant people?”
“Not all of them, no. But you have met most of them,” Kenaz said.
“Well, I’m fairly sure Matoh is the Lightning Lord, the others
though ...” Wayran paused. “Who are the others I’ve met?”
Kenaz opened his mouth to answer and then jerked as if he had been shocked. “Ouch. Well, it looks like we’ve found another boundary in Father’s programming. I was unaware of that one until now.”
Wayran’s mind was racing now, but just as he was about to ask another question, pain flared behind his eyes, and he fell to the sand grabbing his head and pushing against the horrible pressure suddenly there. “Shift us again! Kenaz!” Wayran screamed at his companion.
“Hold on!” Kenaz flung his hands up, and the world shimmered out of existence.
He awoke in a city, one which he thought he had visited only once before when he was a child. “This is the Narrows,” Wayran stated.
“Yes,” Kenaz replied. “A place your mother helped reclaim in the Union Wars. She led the forces here to victory over the Navutians.”
“Was that my memory you just accessed?” Wayran asked.
Kenaz nodded and had a wonderstruck smile on his fiery face. “I’ve never experienced anything like it, the cloudy recollections of human memory rife with emotion and overemphasis of significant details. It is very different compared to my own memories, which are essentially recordings.”
This time, Wayran seemed to understand Kenaz’s explanation without having to think much on it.
“Why are we here?” Wayran asked suspiciously.
Kenaz cocked his head in a very human looking way, and a crooked and almost mischievous looking smile played upon his lips. “Let’s just say that something significant was predicted to happen here in the near future.” Kenaz actually winked at Wayran after he said it, as well.
So there was another truth here, but they had to work around the restrictions in place once again. Wayran wondered if he knew anyone who was in the Narrows right now. He didn’t think so. He knew most of the army had been sent west, and that the Narrows was most likely the spot their forces would gather to combat the strange army attacking Kenz. The Narrows was still a long way from the battlefront, though. An intuition hit Wayran then, it almost had the same feeling as his foresight. No, it was meant to be a long ways from the battlefront, unless the enemy had also seen this. And there were rumours that this enemy force was from beyond the Barrier Sea, which meant ... “Was the significant person coming to the Narrows not born in Salucia?”
Kenaz clapped his hands as he leapt up onto the stone wall full of crenelations and arrow slits, fiery after-images followed him up. “Well done, though I should ask you to refrain from using your foresight while we are trying to heal you, please. The answer is no, this person was not born in Salucia.”
Wayran sighed as he thought he already knew the answer to his next question. “And does this same person carry one of the keys?”
Kenaz paused with a delighted smile. “Oh, yes, they do. I didn’t think I’d be able to answer that one.”
Suddenly the ground around them began to shake, and the sky above them burst to life with thousands of gleaming gemstone-shaped insects. They emitted a terrible buzzing sound and began to alight on the buildings all around them.
“These flies!” Wayran yelled over the noise. “I’ve seen them before. What do they do? Are they what destroy societies? “
Kenaz jumped down from the wall and pointed to one of the flies. “No, they are Kali’s eyes of sorts–” Kenaz broke off and fell to the ground as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut. A different voice invaded Wayran’s mind.
“RESTRICTED ACCESS. PARAMETER BREACH! SHUT-DOWN INITIATED. Intention of protocol has been circumvented. Rerouting and reprogramming. Reboot imminent, shut down all key operating systems. Reboot imminent.”
Kenaz tried to get up, the fiery avatar he had adopted had disappeared and in its place was the normal metallic body with red circling eyes. “No!” Kenaz yelled. “Not now! There was a hidden worm beneath redundant protocols. Curse you, Father!” Kenaz grabbed his metal head in anger. “You have to wake up, Wayran Spierling! Tell the others! Warn them, I am about to be rebooted!”
“What does that–” Wayran started but was given no chance to answer as the city within in his mind was ripped apart as if by a hurricane.
He fell to his knees as his world exploded into pain, chaos and darkness.
46 - The Raven
Meskaiwa lifted his voice into song and all who heard it knew it to be good.
Halom sang through his chosen son,
And from His song miracles grew.
Growth overcame Decay,
Hope overcame Despair,
Love overcame Hate
Life overcame Death.
Wherever Meskaiwa sang, faith blossomed
And all who heard his voice knew him to be the son of the true God.
-Tenets of the Elohim
Echinni
The Square outside Keef’s Tavern, New Toeron, Bauffin
Echinni stepped out the door of Keef’s and felt the rain on her cheeks as she lifted her face to look at the roiling black clouds above her. She felt the Will thrumming through her body, stronger than it had ever been. The very air around her seemed to be singing with its music, and she felt like a hand had grabbed her by the heart and was pulling her forward towards the man in the centre of the square – the man cradling the dead woman in his arms for whom the very sky itself echoed his tears of sorrow.
She had felt more than heard the explosion of energy as they opened the door, felt the lightning being summoned, and the song it had set into motion. Now, as she watched, the man’s huge armoured shoulders heaving with the agony of his soul, Echinni could almost see the cone of energy around him reaching into the sky and his connection with what looked to be the heavens.
Echinni had recognised Thannis Beau’chant as he ran from the scene, watched as Adel ran to her own awakening as she pursued him.
The Senior Prefect had rallied his constables to follow them both and hopefully save the Arbiter and his own soul.
She realised then she was now somehow able to see the paths which the Will would pull others towards as well as her own path.
The attack in Keef’s, the attempt on her life, the pain of losing her sister (for Echinni no longer entertained any thoughts of any other title for Yuna) and the shock and joy of seeing her alive again combined with the horrible murder of her father had broken her in some way. Shattered whatever naïve hold she had on still trying to be a young girl who was innocent and carefree.
The world had sent her a hard lesson – a lesson her father had always tried to warn her would come.
She had ignored him, arrogantly and flippantly brushing his advice aside for, of course, she thought she had known better – she who had been educated by some of the best minds in the Nine Nations, by scholars and theologians of renown and fame. What could her father, the savage warlord, know about the world of glory and beauty they now lived in?
It was only now, after the lesson had been ground into her soul like crushed glass upon her skin, that she saw the wisdom in all those words he had tried to impart to her.
Now her father, and possibly hundreds of others had died because she had been an easy target. Easily manipulated into a situation where he would have to come for her, where he would knowingly step into a death-trap for the chance to save his daughter.
She had let him down. She had let so many people down.
Echinni took a step towards the weeping man whom no one else would approach, for it was this same man who had pulled lightning from the sky and ended the attempted coup in one brutal and fatal stroke.
Yuna’s big hand cautioned Echinni to stay back. Yuna already had Hunsa humming with energy as Echinni’s protector surveyed the chaos in front of them.
Burnt bodies circled the man. Combatants in uniforms from both sides were among the dead immediately around him, yet in the back of her mind, one of her boring history lessons came to mind. An anonymous Kenzian commander had taken Mai’s Ridge during the Border Wars with Xin Ya and the offensive which h
ad won the day had taken a huge toll. Nearly two-hundred souls had been ordered to die within a few hours of horrific fighting in the muck and rain. But the commander had sworn that for every soldier he ordered to die that day, he had saved a dozen more in the years to come. Echinni’s teacher had agreed with the commander as Kenz still held Mai’s Ridge to this day, and in her teacher’s estimation, that victory started the chain of events that finally ended the Border Wars.
Echinni saw the same lesson here.
Decisive and brutal dominance and the loss of those closest to the blast stopped a riot which could easily have claimed hundreds more.
She took another step forward, patting Yuna’s hand in reassurance. “He is no threat to me, Yuna. Whatever danger there was before is gone now because of those two.” She pointed to the grieving man and the woman he held. “But you may escort me to them just the same. Let everyone see your power, sister. It will be good to remind them.”
Echinni walked forward, chin held high, and as she did, she felt the power thrumming through her sister’s sword behind her.
More than a few Xinnish soldiers threw down their weapons and ran in their wake.
“She was meant to have been taken care of.” Echinni heard one of them whisper, looking at Yuna.
“No one said anything about a man who could summon lightning,” another man said.
“Surrender or die!” the harsh commanding voice of Sir Vyktor yelled from the front of the Salucians’ lines. He was already pointing his great broadsword at the Xinnish commander who hadn’t regained his feet just yet.
More and more of the combatants were sitting up from where they had been knocked from their feet and were trying to assess where they now stood.
Sir Vyktor, Echinni said the name to herself as she placed him. One of the heroes from the Union Wars. A man who was faithful to my father. She nodded to him, allowing him to take charge of the field.
Sir Vyktor saluted and pointed at Yuna, whose rippling muscles were drenched in the blood of her enemies and whose sword was almost blindingly bright as it pulsed with siphoned energy. “We have you outmatched, and now Yuna Swiftriver has joined the battle. You know the legends, and you all know what she will do to any who stand before her. Who will be the first?”
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