Invoking Darkness (2 page)

A brilliant fragment ripped away, flying at the wall. Incoherent, separated from the rest, the fragment rapidly faded. Only the faintest remnant of it struck the wall, the last of its energy boiling across the surface. In the dream, a grunt of pain escaped him. Kosh pushed himself to finish his message to Sheridan.

"I wish I could have done more for you. There's so much I should have said and – now it's too late. You're right. It's time we began fighting this war your way."

He doubled over, holding Sheridan at arm's length. The maelstrom thrashed through him, the ropes slicing, rending. His residence became a chaos of strobing light and darkness, flashing energies and shifting shadows. Another piece ripped away, and another. Unable to sustain themselves, they faded, died.

Within the anarchy, Kosh found a sliver of hope. Perhaps there was still a way that he could help Sheridan when confronting the enemy on Z'ha'dum. He had never heard of such a thing being done at this distance, nor with one untrained. Yet he had also never heard of a Vorlon being ripped to pieces. In the manner of his death, there might be hope. He located a piece of himself that still retained some coherence.

It had been partially cut away, would soon be lost. Kosh prepared, extending a threadlike tentacle from his core. The enemy's brilliant ropes sheared the section away. As it ripped from him, he extended the tentacle, seized the fragment, and drew it quickly inside his core. From there, he forced the fragment out through his connection to Sheridan. The tentacle drove his fragment deep into the Human's mind, then quickly withdrew.

In the chaos, he hoped the enemy would not notice. Sheridan's energy would have to sustain the fragment, if it could. The Vorlons would find this further lowering of himself an abomination, when they discovered it. But he no longer cared. In the dream, he forced himself to speak.

"I've got to go now, John."

"No, no, don't leave."

Sheridan's face was filled with fear and concern.

"It's all right, son."

For some reason, in that moment, Kosh felt great solace in calling Sheridan son. He realized that he had created this dream not only to reassure Sheridan, but to comfort himself in the moment of his death.

"See, as long as you're here" – he nodded – "I'll always be here."

The last of his outer layers ripped away, exposing the core of him, the single brilliant flame of his essence. With a final push, the ropes of light sank into it. As they spun him into an incoherent fury of chaos, the pain bled through him into the dream.

In a final moment of recognition, Sheridan seized his wrist and cried out.

Kosh flew apart.

Sheridan jerked awake.

"Kosh!"

The turmoil of his essence faded, faded. And then he was in darkness, murmurs surrounding him.

They were Sheridan's thoughts, he realized, and within their flow, he could barely sense himself as a distinct entity. He was weak, disordered. He concentrated on the calming harmonic he had sent to his ship. It brought him, bit by bit, back into coherence. This single fragment, this small piece of himself, was all that remained.

He had come down from on high to help the younger races. Whether he had truly brought them closer to a victory against the ancient enemy, whether they all, ultimately, could be saved, he did not know. Before he lost this last piece, he would try to help them a bit more. He must bury himself deeply, to avoid detection. It might be that his attempt to accomplish any more was in vain. But perhaps, when Sheridan went to Z'ha'dum, Kosh could somehow guide him. Perhaps, if there was a way, he could lessen the terrible tragedy that he foresaw.

NOVEMBER 2260

C
HAPTER 2

With cries of joy, Anna and her sisters swooped toward the planet. The Eye had told them what they must do: strike quickly, with overwhelming force. They each had their assigned targets, and they separated now, plunging eagerly toward battle.

Her sisters had triumphed in many recent raids, destroying one target after another. Anna had been unable to join them, relegated to Z'ha'dum until her passengers needed her to carry them once again. At last they had, and even better, their requirements had brought her into this raid. Once again she could do what she was meant to do.

As her sleek body penetrated the upper level of the atmosphere, Anna stopped her descent. At this elevation she would deliver from their confinement great balls of destruction. Though the surface was swathed in clouds, she easily located her targets: a primitive city that ran along a curving section of ocean coast; the crude open-air spaceport beside it; and on the hilltop above, a grandiose structure where the head of government resided. She surveyed the site eagerly, calculated the most efficient pattern of attack. Over fifty thousand of those native to the planet lived here. There must be no survivors.

She opened her orifice and wheeled over the area, shrieking in exultation as she expelled one ball after another. Elsewhere, her sisters did the same, and their shrieks merged in an oratorio of evolution through bloodshed.

The balls plummeted through the atmosphere, and far below, structures exploded in great waves of annihilation. Buildings burst into dust, spaceships melted to slag, inhabitants flash-bummed to ash. A vast haze of dust shot up through the clouds and spread out below her, testament to the chaos she had wrought. The city was reduced to random particles, the destruction pure, absolute. Not a single structure stood, not a single being lived.

Then it was time for the second stage of Anna's attack. Her sisters had a different duty. They were to land in some of the smaller towns and allow the Drakh to round up inhabitants for transport to Z'ha'dum. What use the pathetic, weak creatures could be, Anna didn't know. Her duty carried more excitement.

She dove rapidly downward, hungry for challenge. The greatest excitement is the thrill of battle, the Eye had taught her. The greatest joy is the ecstasy of victory. It was true. She preferred to strike where she faced some opposition, some enemy to engage and utterly destroy.

Even where they did not fight back, though, she could take joy in the dizzying delight of movement, the red rapture of the war cry. And the ecstasy of victory. Only once had they ever been defeated, months ago, when many of her sisters had been lost.

Anna had not been there to fight the hated Vorlons. But she hoped she would soon have the chance. She had no fear of death. If she had to die, she only wanted it to be in the blazing heat of battle. Yet she didn't believe she could be defeated. The machine was perfect, and it was part of her. She could not fail. As she plunged downward, the dust and mist enveloped her, and moisture ran over her beautiful black skin. This next attack must be surgical, precise. Her target was a small town not far down the coast.

She slowed as she neared ground level, and the mist finally thinned. Amidst fields of high grasses and wildflowers stood a collection of simple structures made from stacked stones. This was all as the Eye had explained to her. The white-haired inhabitants had been drawn outside by the sounds of the city's destruction. They stared up into the darkening mist. When they saw her, they began to scatter.

Anna scanned the town for the tracking device. It had been planted on the one being she was to spare. There. It emanated from an unremarkable structure on the far side of town. Only a single being took shelter within. She would spare that one building and that one being, while destroying all the rest. She narrowed her focus on the nearest structure, and excitement gathered in her throat. The anticipation, the thrill remained as great as the first time.

With wild intensity, she shrieked out her war cry, her body rushing with the red rapture. Energy blasted firm her mouth in a brilliant torrent. The target was vaporized, replaced with a black, glassy crater. Three of the town's inhabitants ran off through the fields, and Anna turned her attention to them, destruction boiling up into her mouth. Her shriek sliced through them.

Anna fell upon the town, drawing energy into her mouth, screaming it out in blazing red, swirling in a dizzying dance of death. Then everything was reduced to smoking black ruins, everything but the single being in the single, unremarkable building. She would have liked to destroy it, too.

"Take us to the landing site, Anna," Elizar said.

Anna wanted to revel in the ecstasy of victory, to whirl among the clouds. She suppressed her resentment. She preferred to take direction from the Eye, not Elizar. But the Eye had told her that on this trip, once again, she must obey him. He aided in their victory, and by carrying him, she helped to attain victory.

She passed over the smoking ruins of the town like a shadow, and found the moss-covered rocky plain that overlooked the sea. She landed there, in the mist, and opened an orifice for her passengers. She would be glad to have them out of her, even for just a time. She carried three: the techno-mages Elizar and Razeel, and the telepath Bunny. Though she had carried them a number of times now, she still did not feel comfortable with them inside her, particularly the hated Bunny, whose very presence seemed a threat to Anna. They left her, heading into the mist, and she turned her mind to more important things. It was time for her systems check.

The machine was so beautiful, so elegant. Perfect grace, perfect control, form and function integrated into the circuitry of the unbroken loop, the closed universe. All systems of the machine passed through her. She was its heart; she was its brain; she was the machine. She kept the neurons firing in harmony. She synchronized the cleansing and circulation in sublime synergy. She beat out a flawless march with the complex, multileveled systems. The skin of the machine was her skin; its bones and blood, her bones and blood.

She and the machine were one: a great engine of chaos and destruction. The Eye informed her they had won a great victory here today. She and her sisters had found their targets. They had generated vast destruction. The liberators were pleased. A thrill ran through Anna.

Chaos through warfare,
the Eye said.

Evolution through bloodshed. Perfection through victory. Now they were one step closer to that great, ecstatic triumph. For the planet Soom lay in ruins.

* * *

Galen walked the narrow gray corridors of the hiding place. Harsh light shone off the plain, artificial surfaces. The curved passages carried him endlessly around.

Built in haste on a desolate asteroid, their retreat was too crowded, too close, small rooms packed together in two nested circles. Even in the quiet of early morning, while most still slept, the presence of the other mages pressed at him, and the walls seemed to constrict around him.

The regulated temperature remained several degrees below his comfort level. He buttoned the long black coat that he wore over sweater and pants. The tech echoed his discomfort. It had been twenty-one months since he had walked outside, since he had felt the wind on his face and smelled fresh air. Those things, he would never do again. Although the others might eventually return to the universe, he would never leave this place.

He finished one mind-focusing exercise and began another, a mathematical progression. He calculated one element after the next. One. Three. Six. He maintained the exercises from the time he arose in the morning until the time he went to sleep. For the most part, he was barely aware of them. Only in moments of particular stillness or agitation did he become conscious of the progression that built step by orderly step in his mind. The disciplined mental activity helped him retain control, helped him keep buried those thoughts and memories that would threaten his equilibrium.

As he had cloistered his body away, so had he cloistered his thoughts away. The process had begun long ago; now he had nearly perfected it. With each mind-focusing exercise his attention narrowed, telescoping on the here and now, forming walls that held out past and future, that kept his thoughts fixed on a single path, a safe path. He had learned that he could not allow himself to withdraw from the present, to drift away like a ghost.

In drifting he could lose control. Instead, he remained firmly in the present and blocked out everything else. Walking also helped him to retain control.

The regular fall of his footsteps soothed him, as his vision narrowed to his worn boots and the few empty feet of floor ahead. In this manner, he contained the tech's agitating energy. He needed to call the fire down upon himself only a few times a week to hold it to a manageable level.

"Again!" Tzakizak's deep voice echoed down the corridor, yelling out harsh, one-word commands.

Tzakizak maintained a grueling training schedule for his apprentice Hekuba, in chrysalis stage. Galen passed the small room where they worked every morning. Neither of them knew, of course, that their training was for nothing. In one more year, when the time for the next convocation arrived, Hekuba would not be initiated; none of the apprentices would. There would be no tech to implant into their bodies, no tainted gifts from the Shadows to insinuate their way inside apprentices who dreamed of adding magic and beauty to the world.

As Galen continued down the corridor, Tzakizak's angry voice carried after him.

"You aren't concentrating! I'm tired of your laziness!"

Galen picked up his pace. Twenty. Thirty-seven.

Around the curve in the corridor ahead, Circe came into view, wearing a black robe and her customary tall, pointed hat. She was walking in his direction, her head lowered in thought.

Galen had hoped for solitude, yet that was difficult, no matter the hour. Continuing forward, he moved as far to the right as he could, to allow sufficient room for her to pass. In the confining environment, they had deteriorated to such a state that a simple dispute over right-of-way could trigger violence. She glanced up at him, then looked again, her attention lingering.

He nodded. He had, to a limited degree, gotten over his self-consciousness around others. There was no more chance of passing himself off as normal, as he used to try to do. Though the mages didn't know what he'd done on the rim, they sensed, somehow, that he'd come back changed, that he didn't really belong among them. At this point, they'd gotten used to his avoiding them. When they happened to encounter him late at night or early in the morning, most seemed at a bit of a loss, as if a specter had suddenly appeared.