Summoning Light (34 page)

Elizar's jaw tightened. "I had to move quickly and quietly. Agents of the Shadows were everywhere. One was even at the convocation. I had the knowledge. Whom better would you send?"

The more truth Elizar told, the angrier Galen became. He fixed Elizar with his gaze. "What else have you done for the Shadows, to gain their trust and learn their secrets? How many have you killed? Am I next?"

"Not if you will join me. Together we can discover the secret for making the tech. Then we need serve the Shadows no longer, and we can lead the mages in a great war against them. A noble quest, just as we dreamed."

"You tell me this story, and you think I will believe it and join you? You are lying, the Shadows are lying, Kell was lying. One thing I know for certain, and that is what you did." Galen's voice was shaking. He paused, and when he continued, his tone was emotionless. "For that, there is no excuse and no forgiveness."

Elizar looked away, and suddenly Galen saw G'Leel's gun. It lay on the gurney beside Anna's leg, half buried under a fold of her orange jumpsuit.

Elizar's gaze returned to him, and Galen tried to keep his face impassive. One blast should kill Elizar, though it would have to be to the head or the heart, somewhere the damage could not be undone by the organelles.

Elizar reached out. "I am telling the truth. The future of the mages is in our hands. What can I do to convince you?"

"Nothing." The gun was about five feet away from them both. He had to get his leg to work somehow, so he could reach the gun and aim it without interference. If they fought over it, he would lose.

"Galen–" Elizar extended his hand to grasp Galen's shoulder, and Galen jerked back. "For the sake of the mages," Elizar said, "you must help me. You must believe me."

Galen said nothing, and Elizar drew back his hand. For a few moments he regarded Galen in silence. Then he continued, his voice softer. "You of all people should believe it. I told you we had power much greater than we knew, power given to us by the Shadows. You discovered some of that forgotten power. You found one of the weapons they planted within the tech."

At the turn in the conversation, Galen's heart began to pound, and he found he was suddenly afraid.

Elizar continued. "The Taratimude warred constantly with one another. They sought power. The Shadows offered them a technology that would give them great power, make them great warriors. The Taratimude accepted. Many fought for the Shadows in the last war – another dirty secret. But after that war was done, the Taratimude returned to fighting amongst themselves. They destroyed one another. That is the great cataclysm that befell them, which has been so shrouded in mystery.

"What the Shadows did not tell the Taratimude, and Wierden came to realize only after the destruction of most of her race, was that the tech they had been given was not simply an advanced system of energy and control. It had been designed and programmed with a specific purpose in mind. As the Shadows promote war and chaos, they created the tech to do the same, to create an army of warriors, agents of chaos who would bring death and destruction wherever they went."

Galen's hand was gripping his side so tightly his arm was shaking.

"Haven't you wondered why mages are so quick to anger? Why we fight so often amongst ourselves? We can't even live together. The urge to fight is programmed into us. We are meant to attack others, to defend ourselves when threatened, to survive – through the healing power of our organelles – injuries that would kill others. To be nearly invincible forces of destruction."

Galen's mind jumped from one memory to the next, finding connections where he'd never seen any before. When he'd felt threatened by Elizar at the convocation, his first instinct had been to use his chrysalis to attack with overwhelming force. After the initiation, his body had raced with the tech's energy. The agitating undercurrent relentlessly urged him toward action. Each time he used the tech for attack, he felt its eager echo. Whenever he was in danger, he felt its driving need to strike out. The effort to control it was exhausting.

Since he'd agreed to flee with the rest of the mages, to repress his desire for revenge, he'd been fighting both himself and the tech. The restless energy had intensified. On Selic 4, he had been unable to hold it in any longer, and had destroyed Elizar's chrysalis. He'd been so consumed with the urge to destroy that to regain control, he'd had to turn the energy against himself, repeatedly.

Out in the tunnel, as he'd cast spell after spell of destruction, the tech had sung inside him, the energy flowing more easily than ever before, as if that was what the tech had been meant to do. As if that was what he had been meant to do.

Elizar nodded, clearly seeing the recognition on Galen's face. "Wierden established the Circle and the Code to curb our destructive impulses. That is why such stress is placed on them, why the penalties for violation are so severe. Some of us have buried our impulses so well that it is little struggle to obey the Code. For others, it is a constant battle. But without the Code and the Circle, we would revert to chaos."

We all have thoughts of things we must not do,
Blaylock had said,
thoughts of destruction. Most follow me because they must. Without the daily scouring, without the fasting, without the meditation and repentance, the abstinence, the vigils, the sensory denial, the mortification, they would be unable to follow the Code.

"With the Circle and the Code," Elizar said, "we focus on nondestructive uses of our power. We have subverted the programming of the Shadows, using the abilities they gave us toward ends they did not intend and could not foresee. We have combined the various powers they gave us, creating ever more complex spells, obscuring our true nature, even to ourselves. Instead of power, we focus on magic, knowledge, beauty, good. Some of us have even learned to heal, which was never the Shadows' intent. We have become much more than the Shadows ever imagined. We've transcended their designs.

"Yet in doing that, we've lost touch with our most basic powers. Somehow you rediscovered that potential. It's something about your spell language, about the way you think."

Galen had found the spell of destruction at the base of their spells, a simple one-term equation, a basic postulate, as he had called it. It formed the fundament upon which their powers were built, the basic truth of what they were. Take away the flourishes and misdirection, the staffs and cloaks and circles of stones, and all that remained was vast, destructive power.

The ability to listen to the Shadow communications also lay in a one-term spell, a basic postulate. Of course the Shadows would give their servants a simple method for communicating with them.

The tragic, horrific enormity of it struck him. The Circle took children and trained them and taught them and implanted into them the seeds of anarchy. They transformed apprentices into agents of the Shadows, and called them techno-mages. And as the programming of destruction spread through the initiates' bodies, the Circle demanded obedience to a Code that opposed their basic natures. Elizar dared speak of transcendence, as she had, but it was not possible. They were what they were: embodiments of chaos. The Circle fooled themselves into believing that from the Shadows could come good. That the mages could create good. But they carried the contagion wherever they went. Galen was proof of that.

Yet tech or no tech, he wanted to kill Elizar. He had the impulse to destruction. He dreamed of ripping Elizar's tech from him with bare hands, just as Tilar had done to Blaylock. Perhaps the tech had intensified the impulse, raised it to a constant, driving need. Galen didn't know. He had worked with the chrysalis for three years. He had trained it, and it, apparently, had trained him. And with initiation, he and the tech had been joined. They were a single being, intertwined so thoroughly that he felt incomplete without it. How could he tell which desires arose from him, and which from the tech? Or was there no difference?

"It all makes sense now, doesn't it?" Elizar said. "The way we live, the way we behave, the nature of the tech."

Galen nodded. He could find no more objections. The tech was programmed for destruction. He was programmed for destruction.

"You may hate me. I understand that. But I am the only one who can save the mages. And I can only do it with your help."

The mages should never have been made. Potentially, they were nearly as great a threat as the Shadows. Galen felt a great pity for them, with their dreams of creating awe and wonder, of doing good, of living up to a history from which one crucial fact had been withheld. They had all shared those dreams. But the dreams were based on lies.

As Galen thought over their history, of the vast knowledge they'd gained, of the great deeds they'd accomplished, of the wars in which they'd fought, the vendettas they'd carried out, the petty feuds, the plots and counterplots, he wondered if the good they'd done had outweighed the bad. It was only in the past fifty years or so that they had truly lived by the Code. Yet in that time, he knew, they had accomplished much of worth.

Galen didn't know if the mages could be saved, or if they should be. Elric had told Alwyn,
I can see no path by which the mages will survive this war. Not in any form that we would recognize.
Now he understood why. Without the ability to create new tech, the mages would eventually die off. Even if they somehow gained the ability, the nature of the tech would remain unchanged. It would still generate agents of chaos.

Galen didn't know what he wanted, except that he wanted to kill Elizar. "You don't need me," he said. "You have Tilar and Razeel."

"Tilar and Razeel follow the Shadows. Tilar will never forgive our order for casting him away." With a small gesture Elizar extended two fingers toward Blaylock's mangled body. "You see what he is like. Razeel – is beyond help." He lowered his voice and leaned closer. "I first had to convince you of my honesty. That is why I've told you all I have. Whether you believe me now or not, I have no more time to convince you. The Shadows have planned a trap. The mages will all die within the hour, unless you help me stop it."

Galen's heart jumped. "I'm to believe this because you tell me?"

Elizar frowned, impatient. "They know you warned the mages not to board the Zekhite. But the mages have another plan, and the Shadows have discovered it. The mages' ship will be destroyed, along with all those aboard."

If Elizar spoke the truth, then Galen's message had not saved Elric. All those on Babylon 5 would die. Yet how could he know if that was true? Elizar's revelations had been designed to gain his trust. Now could be the perfect time for a lie.

And the perfect time, at last, for Elizar to make his demand.

Galen spoke evenly. "How do you propose I stop it?"

"You must pretend to join with the Shadows, as I have. They've given up any hope of alliance with the mages now; Elric turned down their final offer. But if I can prove to them that I've turned you, it will reawaken their hope. They will believe that I can turn more. You must tell them that the truth has killed your loyalty to the mages. That you realize you owe the Shadows your allegiance. They have promised that if I gain your alliance, they will postpone their plan to kill the mages."

"And you trust them."

"I'm not a fool. I doubt them. But I know that they still desire us as allies."

"And they will simply let the mages run off to their hiding place."

"They will, if you tell me its location. That is the only way to convince them you are truly their ally. With that single piece of information, we can stop our order's destruction and gain time. In that time, we can learn the secret of the tech's creation." As Elizar spoke, his face grew animated, his mouth rising in a slight smile. "And if we cannot learn it, perhaps with your power we can force the Shadows to reveal it. You destroyed a Shadow ship, Galen! Your power rivals theirs. Imagine if we all knew your spell, how much the Shadows would fear us. But first the mages must be saved. As long as they still live, there's hope."

"And to keep them alive, all I need do is tell you where they plan to hide." Elizar was a fool. He was the Shadows' puppet, whether he knew it or not. They sought to draw Galen in the same as they'd done with Elizar. They would never share the secret of creating the tech. But they could demand endless proofs of loyalty from him, just as they had from Elizar. And with the mages held hostage in their hiding place, he would have to obey or become the cause of their deaths. Perhaps the Shadows would have him work with Elizar, approaching the others one at a time where they hid, weakened and with limited resources, giving each of them one last chance to turn or be flayed. Perhaps they would have him teach the others his spell. What chaos might they generate if they all knew his secret? Or perhaps they would have him fight in their battles, spreading his brilliant heat of destruction.

But there was much more at stake. The mages on Babylon 5 were only a small group. Right now, it seemed, only they were endangered. Could the Shadows suspect the deception? Could Elizar? Certainly he knew how the mages worked.

"Galen. It's the only chance to save them."

"And how will you know," Galen said, "that I have told you the truth?"

Elizar dismissed the question with a flourish of his hand. "My telepath will scan you to confirm it."

Somehow, Galen sensed that this had been Elizar's goal all along. All the truth Elizar had told had been to gain his trust, so he would undergo the scan willingly. When Bunny had attempted to scan Kell, Kell had killed himself. Elizar would not want a repetition of that. He would want to know the mages' true plans.

Galen could not allow Bunny to scan him. She was a P12. He might delay her for a few seconds, but that was all. He did not have the skill to induce a heart attack, as Kell had done. Elizar would learn the secret of destruction. He would learn that the gathering on Babylon 5 was a misdirection. The rest of the mages would be endangered. Perhaps it was true that they should never have been created. But he did not want to be the cause of their deaths.