The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [143]
As his awareness continued to expand, and the energy of the depths seeped steadily in, the demands on his will-power grew. His Seer talents drew more and more from his essential vitality and it seemed that the Zyradin was present, watching over him, watching it all.
There was movement off to one side. The central junction of the roothouse had four galleries leading off, all looking grey, a little misty, and it was in one of them that a tall figure stood. It was a Human, naked to the waist, the skin of his torso marked with many small wounds. And when Chel saw the flat metallic implants on the back and the neck he instantly knew that it was Rory, even before he glanced round for a moment before heading away into the shadows at a crouch.
Instinctively Chel drifted forward, wondering how Rory had managed to find his way here, to the roothouse. But when the darkened gallery melted away into somewhere in the open, somewhere flat and gloomy, he realised that he had strayed into the domain of that Seer talent that he called the Dream Speculator.
Ahead of him, the Human Rory was creeping across ground consisting of scattered flat stones and tufts of grass towards a dark, squat building. There were metallic gleams and the glowing red and blue pinpoints of machine displays. Suddenly Chel realised that this was Giant’s Shoulder, and even as the thought struck him the surface of the promontory began to quake. Big stone slabs quivered and shifted and Rory staggered. Some structures, low buildings and a couple of watchtowers, fell apart and collapsed. Then a crack opened and a harsh silver-grey radiance poured out. Rory dodged round and ran for the squat building. But the ground suddenly began to rise from the centre, like a growing mound, forcing Rory to clamber along on his hands and knees.
Until fractures appeared all across it, seconds before it erupted in a violent rushing blaze of harsh silver light, with a solitary figure silhouetted against the brightness for an instant …
Chel breathed in suddenly, a quick, cold chestful of air, and he was back on the stone plinth. Most of his awareness was still guiding itself out to the last extremities of the nineteen roothouses and their networks of strands. The planetary energies continued to trickle through, and over on its mech-guarded fastness of Giant’s Shoulder the Legion Knight remained, unfathomable, yet perhaps also unsuspecting.
But the meaning of that vision – did it presage some kind of inevitable tragedy, or was it a warning, or something symbolic involving Rory? That was the problem with the Dream Speculator – the things it revealed could be thoroughly literal or abstrusely metaphorical, with scarcely any hint as to which was being observed. And right now he had neither time nor opportunity for the meditation that would make the vision clearer.
I must complete my work and trust that Rory’s path does not bring him more pain, him least of all.
KUROS
Bodiless in the cage, sights and sounds were all he knew. From a desperate, indiscriminate grasping at every audible and visual scrap he had grown in attentiveness and analytical acuity. Now he was almost attuned to the totality of the impressions that reached his eyes and ears.
Except that they were his no longer. He was a prisoner in his own brain, betrayed by his lifelong AI companion, Gratach, who now controlled his body. Kuros knew that he was only able to see and hear because Gratach permitted it.
At least the AI was not abusing the body it had seized. Kuros remembered rumours of other Sendrukans whose AIs had taken them over and proceeded to plunge into a frantic whirl of self-destructive pleasure-seeking, drug-taking and various forms of deviancy. Gratach had been modelled on General Gratach, the historical figure known for his severe austerity in personal matters, which accounted for the lack of self-indulgence. That said, the presence of the Clarified Teshak no doubt played an influential part.
The Clarified Teshak … over the days