The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [192]
Then came the explosions that demolished Giant’s Shoulder, exposing the warpwell, from which the Legion of Avatars began to emerge, escaping their ancient and dreadful prison. The Zyradin allowed her to feel the qualities of those ancient organic minds still confined within their elaborately mechanised, militarised caskets. The first thing she felt was a thrilling joy, the ecstasy of freedom from cramped black confinement, then came a gleeful, almost euphoric rage, an unshackled lust to lash out, a voracious need for reprisal against anyone or anything …
** It was the Forerunners who put them in that prison ** When they sense the presence of Segrana and myself they will come seeking retribution ** Only the Keeper of Segrana can be the bridge **
She shied away.
‘I cannot be trusted!’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be the Keeper … ’
The Zyradin faded into the pulse and flow of the living web, the cross-tracery of root and branch, the interlocking circuit of leaf and sun and stream. Then the other presence drew near.
You are here, Segrana said, because I chose you, you and no other – You understand the levers of knowledge – You know how to learn – You are the linchpin – Without you it will all have been for nothing.
‘Ye can’t put all that on my shoulders, ye can’t! … ’
Look! – and see …
All the powers and senses of Segrana suddenly opened up for her. Seeing was like flying through tenuous veils, an exhilarating swoop in amongst buildings, rooms, people, the streets and gardens, then out past fields, hills, forests, rivers, to …
An underground chamber where Chel the Uvovo Seer sat upon a stone plinth, his six eyes gazing in pairs at different things. Above, a few Legion cyborgs were being fended off by energies that flashed up out of the ground. Then beneath again with Chel, who was now staring straight at her, a sixfold regard that pierced her essence.
(All events are balanced at this point, he said to her. There are terrible futures to be avoided. Trust Segrana – she was right to choose you. Beware of losing the balance but prepare yourself to lose … other things …)
Her vision was wrenched away, translucent images flicking past, a flickering sequence of half-glimpsed places, half-recognised faces … Greg’s mother, her features looking tired and careworn, her frown-lines more pronounced, her grey hair tied back … a tall Sendrukan hurrying across burnt ground … five still figures lying on couches, wires and tubes issuing from their bodies while enclosing visors hid their eyes … a man she felt sure was the ambassador Robert Horst, even though he looked much younger, talking with a hovering silvery saucer … Julia Bryce, ice-cold Julia, calmly standing beneath a whirling corona of stabbing needles as they steadily dismantled her …
(This is the point, came Chel’s voice, upon which all events are balanced.)
** A linchpin holds the wheel upon the axle ** said the Zyradin.
A lens gathers the light of the sun into a bright needle, said Segrana.
** Without a fulcrum, a lever is just a piece of metal **
But all she could see was her memory of Segrana burning, trees on fire, veins of heat breaking through the ground, driven by the primal powers that she had unleashed while seeking to act against those invaders many days ago.
‘No!’ she cried, beating herself against the inner bounds of the dream-palace. Only to find herself flying beyond it, soaring at first then, assailed by guilt and a gnawing self-doubt, plummeting into gloom.
Greg, she thought. I need to know, need to find out the truth, need you …
Sideways whirling and hurtling through clouds of blurs and scraps of faces and pages printed with words … and there he is, stumbling