The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [35]
In the central meeting chamber, the leaders of Helion waited uneasily. Politicians, bureaucrats, ministers, clerics, they waited and whispered while surrounded by an elite corps of Necromonger fighters led by Irgun the Strange. Some of the representatives had come willingly, hoping to negotiate the best possible terms of surrender for their people. Others had arrived with hopes of working with the conquerors. Still more had been rounded up and chivvied along against their will, unable to escape or turned in by the first of the inevitable collaborators.
Silence fell as the Lord Marshal and his retinue entered. Without fear or hesitation, he started down the stairs toward the central dais. No one had to part the milling Helions for him. That he advanced alone, without flanking security, was not lost on the onlookers. Backing away, they gave him plenty of space, as if the radius of fear that surrounded him was a palpable thing and not just an impression.
Mounting the dais, he took time to study his surroundings as the Purifier joined him. The interior of the capitol dome was impressive—in the usual transitory, meaningless way of the ignorant and misguided. Like everything else, that would soon be corrected. As the Purifier began to speak, his words were heard clearly all the way to the back of the circular auditorium. The voice of the senior spiritual adviser of Necromonger society had no need of amplification.
“Leaders of Helion! Harken unto me and learn of the true reality. In this ’verse, life is antagonistic to the natural state of being. Here, humans in all their societies and sects are but a spontaneous outbreak, as Covu realized, an unnatural occurrence, an unguided mistake. Our purpose in coming among you is to correct this mistake. Because of the nature of the truth, we are compelled to bring forward our message of understanding and deliverance by those means that cannot be argued.”
It was certainly not the speech the assembled had expected to hear: no talk of paying tribute, of installing satraps and governors over the existing provinces of Helion Prime. No thundering denunciations or threats of reprisal against the stiff resistance that had been put up by the planet’s defenders. Some of those who had gathered in fear now began to relax ever so slightly. Others maintained their guard, as wary of what they did not expect as they were of that which they did not understand.
The Purifier continued, his voice rising, cajoling, persuading. “But let me tell you of another ’verse. A ’verse where life is welcomed. Cherished. Appreciated for what it represents. A ravishing, wondrous, all-encompassing new place called the UnderVerse. All one needs to reach this place is to walk the road that crosses over the Threshold.”
“The Threshold,” the assembled victorious troops intoned rapturously. “Take us to the Threshold.” It was difficult to tell which was more unsettling to the assembled leaders of Helion: the volume with which their menacing guards thundered the request, or the massed unison with which they declaimed it. It smacked of political and religious philosophies long discarded in this part of the galaxy. As the sagest among them knew, technology had a way of granting new life to discarded dogmas. Technology, and promise.
“The Threshold,” the Lord Marshal explained for the benefit of the confused—which at that moment included every non-Necromonger in the chamber— “is what you happen to call ‘death.’ Sadly, it is a term that throughout human history has been as misused as the condition itself has been misunderstood.” He stood a little straighter on the dais. “We have been privileged to see through these historical misconceptions, and to find the