Invoking Darkness (36 page)

That, he could not do. Yet the possibility lingered in his mind, unsettling him, promising him the satisfaction he desired. He turned his mind away. He had to contact John and warn him, tell him that his plan would fail. An electron incantation with a non-mage was difficult, but could be accomplished, if he was able to forge a connection to John.

The Shadows might well detect the attempted communication. He would have only one chance. He would wait until the White Star arrived in the system, for the best possibility of success. Then John would have to listen to him, would have to turn back. In the meantime, Galen would pursue his task.

He followed the Wurt and their prisoners deeper, fatigue spreading through him. A faint sound echoed down the tunnel, like the chattering of a flock of birds. Gradually it grew louder, and as he listened, one chatter or another occasionally rose above the rest, and he was able to pick out a distinct, fluttering burst. He realized, then, what he was hearing. The chirps lacked the distortion he'd heard earlier, when the Shadows had been shielded, because here, they spoke freely.

The squawking clamor built until it seemed to surround him, and he came to the opening of a dark chamber. The blackness shifted as the Shadows massed within moved in seemingly random patterns, their brilliant pinpoint eyes weaving amongst one another like swarms of fireflies in the night.

Standing out of sight, he recorded as much of the sound as he dared and passed quickly onward. In the ancient recordings, he'd heard Wierden speak the language of the Taratimude. The Shadows' speech sounded nothing like it. Nevertheless, he sent the recording to his Taratimude translation program, hoping it might identify a word or two. To his surprise, he received a translation in his mind's eye.

Most of it seemed to be repeated talk of chaos and destruction – almost a litany. Interspersed with that, he found bits of a discussion under way, ideas overlapping, reiterated in different variations. He searched down through the translation for coherent pieces.

The Vorlons must have [words unidentifiable in program] where we would strike.

The Vorlons interfere too much.

Any progress we make is undermined by their meddling.

Their influence is everywhere.

We guide the younger races much better than the Vorlons.

We teach them what is important – desire and survival.

We drive them to evolve, progress, while the Vorlons freeze them into stagnation.

The memory emerged from the walls of his endless exercises, a strange artifact from some distant past. A couple stood before a mirror, preparing for a night out. The man's hands were huge, with prominent blood vessels. He wore a ring with a ragged black stone. As he fastened lapel pins to his jacket, he spoke.

I'm a much better teacher than you would be. I teach him discipline, obedience.

Of course you undermine my authority at every turn, manipulating him to your own ends, smothering him with your false love.

Galen squeezed his raw hand into a fist, accelerating his exercises, narrowing his focus. The Shadows and Vorlons had coexisted as enemies for as long as histories, legends, and myth told, always fighting through surrogates. Was this what they fought over? Had billions died, species been eliminated, the galaxy been thrown again and again into chaos and despair, all so two ancient races could fight over who provided the best guidance? How dare they?

How dare they unleash their conflict on the innocent, whether it was the passengers on a single ship or the inhabitants of an entire galaxy? The translation continued to scroll down through his mind's eye.

The Vorlons broke the ancient agreement.

They must, finally, be destroyed.

If the Shadows were truly considering the annihilation of the Vorlons, this war would go far beyond any that had come before. Galen searched through more talk of chaos and destruction for anything further.

If the younger races refuse to join us, they too should be destroyed.

They are infected with rules and structures.

If all the younger races must be destroyed or subsumed to rid us of the Vorlon influence, it may be for the best.

Again and again we have tried.

They have proven too slow to adapt to our ways.

Multiple species had been exterminated in previous Shadow wars. The Taratimude was but one. But to kill them all? They had the power; John Sheridan might win a battle, but he could never defeat the Shadows. Only the Vorlons – or the mages – could stop them. He looked at the text again, disbelieving. What was meant by subsumed, he didn't know. The translation might be at fault.

Let them fill the ranks of our new army, and when we have won, when we have total control, we can design our own races to build a universe based on anarchy.

The new army. Was that what Kosh had warned him of? Did the Shadows mean to put all those captured into their ships, like Anna? Surely they couldn't have that many. The words seemed to contradict the Shadows' very purpose. For beings devoted to chaos and destruction, it seemed they sought chaos only for others. For themselves, they desired control – control over Londo, control over Morden, control over Anna, and now, control over all the rest, who had proven unworthy of their instruction.

Perhaps they had learned their lesson from the techno-mages, those of their creations least under their control. He realized that, in a limited way, he had sensed the Shadows' nature for some time. But he understood the full truth of it only now. It reminded him of the Shadows' strategy in the shell-shaped region of space. The raids had seemed chaotic, but in reality, they had been carefully planned to manipulate the reactions of those under attack.

The Shadows were growing dissatisfied with the effects of those manipulations. If they could not control, they would turn their minds toward destruction.

Galen crossed his arms over his chest, rocking back and forth. He had started out knowing exactly what he had to do. Now his task had become fluid, uncertain. He had to stop the Shadows. Yet if he gave himself over to total, indiscriminate killing here, as his body raced to do, he would simply be fulfilling their purpose.

He would be surrendering to chaos. He hurried deeper until he again found the Wurt and their prisoners ahead. It was quite obvious that he did not belong at these levels, but no one stopped him, or even questioned him. He felt certain he was growing close to Elizar and Razeel.

He was walking into their trap. At least if they did trap him, did nullify his tech, the Circle's device might kill them as it killed him. The prisoners were split into two groups, and Galen followed one. They were conveyed into another underground cavern, this one about fifty feet across, twenty feet high. Galen stopped in the entryway.

The cavern seemed unremarkable except for a thick vein of reddish-brown rock that cut in a vertical strip through the black stone of the far wall. It glowed with the same runes he had seen in the fingers of stone towering over the surface of Z'ha'dum. The runes repeated a section of the inscription he'd read above. This column, he realized, was a continuation of one of those monuments. They extended underground, perhaps connected below to some sort of machine, just as a mage's circle of stones was connected to his place of power.

A concentration of energy throbbed somewhere far beneath him. If this machine did run through the planet, coordinating its systems, its defenses, then it must be the Eye, that source of the black light that had invaded him, inflamed him. The runes pulsed brighter and fainter, like the beating of a heart, he was struck by the sensation that the Eye was watching him.

The Wurt and their unconscious prisoners joined others in what seemed like a large waiting area. Farther down the wall of the cave, a door slid open, and brilliant white light spilled from a small side chamber. The bright light reminded him of the room in which Elizar had trapped him on Thenothk.

He scanned again for mage energy, found none. If this was the trap, Elizar and Razeel were keeping their distance until he was caught in it.

From the chamber came two of the grayish-skinned aliens he had seen on Thenothk. Their long fingers trembled with anticipation. When he'd been joined to Anna, he'd learned of their atrocities. They drilled into the brain, attached the interface devices, took from a person her will, her freedom, her self.

The Wurt broke off a section of their platform, brought a prisoner to the brightly lit chamber. The grayish aliens followed the prisoner inside. Within a few seconds, a shrill whirring echoed out through the cave.

Galen turned his attention away, to the pulsing runes. He could not interfere. He had to hold on, hold on until he found Elizar and Razeel. Still the drill whirred. The Shadow tech insinuated its way into these prisoners. They were infected with the programming of chaos and destruction. The mages' initiations were disguised with flourishes and stage dressing, but was the end result much different?

One key difference, he knew, separated them. These prisoners were the Shadows' slaves, with no choice but to serve, to obey the directives of the Eye. Galen was no slave. The Shadows had given him the power, and the ability to control it. So instead, he was a slave to control.

Closer by, the Wurt separated another section from the platform, bringing a second prisoner toward the brightly lit chamber. As his eyes fell upon the Nam, he recognized her. G'Leel. It couldn't be. This must be Elizar's trap.

Galen scanned the unconscious figure, the gold-and-black spotted head, white scar across the nose, black leather vest, muscular biceps, black gloves, pants. No mage illusion disguised the figure.

I want to help you,
she had said.
Whatever your task is. Wherever it takes you.

Galen took a few steps toward her. The first prisoner was brought out from the bright chamber, and G'Leel was ushered in. The door built into the stone wall closed, the cavern falling back into its dim light.

He cast the spell to access the relay aboard his ship. Through it, he could reach the relay orbiting Regula 4. Then he could reassure himself that G'Leel was still there, and safe. Not here. Not here.

But there was no echo from the tech. He could not reach the relay. Whether he was too deep, or Elizar had set up some block, he couldn't tell. If he'd remained associated with the ship, he would have had no trouble. But he had not. The sound of the drill chattered out over the cavern. Elizar wanted him to go into that room. That had to be the trap. He could not enter.

He had wanted to wait until he found Elizar and Razeel before unleashing his energy. But he could not wait. So many had died because of him. He could not allow her to become another.

Galen focused on the door and surrounding stone, visualized the one-term equation of destruction. Energy fell upon him with crushing pressure in wave upon wave upon wave, burning through his skin, singing down the lines of tech, filling him with brilliant, ecstatic fire.

For the first time in nearly two years, he'd cast the spell that was his purpose for existing, and he was alive, truly alive, his body blazing, incandescent. With a rush the energy shot out toward the chamber, sending him stumbling back. A spherical area encompassing the door and the stone around it began to redden and darken.

Space became fluid, the cave walls undulating in waves, the bodies of the Wurt and their prisoners swelling in some places, contracting in others. The air felt charged, and time itself grew thick, sluggish.

Something slapped against the side of his neck. Galen turned, his torso seeming to torque around while his legs remained in place, his body ductile, made of liquid fire. A Wurt stood there, his mouth open in an almost comical expression of fear, his hand, withdrawing from Galen, curving in a serpentine course.

The Wurt had stuck something to Galen's neck. And before Galen's hand even reached it, he realized what it was: a tranq tab, bonded to his skin. In three seconds, he would be unconscious.

G'Leel and the bright room had been misdirections. Here was Elizar's trap. Simple and effective. Already a second had passed. The sphere must cut into his neck to have any impact; the tranquilizer would already be driving into his system, and he must remove as much of it as he could. If he lost consciousness, he would never wake again.

Galen focused on the location of the tab, visualized the one-term equation. With the blazing energy surging through his body, he felt no pain, just a growing pressure against his neck as the sphere formed.

If the drug had already gotten into his system, then he could do nothing to stop it. Yet under the influence of the spell of destruction, time was slowed, distorted. He must take advantage of that. Elizar and Razeel remained nowhere in sight.

Galen conjured a platform beneath himself, conjured equation of motion, equation of motion. He sped from the cavern, twisted past a group of Drakh, swerved down a dark tunnel. He must go deep, so deep that no one could find him. His legs wobbled, the fluid fire swaying, wavering. He fell to his knees. Forming the equations of motion, navigating down the twisting tunnels, became more and more difficult.

The pressure at his neck began to burn with a fire of its own. He tried again to access the probe network, and this time he succeeded. He selected the relay orbiting Regula 4, the probe on G'Leel. She stood outside, watching the colorful sunset on Alwyn's home. She was safe.

As the passages split again and again, he raced deeper and deeper, leaving the Shadows' servants behind, the tunnels contracting around him, growing vague and dark. With a crack the pressure at his neck vanished, and he found himself on his side, breathing hard. Wetness ran across his back.

The tunnel ended ahead. He continued all the way into the low, narrow space, and dissolved the platform. With effort he focused on the tunnel's ceiling perhaps twenty feet back along its course, visualized the spell of destruction within the rock.