Summoning Light (26 page)

At the same time, from the center of the window, fractures crackled outward. With a grunt Blaylock thrust his hand forward, and the center of the window blew out.

This time, the breach did not heal. The grey section seemed unable to flow, although the black was rapidly spreading inward.

Blaylock grabbed his arm, retracted the shield from the doorway to snap around them. Its whining ceased. Galen conjured the equation of motion for the fireballs. And as the edges of the hole turned black and began to flow inward, they dove through.

C
HAPTER 12

Galen's coat fluttered out behind him in the cold night air. Beams of light crisscrossed the sky, Blaylock's body a darkness beside him. For a moment as they tumbled, Galen couldn't tell which way was down. Then he realized down was the direction in which they were falling, and if he didn't stop their fall soon, the ground would do it for them. Blaylock's energy was taken with the shield.

Galen conjured a platform below them and they slammed into it. Blaylock grunted.

"Sorry," Galen said.

A plasma burst sprayed red and yellow over them. Blaylock's shield was intact but weak. He was nearly exhausted. Above them, the window had somehow been directed to open, and the Drakh fired down from it.

Equation of motion. Galen sent the platform down, away from the window. He had to save them. In the red spray of light, he saw Blaylock's face, his mouth tight, eyes squeezed shut with effort. Galen climbed to his knees and jogged the platform away from the lights, diving toward the darkness that dominated a large area behind the building. That must be the demolition site. It seemed unoccupied.

Then the darkness moved, its spiky silhouette rising up against the glowing night sky. From above, he hadn't seen it. A red beam shot from its front edge down into the ground, carving some kind of trench in the earth.

The beam vanished, and for a moment there was just the sound of the wind rushing past. Then with a shriek the huge ship wheeled and dove toward them.

No ball of energy would stop it. No shield would protect against it. There was no time to evade it.

He made the decision in a second that seemed to stretch out forever. When he had faced Elizar, he had held back. He had obeyed the dictates of the Circle. He had thought he could save Isabelle by sacrificing himself. Instead she had shielded him, and she had died.

Now Blaylock protected him, though the protection could not hold. In a moment they would both be dead. The warning to Elric would be unsent; he and those with him would be killed.

And the universe would not care.

Fury rose up in him, fury at Elizar and the Shadows, fury at himself, fury at God.

Elric had told him the spell of destruction was his burden to carry for the rest of his life, the burden to have the power and not use it. But it was a burden he could not carry. He would not carry.

He had lost Isabelle by his restraint. Morden had asked him if he could live with that decision, and he now knew the answer: he could not.

He and Blaylock might both be killed, this planet of Shadows might be destroyed, this universe of chaos and death might be enveloped in a massive wave of destruction. But he would not stand by and do nothing.

He would not lose another.

On the front of the great shape of glistening darkness, a point of red light built to brilliance as the ship prepared to fire. Galen closed his eyes, visualized the spell of destruction.

Energy collapsed around him in a massive, overwhelming wave, crushing him with suffocating concentration. Then with a great rush it shot out of him, flinging him back. As he hit the platform, he threw out his arms, one finding the hard surface, the other flailing in empty air. He pulled himself toward the center of the platform, unable to catch his breath. The air felt charged, strange.

Above him, the brilliant red light on the front of the Shadow ship began to darken. The energy he'd conjured had collected in a sphere centered on it. The sphere itself was difficult to see. Perhaps fifteen feet in diameter, it encompassed only a small portion of the leading edge of the ship, an area that had now begun to turn redder and darker.

The spiky silhouette abruptly stopped its dive, hovering over them. Time felt wrong, sluggish, distorted. Space seemed fluid and uncertain. Galen felt his left lung swelling within his chest, as if it would burst out of him. The few inches between himself and Blaylock suddenly expanded, becoming feet, tens of feet. Blaylock turned toward him, and Blaylock's forehead stretched high, snaking upward as if it had become ductile.

Above, the black spikes of the Shadow ship began to waver. Galen accessed his sensors, found massive energy, massive instability concentrated in the spherical membrane. Within the membrane he could no longer see the point of red light; inside was uniform darkness. The sphere suddenly began to contract, revealing a clean, scalloped edge where it had cut into the ship. The blackness within it faded toward grey.

If the membrane retained its integrity, as he hoped, then the section of the ship within the sphere would fade and vanish, pinched off into a separate universe, an unstable one in the midst of collapse. As this new universe imploded, the spherical section of the ship would be crushed to nothingness.

If instead the membrane failed, its energies might fly out like a mini Big Bang. The contents of the two universes would mix, and if the physical laws governing them differed, they could trigger a huge chain reaction of destruction.

The sphere was continuing to shrink, fading to the pale grey of the glowing night sky behind it. The energy levels dropped to a more normal range, as if the membrane and what was within it were vanishing from existence. Time snapped back to its regular pace, and Galen's lung retracted to its normal size. He gasped.

The small, pale sphere faded away, and a great rolling thunderclap split the air. For a moment, in the aftermath, he couldn't hear anything. Then, out of the thick silence, arose a shriek.

The Shadow ship climbed higher, a spherical area cut from the front edge of its body. Galen stood, his brief sense of normalcy vanishing in a strange rush of sensation. At the same time that he looked up at the ship, he looked down on himself from above. He felt disoriented, overloaded with input.

Then the pain found him – extreme screaming pain from the hole ripped through his body. A part of the machine had been taken away. He could not perform his functions, could not keep the neurons firing in harmony, could not synchronize the cleansing and circulation. The beat of his systems stumbled, could not recover.

Galen didn't understand how it was happening. But somehow he had become linked to the Shadow ship. He was seeing through its eyes, feeling its feelings.

Pain shot out along his arms, astonishing in its intensity – a massive systems failure. His tireless, invulnerable body was collapsing.

Above him, the spikes of the ship retracted, shriveled.

He was screaming now, and she was screaming with him. The machine was failing, dying. She plummeted toward the planet. His legs failed; his body collapsed. He hit the platform, saw a flash of Blaylock's fingers stretched toward him, and fell into night.

One by one, the machine's systems failed, and as the shriek of the machine faded, another cry sounded more and more clearly. It was the scream of a living being, a woman. They felt the same pain; they were dying the same death. The last of the machine's stumbling systems shut down, and he found himself blind, deaf, lost.

She searched for her connection to the machine. She and the machine were one. She could not continue without it; it was impossible. All systems of the machine passed through her; she was its heart; she was its brain. The skin of the machine was her skin; its bones and blood, her bones and blood. She was the machine. Somehow they had become separated. She must find a way to rejoin with it.

The machine was so beautiful, so elegant. It had its needs, and she fulfilled them. Without its needs, what would she do? Without the machine, what was she?

In the suffocating blackness she became aware of a body within her body, a body within the machine. It was all that still remained alive. Yet it was choking, dying. It was her core, the central processing unit of the machine.

It was a Human being, wired into the heart of the ship.

The ship slammed into the ground, and they screamed as their body broke apart, tumbling, collapsing, disintegrating. As if from a great distance, Galen felt his own body growing suddenly heavy, as if he were in an elevator decelerating before a stop. In the next instant that distance between him and his body vanished. He slammed into the ground hard, and pain jolted through him.

For a moment he thought he had lost her. Yet as they faded toward unconsciousness, they retained their connection a moment longer, and in that moment, Galen searched for a remnant of the person this woman had once been, before she had been turned into a component of a machine, before she had been hardwired to obey, before circuits and programming had overruled her life. As they fell into oblivion and the connection failed, all he could find that survived was a name: Anna Sheridan.

After checking on Ing-Radi, Elric left Gowen to care for her. Somehow, with the aid of Gowen's healing, she had found the energy to continue, at least a while longer. In fact, she was looking better than she had since arriving on the station. Elric encouraged her to rest until it was time to execute the final stage of their plan.

Then he had to speak to Alwyn. He hurried to the observation room, where mages coordinated their surveillance of different areas of the station. Normally the plain grey room was silent, each mage absorbed in his own task. Yet now, as he ducked through the circular metal hatch, he heard a high, shrill voice singing a grating melody.

Narn opera. Alwyn had to be responsible.

Carvin, Fed, Ak-Shana, and several other young mages were indeed gathered around Alwyn, who had conjured in the air the image from the probe on Vir.

The probe revealed Londo sitting before his datasystem, watching in horror as Alwyn's computer demon ate his files and destroyed his finances. The lights flashed on and off in his ostentatious quarters, and the wail of Narn opera added an extra element of provocation and torment. Londo bemoaned his fate to Vir as a pleasant female voice from his datasystem informed him he was now the owner of five hundred thousand shares of Fireflies, Incorporated. The mages laughed.

As the Narn soprano's shrill voice ascended in a screeching crescendo, the sound pierced directly through Elric's skull into his brain. "Alwyn. I must speak with you at once."

The other mages quickly moved away, returning to their duties. The smile faded from Alwyn's face, and the image dissolved.

Elric led Alwyn to his small room, where they could speak privately. He scanned the room for any probes or listening devices. He was becoming paranoid. There were none.

The harsh overhead light shone off Alwyn's silver hair and cast lines of shadow down his cheeks. Elric felt awkward. He was not accustomed to asking for favors, and this one could easily be fatal. Yet he had no choice, and no one else to ask. "I need your help," Elric said. "It is a matter of great danger. I need you to go after Galen."

"What happened?"

"Morden has threatened him."

The bags beneath Alwyn's eyes wrinkled as his face tightened. "Does Morden know where he is?"

"I'm not certain. But I'm not willing to take that chance."

"You could be playing right into his hands."

"That is why any action must be taken in secret."

Alwyn hesitated. "Have you heard anything from Blaylock or Galen?"

"No." Alwyn was wondering whether they had already been killed. But the lack of communication meant nothing. Blaylock would send a message only if an urgent threat to all the mages had been discovered. And Galen was prohibited from sending any communication. Elric refused to consider the possibility.

Alwyn tilted his head. "By sending anyone after Galen, you would be violating the directives of the Circle. Most unlike you, Elric."

"And this offends your sensibilities?"

"Delights them, actually."

"That is why I've come to you. I told you I would not lose him."

"But aren't Carvin and I needed here? With Ing-Radi failing and others not in the best of health."

Alwyn meant him, of course. "I need Carvin. I cannot do without her. But you could meet her at the gathering place, then go off with her wherever you choose. I guarantee that the Circle will not interfere."

A slight smile lifted Alwyn's lips. "But if I'm to meet her at the gathering place, you would have to tell me where that is, violating another directive of the Circle."

"So I would," Elric said.

Alwyn looked upward, shaking his head. "How I've waited for this day." As he met Elric's gaze, his face grew serious. "I don't want anything to happen to Galen. You know I love the boy. But I hate to leave Carvin. I realize you need her for Londo. But I'd feel better if I could bring her with me."

Elric knew the seven words to say to make his old friend agree, and he hated himself for saying them. "Going to the rim will be dangerous."

Alwyn rubbed a hand over his mouth, considering. Then the hand came away. "You're right. It's better she stay here with you. You'll watch over her?"

"Yes."

They stood silently, regarding each other. Alwyn, Elric knew, was thinking of what would happen to Carvin if he did not return from the rim. At the same time he was thinking of his long-ago friendship with Galen's father, which Elric had never understood, and the responsibility he felt toward Galen.

"I don't know how you'll manage without me," Alwyn said finally.

Relief flooded through Elric, and gratitude. If there was a way Galen could be saved, Alwyn would save him. "It will be difficult."

"No doubt. I'll have to tell Carvin where I'm going. She'll keep the secret."

"I know she will."

Alwyn clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't worry. I'll bring Galen back, safe."