by Darius Hinks
Grekh was seated in a cube-shaped chamber, perched at the top of a clear-sided pyramid. It was an hour since he had heard the others and he could find no trace of their scent. He had tried to help the Navigator get back to them, but the Blackstone clearly had other plans. And there was no way he could reach the others now. The Terran had driven him away – angry with him for simply trying to save the wisdom of the fallen. What an absurd idea. Grekh was the oldest of his kindred, and he had travelled the galaxy for decades, but the short-sightedness of humans still astounded him. They would leave corpses to rot, even those of their bravest warriors, without trying to preserve the hidden learning they had accrued – abandoning all that courage and knowledge to the worms. And yet, they would happily consume the spirits of timid creatures, like ruminants and fowl. How could humans hope to evolve when they constantly diluted their essence with the souls of the fearful and the weak, but spurned the wisdom of their heroes?
Even now, after eating all that he could, Grekh would try to learn more from the fallen. He had marked the walls with his scent, leaving clear directions for any of his kindred that might follow, and now it was time to look again at what he had found. He took kindling from his jacket and placed it on the cold, black floor. Then he took out a tinderbox and lit a fire. Once the kindling had caught, he opened the sack and removed the contents, piece by piece, placing them on the fire. First, he added a flake of black enamel, taken from one of the drones – indigestible, but still useful. The flames flickered oddly, turning green as they licked around it. Then he took out a chunk of half-chewed meat and added that to the fire. The flames engulfed it hungrily and began to grow. Then he took out a bleached, crumbling finger bone and added that. Over the next few minutes he added dozens of tiny fragments, clicking and whistling as he did so, using his native language. He had mastered the human tongue decades ago, but for holy rituals he still used the language of his kindred, the Karakh-Kar. Changed as he was by his time with the humans, he had not yet learned to think in their words.
By the time the sack was empty, the fire was crackling merrily, adding an incongruous warmth to the chamber walls.
He let the fire blaze for a few minutes, then took out a piece of stiff, waxed hide and smothered the flames. A thick plume of smoke rose from the charred pieces and he placed the hide over his head, leaning low over the blackened mess, taking long, deep breaths, letting the fumes flood his consciousness.
His head grew light and his stomach growled. He saw the craggy eyries of his home on Akchan-Kur. He saw the farewell ceremony at the Perch of Nine Hawks, standing at the pinnacle, victorious, rain-lashed and surrounded by his warrior kin. The elders summoned him home, insisting that he alone, the oldest of his kind, had the experience to journey to the Western Reaches. The Karakh-Kar had warriors scattered across the galaxy, serving in countless armies. They knew of the Blackstone’s presence long before the warlords of Terra.
As the fumes filtered through his nostrils and down into his guts, Grekh sifted through each remnant of spirit, searching for anything he might have missed. The odd, splintered conscience of the drones stood apart from the others. The explorers’ thoughts were all similar: eager, greedy, desperate. Such sentiments seemed absurd to Grekh, but he at least understood them. The drones felt something far more profound and interesting. They were part of a vast, galactic puzzle. They radiated violence, but it was not the desperate, bestial tribalism of the explorers – it was a cold, ageless determination. Whatever consciousness drove the drones was manipulating the plans of everyone who entered its darkened halls. Grekh had heard the Terran speak of devotees. He used the word as an insult, deriding the belief that the Blackstone was sentient, but, with every spirit he consumed, Grekh felt that sentience more clearly. No, ‘clearly’ was the wrong word. As the presence grew larger, it also became more mysterious. The more it filled his thoughts, the harder it was to grasp. Even now, after scrutinising the thoughts of the drones, Grekh could not be sure what the Blackstone’s plan was – only that it had one, and that they were all part of it.
You were not sent here to understand the Blackstone, grumbled his innards. You were sent to retrieve our heirlooms.
‘There’s something larger here. The Terran and the priests did not come together by accident. And it’s no coincidence that Draik found me. The Blackstone brought us together for a purpose. Even the pilot is part of it.’
He took another lungful of fumes, tasting the souls of the drones, determining their essence. ‘There,’ he said. ‘There it is.’ Embedded at the heart of the drones’ thoughts was a single, repeated image: a spherical cage of light. ‘The Ascuris Vault.’ Grekh had seen it in countless warrior souls before he saw it on the scrap of paper Draik carried. ‘That is the heart of everything, and the Blackstone needs us to reach it.’
Then why does it battle against you? Why not give you easy passage if it has a purpose for you?
Grekh shook his head, causing his crest of spines to click and rattle. ‘To test us? To ensure we are worthy? Perhaps to be sure that we are what it needs us to be?’
The elders did not send you to solve mysteries – they sent you to find weapons and return as quickly as you can.
‘They sent me to explore without fear, because they knew I wouldn’t settle for minor victories when there’s chance of a greater one. The Ascuris Vault is one of the fortress’ stomachs. If there are Karakh-Kar heirlooms in the Blackstone, the vault is where I’ll find the most powerful of them. And, at the same time, I can learn why the fortress brought us together.’
He extinguished the fire and scattered the ashes with his claws. Then he checked his rifle and left the cube-shaped room, stepping out onto the polished slope of the pyramid. The fumes were still billowing through his head, merging different acrid aromas into a single, potent note. He sniffed the frigid air, turning until he caught a new scent, carried on the cold breeze from a distant chamber. He closed his eyes and allowed a thought to foment in his guts. It boiled up into his mouth and washed over his taste buds, filling his mind with a clear, powerful image: a weapon and place.
The Blackstone had spoken more clearly than ever before. He nodded, understanding what he must do, then began sliding, slowly, down the slope of the pyramid.
17
Corval’s consciousness folded back into his flesh with an audible snap. His mind was smashed, trampled and jangling around his skull, but he was alive. He was floating through black liquid. The seals of his antique envirosuit were intact, and as he glided through the blackness he patted himself down, finding that his body was intact too. His mind was a different matter. His third eye was trying to open, flooding his head with dazzling visions of the fortress. It was wonderful and deadly. As his second sight pierced the veils of the Blackstone, the changes in his flesh accelerated. His arms and chest were burning with a terrible itch and he clawed at the thick rubber suit, trying to ease the discomfort. As he thrashed in the void, an image formed in all three of his eyes: a frame, white and shimmering, the lines identical to the ones on Draik’s informant’s sketch. The vault. It was ahead of him, shining through the murk.
He kicked his legs and powered towards it, struggling to swim through the viscous depths. At first, the light remained steady. Then he recalled Draik’s face as he had turned to face Corval and realised he was about to be shot. Angry. Hurt. Betrayed. Corval remembered how he had hesitated to shoot and, as he considered the reasons why, the light fragmented and grew weaker.
There were now dozens of luminous spheres floating ahead of him, so Corval swam towards the nearest.
Finally, he came close enough to see that it was not lit from within, but from above. The sphere was made of something pale and it was catching a shaft of light that had pierced the darkness, lancing down from an unseen source. The sphere looked like a moon, luminous and crumbling, half obscured by clouds. Corval reached out and turned it around.
It was Draik’s severed
head.
He jolted back in shock.
His breathing became panicked, confusing his envirosuit and triggering a dizzying rush of oxygen. He kicked his legs furiously, trying to swim away from the head and then bumped into something else.
He turned to face another head bobbing in the abyssal dark. It was Draik’s again, identical to the first, except that this one was attached to a butchered torso, trailing ribbons of meat through the void. Again, the pale horror was lit from above by a shaft of wan light.
Corval struggled to breathe, grasping at his throat. His visions of the Blackstone faded as he began drowning in the darkness. He kicked his legs and tried to make for the light.
Another bloodless body thudded into him, sinking from overhead, forcing him down.
He wrestled with the corpse and found himself face-to-face, again, with Captain Draik.
His breathing was now so choked that his suit’s controls were struggling to cope. Warnings screeched in his ears. His vision grew dark. His strength failed. The Blackstone was crushing him.
I want to live, he thought, shoving the corpse aside and kicking his legs. I have a chance.
None of this was my doing he thought as he swam towards the light, dodging more corpses. It was all Draik’s fault.
But he was lying to himself. With every accusation he hurled at the dead captain, he became more aware of how he had deceived himself, and why killing Draik had only made him feel worse. When Draik had looked back at him, in that final moment, realising he was betrayed, Corval saw the truth he had suppressed for all this time. They both shared the blame. Despair gripped him. No, his own guilt was now deeper than Draik’s. Draik’s crime had been accidental; his was premeditated.
He looked down at a sea of Draiks. Dozens of identical faces, suspended in a liquid grave, the light extinguished from their eyes.
I’m a lie, he thought. I have lived a lie.
As he hung there in the impenetrable gloom, he realised this was the perfect chance to end things. He could stop struggling and sink down into Draik’s grave, just another Blackstone mystery. What more did he deserve? He relaxed his limbs and began descending towards the bodies.
He had only sunk a few feet when panic gripped him and he kicked his legs, powering up towards the lights. Even now, full of self-loathing, he wanted to live.
As he swam towards the surface, he saw that the lights above him were moving. At first he thought they were being refracted by the surface of whatever pool he was in, but then he saw that outside the liquid there was a great tumult – vast shapes were rushing back and forth, crashing into each other, revealing and obscuring the light as they collided and fell.
He broke the surface and was hit by an apocalyptic din. He was in an artificial valley – a huge, sheer-sided crevasse split by a river of black tar. At one end, the river flowed beneath an angular archway and disappeared from view, but at the other end, half a mile away, it passed beneath a vast, blazing sphere of light, as big as a palace and identical to the one on Draik’s sketch. This time it was real, rather than a vision – towering over Corval as he drifted towards it, still gasping, carried by the black river. A horrible grinding hum was radiating from it, like a radioactive charge, resonating painfully in Corval’s head.
The sphere was the source of the light and the valley was attacking it. The walls of the Blackstone were thrashing out like limbs, hundreds of feet long, shedding tonnes of rubble as they crashed against the cage of light. It was as if the buttresses of a cathedral had sprung to life and begun fighting each other. The limbs hit like explosives tearing open a mine, but there was another noise, just as loud, roaring down the valley. It was like the white noise of a detuned vox – the screech of battling frequencies, battering against Corval with even more force than the sound of the avalanche overhead.
As the noise jangled round his head, he realised it was more like the sound of a broken generator – electricity, escaping from coils and charging the atmosphere, burning the air. He knew instinctively what he was hearing: the incomprehensible cry of the Blackstone. It was enraged. Furious about the presence of the sphere, attacking it, trying to crush it with a savagery that was tearing the whole valley apart.
If the vault is the fulcrum of the whole fortress, thought Corval, why would it attack itself like this?
He swam towards the edge of the river. As he reached the side, he saw that it was more like a canal, with steep, smooth sides, too high for him to climb. He ducked as a huge shard of wall crashed into the liquid – tonnes of angular masonry that kicked up a wave of tar and sent Corval flailing back the way he had come.
He struggled to right himself as more blocks splashed down around him, filling the air with spray. As he swam, he spied a break in the sheer wall of the canal – a narrow vertical channel, barely wider than he was, leading up to the slopes above.
Corval swam into the channel, pressed his back against one wall and his feet against the opposite side and began to slowly walk up from the liquid. Walls were crashing down all around him as the Blackstone continued battering the distant sphere, but Corval managed to force himself up the channel and finally clambered out into the featureless, black plain at the base of the valley. He could feel the mutation beneath his robes throbbing and growing, but there was no time for the syringe – vast columns were sliding from the walls, exploding as they hit the ground, causing the whole chamber to shudder.
The sphere was like a fallen star, blazing through the tumult, throwing long, confusing shadows, turning the valley into a grid of blacks and whites, making it hard to see what was rock and what was shadow. Corval staggered through the maelstrom, making for an opening in the walls – a pitch-dark triangle, sheltered by a cube-shaped outcrop that had yet to be fractured by the whirling columns.
As Corval ran he felt a mixture of elation and doubt. He had reached the Ascuris Vault, he was sure of it – this spherical cage of light matched Draik’s drawing exactly – but the Blackstone was trying to destroy it. So was it really the heart of the fortress? Was Draik wrong?
He had almost reached the doorway when a toppling column threw him from his feet and he landed on his side with a painful gasp. The ground was still shuddering as he stood and bolted through the spinning rubble. The vibrations grew more violent, spraying cracks across the floor. Corval leapt as a chasm opened beneath his feet, then a second. Then, a vast gulf opened directly beneath him and he fell. His head hit something hard. His consciousness folded in on itself again.
Blackness smothered him.
18
Draik walked into a pool of light.
After so long in darkness the glare was painful, knifing into his head. His ocular implant quickly filtered the brightness and allowed him to see that he had entered a long, rectangular hall, similar in shape to a gallery in a Terran palace. Unlike all the preceding chambers, this room was made of a polished white material, gleaming and lustrous, suffused with a faint shimmer of gold. The room was hundreds of feet long, and so tall he could see no ceiling. It also lacked a floor. Draik had emerged onto a broad balcony, but it only extended a few dozen feet before halting at an abyss. Continuing on from the edge of the balcony and extending down the entire length of the hall was a narrow aqueduct, suspended on cables that reached up into the unfathomable space above. Running down the aqueduct’s centre was a fast-flowing stream of the black, ink-like liquid Draik had seen in previous chambers. The light that had so dazzled him was coming from the chasm beneath the aqueduct: a cool, silvery blaze that filtered up from hidden depths, shimmering across the gleaming walls and the elegant, dangling gantry that led down the middle of the hall.
As Draik hurried across the balcony, he saw dark, motionless shapes around the approach to the aqueduct. He paused to examine the first one he reached and discovered that it was a corpse. The body was a blackened husk, stark and shocking against the ivory floor. It was so badly burned that Draik
could not even discern the species of the deceased – humanoid, certainly, but beyond that he could not tell. He rushed to the next body and found it was the same – more charcoal than flesh, and so brittle it crumbled at his touch.
As Draik neared the aqueduct, he saw dozens more bodies and noticed one troubling similarity – they had all died crawling away from the aqueduct.
He reached the edge of the balcony and found that there were steps leading up to aqueduct, but no footbridge at either side of the black stream. The only way to cross the chasm would be to enter the liquid and swim across to the other side. The current was fast and heading in the right direction, powered by some unseen pump, or perhaps just the strange gravity of the fortress. Draik would only have to lay himself in the stream and he would quickly float across to the far side of the gallery, but his thoughts kept returning to the charred bodies.
‘You’re dead,’ said a voice. It spoke quietly, but the sibilant whisper echoed around the gallery, amplified by the strange acoustics.
For a moment, Draik thought he had slipped into the past again, tricked by the Blackstone into believing he was on a distant xenos world. The breathy, strangled tone brought back a flood of memories, none of them pleasant. He whipped out his splinter pistol and whirled around, trying to locate the speaker.
He could see nothing.
I’m losing my mind, he thought. It must be an hour or more since he had parted company with the others. Without Corval’s protection, the fortress was eating into his thoughts, confusing him. He tried to repeat the trick he used earlier, focusing on the wound in his shoulder, using the pain as an anchor, but it was no use; the voice came again, filling the cavernous gallery with its venom.