Eternity's Mind

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Osira’h still did not understand what deep connection existed between the faeros and Ildirans that Rusa’h’s agonized call could compel the elementals to respond. But they had come.

  She shouted both with her mind and her voice. The words burned out of her mouth. “The Shana Rei are a great enemy, but we will fight—and we beg you to fight them as well.”

  The fireballs swirled as if in alarm, resisting her. She felt waves of uncertainty. If beings as mighty as these trembled before the creatures of darkness, then the Shana Rei must be far more powerful than any enemy they had fought during the Elemental War.

  Jora’h drew strength from his mastery of the thism. “The blood and agony of Rusa’h called you—and I bind you by it. You must listen to me.” His command sounded powerful, but Osira’h felt that his control was strangely slipping. She added her strength to his and drew more from Gale’nh and Muree’n.

  Jora’h opened his eyes under the orange blaze of faeros, and she was startled to see that her father’s normally bright irises were now obscured by an oily black sheen of darkness that seemed to well up inside him. Beside her, Muree’n saw it as well and recoiled, but Gale’nh’s eyes were closed. Still recovering from the Shana Rei and now in the presence of elemental beings of pure fire, Gale’nh fought to focus on his inner strength.

  Under the onslaught, the Mage-Imperator shuddered, ready to collapse, but then the blackness in his eyes washed away. Osira’h gave her father all the secondary strength and focus that she could summon, and her mental voice intertwined with his. “If you refuse to fight the Shana Rei with us, then the entire cosmos will be unmade. You cannot ignore this threat. Help us! We share the same enemy.”

  The Mage-Imperator’s eyes were clear now; Osira’h had steadied him. He looked to her, and then all of them stared up at the fireballs. Together, their single voice rang out. “You cannot hide from the Shana Rei. We beseech you to fight them with us! Come when we call you. We bind you with the agony that brought you here.”

  The Saga of Seven Suns described how Mage-Imperator Xiba’h had set himself on fire to call the faeros, which held them in thrall long enough to battle the Shana Rei. That tactic had worked millennia ago, but perhaps the Shana Rei were stronger this time … or the faeros were weaker after the Elemental War.

  Now the fiery elementals brightened under the demand, like stars ready to explode. Osira’h could sense how they fought against the command, and she was afraid they would lash out at anyone who tried to force their will upon them.

  For a long moment the firestorm seemed to be approaching a critical state.

  Then the faeros backed away and rose up from the Prism Palace. She couldn’t tell whether or not they had agreed to anything. The fireballs hovered high above them, and all the Ildirans in the Foray Plaza below watched the ominous blaze in the sky. Osira’h could feel a pounding, thrumming mental turmoil of churning faeros thoughts.

  The fireballs streaked away, rising up and out of sight.

  CHAPTER

  9

  ADAR ZAN’NH

  Adar Zan’nh had assigned his battered warliners to stand guard over Ildira, because he knew the Shana Rei would return. He had hoped for time to strengthen the Solar Navy after the great battle at Kuivahr, but he never expected mad Designate Rusa’h to summon another enemy to Ildira.

  The Solar Navy had been gravely damaged at Kuivahr. Even so, their laser cannons and enhanced sun bombs had wrought tremendous devastation on the Shana Rei and eradicated the malicious black robots—though at great cost. Now his warliners needed to be repaired, their laser cannons recharged, their sun-bomb stockpiles reloaded.

  They were not ready for the faeros.

  Perimeter sentries on the edge of the system had spotted the fireballs racing toward Ildira. The Adar had activated the guardian warliners to stand as a barrier, but the faeros were coming in fast. “Prepare all available weapons. Laser cannons first, but be ready with sun bombs and conventional projectiles.” His throat went dry, but he kept his voice strong. “We will have to try everything.”

  He and all the Solar Navy crew braced themselves … but the burning ellipsoids dodged through the blockade like embers scattered from a fire, ignoring the warliners and plunging into the atmosphere.

  “Should we pursue them down to the surface, Adar?” asked his weapons officer.

  Below, the faeros converged above the center of the Prism Palace. The warliner’s communications officer sounded tense and perplexed. “The faeros have made no aggressive moves. The Mage-Imperator has gone to meet them.”

  “Stand ready,” he said. “Let us not provoke them. Yet.”

  An agonizing hour passed. Whatever happened down on the surface, Zan’nh knew the faeros would come back. Rather than waiting in helpless dread, he used the time to prepare. All soldiers knew that if they were forced to hurl themselves into the path of the faeros, they would surely be vaporized—but it was a price they were willing to pay to defend the Ildiran Empire.

  Again, alarms bolted through the warliners gathered in a tight cordon. “Faeros are withdrawing to orbit at full speed, Adar! They are heading directly toward our warliners.”

  The fireballs closed in, scorching a path through the outer atmosphere. “Stand ready,” he said. He had to hope. “Report from the surface? How much damage to Mijistra?” And is the Mage-Imperator still alive?

  In the past, the faeros had obliterated the city and melted the Prism Palace. Yet if there were substantial casualties, he would have sensed the death of so many Ildirans through the thism, especially Mage-Imperator Jora’h. Therefore, the faeros must not have attacked. So why had they come?

  The sensor chief called in a voice that cracked, “No obvious destruction in Mijistra, Adar.”

  “If we wait any longer to launch sun bombs, Adar, we will also be destroyed in the detonation,” said his weapons officer.

  The faeros roared closer, clearing the atmosphere and rising up to orbit toward the Solar Navy.

  “Adar?” the weapons officer pressed, ready to launch the sun bombs.

  “No … this is not what I thought.” Zan’nh stared at the oncoming fireballs until his eyes ached from the glare. What were they doing? Did he dare provoke them? If so, he knew the Solar Navy would lose.

  The comm system crackled, and a voice came through—Tal Gale’nh on the primary command channel. “Adar, the faeros caused no harm down here. They did not attack!”

  Zan’nh reacted immediately as the fireballs closed in. “Stand down. Do not fire sun bombs.” His insides twisted, knowing what a gamble this was. The fireballs rushed closer.

  Gale’nh continued to transmit from the surface. “The faeros communicated with the Mage-Imperator. We … we believe we were able to enlist their aid. Let them pass.”

  Through the thism Zan’nh’s emotions broiled. The fiery elementals hurtled closer, showing no sign that they even saw the warliners lined up against them. The Adar clenched his hands on the rail of the command nucleus. The fireballs careened into the cohort of Solar Navy warships … and then soared past and headed out into deep space as if the warliners weren’t even there. They simply rolled away into the universe.

  CHAPTER

  10

  COLLIN

  The worldtrees could not help free them, Collin knew that. The forest here was tainted.

  The sentient forest was one of the greatest forces in the universe, a power so vast that no one could comprehend it all. But now, when he needed them most, the verdani were silent, as if blind to the darkness that was devouring them from within. And that emptiness manifested itself in this hollow remnant of Kennebar and his followers, who had become human-shaped wells of darkness.

  He tried to get through. “Maybe it’s not too late, Kennebar. You were a green priest once. Maybe—” Fear stiffened his words, and his voice cracked.

  The voidpriest’s eyes were nearly invisible on his ebony face, and when he spoke, his mouth was even darker than the rest of him. “We all tend
ed the trees, but now we know something more. No one can stop the fall of night. The darkness is coming, and we will usher it in.”

  Arita clamped her hands against her head, as if a loud noise roared inside of her. “Something is calling me, Collin—but not the trees.”

  “The trees are silent,” Kennebar said.

  Two more black figures came down from the fronds and stood with the other gathered voidpriests, all of the isolationists who had once been Collin’s comrades. He couldn’t even recognize them now. A sick chill flooded through him. If he hadn’t discovered the groves of dying worldtrees and rushed to ask Arita for her help, he would have been here with Kennebar and his companions. He would be one of them, nothing more than a black emptiness.

  Collin took her hand as the voidpriests pressed closer.

  “Arita cannot hear us,” Kennebar said. “The trees rejected her, and now the shadows reject her. She is … different inside. If we cannot engulf her, we will kill her, as the Onthos killed Sarein.”

  “No! Sarein is alive.” Arita reeled, tried to lunge toward the voidpriest, but Collin held her back.

  “You are all dead,” Kennebar said. “The worldforest is withering. Eventually, the blackness will be absolute … and all will be peace and calm.”

  “I refuse. I am a green priest, and the trees are still alive.” Collin pressed backward against the thick, gold-scaled trunk of a comatose worldtree. They could retreat no further up here among the branches. Desperately seeking any help, he used his telink to pierce deep into the heartwood, like a hard projectile.

  Always before, the verdani mind had enfolded him like a safety net. He had been able to sense their thoughts, their information, just by stroking a frond or touching a trunk. Now, though, it felt as if his mind had plunged deep into cold, still water. Where there had once been a cacophony of information, billions of lives, trees, and green priests, along with all the knowledge that human acolytes and green priests had fed them over the centuries … now there was nothing. Silence.

  Refusing to give up, he sank deeper, sending his mind all the way down to the roots, searching for some spark of the intellect that had been there. The worldforest in the Wild was withdrawing, falling silent … growing senile.

  Collin had to find something. The trees were all connected, and other trees on Theroc were alive and strong.

  Knowing that he was leaving Arita and the voidpriests behind for a few moments, he made contact with the deepest heartwood—and there he did find a spark, a few confused and faint recollections. He awakened them, searching for answers, hoping those thoughts would give him a way to fight.

  Inside the verdani mind, he found long-buried memories, alien memories, some of them restored by the Onthos when they came to Theroc asking for refuge. But the Gardeners had also brought with them an insidious taint of shadow that they themselves hadn’t known they carried. Collin read the information there and found the answers.

  In those lost, ancient memories he saw waves of Onthos rushing to escape from their homeworld as the enormous shadow clouds closed in, as the Shana Rei built an impenetrable black sphere around their star system. Many aliens, unable to flee, had been left behind to smother in freezing darkness.

  Others had stayed behind to fight, fusing themselves with the great trees via the catalyst of wental water to become verdani battleships … lifeships that carried millions of escaping Onthos, who burrowed into the trees like parasites. Some of those lifeships were destroyed by the Shana Rei before they could get away.

  A very few Gardeners had escaped, though, along with their rare spore mothers, but their race withered and declined, because they had no worldforest, and the last refugees spent thousands of years fleeing and wandering, trying to establish new colonies, doing anything to survive. Along the way, they were also hunted down and nearly eradicated by the Klikiss race.

  And all along the Onthos had carried a blight hidden within their DNA, which they had now unwittingly brought to Theroc. They planned to thrive again, to become part of an ever-larger worldforest, which the blight was killing. The infestation would destroy the Wild; then it would snuff out the whole verdani mind.

  Kennebar and the voidpriests intended to assist in that doom. They were entirely composed of dark matter now, a manifestation of the shadows.

  Now only Collin knew the truth, and he and Arita were trapped here. Sarein must have discovered some part of the secret herself and been killed for it.

  Through his probing, Collin had nudged the worldforest mind, awakened part of it here. And now he knew he needed to emerge, return to his body and to Arita. The two of them had to fight and survive. It was more important than ever.

  I am a green priest! He came back to himself and although only a moment had passed, he saw the voidpriests closing in like slow ink-black soldiers. Collin and Arita stood together, ready to fight. “I am a green priest,” he said aloud, his voice strong and clear.

  He heard a rustling sound and realized that the fronds overhead were filled with Gardeners—not just the few who had come to watch before, but dozens of them crowded shoulder-to-shoulder, all identical and staring down with clinical fascination. As if anticipating death and blood.

  Collin drew a deep breath. The first enemies he and Arita had to fight were the voidpriests.

  CHAPTER

  11

  ROD’H

  The void around him was a lifeless purgatory that preserved his existence so the shadows and their malicious robots could toy with him, study him, excavate his mind.

  Because Rod’h was a halfbreed, he could resist them to a certain extent, but he was no longer truly alive. The Shana Rei held him in an entropy bubble, a vague chamber apart from the real universe. He drifted in the blackness with no sensory input, except for pain. And the robots were extremely good at inflicting pain—almost as good as Rod’h was at preserving his secrets. The Shana Rei were growing frustrated with him.

  During the battle at the Onthos home system, black robots had captured his scout ship, taking him as an experimental subject. Months earlier, the shadows had also seized his brother Gale’nh when they engulfed the Kolpraxa, but they let Gale’nh go—weakened and damaged—when they could not derive the answers they needed.

  They took Rod’h instead, and he knew they would not make the mistake of releasing him.

  Even in his bizarre isolation, though, he remained connected with Gale’nh and their three half-sisters, Osira’h, Muree’n, and Tamo’l. As he drifted, an unknown time after the attack on Kuivahr—because time had no meaning here—he reached out to make a connection with his siblings. He was surprised to sense Tamo’l more clearly than the others. She had devoted her life to tending the misbreeds in the sanctuary domes on Kuivahr, and she had escaped just before the shadows engulfed that planet. Now, he could sense that Tamo’l was vulnerable, susceptible … contaminated in a way. Somehow, the creatures of darkness must have touched her before she escaped Kuivahr.

  Rod’h feared that the Shana Rei had found some way to break her innate halfbreed defenses. Was it because of something they had learned by torturing him? He was frightened for Tamo’l. If the shadows had inserted some insidious hook into her mind, what sort of damage could they do?

  The frustration cut through him like a hot wire. Could he help his siblings? Could he learn anything useful from the Shana Rei? From the black robots? He had to accomplish something!

  One of the shadow creatures appeared, a formless inkblot against the darkness in his prison cell of nothingness, but he could sense the presence because the stain of darkness seemed somehow more malicious than the background. The center of the blot manifested a bright glowing eye, useless and symbolic, perhaps only for the purpose of frightening the captive.

  Rod’h had moved past fear, though his emotions were tempered into strength. He promised himself that he would disrupt them if he could not find some way to escape from this void. He was sure his siblings knew that he remained a captive among the Shana Rei. His thoughts
were still active, his body alive … in a certain sense.

  Nira’s halfbreed children were connected by a mental bond that went beyond thism. That had been one goal that the Dobro breeding program had tried to achieve, and why Nira had been forced to bear children against her will by different mates. Rod’h and his mother had never been close, but because of the torture and deprivation he now endured, he could comprehend the torment she must have felt to be held prisoner, constantly abused. He hadn’t treated her well, had even resented her for complaining about her duty. Not understanding her pain and helplessness, he had thought her weak. And now he doubted he would ever have a chance to tell her about the change in his perspective.…

  Now, focusing his defiance, he glared at the throbbing Shana Rei inkblot. The glowing eye did not blink, nor did it show any expression.

  Rod’h refused to acknowledge his helplessness. He pushed outward with his mind, searching for contact with his siblings. They would know him when his thoughts touched theirs. Osira’h … Osira’h was strongest. When he reached out for a susceptible contact with his sister, he felt fire carried along with her bright mental light. Osira’h was with the faeros! The faeros were on Ildira, right now!

  Muree’n was there, too … and he sensed Gale’nh, who had suffered much the same agony aboard the Kolpraxa as Rod’h was enduring here. Feeling the connection, Rod’h tried to open up to his brother. Gale’nh attempted to respond—but as soon as the bond was established, dozens of Shana Rei inkblots swarmed around Rod’h, pressing closer, swelling darker. They were trying to commandeer the connection, pushing through the bond to Gale’nh.

  Rod’h scrambled to block off his thoughts, to sever the link. He felt Gale’nh also resisting on Ildira, despite his longing to connect with his lost brother. But when the shadows reached out through Rod’h, Gale’nh broke the connection with his own will and determination. So, his brother was stronger than Rod’h had thought.