by Chris Reher
“Stop at once!” Galen felt the adept’s attempts to restrain him. “The La’il is over there! I’ve not felt her this strongly in years!”
Galen was surprised that, although powerful, the man’s abilities were not what he had expected of the people of Chenoweth. It would take very little effort to elude his mental grasp. “She is still on the Homeworld. But there is only a single, untrained adept between La’il and this little gathering. And she’s just about out of chi’ro.”
“What is happening down there? I’ve never felt the La’il so powered up. What is happening on Thali? Why were you drawing chi’ro from here?” Sensing no deceit in Galen’s urgency, the man released him. Immediately, some of the adepts began to feed the moon’s energy into the conduit and from there to Aletha, who picked it up hungrily.
Galen experimented with a deep breath and found it relatively painless. “We have to get back,” he rasped, rubbing his chest. “We need to close that seal again.” He staggered against the adept, feeling a new wave of pain as Chor coughed, blood pouring from his mouth and nose.
“Your brother can’t go back in this state. This will take more time. His lung is punctured.”
Galen cursed. “I can’t leave him up here. We have to go back together.” Looking at the man’s puzzled face, he shrugged. “Complicated. I’m one of the giants. From up there.”
“A Homeworlder? How is this possible?”
Galen winced but did not ward off the adept’s intrusion when he felt himself scanned far more thoroughly than he imagined possible. This adept’s abilities were wielded differently than those of the Homeworld’s primes, and far more effectively.
Galen shrugged uncomfortably when the man released him. “I’ve always been in favor of a little conversation before getting that personal.”
“Dazai!”
“What?” Galen looked around to see what had startled the man before realizing that the adept’s astounded gaze was fixed upon him.
Suddenly several more people appeared from conduits forming and fading so quickly that Galen wasn’t sure he had even seen them. No one but the older adept had spoken aloud, even the healers surrounding Chor did their work silently, evidence of some sort of mental communication among these people.
There was an odd excitement among these newly arrived adepts now and he found himself backing away from their intent, expectant stares.
“Dazai!” the elder adept said again. “Returned after all these years.”
“Returned? What are you talking about?”
The adept lifted a hand to cup Galen’s chin. “Yes, I see the resemblance.” He turned Galen’s face to look at his profile. “A good likeness, in fact. And not aged a day!”
Galen felt others now reaching for him, digging into him until he finally had to shut them all out. They looked surprised and even offended at this and, as they exchanged meaningful looks, he was sure they were discussing the uncouthness of this Homeworlder. “What do you people want?” He turned to the older adept. “What are you talking about?”
“You are Dazai! A son, perhaps, or grandson. But there is more than that. Something too familiar, too much like Dazai to be merely progeny. How did you come to be?”
Galen could only stare at the excited adept. Dazai his sire? The Chenowan’s discovery answered as many question as it posed and, reluctantly, Galen put it all aside. He sank onto a large boulder, his eyes on the splendor of the valley below. The Garden, Aletha would say. It was everything her people imagined it to be. “How many of these habitats have you built?”
The adept blinked, taken aback by Galen’s response. “Five, although we live only in this one, for the most part.” The Chenowan shook his head, as if suddenly aware of his lack of manners. “I’m sorry, my name is Bacchias Dwen Neben. We’ve been watching the seal for weeks now, knowing that the La’il is gathering her forces to break through. The day we’ve dreaded has come. Three hundred years of peace are at an end.”
“I was told you were trying to open the conduit. To invade the Homeworld.”
“The Homeworld?” Dwen Neben exclaimed. “Hardly! May La’il choke on it.”
“You sealed the apertures,” Galen pointed at Thali. “You left them there.”
“We did. There was no choice. With so much of the moon’s chi’ro removed we feared that it would become uninhabitable within a few centuries, if not sooner. We tried to get them to leave Thali, to come here. Many of their adepts came with us rather than live without chi’ro. But the lesser talents did not want to leave. So Dazai closed the doors in the hopes of keeping the La’il out. We assumed that we would return to Thali later to find out if the moon was restoring itself or if we should try again to evacuate the people. Unfortunately, we did not foresee that we would be unable to activate the launch, nor La’il’s determination to succeed in that.”
Galen sighed. This man had no inkling about the misery that their well-intentioned advice had brought upon the remaining adepts. “And then Aletha was born and she has the ability to open the gates. You’ve been trying to stop her ever since the La’il found her and sent me to bring her here.”
“Even before then,” Neben said. “Any significant use of chi’ro is harming the planet. Over the years she grew steadily more powerful. We hoped our agents on Thali would find her before she caused much more damage. But they’ve become so weak that their talents barely even register with us and it became difficult to lead them. We started to trifle with the launch again, hoping to bring her here where she could do no harm. Then when you found her the drain of resources became alarming. And today La’il stands at our door, ready to tear it down.”
Galen studied the small crowd, easily reading the apprehension with which they regarded the conduit in their midst. Yet no one had attempted to dissipate it. “Come back with me and help us destroy the launch sites that lead to the Homeworld. There must be a way. You’ll never have to fear La’il again.”
Neben’s gaze strayed to the launch. “Destroy the sites? Even if that were possible, surely the La’il and her ambitions will some day cease to be. These links to the planet were here long before our people arrived on the Homeworld. Can we truly know their purpose? Can you say that some day we will not desperately need them? Can we destroy something so singular, so mysterious, without risking damage to ourselves, or these worlds, in the future?”
“She will destroy all of this if we don’t find a way to stop her! If you won’t take out the launch sites then come with me. Help us fight her.”
“Fight her? How?”
“Kill the bitch! You’re prime adepts. You have a wealth of chi’ro. Surely you can stand against her.”
“I doubt any of us can.” His gesture swept across the people now watching them in silence. “We’ve not raised voice or hand in anger in nearly three hundred years. No, we have not forgotten the La’il, nor what happened on Thali. But we are no longer a part of that. We spend our lives in a dream. What matters is only what we can create in our minds or how we touch the minds of others, to please them and ourselves. Look around you. We have all we need because we need very little. We don’t even build cities. Why build castles when anyone can do so? Why own a house when we can be anywhere we wish? If we want to eat we let something grow. If we are cold we change the air around us. If someone upsets us we go away.” He shook his head. “The La’il would find no worthy adversary among us. It’s beyond us to destroy, even one such as she.”
Galen sighed, unaccountably amused by the man’s revelations. Then he saw the sickening amount of blood darkening the stone around the launch and was reminded that Chenoweth’s philosophies had no part in the matter at hand. That was his blood on the ground and La’il was to blame for it. “We have to go back.” Chor was stronger now and able to breathe more easily. The adepts of Chenoweth were able healers. “We’ll reseal the launch down there and the one up here. You will have your peace back. At least for a while, until she finds another way.”
“Why not return here and
seal our launch from here? We have much to talk about.”
Galen scrubbed a hand over his face. Did these people not understand? “We can’t leave the crystal unguarded. She will try again. She’ll never stop trying.”
“You would do this for us?” Dwen Neben said, genuinely puzzled.
Galen took a last look at the valley, its bounty made possible only by the shroud of chi’ro separating it from the hostile environs of Chenoweth. It was a vast garden, filled with all that was beautiful, forever waiting for inhabitants who would never arrive. Chenoweth’s people, evolved into peaceful, otherworldly creatures, would not even be noticed by the La’il when she came to take their magic away. He doubted that any of them really understood their peril.
“Yes,” he said.
“Dazai,” someone said, sounding the word like an invocation.
Dwen Neben nodded. “Yes, so it begins again. Dazai stood between these moons and La’il three hundred years ago. They were lovers, once, but her greed drove them apart. He came to Thali when he met Amaya Phrar. She showed him a new way to use chi’ro and the two of them led our people to discover a new existence, a new way of thinking. But then La’il’s ambitions and her jealously drove her to nearly destroy Thali. Dazai and she battled for days. It killed him, in the end, but not before he created the seals. And now it’s all begun again.”
“Yeah,” Galen said and pulled his twin to his feet. Both men stifled a pained groan when Chor tested his newly mended injuries. “But this time there are two of us.” He glanced at Chor. “Well, three.” Taking a deep, shuddering breath, they stepped back onto the launch.
* * *
“Aletha!” he shouted, finding himself inside a maelstrom on the Thali side of the conduit. She was using the energy he had sent from Chenoweth like a stopper on the open seal to the Homeworld. The tornado of chi’ro raged through the clearing, centered on Aletha’s small figure hunched between the crystals. She was on the ground, eyes closed, her lips moving silently. The forest debris brought down with the rockslide had been pitched aside by the violence of the storm tearing at her clothes and hair. Delann and the remaining soldiers were pushed back beyond the edges of the storm that also kept their arrows from reaching Galen when he moved toward the woman. Galen heard their shouts and threats but he doubted that, in his present, chi’ro-suffused state, their weapons could injure him even if the chi’ro tempest around them hadn’t kept them out. He bent to touch Aletha’s shoulder.
She recoiled instantly and launched a missile of chi’ro at him and his blood-soaked twin. He held his hands up to shield himself against her assault and it swept around them in a spray of sparks. “That was pretty.”
“Galen? Is that you?” Tears blurred her vision when, in answer to her tentative probe, she felt his familiar, untainted mental touch. “Galen, by the Gods, I thought you were dead!”
He crouched beside her to fold her into his arms, appalled by the purple bruises ringing her neck. A lattice of scratches beaded blood across her forehead; much more of it still seeped from the wound at her knee. She hid her hot, tear-streaked face in the curve of his neck and his throat closed around something like a helpless sob when he felt her tremble with fear and exhaustion.
“I thought the La’il had taken you,” she wept. “Or Delann killed you… I thought you were gone! Or… or maybe gone insane. Those awful things you said...”
“I remember,” he said, wincing.
“Don’t leave me,” she said. “I don’t care about Chor. I don’t care if there are ten of you. Just stay with me.”
“I won’t leave you,” he promised. “Let’s close the seals.”
She pulled away from him and wiped her face on her sleeve. “I can’t. I know how to seal this thing up again but it’ll take longer than she’ll need to get up here. She’s trying to send a conduit so she can get at this chi and I keep having to knock it down. She’s so angry!”
“We can do it together. I’ll keep her conduit from forming and you slam the seal shut. There are adepts up on Chenoweth. Let them—”
“She’s gone!” Aletha cried suddenly. “Disappeared. Let go. I don’t know what happened. I can’t feel her anymore!”
“Maybe she’s out of chi for now. Seal the launch, quick!”
Suddenly the amassed chi’ro rose high into the air and then shot away toward the distant horizon, drawn southward by some unimaginable force, leaving them with nothing but the weakened riser near the crystal. “It’s a conduit!” Galen shouted, knowing that nothing within the scope of his talents would let him prevent what was about to happen. “She’s making a conduit!” Everyone in the clearing gawked in wonder and disbelief when the La’il appeared in their midst. Not gently floating in mid-air, not robed in exquisite costume. This was no mirage of herself projected through space. The goddess stood before them in her true shape, towering above them all, dressed in trousers and loose-fitting shirt, her white hair gathered at the nape, unadorned.
“Now you die, all of you,” she growled, her voice a low rumble vibrating through the cool mountain air. “Did you think it would take me any longer than this to open the other seal in Phrar? Or did you forget it was there?”
With barely a glance at Aletha, she seized control of the launch. She smiled sweetly as she admired the conduit to Chenoweth with proprietary interest, knowing her power to be absolute now. She had only to reach into that gateway to touch as much chi’ro as she desired. “So it is, dear. And I no longer need either of you. I will miss you, though, Galen Chor.”
Galen tried to signal a warning when someone stepped out of the conduit. But three adepts from Chenoweth had already set their feet upon Thali before the two who followed turned around again and fled. The La’il hammered the three with a fiery burst of energy that catapulted them across the clearing where they were crushed against rocks and boulders. They heard shouts of dismay from where Delann’s men watched in horror and fascination.
The La’il turned from her inspection of the dying Chenowan adepts back to the twins and Aletha. “Is that all there is to these creatures? Oh, sorry, were they coming to your rescue? How rude of me not to at least let them try. Well, I’ll be nicer to the next ones.” She leaned forward a little to squint at Aletha. “You have not introduced me to your friend, Galen. Is that it? She looks a little gone over. Too bad I need all this chi for myself. She’s such a little thing! She looks so different in your head! What powers, what talents does she possess to capture your twofold heart?” Amused, she watched Galen and Chor draw together to stand in front of Aletha. “I’m touched, Galen, but I hold the power of three planets. Do you really think you can stop me?” She gestured toward Galen and when she spoke her derisive tone was replaced by the razor edge that usually lined her words. “This body is first, halfling. When it’s gone I think I’ll let you watch Delann have a little fun with your friend there. A reward of sorts. Won’t that be entertaining?”
“Let Aletha be,” he pleaded. “You can leave her here once you’ve got the Homeworld linked to Chenoweth again. Thali is worthless to you.”
La’il scrunched up her nose and thought about this for a moment. “You know, that sounds reasonable. Very well, off you go.”
Aletha glared at her. “Bitch.”
The La’il laughed out loud. “Oh, she’s plucky. No wonder you like her.” Her expression returned to one of malice. “I had no intention of ever letting her live past this moment. Would I allow such an adept run loose up here? Especially one I can’t perceive, even now. She’s an abomination! Time to put an end to this nonsense. Come here.”
Galen glanced wistfully at Aletha. With a deep sigh, he reached around her waist to pull her close and bent to kiss her. She gasped when she felt his lips move against hers to form a few words, repeating his instruction urgently until La’il wrenched him away from her.
“That’s not the show I was looking for,” La’il said.
Galen groaned when some invisible fist wrapped around his body and began to squeeze his
rib cage with steadily increasing pressure. He was suddenly unable to breathe. The La’il was killing him slowly, enjoying his growing terror.
He lurched away from Chor and Aletha, toward Delann and his company. The La’il turned to watch him with great interest, a gentle smile on her face. “Can’t catch your breath, dear?” She shivered with delight when she heard some of his ribs break. “Where are you going? I’ve got an interesting afternoon planned for us. You won’t need those anymore.” Both Chor and Galen groaned when some of Galen’s fingers snapped.
“Hurry,” Chor grunted.
“Now!” Aletha said and Chor launched himself forward. He raced at the La’il to ram his shoulder into her midriff before she had quite turned around again. Utterly taken by surprise, she had no time to react and, although much taller than Chor now, she was no match for his bulk. His momentum carried her backward and onto the launch where both of them instantly disappeared into the conduit that Aletha had released from Chenoweth’s terminus.
* * *
The La’il’s scream of rage and protest stabbed into his ears, quickly muffled and distorted when the vortex of chi’ro enveloped them. He fought off her attempts to access his mind as they were swept along, each fighting for control of the conduit that no longer led to Chenoweth. Instead of instantly stepping out of the vortex onto some distant launch site, they grappled with its unanchored terminus, desperate to use it to their advantage. Almost frozen to immobility in the non-space and non-time that was called a conduit, they felt neither gravity nor atmosphere inside their cocoon of shifting smears of light and shadow.