A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 5 : Among the Stars, like Giants. Part 3 : On the Edges of Perception addm-5

by Gareth D. Williams

  "Masters, be pleased!" he cried.

  "He is a threat," said the ever-present Narn voice at his side. "By G'Quan, listen to me, Moreil!"

  He turned from the sight of the battle to look at Mi'Ra. For a moment he was mildly irritated, but then he quashed the emotion. Nothing could destroy this feeling of rapture. The spreading of chaos, the winnowing of the weak. This was what he lived for.

  "He knows who I am. He must know of our.... understanding. Moreil! Listen to me, damn you! The Wykhheran fear him!"

  "The Wykhheran know no fear in battle, but battle is all they understand. It is all they were created for." Moreil's eyes closed in near ecstasy. "The glories of battle."

  "Listen, I don't care how good he is. The danger is in what he knows. Send a Faceless after him and it will be over in seconds. No one can withstand a Faceless."

  Moreil smiled. "You may be proved wrong, but no. The Faceless were created to destroy the cowards, those who wield the reins of power in secret, behind the masks of illusion. Marrago is not one of those. He is a warrior. He will be dealt with as a warrior."

  "You're being too complacent. Where's his ship? Why haven't they joined us yet?"

  "Perhaps he is dead."

  "If this fails, Moreil...."

  "Then it will fail because we were too weak, and the failure will make us stronger. What else is this about, if not the strengthening and the purifying of the weak?"

  "Vengeance," she hissed. "It is about vengeance, and if all you care about is battle, why aren't you down there taking part in it, instead of just watching up here?"

  "Ah." Moreil smiled again. "I am Z'shailyl, and mine is the power to read the ebb and flow of war. I can sense great warriors and great deeds. Somewhere hidden from mortal eyes, hidden even from the eyes of the Faceless, but not from the eyes of the Z'shailyl....

  "Hidden somewhere is...."

  His eyes gleamed.

  "Death."

  * * *

  G'Kar spoke to me often, of a great many things. His love for his people, his dreams for the future, his friends and allies. One topic he rarely touched upon was his involvement in the early wars with the Centauri, of the occupation and rebellion where he first rose to prominence as a soldier, not a prophet.

  Many years ago I asked him about those times, and his face grew dark. He would not talk about it then, nor for many years to come, but eventually he did, and I knew then just how much those years weighed upon his mind. Not merely for the friends and family he lost. Not even because they reminded him of Da'Kal.

  No, it was because those years reminded him of what he had once been. He had killed Centauri without a thought, without a qualm. He had even gloried in it. The death of a Centauri was something to be celebrated. He regretted bitterly that he had felt that way, just as he regretted the creation of a world that had done that to him and to people like him.

  But most of all he regretted the way those years had touched and tainted our entire people. Every Narn who had lived through those years had been marked by them and that taint had corrupted their souls all their lives. He once told me that he hoped that my generation, one of the first born since the liberation, would be able to approach the future unshackled by the old hatreds.

  He was not optimistic about that possibility, and, sadly, neither am I. But he tried to bring it about until the day he died. Indeed, it was that never-ending dream that caused his death. He tried, always, and so shall I.

  L'Neer of Narn, Learning at the Prophet's Feet .

  * * *

  He could hear the screams and smell the smoke in the air. Around him hundreds of his people huddled close together, united by fear. Above them, Centauri ships were tearing the city apart. Na'Killamars had been suspected — albeit justly — of harbouring a resistance cell, and the Centauri had tired of fighting the resistance on their own terms.

  Da'Kal held herself close to him, and he could smell her fear. He knew as well as she did that this bunker would not hold forever. Once the softening-up of the surface was complete, the Centauri would send in their ground troops and they would find this place. Once they did....

  Da'Kal kissed him, powerfully and forcefully. "Never leave me," she whispered with a fierce passion. "We will always be together."

  G'Kar kissed her back. "Always," he replied, his eyes blazing. The Centauri would come, and he would be ready for them. He would fight them. No longer would he be their slave.

  And nor would Da'Kal.

  The bombing stopped, and a heavy, thick silence fell over the dark room. Then a Narn coughed and the silence was broken, but for that one moment it had seemed infinitely oppressive and commanding.

  The Centauri had stopped. Had they given up and gone home?

  Another blast ripped through the air and the wall of the bunker shuddered.

  Or had they found what they were looking for?

  G'Kar rose to his feet as the wall was forced inwards. Chinks of sunlight appeared. Silhouetted there was a tall figure, holding a plasma weapon in his hands.

  A tall figure.... but she was not holding anything. And the light was a door opening, not the bunker wall being ripped apart.

  And he was alone.

  And he was older.

  And he did not have a sword.

  G'Kar blinked against the tide of memory and shielded his face from the light. The present returned to bury the past, but he had a feeling it was still the past, merely made-over and redecorated in new colours.

  "G'Kar," said a voice, filled with passion and pathos and sorrow. "G'Kar."

  "Da'Kal," he sighed. "Oh, Da'Kal, what have you done?"

  * * *

  Sinoval knew the histories, of course. The Well had made sure of that. The old secrets, the ancient memories. The ancient war. The evil the Vorlons had unleashed upon the galaxy in their moment of hubris. The evil that destroyed the Enaid Accord, that shattered Golgotha, that engulfed the galaxy in war.

  The voices in the shadow of hyperspace.

  The voices from another universe.

  He stood in the gateway, staring at the flickering light that was a million stars slowly being devoured, one at a time, by an evil that had destroyed an entire universe.

  Beneath him the city throbbed with dark life, a city and a tower coated in blood.

  Sheridan was nowhere to be found. The mirror was shattered, the orb that Sinoval had used to steal the mirror of Sheridan's soul was gone. Without it he had no way to control this soulscape. Somehow he had lost control of the world he had created to purge the Vorlon influence from Sheridan's mind.

  The evil was moving in the city below him. The evil seeking always for more worlds to destroy, for more stars to devour.

  The ancient evil the Well of Souls was charged with defeating.

  "You have done this," he said.

  Beside him there came the soft, gentle tapping of metal hitting stone. "We had to match the power of the Well of Souls one way or another," said a clipped, precise, meticulously pronounced voice. "The collective consciousness of a million dead races would take more to defeat than we can spare at present."

  Sinoval looked at him. The human, dressed in an ancient style, dead in his eyes, dead in his soul. A cold, harsh, calculating man, renowned for murder. Not the murder of millions or thousands or even hundreds. Before he had been made an Inquisitor he had killed five people, and only five. A small number even by the standards of human murderers — but he was special.

  He had stared into infinity, into the centre of the universe. Somehow, during that last taking of life, he had seen something that had changed him forever.

  He had seen into a new universe.

  "Sebastian," he said. "Your name is Sebastian."

  The human nodded, touching the brim of his hat. "We have not yet met in the flesh, and we are not doing so now, so you will have to forgo the formality of an introduction. When you are brought to our worlds to face judgment, then there will be time for politeness."

  "You have a bizarre unders
tanding of etiquette."

  The man nodded. "I do what is required of me. Look upon this place, Sinoval. Look, and wonder how it is you will escape, for that will never happen. This is what awaits you."

  Sinoval looked at him. "You are playing a game you do not understand."

  "On the contrary, sir, we understand it very well. Good day, Primarch."

  With that, the Inquisitor was gone.

  Leaving Sinoval alone.

  * * *

  Susan stood before the massive doors, the single jewel shining down upon her. Its light was dull and faint. She had explored large areas of Cathedral during her time with Sinoval and she had found a great deal to surprise her, but she had not returned here since her arrival.

  That did not mean she had been scared to.

  The door was clearly meant to inspire awe and terror. Susan was neither awed nor terrified. She was mildly impressed, and in a very bad mood.

  "We haven't got time for ritual," she snapped. "Open up now or I'll kick the door in."

  The door opened, and she stepped inside.

  In another situation she would have been astounded by the size and majesty of the room that greeted her. She might have asked how such a room, whose borders seemed to stretch into infinity, could fit inside a place even as massive as Cathedral. She might have wondered at the millions of twinkling stars that lined the walls.

  She did not.

  She stormed up to the altar, sparing only a passing glance for the flower that still rested there, looking as perfect and alive as the day it had been plucked.

  "You know who I am," she snapped. "Talk to me, dammit!"

  We know you, Emissary, came the voice. It was strange. She had expected something.... bigger. The voice sounded almost ill. But the Well could not be ill, surely. This was the Well of Souls. This was where Lorien had sent her. Lorien had told her all about the Well, all about Sinoval and his mission and what she had to do to help him.

  "What the hell is going on? And answers today, please!"

  Weak.... Our voice is.... trapped.... Imprisoned in a place we dare not.... go.

  "Sinoval? Where is he?"

  His.... soul.... taken elsewhere. The Vorlons have.... linked with him.... weakening us.... weakening him. Allied with.... others.

  "Who? What others?"

  Evil.

  "The Vorlons are evil."

  The Vorlons are.... ambition.... pride.... arrogance. They are wrong, but they are not evil. This evil.... has consumed stars.... fed upon the life.... the souls.... of a universe.... Everywhere they walked.... begat a charnel house.... They worshipped death.... they fed off death.... they became death. The soul.... the cycle.... rebirth.... nothing to them.... Evil.

  Susan shivered. "Boy, you guys don't go in for small enemies. How do we get Sinoval back?"

  He must.... return.... himself.... We cannot go there.... Enaid.... Golgotha.... old wounds.... old memories.... Our voice must.... speak once more.... be free.... himself.

  "Your timing sucks. We've got a full scale war going on outside and Sinoval's grand plan is falling down around our ears, or whatever you have instead of ears. We need to get Cathedral out there and doing something."

  Our voice.... trapped.... weak.

  "Fine, if you need a job doing, do it yourself. Have we got any power here?"

  A little.... Go to.... the pinnacle.... We will give what we have.... Emissary.

  "Yeah, whatever." Susan left, running. She had a feeling even flying might not be fast enough.

  * * *

  There were no words, no whispers, no sound. There was the still, hollow silence of regret and sorrow and terror.

  Marrago was motionless, paralysed, a sick feeling at the base of his stomach. He had not felt this since his banishment from the only home he had ever known, since he had learned his daughter was dead.

  He looked at Senna's prone body, and he could not move.

  "Captain," came Dasouri's voice across the comm channel. "Captain, we are ready to go." He ignored it.

  "Captain." The voice came again, with greater urgency than before.

  Marrago finally found the energy to move. He took a slow step forward and bent down over Senna's body. His throat dry, his hearts pounding, he reached out to touch her, remembering all the while the impact of his fist on her jaw.

  He touched her arm, where blood pooled, sticky and warm.

  Warm.

  He touched her mouth and felt the slow, faltering gasp of breath.

  Still alive.

  Still alive.

  "You're not dead," he whispered. "Lyndisty, you're not dead."

  His thoughts began to race. He was a soldier. He knew all about injuries sustained on the battlefield. He had been trained in bandaging wounds, preventing blood loss. It was not too late. He had been too late before. She had been dead then, but she was alive now. There was a chance to save her.

  He began ripping away the edges of her dress. The cloth would be capable of staunching the blood loss. She would need air blown into her lungs, and her hearts would need to be massaged. Old lessons more than four decades gone returned to him and his body began to move with the smooth motions of an automaton. He had been too late before, too slow and too old and too weak, but now he would be in time.

  Old soldier's instincts kicked in. He heard the noise of the creature behind him swinging into the attack. He smelled its odour of death and hatred. His legs threw him out of the way. His arms reached for his kutari and his hands held the hilt tightly.

  The Wykhheran appeared before him.

  Lyndisty's blood continued to pool on to the floor.

  Dasouri's voice continued to call for him over the comm channel.

  Marrago felt twenty years younger. Thirty even.

  "She will not die," he told the creature. "I will not let her die. Not again!"

  The creature moved to attack.

  * * *

  "I have been thinking," he said softly, hoarsely, the remembered dust and smoke of twenty years ago clogging his lungs. "Thinking of the past."

  "Really?" Da'Kal remarked, as she stepped inside and closed the door of the cell behind her. For a moment there was darkness, and then the light globe in her hand burst into life and the shadows flickered on the wall. In the half-light she looked ghostly, almost spiritual. He was not entirely sure she was even real. She had lived in his memories and dreams for so long, and yet he had never dared talk of her, talk to her, acknowledge her reality. She belonged to the old days.

  "All I think of is the future."

  G'Kar looked at her, feeling his mouth twist into a semblance of a smile. "You could never lie to me," he whispered.

  "I am not. I think of the future all the time. But the future is shaped by the past. You told me that once, me and a thousand others."

  "G'Khorazhar."

  "I was just one of many. A pilgrim, a traveller, come to hear the words of the prophet, the preacher of the future of our people." She shook her head. "I suppose that even after all that had passed between us, I wanted to be near to you."

  "You always were," he said, although the words were so soft he could not be sure he had actually spoken them aloud.

  She carried on without reacting, as if they had been nothing more than thoughts. "Your words touched me. It was as if you were speaking only to me. I remembered our long conversations at night, beneath the stars, and the voice was the same as the one I knew.

  "I later found out that every other person there felt the same way.

  "You have a remarkable gift, G'Kar. You always did. I went away and I thought about your words. I thought about what you had said, looking for something there, for some wisdom and insight."

  She paused, shaking. When she looked up again, her eyes were filled with anger. They looked demonic by the light of the globe. "I found it. I saw your words of forgiveness and unity and understanding and I shook with rage. I had hoped before that your message was misrepresented, or that it was an imposter pretending to be you,
or that the Centauri had brainwashed you, or any one of a number of things.

  "I had never wanted to think that you were actually advocating an alliance with the Centauri."

  "I told you of my feelings when we parted," he whispered. "When I returned your armlet."

  "I remember. I had hoped they were.... fleeting. You were a warrior, G'Kar! A leader. You could be leading the Kha'Ri by now! You could be ruling half the galaxy! Our people would follow you into fire and darkness without a second thought. With just a few words you managed to derail the entire course of the war with the Centauri. Think about what you could have done.

  "And you spend all that power on peace.

  "Have you forgotten what they did to me? Have you forgotten what they did to your father, to my sister, to G'Quan knows how many friends and allies?"

  "No," he whispered.

  "Have you forgotten what they did to my father? Do you remember what was left of Ha'Fili when we found him? I swear I will never forget that.... mass of flesh, sightless and limbless, screaming over and over again for mercy. Do you remember?"

  "I remember," G'Kar whispered, seeing again the knife in his hand that had plunged into Ha'Fili's heart.

  "Do you remember your uncle, carrying back his only daughter's body?"

  "I remember."

  "Do you remember...?

  "Do you remember...?

  "Do you remember...?

  "Have you forgotten...?

  "Have you forgotten...?

  "Do you remember...?"

  It continued, an endless litany of friends dead and mutilated, of family tortured and butchered, of villages destroyed and burned, of memories lost and eradicated. His reply to each was the same.

  "I remember."

  "I remember."

  "I remember."

  "You hated them once. I remember that hatred. Do you remember what you told me the night we buried my sister? You said that you wished you could kill every one of them, and then bring them back to life so you could kill them again."

  "I remember."

  Gently she unhooked the top of her tunic, pulling it open. G'Kar could not look away from the sight of the deep scar running from her neck almost to her waist. A Centauri torturer had done that with a garden fork, forcing him to watch.