were taken.' He hesitated. 'How about you? You look
pretty much the same, apart from needing a couple of
days' sleep, maybe.'
A look of amusement softened the Uvovo's weary,
strung-out expression. 'Yes, the husking did not pro-
ceed quite as I or anyone else expected. Yet it has left its
mark ...' Chel paused as one of his cowled companions
signed to him; he nodded and continued. 'Gregori,
regretfully we must resume our talking later - I have a
very important forgathering to attend.'
i understand - I look forward to hearing about your
travels.'
i promise I will explain what I can,' Chel said cryp-
tically. 'Till then.'
For the next three hours or more Greg went over a
bundle of field reports filed by teams of Uvovo scholars
who had been surveying the valleys northwest of the
Kentigerns. Periodically he had to go over to the large
eco-samples hut to examine this or that specimen - he
would have asked the reports' authors but they were
attending the conclave of this Artificer Uvovo. As he
shuttled back and forth he could see that the numbers
were growing steadily as newcomers arrived via the
densely forested ridges rising to the west. There seemed
to be a lot of discussion, groups walking to and fro,
lone speakers addressing small crowds, knots of Uvovo
milling about. Fortunately the weather was mostly dry,
with just one light passing shower which freshened the
air and made everything gleam in the cloud-fractured
sunlight that followed.
At last a young, wide-eyed Uvovo brought a message
from Chel asking Greg to meet him in the excavated
area known as the Stairwell in half an hour. He spent the
time eating a snack of baroham and gramato sand-
wiches while catching up on the news headlines on the
radio, then, with minutes still to spare, he decided to
head over anyway.
The Stairwell was a perfect example of the problems
inherent in excavating Giant's Shoulder. It did have
some stairs, two flights descending beneath the flag-
stoned expanse, but after that further steps had been
improvised out of broken masonry uncovered by earlier
explorers during their excavations. However, due to the
unstable, cavity-riddled nature of the interior, those pio-
neers found that the baulk sides of their digs quickly
became prone to serious collapse the deeper they went.
After several cave-ins and one fatality a couple of
decades ago, the bottom ten metres of the twenty-metre
hole were filled in and planked over. Further investiga-
tion was restricted to stratification studies and a few
cautiously shallow side trenches.
Chel was already there when he arrived, seated on a
bench in one of the older side trenches, just out of the
fitful sunlight. He raised a hand in greeting as Greg
descended the few steps and joined him on the bench.
'Chel, I could say that you're looking great,' he said.
'But that wouldn't, strictly speaking, be true.'
'The truth, friend Gregori, is that I feel worse than I
look,' the Uvovo said with a tired smile.
'Was your gathering a success?'
in the end, yes. There was much doubt to overcome,
and more distrust and pessimism than I anticipated.' He
gazed up at the ragged clouds. 'They were expecting a
fully-fledged Listener but instead they got... something
else.'
Turning to face Greg, he launched into an account of
his visit to the daughter-forest Tapiola. Greg listened
intently, fascinated at first by the husking ritual and
ensuing hallucinatory trance. But when he spoke of
having visions of the past and hearing the voice of
Segrana in his head, Greg began to wonder if the drug
had affected his mind - Chel seemed convinced that
these experiences were not fanciful creations of his mind
but came from outside, from Segrana.
Chel paused and regarded him a moment. 'Earlier,
many of my brothers and sisters thought that part of me
was still in thrall to the husking sap - do you think that
I have lost my reason?'
'You seem quite rational, Chel - I'd be reluctant to
judge until you've finished your tale. What happened to
you in there? Why didn't you turn into a Listener?'
Chel gave him a considering smile. 'Because I became
something else.'
He pushed back his cowl, reached up to untie the
dark grey bandage and lifted it away.
Greg stared, open-mouthed, at the row of four closed
eyes on Chel's forehead. As he watched the outer pair
fluttered open while Chel kept his own, original pair
tightly shut, along with the centre pair. The new eyes
swivelled to look at Greg, who smiled uncertainly.
'What do you see?'
The eyes looked around the shallow trench, its slop-
ing sides of compacted soil and masonry debris, then up
to the sky for a moment of searching before gazing
down at the Stairwell and its gloomy depths.
i see Umara's hidden face,' Chel murmured. 'I can
see glimpses of lost and forgotten histories. That block
for example—' He pointed to an irregular piece of stone
with a smooth outward surface,'—was once part of an
archway, and that one just along from it was part of a
supporting wall. Or I can look at your face, Gregori,
and see your mother and father, very clearly . . . and
also a thin-faced man with an ear missing, and a woman
with long black hair and a white streak through .. .'
Greg could suddenly feel his heart pounding. 'My
grandfather Fingal was a hunter who lost an ear to a
GREG
cragwolf, and the woman with the white in her hair can
only be my great-grandmother Moira - Chel, how . ..'
The Uvovo regarded him with those eyes, their dark-
ness a mingled hue of brown and green. 'Segrana's gift,
with which to carry out Segrana's work.'
Greg could not help noticing the undertone of resent-
ment in Chel's voice, but now that the initial shock was
past his mind was focused on the Uvovo's new abilities
and what they implied.
'And the other eyes,' he said. 'What do they do?'
i am not entirely certain,' Chel said, replacing the
strip of cloth then opening his ordinary eyes, i have not
yet learned how to interpret what they show me - some-
times it is as if I can see a kind of language underpinning
things around me, then if I look at symbols or written
words or even pictures it feels as though part of my
mind is trying to wrench a different kind of meaning
from them.'
'Are all these eyes meant to work together, perhaps?'
Chel gave a bleak smile, i have attempted that -
once. The effect is ... hard to describe, as if my head is
filled with a thousand arguments except that it is not
voices that war with each other but meanings! When I
came out - crawled out of the vodrun I really thought
and tearing apart a town, a city, while all I could do was
watch the destruction from a nearby hill. If Listener
Eshlo had not acted to cover these eyes ...' He left the
sentence unfinished.
Could it really be true? Greg wondered. Is Segrana
actually an aware entity, some kind of distributed sen-
tience capable of radically altering individual Uvovo}
He had never heard of any Uvovo being born with extra
eyes, yet here they were before him, which suggested
that they had to be part of Uvovo DNA. Which also
begged the question, were these characteristics the result
of survival adaptation or of genetic engineering?
'Chel, have you looked at any Uvovo carvings or
symbols with the outer pair?'
'A few times,' Chel said.
'Did any appear unusual?' he said, adding, 'but in a
rational way?'
in Tapiola there are several ground dwellings and
the one where I recuperated is decorated with a number
of meditation pieces, wooden figurines and tablets. One
bore the symbol hmul, meaning "release of burdens",
but when I opened these eyes it became a word -
elishum, meaning "work of calmness".'
Greg nodded, his smile growing as facts fitted together.
'Chel, my friend, I think you might be able to help me
solve a little problem.' Then he told the Uvovo about his
encounter with the Heracles's xeno-specialist, Lavelle,
and took him over to his hut to show him the scan print-
outs of Giant's Shoulder. As Chel stared at the images by
the light of a desk lamp, Greg went on to tell of his mid-
night expedition, the strange passage and the pillar traps
blocking the way. The pictures he took down there had
turned out slightly distorted or blurred but he showed
them to Chel anyway. Chel studied the pictures closely
then shook his head.
i cannot make out these symbols, Gregori.'
Greg grinned. 'Would you like to go and look at the
real thing? Now?'
Chel needed little persuading. Half an hour later, with
the help once more of the Uvovo scholars Teso and
Kolum, they were lowered down the south face of
Giant's Shoulder, first Greg then Chel, entering this time
through the creeper-curtained opening. Equipped with a
torch each, they ventured into the cold, dark passage.
Chel stared about him at the eye-motif carvings on the
walls but made no comment, just nodded thoughtfully.
Greg slowed as they approached the pillars.
'Be ready for when the symbols appear,' he said.
'When that countdown starts it goes by very quickly.'
'Very well, Gregori, as you wish,' Chel said, removing
the headband and opening those strange eyes. Then he
walked the final few paces, bringing him right next to
the row of square pillars. He looked them over carefully
while Greg watched, tense and edgy, and they both
waited. Five minutes went by without incident then five
more. Chel looked questioningly at Greg, who shrugged.
'Friend Gregori, did you not say that you touched the
pillar while examining it?'
'Well, when I touched ... I suppose you could say it
was a bit of a shove ...'
Chel nodded and gave the nearest pillar a firm push.
There was no give to it but almost immediately four
familiar, glowing symbols appeared on the middle pillar.
Chel saw them, gasped and staggered back a step and
shook his head, as if dizzy.
'Are you okay?' Greg said.
Chel glanced at him with his ordinary eyes while
keeping the new ones focused on the pillar. 'No cause
for alarm, friend Gregori. Every time I need to adjust a
little ... ah now ...'
Leaning closer, the Uvovo examined the four intricate
symbols, just as a column of glowing triangles appeared
on the adjacent pillar.
'And that right there is your countdown, Chel,' he
said but the Uvovo waved him into silence, his stance
almost that of someone who was listening intently. After
a moment or two of standing stock-still he suddenly
straightened, his small, neat features creased by a smile,
then he sang a sequence of syllables in a clear, loud
voice. There was a grinding sound, deep vibrations from
above, and trickles of fine dust fell as the double row of
pillars ascended into the ceiling. Beyond it, Greg could
see by torchlight the previous ones and another three
sets after that also rising.
'That,' he said, 'was well done.'
Chel was gazing up at the pillar ends, resting flush
against the plain, unadorned stone ceiling. 'At first I
thought the celfs - the symbols - were showing me
words but when I looked deeper at each one I heard
musical notes which I sang in the order of the words
and ...' He gestured at the now-open corridor.
if only Cat was here to see this,' Greg said, laughing.
'Right, let's see what's along there.'
'Tread carefully, Gregori,' said Chel. 'There may be
other tests.'
Twenty paces on, the passageway turned a corner
and steps went down to a chamber where four columns
stood in a group before three stone doors in a curved
wall. The room was icy-cold - it was like walking into a
storage freezer. Greg shivered, his breath pluming like
silver fog in the torchlight as he went up to the door on
the left. Before he could get near it, though, Chel said:
'Gregori, wait, don't touch it! There is danger in this
room, another test to overcome. These columns .. .' The
Uvovo reached out to one, grazed it with his fingertips
and snatched them back. 'Very cold, sharp as talons,
and something else . . .'
Greg stood back from the stone door, and moved his
torch beam up the heavy frame and across the lintel and
the wall above, illuminating panels of relief carvings of
forest imagery alive with creatures of every kind, includ-
ing Uvovo. Then he noticed something in the wider cone
of torchlight, a circular, seemingly blank panel amid the
carven foliage, and when he turned the torch rightwards
he saw others.
'Chel - look.'
The Uvovo turned to see, adding his own torch beam
to Greg's as he examined the discs, standing motionless
with only his strange eyes staring. After several moments
he let out a long sigh, bowed his head and muttered
something in the Uvovo tongue. When he looked up
again his original eyes were open as well and full of a
dark, relentless concentration. The light from his torch
trembled on the wall and Greg didn't know whether to
speak or keep silent. Then Chel drew in a shuddering
breath as he turned away, all eyes closed, shining torch
dangling from his waist.
it says, "Choose Your Path To Death".'
'How cheery,' Greg said.
'But in the Iterants of the Eternal it says that all paths
lead to death and all deaths lead to the Eternal ... so
<
br /> why three doors?' The new eyes were closed but his
own glinted in the torchlight. 'And why four pillars?' He
approached the nearest, aiming his torch at it as he
placed his empty hand against it.
'Careful, Chel,' said Greg. 'Frostbite.'
i can resist it for a short while, Gregori. There is
something strange about these pillars . . . could you
shine your torch here a moment - thank you.' Under the
combined light, Greg could see that the column had a
slightly slick, dull sheen. Chel shook his head. 'This is
not stone. Like the ones out in the corridor it signifies
something but I cannot see it. . . with these or these.' He
indicated his normal eyes then the new outer pair.
'What about the other ones?' Greg said.
Still looking at the pillar, the Uvovo said, 'Are you
asking me to risk my sanity, Gregori?'
i could never do that, Chel,' he said, if the risk for
you is too great, then we'll go back up top and see if
there's another way to solve this - your call.'
CheL smiled. 'There is risk, certainly, but as I now
have a responsibility to the Artificer Uvovo I must inves-
tigate this mystery with all of my abilities. Otherwise I
would not be worthy of Segrana's gifts and purpose.'
He closed all his eyes and stood there for a moment,
head slightly bowed. Then he straightened suddenly and
on his brow the centre pair of eyes snapped open,
glanced very briefly at Greg, then stared at the pillar
before him. Greg looked on, trying not to think about
the cold, pitiless volition he glimpsed in those eyes for an
instant.
Chel's gaze seemed to bore into that column.
Occasionally he flinched, a slight twitch of the head,
and his lips began to move soundlessly. Then without
warning he stepped away and went over to the next
pillar, his features fixed in a wide-eyed grimace. After
some moments he proceeded to the next and finally to
the last. When he retreated from it his eyes were all
tightly closed and his face was a mask of pain. As he fell
to his knees, Greg lunged forward to slow his fall, help-
ing him to rest on his side; the hand he had used to
touch the pillars was cradled by the other, and when
Greg reached out to the wrist he felt shockingly stone-
cold flesh.
Guilt washed over him. God, what have I done}
Michael Cobley - Humanity's Fire book 1 Page 26