But such speculation palled after a time and Akreen set the matter aside as a minor imponderable. Instead he focused on trying to follow the comments, curses and exchanges taking place between his usurping precursors. As near as he could be sure, it appeared that they–led by Rajeg–were still in league with the vile Khorr and continuing his pursuit of the Zavri ancestor by following the faint resonances peculiar to Zavri biophysiology. Only they had given up trudging around the maze of corridors and stairs and were now using the Zavri body strength to literally punch and tear a way through walls if there was no easy route close by. This approach caused several minor cave-ins along the way, and a couple of major ones that left Akreen’s physical form completely though temporarily buried. Even with these delays, however, they were still making faster progress than they had before.
Akreen did note how his precursors still reflexively indulged their vestigial character traits, despite being collectively in the ascendancy. Casx venting his outrage was like the blare of battle horns, Iphan was the essence of superior indignation, Togul’s monumental disdain could belittle a conqueror of worlds, Drolm’s irritation served only to elevate his own paramount importance, while at the head of this fractious squad was cold Rajeg, who proved adept at exerting pressure in a variety of forms, lack of time, snap decisions, expectation of others (in this case Khorr, who carried the anti-Zavri weapon), possible loss of honour, and even possibly appearing weak and indecisive. And at every juncture they went along with Rajeg’s suggestion. Akreen had to admit, it was masterful.
And after that earlier assessment he had realised that one of his precursors, Zivolin the mischief-maker, was conspicuous by his absence. Which was not a bad thing, he decided.
So the plodding ascent through the imagined landscape went on and his precursors’ childish squabbling continued to filter down from the heights of his conscious mind, echoes and disjointed fragments of angry dialogue and monologues. Paths were still being smashed through decrepit walls while Rajeg maintained his working relationship with Khorr. Then Akreen heard them babbling about the gang of Humans who were spotted crossing a bridge, but that had been well over five hours ago, according to Rajeg (who was enjoying seeing how long every task took, down to the second). Rajeg’s exchanges with Khorr seemed to be mainly on the subject of Zavri social hierarchy, precursors and lineal descendancy, and it seemed clear that Rajeg was merely humouring him.
Gredaz slowed to a halt on the stair a couple of paces ahead and half turned to look down at Akreen. “Be advised that we shall soon arrive at the Subcognitive Plateau. Where we must wait.”
Saying no more the tall figure, now garbed in full-length battle-elder’s robes, turned and resumed his climb.
“Plateau?” said Akreen. “You made no mention of this before.”
“It did not exist before.”
Gredaz’s logic was undeniable.
Akreen kept on going, letting the repetitious tedium of one foot after another absorb his awareness until it took on a mesmeric quality which, oddly, added details to his surroundings, scratches and worn edges on the stairs, clusters of shiny purple berries on the bushes, little yellow flowers on the gnarled-looking tree branches.
A light impact on his chest made him stop, abruptly dispelling his reverie. Gredaz had stopped him with an outstretched hand, which he then swept out to his side in a grand unveiling gesture.
“We have arrived–this is the Subcognitive Plateau.”
The fog had dissolved into a thin mist and Akreen could see an expanse of dark barren rock spread out before him, wide enough that its edges were hazy grey. When he looked back the way they had come, the steep stone stairs wound down to disappear in thick fog. All around and above were shifting billows of grey.
“So, we cannot go any further,” Akreen guessed out loud.
“Correct. In this metaphorical context, above us, beyond the veil of non-awareness, your precursors are enthroned in the courts of perception, to a greater or lesser degree. While they prevail we cannot proceed.”
Akreen felt an urge to be openly disdainful of their situation, but decided instead to trust that Gredaz was in fact following some kind of rational plan.
“All that we can do now is wait,” he said evenly.
“We wait, hopefully just for a short while.” Gredaz directed a stony gaze at the shifting grey overhead. “Our presence here will not go unnoticed for long.”
Akreen gave him a narrow look. “You are expecting us to be noticed? By whom?”
Gredaz glanced at him. “You are not the only one receiving the benefit of my counsel.”
Akreen stared at him, feeling slightly dislocated by that comment. “Not the only one…?” Was Gredaz in contact with the outside world? But how would that be possible?… And who would he be counselling?
Suddenly, and thoroughly unexpectedly, Gredaz laughed, a dry, slightly hoarse sound. A sharp smile occupied his lips as he looked over at Akreen.
“At last,” he said, pointing upwards. “Listen to them and be ready.”
Gredaz was right. The steady background mutter of exchanges, arguments and bitter asides from above had surged in volume and anger. Incoherent roars passed back and forth, principally involving Iphan and Casx with Rajeg issuing contemptuous denials in between his attempts to cope with the real-world journey through the corridors. Akreen marvelled at how the petty squabbles of those vestigial personae could sound so vast and godlike from this perspective.
Then another voice cut across, the thunderous, raging bellowing of Togul, a stream of accusations of betrayal and deadly insults besmirching his honour. And just when it seemed that the deafening sound could not get any louder the voices of Casx and Iphan rose to a wrathful clamour, building the cacophony to a crescendo.
“Get ready!” yelled Gredaz, pointing upwards. “Keep your nerve–you will experience no discomfort!”
Seconds later gravity drained away, replaced by a force tugging them upwards, slowly at first then faster, gaining velocity, flying through white streaming fog…
Then something snatched him out of that crazed headlong ascent, and dropped him into abrupt reality. Sense impressions jolted him, almost leaping at him so swiftly that he gasped. He was lying sprawled and alone on the floor of a dim corridor, amid the dusty debris smashed out of a hole in the wall. As he levered himself into a seated position he noticed fragments of metal scattered among the rubble, then looking around he saw the split and shattered wreckage of a weapon that he knew all too well.
[I have it on good authority that Khorr received something of a beating before he managed to escape, said Gredaz.]
[Ah, it was a thing of beauty, said Zivolin. My carefully orchestrated campaign of innuendo and half-truths brought them to a pitch-perfect brink of pent-up fury and hate. As soon as you reached the plateau I triggered the final bitter notes of my symphony of rancour. As you can see it has played out to a most satisfactory conclusion.]
As Akreen got to his feet he picked up the wrecked anti-Zavri weapon and saw where repeated impacts had smashed apart the emitter barrel.
“So what actually happened?” he said in his thoughts. “Where is Khorr?”
Zivolin was effusive with self-congratulation. [Well, my hate-drama, being a drama of hate, needed a secondary antagonist as an external focus of the acrid hate-storm I was stirring up, someone to serve as a stand-in for grand diabolical powers single-minded in their dread resolve. Rajeg, of course, was the primary antagonist, the betrayer. Iphan and Casx were primed to seize control from Rajeg and attack the unsuspecting Khorr; Togul, however, had become convinced that the pair of them were conspiring against him. So, with Rajeg ejected from the seat of command and those three fools brawling like senile toys, your presence on the plateau was all that was needed to tilt the cognitive balance in your favour.]
“Most skilfully done, honoured Zivolin,” Akreen said. “And what of Khorr?”
[Ran off, bloody and beaten, said Gredaz. I caught a glimpse of Iphan’s handiwor
k while he was in control for a few moments.]
Akreen tossed the broken weapon away, and surveyed his surroundings. Ancient, eroded corridors poorly lit in patches by strange clusters of crystal-like nodes that gave off soft, opaque glows. Cracked walls spilling heaps of pebbly dirt in which emaciated plants had at one time taken root, sprouted, withered and died. Ceiling collapses half blocking passages but occasionally providing an accessible slope to the floor above.
And there, right there at the faint and trembling edge of perception, something was resonating, a kind of high, sighing hum that called to him.
[Can you hear it? said Gredaz.]
[The song of the Ancestor, said Zivolin. A summons out of antiquity.]
“Yes,” Akreen said. “I can hear it, but how can a Zavri live for thousands of years and not be noticed?”
“He can if his mode of existence is closer to death than life,” came a new voice.
From the shadows along one corridor a floating blue point of light came gliding towards him. As it drew near Akreen saw that it was an odd ridged spheroid smaller than his fist, and that the light was a diffuse blue beam projected from one of several apertures.
[At last, said Gredaz. A messenger from the one that guards the Ancestor.]
The glowing device slowed to a halt a couple of paces away. “Welcome, Akreen, First Blade of the Zavri Battalions.”
Akreen stared at the hovering remote. “I am told that you speak for the one that guards the Ancestor.”
“Well, we all speak in that capacity, in one way or another.”
“So, do you represent the Apparatarch, or whatever it has become?”
“Hmm–the same question as before yet more pointedly framed. We call ourselves the Inheritors, even though our inheritance amounts to a few trinkets and relics and an insurmountable burden of responsibility. But we must make do with what we are given, or chance upon, and it was our good fortune that your precursor, Gredaz, heard the subtle coded message which we fed into the portal web.”
Akreen nodded, still racked with uncertainty. “Are you satisfied that I am who I say I am? I have experienced some fundamental disturbances since my arrival, challenging to the very core of my being.”
“For us, the Zavri aura is as telling as the facial expressions of other species, so yes, First Blade, we can tell from the comfort and harmony indicators that you are the rightful possessor of this form. The previous occupier gave off such a garish clash of hues that we knew to avoid making any contact.”
“This is a great relief,” Akreen said. “I am now ready to learn all you can tell me about the Ancestor before… before whatever happens next.”
“Good–however, we are presented with a problem.”
[Tsk. The long, long centuries must turn these machine intellects into lovers of prevarication, said Zivolin.]
Akreen remain composed. “What kind of problem?”
“It is to do more with ends than means. You see, after the unfortunate ambush you suffered at the hands of that Shuskar thug, Khorr, we concluded that you were a lost cause and with time for ploys growing short we opted for the only available option.”
A pair of spheroid remotes, identical to the first, descended from a break in the ceiling and lined up next to it.
“The explanation covers ancient history as well as recent events, and therefore is a little intricate,” the remote said. “So rather than have you plod all the way to the Ancestor chamber, we can transport you there in a bearer field and tell you all you need to know as we travel. Is that agreeable?”
[Most agreeable, said Gredaz.]
[Very glib and thus untrustworthy, said Zivolin. These ancient machines always have some twisty agenda.]
Despite sharing Zivolin’s reservations, Akreen accepted the invitation and moments later was being whisked along corridors while reclining in a forcefield web projected by all three remotes. He learned new things about the Great Unshackling War, the millennia-ago war that obliterated the Apparatarch and its allies while elevating the victorious rebels led by the Shuskar and their ominous Gun-Lords.
He heard tell of the Ancestor, a Zavri general called Kaldro-Vryn, who approached the minds of the Apparatarch near the war’s end, while the forces of the Shuskar were drawing ever closer–of how Kaldro-Vryn had told them of his intention to undergo a crystallising metamorphosis and asked them to find a safe hiding place for his final form, an Incarnalith. He heard of how they’d agreed, and buried his crystalline remains deep underground, only, when the Shuskar fleets started their bombardment, for it to prove not to be deep enough, field-driven vibrations from their mantle munitions penetrating the armoured vault and shattering the Incarnalith into thousands of fragments.
The explanatory account then switched to more recent events and Akreen was surprised to learn of the appearance of the Human Pyke and his companions, then astonished to hear that this same Pyke had been chosen to play host to the shards of the Incarnalith.
“This is the ‘only available option’ that you spoke of earlier,” Akreen said.
“You were in thrall to your precursors,” said the Inheritor remote. “We could not possibly use you as a host, so when the Human and his crew appeared a while later and followed your tracks into the deep city, we contrived to separate him from the rest and convey him to the Incarnalith chamber exactly as we are doing with you.”
“Is he still here, on Gatuzna?”
“Long gone, First Blade. He and his companions have gone to meet with another band of valiant rebels with the purpose of stealing a fleetworld ship to use against the Citadelworld. The intention is for this Pyke to gain access to the Shuskar control hub there, at which point the Incarnalith shards will pass from him into the enemy’s control systems. Full mastery of the portal web and the shadow-force defences will at a stroke fall from their grasp.”
“So why are you taking me to the Ancestor?”
“Because we need someone to cross over into the Sunheart and distract the Gun-Lords while Pyke takes over their communication and control systems.”
Akreen was stunned. “The Sunheart? Where the great stardrives reside, where the Warcage derives its power and energy? I have only ever heard children’s stories about it. I did not know that it was possible to travel there.”
“Our sun is as much a creation of the Builders’ genius as the portal web and the world anchors,” said the remote. “The drives are self-maintaining, self-repairing and impregnable, but the vast catavaults hold other secrets and power, as well as the stardrive control boards and the navigational system. You can see the inherent risks.”
Akreen frowned. “Would the Shuskar really set the Warcage on a collision course with another star system?”
“The underleaders might not, but it is likely that the parasitic Gun-Lords would, if they are faced with certain defeat.”
“Certain defeat,” Akreen echoed. “How plausible can that be?”
“Our probability studies assigned it a low rating,” said the Inheritor remote. “But in a complex system unseen variables can have strange multiplier effects. At any rate, your presence in the Sunheart with the Incarnalith remnants offers the chance to shut the Shuskar out from control of the stardrives and all other systems. They will be fatally weakened and, Gun-Lords or no, their days will be numbered.”
[Damn, these machines are persuasive, said Zivolin. I’d sing the battalion anthem if I knew the words. But then, who can win battles with charisma alone?]
[For once I share your precursor’s doubts, Gredaz said. You should ask how they intend to get you to the Sunheart from here–I had heard that the only way was through a portal gate on the Citadelworld.]
Giving a wordless, internal assent, Akreen then said, “May I know how you are going to convey me to the Sunheart?”
“By our unrivalled yet subtle use of the portal web,” said the remote. “We were with the Builders when they created it–we were their assistants, critics, mirrors for a myriad designs and overseers of their gr
adual emergence into the stuff of reality. The millennia have not dimmed our most precious memories, thus we still know of certain pathways which can give access to secret places of the Warcage. Although some pathways can only be used once, obviously.”
By now Akreen’s journey had reached the huge, sheer-sided gulf that cut through the underground complex. He could feel a cool breeze on his unelaborate dermal covering as the remotes bore him down into shadowy depths. He descended past levels of sliced-open rooms and corridors, all like a decayed, weather-worn parody of sedimentary existences.
A dark opening appeared off in the hazy murk, loomed closer and closer and swallowed them all. Along a tilted, debris-strewn passageway they swept, the cold blue beams of the remotes picking out corroded details right along the length of it before they came to where a large, heavy hatch stood wide open. Through it they dived, flew level for a few seconds then pitched into another descent that lasted several minutes, a plummet into blackness. Then they slowed and glided forward again, following an angular, irregular course which took in more smashed-up corridors and another vertical shaft before he was brought before a tall glowing entrance. The remotes set him down a short distance away and he finished the journey on foot, following one of the remotes into the glow.
It was a circular chamber empty except for a long cradling plinth at the centre. The curving wall was stippled with triangular tiles, only a few of which shed light on the carpet of dark thumb-sized splinters that surrounded the plinth. The chamber was still, deadly quiet, yet Akreen’s senses were thrumming and oscillating in tune with the resonance which had been so faint earlier.
“These are the remains of the Incarnalith of Kaldro-Vryn,” said the Inheritor remote.
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