That meant it had to be someone else. And that meant…
“Someone has got the arrogance—or the stupidity—to try to mess with the xel’naga,” Jake breathed. “And if they succeed—”
“The xel’naga will not be reborn. Instead, a monstrous and powerful perversion of both protoss and zerg will be set loose upon the universe, and all that we know and cherish will fall in their wake.”
CHAPTER 17
THEY WERE DIRE WORDS, EXTREME WORDS, BUT Jake felt they barely scratched the surface. Zeratul had been almost motionless, save for his furious trembling. Now he unfolded himself from his squatting position so quickly it startled Jake.
“We have lingered here long enough. We have told the stories that need telling. It is time for action. We do not know who or what is behind these events; but we know that Ulrezaj and Samir Duran are involved to some degree.” He turned his glowing eyes to Jake, speaking to both him and Zamara. “Our prophecy states that the Twilight Deliverer’s reappearance heralds a great crisis. A time when things that seem to be in opposition must join together if we are to triumph. We saw it in Adun—the first to use the energies of both Aiur protoss and dark templar to protect the dark templar and save the Aiur protoss from making a tragic error from which they could never recover. We saw it in Tassadar, when he began to listen to me and what I had to teach. No teacher has ever been prouder of his pupil than I of him. And he taught me much as well. Things that until recently, I have forgotten.”
A hint of Zeratul’s shame brushed Jake again, but there was no self-pity, just acknowledgment, acceptance, and the resolve to move forward.
“I thought the prophecy fulfilled when Tassadar brought us together—when we joined to fight the zerg and do what we could to save our people. He sacrificed himself to destroy the Overmind. And yet, this crisis that faces us now is even more atrocious, more abhorrent, than losing our homeworld. It could mean losing…everything.”
His eyes glowed brightly. “I think perhaps the Anakh Su’n has yet one more manifestation before all is said and done. But first, we must take care of you—both of you. There is a place, one of the first settled by the dark templar soon after we were exiled from Aiur. Though we have spent many hundreds of years exploring the Void since we found Ehlna, we have not forgotten it. It is a place of lore and knowledge. Indeed, our term for it, ‘Alys’aril,’ means Sanctuary of Wisdom.”
Zeratul hesitated. “I once considered traveling there myself, on pilgrimage. It is instilled in us that we should do so, as we have no preservers to keep the memories for us.”
“I remember, you once spoke of such a method of preserving knowledge among your people, but you did not tell me where,” Zamara replied. “That is why I sought you out.”
Zeratul nodded. “You have a crystal? From the chambers that lie beneath the surface of Aiur?”
“Yes,” Jake answered. “Zamara seemed to think a crystal from there would give us a better chance of success in downloading her knowledge.”
“May I see it?”
Jake smiled. “Of course.” He fished in his pockets for the precious shard, his hand closing on it gently. Even to him, a non-telepath, it felt powerful. Warm and smooth in his hand, it seemed to have a vibration that was not physical, that one sensed with the soul rather than the body. He knew from experience that the sensation, now pleasant, would increase to the point of discomfort, and he let it drop into Zeratul’s outstretched hand. Zeratul’s eyes widened the instant it touched his palm. Two thumbs and two fingers closed over the precious item.
“Powerful indeed,” he said softly. “I have never felt the like. Not even in the Alys’aril, not even in the Uraj and Khalis crystals. Truly, this is special—I will not say unique, for as you have said, many more crystals exist in those chambers. What a powerful force for good or ill they would be.” He peered at the gem, cupping it carefully, reverently. “I am even more distressed to learn that Ulrezaj has commandeered the chambers now that I can sense for myself the power he controls.”
Reluctantly, he extended his hand to Jake. “You are the best custodian of this for the moment, Jacob. You would not be tempted to use it, as I would. Save this for yourself—for Zamara.”
Jake nodded and slipped the crystal back into his vest.
Zeratul hesitated. “Zamara…Jacob. Surely you must be aware that what you ask has never been attempted. We are able to capture memories of ordinary dark templar. A preserver is something else entirely. And to retrieve those memories from a human brain…could prove to be impossible. One or the other, or both of you, could die.”
“We know,” Jake said before Zamara could speak. “But honestly—is there even an option? If I don’t get Zamara out of my head, I’m definitely going to die, and if I die, all her memories die with me. There might be a chance to transfer Zamara’s memories to another preserver, but it’d be even harder to find one of those than get to Ehlna, especially now that we know Ulrezaj has been trying to kill them all. We’ve got this,” and he patted the crystal in his pocket. “And we’ve got you. If anyone can convince the Keepers of Wisdom that this is an important task, it’s you, Zeratul. I’m willing to take the risk because, hell…it beats sitting here and dying on a pink planet.”
Zeratul half closed his eyes and hunched his shoulders, laughing.
“Then let us go to Ehlna, where the Keepers of Wisdom will do all they can to preserve a preserver, and save a human life.”
Jake had, for some reason, gotten the impression that this was going to be a long journey. But as he rose to join Zeratul and said, “We should probably lay in some supplies—I’m going to need food and water for however long it takes,” Zeratul only chuckled.
“If you are hungry, eat now. Otherwise, I am certain food will be found at the Alys’aril for you. Ehlna is not the most congenial of worlds, but it has clean water, and there is life upon it.”
“Oh…I thought this place was pretty far from here.”
“Not via warp gate,” Zeratul replied. Jake followed him into his small atmospheric craft and settled in, blushing a little. “Remember, Jacob, the gates are not protoss technology. They are creations of the xel’naga. And there is one on Ehlna. It is why we are still able to return, most of us, on pilgrimage, to have our memories recorded for future generations.”
“Those on Aiur could have found you any time they wanted to then.”
“Not if they did not know the gate’s coordinates. But if they did, yes, they certainly could. And if they ever had, I think my people would have looked on it as an act of destiny.”
It was a short trip to the warp gate, and Jake looked out the window at the pink sky and purple-hued landscape. He would miss it. Zeratul had been right—it was a soothing and calming place. Even his headaches had seemed less frequent here. Absently he rubbed his temple, where he realized another monster of a headache was waiting, like a coiled serpent. He bit his lip and willed it back.
Soon, Jacob, this will be over, Zamara said, offering comfort.
One way or another, right?
She chuckled, sadly. One way or another.
And three minutes later, right as the small dark templar vessel sped through the gate, the pain hit. And this time, Jake blacked out.
Jake came to to discover himself lying on his back on something cool and hard and looking up at a dark, polished ceiling. It was inlaid with a dazzling display of glowing, singing crystals. They were beautiful, but blurry and wavy. He blinked hard, and then suddenly panicked.
Powerful, nonhuman hands grasped him to steady him, and he flailed, staring wildly at the purple-skinned protoss. Who was this person? Where the hell was he? The caverns beneath Aiur, with Savassan—or in the temple where that dead protoss was—
Jacob. Listen to me. Remember.
The voice in his head terrified him for half a second, and then he remembered. Zamara. He was probably in the ancient library Zeratul had spoken of on…Ehlna. The Alys’aril. The protoss sitting over him, keeping vigil while he
slept, was Zeratul.
“Are you all right now?” Zeratul asked. Jake nodded shakily. Zeratul released him and sank back on his haunches. Jake closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, and when he opened them again his vision had cleared.
More symptoms, he thought to Zamara. First headaches, then seizures, and now blurred vision and memory loss.
Yes. But we are here now. At the end of our long journey together.
“Are you well enough to speak with the alysaar’vah?”
Jake guessed that was the supervisor of the library and nodded again. “Yeah. I’m not going to get any better just sitting here. How long was I out for?”
“We had barely laid you down when you awoke. I explained a little to the alysaar about our situation.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he was wondering what you were doing bringing me here.” The ice pick in his brain had been removed, leaving behind only dull pain. He got to his feet, taking his time, realizing that his legs felt weak. Yet another symptom. Zeratul watched him closely, ready to aid him if it was needed, letting him keep his dignity if it wasn’t.
Damn, Jake liked the protoss.
“Indeed, some information was necessary. But I also felt much needed to be explained by you and Zamara, and she was unreachable while you were unconscious. Krythkal has been here for several centuries,” Zeratul continued. “He is now the alysaar’vah, the head of the alysaar. He oversees the work done here and sees to it that the traditions and the level of care are kept.”
Jake followed Zeratul out of what he assumed was the sleeping quarters and into a cavernous hall. He stopped dead in his tracks.
He’d thought the crystals in the temple were impressive, but compared to the sight that greeted him in this room, they were a candle next to a sun. Obsidian walls arched far, far above his head, pocked every foot or so by a small alcove that held a crystal. Some were larger than others, some less radiant, some were more beautifully prismed, but to his eye, they were all glorious. They seemed to him to have a slightly different hue than the ones he’d seen on Aiur and in the temple where he’d encountered Zamara. He rubbed the palms of his hands on his eyes and looked again.
“So is it the brain tumors or are these crystals different from others?” he asked Zeratul, his eyes roving over the countless crystals nestled in their alcoves, each one a unique little star.
“You are quite observant for a non-protoss,” came a pleasant mental voice. Jake turned to behold a protoss so old that he made Zeratul look like a capering youngster. So they, too, showed physical signs of aging, though subtler than a human’s white hair or wrinkled skin. A slightly brittle fragility to this dark templar’s skin and build indicated that he had been around for a long, long time.
His eyes, which also seemed paler to Jake than Zeratul’s, crinkled and he hunched in laughter. Jake felt heat rise in his face.
“Yes, Jacob Jefferson Ramsey, I remember the expulsion from our homeworld. I was even older than Raszagal, and I do not anticipate my life to extend overmuch longer. But glad I am to have lived this long, to see our people reunite, to meet a non-protoss who honors our knowledge as we do, and to give my aid to a preserver. You are right about the crystals. There is a rare combination of energies here that alters the crystals on a deep level. There are two such places where the energies converge. One is in the ocean depths, the other is beneath our feet. It is why we chose to stay and create the Alys’aril on this precise location.”
He shifted slightly, and Jake could no longer hear his thoughts. Jake assumed he was talking privately with Zamara. Something Zamara said affected the old protoss profoundly—Jake saw his eyes widen and his body stiffen, then settle sadly into the closest thing to a slump he’d ever seen a protoss display. At length, Krythkal nodded.
“Dark times indeed are upon us, that it comes to this,” he said. “Zamara, here in the Alys’aril we have ever sought to preserve memories in our own way. That does not mean we do not respect the way our brothers kept their wisdom—through protoss such as you.”
“I know this,” Zamara said. “I am grateful beyond expression that the dark templar used their skills to such ends. Now information vital to the survival of not just the protoss as a united race, but perhaps many other species as well, can be passed on.”
He nodded, but something else concerned him. “You speak of Ulrezaj. Do you know if he was defeated on Aiur or if he survived?”
“I couldn’t stay long enough to determine whether or not we’d brought him down,” Jake said. “I had to get through the warp gate before it was too late—I’d lingered long enough to miss the boat to Shakuras as it was. But he was definitely being weakened, that much is for sure.”
He expected Krythkal to express at least some pleasure in the news, if not exactly delight. Ulrezaj, after all, was originally a dark templar, albeit a misguided one. But even the dark templar feared the power of the dark archons, and the horrors Ulrezaj had perpetrated on the protoss would move all but the hardest heart. So he was surprised when Krythkal seemed genuinely saddened.
“I am glad that his evil was stopped, but I will mourn him,” he said.
Jake blinked. “Come again? I know he was one of your people once, but I don’t think anyone should weep over the death of something so awful.”
“Something? No. A dark archon of such tremendous power and malice—no. That I do not mourn. But I will mourn Ulrezaj.”
He regarded Jake steadily. “I will mourn my student.”
Jake stared. His student? “Ulrezaj—used to be a Keeper of Wisdom?”
Krythkal nodded. “Many centuries past, he studied these crystals. He was passionate about the cause of our people, as we all were then, with the wound still so very fresh. His was a sharp mind, an eager mind, not content with merely cataloguing memories and transferring them from one crystal to another. He hungered for knowledge, and we foolishly granted it to him.”
The dark templar looked, if such a thing were possible, even older as he spoke. “We let him rise in our ranks, for he proved an able student. We took great care to allow him only limited access, for much of what is recorded in the Wall of Knowledge is forbidden lore. We understand that, and while we preserve it because all knowledge is precious, we do not access it. No one living in the Alys’aril, not even I, knows most of the secrets contained in the Wall.”
“Ulrezaj did not confine himself to the areas that he was permitted to explore, did he?” It was a rhetorical question from Zeratul; he, Jake, and Zamara already knew the answer.
Krythkal nodded again. “No, he did not. Secretly, he was rising in the night, and studying the darkest, most forbidden knowledge the dark templar possessed.”
“That’s how he did it,” Jake breathed. “That’s how he figured out how to become a dark archon that’s greater than just two dark templar joining!”
“We caught him one night,” Krythkal continued, his mental voice laced with pain. “I confronted him, begged him to tell us why he had so betrayed our trust. I thought I could reason with him, but by then, he was too far gone in his zealotry. Anything that advanced the dark templar cause, he claimed, was worth doing. No matter whom it harmed, no matter the cost, even to our own people. We would have our vengeance on the protoss who had banished us, and he would be the weapon of their downfall.”
He lifted his eyes to Zeratul and Jake. “I barely recognized him then, as he stood here raging. I could see no trace of the scholar, the bright youth I had been so proud of. All that was left was burning anger and hatred, and a firm conviction that however abominable the means, the end—revenge on the protoss of Aiur—was worth it. We begged him to tell us what he had discovered, but he refused. We implored him to let us erase what he had learned, so that he could again return to us as an alysaar, one who tends the knowledge but does not abuse it. Again, he refused. He left us that night, seething with rage and a hatred that was at once so dark and so pure as to astound the mind. I did not think to see or hear from him again. To discover that he u
sed the Alys’aril—to become this…this monstrous entity…”
Krythkal was overcome and quickly shuttered his thoughts. Zeratul reached out a hand and laid it on the old protoss’s shoulder. “Your remorse is understandable, but no one could have foreseen this. Do not overburden yourself with guilt. What is done is done. That Ulrezaj chose to steal knowledge for such reasons was his own decision.”
The elderly alysaar’vah nodded, but it was clear that he did not quite believe Zeratul. “You speak wisdom, yet the doing is not so easy. But I will do what I can to make amends. You are aware, Jacob and Zamara, that I cannot guarantee a positive outcome.”
“We know,” Zamara said.
“But we have to try,” Jake added.
“I think you must, and all the skills we have are offered to you. I understand you have a crystal from the chambers beneath Aiur, where the Wanderers from Afar kept knowledge of their own, safe and secret.”
Jake nodded and fished in his pocket for the fragment of the crystal. Krythkal suddenly froze, his head cocked, listening. “Excuse me,” he said. “I will be right back. There is some kind of commotion—”
He strode down the long stone hallway. Zeratul and Jake exchanged glances. They did not even need to touch thoughts to realize they were both thinking the same thing, and as one, turned and followed their host. Despite his age, Krythkal, like every protoss Jake had yet seen, could move very quickly when he so chose, and Jake had to break into a lope to keep up with him and Zeratul.
Several alysaar were hastening to them, their robes fluttering, every line in their bodies speaking of their agitation. A silent conversation that was clearly of great importance went on, and Jake chafed at being left out of it.
I, too, am not being included, Zamara said.
“Zeratul?” Jake asked, because clearly the dark templar prelate was part of the conversation. Zeratul’s gaze was fastened on Krythkal and he did not respond away. All at once he hunched his shoulders and half closed his eyes. Jake frowned slightly—why was Zeratul laughing? And then Zamara was laughing too, and in the silent chambers of this ancient temple a strong, assertive, and quite definitely female voice rang out:
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