Invoking Darkness (5 page)

Galen selected the probe on John's neck. He stood now in his office, talking to a group of nine, attempting to recruit them to the alliance. Galen had seen John give this speech before, though each time he delivered it with power and conviction. The nine were telepaths, critical to fighting the Shadows.

Galen believed John's effort doomed to failure, the alliance's technology vastly inferior to the Shadows'. Yet John had already accomplished two things Galen would never have thought possible. Although history showed that the Vorlons and the Shadows were ancient enemies, no record existed of any direct confrontation between them. A few months ago, however, John had managed to convince the Vorlon ambassador, Kosh, that he must intercede in the war.

The result was a major defeat of the Shadows. In short order, the Shadows had retaliated with Kosh's murder. With him had probably gone any hope of future help by the Vorlons. They had the power to stop the Shadows, but they would not use it. John, though, had discovered another weapon: telepaths. They could disrupt the connection between a Shadow ship and the living being that served as its central processing unit. If the telepath was strong enough, the ship could be immobilized.

The Shadows had taken steps to decrease this vulnerability, as John had learned. He had intercepted a freighter on its way to the rim, carrying telepaths in sleeper tubes, just as G'Leel's freighter the Khatkhata had been. The sleepers were to be wired into Shadow ships, where they might repel any telepathic attack. Whichever side had the most powerful telepaths would win. John finished his speech and stood silently. One by one, the telepaths agreed to join his alliance. Thus far, John had not been able to confront the Shadows with his new weapon in a major battle, for he never knew where they would strike.

The Shadows' recent hit-and-run attacks were scattered over a large volume of space, their specific locations impossible to predict. After the last raid, however, Galen's repeated analyses had at last revealed an underlying pattern. The seemingly chaotic attacks were not chaotic at all. Their locations defined a rough shell around a sector of space into which refugees were frantically fleeing. As for why the Shadows might pursue such a plan, it had taken Galen only a moment to understand.

The Shadows knew that despair led people to chaos. They had killed Londo's girlfriend to gain his alliance. And they had used the same strategy before. The Shadows were manipulating the flow of refugees so that the survivors could be killed in one single, devastating assault. Within the next few weeks, the Shadows would surely attack within the center of the shell, striking a demoralizing blow against the alliance and showing they could not be defied or escaped the telepaths filed out, and John sat at his desk, rested his head in his hands.

He did not see the pattern of the attacks, which Galen found immensely frustrating. To be fair, John's information was incomplete, which made the pattern more difficult to see. And he was exhausted and overwhelmed with his duties. Yet he must see it soon. Foreknowledge of the attack presented his best chance of scoring a major victory against the Shadows. And countless refugees would be killed if he did not. Alwyn did not see the pattern either, even though his home of Regula stood in the very sector that would soon come under attack.

Galen's knowledge, of course, was useless. It could not leave this place, could not save even one of those who was to die. He put the thought from his mind, searching through the cameras on board the heavy cruiser Hyperion for Matthew Gideon. Watching Matthew usually brought him some small consolation. Matthew had been an ensign when Galen had plucked him from space, sole survivor of the hybrid ship's attack on the Earth-Force Destroyer Cerberus.

He was a lieutenant now aboard the Hyperion. It would have given Galen some satisfaction if Matthew, at least, had been able to fight the Shadows. Yet the Earth president, Clark, kept his forces out of the war, in secret alliance with the Shadows, who had helped him to secure his office.

Meanwhile, Matthew struggled with his growing distrust of his own government, who insisted that the hybrid ship had never existed. How could they admit the rampaging ship had killed hundreds, when they still searched for enough Shadow tech to build another?

Galen found Matthew in the mess, eating with several others.

"Gale! Gale! Gale!"

The voice came from elsewhere, and as he recognized its source, the accompanying image flashed into his mind's eye, next to that of Matthew.

Fa.

She stared directly at him, at the probe in the ring he had given her. She was crying, her breath hitching, her face twisted in distress. Her skin, beneath the curly white wisps of hair, had flushed a deep pink.

He had programmed the ring to inform him if ever she said his name three times. He had told Fa that if ever she did, he would come to her.

He had never imagined, then, that he would flee the galaxy. Her head jerked up in response to some distant sound, and she swallowed her sobs. After a moment, her gaze returned to the ring.

"Gale, I'm afraid," she said in the language of the Soom.

"Please come."

She stood and took a few steps, and though the light was dim, he could see she'd been crouched in one comer of her bedroom. She was taller than when he'd last seen her, her nose flatter and wider. She had seen nearly ten cycles of the sun now. She still wore the jumper of a child, though this one was blue rather than her favored orange.

"A ship fell out of the sky. A bad ship. Everything is gone. Look. Look."

She turned the ring to face out the window. Where once the neighbor's house had stood, a smoking pit yawned, its sides coated with a black, glassy substance. The fused surface carried the signature of a high-intensity plasma blast at close range. A Shadow ship.

Galen's heart quickened. As Fa turned the ring, the gray mist revealed only a few ragged remnants of walls among the shining black scorch marks. The town of Lok had been destroyed. He caught a hint of movement in the mist, but that was all he could see before she aimed the ring back at herself.

"My family they went to Farmer Jae's house. I stayed behind to practice my magic. I don't know if I can find Farmer Jae's house now. I don't know if I can find it."

Galen accessed the menu of probes on Soom.

Elric had planted many. More than half no longer functioned, including most of those in the cities. Of those that still did, he selected the one closest to Thin, on a rocky promontory far outside the coastal city. A dusty haze enveloped the lowland. As he increased magnification, he saw in the dim light only scattered dunes and irregular lumps of rubble. Not a building stood, not a survivor moved. The spaceport was distinguishable only by a few puddles of slag. On the far side of the seawall, the water was covered with a layer of dust. The charred remains of the seagoing ships burned as they sank.

He selected one probe after another, flashing from one scene of desolation to the next. All the other cities were the same: wastelands in which all had been reduced to chaos.

It would kill Elric.

Most of the smaller towns had been spared, but not Lok. He searched for a probe still functional in the town, to get a better view of what had happened. The one on Farmer Nee's Jab was still active.

Nee lived next door to Jae, so Galen might be able to get a view of Farmer Jae's house, discover what had happened to Fa's family. The image appeared in close-up, a scorched stone lying on the ground. As Jab moved, pushing herself forward on low, powerful legs, the view from the probe on her forehead shifted back and forth.

Galen realized she was circling another smoking ruin. Only a few of the foundational stones remained around the perimeter of a glassy pit. She was looking for something, Galen sensed. The front part of the house appeared to have been hit directly. The glassy pit encompassed that section. Ragged remnants of the back, and the attached stone barn, still stood, coated with black ash.

Jab approached a section of the ruins, climbed over the low barricade with a scrabble of claws. As she sniffed the ground with a series of harsh inhalations, Galen noticed a heavy earthenware bowl lying broken against the wall. With a start, he recognized it. The bowl belonged to Des, Farmer Jae's prizewinning swug. Of all things, it had somehow survived. Galen remembered the flourish with which Elric had revealed the bowl, solving the mystery of Des' poor health so long ago. It seemed like another lifetime.

This was Farmer Jae's barn and house. Farmer Jae was dead. Fa's family was dead. Jab had found a black chunk of something, and she pushed at it with her nose. Perhaps it was a piece of Des, or one of Jab's children. She'd had five, with Des serving as host for the larvae. They should be nearly full-grown now. Jab turned and marched out of the ruins.

"Are you coming, Gale?" Fa asked the ring.

"Will you come soon?"

She wiped at her eyes, and with a shaky breath, she seemed to make a decision.

"I'll go to Farmer Jae's. You can meet me there."

His hands closed into fists. He wanted to tell her not to go, not to move. But he had no way to communicate with her. The probe transmitted information, nothing more. Besides, if he could talk to her, what would he say? That she should stay in her room? She couldn't stay there forever. And he wouldn't be coming to rescue her. He had run away from everything. He hadn't even checked on her in all this time.

She climbed out her window – she had always preferred windows to doors. As she dropped to the ground, he caught a flash of her broad feet, bare as usual, and legs covered with wispy white hair. She hesitated, then again raised the ring to face her.

The wind riffled her hair.

"We'll go. We'll go together."

He had not wanted to think of her, of Soom, of his life before. Though he had been charged with watching the universe outside, he had conveniently overlooked his old home. He used his task just as he used his mind-focusing exercises, to distract himself, to build walls of facts and information to keep out all that he could not face, not if he was to retain control.

Fa started through the ruins, the hand with the ring clutched to her chest. He should have realized that the Shadows might attack here. Soom was on the outskirts of the area they'd been targeting. Refugees from earlier raids had fled in this direction.

Though Soom constituted no threat, with no weapons or space technology to speak of, the Shadows would want to turn the refugees back, to force the flow toward the center of the sector. A feint here would do that.

But he had not seen it, had not wanted to see it. Even if he had, he could have done nothing. He must remain here, isolated from the rest of the universe. Fa cried with short, broken breaths as she wandered through the blackened waste. She must know, by now, that her family could not possibly be alive. Of all the town, only her house had been spared. It was unlike the Shadows to spare any. In the mist ahead, a dark silhouette took shape. The figure approached. Perhaps another had, somehow, survived, or come from the next town.

Galen was relieved; Fa would not be alone. She obviously didn't notice, for she kept walking at the same slow pace. With a gust of wind the silhouette's shape shifted, a long, dark cape billowing out to one side. This was not one of the Soom.

Galen wanted Fa to turn, to run. She must have seen the figure, for suddenly she stopped.

"Are you all right?" a woman said in the language of the Soom, her voice rich and deep.

As she came forward, thin, dark hair swirled over her pale face, obscuring it. The blowing cape disguised her smallness, yet he knew her.

Razeel.

He willed Fa to run, run, but she stood stubbornly in place.

"Don't be afraid," Razeel said.

"I'm here to help you."

Fa looked down at the ring.

"Did Gale send you?"

Oh God. She sensed Razeel was a mage, like him. Perhaps she even recognized Razeel. That was why she wasn't running. Razeel stopped in front of Fa, and behind her shifting veil of hair, her gaze flicked briefly to the ring. She smiled. She was only about a foot taller than Fa, able to make friendly eye contact without bending.

"Galen, you mean. Yes, that's right. He asked me to come for you."

Fa wiped at her tears.

"Is he with you? Why didn't he come?"

"Galen is very ill. He sent me and my friends to help you."

Friends? Elizar, then. Perhaps others. But why would they bother to come to Soom? Why seek out Fa? To strike at him? To try to provoke him into the open?

I will find you,
Elizar had written in his final message.
And I will kill you.

That had been nearly two years ago, though. Why now? Galen realized he was rocking back and forth, his nails digging into the skin of his palms. They were going to hurt her, he knew. They were going to do something horrible to her, because of him.

"Will you take me to Gale?" Fa asked.

"Is that what you want?" Fa nodded vigorously.

"First we need your help," Razeel said.

"What can I do?"

"Let me take you to the others. They are near where Galen used to live."

Razeel flipped her cape back over her shoulder. Beneath, she wore yet another ill-fitting dress, this one of layered black chiffon. She had still not found an identity that fit her. Despite that, she seemed more assured, in some way that frightened Galen. She held out her hand, and Fa took it. She smiled into the ring, her hair blowing over her face.

"Hello, Galen."

They walked out of town and down toward the mak, Razeel humming a cheerful tune. He had to do something. He had to help Fa. But how?

"Galen... Gale has lost something," Razeel said.

"Because he is ill, he cannot remember where he left it. But he is certain it is here. Do you know of anything he or Elric left behind?"

"What did he lose?"

"Did he leave any papers, any crystals, any devices?"

Did she think he and Elric were fools, to leave anything behind? What was it they were after? Something in Elric's place of power? Or was it truly something of his? In that case, it could be only one thing: the secret of destruction. But why would they think he had left it behind?