Authors: Gillian Andrews
The others had heard the thudding of his canth’s hooves. They waved, though he was still so far away that he could only see tiny stick people and stick arms. He put his own hand up above his head to reply.
The scene in front of him was full of colour, full of sunlight. He concentrated on it, trying to figure out how he had come to live here, in what must be the most beautiful place in all the binary system.
Then, in one grim instant, everything changed.
On Enara, the Ammonite animas formed their astrand.
On Dessia, the Dessites formed the mindwall.
Each began to trace the weak mental pathways which would lead them to Arcan and his close collaborators, the virtual links that would enable them to reach across to the binary system.
The mindwall reached out to the orthogel entity, preparing to draw him over towards their waiting traps.
The astrand stretched across space to take over what minds it could find, then to reach further and further past those minds, until the canths and the lost animas of Xiantha were at its mercy.
Grace gave a cry and turned over in the water, so that she was now on her front with her face submerged under the liquid. She lay in a completely inert way; if she breathed now, she would inhale water. Her stillness was eerie – it was as if she were already dead.
Ledin leapt for his wife, shouting at Tallen and Bennel.
Tallen pushed the ortholiquid bracelet around his wrist, warning Arcan on Valhai that the attack had begun.
Ledin wrested Grace’s head out of the water and forced her mouth open.
Six, still galloping towards the scene, saw only rapid movements of the tiny figures – movements which made him frown, but which were too far away to be distinguishable – before he was pulled off his canth and transported away from the scene by Arcan. As he disappeared, he only had time to register that his canth was still galloping along the sands, apparently unaware that he was no longer astride it.
At the same time, Ledin felt himself begin to dematerialize. His eyes moved in a plea to meet Bennel’s. The Coriolan gave a nod and as the Kwaidian began to disappear, he saw that both Bennel and Tallen had reached Grace and Lannie was hurrying down the beach towards the Sellite girl too. Further back, on the shoreline, Sanjai was running towards Temar, and Quenna was already at Raven’s side. Six’s canth had slowed, and was drawing to a halt just short of the tallest trees.
Grace was screaming, lashing out and kicking at both of the Coriolans, desperate to turn back to the water, to submerge herself into its cool embrace. She had no idea where she was, nor who she was. She bit Tallen savagely, and he snatched back his arm before overcoming his instincts and restraining her again. He and Bennel began to drag her into shallower water, ignoring her demented yells.
Then Raven pulled roughly away from Quenna’s loose hold. Quenna looked down in surprise, to see that her charge was tearing as fast as her thin legs could carry her towards the tallest tree. Quenna gave a gasp of dismay and began to race after her.
Unfortunately, by the time Quenna got to the base of the tree, Raven had already begun to climb the iron rungs set on each side of the trunk, and, despite her age, was managing to reach up from one to the next quite efficiently. Quenna looked around for help, but the others were far away, dealing with other problems. She stared up. Raven was at least five rungs ahead of her. There was nothing for it. She was not a Coriolan companion’s daughter for nothing, and she could not simply stand by while First Six’s daughter did something so dangerous. She would just have to dominate the fear of heights which had plagued her since she was little, and go up the tree herself. There was no choice; there was nobody else here to do it. She gave a little swallow, and then closed her eyes, feeling up for the first rung. Once that was done, she found her heart was thudding so much that it almost seemed about to leap out of her chest. It was very frightening, and it left her light-headed. She tried to take deep, even breaths. She couldn’t allow herself to faint, not now that she was already above ground level, not now she had persuaded her legs and arms to start this terrible ascension. She began to pull herself up the tree trunk determinedly, fixing her eyes on Raven, who was still a good metre ahead. Quenna just concentrated with all her might on putting one hand after the other, one foot after the other. She ignored the pounding of her heart, which was putting up a strenuous objection to being subjected to so much stress.
Raven still seemed unaware that she was being followed; she kept up the same steady pace. In the scarce seconds that had passed since the Enarans had taken control of her mind, she had already managed to climb to seven or eight metres above ground level.
Quenna was much older than Raven, however, and so was able to climb faster, despite the difficulty she had to control the panic which threatened to take her over. Although her whole body shook with the effort of forcing herself to go further and further up the tree, she made as little sound as possible and had time to reach the next but one rung beneath Raven before the girl higher up heard her. As soon as she heard Quenna, though, she stopped suddenly as the Ammonites who were controlling Raven’s movements made her look around.
Their decision was fast. They had hoped to reach more height before ordering this, but they told the dominated mind to loosen its hold on the rungs and to throw itself backwards. Without thought, Raven obeyed. Her small body began to tilt outwards from the tree and her eyes closed, ready for death.
Then something slammed into her, pushing her back against the trunk again. Quenna had launched herself up the last two rungs and flung her own body flat against Raven’s back to pin her to safety. Raven screamed – a demented cry of frustration – and began to struggle. Quenna wrapped both arms and both legs as far as she could and as tight as she could and pressed the little girl into the bark with no thought of its roughness. The elder girl closed her eyes. She had to hang on for just as long as she possibly could. She could not allow the terror of heights to creep in now. She couldn’t! Raven’s life depended on it.
Behind her, Lannie had already reached the water’s edge, which was just as well, because Bennel suddenly dropped Grace, and threw himself on Tallen, with the clear goal of drowning the Namuri boy in the lake. Tallen was so surprised that the Coriolan guard had almost reached him by the time his sense of preservation kicked in to warn him, and he managed to duck quickly away. It took all of his wiry strength to resist the initial momentum, but it was a fight he would lose. Bennel was heavier than he was and an extremely capable and skilled fighter, with or without weapons. Tallen was at least lucky that his opponent was, for the moment, unarmed. He was also aware of a heavy pressure on his mind. He could still remember how it had felt when the Ammonites had entered his thoughts, back on the strange planet of Yttrea, and he knew that they would not be long in overcoming the mental barriers he was trying to put up. At the moment he was able to resist the pressure, but for how long was a mystery.
“Lannie,” he shouted. “Help Grace! Quickly!”
Then he was forced to dart out to the shallower water. Bennel was advancing towards him again. All he could do was to try to resist the stronger man for a certain length of time. He just prayed to the namura stone that the Enarans would not be able to take over his own brain before then. He hated to think what would happen if they did.
Sanjai heard Tallen call for help, but he himself was staring down at the toddler on the beach. The small boy had thrown himself face down into the sand and was squirming violently, his face pressing into the moving surface and burrowing further and further down. It seemed such a bizarre thing to do that Sanjai just frowned at first. Then his own brain, which felt surprisingly dull and confused, registered the end result. He grabbed down for the tubby little body and yanked it upright, away from the asphyxiating particles. Temar began to cough, his little face red and congested, but still pulled away, trying to throw himself back down to the sand, trying to get away from the person who had saved him. It was amazing how strong a toddler could be, thought Sanjai. There was no chance of his going to his mother’s aid; not with Temar still struggling and kicking like this.
DIVA WAITED UNTIL she felt the tendrils of the Ammonites creeping across towards the binary system. She felt the trimorph twins silently warn the canths, and also sensed the immediate resultant hum of resistance that went up between Enara and the system planets. The Ammonites had been expecting this, she saw. They knew that they were unlikely to get a clear target a second time. They had been expecting the canths to interpose themselves between the transients and the attempt at mental control. They were pleased, she realized, because this was a way to attack the trimorphs and the canths too. They now knew that this link could be used against Arcan and his allies. She grinned to herself. What they didn’t seem to have realized was that their own link could be used against them in a similar way.
“Well done,” she sent quietly over to the canths. “Keep up the good work, but be careful: you are in danger yourselves.”
The lost animas acknowledged her concern, and intensified their struggles. Diva felt the mental power of the Ammonite astrand strengthen. She searched inside the attack for the trace which would lead her back to the astrand on Enara. At first she couldn’t find it, and knew a moment of panic. Their whole plan depended on her being able to follow the attack back to the point of origin.
For long minutes, she searched inside the broad mental wave which was being projected at them from Enara. Nothing. It washed over her without giving her a clue about its origin.
Diva frowned. This was going to be more difficult than they had thought. Already she could sense that the canths were tiring, and the twins were gradually being tugged closer in, towards the quantum waveform of the Enarans. If she didn’t find the way soon, it would be too late.
Then she saw a small spot of colour inside the wave and dived towards it. As she approached, it became a crevice, opening out into shadows which seemed to plunge deeper inside the mental barrage. She could feel some essence of Grace in the aura, but she had no time to consider what was happening to her friend. Instantly, she was inside the cleft, diving further and further along it, flowing along against the current, weaving this way and that as she followed the signal.
The closer she got to the astrand on Enara, the stronger the signal became, but the more energy the waveform held too. By the time she was close to the centre of the Ammonite diamond of diamonds, the sheer potential of the Enaran shape was almost blinding. It became harder and harder to struggle against such a force, and she had to concentrate with all her might so as not to be forcibly ejected from the mental stream. The energy potential made her feel like a leaf in an autumn gale, but she battled to stay within it, clinging on as best she could. She could sense that she was nearly at the epicentre now. She peered down and around her; but she was being buffeted so much that it was almost impossible to see anything at all.
It seemed to her to take forever, but at last she felt the mental barrier which marked the edge of the astrand. She dropped immediately out of the waveform, coalescing close to the astrand, spun, and quickly dived behind the nearest cover she could find. Only then did she begin to take stock of her surroundings.
It was a blisteringly hot and humid environment, one in which nothing but a morphic could have survived. She was in a huge underground cave which glistened in the dark. She gasped; all over the cavern were enormous crystals, growing in all directions and criss-crossing each other, like a giant game of pick-up sticks.
Diva stared around her in wonder. She had never seen anything like it in her whole life. The translucent white megacrystals must have been up to 15 metres long! Why, some of them were as long as the Valhai Voting Dome was high and as thick as a shuttle! It was absolutely staggering and made the most impressive backdrop possible for the Ammonite diamond of diamonds. The astrand of Enaran animas was, she could see, hovering between several of these crystal beams. It shone with an eerie greenish-yellow light which reflected off the huge crystals, forming ghostly patterns across the crystal cavern.
Now that she had decohered, she could also see the assembled Enarans in person. The Ammonites were physically clustered close together inside the chamber in an agglomeration of hundreds of wispy small bodies. It seemed untidy compared to the geometric perfection of the mental astrand, which was still visible to her as an aura. Physically, they were just a tangle of bodies, and it was easy to see that they were, in some sense of the word, empty of consciousness.
Diva moved slowly around the cavern, examining it carefully, trying to determine the edges of the cave, trying to find the entrance. She was glad she could move like a morphic now and didn’t have to walk; the floor was strewn with lethal, jagged shards and smaller crystals seeded amongst their overgrown brothers. She saw that some of the crystals had formed huge roses too, almost perfect replicas of open flowers, on the floor of the cavern. These were so big that several of them had long white multifaceted columns growing out of them too, like gigantic stamens.
She couldn’t help staring. The whole cavern had an almost mystical aura about it. She wondered how the Ammonites had managed to find it, and where it was on Enara.
That mystery was soon solved. She followed one of the long tunnels leading off the main chamber, emerging from the intense heat and humidity into the fresh air some hundred metres above the crystal chamber. She found herself at the entrance of a cave, set into a small mountain which faced out over an expanse of semi-desert. She looked around. They must be only a few miles from the Eye of Enara; she could remember that rather distinctive shaping of the adjoining peak. The cavern’s entrance faced south and opened out onto a large plain, dotted with the strangely-shaped trees which lived on the planet. There were also gentle mounds in the terrain, which was a mixture of sand and small rocks. Diva retraced her steps and moved around the incredible crystal cavern again, threading in and out of the immense columns, which jutted out in all directions, in some sort of majestic chaotic order.
She shook her head. What a place! This was absolutely unbelievable. The Ammonites must have thought they had been brought to somewhere sacred when they discovered it. Diva felt it was ironic that they themselves had introduced a race which was turning out to be their enemy to such an amazing planet.
But her work had only just begun. She had no time to waste on regrets. She had to find a way to stop the Ammonites. That is why she was here, and why the others were risking their own sanity to help her. She began to examine her surroundings more carefully.