Things do not start well. Once I'm properly washed and dressed again, and I've enjoyed a daybreak meal of dried fruit, grains and nuts, I go through to Asor's room to see his apparently useless mirror-portal for myself - and he was quite correct when he told me about it yesterday. The glass is blackened, as though a fire has been raging behind it, the ornate frame appears to be decaying, the golden surface flaking away before one's eyes, and not one of my senses, internal or external, can pick up the slightest energy emanating from it.
"From what Turah told me about it, the system is centralised - the mirrors are just receivers, destination points for the portals generated on Wyridaen", I tell Asor, "so we have to assume the system has been shut down completely, possibly permanently."
"I suspect the Inheritors had that in mind from the start", adds my friend. "That would explain their use of the slip-ways - a one way, one use escape route."
No matter how much we debate the issue, or analyse the Inheritors' technology and methods, the truth remains the same: that path is most categorically closed to me. There's not exactly a bewildering choice of paths left, and I don't hold out much hope for sending out a distress call by local means, as the technological expertise of both the Gara-Morsa and the Gara-Laserma is not exactly geared towards communication or travel over interstellar distances, or the immeasurable gulf between universes. Asor admits to not being an expert on the subject, but he does know someone who more closely fits the description, and before the town comes properly to life, and the roads become too busy with other, inquisitive Gara-Laserma, I'm back in my more customary position, on Asor's back, clinging to his mane as he gallops away, up into the nearby hills.
As is most often the case, I leave the "driving" to Asor, the quite willing passenger as he heads up the highest of the hills to a broad open area where a single large building stands, perhaps four stories high in breach of the otherwise citywide "low rise" rule. The third floor walls angle inwards to a small degree, the walls of the fourth even more, giving the structure a pyramidical, or dome-like appearance - and I think I know to what purpose...
"An observatory?", I venture as I slide off Asor's back and drop to the ground, and my query receives a look of bewilderment, requiring some clarification. "A place from which scientists can study the sky, the stars - and the moon."
"Niramth is a scientific observer, one of the few people prepared to spend any great length of time looking up at the sky at night", my friend tells me as we circle the building, putting it between us and the city. "He doesn't venture very far from this place - from what my uncle told me, he actually lives up here..."
There is, indeed, a small house just over the other side of the crest of the hill, and there, on a paved area at the rear, we find a sandy-skinned, grey-maned Cursed Gara-Laserma, basking in the early sun. He looks round as we approach, and it takes some effort for him to rise to greet Asor, but a whole new lease of life comes to his elderly form as the light shifts, and I emerge from my companion's shadow. A being showing the weight of his years is suddenly transformed back into a child as one of the dreams of his profession comes true, and he sees a real live alien with his own eyes...
"Spirits of Moon and Sun - can this be...?", murmurs the scientist, prancing back and forth alongside me. "Oh - oh my dear, you can't possibly imagine what your presence means...!"
"I may have more idea than you suspect", I tell him. "My presence means that speculation about life on other worlds is speculation no longer - the races of this world are not alone in the universes. I hope I'm as uplifting as you dreamed."
Niramth comes to a stops in front of me, gravel hissing under his hooves, and he stretches towards me with an eagerly sniffing nose. "Correct, in both instances", he then says, backing away a little. "I have so many questions..."
"I'll try my best to answer them", I reply, although what I should be saying is "Our civilisations are centuries, maybe millennia, apart - if I tell you anything, I could wreck your future..."
We go inside the main building, most of the interior of which is a single chamber housing not the high-powered telescope I'd expected, but a curious arrangement of circular mirrors, held within an adjustable web-like framework of black-painted metal. From inside, one can see that the slanted walls of the uppermost level are in fact shutters that can be opened and closed as required to allow starlight - and moonlight - in to be channelled down to the second floor, where the mirrors finally project the sharpest, clearest image they can produce onto a large blank screen, viewed from a suspended walkway built in a circle around it.
The sun is up, so there's not much to see in the sky, but Niramth has plenty on display to make up for it on the ground floor. The walls and covered with detailed drawings, maps of the surface of Gara-Laras's moon, Gara-Naluxa, images Niramth reveals are traced from the projections created by the mirror-mechanism. Some of the images, however, are of something else, something far more disturbing.
"It's viewed as being particularly unlucky to look at The Dark Child for any length of time", says Niramth, "but I have spent all my life studying the sciences, and I've come to the conclusion that luck, good or bad, is an illusion. To have such... myths stand in the way of understanding is, well, beyond understanding..."
Niramth leads us over to the wall of drawings, and what appear to be some kind of photographic reproductions, of The Dark Child. "On those rare occasions when Gara-Naluxa stands between us and our star-mother, the reduced light causes anxiety, and even fear, in those who do not understand the phenomenon", he continues. "However, for me those times are a time of joy, and discovery. The light that leaks from behind Gara-Naluxa illuminates The Dark Child in just such a way that details of its surface can be seen - it has been quite a struggle to record those details, given that these events only occur in the day-time, but I have either trusted the details to memory, and combined them with night-time observations, or used light-sensitive film to capture the images as they appear..."
The images of the moon show ravines and craters, just as they appear on the surface of any airless, lifeless planetary body, but the features of The Dark Child immediately remind me of the body of some bizarre, gigantic insect, ridged and segmented in shocking similarity to an ancient fossil, frozen by time into a sculpture made of polished darkness.
"It... it looks... alive", murmurs Asor. "Alive, or at least it was, at some point..."
Asor may have more knowledge of other worlds and their inhabitants than the rest of his race, but he hasn't seen the things I have seen - Gralon living warships, bombarding a planet's surface with pulses of compressed bio-energy; the "drones" of the Gylar, each massive living weapon a single "cell" of a far greater organism... even the Val'haedrans can be viewed as living machines of a sort, and there are elements reminiscent of all of them echoed in the images Niramth has produced, and for every factual monster, there is another myth, another fictional nightmare - they, too, have found their likeness in this space-borne obscenity.
"Have you seen something like it before?", asks Niramth, and I don't know how to answer - or whether I should.
"I daren't offer an opinion without more information", I tell him. "Were I to misidentify this... entity, it could cause more problems than it solves..."
"All I can say is that its position in the sky is changing", says Niramth. "The Dark Child no longer appears to be keeping the same pace with Gara-Naluxa. That means that that body is either slowing down, or it is moving closer to Gara-Laras."
"And how long will it be before The Dark Child presents an imminent collision threat?", I ask the scientist.
Niramth looks genuinely surprised that someone such as me knows anything about his field of expertise. "Now... now that The Dark Child is in the grasp of the mass-attraction of Gara-Laras, it may be as little as ten or twenty years", he reveals, anxiously. "The Dark Child has a considerable mass of its own, and an impact could have disastrous consequences for our world."
That's the physics of the situation dealt with - but what about the more... esoteric properties of this second moon...? "But that's not all, is it?", I continue. "It really does cause The Curse, doesn't it?"
"That's outside my field, but that fact is undeniable", says the scientist. "A measurable energetic aura produced by The Dark Child begins to affect our people from conception, and as the object draws closer, the effect intensifies."
"That might explain Zserreth, and the generation like him", observes Asor. "The Gara-Laserma are touched by The Curse sooner and sooner in life, and they are considerably more... feral that previous generations. Any more of this, and they risk losing all trace of civilisation."
"And the Gara-Morsa?", I ask them both. "Is there any sign of The Curse in them, or any indication that they know about the danger posed by The Dark Child?"
"If they are touched, they have guarded its secret well", says Asor. "None of us have encountered anything in the wilds that is Cursed and is not Gara-Laserma."
"The Gara-Morsa are not imprisoned in bodies without hands for half the day", Niramth reminds us, "and so they have pushed ahead of us in terms of science and technology. They cannot possibly be oblivious to the threat from above."
And if... Creatures like Zserreth carry on eating Gara-Morsa, the people of this world could be too busy killing each other to do anything sensible about The Dark Child - unless... unless someone does something about it.
I came to the observatory to find a way to make contact with my friends, my world, but in the light of what I've just been told, my priorities have shifted significantly. The two races of this planet face the same threat, and they have to be made to realise it - and who seems ideally placed to make that happen?
I call home, and I end up back on Sentinel, little more than a figurehead. I stay here, I can perhaps save a world. I may breach several Confederacy regulations on intervening in events on "marginally advanced worlds", but Mystalorn isn't part of the Confederacy, and its not as though I'm calling in Battlehawks to threaten the peoples of Gara-Laras into peace...
"I think we should try and make sure that they're aware of the danger", I tell Asor and his star-gazing friend, as plans start to simmer in the back of my mind. "It might also be a good idea to discourage Zserreth and his friends from doing any more to aggravate the Gara-Morsa - Asor, do you have any idea where I might find the less reputable element of Gara-Laserma society...?"
Ibarha had been struggling to keep up with her work following the exhilarating events of the previous night, but events were conspiring to ensure that, when she heard about them, she would remain fully alert for the rest of the day - and probably be unable to sleep that night...
The evidence examiner had been engaged in one of the least pleasant tasks of her life, making a thorough pictorial record of the savaged remains of the three hunters who had gone missing the day before, when her thoughts were disturbed by a sudden, and drastic, increase in activity throughout the civic defence building. Something had happened that Ibarha had to find out about, and she hoped superiors would be so caught up in it themselves that they wouldn't mind waiting a little longer for their pictures.
Stepping out into the corridor running along the side of the mortuary, Ibarha was almost bowled over by one of those very superiors, senior analyst Keborr. A usually thoughtful man, who customarily took his time over everything - but who seemed unfairly impatient when it came to any task Ibarha was given - Ruthasa Keborr looked unhealthily pale, and atypically agitated...
"What is it, sir?", Ibarha asked, nervously.
"It's the Cursed", muttered the senior analyst. "They've gone too far this time. Word just reached us that they attacked a military patrol group, out in the wilderness. Several soldiers are dead, and two officers are missing..."
"Are... are they sure...?", murmured Ibarha, not needing to fake her horror at the news. She had never imagined that the Spirits would risk such a thing...
"One of the patrol vehicles is on its way back right now", said Keborr. "They have wounded, and we've been asked to treat them. I hear they have all the evidence we'll need to be absolutely certain..."
Keborr grabbed Ibarha's arm, and dragged her along with him. "Come - the pictures of those hunters can wait", he told her. "The military want pictures of the dead Cursed - probably to spur their men into a killing frenzy..."
A terrified Ibarha soon found herself standing in the parking area outside the rear of the civic defence headquarters, image recorder in her trembling hands. An age seemed to pass before the military vehicles, lightweight land-racers designed to cover rough ground at speed, came hurtling into view, screeching to a halt in clouds of dust and tire-smoke. The girl was horrified by the injuries she witnessed as the soldiers dismounted from their battered, blood-stained machines - one man was missing an arm, another almost torn in half - but the bottom fell out of her cherished world of wild dancing in the night-time fire-light as "The Spirits" became just creatures of flesh and blood, the evidence tied to the front of one of the land-racers - the severed head of a Cursed Gara-Laserma, one eye scooped out of its socket by a projectile entrance wound.
Ibarha could not bring herself to look, but if she failed to do as Keborr ordered, questions would be asked that she might struggle to answer. She begged for the dead Spirit to be anyone other than the beautiful golden creature who had looked down upon her the night before...
The girl lined up the grisly trophy on the image-recorder's tiny preview screen - the skin was bronze-brown, with a broad stripe of white running down from between the horns to the tip of the nose, where it became tinged pink with bloody foam from the beautiful creature's mouth and nostrils - it was a different Spirit; different, but nonetheless beautiful, sacred, in Ibarha's eyes...
The girl has seen far worse in her time as an evidence assistant - only minutes before, she had been taking pictures of half-eaten Gara-Morsa - but she only managed to take three pictures before she was forced to turn away, and her stomach rebelled against her, emptying itself in an explosion of nervous vomit.
Those pictures meant more to her than anyone she worked with could ever understand. If the military had their way, those images would be the last anyone saw of the Children Of The Forest...
...to be continued...
Posted at 15:11 on 30.04.2009
~ o O o ~
Previously...
Mane-of-Night And The Watcher From Beyond - Chapter 1 - 21.06.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Dark Child's Descent - Chapter 14 - 17.05.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Dark Child's Descent - Chapter 13 - 15.05.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Dark Child's Descent - Chapter 12 - 13.05.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Dark Child's Descent - Chapter 11 - 11.05.2009
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