<Your petty moralities are meaningless to me.>
‘We humans are capable of reasoning.’
<Yes, but to a finite and ultimately self-centred degree. It is a poor intelligence that would allow itself to be so readily overwhelmed by instinct, by emotion. Yet instead of recognising and thereby extirpating this weakness, you extol it as the essence of your being.>
‘Yet we recognise, through that same instinct, that to hurt another, to kill, is a wicked and selfish act.’
<You kill animals to consume them. You destroy entire ecologies, annihilating the many lives that exist within them, to satisfy your needs. You humans kill one another in your innumerable wars with a relish that you fail to recognise to be a passion.>
‘We also help one another. We have the concept of charity, of love.’
<You consider this a higher purpose. And you extend this concept of love to the universe, expecting it to reciprocate. Yet in the heavens whole galaxies collide, bringing extinction to countless civilisations, many more worthy of survival than yours. But no matter! I am not here to chastise you. Things are about to change. In time you will come to know more of the logic of existence. It is my intention to open your vision onto wonders both terrible and exhilarating. You will realise that absolute concepts of good and evil do not exist.>
‘Then you claim that the universe is not immoral but amoral.’
<I would have you understand the true nature of power. Look upon it, if you must, as an indulgence on my part. I would give you what your species has yearned for all through your brief existence.>
‘What is that?’
<Liberation. I would free you from the sentence of death that is the burden of all others of your kind.>
‘What does that mean?’
<In the same way that the life of the butterfly in its brevity is no more than a puff of smoke to you, so your human lives are transient to me. I am far from alone. There are beings in the universe who take as long to consider an idea as you would measure millenia. You are frail beings whose lives are as fleeting as insects. Yet, so rare is your mind, Penny Postlethwaite, that you alone, of all other humans I have encountered, have a quality that might extend your creativity, your will, your being, beyond the confines of your human limitations.>
‘You’re attempting to change me. But what if I don’t want to be changed?’
<I would enable you to discover your innate potential.>
‘So that you can use me?’
<I would develop the seed in you.>
‘Did . . . Did you place it there?’
Silence.
‘Oh, no! Don’t tell me . . .! You did, didn’t you? You said that you . . . you searched for me, even before I was conceived.’
Silence again.
Her voice trembled. ‘Am I . . . Please don’t say that I’m your daughter?’
He laughed. <Since you are human you could hardly be my offspring.>
But she trembled all the more, not knowing if she believed him. Not knowing what to believe.
<You already know that some things cannot readily be expressed in words. Language is a poor messenger for what you have already recognised as the communication of mathematics. Humans sense something of this in your passion for music. But you, Penny, were born with the potential of this deeper level of communication. It is this potential that will enable you to control the minds of the Akkharu. At the moment this potential is dormant. But the seed is in you. I would develop this potential.>
‘I won’t hurt people.’
<To wield power, you must learn to be ruthless.’
‘No!’
<What if in order to help many, you must hurt some?>
‘You’re playing with words, with ideas. But I won’t go along with you. I won’t do it. I won’t let you make me hurt people.’
Fear of Duty
Alan was tossing and turning in his sleep. In his dreams a storm raged; uncanny splotches and blotches of black wheeled like a murder of crows against a wasteland of snow. The shock of it woke him in his tent. He searched for Kate in a rising bewilderment, but then he remembered that Kate was not there. Every hour of the day and night he was interrupted by reports, or messengers from the Gargs, or Shee sentinels in anticipation of further conflict – the intrusive bureaucracy of war – so Alan had insisted she sleep in a tent by herself on the quieter periphery of the camp. It wasn’t Kate’s fault that they couldn’t be together. She needed rest to recover from her ordeal in Ulla Quemar, the ruined city of the Cill. But none of that reasoning helped now as Alan sat up, his face bathed in sweat, his hands braced against the edges of his bier, breathing hard. The nightmare was fading, but the sound of footsteps approaching the flaps of the tent made him wonder if a new threat was coming to take its place.
A Shee guardian announced a single visitor.
Within moments, somebody slight and nimble had slipped through the flap, hardly disturbing it, her presence more readily apparent through his oraculum than in the gloomy light of the tent interior.
‘Mo!’
Her face was only half visible because it was concealed within a hood, the other half illuminated by waves of light from the Torus she wore round her neck. The fact it was pulsating was enough to alert Alan. Mo’s face lifted slowly, showing a ghostly outline of his friend. She didn’t look solid, somehow. She sat cross-legged by his cot, her eyes wide with fright.
‘Mo, what is it?’
<I’m not alone.>
Her statement caused Alan to jerk fully awake, his eyes darting around the close confines of the tent. ‘Who else is here? I can’t see anyone.’
<Indeed, I too am here; in moral support for your friend.> It was Magtokk’s voice, but Alan could detect no sign of his presence.
<I shall desist from manifesting in such close quarters, since my bulk would fill this space.>
Alan wasn’t sure he entirely accepted the explanation. He had never fully trusted the mage, who had only recently revealed himself to be a True Believer, and he was still struggling to clear his thoughts following his disturbing dream.
‘What’s going on, Mo?’
‘Like you, my sleep is increasingly disturbed. Alan, I’m so afraid. I sense that we’re in the greatest danger. And it’s my fault.’
Alan realised he was wearing no more than underpants. He threw on his trousers, ignoring his naked upper body. Then he sat down once more on the bier, his feet extending onto the mat-covered floor. ‘What’s your fault?’
Another Shee – he recognised Chinonche, the commander of his protective garrison – poked her head in through the door flap and took a good long look, reassuring herself that he was in no danger. He waved her away, but knew she would stay close, and, very likely, would now be listening to this conversation from outside the tent. The Shee had very acute hearing.
The disembodied Magtokk said: <Mo is right to sense change, and it is only natural that the change should worry her.>
Mo said: ‘It’s more than worrying me. It’s terrifying me.’
‘Hey!’ Alan embraced his friend. He encouraged her to sit on the bier beside him, his arm around her shoulder. ‘We’re all changing. I know that it can feel really awkward at times – confusing, disorientating.’
‘I don’t know what or who I am anymore. It troubles me so much I can’t sleep. I worry I might be losing my mind.’
<If I might suggest—>
Alan interrupted the mage. ‘Let her speak, Magtokk. Perhaps you should leave us alone so we can have a talk in private.’
<I shall leave, if Mo wills it, but I suspect that she would benefit from my presence.>
‘Then please allow her to speak for herself. Mo, what’s going on? Why do you look like a ghost?’
‘My journey, what I have come to know as my journey, is not yet complete.’
‘Your journey?’
‘My . . . metamorphosis.’
The word, metamorphosis, shocked Alan. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘How could you? No one knows other than me. There is so much more I am obliged to . . . to witness. That’s what they tell me, the True Believers. Oh, Alan, I don’t know if I dare to go further.’
‘What is it? What’s worrying you?’
‘Even you, you’ve noticed how I look now. I’m here, bodily, but my body is changing; the changes in my soul spirit are much greater still. In my mind, in my soul spirit, I am becoming one with the Akkharu.’
‘Who the blazes are the Akkharu?’
‘The miners underground. The dreamweavers.’
‘Mo! I don’t understand a word of this.’
‘I have come here to warn you and Kate. We – Magtokk and I – have discovered the Tyrant’s secret. Oh, Alan, it’s so terrifying!’
‘What secret?’ On impulse, Alan closed his eyes and looked through his oraculum. Mo’s face had dwindled to a twinkling star, but there were two stars within the tent, twinkling on and off, as if they were holding a conversation with one another. If Magtokk was a True Believer, it looked like Mo was close to joining their ranks.
‘Stop this! Stop this whispering between you. Mo, Magtokk; you have to explain to me, clearly and simply, what the hell is going on.’
‘Magtokk was right to warn me. I shouldn’t have troubled you, Alan. You can’t be expected to understand. I’ve just made you angry.’
‘You’re right, I’m angry. You pounce upon me in the middle of the night, looking like a ghost, to tell me we’re in danger. Yet you refuse to explain.’
‘I’m sorry, Alan. Magtokk has been attempting to explain my fate to me, my purpose here, but I don’t think I’m brave enough to contemplate it.’
‘Mo – Mo! Please slow down. I still don’t understand anything of what you’re telling me. What fate are you talking about?’
‘Magtokk is my True Believer guide. He wants me to travel with him on another dream journey, but I’ve been too frightened to take it. That’s why we’ve been waiting and waiting. I’m afraid that my timidity has caused confusion and restlessness among the Akkharu.’
‘Mo, you’re not really explaining things to me, not in a way I could understand.’
‘Please tell him, Magtokk. Explain it for me.’
<The Akkharu toil underground in the Valley of the Pyramids. The beings that created the towers are not Akkharu, but their servants. You have not met the real Akkharu. Yet, from the moment we first arrived in the Valley of the Pyramids, they have been signalling a warning, an acute sense of danger.>
‘What signals? I’ve seen nothing of them.’
<The clots of black ever changing against the white of Dromenon that so disturb your sleep, as they do my own . . .>
‘That’s the Akkharu signalling?’
<They speak a language of the mind, one that is unlike any other language. A language understood only by the initiated.>
‘But what does their warning mean?’
<I am not privileged enough to be an initiate. Only Mo is so privileged among our company. But I sense it – I sense it overwhelmingly – that everything that matters to you, and to us all in this quest, is under grave threat.>
Alan frowned.
‘Magtokk thinks it is of the utmost necessity that I make another dream journey deep under the Valley of the Pyramids. I must become one with the minds of the Akkharu.’
<Indeed that is what I must ask of Mo. The Akkharu cannot leave their tunnels under the ground, no more than humans can safely negotiate the honeycomb of tunnels they regard as home. And there are other reasons why a meeting in the flesh could not be. As a soul spirit, she – the chosen – would move freely and safely in a world where its resident beings fly, or burrow, rather than risk the perils of gravity.>
‘What’s the connection between these beings you call the Akkharu and the towers of skulls in the valley?’ Alan asked.
<The skulls are those of past generations of the Akkharu, but the towers were constructed by their servants. The Akkharu themselves are long-lived. To you they would appear eternal.>
Alan picked up his shirt and pulled it over his head, letting its tails fall outside his trousers. He shoved his feet into his sealskin boots. ‘Mo, I’m not surprised you’re terrified. Everything about this sounds bizarre to me. Nobody here is offering anything other than half explanations. Stay here with me. You don’t have to do it.’
‘Magtokk thinks that the Akkharu are warning us not merely of danger, but of the need to act. He believes that it is vital we do so. If he is right we have little time. It’s my fault we’ve not heeded their warnings up to now. I’ve been too frightened to act.’
Alan saw that Mo’s pupils were dilated and her skin pale. ‘Kate might be able to comfort you better than I can. But she isn’t here right now. She’s sleeping in the Shee encampment, close to Bétaald and the Kyra.’
He didn’t want to speak about what Kate was suggesting to the Kyra. The lives of everybody in the camp might ultimately depend on keeping that a secret. He said: ‘I miss her every moment, even now, when she’s still near. Why don’t you stay and talk to both of us, me and Kate, in the light of morning. I promise you that we won’t let anything bad happen to you. There’s no way we’re going to ask you to put yourself in danger.’
She smiled at him. ‘You’re so kind, but I won’t be in any danger just meeting the Akkharu, any more than I was in danger in the dream journey when I was taken to see my mother.’
‘What then, are you afraid of?’
‘Through meeting them, I will discover my ultimate fate.’
Alan felt a thrill of fright move through him. He couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to Mo.
‘Magtokk, why don’t you meet the Akkharu on your own?’
<Would that I could. But alas, I am not the chosen one. It is not me the Akkharu need to meet.>
Mo grasped Alan’s hand. She held it with a sudden fierce determination. ‘I have to do it, Alan. I came to Tír with a purpose, just like you. If I must face danger, then I have to find the courage to do it.’
‘You cannot risk the army,’ Mo replied.
Alan pulled the tent flap aside and stepped out onto the arid ground. The night had flown while they talked and dawn was no more than half an hour off. He brushed his fingers across his brow, uncertain of what to think. Mo joined him, hesitating, her eyes meeting his. Alan saw the tears rise into her eyes.
‘Mo, you know that you are under no obligation. Please speak to Kate about this. We’ll help you through it.’
She nodded, but didn’t look reassured.
Alan felt out of his depth with Mo, with what she was feeling. He felt so frustrated he rammed the butt of the Spear of Lug into the arid sandy ground. ‘I wish I could delay even for a day. I wish we had the time for a get-together – you, me, Kate, Turkeya. But we really need to move on.’ Alan sighed. He appraised Mo, who was cradling her Torus in her right hand. He hugged her to him. ‘At least you have powerful protectors – perhaps even more powerful than the Shee army.’
‘I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have woken you with my worries. We were all drawn here, to this world. Not merely you, Alan. I have to face my destiny.’
‘Mo, that’s not what I mean at all. We’ll all help you. Tell me that you’ll come to me, and to Kate, any time you need us.’
‘I will.’
He wasn’t convinced. ‘Promise me you will.’
‘I promise.’
‘And in the meantime you’ll be really careful?’
Her eyes met his again.
‘We must all face some risks, Alan. You’re the bravest of us. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was so fearless, but I have to find the courage in myself to do what must be done.’
They were surrounded by the noises of the waking camp. Qwenqwo’s hello sounded out from a distance of a hundred yards. The dwarf mage was hurrying towards them, waving his hands. ‘Iyezzz is here. He has scouted the land ahead. We are but two days’ march to the hinterland of Ghork Mega. There is a five-league corridor devoid of visible defence around its southern circumference.’
Alan hesitated. ‘But why would they leave any corridor open to us? They must be well aware that we are close.’
Qwenqwo came up to them, pulling at his beard in thought. ‘Perhaps they are confident in the city’s defences and so have withdrawn behind its walls?’
‘I don’t think so. We might be facing a trap.’
‘I must confess that such would be more like the Tyrant.’
‘We need to be very cautious in our approach.’
‘You must insist on that with the Shee.’
Alan looked up into the sky, where two stars shone on, only fading now as the sun broke through the distant horizon.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We must contain their impatience.’
Mo spoke softly: ‘Go ahead with Qwenqwo, Alan. I mustn’t distract you any longer. You have important duties to be getting on with.’
Alan hesitated, looking at Mo, who was still trembling. Her tears had stopped, but the moistness had not left her eyes. He continued to look at his friend, who had shared so many adventures and tribulations with him. ‘I hate to see you afraid like this, Mo.’
‘Magtokk will stay with me.’
‘Remember, you don’t have to do anything just because he says so. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Kate and I will stand by you.’
‘I’m afraid that I have no choice.’
Resistance Headquarters
The battered Pig arrived at their destination a few minutes after four o’clock in the afternoon on a gloomy day, under a sky that couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted to snow or hail. The roadblock was every bit as impressively manned as it had looked from the near distance. Tajh and Cogwheel had sent a message ahead but even so there was an anxious moment as Cal climbed out and headed into a makeshift hut to talk to whoever was in charge. There were a few more minutes or so of tense waiting, during which Cal could be heard arguing the need for urgency. Meanwhile squalls of icy wind blew in through the open porthole, making everybody shiver. Then, an enormous field gun was towed out of the way to allow them to lurch through a natural archway in stone and park close to the entrance of a very large cave. They were just coming to terms with the fact that the Resistance HQ was based within a cavern complex when an emergency vehicle raced down a track road and a stocky figure, dressed in green surgical fatigues, stepped out accompanied by two medical orderlies.