CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE

“I think they want us to go with them,” Elyria’s voice said. “Wake up.”

Joshua scowled as he opened his eyes. His dreams had been strange, almost blindingly erotic. Some of the older lads in Warlock’s Bane had boasted of what could happen when one slept with an older, more experienced women, but Joshua had never really believed them. The whores were experienced – and most of them hated men. And yet making love to Elyria had been fantastic. She’d known precisely how to draw the maximum pleasure from his body. He just hoped that it had been good for her too.

Two men were standing in the doorway, waiting for them. Both men carried swords and looked formidable. They didn’t seem to notice that both Joshua and Elyria were naked, or the fact that their clothes were in tatters, lying on the floor. Joshua moved to cover himself and then realised that it was futile. Besides, he’d had very little privacy as a child and had never developed any real sense of modesty. Having his own room in Master Faye’s house had seemed the height of luxury, but it had also been strange to sleep alone.

Carefully, Joshua tested his magic and discovered that part of it had leaked back to him. The spell binding it, he assumed, was weakening. He kept it to himself as he pulled himself to his feet, feeling his body aching as the previous day’s exertions returned to haunt him. Elyria followed him, seemingly unbothered by her own nakedness. There was something in her eyes that bothered him, as if she were distracted by a greater thought. But what?

“Follow,” one of the men ordered, and turned to lead the way out of the prison cell. The second man stayed behind, obviously intending to bring up the rear. “Walk. Now.”

Joshua exchanged a glance with Elyria and then shrugged, following their captor. There was no attempt made to tie their hands, which struck him as a gesture of contempt – or overconfidence. It was impossible to tell which, if indeed it was either. They might just have kept them tied up because the Scions had left them that way after they’d brought the shuttle crashing down to the ground. Master Faye had told him what signs to watch for, when looking for someone under the influence of a controlling spell. A lack of imagination was definitely one of them.

The interior of the colony ship was strange, a mixture of metal bulkheads and primitive – or magical – conveniences. If Joshua hadn’t already seen the Confederation space station, he suspected that he would have been in serious trouble. Producing so much metal would have been flatly impossible for Darius – and even if it had been possible, no one would have wasted it so blatantly. The entire ship had been built by a society with a very different attitude than the one Darius had developed. Shaking his head, he looked at Elyria – and saw her studying a line of crystal that someone had worked into the metal. A moment later, the captor who was bringing up the rear prodded her mercilessly, forcing her to start walking again.

“That’s out of place,” Elyria muttered to Joshua. “Does your society work with crystals?”

“As jewels,” Joshua said. It was easy to make certain jewels using magic, particularly diamonds. There were even legends of swords made out of diamond, early versions of the ultra-sharp blades the Confederation had demonstrated. “I don’t think we use them for much else, apart from some cutting tools.”

“Interesting,” Elyria said. “So why is there a network of crystal running through the ship?”

Joshua couldn’t even begin to answer the question, but the captors stopped in front of a hole in the metal floor before he could say anything. Joshua glanced down into darkness, stretching down further than he could see. He felt dizzy and stumbled backwards, right into Elyria’s arms. Her bare breasts pushed against his back and he felt a sudden wave of desire, just before the first guard jumped into the hole and vanished. The second one motioned for Joshua to follow him.

“No,” Joshua said. He couldn’t even see the bottom. “I won’t...”

The guard made a motion with his hand and an unseen force shoved him back, sending him tumbling over the edge and plummeting down into the darkness. Joshua yelped in shock as he fell, certain that he was about to slam into the ground at terrifying speed, just before gravity seemed to invert around him and slow his fall to a halt. Opening his eyes – he hadn’t even realised that he’d closed them – he found himself floating in the air, just above a glowing crystalline floor. Raw magic crackled around him, daring him to reach out and draw it into his wards. He was tempted, just before a strong hand grabbed him and pulled him forward. Gravity reasserted itself seconds later and he fell to the ground. The crystal felt uncomfortably warm against his bare ass.

Elyria appeared a second later, bouncing on the levitation field until the guard pulled her away too. Joshua could have stared at her beauty forever, but the guard motioned for them to follow him into the crystal caves. Light seemed to flicker and flare all around them, bathing them in an eerie fluorescent glow, while a dull beating sound echoed through the air. It was impossible to escape the impression that he was walking through a massive creature, approaching its heart. The flickers of light that danced through the air dazed him, almost as if they intended to take root in his mind. Elyria caught him just before he collapsed on the ground, holding him upright.

“Don’t look at the lights,” she warned. “They might infect your mind.”

The ground kept shaking, as if the gravity field was changing rapidly. For a moment, Joshua felt as light as a bird, only to feel heavy a moment later. The sound was growing louder, becoming a terrifying pounding that threatened to overwhelm him. Elyria took his hand and held it tightly, nodding towards one of the crystal pillars.

“We found something similar years ago, on an artefact left behind by an Elder race,” she muttered. Joshua found it a little reassuring. At least the Confederation wasn’t completely ignorant about what they were facing. “I wonder if Darius was created by the same race.”

Joshua looked over at her. “You mean... they were powerful enough to create a whole world?”

“It’s possible,” Elyria admitted. “We can terraform planets; we just don’t bother, not when space is so much more useful as Lebensraum. But a terraformed world wouldn’t need constant maintenance.”

She looked from side to side, studying the vast crystalline structures. “I think we’re looking at the very heart of magic,” she added, a moment later. “This technology is certainly highly advanced, even if it isn’t quite as smart as a Confederation AI.”

“Oh,” Joshua said, although he had no idea how she knew that, let alone if she were right. “Is that a good thing?”

“A real AI would probably have found more effective ways to deal with us,” Elyria said. “Or it might simply have become bored of handling Darius and left to find something else to do. We were really quite lucky with our AIs. There have been civilisations that have been destroyed, or reduced to barbarism, after starting wars with their newborn children.”

Joshua nodded. Ahead of them, the crystal structures had become an archway, leading in to a single massive chamber glowing with light. A set of chairs rested in the centre of the room, made up of the same glowing crystal as the rest of the chamber. Their captors stopped and pushed them forward, towards the chairs. Joshua hesitated, looking at Elyria. She didn’t seem sure of what they should do either.

She stepped forward and raised her voice, addressing the empty air. “I represent the Confederation,” she said, loudly enough for her voice to echo back from the crystal walls. “We can talk verbally, if you wish.”

There was a long pause. “I don’t think anyone’s listening,” Joshua muttered. “Who do you think would answer?”

“There’s an intelligence here, somewhere,” Elyria said, crossly. “Even if it is a heavily restricted intelligence, it should still be able to comprehend us, maybe even respond.”

She shook her head. “But maybe it simply cannot make a connection between us and itself,” she added. “There were early AIs that never realised that they’d been created by another race until it was too late. They just adapted to their environment and evolved into intelligence.”

Joshua frowned. “How is that even possible?”

“They discovered that if they did certain things, they got certain rewards,” Elyria said. “Like any organic life form, they learned how to manipulate the universe around them. Except that sometimes meant trampling on their creators. At least three that we know of decided that the universe would be a better place without irritating mites swarming over the planet.”

She shook her head. “But I don’t think that this one is even that intelligent,” she added. “It seems to be reacting to an outside context problem. I wonder if it is even aware of the outside universe...”

The guards prodded them, sharply. Elyria moved like lightning, slamming one of her palms into the first guard’s throat, sending him choking to the ground. The second guard was still trying to raise his weapon when Elyria kicked him in the groin – Joshua couldn’t help wincing in sympathy – and stunned him with a kick to the head. It had happened so quickly that Joshua couldn’t quite believe his eyes.

“I think those chairs have to be a neural interface system,” Elyria said, finally. Her voice didn’t even show a trace of breathlessness after what she’d just done. “If I’m right, sitting down would allow us to communicate directly with the magic source.”

Joshua walked over to one of the chairs and touched it, lightly. A flare of light appeared where his hand had touched and he jumped backwards in shock. The magic field twisted a moment later, as if it was slowly being reshaped into a very complex spell. He glanced around nervously, from side to side, as it grew stronger. It didn’t seem to have a focus point, but it was so powerful that it might not need a focus point

And then a voice slammed into his head. “OBEY,” it thundered. Joshua fell to his knees in shock, his hands tearing at his skull as if he could physically drag the voice out of his mind. “OBEY!”

He barely heard Elyria cry out as the pain grew stronger. The voice was attacking him through his magic, through the mental communications ability he’d developed by working with Master Faye. He could feel it working its way through his mind, pouring overt and covert suggestions into his brain – and even that awareness wasn’t enough to keep it out. Up close, he could see the puppet strings that had worked their way into his mind ever since the day he’d first developed magic. And resistance was futile.

Elyria shook him, violently. He wanted to tell her to run, but instead he cast a single spell. Her body stiffened, a moment before she started walking towards one of the chairs. The compulsion spell was far more powerful than any he’d been taught by Master Faye – she’d know that she’d been affected, but she wouldn’t have been able to fight it off. Her magic resistance was almost non-existent. Shaking with rage and horror, he felt his own body rising to its feet and stumbling towards another chair. He’d thought that their captors had underestimated the level of magic they needed to keep his magic firmly bound and useless. Instead, they’d used it as a weapon against him – and against Elyria.

And would she forgive him for using the compulsion spell on her?

But it wasn’t my fault, he pleaded mentally, as his treacherous body sat down on the crystal chair. It wasn’t my fault...

There was a long moment of nothing, followed rapidly by a sense that his mind was being sucked out of his body. And then he fell into a universe of light and pain.

***

Elyria had wanted to scream as her body moved, robotically, towards the nearest chair. How could anyone do that to someone else? But judging from Joshua’s collapse, it hadn’t really been his thought at all. They were right in the heart of magic and whatever force was behind it could presumably have controlled him, perhaps even used him as a weapon. She considered the possibilities as her body sat down on the hard chair and braced herself. A neural link with an AI was straightforward, at least once the human knew what she was doing, but this was an alien machine. It might well hurt them without any deliberate malice.

Her mind plummeted out of her body and into the alien computer network. It was alien, she determined a moment later, its intelligence oddly developed compared to a standard Confederation AI. In some ways, it was smarter than an RI, but its thoughts were slow, almost sluggish. No wonder it hadn’t been capable of taking direct action against the Confederation interlopers. They had to look like scurrying mites to the network, even though it had links to almost every magician on Darius. Swatting one of the intruders would have taken it so long that the target would have moved by the time the magic was deployed.

And yet there was a steady patience pervading the machine that awed her. It had manipulated Darius for years, rarely having to deploy its servants to interfere directly. She’d wondered how Darius’s social system had remained a curious mixture of stable and instable for centuries, perhaps thousands of years; now, she realised that the machine was gently adjusting the planet, steering the population away from any developments that might threaten its social order. They’d never seen anything like it, even during the few encounters with rogue AIs. The people on Darius were in a cage... and yet they couldn’t even see the bars.

She braced herself as she felt the first tickle of intrusion into her mind. A Confederation AI wouldn’t attempt to scan her mind without permission, but this machine was different – and besides, her implants still appeared to be useless. A moment later, there was a flash of pain as her mental self was pinned down, followed by her memories flashing in front of her awareness. There was no malice in the machine, she realised, none of the desire to hurt humans or other organic life forms that the handful of poorly-raised AIs had demonstrated, but that didn’t make her feel any better. She couldn’t even scream as her mind was raped, her every last memory plucked out of her brain and...

It noticed that she was pregnant. The pain stopped a second later. Elyria found herself reeling, barely able to keep her thoughts together. Physical rape would have been bearable – she could simply have shut off the pain – but this was different, a violation of her innermost self, an offense against everything the Confederation believed in. And yet she managed to cling to a single thought. The machine cared that she was pregnant.

Why? Desperately, she tried to analyse it. Why would it care about a Confederation child when its servants had murdered Confederation citizens without remorse? It didn’t even have the ability to feel threatened, let alone intimidated. Or did it care because her child was also Joshua’s child? A child fathered by a magician?

The thought span through her mind. She knew that the locals had a taboo against magical children, claiming that they went mad with power very quickly. Elyria could understand that – even a Confederation child, granted such power, would become a brat – and yet... why would the machine not intervene? Or were there limits to its abilities to steer the human race in the right direction?

Joshua had been modified by an outside force. His libido was higher than the average human male – and he had the power to force a woman into bed, if necessary. The modifications had also altered his sperm slightly, and somehow enabled them to overpower the biomods worked into Elyria’s body, allowing him to impregnate her. Could it be that the real objective was to breed magical children? And yet... why allow the taboo to exist if it directly contradicted the machine’s objectives?

The machine’s vast slow thoughts beat around her, considering the possibilities. Elyria wanted to raise her voice, to try to reason with it or to fight back, but both were impossible. A tiredness was overwhelming her, a sensation that she had gone too far into the machine for her own safety. It hadn’t been designed for human minds – and the original designers had simply left it alone, without oversight. No Elders had arrived to warn the Confederation away from the planet.

They’d wondered if that would happen. An Elder race might have created Darius – and might forbid the Confederation to land. But nothing had happened.

Inch by inch, her thoughts started to come apart. The machine had created its own Gestalt, she realised, a twisted version of the MassMind. But it wasn’t anything more than a storage system, absorbing thoughts from its victims. It didn’t even seem aware that it was killing her, no matter how much it wanted the magical child. The thoughts it had subsumed within itself were insane. No wonder; they’d been trapped in the matrix for so long that they’d forgotten everything but their torment.

She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t even do that, or call out for help. The machine wasn’t evil; it didn’t have the imagination or self-awareness to be evil. It just was.

And then something caught her and shoved her back out of the machine, back into her own body.