Sitting on a dusty stone plinth in the gloom of the roothouse, he let the wandering sight of his Seer eyes stretch itself out along the rootways, the underground interlinkage laid down by their most ancient forebears. Many of the essence strands had long since rotted away but the Artificer Uvovo teams had worked wonders with a variety of vines and roots brought from the daughter-forests. And their hard work was evident at many other roothouses scattered across the hills, the forests and the coastal plain. Days upon days of effort had borne their fruit, yet with the warpwell subverted and the return of the Legion of Avatars looking more than likely, could it all have been a waste?
Back when the Ancients still had corporeal form, this world, Umara, the dense forests of Segrana-That-Was, generated webs of power capable of defending the entire planet against attacks from near space. Greater nodes oversaw primary nodes, each of which gathered in an array of roothouses, hundreds, thousands. But all that Cheluvahar had to muster against the hostile forces building in the heavens, and against the flesh-and-machine horrors soon to emerge from Giant’s Shoulder, was a single secondary node and nineteen roothouses.
When the Zyradin transported him here from Tusk Mountain, it had been unswerving in its insistence that Chel prepare the nodes, the roothouses and the Artificer Uvovo for battle. And not long afterwards he had a visitation from the Pathmaster, his spectral form appearing even more tenuous and fragile than before and his voice sounding scratchy and broken, like a cluster of insects.
I agreed to come here, he had told the ancient, ancient remnant of the long-past forebear. I agreed to prepare for battle, and the only reason I’m able to do so is the healing that I received from a vudron. Not due to anything you said or did.
The Pathmaster’s thin, vaporous presence, his eyes in shadow, had smiled and nodded. A faint sibilant voice said, Understanding is seldom understood…
Then it had faded away, like threads of smoke dissolving in the air. Immediately Chel had felt ashamed at the blinkered anger of his response and now, sitting here, he felt a sting of regret. Could that have been the Pathmaster’s last fleeting words to the living before finally merging with the Eternal?
Seated on the stone plinth, his eyes were closed yet his Seer sight ranged forth from the roothouse, from this secondary node, drawn along the essence strands, dividing when they divided, spreading to join with the other roothouses from which the entwining web spread further. The Zyradin motes that he brought were doing their work. He could sense the slow gyring pulse of the planet, rising from hard and compacted depths to the thin uncertain crust over which organic life existed like a frail bubble. Yet it was frail organic minds that had learned how to harness the pulsing gyre of those colossal inner energies. And as Chel’s awareness expanded across the web of connections he could feel those energies, feel the ancient webs respond to them, opening to them, drawing on them.
This was the point where control had to be exerted. Were he to allow the new energies to flood the web of roothouses it would be like a beacon in the perceptions of some entities, particularly that resolute survivor, the Legion Knight. So he had to carefully gauge the flow of energies, making sure that their permeation was gradual and even, and to keep the roothouses themselves from trying to draw on this new source of fresh, vibrant power.
As his awareness continued to expand, and the energy of the depths seeped steadily in, the demands on his will-power grew. His Seer talents drew more and more from his essential vitality and it seemed that the Zyradin was present, watching over him, watching it all.
There was movement off to one side. The central junction of the roothouse had four galleries leading off, all looking grey, a little misty, and it was in one of them that a tall figure stood. It was a Human, naked to the waist, the skin of his torso marked with many small wounds. And when Chel saw the flat metallic implants on the back and the neck he instantly knew that it was Rory, even before he glanced round for a moment before heading away into the shadows at a crouch.
Instinctively Chel drifted forward, wondering how Rory had managed to find his way here, to the roothouse. But when the darkened gallery melted away into somewhere in the open, somewhere flat and gloomy, he realised that he had strayed into the domain of that Seer talent that he called the Dream Speculator.
Ahead of him, the Human Rory was creeping across ground consisting of scattered flat stones and tufts of grass towards a dark, squat building. There were metallic gleams and the glowing red and blue pinpoints of machine displays. Suddenly Chel realised that this was Giant’s Shoulder, and even as the thought struck him the surface of the promontory began to quake. Big stone slabs quivered and shifted and Rory staggered. Some structures, low buildings and a couple of watchtowers, fell apart and collapsed. Then a crack opened and a harsh silver-grey radiance poured out. Rory dodged round and ran for the squat building. But the ground suddenly began to rise from the centre, like a growing mound, forcing Rory to clamber along on his hands and knees.
Until fractures appeared all across it, seconds before it erupted in a violent rushing blaze of harsh silver light, with a solitary figure silhouetted against the brightness for an instant…
Chel breathed in suddenly, a quick, cold chestful of air, and he was back on the stone plinth. Most of his awareness was still guiding itself out to the last extremities of the nineteen roothouses and their networks of strands. The planetary energies continued to trickle through, and over on its mech-guarded fastness of Giant’s Shoulder the Legion Knight remained, unfathomable, yet perhaps also unsuspecting.
But the meaning of that vision–did it presage some kind of inevitable tragedy, or was it a warning, or something symbolic involving Rory? That was the problem with the Dream Speculator–the things it revealed could be thoroughly literal or abstrusely metaphorical, with scarcely any hint as to which was being observed. And right now he had neither time nor opportunity for the meditation that would make the vision clearer.
I must complete my work and trust that Rory’s path does not bring him more pain, him least of all.