The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) (74 page)

Her mind went back to her journey with Boxx through the Great Forest of Illaryon, far to the west of Chalimar. That had been a vibrant place, replete with the chirruping and cooing of living things, the scent of bark and of fresh loam, orange and yellow and crimson leaves reflecting sunlight like fire. This was different. There was no life here: no leaf, no moss, no scampering animal fleeing her approach. No birds wheeled in the empty sky. There were not even any insects as far as she could tell. The entire forest was a dirge–an epitaph carved in dead wood.

As she headed deeper into the forest, she thrust aside her unsettling thoughts and focussed her mind on her task; to uncover evidence of what had happened to the Chandara. In truth, she did not know exactly what she was looking for. There were some investigations where you started out with very little. You just had to follow your nose and see where it led you.

Keris stopped and knelt down on one knee. She scooped up some of the soil, letting it run between her fingers. It was grey-brown and felt powdery, like dust–or ash. She had heard of instances where whole areas had been devastated by fire, storm or flood. Yet a very short time later, often within days, signs of new growth would appear; shoots budding forth, birds pecking at the devastated ground and animals burrowing into it. Here there was nothing. It was as if the forest had been…murdered.

She froze, stunned by her own audacity. She had nothing to substantiate such an outrageous theory. It was a thought unworthy of a trained investigator. There was no way that such a thing could be done. More importantly, there was no conceivable reason. And yet…and yet, it was evident that something ill had transpired here–something that chilled her to the very bone.

Keris rose to her feet and hastened toward the heart of the dead forest.

~

“Keep moving.”
Rael and Boxx scrambled over the black rocks that jutted out between the covering of snow, while Shann acted as rearguard, swinging the diamond blade in a wide arc in an attempt to slow the progress of the murghal. The creatures kept coming, heedless of the blows inflicted on their outstretched limbs. Tubules that passed for fingers flashed inches in front of her face, forcing her to retreat.
Don’t let them touch you.

Two more murghal appeared, adding their throats to the chorus of gnarls. She could not tell whether they had eyes; the creatures seemed to be attracted by heat and sound. One thing was clear. She and the others couldn’t keep running indefinitely. Sooner or later one of them would stumble, or be claimed by cold or exhaustion. If they headed back to the avionic, the beasts would swamp the flying machine before Rael could get it airborne.

“Shann.”
Rael’s urgent shout behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. The murghal surged forward.
A sharp stab of pain.
A tubule brushed her bare left arm. Shann pulled back her arm instinctively and retreated to join Rael and Boxx. They were not moving. Another murghal was shuffling down the mountain toward them, bellowing loudly. The party was about to be surrounded. Shann clutched her left arm and cast about wildly. There was a narrow cleft in the rock face to her right. “Come on.” Boxx scampered through the fissure. She waved Rael forward.

He turned to her as he passed. “You’re hurt.”

“Never mind that,” she snapped, shoving him through the gap and clambering after him. She reached the other side and spun round to face their pursuers. The pain in her arm felt like fire. Already, she could see the murghal jostling together on the other the side of the opening, preparing to surge through after them. However, they would not be able to pass through more than one at a time. She might at least be able to hold them for a while. And if this was to be their last stand, then it seemed as good a place as any.

“Look.” She heard Rael’s voice behind her, but it was different somehow. The fear, concern, the panic–they were gone. In their place was…wonder. She turned and saw it. Rising out of the ice directly ahead of them was a round grey tower, an open portal at its base, dark and inviting.

“What is it?” Rael asked in hushed tones.

The answer came to Shann from a distant place, in words spoken by a woman dead for more than three thousand turns. Yet there was no room for doubt.

“It’s a vacuum displacement transporter.”

<><><><><>

Chapter 17

“It’s a what?”
Rael looked confused as Shann bundled him in the direction of the doorway. Behind, the sounds of scraping and growling as the murghal forced themselves through the gap in the rock face. Boxx had already covered the distance to the tower. She called after it, but it ignored her and disappeared inside. She cursed under her breath. For all they knew, there could be more of the creatures inside. Too late now.

She and Rael reached the doorway and plunged into the darkness inside. As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she scanned the interior for signs of movement. There were none. A pair of cabinets stood off to one side. She went over and tried to move one. It was made of metal, and heavy. “Give me a hand,” she called. With Rael’s help she dragged the cabinets over one by one so that they blocked the open doorway, light filtering in from the top. The two of them scoured the entranceway and located whatever bits of furniture and other detritus they could find. Pretty soon, they had a respectable barricade. Outside they could still hear the bestial growls of the frustrated murghal. Shann remembered something and located a smooth protuberance near the entrance on the left wall. She pressed it, and there was a series of clicking sounds as light spilled from rectangular panels in the ceiling.

Rael gasped. “How did…?”

“It’s one of my many talents.” Shann eased herself down to the floor with her good arm, cutting off a cry of agony with a grimace. When she looked up, Boxx was standing over her, its black beadlike eyes unreadable. “You Are Hurt,” it trilled. “Cellular Disruption.”

“If you say so,” she sighed wearily.

“Remain Still,” it instructed, then placed its forelimb on the site of her injury and closed its eyes. Its mouth began rippling wordlessly.

“What’s it doing?” Rael asked.

“Making my arm better…I hope.”

“I didn’t know it could do that,” he said. He began walking around the artificially lit room. Various banks of instruments stood at waist height, their purpose unknown. “This is…ancient technology. From before the Goratha.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Annata’s people built this.”

“There are three principal ancient sites in Kelanni-Skell,” he continued. “The ruined cities of Kynedyr and Gal-Mador, and the Tower of Akalon.”

She could feel a strange warmth in her arm. The pain was subsiding. “Congratulations. You discovered a fourth.”

Rael was drinking in everything. “I think these are computers.”

“Computers?” she queried.

“They’re a type of machine that does calculations very fast. We’ve been experimenting with them…Hannath is going to go crazy when he hears about this.”
He doesn’t comprehend the nature of our situation.
Shann felt waves of tiredness wash over her. All she wanted to do right now was curl up and go to sleep. “You said this was…a transporter.”

“A vacuum displacement transporter,” she repeated. “There are four of them–two on your side and two on ours. We have the Dagmar Tower near Chalimar and the one on the Eastern Plains. That one was destroyed by the Prophet’s soldiers. You have this one and…”

“The Tower of Akalon.”

“Right,” she said.

“How do they work?”

Shann sighed. “At the top of the tower there should be a…big globe. You enter it, select a destination tower and pull a lever.”

“So…we can use it to escape from here.”

Shann pursed her lips. “No, I’m afraid not. You need a…an access module to get inside the globe. Keris has it. I don’t.”

“So, what’s the plan?” he asked.

“Plan?”

“For getting out of here.”

“The plan,” she said with forced patience, “was for you to take the avionic and leave with Boxx when you had the chance. Why didn’t you?”

Rael looked as if she had just slapped him in the face. “I…I couldn’t just leave you.”

“Why not?” she demanded. “Didn’t you realise that everything depends on us getting hold of the instrument that Annata preserved here and using it to disarm the weapon?”

Rael’s gaze was riveted to the floor, the same way it had been when she had first met him at the observatory. “I…I just couldn’t, that’s all.”

Shann let out a sigh. “Well, what’s done’s done, I suppose.”

“Maybe we could wait for the murghal to leave, then head back to the avionic?” he suggested.

Shann shook her head. “They’re everywhere. These mountains seem to be infested with them. And they know we are here. We wouldn’t get fifty paces.”

“Maybe someone will find us?”

“Unlikely,” she said. “This place has lain undiscovered for millennia. No-one knows we are here, and we have no way of contacting anybody. I’m sorry, but all we have managed to do is delay the inevitable.” She looked up at him and smiled faintly. “You might have lived rather longer if you’d listened to me.”

~

Keris looked up at the immense bole that was the Great Tree in the centre of the Forest of Atarah. It was a mass of gnarled wood, ancient ribbed bark and roots as big as hillocks that plunged beneath the forest floor. Yet there were no leaves, no creepers, no moss. The Great Tree was as dead as all the rest.

She entered the hollow trunk through a high archway. Dappled sunlight carpeted the floor and the air smelt old–musty. She headed for the curved path that led up the inside of the Tree. If the layout was the same as the one in the Forest of Illaryon, then a short way up, there should be a counterpart to the audience chamber where the Chandara had conducted her to hear the message of the woman from the past. Her stay at the Great Tree had been all too brief, yet her impression was that that place was the centre–the core of the Chandara community. If there were any clue to what had happened, then her instincts told her that it would be there.

As she climbed, natural holes in the trunk gave a panoramic view of the skeletal forest. Keris felt a shiver pass up her spine. It was a different time and half a world away, but it seemed just as if she were returning to the place where it all began. She remembered waking up in the cosy chamber high up in the bowels of the Great Tree, her injuries miraculously healed, her head filled with the scents of new growth and fresh wood. She had gone to the opening and looked out with wonder at the treetops of the forest far below; red and russet, purple and gold, stretching as far as the eye could see. Then she had turned to see one of the creatures standing before her. It had called itself Boxx…

The path suddenly opened out onto a wide, flat area within the Tree, dominated by a central column which rose from the floor and disappeared into the ceiling. This was indeed the audience chamber as she remembered it, although then the space had been occupied by Chandara jostling and crawling over one another. Now it was empty.

She walked slowly through the spacious cavity, her boots sounding a faint echo. There was something on the ground ahead of her. Keris knelt, and as she turned it over to examine it, she knew instantly what it was. A Chandara shell. This must be what was left when one of the creatures…when they passed away. She laid it back on the ground carefully and stood, looking about her. Soon she had spotted a second…and a third. By the time her circuit of the chamber was complete, she had counted a dozen shells in all.

Keris put a hand to her mouth, deep in thought. When she had encountered the Chandara before at their Great Tree, there had been hundreds of them. The Tree here was of a similar size, so logic would suggest that it would support a similar sized community. So what had happened to the rest of them?

Keris exited the audience chamber and made her way back to the forest floor. She had one last lead to explore. Maybe it would turn up some answers.

~

Keris passed beyond the tree line at the northern edge of the forest of Atarah and entered once more into open countryside. A scattering of snowflakes drifted down lazily from an overcast sky. Far to her left, the lofty peaks of the Meurigs were hidden in low cloud. Ahead and to her right was a rolling landscape, interspersed with isolated copses and areas of brush, overlaid with a covering of snow. There was firewood aplenty, but little enough in the way of game. Until now, Keris had been subsisting on the dried fruit and slices of some odd black bread she had brought with her from the house in the highlands near Kieroth. However, her food supplies were running low and would soon become a priority.