Molten rock and sulfurous plumes blanketed the planet as the Avenger moved openly over its landmasses and seas, the air alive with the lamentations of billions of Telinaruul who prayed to her for mercy, having taken her for the deity of apocalypse. She ignored their desperate petitions and cleaved the face of a mountain to reveal the Conduit that she had hidden there aeons earlier, before she had buried herself in the heart of this world, for a sleep that had been intended to last longer than any known biological species had ever lived.

Awaken and come home, implored the Wanderer.

Receive me, replied the Avenger. I return.

Individuals came at first, then duos and trios. With supreme patience, the Wanderer watched and waited and periodically repeated her adjuration: Awaken and return.

Shapes came alive and congregated as the returning Shedai took avatars for the Colloquium. Some animated tendrils of snaking energy, others drifted as flashing clouds, a few chose to emulate the corporeal forms worn by their ancestors.

The Herald had been the first to return, and he had added his own voice to the Wanderer’s. Then had come the Sage, he who embodied the living memory of the Shedai, the sum of its wisdom. In tandem the Adjudicator and the Warden had emerged from the Conduit, each choosing shells exotic and complex. The First World turned and shuddered under the renewed power of the Shedai Colloquium, and as one day-moment passed into another their numbers swelled with the ranks of the Nameless, they who are Shedai. At last the one known as the Maker revealed herself, and upon her proclamation a census was taken.

The Wanderer did not need to listen as the count ensued. She knew that when the names of the gathered were known, one of their august number would be found absent.

Ever insolent, she brooded. Singling him out in her thoughts, she cast her voice once more to the empty reaches, seeking him out. Return.

Alone on an airless moon under the cold grace of starlight, the Shedai Apostate lay mingled with the regolith, his essence one with the fine powder of meteorites long ago turned to dust.

The Wanderer’s voice called out, no longer a general appeal as before but a targeted imperative meant expressly for him. He did not dignify her entreaty with a reply. The aeons of silence had suited him well, and when, not so long ago, the first stuttered Songs of Conduits had drawn his attention, he had hoped that such disruptions were only the fleeting product of the artifacts’ destruction, perhaps by an aggressive intelligence or some natural calamity. But soon the Song had become more frequent, more focused, and he had realized that the sleepers were rousing. Just as I had warned them, he reflected. Rest is not for ones such as us. We should have embraced eternity, not tried to cheat it.

Unlike the others, the Apostate had not slept these many aeons. Sequestered on the lifeless satellite of a barren planet, he had enjoyed a measure of privacy and peace that had been denied to him in all the ages before then. To be summoned at the whim of one such as the Wanderer galled him. I am second only to the Maker, he fumed. Who is she to command me?

The Colloquium gathers, came the Wanderer’s thought-pulse. The others are risen. Hie unto us. The Maker commands it.

Indignation blackened the Apostate’s thoughts. Never had the Colloquium heeded his counsel; there was no reason to expect that would change. His role as a voice of reason was ever vilified, his partisans permanently consigned to a vocal minority. Attempts to guide or ameliorate the Colloquium’s harshest voices were inevitably futile. He resented being forced to endorse such a charade with his presence.

The Maker commands it.

Denying the summons was not an option. If he refused, the Colloquium would be forced to assail his thoughts until he relented. The longer he refused them, the more resentful the Maker would become and the longer this travesty would endure.

He propelled himself with an act of will through the vacuum, to the artifact that would grant him passage to a home and a legacy he had long ago renounced. Undisturbed for so long, the Conduit dominated the moonscape, its brilliantly reflective obsidian surface standing in stark contrast to the blanched gray vista of pockmarked desolation.

Desist, he commanded the Wanderer. Prepare for my coming.

Blinding flashes of thought-color racked Nezrene [The Emerald]. Unlike the fleeting touches of the Lattice, where minds might meet and share for a brief time before retreating into privacy, the surges of the Conduit were constant and overwhelming. It was like drowning in a sea of thoughts too great to comprehend.

Against her will, she found herself echoing and tuning the voice of another Shedai, from a distant node in a thought-space network far more complicated and robust than anything her own people had ever contemplated.

Prepare for my coming, said the voice. Its defining qualities were arrogance and power, with undertones of resentment and melancholy. As soon as the message was relayed, the radiant auras of the beings around her and the rest of the Lanz’t Tholis’s crew shifted noticeably, taking on hues of fear and anticipation. Then a tide of malevolent consciousness passed through her, cold and terrible.

The Song of the Conduit faded then, and the luminous beings began to confer among themselves. Forcing herself to dim her troubled thought-colors from crimson to a muted violet, Nezrene reached out to the minds of her shipmates. Commune with me, she invited them. The ones trapped in the core of the machine did not answer her. They writhed in the searing darkness, bereft of even the enemy’s voice. Those bonded to other nodes of the Conduit, however, replied with the kind of intimacy that normally came only during touch-communion or a private SubLink.

Waves of incandescent scarlet coursed along the mind-line of Tozskene [The Gold]. They are Shedai.

The Voice speaks, chimed Yirikene [The Azure]. It speaks and compels us.

We must resist it, counseled Nezrene. We must break free.

Dismay coruscated through the others’ mind-lines. Destrene [The Gray] protested, They disintegrated the commander and the subcommander. If we fight, they will destroy us as well.

I am not content to remain a prisoner, Nezrene countered. She felt out of place assuming a leadership role among her shipmates. Before the Lanz’t Tholis had been ensnared and its crew forcibly abducted into slavery, she had been just one of several tactical specialists. Though she was one of the more experienced members of the crew, she was merely one of the warrior caste and certainly was not worthy to assume the duties of one of its leaders. Adopting such a posture during a crisis of this magnitude felt like arrogant presumption to her, despite the obvious necessity of her doing so.

Tozskene, she instructed, see if this shell that holds us will let you look into orbit; try to find the Lanz’t Tholis. Destrene, monitor the Shedai and warn us if they return to work the machine again. Yirikene, I want to know if we can use this machine to send our own signal back to Tholia. Flooding her thought-colors with reassuring shades of indigo and dark green, she added, We might die trying to break free, but I will not live as a slave to the Shedai.

4

Ambassador Lugok paced liked a caged targ through long, red slashes of dusk light that fell across the stone floor in front of Councillor Indizar’s desk. “How long will it take for Sturka to come to his senses?” he wondered aloud. “Every day I’m on Qo’noS is a day wasted.”