Gareth Williams - A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 5 - Among the Stars, like Giants. Part 3 - On the Edges of Perception

She did not.

She stormed up to the altar, sparing only a passing glance for the flower that still rested there, looking as perfect and alive as the day it had been plucked.

"You know who I am," she snapped. "Talk to me, dammit!"

We know you, Emissary, came the voice. It was strange. She had expected something.... bigger. The voice sounded almost ill. But the Well could not be ill, surely. This was the Well of Souls. This was where Lorien had sent her. Lorien had told her all about the Well, all about Sinoval and his mission and what she had to do to help him.

"What the hell is going on? And answers today, please!"

Weak.... Our voice is.... trapped.... Imprisoned in a place we dare not.... go.

"Sinoval? Where is he?"

His.... soul.... taken elsewhere. The Vorlons have.... linked with him.... weakening us.... weakening him. Allied with.... others.

"Who? What others?"

Evil.

"The Vorlons are evil."

The Vorlons are.... ambition.... pride.... arrogance. They are wrong, but they are not evil. This evil.... has consumed stars.... fed upon the life.... the souls.... of a universe.... Everywhere they walked.... begat a charnel house.... They worshipped death.... they fed off death.... they became death. The soul.... the cycle.... rebirth.... nothing to them.... Evil.

Susan shivered. "Boy, you guys don't go in for small enemies. How do we get Sinoval back?"

He must.... return.... himself.... We cannot go there.... Enaid.... Golgotha.... old wounds.... old memories.... Our voice must.... speak once more.... be free.... himself.

"Your timing sucks. We've got a full scale war going on outside and Sinoval's grand plan is falling down around our ears, or whatever you have instead of ears. We need to get Cathedral out there and doing something."

Our voice.... trapped.... weak.

"Fine, if you need a job doing, do it yourself. Have we got any power here?"

A little.... Go to.... the pinnacle.... We will give what we have.... Emissary.

"Yeah, whatever." Susan left, running. She had a feeling even flying might not be fast enough.

There were no words, no whispers, no sound. There was the still, hollow silence of regret and sorrow and terror.

Marrago was motionless, paralysed, a sick feeling at the base of his stomach. He had not felt this since his banishment from the only home he had ever known, since he had learned his daughter was dead.

He looked at Senna's prone body, and he could not move.

"Captain," came Dasouri's voice across the comm channel. "Captain, we are ready to go." He ignored it.

"Captain." The voice came again, with greater urgency than before.

Marrago finally found the energy to move. He took a slow step forward and bent down over Senna's body. His throat dry, his hearts pounding, he reached out to touch her, remembering all the while the impact of his fist on her jaw.

He touched her arm, where blood pooled, sticky and warm.

Warm.

He touched her mouth and felt the slow, faltering gasp of breath.

Still alive.

Still alive.

"You're not dead," he whispered. "Lyndisty, you're not dead."

His thoughts began to race. He was a soldier. He knew all about injuries sustained on the battlefield. He had been trained in bandaging wounds, preventing blood loss. It was not too late. He had been too late before. She had been dead then, but she was alive now. There was a chance to save her.

He began ripping away the edges of her dress. The cloth would be capable of staunching the blood loss. She would need air blown into her lungs, and her hearts would need to be massaged. Old lessons more than four decades gone returned to him and his body began to move with the smooth motions of an automaton. He had been too late before, too slow and too old and too weak, but now he would be in time.

Old soldier's instincts kicked in. He heard the noise of the creature behind him swinging into the attack. He smelled its odour of death and hatred. His legs threw him out of the way. His arms reached for his kutari and his hands held the hilt tightly.

The Wykhheran appeared before him.

Lyndisty's blood continued to pool on to the floor.

Dasouri's voice continued to call for him over the comm channel.

Marrago felt twenty years younger. Thirty even.

"She will not die," he told the creature. "I will not let her die. Not again!"

The creature moved to attack.

"I have been thinking," he said softly, hoarsely, the remembered dust and smoke of twenty years ago clogging his lungs. "Thinking of the past."

"Really?" Da'Kal remarked, as she stepped inside and closed the door of the cell behind her. For a moment there was darkness, and then the light globe in her hand burst into life and the shadows flickered on the wall. In the half-light she looked ghostly, almost spiritual. He was not entirely sure she was even real. She had lived in his memories and dreams for so long, and yet he had never dared talk of her, talk to her, acknowledge her reality. She belonged to the old days.

"All I think of is the future."

G'Kar looked at her, feeling his mouth twist into a semblance of a smile. "You could never lie to me," he whispered.

"I am not. I think of the future all the time. But the future is shaped by the past. You told me that once, me and a thousand others."

"G'Khorazhar."

"I was just one of many. A pilgrim, a traveller, come to hear the words of the prophet, the preacher of the future of our people." She shook her head. "I suppose that even after all that had passed between us, I wanted to be near to you."

"You always were," he said, although the words were so soft he could not be sure he had actually spoken them aloud.

She carried on without reacting, as if they had been nothing more than thoughts. "Your words touched me. It was as if you were speaking only to me. I remembered our long conversations at night, beneath the stars, and the voice was the same as the one I knew.

"I later found out that every other person there felt the same way.

"You have a remarkable gift, G'Kar. You always did. I went away and I thought about your words. I thought about what you had said, looking for something there, for some wisdom and insight."

She paused, shaking. When she looked up again, her eyes were filled with anger. They looked demonic by the light of the globe. "I found it. I saw your words of forgiveness and unity and understanding and I shook with rage. I had hoped before that your message was misrepresented, or that it was an imposter pretending to be you, or that the Centauri had brainwashed you, or any one of a number of things.

"I had never wanted to think that you were actually advocating an alliance with the Centauri."

"I told you of my feelings when we parted," he whispered. "When I returned your armlet."

"I remember. I had hoped they were.... fleeting. You were a warrior, G'Kar! A leader. You could be leading the Kha'Ri by now! You could be ruling half the galaxy! Our people would follow you into fire and darkness without a second thought. With just a few words you managed to derail the entire course of the war with the Centauri. Think about what you could have done.

"And you spend all that power on peace.

"Have you forgotten what they did to me? Have you forgotten what they did to your father, to my sister, to G'Quan knows how many friends and allies?"

"No," he whispered.

"Have you forgotten what they did to my father? Do you remember what was left of Ha'Fili when we found him? I swear I will never forget that.... mass of flesh, sightless and limbless, screaming over and over again for mercy. Do you remember?"