Wayfarers (Champions of the Crystal Book 1)

Chapter 18.1

Tirqwin was surprised when the guards showed him into a huge room with a vaulted ceiling, looking more like a banquet hall than a laboratory. There were long, wide tables pushed up against the near wall with various equipment and chemicals on them, and a few Stanosians hunched over them. On the far side was a huge clearsteel vat, with thick wires and tubes feeding into, or perhaps out of, it. Some of them led to a chair wired with a skull cap and other ominous gadgetry. Tirqwin suspected that whatever science was going forward here, ethics and safety precautions were no part of it.

Emalicia watched over the room from a raised dais at one end, her golden chair draped with rich fabrics to match the clothes of the guards who stood on either side of her. When she caught sight of Tirqwin, she gestured languidly, and he walked toward the dais, his two escorts trailing uneasily.

"Ah. So Qazhan has seen reason and sent me a gift of his goodwill," she said, smiling sardonically.

"I am here merely as an observer," Tirqwin said, inclining his head slightly. "I am a scientist. You have a fascinating setup here. May I inquire as to its purpose?"

Emalicia laughed. "My purpose is my own, traveler. You may observe; it matters not. Qazhan cannot stop me now, no matter what he discovers. He may control the army, but I will control something far greater."

Tirqwin decided not to ask what that was. This woman's arrogance would lead her to tell him in time, he decided.

She got up and descended the two steps from the dais to the floor. "Come. See what you think."

She led him to the vat and gestured to one of the workers nearby. He threw a switch, and a beam of light illuminated the vat from its bottom, revealing a huge, graceless lump floating in a thick amber liquid. It was obviously living tissue; he could see streaks of veins pulsing in it, but it had no visible appendages or sensory organs. In fact, he realized, it resembled nothing so much as a huge mass of brain tissue.

What is she doing with this? he wondered. A huge brain? What is its purpose?

And then it hit him: the disturbance in the Way, in the continuum, that they all assumed had been caused by mechanical means, could also have been caused by an organic source. It could have been a psionic mind more powerful than any living thing they had ever encountered, something more potent than a Wayship and unrestrained by the moral code the earliest Miahns had imposed upon the Great Crystal.

Something like this huge lump under the direction of this nakedly power-hungry High Priestess.

Emalicia, watching Tirqwin closely, smiled a slow smile as he struggled for control of his expression. "What...is it?" he asked finally.

"Why," she said, her eyes glittering, "a birthday present for my daughter. She reaches the age of confirmation as the King's heir tomorrow. Ah, here she is. Varla, my dear, come and meet our guest. He is a scientist."

Tirqwin turned to look at the girl in the doorway. She was still young and gangly, but she showed the promise of great beauty. Her scales were greenish like her mother's, but her hair was lighter, a kind of muddy green-brown. She had her father's air of command but her mother's disturbing eyes.

"Another pstar fish for your cookpot, Mother?" Varla inquired, smiling at Tirqwin as if he were an hors-d'oeuvre. Then she frowned. "Mother! This one is sensitive."

Emalicia raised an eyebrow. "Is he so?" she said, slowly, as a chilling smile crept across her face. "How kind of your father to send him to me, then." She faced Tirqwin again. "You see, my daughter is the culmination of centuries of selective breeding. She is the most psychically powerful Stanosian who ever lived. She will rule with the authority of her father's warrior caste blood and all the power of the priesthood, passed on through me. And, of course, with the help of my pet, here."