Invoking Darkness by Babylon 5 Read Free Book Online

Ragged remnants of the back, and the attached stone barn, still stood, coated with black ash.
    Jab approached a section of the ruins, climbed over the low barricade with a scrabble of claws. As she sniffed the ground with a series of harsh inhalations, Galen noticed a heavy earthenware bowl lying broken against the wall. With a start, he recognized it. The bowl belonged to Des, Farmer Jae's prizewinning swug. Of all things, it had somehow survived. Galen remembered the flourish with which Elric had revealed the bowl, solving the mystery of Des' poor health so long ago. It seemed like another lifetime.
    This was Farmer Jae's barn and house. Farmer Jae was dead. Fa's family was dead. Jab had found a black chunk of something, and she pushed at it with her nose. Perhaps it was a piece of Des, or one of Jab's children. She'd had five, with Des serving as host for the larvae. They should be nearly full-grown now. Jab turned and marched out of the ruins.
    "Are you coming, Gale?" Fa asked the ring.
    "Will you come soon?"
    She wiped at her eyes, and with a shaky breath, she seemed to make a decision.
    "I'll go to Farmer Jae's. You can meet me there."
    His hands closed into fists. He wanted to tell her not to go, not to move. But he had no way to communicate with her. The probe transmitted information, nothing more. Besides, if he could talk to her, what would he say? That she should stay in her room? She couldn't stay there forever. And he wouldn't be coming to rescue her. He had run away from everything. He hadn't even checked on her in all this time.
    She climbed out her window – she had always preferred windows to doors. As she dropped to the ground, he caught a flash of her broad feet, bare as usual, and legs covered with wispy white hair. She hesitated, then again raised the ring to face her.
    The wind riffled her hair.
    "We'll go. We'll go together."
    He had not wanted to think of her, of Soom, of his life before. Though he had been charged with watching the universe outside, he had conveniently overlooked his old home. He used his task just as he used his mind-focusing exercises, to distract himself, to build walls of facts and information to keep out all that he could not face, not if he was to retain control.
    Fa started through the ruins, the hand with the ring clutched to her chest. He should have realized that the Shadows might attack here. Soom was on the outskirts of the area they'd been targeting. Refugees from earlier raids had fled in this direction.
    Though Soom constituted no threat, with no weapons or space technology to speak of, the Shadows would want to turn the refugees back, to force the flow toward the center of the sector. A feint here would do that.
    But he had not seen it, had not wanted to see it. Even if he had, he could have done nothing. He must remain here, isolated from the rest of the universe. Fa cried with short, broken breaths as she wandered through the blackened waste. She must know, by now, that her family could not possibly be alive. Of all the town, only her house had been spared. It was unlike the Shadows to spare any. In the mist ahead, a dark silhouette took shape. The figure approached. Perhaps another had, somehow, survived, or come from the next town.
    Galen was relieved; Fa would not be alone. She obviously didn't notice, for she kept walking at the same slow pace. With a gust of wind the silhouette's shape shifted, a long, dark cape billowing out to one side. This was not one of the Soom.
    Galen wanted Fa to turn, to run. She must have seen the figure, for suddenly she stopped.
    "Are you all right?" a woman said in the language of the Soom, her voice rich and deep.
    As she came forward, thin, dark hair swirled over her pale face, obscuring it. The blowing cape disguised her smallness, yet he knew her.
    Razeel.
    He willed Fa to run, run, but she stood stubbornly in place.
    "Don't be afraid," Razeel said.
    "I'm here to help you."
    Fa looked down at the ring.
    "Did Gale send you?"
    Oh