Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley Read Free Book Online Page B

Cooperation may become inevitable, should events turn unfortunate.'
    'Forgive me, Great Elder,' Chel said, 'but what is it that draws the Dreamless here? What do they want?'
    The Pathmaster sighed. 'For long ages we guarded it, serving the Great Purpose, thinking that finally all knowledge and memory of it had passed irretrievably beyond the veil of the past. But some dreams persist longer than the lives of the stars and lurk and wait in hidden places for their time to come round again.' Dark eyeless hollows regarded him. 'The edifice atop that prow of rock, Waonwir, is not some old Uvovo temple of devotion as the Humans have surmised. Beneath its walls and foundations lies a gateway to the framework of the universe, a source of power once used to defeat the first enemy, the cause of the Great Purpose, a terrible adversary now long vanquished. If the Dreamless were to gain control of it, all thought in this galaxy and beyond would become enslaved to their will and life would have no song.'
    He paused a moment. 'Now you know what you are meant to know. Go - return to Giant's Shoulder and wait for the command to travel northward.'
    As the Pathmaster fell silent, his image blurred and dissolved into the pale, falling mist. With his vanishing, the light in the clearing dwindled suddenly, like a door closing, leaving Chel feeling adrift and burdened with portents.
    War is coming, he thought, and J am to become a Listener even though I have been a Scholar for only four hem-seasons . . .
    'I am not ready,' he muttered.
    'On that I can only agree,' said Faldri, brushing off his long garments as he got to his feet. 'But higher counsel has determined the course of your doings - now we must wait to see if the meeting of fate and dream aids or hinders you.' He took his stave from where it leaned against one of the vaskin trees, and started up the slope. 'Come, Artificer, let me see you safely back to your lohig.'
     

CATRIONA
     
    On the moon Nivyesta, beneath the lush, living canopy of the forest Segrana, it was forever dusk. Through humid green shadows a trictra swung, long hooked limbs finding purchase on branches, heavy vines and creeping webs, descending into the well of gloom. Catriona Macreadie clung to its dumbbell-shaped torso, strapped firmly into a woven harness and uncomfortably warm in a grey concealing robe, feeling slight waves of vertigo as the creature dipped and swooped in the moon's lower gravity. In front, Pgal the herder sat easily in the notch behind the trictra's head, directing it with prods to either of its frontal joints or with single-syllable cries. Periodically, Pgal glanced back with his doleful eyes in a wordless query but Catriona, despite her discomfort, would shake her head and point onward and downward. The hunt was on and she was not for turning back.
    Clouds of insects parted and swirled in their wake while innumerable creatures noticed the disturbance of their passing, mammalian kizpi, their large eyes staring from leafy niches, or umisk lizards startled and darting away. It was an exhilarating display of Segrana's biodiversity, which Catriona had charted and studied for nearly two years, filling scores of datacubes with profiles, reports and commentaries, as well as hundreds of images. She had seen how liexaformity was a trait common to different species, and how some subspecies exhibited tripartite or even quadripartite life cycles, changing their physical attributes as they aged, while others did not. She understood how the vast, continentspanning biomass of Segrana shielded its multifarious denizens from the moon Nivyesta's weather patterns, regulating the many microclimates found beneath its canopy, while the lower gravity aided the growth of wider, taller trees and other plants.
    She also knew that the map was not the territory and that Segrana hid many secrets. Satellite surveys confirmed that while Segrana's topmost extremities grew to nearly a mile above sea level, some of the unseen valleys