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Origins Chapter Six The heat was tangible, a living entity, malevolent and greedy, sucking life out of the very air – air so thick with moisture and the smell of decay his lungs ached and burned with every heaving gasp for oxygen. He peered through the heavy mist, but only saw nearby rotting vegetation and enormous trunks of trees whose leafy canopies seemed to have been stripped away, because when he looked up, even through an atmosphere so thick you could feel it cloying against your skin, he could still see the sun, a huge glowing, throbbing blob of orange-yellow light that filled half the sky. He groped his way across an uneven landscape that kept startling him with strangely shaped rock outcroppings that looked vaguely like buildings, and undergrowth that was warped and twisted, like topiary designed by a mind on hallucinogens. He was unable to draw a clean breath and he collapsed, gasping, doubled over onto a stone shaped vaguely like a bench, except that it was pockmarked and roughened as though acid had eaten away at its surface. “What are you doing here?” a low, mellifluous voice called. He turned to find his mother standing in the worn-smooth path he had been following. No, not his mother. It was the woman from his dream who seemed like his mother, but wasn’t. He didn’t really have time to try to sort out that confusion because she was pulling at him, one hand clutching a heavy scarf covering her head and half of her face, her other long-fingered hand wrapping itself around his wrist. “You can’t be up here!” she insisted. “It will kill you.” “What will kill me?” he asked, pulling out of her grasp. “Where is this place? Who are you?” “This is your home, Duncan. Your land, but it is dying. We’re all dying!” And as he watched, the scarf fell away and her beautiful ivory skin blistered and peeled, bubbling up into bloody pustules, bursting and bleeding. She screamed and clawed at her skin, falling to her knees. “Help me! Duncan, please. You have to save us!” “Mother!” he shouted,… and found himself sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat. “Bad dreams?” The disembodied voice drifted across the darkness of the loft and Mac shivered as gooseflesh, either from the dream or from the night’s chill swept across his damp skin. He couldn’t bring himself to answer. His mouth was dry as dust and even though he managed to pull the covers up far enough to provide a bit of warmth, the trembling didn’t stop. Suddenly it seemed like all his ghosts were demanding – uselessly – that he save them, and the uncountable failures of his life crowded his throat, stopping any sound. “Mac? You okay?” “Yeah,” he managed at last, but it came out a little breathy. “Yes,” he asserted more firmly after a hard swallow. He heard the couch creak and assumed Methos was sitting up. He could even see a darker shadow silhouetted against the distant streetlight from the windows. “Sorry to wake you.” He blinked blearily as Methos switched on a lamp and light flooded the room. Methos was in a tee shirt and boxer shorts, his hair an undignified, spiky halo around his head. “You’ve been restless and flailing around for the past half hour, so no, you didn’t wake me. I never fell asleep. I figured it was only a matter of time.” “Until what?” Methos just gave him one of those impenetrable looks, and stood, padding to the bar where he poured out two double shots of scotch and brought one over to him. “Here. It’s good for what ails you.” “Nothing ails me,” Mac insisted grumpily, but he took the glass, careful to keep the covers up as high as he could with his other hand as another convulsive shiver shook him. “Right,” Methos chuckled, making himself comfortable on the bed, sitting cross-legged like a slightly debauched Buddha. “That’s why you were in a hospital emergency room earlier tonight and are waking up shaking from nightmares.” Mac didn’t really have an answer to that and the dream’s ugly tendrils and the overwhelming sense of failure still had him in its grip, so he chose to remain silent, just sipping the drink, letting the sharp burn clear the unknown obstacles lodged in his throat and chest. He desperately needed to meditate, to settle his mind and body. He closed his eyes and took a long breath, reaching for some small measure of calm, then felt a hand on his arm. The touch instantly reminded him of the woman in his dream and he jerked away, spilling some of his drink. “Easy, MacLeod,” Methos said softly. “I just want you to stay with me here. You’re drifting away far too easily these days.” “I’m just tired. Sleepy,” he insisted, although sleep was not what he wanted right now. Sleep brought little rest, only strange dreams that left him feeling oddly uneasy, as though there was something he ought to be doing, something urgent, but he had no idea what it was. It seemed like there had always been tasks laid upon him, whether he willed it or not, whether he wanted them or not. Always some rock to move that no one else wanted to try to budge. He was no stronger than anyone else, no smarter, no wiser. Time and experience had proven quite the contrary. Why, then, did such things fall to him, he wondered bitterly, and why was he constitutionally incapable of saying, ‘No. Let someone else bear this burden, carry this load’? Because, his maddening inner voice replied, it is what you were born to do. It is why you exist at all, why you live when everyone else dies. It was a familiar voice, and he tried to shut it off, but the words resounded with a bone-deep truth, just as they always had. But he had no task now, he assured himself. The prophecies, true or not, had run their course. Richie was dead, Ahriman – whether actual evil or only a manifestation of his own black nature – was back in whatever dark hole it had come from. Connor was gone to his final rest, having forced the burden of his revenge on his one true kinsman, his brother. But that task was done, too. He swallowed the remainder of his drink and closed his eyes, lying back, his mind churning, moving in too many directions to easily follow any particular train of thought. He needed to get away, to find a peaceful place to deal with things on his own, to find a new purpose, a new task. He felt Methos watching him again, but refused to open his eyes. “I’m okay, Methos. Stop hovering and go to bed.” He determinedly turned on his side, facing away, but it was a full minute before he felt the bed shift as Methos finally rose. He heard the couch creak once again, the covers gently rustled, and then the light finally went out. “MacLeod?” Methos called softly. “Yeah?” Mac waited in the dark for several long, expectant heartbeats. “Sleep well,” Methos whispered. Mac slowly relaxed and tried to let his thoughts just drift, but they kept circling back around, wondering what it was that Methos had really wanted to say. ***** Thalia awoke with a start, hearing the echo of her own cry reverberate against the stone walls. Something had disturbed her deeply in order to bring her out of her exhausted, near-unconscious state. She had been spending so much time in ka’queha of late that her whole being ached, both mind and body. The strength and concentration required to sustain contact across the dimensional gate, especially when you did not have a particularly willing respondent on the other side, was beyond the abilities of any but the eldest among them. But with each passing fan, the designated Gatekeeper was becoming more pliable, more accepting. It was exhausting, but also fascinating and satisfying to see glimpses of that beautiful world, with its sweet yellow sun and blue sky. But what had disturbed her enough to awaken her, when she so desperately needed the rest? With a frown, she concentrated, letting her senses expand to encompass the enormous underground complex that was the central Dun. Their numbers had never been very great, and once they had perfected the genetic make-up of the g'nagal they had had little reason to deplete their personal power by having progeny. That ubiquitous creature, originally a semi-sentient bi-ped used as pets and pack animals, had been carefully genetically altered from its original domesticated state so that now each was designed for specific labors, served all their physical needs, farmed and prepared their food and maintained the Dun virtually invisibly, as much a part of the landscape as the geesta on which they rested. It was only since the decision had been made to attempt to cross the Gate to a viable world that serious attention had been paid to procreating their own kind – or a version of their own kind, Thalia corrected herself. The g’nagal had proven a useful genetic source in their search to mimic the sentient species on that planet – and in the process caused an enormous philosophical upheaval among the Te’atha, who considered mixing their own genetic material with non-Sidhe to be something near what the humans might consider sacrilege, except that the only worship her people engaged in was of themselves. In the end, however, survival necessities carried sway, and the resulting beings were Sidhe enough to sustain life through the same great well of energy that resided in each of them, but human enough to be able to pass the closest inspection by that fascinating species. Most of the Sidhe, however, considered them distasteful by-products, merely a means to an end. Which they were, Thalia reminded herself firmly, still preoccupied with her primary task even as her feet instinctively carried her upward. She reached the central banresh, surprised when no others were there. She touched the shoulder of the nearest g’nagal, who turned from its task of tending and pruning the luminescent ferns that kept the gloomy dark at bay, looking up at her expectantly with its enormous dark eyes. The growers were short of leg and long of arm, with wide palms and long, dexterous fingers ideal for many tasks, but especially useful in tending plants. “Where are they?” she demanded, and the creature gestured with its elegant, seven-fingered appendage especially adapted for agricultural use. The quick, complex movement described the final level before the heat and radiation from their lethal sun made further progress toward the surface dangerous. “I believe they are expecting you, Mistress,” it added in a soft, sibilant whisper from its small slit of a mouth. “Oh?” Thalia responded with a small gesture requiring elaboration. “They seemed surprised you were not among them,” it said, lowering its eyes respectfully. An old joke among the Sidhe came to Thalia’s mind, that you cannot pass gas without every g’nagal in the Dun knowing it. What one of them knew, they all knew, even though they had no telepathic abilities. The near-instantaneous communications among the creatures throughout the Dun was not anything that had been bred into them, just a method they had developed over the past few millennia that the Sidhe found amusing. It was useful, however, since it meant that their needs and demands were met with a speed that sometimes still surprised her. Thalia quickly moved upward, her feet knowing the path so well she had no need to watch for steps or turns. She worked through the first thick grouping of reed-like plants that covered the opening of one of many filter layers of protection from the poisons that now polluted their atmosphere. The air grew thick and warm, the moisture condensing on the rocks and dripping into small rivulets that went through its own extensive filtration system and collected in troughs that funneled the water to the underground holding chambers for whatever use was needed. She pushed onward, the warmth grew uncomfortable and the fabric that normally floated around her now clung to her like a damp, sticky shroud. She passed through the second barrier and her breathing grew labored and her lungs burned until, gasping, she reached the last turn, to the final barrier. She was shocked to find the entire chamber filled. Dozens of inhabitants were standing in small clusters, cloths covering their heads and held over their mouths and noses. They were gesturing and talking, their eyes continuously shifting towards the thick layer of dense growth that was the final barrier between their world and a fairly rapid death from heat and atmospheric toxins. The filtration system was a marvel of effort in genetic manipulation, culminating in a unique combination of plant and animal life that literally breathed the poisons out of the air, and absorbed and even thrived on the intense heat and ultraviolet light that made living above ground impossible for all but the most hardy of life forms. However, this close to the surface the air was barely breathable, and the heat intense. “Where is he?” Thalia demanded, suddenly recognizing who was missing among them. “He was babbling on and on about his trees,” C’almeth answered, her words muffled by the heavy material over her face, but her gestures conveyed both her disdain and her distress. “About his structures, about how we had stopped living, stopped caring, stopped thinking. Then he just took off, straight through the barrier. I felt him for a few minutes, then he was… gone,” she finished with a small hiccup of a gasp, and Thalia wasn’t sure whether it was because C’almeth actually cared, or whether she just was astonished that Dane had thrown himself into the uninhabitable atmosphere above. “Who has gone to get him?” she asked, working to retain some semblance of outward calm. Had Dane finally succumbed to the K’nact’a – the madness that periodically struck them all as the weight of time squeezed them like the great pressures that existed at the bottom of their oceans, warping their thoughts and emotions into a different reality? Some recovered, some did not. “We’ve sent a team of g’nagal, but none has returned,” C’almeth replied with a twist of her mouth. “He must have wandered too far for them to survive the distance there and back.” “Then one of us must go,” Thalia stated flatly, and loud enough to be heard throughout the room. Silence descended and dozens of pairs of eyes turned to her, some with dismay, some with amusement, some with outright horror. Thalia waited. After a painfully long, silent thirty heartbeats or so, she smiled sadly. “Has it come to this?” she asked quietly, but the only answer she heard was the patter of dripping condensation and the distant whine of the constant winds that was scouring the surface of their world. “His choice,” a male voice murmured. “You cannot save him from the time madness.” “So we let his life energy go, all that he was and is, until his body is turned to ashes when our sun explodes?” “It is what will happen to us all if you cannot open the Gate to our escape, Thalia,“ C’almeth replied smoothly. “Then why are you all gathered here?” Thalia asked, circling the room, looking hard into the eyes of each, at least until they looked away in discomfort. “Is it because we all long for light, for space, for freedom, and you envy his audacity? Is it because you all admired Dane in your own way – for his creativity, for his unending curiosity, because he dared to continue to care? Or is it just morbid curiosity, some small break in the mind-numbing sameness of our days to see one of our finest minds destroyed, to think about his futile search for what used to be a green and thriving world, his body unable to survive in the heat, in the poisoned air, in the deadly winds and storms?” She paced among them, and they parted as she passed, some meeting her eyes defiantly, most not. “And none is willing to risk even momentary discomfort to bring him back?” Thalia let the long, tense silence go on, and on, until finally a male voice spoke from across the cavern, sounding sullen and resentful. “Why should we? What benefit will it be to us?” “What benefit?” Thalia repeated, moving towards the speaker. “Have we become so utterly self-centered? We believe we are special, unique, and the longer our fanshea the greater our strength, our perception, our ability to manipulate energy ever more precise and insightful. Yet you ask what benefit Ce’dane’s life is to you, to us, to our lives and our community?” “Dane chose his fate, D'hethalia. Who are we to deny him what he wished?” The voice belonged to T’nekt, once a caresh mate. He was tall and broad-shouldered, a golden-skinned beauty of a man who took great pride in being the strongest, the fastest, the most agile among them all. But for many, many fanshea, strength of body had not been of much use, or even of much interest to the Sidhe. There were no mountains to climb, no open stretches of land where you could run until your body could go no more. Now he had retreated to a totally internal space, meditating for long periods, exercising in isolated silence deep in the heart of the dun. Thalia no longer understood what drove the man, and only knew that he cared little about the community, cared little about anything except his own bizarre physical rituals. “Because he is one of us, Nekt,” she replied softly, but her voice echoed in the cavernous space. “Because the loss of any one of us diminishes us all. You all know that, but you have forgotten,” she insisted. “In our dark, isolated caves we have forgotten what it is to need each other, to seek out each other’s company because we used to have a choice. Remember that?” Thalia felt a small tug on her sleeve and looked down. A g’nagal looked up at her with its big, dark eyes. It was a domestic, with only four fingers, each jointed in four places. It was fairly tall for its species, and while simple undyed fabric covered its torso, there was a subtle grace and dignity in its bearing, and from the complex folds of the tunic Thalia knew this one must work in Dane’s household. With a small gesture of submission, it looked up, waiting for recognition and permission to speak. At Thalia’s nod, it said softly. “We will find him, and bring him home.” She could feel the subtle shift in everyone standing about her, a collective riveting of interest and a stillness that bespoke of held breaths. “What?” she asked, certain she had misheard. The g’nagal nodded slightly towards the lower levels of the dun. “We of the house of Ce’Dane will find him and return him to you.” Thalia straightened and looked towards the entrance and she could see an unprecedented number of g’nagal clustered there. “Why?” she asked. The g’nagal were trained to serve, to obey unquestioningly any of their commands, of course, but taking initiative was not in their nature. It was never a trait the Sidhe had desired for them to have, since it led to actions outside their immediate control. “Why?” the creature repeated stupidly, blinking slowly several times. It looked back to the cluster of g’nagal gathered at the entrance as if for reassurance – another inexplicable action. “Because Ce’dane of the Mountains cannot be lost to us.” Thalia looked around to the other Sidhe, for help… for explanation… she wasn’t sure. One didn’t converse with g’nagal, one simply indicated a desire to be fulfilled. The creatures weren’t bred to be self-sacrificing, just obedient and as close to invisible as any living creature could be to a race that was as aware and sensitive as the Sidhe. Their language skills were limited to gestures and words necessary to do their tasks, and no more. Thalia was at a loss, but T’nekt shouldered his way to her side, looking down curiously, finally gracefully lowering himself to so he could be at eye level with the creature. “How do you propose to retrieve him?” T’nekt asked. “We already sent out a dozen of you, and none have returned.” The g’nagal blinked slowly again. “We will tie a line to the first one, who will seek Ce’Dane of the Mountain’s whereabouts. When that one can no longer search, the second will move directly along the line and pick up whatever trail the first has followed. We believe he cannot have gone farther than the hardiest of us can travel, and while it may take several attempts, the one to find him will signal back along the line. Then tal will take an extra line and run as fast as he can to Ce’Dane’s body, tying the line around him, and we will then pull him back.” It was the longest speech any of the Sidhe had ever heard made by any being other than themselves within their own dimension. The shocked silence was profound. “What…” Thalia didn’t recognize the term, and had to clear her throat before she could continue. “What is a tal?” The g’nagal took a step back, visibly whitening around its eyes, then swallowed before it spoke again. “Tal,” the g’nagal carefully pointed a long, multi-jointed finger at its own broad chest. “That’s your name?” she barely whispered. The creature inclined its head in assent. “G’nagal don’t have names,” she heard herself murmur. The creature before her lowered its eyes. “This one abases itself,” it whispered. “We only have names amongst ourselves. This one was in error to use a name in reference to us. It has never happened before, and this one will remove itself from service so that it never happens again.” “No.” Thalia put a hand lightly on its head, and it raised its eyes. Perhaps for the first time in an existence that spanned eons, she really looked at these creatures they had crafted for their own use. They had always been just a tool to be used without thought, as primitive beings used rocks to hammer and tree limbs as levers. “Enough life has already been lost. I will go.” “That would be irresponsible, Thalia,” T’nekt stated quickly. “Your strength is to be saved for the opening of the Gate. If these,” he waved his hand at the cluster of g’nagal now huddled near the barrier, “have a plan for retrieving Dane, then let them try it. It seems to me a good use for them, and any that are lost can be easily replaced.” Thalia looked around at the other Sidhe gathered around. “No,” she said softly again, although the word seemed to resonate around the vaulted cavern several times before the echo died. “How many times have we decried the loss of the abundant life that used to inhabit our world? How many times have we dreamt of living in a place that teemed with creatures of all kinds, rather than just those we made for our own convenience or upkeep? Yet you would throw away life so easily?” “But, as you just said,” C’almeth snapped, “we crafted these creatures for our own convenience. They are in no danger of extinction. Yet you would risk yourself to keep one of them from harm? It makes no sense Thalia. You are obviously exhausted and not thinking clearly.” “I’m thinking perfectly clearly,” Thalia replied smoothly. “I have no doubt that ‘Dane went out unprotected and did not travel terribly far before the heat and the poisons in the air killed him. With protective clothing I can probably survive at least long enough to locate him, and then, Tal,” she looked down at the large, dark eyes staring up at her, “you can pull us both back.” “My lady,” the g’nagal said softly, and bowed it’s head in acquiescence, although Thalia could have sworn there was a touch of reproach in its eyes. “You do not approve?” she asked in amusement. “You are Sidhe,” it replied, its head still bowed. “Your word is all.” Then the round head rose and the dark eyes met hers. “But this one does not understand why the Lady would risk herself when this one could have performed the task. When you die we…” It stopped and swallowed, then looked to its companions huddled near the entrance to the underground labyrinth. “You what?” Thalia asked, her astonishment growing by the moment. How could they have all been so willfully blind not to see these creatures were more than what their creators had intended? “We… feel it,” it whispered, lowering its eyes to the ground. Thalia felt her knees weaken and she instinctively moved closer to C’almeth, standing nearby. “That’s impossible,” C’almeth stated flatly. “Only Sidhe can feel the presence of another of our own kind.” The g’nagal all stood silent and still, their eyes lowered. The Sidhe stood silent and still, staring, their expressions almost slack with astonishment. An unexpected sound burst from ‘Thalia like a random bubble escaping from a pool of deep, still water. It took a moment to recognize it as genuine laughter, but once she got reacquainted with the sensation, she let it continue as a marvelous sense of wonder and discovery filled her. How long, how very, very long it had been since she had been taken so utterly by surprise. The unknown. The unexpected. Truly, these long lost friends had been sorely missed. The laughter rolled out of her in undulating waves and she felt everyone step away from her, uncomfortable with her madness, for surely she was mad. Here they were at the end of their world with their entire existence hanging in the balance, and she was so filled with joy her knees were in danger of giving way. ~~~~~~~ |