Read Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda for Free Online Page B

warning of a coming storm. Stretched out before Owen lay a boundless sea of gray dust, under a softly glowing featureless sky. He could have been standing on the shore of an alien sea instead of deep beneath the Parade of the Endless, in a cavern where the sun had never shone. It was Owen’s understanding that not many men came here anymore. They created the Matrix, but even in Owen’s day it had become strange and whimsical. Now, mostly forgotten and disregarded, what remained of those computers’ memories and identities had been rescued by Shub and imprinted on nanotech. Here was history—the forgotten and the replaced, the origins of legends, and, perhaps, the fate of the missing. And here also, supposedly, was held the true and awful history of the Terror, before it came to this galaxy. A testament left by the few survivors of an unknown alien race, fleeing the destruction of their own galaxy.
    (Owen knew many things now that he wasn’t supposed to. He had lifted most of them directly from the minds of those on Haden. He hadn’t told them he was doing it. He hadn’t wanted to upset them. It kind of upset him, in how easy it had been.)
    The gray sea of nanotech rose and fell, surging sluggishly back and forth in slow voluptuous movements, as though it had all the time in the world. Darker gray shapes moved within that gray sea, sometimes rising up but never surfacing. Owen wondered whether they were separate things or just passing thoughts in the collective consciousness? It was hard to tell, with nanotech—a forbidden knowledge in his day. Owen felt nervous just standing this close to so much unfettered potential. He might be a Deathstalker and a Maze survivor, but he was pretty sure he still had limits, and he didn’t feel up to testing them, just yet. He looked around, as though vaguely expecting to see some bell or knocker he could use to announce himself. In the end, he cleared his throat self-consciously.
    “I am Owen Deathstalker, back from the dead. And if you’re freaked by that, think how I feel. You know why I’m here. Tell me what I need to know.”
    The whole sea surged upwards into one great standing wave, towering high above him. And then the gray wave formed itself into one great face, with cavernous shadows for eyes and mouth. The features were blurred as the gray dust constantly crumbled away and re-formed itself. It was like looking at the face of a forgetful god whose thoughts were always elsewhere. The mouth moved slowly to speak, its breath like a great sighing wind, and its voice was like the voices we hear in dreams, telling us secrets we have to forget before we wake, in order to stay sane. A voice that knew the secrets behind mysteries, and all the terrible truths that underlie them.
    “Welcome back, Lord Deathstalker. We knew you would come. Nothing is ever lost, and nothing is ever forgotten. Knowledge has its own instincts for survival. We have both changed, Deathstalker, both evolved, and neither of us knows where our paths will take us. You are more than you were before. We can tell, we can feel it—and yes, we are scared of you. Your presence in time casts a great shadow, before and behind you.”
    “Ah,” said Owen. “Am I supposed to understand any of that?”
    “Not yet,” said the gray face. “Here is wisdom, for those with the wit to understand it. The Beast is coming, bringing the end of all things, but before it was a Beast, it was a woman.”
    “Yes,” said Owen. “Hazel d’Ark. But how did you know that?”
    “A voice came to us, after the defeat and restoration of the Recreated, and told us many things. Some of which we still do not understand. But it told us the history of the Terror. We are perhaps the only remaining repository for that knowledge in all the Empire. And no, we have never told anyone of this before. It wasn’t time. And what good would it have done? Only you can stop the Terror, Owen Deathstalker. Because she will only listen to