* * *
When John Sheridan came from the other room, the first thing Anna felt was surprise. In his loose robe, with his dark-blond hair in disarray, he looked so unremarkable, so pathetic and Human. Was this the nexus, whose influence and control stretched across the galaxy?
As his sharp gaze found her, though, she did sense something, a power she hadn't detected in any other Human. He carried some of the authority of the techno-mage Elizar, but more than that. Anna couldn't say what.
A strange flutter of excitement passed through her. It felt as if the machine's beat had stumbled. He was no ordinary Human. No wonder he had been able to murder so many of her sisters. He was dangerous. She had reached her target. Now she must gain control of him.
"Anna, my God, what are you doing here?"
He called her Anna. Was he really her friend, or just pretending to be? He wasn't smiling; she couldn't identify the expression on his face. He glanced toward the other room, where Delenn's figure moved behind frosted glass. Delenn had no place here. Anger filled Anna.
"What are you doing here?" she said. "After five years that's the best that you can do?"
Delenn came from the other room, dressed in new clothes, and stopped beside John. Anna's eyes narrowed on her.
"Though under the circumstances, I can understand."
"I... I should go," Delenn said, and started toward the door.
"No... Delenn, wait," John said.
Delenn brushed past Anna, left. The door swung closed behind her.
"It's all right, John. Let her go. You can talk to her later. This should be a moment for us."
John stared at her, and he looked as if he were in pain.
"I thought you were dead."
"You mean she didn't... She didn't tell you? Well, that is interesting."
His gaze sent that strange flutter through her again, and she raised a hand to her stomach. She moved toward him. She could pretend to be a friend too.
"Oh, John. I'm sorry that I couldn't tell you myself. I'm sorry for leaving you alone for so long, not being able to get word to you. But that's behind us now. We're together again."
She reached out to touch him, and he took a step back, frowning. She forced herself not to pursue him.
"I know what you're thinking," she said.
"How can you be sure it's really me? For all you know – for all she told you – I could be some thing made up to look like me. Fine, I'll take whatever test you want. Ask me any question. I don't – mind."
She knew all the answers, and once she had proven that, he would fall further under her control.
"I know there's a lot that you don't know. I know there's a lot that you understand. I'm here to fix that."
She took another step, laid a hand on his chest. It was warm, and rose slightly to press against her hand. She looked up at him, and imagining that he was the Eye, that they would soon be joined, she smiled.
"Don't you want to know what it's about? What it's really all about? I can do that. All you have to do is come with me."
"Where?"
"Where else? To Z'ha'dum."
C
HAPTER 15
Even though he had foreseen it, Kosh found it difficult to accept. Even within Sheridan's mind, Kosh could not understand his decision. Sheridan was going to Z'ha'dum.
Already the Human moved about his quarters, gathering his belongings for this ill-fated journey. Sheridan knew that his wife was no longer his wife.
He'd known, somehow, within moments of seeing her. Despite that knowledge, a flicker of hope remained that some bit of her still survived. Each time he was with her, that hope died anew, and the desire to confront those who had committed this abomination grew stronger.
Yet he did not go to Z'ha'dum because of that. He knew the enemy had sent her as a trap. He knew that the story his wife told, of her friendly relationship with the approachable aliens, was false. He did not believe her claim that the enemy wanted only to tell their side of the story. He was not deluded by their deceit. He did not go to Z'ha'dum. Kosh had once told the Human that if he went to Z'ha'dum, he would die.
It was not in Sheridan's nature to accept such pronouncements without question. The return of Sheridan's wife had eroded his trust in Kosh and Delenn; he was less and less inclined to accept what he'd been told and follow the path worn through history by those who had played his role. In that, Kosh found hope that this war might end differently than all the rest.
Sheridan sought his own truths, his own role, his own path. But even so, that was not the whole of the reason that he went to Z'ha'dum.
Sheridan had come to believe that avoiding the stronghold of the ancient enemy would lead to, at best, an incomplete victory, one in which the maelstrom would retain the strength to cause continued devastation to the younger races.
Not only did Sheridan seek true understanding of this conflict, he wanted to minimize the harm to the younger races and end the cycle of war once and for all. For that purpose, Sheridan went to Z'ha'dum. His goals were admirable, yet he chose the wrong means to accomplish them. The only way to end the cycle was for the younger races to prove definitively that, of order or chaos, one was overwhelmingly superior. One side must win beyond all doubt and all recovery.
For order to win, all the races must join in a single great alliance, against which no defiance could stand. For chaos to triumph, all alliances, all governments, all codes of conduct must fall to the changing whims of personal desire.
Neither side had ever won such a decisive victory, and Kosh had come to doubt that either side ever would. Instead, the wars grew progressively more vicious and desperate, any benefit to the younger races lost in the firestorm.
The cycle of war and death had to end, before all hope, all future, all life was lost. Kosh had come to believe that if there was any hope of the cycle ending, of order being proven superior, it lay in Sheridan.
In all the millennia he had guided the younger races, he had found no species more drawn to creating alliances and communities than the Humans, and no leader more fit to build and sustain such an alliance than Sheridan. Through Sheridan, all of the younger races could be united under a single government, subject to a code where personal desires would be sacrificed to the greater good of all.
If Sheridan went to Z'ha'dum, if Sheridan died, none of that would come to pass. The ancient home of the enemy was well guarded and defended. In that dark place their power was concentrated, their pestilence thriving and mutating in endless variations. For countless millennia, none who had gone there to oppose chaos had escaped.
Kosh could think of only one power that might allow Sheridan to survive, a primal presence of which nothing had been heard in eons. That power was out of his control and beyond his reach. Perhaps that First One, whose mediation between order and chaos had generated the ancient rules of engagement, no longer existed. Perhaps he had passed silently beyond the galactic rim. He could not be counted on to save Sheridan.
And Sheridan must not die. If Kosh worked carefully within his host, he believed he could subtly control Sheridan, push Sheridan to change his decision.
The other Vorlons, if they knew of Kosh's presence, would judge that course the correct one. They believed the younger races' purpose was to learn discipline, obedience, self-sacrifice. Sheridan's decision would be seen as undisciplined, self-indulgent.
More important, it would greatly lessen the Vorlons' chance of winning this war. Yet Kosh could not make himself take the action. He and Sheridan had disagreed before, on the involvement of the Vorlons in the war, and Sheridan had been correct. Kosh no longer thought of the Human as his inferior.
Moreover, if Sheridan was truly the one who might end this war at last, then he could not be ordered and manipulated like a youth; he must be allowed to make his own decisions. Whether they pleased Kosh or not.
As Sheridan closed his suitcase and set it beside the door, Kosh knew that the decision must be left to him. Perhaps, though, Kosh could remind him of the consequences of his decision, put the truth before him so that Sheridan, himself, would change his mind.
Kosh could not reveal to his host that a piece of him still lived, within. If Sheridan's mind was probed, the enemy could learn of his presence. They might kill Sheridan, just to be rid of this last fragment of Kosh. He had come to Sheridan before in dreams.
He could not wait for sleep now, or Sheridan would be on the way to Z'ha'dum. But he could stimulate Sheridan's memory and speak through that memory, almost as a waking dream. Standing before his dresser, Sheridan loaded a fresh energy cap into his weapon, slid the weapon into as holster. Kosh located the incident in Sheridan's mind. Sheridan had confronted the mysterious, elusive Vorlon in his residence, demanding to be taught how to be taught how to kill Shadows.
Sheridan had sworn then that he would one day to go to Z'ha'dum. And Kosh had told him the inevitable outcome of such a visit. Sheridan took a second weapon from his dresser drawer, removed it from its holster, checked it. An extra weapon would not save him. Above the dresser was a mirror.
Kosh would make the memory appear there to increase the sense of unreality. Kosh stimulated the memory, the image of him in his encounter suit, looking as he had on that day. Within the mirror, he placed that image over Sheridan's shoulder. Catching a flicker of movement, Sheridan glanced up. The memory spoke.
"If you go to Z'ha'dum, you will die."
Sheridan spun around, searching for the source of the reflection. After a moment, he decided that he was alone, and that his tired, overstressed mind was playing tricks on him. Yet the memory revived his anger at Kosh, and Delenn, for trying to control him.
He turned back to the dresser, shoved the second weapon back into its holster, more determined than ever to continue on his course. Sheridan was stubborn. Independent. Impudent. Incorrect.
He would destroy the alliance, and lose the war, for the chance of ending the cycle of conflict between order and chaos for all time, something that had never been done in the history of the galaxy. For this unreachable goal, he would give his life.
Sheridan would go to Z'ha'dum. And he would die.
* * *
A breather over his face, his coat buttoned tightly around him, Galen walked down the ramp of his ship. The cold wind blew past him, carrying a grit of reddish-brown dust. The particles shrouded him in isolation, the landscape beyond reduced to uncertain, shadowy shapes in the dim light.
He reached the bottom of the ramp, stepped onto the surface. For a bewildering, disorienting moment as he stood there, he couldn't even remember why he had landed. Then it came to him. Of course. He must kill three people: Elizar, Razeel, and himself.
Three days had passed since the Eye had looked upon him. It had taken him that long to secure his hold on the energy that drove through him, to contain it. The walls of his exercises wrapped suffocatingly around him, blocking out everything not needed in the immediate moment, holding in that feverish chill, showing him this place with the detachment of an observer looking out from a long, dark tunnel.
Buried in the walls of that tunnel was the hatred the Eye had revealed, the pestilence that defined who he was, and what he was, no matter how much he fought it. The Eye had taught him, beyond any doubt, that he could not transcend it. No good could come of him.
He directed his ship to raise the ramp, sealing itself closed. Then he visualized the equation to dissociate, and twin echoes from the tech and the chrysalis confirmed the command. His connection to the ship broke; the second echo faded into silence. He would have preferred to destroy his ship immediately, since he had no intention of using it again. But that would only draw attention to his presence.
Instead, he had given the ship new instructions. If anyone tampered with it, it would destroy itself. If he failed to contact it for twenty-four hours, it would destroy itself. And once it detected his death, it would destroy itself. He would leave the Shadows nothing to aid them.
As he moved away from the ship's shelter, his coat whipped against his body, and the windblown dust raked over his raw hands. Though it was day, the light from the distant sun was weak, refracted by the dust and other elements in the atmosphere.
The planet seemed to exist in twilight. The gravity, 1.3 times standard, pulled at his feet. Through the dust, he saw the silhouettes of the other ships among which he had landed. Some were Shadow ships, but others represented a variety of species; agents and associates reporting to their masters, he supposed. Among them, he hoped that he might go unnoticed for a short time.
To one side of the landing area ran a series of rocky outcroppings, the trailing fragments of a vast black mountain range that stretched into the distance. From several places along the length of those outcroppings, faint energy emanated. They were openings, he believed, to the vast underground complex his sensors told him stretched below. As he headed toward the closest one, he approached one of the towering stone monoliths that covered the planet.
These ancient monuments, great up thrust fingers of stone, were spaced a regular 2.432 miles from one another, spread over the entire planet's surface. Each was carved with an inscription of some kind, the vertical line of characters glowing from an internal light. The light pulsed brighter and dimmer in a steady cycle, like the beating of a heart.
Galen drew closer to the pillar, and as the wind shifted, for a moment, he could see the characters clearly. They were runes, he realized with a start, from the language of the Taratimude. There was the rune for secrecy, and there the rune for mystery. The mages' great Code, the Code to which they all swore obedience, the Code that embodied everything that they stood for, had been written in the alphabet of the Shadows.
No wonder there was no rune to signify good, he thought. The Shadows knew nothing of that. The rune that the mages translated as good, he had learned in his studies, actually meant useful. A faint vibration pulsed through the ground in time with the light.