"How are any apprentices to be initiated? You've destroyed our order!"
"I told you," Fed said, "the time for all this is later. Galen hasn't even spoken to the Circle yet."
"Whatever he says doesn't matter. We all know what happened, though the Circle is holding back the details. He blew up Z'ha'dum. The Shadows will never give us tech now – if any of them are still alive."
Galen thought of the Drazi shrouded in Shadow skin, dying as he gave birth to a chrysalis; the stack of corpses against the cave wall.
"Z'ha'dum was our home as well," Galen said. "And if you had seen it, you too would have destroyed it."
"What did you see there?" Ak-Shana asked.
She had come up behind him. Galen fixed one after the next with his gaze. In their faces he saw the tension of control, the adrenaline-heightened awareness of danger, the rush of energy and anger, the driving need to act.
"I saw that the Shadows had lost their way. They had abandoned questions for answers. And they had decided to impose their answers upon us all – to manipulate, to control, to enslave, to kill. I discovered that we have been created in their image, and have begun down their path."
"We're nothing like the Shadows!"
Chiatto's left hand curled upward like a snake, and struck. A fireball shot at Galen. Around them, mage shields snapped on. Galen stopped the fireball in midair.
"Your anger, I realize, is partly your own. I too feel anger when confronted by a truth I would rather not face. Yet your anger is also, in part, the Shadows'. They urge you to chaos and destruction. Sometimes, to be sure, anger is well deserved, and destruction is the greatest good that can be done. Yet more often" – he quenched the fireball – "anger brings no good. For the truth cannot be changed with a fireball. The most effective way to change it, in fact, is simply to question it."
"You sealed our fate without consulting any of us!"
Though his words were defiant, Chiatto lowered his hand to his side, shaken.
"But your fate has not been sealed," Galen said. "It has been opened."
Chiatto's companions drew him away, and Fed continued ahead, Galen following. As they approached Blaylock's room, the hall became filled with his followers. They wore plain black robes, their bodies scoured of hair, small fireballs cupped between their hands, holding vigil in silence. Some seemed not to notice his passing; others looked on with resentment.
The door to Blaylock's room stood open, with more followers inside, including Miostro. Fed whispered something to the grave mage, who watched Galen with narrowed eyes. Galen didn't care whether they welcomed him or not.
Blaylock was the one most likely to understand his joining with the tech, and the one most likely to accomplish it himself. The desire resounded within him, to free the others, tech and mage, to allow them to find themselves, and their purpose, without the poison of the Shadows.
Perhaps Blaylock would know the way. Galen drew close beside him. Blaylock was laid out in his robe, his body a stick figure beneath it. His skullcap was tipped slightly back, too large now, a gap between it and his head. His face was sculpted in severe planes, his skin a shiny yellow, looking almost artificial. At least his skin remained free of hair, as he would have wanted.
His breath was a soft whisper in the quiet room. His hands lay at his sides, stiffly open, as if still they pained him.
Galen wrapped his hand around Blaylock's cold one. Sent a message.
Blaylock.
Another.
Blaylock.
No response.
He and the tech performed an electron incantation. Galen chose as his setting the great amphitheater where, legend had it, the first Circle met under the leadership of Wierden. He believed that would please Blaylock. The amphitheater took shape around him, rising in tier upon tier of stone to a vast dome of blue-green sky, a pale yellow sun. Around the bottom tier glowed the runes of the Code.
Galen stood on the second level, and in his self-image, his burns were gone, his health restored. Blaylock stood a few tiers above him, a thin, severe figure in black. His expression was dour, his voice, as he spoke, harsh and certain.
"They tell me that you and John Sheridan destroyed Z'ha'dum. That was not part of your task."
Galen had expected Blaylock would be barely coherent.
"It was a place of atrocities. Enslavement."
"They tell me that you joined with a Shadow ship."
"I joined with the tech. Just as you said. I found the way."
Excitement rising within him, Galen climbed the high stone blocks toward Blaylock.
"We are one now, beyond any control or programming of the Shadows."
"They did not tell me that."
Blaylock's gaunt face contracted in a way that somehow suggested pleasure.
"I see the change in you. You have healed the rift between tech and mage. You have attained perfect control, just as I hoped. Elric taught you well. You will be the new leader of the mages, a Wierden for the new age."
Galen couldn't tell Blaylock that he wasn't leading anyone anywhere, that the other mages didn't understand. He paused in his climb, found Blaylock still an equal distance above him.
"What is it like?" Blaylock asked.
Galen continued upward.
"It is like embracing yourself, and more than that, like embracing an old friend, and more than that, like embracing the universe. It is becoming connected to something spiritual growth. The tech is a reflection of you. It knows all your thoughts, and it shares them."
Blaylock was farther above him than ever. Galen bounded up the levels, fearing that he had come too late.
"All you have to do is conjure nothing. Cast a spell in which you ask the tech to do nothing. That is the way to open the door between you."
"So simple. Yet it is a solution I would never have found."
"Please. Try it."
"I have spent my entire life in the pursuit of perfect discipline, perfect control. I don't know if I can relinquish that control."
Galen stopped his climb, panting. Blaylock stood on the top tier of stone, a black figure against the blue-green sky.
"Try, at least. Only in uncertainty can we gain understanding."
"How does one conjure nothing?"
Blaylock lifted his stiff hand and seemed to regard it for a moment. Then he lowered it to his side. Within his black silhouette, a light began to grow, a pale yellow light, suffusing his form and radiating beyond, spreading its warmth, growing brighter and brighter until Galen had to look away.
"I understand," Blaylock said, his voice stronger, fuller.
"This is what we were meant to be. This is what we will be, someday. I embrace the universe and its will."
The light dwindled, and Galen looked up to where Blaylock had been standing. All that remained was the sky, and the sun. Blaylock was gone. Yet Galen was filled with the warmth of his light.
He had freed his tech, had joined with it, at the last. Galen had shared his understanding with at least one other. He dissolved the spell, returned to his slumped, burned body in the platform chair.
Beside him, Blaylock lay still. His stiff, open hand, in Galen's, curled inward, relaxed. As Blaylock lay there, so did Isabelle, and Burell, and Carvin, and Fa, and Elric. So much had been lost. He told himself that in his memory of the lives they had lived, the struggles they had fought, the questions they had asked, the insights they had gained, they survived.
Yet that did not ease the loss.
You must learn, one day,
Isabelle had said,
to forgive God for His decisions.
The thought of some all-knowing god manipulating, judging, handing out life here, death there, sent anger resounding through Galen.
But if there was no omniscient god, if there was instead simply a universe seeking understanding, then it may have been no more able to stop their deaths than Galen had been. Some of Blaylock's followers were crying. Others had fallen to their knees, praying for his peaceful passage to the other side. Miostro raised his hands.
"May he receive the answers he sought."
Galen had never believed in an afterlife. Now he no longer knew. But life seemed far, far too short. And if there was an afterlife, Galen hoped that it brought not answers, but more questions, so that each could continue ahead on his journey into uncertainty. Perhaps, as he continued his journey, they could travel together.
* * *
Galen stood outside the Circle's meeting room, waiting to be called back inside. He felt a bit naked, standing there in a simple black shirt and pants. He'd found he no longer needed the warmth of a coat, yet he'd become accustomed to wearing one. Perhaps he could find a lighter one to wear. Down the corridor, mages clustered outside the dining hall, where a celebration was being held.
They drank and laughed and exchanged sleights of hand. The walls of the corridor danced with colorful light displays, reverberated with music. Today, celebration filled the galaxy, for the Shadow War was over. The bombing of Z'ha'dum had been the beginning of the end. It had led, first, to a rapid escalation. The Vorlons had ceased their distant manipulations and entered the war with a full-scale onslaught, wiping out any planets on which the Shadows had gained power or found allies. They had determined, finally, to destroy the Shadows' influence.
The Shadows, desperate after the great destruction on their home-world, had gathered their fleet and begun a similar campaign of ruthless planetary annihilation, destroying bastions of order. While the war between chaos and order had manifested itself many times in the galaxy, for as long as history told, the Shadows and Vorlons had never taken such an active role before.
That exposed them for what they had become. And it left them vulnerable.
John Sheridan left the ruins of Z'ha'dum a few weeks after Galen. He returned to Babylon 5 not only with his health but with the wisdom to end the war. He realized that the Shadows and the Vorlons, in fighting over who best could guide the younger races, had lost their way. Victory mattered more to them now than anything.
Only two weeks later, John engineered a direct confrontation between the Shadows and the Vorlons, with his own forces in the middle. By refusing to accept control by either side, he showed the two enemies that their manipulations would no longer work, that the younger races were no longer children to be fought over and dominated, but adults who had found another way, the way of freedom and uncertainty.
Neither took his rejection easily. Yet ultimately, they realized they had no choice. If they did not leave the younger races, they would destroy their charges. They passed, together, beyond the galactic rim, leaving the rest to live outside their control. And so the war between order and chaos ended, the cycle at last broken.
The mages had been uncertain, at first, how to react to the news. The end of the war, and the mass killings, was certainly cause for celebration, as was the departure of the mages' sworn enemy, an enemy who had tried to exterminate them.
Yet the passing of the Shadows, and their knowledge, the mages considered a two-edged sword. Just as it gave them hope for the future, for a life outside the hiding place, it took that hope away. For without the Shadows' tech, their order had no future. As the Shadows passed, so would the techno-mages.
But within minutes of receiving the news, the mages had seemed to decide that celebration was the only possible reaction. They could not pretend to believe in good and support the continuation of a bloody war. Instead, they would pretend to be happy and hope that the pretense would become reality. It had been a long time since they'd had anything to celebrate, over two years.
Galen was glad to see them happy. Even if their order would end, it need not end in despair. Now that the Shadows were gone, they could go back out into the universe, and Galen could go with them. They still could do good, could heal the wounds of war, could search for answers. And perhaps, in time, more would learn to free their tech.
Galen heard running footsteps behind him and turned. Optima dashed around the corner and banged into him. She stumbled back, laughing, her face flushed. She wore one of the long white feather capes that the Kinetic Grimlis liked to pull out for celebrations. Beneath, a purple tunic glowed. When she saw whom she'd run into, her face fell in dismay.
"Sorry."
Then laughter bubbled out of her again.
"Is Fed still in there? He's missing all the fun. Don't they realize this is the party of a lifetime?"
"They are deliberating," Galen said.
A feather drifted down and landed in her tangled hair. Galen smiled.
"I told Fed he shouldn't have run. He's going to miss the probe-spitting contest, and he could have won that hands down. Will you tell him to come as soon as he can?"
Galen pulled the feather from her hair, returned it to her. On the back of his hand, only a slight discoloration remained of his burns.
"I will."
She started toward the dining hall. With a joyous cry she jumped into the air to perform a dizzying succession of somersaults. Then she landed and turned back, swaying.
"I mean, you're welcome to come too. Why don't you come down while they're – doing whatever they're doing. I'm sure they'll call you when they want you."
Brilliant white feathers drifted down around her, tracing gentle arcs through the air.
"Thank you, but I don't think it will be long."
She noticed the rain of feathers and laughed.
"Okay. Anyway."
She ran off.
He had never been one for parties. And though the looks of others no longer discomfited him with what they might see, and the noise and activity no longer threatened his control, he was still, at base, someone who felt most comfortable in solitude. That had not changed. He was who he was. Yet he was also more.
Isabelle had told him it could be so, but he had not believed her. The rune representing him appeared on the door. He entered.
The five members of the new Circle sat at the round silver table in a semicircle, Herazade at their center.