spoken.
'I remember.'
'What was the promise?'
'That I would stand before you, and never let a shadow touch you. I would be the light in your darkness.'
'You have been,' she replied, stepping up to him and gently touching his face. 'In memory, when you were unable to be so in flesh. I never forgot you, and nor did those you fought beside with G'Kar. Return to them.... they need you....'
'Parlonn....'
'Is dead. He died here, killed by someone who had once been his friend. They lied to him, just as they lied to you. Do not become another Parlonn, Neroon.' She cast her eyes downward. 'I could not bear that.'
'I swore to keep you safe, Delenn. You were always.... in my thoughts.... always.' He nodded once. 'Very well.... I have betrayed and abandoned my masters not once, not twice, but three times. My doom is complete, I believe. But as long as I am by your side, it cannot claim me.'
'Your doom will never claim you.' Delenn turned back to Susan. 'Where can we go?'
'I.... don't know. I think we go down. Underground. He's down there. He can help us.'
'Why are you doing this?' Delenn asked suddenly. 'Why are you...?'
Helping me? Susan didn't know. She could give a million reasons, and none of them would make any sense at all. She remembered seeing Delenn torn half-formed from the chrysalis, looking at her with a child's eyes. She remembered seeing Marcus die, his heart stopped by the force of her pike. She remembered her last talk with Laurel.
She remembered a great many things. She could not, however, give any reason that was anything resembling the truth.
'I must have been dropped on my head when I was a baby,' she said, with a half smile. 'I don't need a reason.'
'I will not forget this,' Delenn said, as she hurried towards the door. Neroon pushed it open and stepped through. Delenn and Susan followed. The corridor seemed empty.
'I doubt you'll live long enough to.' There was a sudden buzzing in her ears, and she started. Suddenly she realised she was holding a weapon, a PPG. She didn't remember picking it up. A darkness suddenly fell over Delenn and herself, and a glint of understanding shone in Delenn's eyes.
'It's one of them,' Neroon hissed. A Shadow was there. Its eyes opened in brilliant flares, and then they closed, and there was darkness again.
It moved forward, and the buzzing grew louder.
'Not a very pleasant-looking place,' observed the Captain as he looked at the surface of the planet over which the shuttle was flying. Corwin concurred.
'I'm told it was a beautiful garden before the Vorlons came here, a thousand years ago,' replied his father. He was still looking at his son. Corwin didn't think he'd taken his eyes off him at all on their journey down. 'They did something to the ground, poisoned it, so nothing could grow on the surface any more.'
'Sounds like what happened to Minbar,' said the Captain absently.
Ambassador Sheridan said nothing, probably recognising there was very little to say. Corwin remembered Minbar. He still dreamed about the poisoned rain, the barren earth, the muddied and deadly waters. It was not hard for him to imagine the Vorlons doing something similar to Z'ha'dum.
He did not like this. Not at all. The whole thing just screamed 'trap' to him. Surely the Captain could see that? But as he looked at him, he began to wonder. He had said hardly anything during their journey down, and certainly nothing about Delenn. It must have been a shock, discovering his father was alive, and working for.... well, them. Corwin wondered how he would react to seeing his own father there, or his brother Adam. He just couldn't imagine it.
But there was still something very wrong with this. The Captain just wasn't himself. Of course, given everything that he had been through in the last few days, that was hardly a surprise. To be miraculously cured of his paralysis and a terminal illness, to find his love had been captured by the Enemy and his father was still alive....
Corwin trusted the Captain. If he seemed to think this was all right, then he accepted that. He still didn't have to like any of it.
The shuttle was coming in to land, and he could see the structures of a city just in view. It seemed very small. The buildings couldn't be more than a single storey. There were hints of something larger, a dome he could only just make out, but he could not see very much to identify this as a major city.
Then it suddenly struck him. Underground, of course. The Shadows would live underground.
'Here,' said Ambassador Sheridan, as the shuttle came to a halt. He passed over two breathing masks. 'You'll need these. The atmosphere on the surface is difficult for us to breathe. The.... uh, the Shadows of course have no problems. It's only a short way to the entrance, so we won't have to wear them long.'
Corwin fixed on his mask and followed the Captain out. He had been to a great many alien worlds before — Narn, Kazomi 7, Minbar — but nothing like this. It seemed as though a great hand had reached down from the skies and scoured away the uppermost earth from the surface. There was no life here. No trees, no plants, no animals. Nothing but howling winds, and a bitter, thick red dust that billowed up around them.
Ambassador Sheridan led the two of them to a door. He pushed it open, and Corwin stepped inside. As he did so, he saw the Captain's head turn to look back outside. For just the briefest of moments an expression of satisfaction crossed his face, and his eyes seemed to glow with a brilliant light.
But it was only for a moment, and Corwin put it down to an optical illusion of the strange climate. In light of what happened later, he forgot about it entirely.
Sinoval tapped his denn'bok against his side thoughtfully, feeling it almost throb against him. It was a strange weapon, one he had made with his heart and soul in one choking night at Durhan's forge. He had called it Stormbringer, without thinking why. The name had just seemed to fit. It was a name of ill-omen, but then Sinoval's future seemed marked by ill omens. The blade at least was a fine one, and deadly. It had wounded a Vorlon once, and saved his life in the Starfire Wheel.
But lately, when he was aboard Cathedral, he could feel something more within it, something deep and ancient. There were voices whispering in his dreamless slumbers, and one of them, he was sure, was Stormbringer's. Cathedral was not an easy place to sleep of course, not even at the best of times, but since his meeting with the Well of Souls....
He had faced down a great deal in his life, and he had rarely known fear, but at the sound of that voice, filled with wisdom and power and mingled with the memories of billions of different souls.... he had been awed by the sheer majesty of the place, and by the secrets that lay within it. He was sure he knew only the merest fraction of them, but that was enough, for now at least. He would soon know all, or almost all.
Besides, he reminded himself, there was one question to which not even the Well of Souls knew the answer.
He was not afraid now, however. He had put off this meeting until he was sure he was ready. There had been others to see first, to talk to privately, to ascertain the scope of knowledge possessed here. None of them knew the truth about Delenn's disappearance, which was strange, but easily explained. Mollari, and Vejar, and Lethke, and Taan Churok.... he had talked to them individually and privately, and he would soon be ready to address the Council as a whole.
But there was one being he still needed to talk to before that could happen.
His mind and soul ready, and with Stormbringer still in his hand, he set off down the corridor. Finding out the location had been simplicity itself. Vorlons were good at keeping secrets, but the place where their representative resided was not one of them.
He had prepared himself thoroughly, even meditating, which was unusual for him. He had replayed Delenn's message, he had thought of Kats, and of Kozorr, and of Deeron, lost to them all. His mind had hardened, and his anger deepened.
He had then gone to see Delenn's shrine. The Shrine of the Unknown Warrior. He had admired the concept,
