The Testimony of Her Eminence and Most Puissant Sentience Tara del D’myn, Matriarch of Skarsia and All Humanity, Nuncio to the Combine of Sentients
The minute Lord Danak emerged from the wormhole, I summoned him to a holoconference with the rest of my Privy Council on Eirelantra. Ta’al Erich explained the current situation. “But we can’t restore you to power without the Staff,” Danak lamented.
“We can’t do that anyway, until we find the telepathic enclave.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” replied Ta’al Erich.
“If I restart the Aion now, it will cause Ash to revert to his mothman form. We’ll lose Manan. If Thomas isn’t expecting it, he might not be able to fight off the telepaths. We’ll end up back at square one.”
“What I don’t understand is the SongLuminant involvement in what seems to be an internal matter,” said Danak.
“That’s easy,” replied etch brightly. There was a slight delay echo as she said it next to me, while the android on Danak’s ship repeated the statement. “It’s exactly what Skylight Spin accused them of doing – interfering in the governments of the new advanced sentients. But they are playing for bigger stakes than just humiliating us and lowering our status. They’re trying to install their own Matriarch and Archon.”
“We’ve got to find those telepaths,” I muttered.
“We’ve scoured the mountains,” said Ta’al Erich. “They must have some kind of shielding technology we can’t penetrate. SongLuminants aren’t stupid.”
“If Ash were there, he might be able to find them. I’m sure that blocking his perceptions is a big part of this.”
“How about the amrita?” suggested Danak.
“When I’m using it, I’m tapping into Ash’s sensory perceptions. The problem is that his extended sensorium is located in his trees, and he’s cut off from that because his consciousness is trapped in the pleroma. What we really need is a way for him to have contact with the outside world. Isn’t there some way to shield against telepathy?”
“It depends,” says Zosim. “Standard scans can be blocked by physical means, but all standard scans do is to snoop on ordinary brain activity. In order to do that, a telepath’s brain is modified before birth to suppress their own subconscious thoughts, and to over-sensitize them to the electrochemical brain activity of others. It works like a scanner, except that telepaths can use their own brains to make sense of the energy patterns instead of just recording them. A deep scan, on the other hand, is aggressive. The telepath has to induce a trigger thought which results in a cascade of associations. It’s kind of like beating a rug. Not only is it painful, but done too often, the electrochemical disruption will permanently damage the brain of the person scanned. High CenGov officials have chip implants set to respond to the pattern of brain activity induced by a deep scan. They generate electro-chemical feedback into the telepath’s brain which causes permanent damage.”
“So it’s not practical here since chipping is illegal according to the heresy laws.”
“In addition,” Zosim continued, “we’re not exactly sure of the mechanism behind the telepaths’ ability to use the Skarsium crystals. We’re theorizing that it has something to do with the way nul-energy seems attracted to that nebulous concept known as consciousness. Since we don’t have telepaths of our own, it’s difficult to do any real research. Most telepaths either work for CenGov or the Ennead. We don’t exactly have good relations with either.”
“And none of this really explains what’s going on with Ash.”
“The kind of phenomenon you’ve described is unheard of,” said Zosim. “Telepaths can’t invade your brain. But then again, the human mind is not an enormous theme-park occupied by fully-realized personalities. We know from Molly that full contact with a Cu’enashti mind is traumatizing for a telepath.”
“Damn it. Let’s try something different. What do we know about the two trees who have usurped the Archonate?”
“Nobody knows the one who stole the Staff of the Matriarch,” etch replied. “Without the Cantor, nobody has been supervising the grand jeté. That left an enormous opening for our adversaries. Nan-Zee probably learned the trick of forcing a Cu’enashti to emanate from Elma, and she did it while nobody was watching.”
“So basically, that guy is a feral child with no guidance at all, and a Chosen who is playing him against a rival.” I was livid. The fact that Cu’enashti are so powerful masks how vulnerable they are. Most of them have the good sense not to choose someone who just wants to exploit them – but there are exceptions, and ways to manipulate the situation.
“It’s not so different from what Esau St. John did to Lilith,” said etch, and for the first time, there is a hint of anger in her voice. “Except this time two Cu’enashti lives are ruined, and without a Quicknode to save them.”
“Hold on,” injected Elma, who had been silent until this point. “Nan-Zee’s got issues, but she was always obsessed with the Cu’enashti. I don’t think she means to hurt them. She probably felt two are better than one and didn’t think it through carefully.”
I had a gut feeling that she was right, but for a much less prosaic reason. “Venahalee would never have used someone she thought would be an actual threat to her power. She probably talked Nan-Zee into it, knowing that a prophetess desperate for love is just the right kind of person to do it. Nan-Zee doesn’t care about power. She wants the Archon to love her.”
“That’s it,” said Elma, slamming her fist against the table. “You said it.”
“I did. That seems obvious.”
“No no no. Her girlhood crush was on the Archon. She was obsessed with how Wynne had rescued her from CenGov. She doesn’t want emo kid or the blond used hovercar salesman. She wants Ashtara.”
“Is it obvious how not happening that is?”
“But it adds a whole new layer of intrigue,” said Danak. “First, that Nan-Zee might be appealed to, as she might not want to hurt Ashtara. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the two current Archons are also rivals of the old one.”
“I have to think about this.” I wished I had Ash’s input. I had gotten very used to having an entire spectrum of brilliant advisors at my beck and call. What would Tarlach have advised, with his psychological insights? What would Cillian have done?
Cillian.
Venahalee said it was a grudge match. She wasn’t the only one with a grudge.