Rise of the Horde

Chapter 880: Chapter 879

Aliyah’s instrument room held six monitoring stations, each calibrated to a specific Keystone, with the seventh station positioned at the center of the room facing the Gate through a narrow window cut through the stone wall at precisely the right angle. The instruments were not mechanical in the ordinary sense. They were material objects that responded to the specific type of pressure the Gate exerted on the sealing compound, translating that pressure into visual readings through a system that Aliyah had spent years refining.

Vor’gath stood in the doorway of the instrument room for a full minute before he came inside.

Kael watched him from behind. He watched the elder’s posture, the specific quality of stillness that Vor’gath adopted when he was working, and he noted that the stillness was different here than it had been in Yohan. In Yohan, the stillness had been relaxed. Here it was the stillness of someone managing something. Holding something at a distance.

Aliyah watched Vor’gath with the expression of a woman revising an estimate in real time.

"You feel it," she said. It was not a question.

"Since yesterday afternoon," Vor’gath said. "When we reached the highland boundary." He moved into the room slowly, stopping at each instrument station as if testing the floor beneath his feet. He reached the third station, the one calibrated to the Keystone with the rhythmic pattern, and stopped. "This one has been attended to the longest."

"The third Keystone," Aliyah said. "We registered the first deviation fourteen weeks ago."

"The attention predates your first instrument reading." Vor’gath’s eyes were half-closed. "The entity on the other side has been aware of this specific point for longer than your instruments detected it. The instruments detect the pressure. My practice detects the attending quality. Those are not the same moment." He moved to the second station. "And this." He stood at the second station for a moment. "This one is newer. This one arrived angry."

"Angry," Darak said, with the cautious precision of a researcher who was not sure whether to accept the term as accurate or metaphorical.

"It is not emotion," Vor’gath said. "I am using the word because it is the closest available approximation. What I feel is purpose without patience. The first entity, the rhythmic one, has patience. It is testing with the intention of finding a specific weakness and exploiting it. This entity," he tapped the second station’s housing lightly with one finger, "applies force because force is the only tool it recognizes. It is not ineffective for being impatient. Force against a point under sustained pressure is a coordinated strategy, not a failure of sophistication."

Aliyah looked at her instrument logs. "The third Keystone has held despite fourteen weeks of rhythmic pressure. The second Keystone is at sixty-one percent deviation in three weeks."

"The second entity is more immediately dangerous to the seal," Vor’gath said. "The first entity is more dangerous to the long-term stability."

Khao’khen was standing at the room’s edge with Arka’garr. He had said nothing since entering the room. He was watching and letting the people who knew the things he did not know speak.

"The Ferrath Arch," Kael said from the doorway. He had not entered. "The same two entities?"

"I cannot know," Vor’gath said. "I cannot feel the Ferrath site from here with enough resolution." He paused. "But the coordination I feel between these two is the coordination of instruction. They are not two animals working the same territory independently. They are two expressions of the same intent being directed. What directs them," he turned from the instrument stations and looked at Aliyah, "is much larger than either of them. I feel it behind them like a current feels a river."

The room was quiet except for the low consistent hum of the monitoring instruments.

Aliyah moved to the central station, the one facing the Gate. She indicated the reading.

"Yesterday evening," she said, "I was performing reinforcement work on the third Keystone. The deviation reading was cycling as usual. Forty-three, forty, forty-three, forty, consistent with what we have called the rhythm. Then, at the eighth hour, the rhythm changed." She showed the log. "It matched my reinforcement cycle exactly. I reinforced. The reading dropped by four percent. I stopped reinforcing. The reading rose by three point and a half percent. I reinforced again. The reading dropped. I stopped. The reading rose." She set the log down. "It was mirroring my work. Not countering it with greater force. Mirroring it. Responding to me."

Vor’gath looked at the log. He looked at Aliyah. "It noticed you," he said.

"Yes."

"Not just that there is resistance to its pressure. That there is a specific agent providing that resistance."

"That is what the readings suggest."

Vor’gath was quiet for a moment. Then he said, with the directness that Skarra had observed in him: "That is the more significant event. A force that simply pushes is manageable by sufficient counter-force. A force that notices what is pushing back and adjusts its behavior accordingly is something else."

Khao’khen spoke from the room’s edge. "Can it communicate?"

Aliyah looked at him. "That is the question I have been sitting with for seventeen hours."

"And?"

"I do not know. But it is attempting something. Whether that something is communication or simply more sophisticated probing, I cannot yet determine." She paused. "I think we should attempt to find out."

Kael stepped into the room. He had his analytical face on, the one that meant he was moving from listening to assessment. "If it can respond to the reinforcement cycle as a mirror, it can also respond to a deliberate pattern introduced into the reinforcement cycle. You could signal with it."

"Yes," Aliyah said.

"Have you?"

"Not yet. I was waiting for someone to tell me that was a rational choice."

Kael looked at Khao’khen. Khao’khen looked at Vor’gath.

"If we signal," Vor’gath said, "we are acknowledging that there is something capable of receiving a signal. And we are telling it that we know that." He let that sit. "It may already know that. It is already demonstrating it. Whether we signal or not, it knows someone is on the other side."

"Then we lose nothing by answering," Khao’khen said.

"We lose nothing," Vor’gath agreed. "And we may learn something."

Kael came away from the instrument station and stood at the center of the room. He had the look of a man who had been handed a problem that exceeded his previous category of large problems and was in the process of building a new category.

"Tell me about the reinforcement pacing," he said to Aliyah. "Specifically: what would double the current rate?"

Aliyah told him. More hands trained on the instruments, more compound available on-site, a secondary reinforcement protocol for the nights so she could rest without losing ground. Kael listened and made his mental notes and by the time the conversation concluded he had already begun calculating which of his forty garrison warriors had the aptitude for instrument training and which would be wasted on it.