The Index -|-
Zara woke from her slumber when she heard Viinox’s footsteps in the hallway. She sat up and turned her head. “Where have you been all week?”
“Yeah,” said Kpleeb grumpily as he stood and worked the cricks from his back. “These reed mats are terrible. I guess I’ve gotten used to the comfy hammocks on the Greki.”
Viinox stopped and retrieved a thin tablet from its pack. “I think I’ve found the key word.”
Zara stood excitedly. “Wow, I bet it was hard to find! What is it?”
“Before I tell you, I want to explain what I found. This information reveals much about the Xih. I searched for the library and found nothing special, but there was a reference to the oldest physical portion of the library.” Viinox pointed in a seemingly random direction. “I went there and found actual, physical records and a very old library terminal complete with an ancient data entry system.”
Kpleeb grunted. “Will this long story of yours last another week?”
“Da,” said Zara gently, “Viinox said this is important.”
Kpleeb took a long pull from a tumbler of water. “Alright, alright. Go ahead then.”
“So I searched for a few words before I found the right pattern. Xih was first. Apparently, it meant ‘seven’ in a very old dialect. There was a Council of Xih many years past in the earliest days of the Xi expansion. I found that the Council of Xih was a guidance committee that served the Predominant by providing information and recommendations for various decisions such as which laws were needed and which planets would be a priority for colonization. Quite possibly, they served the original Predominant.”
Kpleeb was listening now and issued a low whistle.
“Anyway,” said Viinox, “it appears the Council of Xih took control of the Predominant. There is are old records where the Council disagreed with and countermanded the Predominant’s edicts. It’s difficult to say what happened in the background, but the Council’s orders were adhered to, not the word of the Predominant. This indicates a power struggle. There was a change in empire’s foundation because a few dozen years later, there is a record of Na’s destruction and replacement.”
Zara shook her head. “Wait, you’re saying the Predominant were in charge and then the Xih conducted a coup and replaced them?”
“Replaced them with who?” said Kpleeb. “I’m confused.”
“I believe the Xih started by replacing Na with an Ixant they created and could control.” Viinox tapped the tablet it held. “Though they are not named, there are vague records of beings imbued with special powers. Zara, we know that they call you Ixant fifteen.
“So the whole Xi empire on every orb has been governed by the Xih for a long time then?” Kpleeb shook his head in amazement. “And the Xi don’t even know.”
“I believe this to be true. Anyway, the Xih created kerflk under a different name, which brings us to this key. The original designation for kerflk,” Viinox confirmed. “Pre-Consolidation. The term was standardized to kerflk during the imperial reform period. Most records with the original name were purged from active archives. This record survived because it was ceremonial rather than administrative. They accidentally preserved their rituals even as they revised their history.” Viiinox glanced at its tablet. “Listen to this. ‘From the unworked stone, the maker’s hand calls forth the edge that cuts, the answer that lives in the willing grip. This slips through the walls built to contain it. The knowing tool, remembers the hand that shaped it and opens to the voice that speaks its name.'” It nodded at Zara. “Are you ready?”
Zara opened herself to the aji-realm and then nodded.
“Kriifal,” Viinox said.
The symbol flared in both the visible and the aji spectrums. Once, twice, a pulse of light so bright that for a moment the entire chamber was visible in the aji-realm as it might have been centuries ago—pristine, lit, alive with the movement of imperial functionaries long turned to dust. Then the light gathered along the edges of the door and the stone itself began to move. It did not slide. It was grinding. The sound was low and massive, stone against stone with the patient, inexorable weight of something that had been waiting a very long time.
Kpleeb dropped to one knee and pointed his lightning spear at the now visible opening, and the Ganix fanned out to do the same.
The door opened inward, which was the first surprise. Xi architecture favored sliding mechanisms, recessed panels, and the clean efficiency of things that moved along tracks. This door ground on pivots set deep into the stone, rotating on an axis that should not have been possible given the weight and thickness. The sound it made was the sound of very old engineering being asked to perform a long neglected duty.
Beyond the threshold was a deep gloom. Cool air moved past them, carrying a scent that Zara categorized automatically: ancient stone, the faint metallic tang of preserved systems, and underneath both, something vegetal and unfamiliar, like leaves crushed underfoot in a forest she had never visited.
Kpleeb activated his light first. The beam cut through the darkness and revealed a corridor that was nothing like the grand administrative chamber where they stood. The passage was a perfect triangle in cross-section, its walls meeting at a pointed ceiling that lofted three meters overhead. The surfaces were smooth, polished to a finish that caught the illuminator beam and threw it back in precise, geometric reflections. No carvings. No imperial markings. No evidence of the bureaucratic obsessive decoration that had covered every surface of the structure outside. Just clean lines and perfect angles, the architecture of a space designed for a single purpose that its builders had not seen fit to advertise.
“It’s clean,” Viinox observed. Its voice carried a hint of genuine surprise, carefully contained. “No dust. No debris. This corridor has been maintained.”
They advanced, Kpleeb and two Ganix at point, a low illumination emitting from the bottom corners of the corridor as soon as they stepped over the threshold. Zara and Viinox followed behind them, close enough to communicate while speaking quietly. The remaining Ganix covering the rear. They moved quietly, but the acoustics of the triangular corridor turned even the softest footfall into a sound that traveled, bouncing off the polished surfaces and returning as faint, distorted echoes.
The corridor ran straight for thirty paces, then intersected with another identical passage. Left and right branches offered the same featureless triangular geometry. Kpleeb chose left after a brief consultation with Viinox, who had produced a compact scanner and was reading its display with focused attention.
“The energy signature is strongest in this direction,” Viinox said. “Approximately two hundred paces ahead. There’s a chamber or a junction that’s larger than the corridors.” In a few minutes, they approached another junction. “Just around the corner,” murmured Viinox quietly.
They advanced with greater caution and peered around the corner. Ahead, the corridor widened, the triangular cross-section expanding gradually until the pointed ceiling was lost in shadows and the walls curved outward to meet what could only be described as an antechamber. Circular, maybe thirty paces in diameter, its floor inlaid with a pattern of concentric rings alternating between a marbled white stone and some dark material that absorbed rather than reflected light. A tall door made of the same dark material was set into the far wall flanked by six alcoves that each held a stationary figure dressed in a deep brown tunic.
Kpleeb held out his hand slowly and whispered. “As soon as we step into the hall, they’ll know we’re here. We’ll need to attack all at once.”
Always ready, the Ganix warriors shifted on the balls of their feet and stayed silent.
Kpleeb whispered “After three.” He thrust his fist downward slowly three times and on the third, raised his lightning spear and fired. A dozen channels cracked through the antechamber at once, each a white-blue fork that struck an alcove and shards of stone and wood blew apart in a flat bang of light. The warriors began to sprint toward the room.
In a cloud of debris, four of the Xih guards crumpled and fell out of their alcoves, but the remaining two appeared to be unfazed and leapt from their spots to level their long staves. Two of the Gannix collapsed and began to scream, clawing at their temples, but the remaining Ganix closed the distance and quickly overwhelmed the tall, cloaked Xih, piercing them over and over with their short, thin spears.
Just then, the dark rings on the floor disappeared entirely and several Ganix warriors fell into the spaces beneath the floor.