Free The Orphaned Worlds by Michael Cobley

to get through …
    As the great mound of dust-caked rock and soil came into view, he quickened his pace – a familiar glimmering radiance clung to the edges of the hole, fading as it sank. Moments later Chel was squatting down to lower his legs in, then, grasping a solid section of the edge, he swung down, hung there a second before dropping the last few feet.
    Landing in a crouch, he barely had time to draw breath before he was engulfed in whorls of radiance surging up from the stone floor underfoot. The glittering light flowed in skeins of amber about him, a slow enfolding luminescence beyond which strands of dust and desiccated motes floated.
    ‘Intruder! … Violator! …’
    The radiance swirled and pressed and probed, seeking access, a weakness, a gap in the defences. Chel did not yield.
    ‘Not I,’ he said.
    ‘Defiler! … Outrager! …’ When it spoke it was like a shriek pared down to the level of a whisper. ‘… Bringer of empty sleep! … Name thyself …’
    ‘Cheluvahar of the Warrior Uvovo, scholar and seer …’
    ‘Liar! … Despoiler of truths! … You lie – all the Seers died at the Isle of Colloquy when the Enemy fell upon them from the sky … the sky … they came with silent death …’
    ‘I am a new seer,’ he said, resisting the stabbing grasp. ‘Segrana remade me from what I was!’
    ‘… you lie … YOU LIE! … she who enfolds, she is gone, dead, expired … burnt and dead … great Segrana of endless memory … you lie, just like the Cold Walker …’ The voice lost its ferocity and the shimmering nimbus receded. ‘… It comes here with a great cargo of lies, vast and cruel … it tests me and I tire … it tries to make me believe cruel things but I will not forget … what I am …’
    ‘Who are you?’ Chel said. ‘What are you?’
    ‘… seed and root, leaf and branch …’ The voice sounded mournful. ‘… droplets of sun, droplets of time …’
    Chel was astonished. The couplets were familiar, a childhood refrain, a youngling’s rhyme whose words came easily to mind.
    ‘… the feathered ones, the scaled ones … the digging ones, the chewing ones … the buzzing ones, the singing ones … the swimming ones, the resting ones … all kept safe, all kept well … by the lonely keeper … the Keeper of Segrana …’
    The voice fell silent and a pale amorphous luminosity flowed away towards a carving-covered wall, up to a long horizontal crack into which it vanished.
    What kind of being is that? he wondered. It knew of the Keeper, but it tried to possess me just as it did with my scholar .
    According to the song-cycles of the War of the Long Night, the Keeper of Segrana was the wisest of the wise, the most capable of all the Pathmasters chosen by Segrana herself to carry out a vital wardenship. The Pathmasters were closely attuned to the thoughts, the moods, and the currents of Segrana but only the Keeper was able to share them, by virtue of bonds laid out in the underdomain of reality, by way of intertwined consciousnesses. If this was true, how could a spectral remnant survive all these centuries? Could Yash be right, that past events full of the most intense emotions could imprint themselves in the solid surroundings of their locations?
    He looked about him. It was a long room with shallow recesses to either side, each with several concave ducts running across the back, connected to the others. These had to be root guides similar to those he’d found in the underground root chamber a few weeks ago. Through the gloom of the room he saw a shadowy door at the far end and made towards it. Beyond was a circular passage with another nine root chambers leading off, and a small central room with small, narrow steps leading up. He climbed up through a rectangular gap and found himself at the bottom of a high, circular hall dimly lit by a few opaque, glassy panels dotted here and there, giving off a wan radiance.
    The hall was about a hundred paces wide and the tall