Free Eternity's Mind by Kevin J. Anderson Page A

silent, as if blind to the darkness that was devouring them from within. And that emptiness manifested itself in this hollow remnant of Kennebar and his followers, who had become human-shaped wells of darkness.
    He tried to get through. “Maybe it’s not too late, Kennebar. You were a green priest once. Maybe—” Fear stiffened his words, and his voice cracked.
    The voidpriest’s eyes were nearly invisible on his ebony face, and when he spoke, his mouth was even darker than the rest of him. “We all tended the trees, but now we know something more. No one can stop the fall of night. The darkness is coming, and we will usher it in.”
    Arita clamped her hands against her head, as if a loud noise roared inside of her. “Something is calling me, Collin—but not the trees.”
    â€œThe trees are silent,” Kennebar said.
    Two more black figures came down from the fronds and stood with the other gathered voidpriests, all of the isolationists who had once been Collin’s comrades. He couldn’t even recognize them now. A sick chill flooded through him. If he hadn’t discovered the groves of dying worldtrees and rushed to ask Arita for her help, he would have been here with Kennebar and his companions. He would be one of them, nothing more than a black emptiness.
    Collin took her hand as the voidpriests pressed closer.
    â€œArita cannot hear us,” Kennebar said. “The trees rejected her, and now the shadows reject her. She is … different inside. If we cannot engulf her, we will kill her, as the Onthos killed Sarein.”
    â€œNo! Sarein is alive.” Arita reeled, tried to lunge toward the voidpriest, but Collin held her back.
    â€œYou are all dead,” Kennebar said. “The worldforest is withering. Eventually, the blackness will be absolute … and all will be peace and calm.”
    â€œI refuse. I am a green priest, and the trees are still alive.” Collin pressed backward against the thick, gold-scaled trunk of a comatose worldtree. They could retreat no further up here among the branches. Desperately seeking any help, he used his telink to pierce deep into the heartwood, like a hard projectile.
    Always before, the verdani mind had enfolded him like a safety net. He had been able to sense their thoughts, their information, just by stroking a frond or touching a trunk. Now, though, it felt as if his mind had plunged deep into cold, still water. Where there had once been a cacophony of information, billions of lives, trees, and green priests, along with all the knowledge that human acolytes and green priests had fed them over the centuries … now there was nothing. Silence.
    Refusing to give up, he sank deeper, sending his mind all the way down to the roots, searching for some spark of the intellect that had been there. The worldforest in the Wild was withdrawing, falling silent … growing senile.
    Collin had to find something. The trees were all connected, and other trees on Theroc were alive and strong.
    Knowing that he was leaving Arita and the voidpriests behind for a few moments, he made contact with the deepest heartwood—and there he did find a spark, a few confused and faint recollections. He awakened them, searching for answers, hoping those thoughts would give him a way to fight.
    Inside the verdani mind, he found long-buried memories, alien memories, some of them restored by the Onthos when they came to Theroc asking for refuge. But the Gardeners had also brought with them an insidious taint of shadow that they themselves hadn’t known they carried. Collin read the information there and found the answers.
    In those lost, ancient memories he saw waves of Onthos rushing to escape from their homeworld as the enormous shadow clouds closed in, as the Shana Rei built an impenetrable black sphere around their star system. Many aliens, unable to flee, had been left behind to smother in freezing darkness.
    Others had