Bringer of Light Read Online Free Page B

The display had changed again: the original message was gone, to be replaced with moving words and numbers.
    Damaru snorted; he was angry at having been thwarted.
    ‘What is it?’ she whispered urgently.
    Urien, still focused on the screen, must have assumed she was speaking to him. ‘I think . . . There is an error. A – a lost connection of some sort.’ He sounded unsure.
    Desperately she asked her son, ‘Damaru, have you still got control? Are the sky-weapons doing your bidding?’
    Damaru grunted, obviously annoyed, but said nothing.
    Kerin had a sudden, foolish desire to grab his shoulders, but she forced herself to stay calm and silent.
    ‘It keeps repeating the same message,’ said Urien, ‘“Contact lost”; oh wait, there is another message appearing now: “Platform status unknown” – and then the words “All Units”, which keep flashing. By the Adversary, I wish I knew what all this meant!’
    ‘Gone.’ They both jumped when Damaru spoke. He sounded forlorn.
    ‘What is gone, Damaru?’ asked Kerin, trying to keep her voice soft and low. ‘Are— Have the visitors gone?’ Please let that be so, she hoped silently, please let those evil creatures be dead and destroyed in the vast beyond, so those below may remain free.
    ‘No,’ said Damaru.
    ‘They are still coming, then?’ asked Urien. ‘What is the contact that has been lost?’
    Damaru did not appear to hear the Escori. Kerin crouched down next to her child and laid a hand on his arm. ‘Please, can you tell us what has happened, Damaru? Have you succeeded, my lovely boy? Have you turned the Sidhe’s weapons on them?’
    ‘No,’ he said again, ‘cannot see the rock throwers!’ He sounded peeved.
    Kerin said patiently, ‘I do not know what these rock throwers are, Damaru. Can you tell us?’
    Damaru sighed, as though she were the fool. ‘Throwers of rocks. In the sky. To destroy!’
    Urien said, ‘Kerin, you said Sais compared the sky-weapons to great crossbows: could they perhaps fire rocks instead of quarrels?’
    ‘Aye, I think they could. Is that it, Damaru? Are the rock throwers the sky-weapons?’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘And you cannot see them any more? What does that mean, precisely?’
    ‘Not in the pattern. Gone.’
    Urien said, ‘Are you saying you have lost contact? That you can no longer observe or control the weapons?’
    Damaru looked up, as though noticing the Escori for the first time. ‘Aye,’ he said tetchily, then went back to staring into the machine.
    ‘Could that mean they have done their work?’ asked Kerin, not wanting to let go of hope.
    Damaru shrugged.
    ‘Can you still talk to the watching devices, Damaru?’ asked Urien. ‘Do you know if there is anyone out there now? Or have the weapons destroyed them?’
    ‘I will look again.’ Damaru’s already unfocused gaze grew vaguer; from the way the muscles in his wiry arm were flexing Kerin could imagine his fingers moving deep in the arcane device. Finally he said, ‘They still come.’
    Kerin felt the cold fear expand to knock at her heart. ‘Can— Can you do anything, Damaru?’
    ‘I try to grasp the cutting light,’ he announced.
    ‘And what is that, Damaru?’
    Damaru gestured vaguely upwards with his free hand, shaking off Kerin in the process. ‘Above us, the cutting light on the silver thread!’
    Kerin considered asking for further explanation, then thought better of it. ‘And can this cutting light destroy the Sidhe?’ she asked.
    ‘Aye.’ But he did not sound sure.
    ‘I know you can do it,’ she said firmly, though she was not.
    He wrinkled his nose and sucked in his lips; the expression might have been comical, but Kerin knew it meant he was concentrating as hard as he could.
    Kerin drew back. She turned to Urien. ‘We should leave him to work.’
    Urien nodded tersely. ‘Aye.’ He was still watching the screen, which appeared to have frozen in place.
    Kerin wished she had some idea whether this was a good sign or not. She made