Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

various nonhuman members of the Empire. Every alien species was entitled to its own Embassy, though not all of them bothered. Sometimes because of the expense, and sometimes because the aliens involved still hadn't worked out what an Embassy was for. Some of them were still having trouble with the concept that they were a part of someone else's Empire.
    (The espers didn't have an Embassy. They had New Hope. And the clones weren't important enough to rate an Embassy of their own. They rented a room in the back of Parliament, and knew they were lucky to have that.)
    Lewis studied the front door to the Shub Embassy, which had no identifying name or number, or indeed any trace of a bell or knocker. No sign of a Welcome mat either, but then, he'd expected that. He found his hands had fallen to his weapons belt, even though he knew he had nothing to fear from the AIs.
    Everyone knew that. Rogue no more, the Artificial Intelligences that made up Shub were Humanity's friends and colleagues now. Once the official Enemies of Humanity, these days they were Humanity's children. But still Lewis hesitated. There was something about the silent building before him; something that disturbed his instincts and raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Not just a feeling of being
    watched, although he was sure he was, but rather a distinct feeling of ... threat. Danger. Foreboding.
    Though if he was honest with himself, Lewis had to wonder whether that was because he wasn't at all sure he wanted to know the answers to some of the questions he'd been sent to ask.
    Douglas had sent him. King Douglas, speaking on behalf of Parliament and Empire. With the Terror finally come upon them, Humanity's greatest nightmare proven not only real but more awful and more dangerous than they could ever have imagined, the Empire needed to know all there was to know about its greatest Enemy. And that meant consulting Shub, because the AIs were the only ones who still possessed a copy of Owen Deathstalker's original warning, as related to Captain John Silence. Of course, everyone knew the gist of it; everyone knew the liturgy, repeated word for word for two hundred years. But sometimes the devil is in the details; and since King Robert and Queen Constance's (no doubt well-intentioned) data purges, only the AIs still held that information. And so here was Lewis, cap in hand, come to ask very politely for the AIs to share whatever knowledge they had.
    Information they had so far declined to divulge of their own accord.
    It had been Finn Durandal, interestingly enough, who had first raised the matter with the House. While everyone else was busily losing their heads and running around shrieking in ever decreasing circles, the Durandal was right there with a positive suggestion. He remembered what everyone else had forgotten.
    He even volunteered to go to the AIs himself, to learn what they knew, but in the end King and Parliament had settled on Lewis. Because he was the Champion, and because he was a Deathstalker.
    Like everyone else in the Empire, Shub had much reason to be grateful to that legendary name. Finn had agreed, of course. In fact, he'd been very gracious about it, and had even offered to accompany Lewis, to watch his back . . . but Douglas said no. Lewis was family to Owen. The AIs might tell Lewis things that they wouldn't tell anyone else. So there Lewis was, feeling very alone and even more vulnerable, standing in front of a featureless door he just knew was looking at him and deciding whether or not to let him in. Shub was still very choosy about what it revealed of its past.
    Lewis made himself take his hands away from his weapons belt, stepped briskly forward, and raised a hand to knock. The door swung smoothly open before him. Lewis slowly lowered his hand. Beyond the open door lay only a silent, impenetrable gloom. Nothing but darkness, that could hold anything, anything at all. Lewis swallowed hard, stuck out his chin, and walked unhesitatingly forward into the dark. And everything changed. There was no sense of transition. Just, one moment he was stepping out of the street, and the next he was walking through a metallic jungle.
    He stopped, and looked slowly about him. The floor beneath his feet was solid steel. All around him loomed and jutted intricate machines of enormous size, of metal and glass and crystal, moving in slow and unexpected ways, performing unguessable tasks. And everywhere, long thick strands of intertwined wire and