Pt. 5

Sarah Chambers dropped into the mess room chair with a sigh. Across from her, Captain Gideon was playing with a deck of cards. "Well, that's done."

"How are the Grey's?" Gideon asked, his long fingers shuffling the cards again.

"Better now. Herodotus is sedated and quiet. Selma is with him. I think she's just happy to have someone take this responsibility off her shoulders for a while."

"I arranged for us to be met at Babylon 5 by a cargo ship bound for Mars. They'll transport the Grey's back to their home by the end of the week. The ship's captain owed me money from a poker match we played a while back. This will make us even." He started to lay the cards out for Solitaire, flipping the pieces of plastic over quickly.

"I know Selma appreciates what you're doing for them, Captain. It's obvious now that Herodotus needs more help than she can give him, especially after what happed on the planet. Speaking of which, what's your take on what we saw?"

"You heard Galen. He said a portal was opening. How or why it was opening I'm not prepared to debate. Maybe there was some Shadow tech attached to those paintings that was activated when they were brought together. Maybe it was one of the other First Ones playing their own little cruel joke. I doubt we'll ever really know."

"Have you spoken to Galen since it happened?" Sarah asked, quizzically, watching him play with the deck in his hand, re-shuffling them in the middle of his game.

"No, he took off almost immediately. Funny thing, I think this whole thing bothered him more than he was willing to say."

"Do you really think he experience that moment of déjà vu when he touched the painting?"

"I think that he thinks he did. And that's good enough for me." Gideon frowned then gathered up his cards and shuffled them again. "Care for a game Doctor?"

Sarah smiled wearily. "Sure. Why not?"

Light years away from the Excalibur, Galen sat quietly in his ship listening to the music it played for him. He reviewed the events of the last day in his mind, trying to find an explanation for what he had experienced. He was not a telepath, of that he was sure, yet he had touched a mind from long ago and heard a voice that had been long silent. Yet his implants told him nothing whatsoever had occurred. Nothing had registered with any of the tech he carried with him as part of himself or part of his cloak. Whatever it was, it had only happened in his head. He stared down at the sketch he had made of the runes on the Mage's staff, watching his ship's computer try to match them to any know glyphs. The images moved faster and faster on the screen, lulling him for a moment into a trance-like state. He could still hear that voice – his own voice – in his head "It's brought me no more peace than you." he had said. Galen shook himself awake, his eyes focusing again on the screen as the computer finally translated the symbols.

"Warrior, priest, soldier, spy, brother to she who is light in the darkest night." He read the inscription aloud, wondering if the words had been once part of an equation or spell that the staff's owner had created for his own purpose. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, seeing the Swordsman's portrait in front of him, using his tech to call up its image in detail. He downloaded the image of the painting that his tech had automatically captured to the computer and projected it as a hologram in front of him. Even the glow was there, surrounding him in the night. As he sat, musing on the image, a light, that same golden light which had enveloped the paintings stole quietly into the room, illuminating every corner with its brilliance. The painting seemed to come to life, displaying more texture and dimension than a normal holographic image such as this had any right to display.

Somehow Galen found himself on his feet, his eyes glued to the image. Behind the man in the painting, the scenery seemed to move, to shift and shape itself into a real landscape, with rolling hills and wooded paths. It was so real he could almost reach out and touch the shapes in front of him. The image changed as he watched, moving from a posed portrait to a landscape. Rolling hills covered in vegetation stretched beyond the horizon and tall trees shaded the path before him. But the sylvan setting held no peace. The trees cast grotesque shadows on the path and the land was deathly quiet, as though the land itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. He frowned as a figure appeared over the horizon, coming slowly down the path. A rider astride a shaggy black horse moved with silently down the road. The figure in the saddle wore an earth-toned clothes and a ragged cloak with the hood pulled up over its bowed head. A crossbow was strapped to the rider's back and an almost delicate katana hung from the saddle within reach of its owner. The image flickered and changed as the horse and its rider moved down the path, finally cresting a small hill to see a small, prosperous village. Behind the cluster of perfect little homes rose an ancient castle, surrounded by ominous clouds. The rider stopped and looked up, pushing the hood back from its face. Then the image faded and the portrait appeared in its proper place.

Galen stepped back, startled, then dropped into his chair. Before it had faded, he had glimpsed the face of the mysterious rider. It was the Dark Lady.