Christie Golden

STARCRAFT.

THE DARK TEMPLAR SAGA VOL. 3

TWILIGHT.

PROLOGUE.

IT WAS TIME TO WELCOME THE TWILIGHT.

The young acolyte was so deep in his studies that the singing of the crystals startled him. Simple things they were, gentle chimes that did nothing more or less profound than call the scholars of the Alys'aril, the "Sanctuary of Wisdom," to gather together at the end of the long, scorching day. He jumped, grasping the precious khaydarin crystal tightly in his four-fingered hand rather than dropping it; such had been the rigors of training from a young age here in the Alys'aril. The crystals were everything. They must always, always be handled with care, training overriding instinct so that no careless hand would risk dropping such a precious item.

He forced himself to relax, carefully returned the crystal to its slot and stepped back to survey his handiwork with pride. Today, he had successfully negotiated the transfer of information held by no fewer than seven ancient, time-worn, and damaged crystals into gleaming, freshly-quarried, and charged receptacles.

His mentor, Krythkal, came up behind him, ducking and tilting his head in a smile. "Well done," he said. "Seven. An impressive number. But you must always take care that you do not rush the task. It is better to accurately salvage the contents of a single crystal than to imperfectly translate a hundred."

The young alysaar fought back annoyance. He had been here for forty years; he was no novice. Nonetheless, he inclined his head. "You speak truly. And yet, there is so much that remains to be done."

He spread his hand to indicate the Chalice of Memories. An enormous bowl carved from soft stone by those among the dark templar who had once been of the Khalai caste, it towered stories high in front of both master and apprentice and was filled to brimming with khaydarin crystals. A levitating platform wouldbear the scholars to the top, where they would place no more than five crystals at a time into special padded satchels strapped securely to their bodies. Some crystals stored but a single memory. Others had hundreds. Some were still largely clear, needing only slight refinement. Others required the sharpest, most highly disciplined minds the alysaar, the "Keepers of Wisdom," could bring to the task to understand the memories and successfully transfer them to purer crystals. No one dared even make an educated guess regarding how many crystals were cradled in the Chalice. It would take the lifetimes of many—and the lifetimes of the protoss were long—to chronicle all it contained. And there were always new memories coming.

"It is a duty whose joy lies in the doing, not in the finishing," Krythkal chuckled. "For it will never be finished, not as long as a single dark templar lives. But come. The sun sinks to its rest, and so must we. Weary minds can miss a detail, and that is most certainly not what we want."

The little moon was arid and almost unbearably hot, and because of this the scholars who manned the Alys'aril ventured forth from its dark, cool stone halls at only dawn and dusk to take nourishment. Three centuries ago, when the first dark templar had come here in a xel'naga vessel, banished from their homeworld of Aiur, they had thought it destiny that they found this place so quickly. Not only was there a warp gate, a relic from the xel'naga, that marked this place as one that had been visited by the Great Teachers, but there was a rare combination of energies that had modified—some said "purified"—the khaydarin crystals that were to be found here.

The Alys'aril had been constructed atop one such clustering of energy. There were two others, one deep below the surface where khaydarin crystals manifested in riotous profusion, and one that had been detected but never explored, below the floor of the moon's single large ocean.

Ehlna, "Haven," they had named the moon, and spent many long years constructing a settlement and, of course, establishing the Alys'aril. It was well into the second century of habitation before other voices clamored to expand beyond this place, to seek more information and more hospitable worlds. But Ehlna was not forgotten, even as the dark templar continued to wander and learn and explore the cosmos. The warp gate that linked this, the first place to know the tread of dark templar feet, and other worlds visited by the exiled protoss still occasionally hummed and brightened to life, as pilgrims came through to add their memories and discoveries to the whole. They were made welcome, and an alysaar sat with them as their memories were channeled into a crystal.

The youth nodded, erected a glowing force field of mental energy to protect his unfinished task, and accompanied his mentor outside.

Ehlna was a lovely place at twilight. The dust that would settle into skin and clothing during the day also scattered out the sun's blue and green lights, and the sunsets were spectacular. The one hundred and thirteen protoss who had pledged their lives to remaining on Ehlna to tend the Alys'aril stood and lifted their faces to skies that went from yellow to orange to purple, and then slowly to gray. Clad only in a short robe that exposed most of his skin to the life-giving rays, the youth absorbed the nutrients from the setting sun. He felt himself growing stronger as one by one the stars came out, looking like small crystallinespheres to his eyes, although he knew they were suns or worlds all to themselves.

He wondered what was out there, on those other worlds. He was glad of his choice to stay, for he hungered for knowledge, for lore, more than he hungered for adventure. But he was growing weary of simply transferring memories from one khaydarin crystal to another. The protoss who had exiled them had preservers. The dark templar, who embraced the power and strength of the individual and abhorred subsuming one's will to the collective surrender of the Khala, did not. Thus, they had to find an alternative way to preserve memories; a technological way. When he was younger and did not question so much, he trusted that the decision to thus artificially create preservers was a wise one. Now he was not so sure. It seemed to him...wasteful. Certainly some memories—such as learning how to create a weapon or ship, or developing a new skill, or the recollections of a great battle or discovery—were extremely useful to future generations. But an old protoss's remembrance of a humorous story? Or beholding a sunset such as this one? Those memories might be important to the individual, but surely not to those who had no personal stake in them. The Keepers of Wisdom exclaimed over such things, regarding them almost reverently, and the youth was hard put to conceal his growing annoyance with such petty memories.

The Wall of Knowledge, now... that was what he yearned to explore. One of the reasons he had chosen to stay behind and devote his life to being a Keeper of Wisdom was because he wanted to help his people. Anger burned in him when he recalled the stories of how the dark templar had been so badly treated at the hands of their supposed "brethren," for a crime no more horrible than not wishing to share their mostintimate selves with all other protoss. He wanted the dark templar to surpass their banishers—grow stronger, wiser, better than the protoss who remained, wrapped in smug self-satisfaction, on Aiur. Surely there was knowledge in these crystals to help the dark templar achieve that goal. But ritual and habit had evolved so that the Wall of Knowledge remained largely untouched. The reasoning was that while all knowledge was considered important, not all knowledge was considered wholesome. Some knowledge was deemed too dangerous to come to light, even among the general population of the alysaar. He would have to labor at the Chalice for many, many more decades before he would even be considered for such a coveted duty. And that knowledge chafed at him.

The idea had occurred to him before. The Wall might be forbidden to him, but it was never guarded. Certainly not at night, when all the scholars slept. He'd planned it all out: how he would stay awake at night, and see just what the Wall of Knowledge held, what secrets it kept to itself and the select few deemed worthy of plumbing that information. But something had always held him back. Respect for tradition, perhaps. Or a desire to eventually prove himself trustworthy.

Or perhaps simply fear.

It was at that moment, even as the song of the crystals faded and the night sky went utterly black, and the Keepers of Wisdom turned to their beds for deep, refreshing rest, that the fear abruptly vanished. No more waiting. No more hesitating. He had been here forty years. Would he wait forty more, too afraid to take the opportunity that was right in front of him?

No.

Quickly the youth buried his thoughts. It was unlikely anyone would read them; most of the time, itwas only surface thoughts that were heard, unless one was engrossed in a private conversation. And now everyone's attention was focused on sleep. He pretended tiredness as he accompanied his fellow alysaar back to their sleeping quarters. Beds consisted of blankets placed on the stone floor. There was not much luxury here; the scholars lived a simple, focused life. Tonight, with his new resolve burning in the back of his brain, the youth saw it all with new eyes. The alysaar were custodians of the most significant knowledge the dark templar possessed. And yet they were content to simply drowse on the floor, feed from the twilight skies, and transfer knowledge from one crystal to another rather than actually