Say that this Dau 'wa pushed us into what we became. But it was not so simple on Kur. We were scientists interested only in truth, and we were ready to subvert the Opinion even at the cost of our lives. The arrest of a Dau 'wa galvanized us, and we began to plan against the day when there might be a more widespread persecution. We planned escape routes to other worlds, began to talk of weapons and plots. Sure enough, some of us, purely in the interest of science, tried out our theories on plants, animals, and finally a sentient. I remember the first time I fed on a sentient, some trembling wide-eyed creature from a long-nighted world of rock and ice. I consumed one and then another, and found that each aura was richer, as the terror in their pounding hearts mounted, knowing what was coming. I developed a taste for it.
"Some of them fought. We learned-what you would call the hard way-that it could be dangerous to drain the food ourselves, we turned to intermediaries, using our own DNA as well as others, to design the creatures you call Reapers. It took us ages to get the connections right, to get our animating guidance flowing out and the auric channels to us. In the midst of all this, we were unmasked. It was heresy on such a grand scale, I think the councils were unsure of how to handle it. They dithered, and we acted. Some fled to other worlds, including yours, and tried to carve out niches where we could live in hiding. A few recanted, but the rest of us used our avatars as weapons. We told ourselves lies, that it was us or them, justifying any tactics. They had forgotten war, but we took to it with a will, and our skill waxed.
"Kur was ours. During the battle, we made the most terrible discovery yet. A Dau'weem has the richest aura of all, like nothing we had experienced before. We began to openly boast of being connoisseurs of death, and we hunted our brothers up and down the tunnels of Kur.
"That proved to be a mistake. Had we pushed our advantage at that time, we could have owned every portal in the
Interworld Tree. But we were like pirates who, having seized one ship in a convoy, immediately drink ourselves into insensibility on the contents of the wine chests, forgetting all the other fat prizes to be had. When the orgy of death ended, we found ourselves shut off from the rest of the worlds. The Doors were shut, permanently it seemed.
"The Dau'weem's strategy would have worked. We Dau'wa might have stayed trapped on Kur, gnawing at it until the world lay lifeless, and then turning on each other at the last. But the Dau' weem forgot that Kur was the library of the Anciens. We learned to live off minimal supplies of aura in that long dark time, thousands of your years. I found, somehow, that growing gardens, thriving fish, and happy sentient life could give me enough to exist. I guarded my estate, for there was no honor among us Dau 'wa where auric energies were concerned. I even killed for it. We despaired of ever opening another door when we discovered an intact portal from one part of Kur to another. It was like having both halves of an equation, we realized how to go about it, and we began to open doors. Not to worlds with many of the Dau'weem, but to worlds rich in sentient life. Like yours.
"I believe you are familiar with the rest of the story."
"So you kept living off the living, so to speak?" Valentine asked.
"No, I slipped into old habits, like an addict who tries just one more injection for memory's sake. We took life from your world, consumed it, and I joined in with the rest. When the time came to make the move here, I was in the vanguard, so hungry for a world of fresh auras, I forgot that I could do with less. But we did it right, we laid our groundwork well, found allies amongst your own people- imagine a bull offering some of his cows to the meatpacker-and when the time came, your dominion collapsed easier than we had hoped. Of course there was error. Our earthquakes sank islands and coasts we had meant to leave intact. The viruses we used to break down your social order were more lethal
than we planned. But perhaps it was to our advantage, after all. In many cases we came as saviors, not as conquerors."
"It's been done before."
"Yes, from what I've read, your race is adept at exploitation."
"Can you tell me one thing about the Dau 'weem?"
Papa Legba looked into his eyes, but Valentine avoided the stare. Locking eyes with the Kurian was too much like sharing his mind from the inside.
"Yes, young Valentine?"
"Did they make us? Humans, I mean."
"Made you? I doubt it. You're too flawed. Shaped you? Perhaps. They needed the equivalent of our Reapers, you must remember, something to do their fighting. Both the Dau'weem and the Dau'wa are too canny to fight through anything but proxies."
"I had been told you were just bad at it."
"Bad at it? Are we? Who owns your planet, young Valentine? Or more important, from your point of view, that is- who keeps the Dau 'wa from controlling all of it?"
Valentine felt a hot flush come to his face. "As long as we're talking about weapons, you're supposed to have one. I've come a long way to get it. I trust it's not just smoke and mirrors."
"You've seen it already, from a distance, Valentine, though perhaps no one told you. But I'll show you the source."
Papa Legba walked down a grassy hill, into a stand of taller trees. Victo and Valentine helped him down the path. The trees stood in a ring around a hollow, a bowl-shape in the landscape. A spring trickled out of a rocky overhang and fell into a rill that emptied into a pool.
"There are many springs in this area. Some of them run beneath the floor of the great house, a natural cooling system. Though this climate is to my liking. I was always too cold when I ventured outside in the cooler lands."
They entered into a pine woods. The trees had the twisted, tortured look of timber that grows on a windy coast, and short needles, like those on a balsam fir. The wind-warped limbs of the tree extended in the direction of the prevailing airs like a woman's hair blown in the wind. Ahn-Kha ran his hand over the needles and grimaced.
"Strange sort of pine, my David. The needles are like thorns."
Valentine touched the bark; it was smoother than most pines, more skinlike. It made him think of the beeches of the north. The smaller branches had thorns growing on them.
"It isn't pine, Golden One. It is quickwood, to translate it into English," the Kurian said. "This is your weapon."
"Trees? You can't-," Valentine began, then fell into a stunned silence.
"This is what you came to find."
All the miles, all the risks, for a stand of timber. He stifled a hysterical laugh. "Quickwood? A tree is the new weapon against Kur? Okay, walking through a thick stand would be like walking through razor-wire, but that's not much of a weapon."