Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) (14 page)

The giant Rougaire took a heavy robe from atop a nearby crate and put it on, then strapped his swords to his back. Gallen studied the man’s movements. He was all strength and no grace. When he was ready, the giant handed Gallen one of his swords, a weapon that seemed just a bit too long and heavy for convenient use.

“For you, sir,” Rougaire said, bowing deeply.

“I’d rather have one of your daggers,” Gallen said. The giant frowned a bit at Gallen’s choice, then took one of his daggers from its sheath at his knee and handed it to Gallen. It was large enough for Gallen to use as a short sword. Gallen just held it, for he’d left his belt with Maggie and had nowhere to put the weapon.

“Thank you, Rougaire,” the Lady Ceravanne said to the guard. “Go quickly!” The guard bowed to her, then hurried out in company with the Bock. Gallen bolted the door behind them.

Ceravanne studied Gallen, and the haunted look did not leave her eyes. She appeared to be a child of thirteen or fourteen, but she held herself with a dignity, a wisdom, far beyond her years. Her platinum hair cascaded in waves down over her shoulders, and she watched him from green eyes, paler than any eyes he’d ever seen or imagined. She wore a delicate white dress with white birds embroidered upon it, and she looked like something not quite human, like a fragile fairy bride in a dark glen. But there was the pain in her eyes, and Gallen wondered idly how many cloned bodies she had worn out.

“I’m sorry for asking the Bock to bring you stripped
and alone
,” she said. “I asked him to bring you alone because curious children sometimes follow the Bock, and I didn’t want them tagging along. The Bock … is very wise in his way, but he does not think on our level. He often takes the things we say too literally, and he does not comprehend the import of our struggle. He meant no harm, and I hope that no harm will come of it.”

“My friend Orick is handy in a fight,” Gallen said, trying to put her at ease, still uneasy himself. “I suspect they’ll be all right.”

“I am not worried that they will be injured or killed,” Ceravanne said. “I’m worried that they will be infected by the Inhuman.”

“Infected?”

“The Inhuman sends agents—small creatures—to burrow into their victims from the back of the neck, and then the creature infects its host with the Inhuman’s propaganda, downloading information into the victim’s brain. Those who have recently been infected will bear a scar at the base of the neck.”

Ceravanne went to a large barrel, used a match to light a single candle, then set it on the barrel. She sat down cross-legged at the base of it, and motes of dust rose up, floated in the light.

“I asked the rebellion to send someone I could trust. Can I trust you?” she asked.

Gallen stared into the child’s eyes, and his heart felt as if it would melt. He had forgotten how powerful the scent of a Tharrin woman could be, had forgotten how the pheromones she exuded could tug at his sanity. One look at her frail, perfect figure, and he wanted only to fall to his knees, pledge his fealty. And because she was Tharrin, because she was bred to rule in kindness, he could see no reason not to do so. Yet Gallen remembered the deadly rose in its glass last night, someone warning him against trusting the beautiful Tharrin? He stood aloof from her. “Of course you can trust me.”

“You are new to our world,” Ceravanne said. “I forget my manners. Is there anything you need? Food, drink?”

“No,” Gallen said.

“I suppose you have questions?”

“Your friend, the Bock—he said that you Tharrin worship him. Is this true?”

“Worship?” The question seemed to make her nervous. She shook her head and looked away a bit guiltily. “I’m afraid he does not understand all of the nuances of our language. I revere him, certainly. I respect him, seek to emulate him. He is my teacher, and I love him as a friend.…Perhaps ‘worship’ is close to the right word.” She looked at him squarely. “I do not worship him any more than you worship the Tharrin, I suspect. Do you worship the Tharrin?”

Gallen puzzled at the question. In many ways, he almost did. He found that when he was in their presence, he could not help but serve them faithfully. He admired them. He had loved the Lady Everynne. Still … “No,” Gallen said. “I do not trust them completely. I have learned that despite all appearances, we are not the same species.”

Ceravanne smiled wryly at that. “In some ways, I trust the Bock completely. He is a man of peace, who can do no harm. But it seems that I cannot trust him to fetch a Lord Protector to me, without botching the job.”

Gallen changed the subject. “Why does the Inhuman want you?”

“I’m Tharrin,” Ceravanne answered. “And therefore am born to lead. The Inhuman may want me as a leader.”

“I am surprised,” Gallen admitted. “With the dronon gone from this world, I would have thought you would be a Lord Judge, wearing a mantle.”

“No,” Ceravanne said. “The human lords in the City of Life act as judges on this world, not me. I act as a counselor to them only—should they seek my counsel. I have not held much power for the past several centuries. Still, I am the last of the Tharrin here, and so the Inhuman seeks to control me.

“Beyond that, what I can tell you about the Inhuman is mostly guesses.

“We began to hear rumors of it three years ago. At first it was only one or two odd reports, borne from the interior of Babel by nonhumans who came with wild tales. The lands there are very rugged and backward, and we imagined that it was only some new religion. But when our leaders sought to send scouts to the area, the dronon opposed us. Among the Rebellion, there was some talk of sending our own scouts in secret, but we erred—we ignored the rumors for the moment, and concentrated instead on fighting the dronon.

“So the Inhuman seemed to grow slowly, until last year. Among the peoples of Babel, there is a race called the Tekkar, a brilliant people, engineered to live on a brutal world so hot that men can only safely move about at night. They have purple eyes that see in the dark, and they are themselves stealthy and dark. Within weeks, all the tribes of Tekkar were converted, and then they began to attack their neighbors by night, converting those they could, slaying those who opposed them.”

Gallen said slowly, “The Bock showed me some of the peoples who live here, and he warned that some were more powerful, more vicious than humans. Yet I wonder: the Tharrin are peaceful people—why would you create such beings?”

“Once again, you overestimate my influence,” Ceravanne said. “The human lords in the City of Life choose which races to create, which attributes are needed for those who will inhabit other worlds. Some of the beings they’ve created were designed before the Tharrin were born. Others I see as abominations that should never have been formed. Still, I have long sought to maintain peace between our various races.”

“You were telling me about the Inhuman?” Gallen said.

“Yes. It was about a year ago that the Inhuman sent its first scouts to the City of Life, where I had been in hiding from the dronon for many years. The agents of the Inhuman tried to abduct me, but I resisted to the death, and my faithful followers downloaded my memories into a new clone.

“Then sailing ships began arriving from Babel, ships filled with refugees, and they warned us of the darkness growing in the land of Moree. Only then did we begin to recognize the true size of the danger, but we could not mount an attack against the Inhuman. The dronon still ruled here, and they refused our pleas. At first, we thought they were only refusing to take sides in a local squabble, so we sent out scouts then, in secret. Even I went with that first scouting party, but most of our people were killed, and those who survived returned as Inhuman converts who betrayed the Rebellion by pointing out our operatives. Some small bands of our people went to war secretly then, but they were no match for the Inhuman.

“Then three months ago it became apparent that the dronon were openly siding with the Inhuman. They put a marching hive city in each of our ports so that we could not mount an offensive. We could not defeat the dronon’s aircraft and walking fortresses with spears and swords.

“And so we began to lose hope. We thought we would all be consumed—until a few days ago, when the dronon left our worlds. And suddenly our hope is reborn!”

“And what is the Inhuman’s cause?” Gallen asked.

“It was created for the purpose of convincing mankind that our species can coexist peacefully—as subjects within the dronon Empire.”

“So the dronon created the Inhuman?”

Ceravanne frowned. “Not exactly. It is beyond their technology—in some ways, it is beyond ours. Here on Tremonthin, we have adopted a simple way of life. Nearly all technology is proscribed, except that which is used in the service of extending life. In the City of Life we download memories into clones, perform our great work of adapting mankind to fit within alien ecosystems. Because it is our sole technological export, our life-enhancing technologies are among the best in the galaxy. The dronon incorporated our technologies into the Inhuman. Some of our scientists aided them. We found the perpetrators, and those who aided them willingly have already been dealt with. The rest are working to undo the damage.”

“You say that the dronon helped create the Inhuman,” Gallen said. “What is the Inhuman?”

“The dronon saw that with the thousands of subspecies of mankind living on this world, it was the perfect place to experiment, learn which breeds might most easily integrate into their society.

“So they made an artificial intelligence that stores the memories of dronon technicians, along with those of nonhumans from our southern continent.

“And this artificial intelligence is struggling to infect our people with a new world view—a complex web of memories and beliefs and lies that lead those infected to convert to the doctrines of the Inhuman,” Ceravanne sighed. “We couldn’t fight such sophisticated weaponry.”

“Then why don’t you get better weapons?” Gallen blurted out. “Bring in forces from off-world.”

Ceravanne looked pointedly at Gallen. “Our world is distant from others. Even with the fastest ships—and such ships are on their way—it will take months for help to arrive. Even then, it will be hard to mount an attack on Babel. It was created as a refuge for nonhumans, and many of the species there fear us. If we attacked in force, they would see it as an invasion and would seek to turn us away. So even those we count as allies could turn against us. But more importantly, many of the nonhumans in Babel are genetically upgraded. They are stronger and faster than us, tougher, and often more cunning. We could not defeat them on their own ground. We can hardly hope to repel an invasion.”

“So you want me to sneak into the southlands and destroy this Inhuman, this machine?” Gallen asked. Ceravanne studied him a moment, then looked down at her feet. Her jaw trembled, and an expression of utter hopelessness crossed her face. “Oh, Gallen, I wish that were all I was asking of you.…”

Gallen went to her, knelt and put his hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. She looked up, reached up with one hand and stroked his cheek, then kissed him softly.

For one long moment, he allowed it—reveling in the sweet, intense taste of her lips—then pulled back sharply, as if he’d been struck. He wiped her kiss from his mouth with the back of his arm, yet the scent of her pheromones lingered, and he had to remind himself that as a Tharrin she was made so that he would love her. “I, I—” He fumbled for an explanation. “I’m married.”

“I need you!” Ceravanne said fiercely. “I need you to give yourself to me completely. Gallen—I don’t know everything about the Inhuman, but I believe that it is more dangerous than you or I can imagine. It isn’t just a machine, it is a technology that has fused the minds of millions of beings—and they will oppose you. It is not just the machine, it is the talents and wisdom and hopes of all those people. I can’t tell you what I think I must ask you to do for me! But I need you to trust me. If my guess is correct, it will be harder than anything you can imagine. I need you!”

Gallen studied her face. It was obvious that she planned to face this challenge with him, that she did not want to reveal her part in this fight. It annoyed him that she would hold her plans so secret, but looking into her eyes, he suddenly realized that he trusted her. “It seems that I do trust the Tharrin completely,” Gallen said. “Or at least I trust you. I’ll do whatever you ask—but don’t ask me to give you my heart.”

“I need
that
most of all!” Ceravanne whispered fiercely. “I need a Lord Protector to serve me wholly. Listen: in Moree there is a leader, a very powerful person that the servants of the Inhuman call ‘the Harvester.’”

That name struck a chord in Gallen, and he found his heart pounding. He was sure he’d never heard of this Harvester—yet he suddenly remembered something, a bit of information that only his mantle could have planted in his memory.

“Are you sure it’s human?” Gallen asked. “A thousand years ago, on a planet from the Chenowi system, a few hundred machines were built, machines called the Harvesters. They are nanotech devices which carry downloaded human memories. They can assume dozens of forms, change colors. They were designed to be the ultimate assassins. Over the centuries, most of them have been destroyed. But on a low-tech world like this, a Harvester would be almost invulnerable. It’s possible that one survives here.”

This bit of news seemed to disconcert Ceravanne. “I—never considered such a possibility,” she said.

“I’ll have to kill it,” Gallen said, almost certain that this Harvester was more than a mere person. Ceravanne looked up at him, startled, and there was resignation in her eyes. Though she was a Tharrin, and could never bring herself to harm another, she understood the need for killing at times. Still, she seemed tormented. “I hope it does not come to that,” Ceravanne whispered, and Gallen wondered at her naïveté. “But if it does, it won’t be easy. At the very least, I suspect that you will bear scars from this—scars on your soul, scars that you will abhor. I … am loath to ask this of you.”

“I’ve killed before,” Gallen said calmly, wondering what Ceravanne knew of this Harvester, and even as he said it, he remembered the three men back home, the empty-headed oafs who had forced his hand by testifying against him. He still felt marred by those killings, stained.