Read Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) Online
Authors: David Farland
Maggie waved toward Ceravanne, her voice expressing confusion. “Have we no Word for our sister, or for the bear?”
The Tekkar Lord gazed into her eyes, and his own purple eyes looked like black holes in his dark skin. “None,” he hissed, his voice whispery, as is often the case with those who have keen ears. “An aircar will be here soon. Perhaps more will be provided.”
Maggie looked about the room, still wondering what to do. “I … want to serve the Inhuman,” she said. “But I don’t know how.”
The Tekkar nodded graciously. “The lives you have lived—they train you in the use of technology and weapons, strategy and history. All that remains is for you to be assigned to a unit.”
Maggie considered. She had the lives of forty-one men and women who’d gone to war—swordsmen and bowmen, tacticians, scouts, squires, kings, and supply men. Merchants who understood the economics of war, a dronon technician and worker from the City of Life.
She hadn’t considered before, but she was prepared for just about any situation that the future could throw at her, and she also realized that much of what she’d learned was designed to help accommodate other nonhuman species. The passionless Wydeem would learn about lust and the desire to build. The gentle and shy Foglarens would learn how to be confident in open spaces and understand the thrill of battle. The Roamers would learn of trade and economics.
“Yes,” Maggie whispered for the first time. “I see what you mean. May I be in your command for now?”
“Of course,” the Tekkar hissed. “It is always an honor to work with a kitten whose eyes have just opened.”
Maggie gave him her hand, let the Tekkar help her rise. She nodded toward the food. “May I? We haven’t eaten well in days.”
“Of course,” the Lord said. “But you will need to hurry. The transport will be here soon.”
Maggie made up a plate, and the Tekkar Lord knelt beside her, watching her every move. Maggie nodded toward Ceravanne. “I almost envy them.”
“Why?” the Tekkar asked.
“Because soon they will hear the voice of the Inhuman, and they will feel what I felt upon awakening. That first moment of being alive.”
“Yesss,” the Lord hissed, obviously pleased.
Maggie sat eating, wondering what she might be able to do to help the others break free. Probably nothing. She noticed the furtive glances the Tekkar gave her. They were watching her closely now, and had not yet offered her a weapon. She knew that they wouldn’t offer her one until she had been safely delivered to Moree. She had just finished her plate, when the building began to rumble and vibrate as the gravity waves of a dronon flier bounced against it.
“The transport is here,” the Tekkar Lord said, and his men began picking up their packs. They had great mounds of food and blankets, and most of the men had to fill their arms.
The Tekkar Lord himself was about to grab his pack, but instead ordered one of his men to do it and took both of the dronon pulp guns, waved Gallen and Orick forward, and they went out into the night.
On the stone bridge outside Farra Kmir, a lone flier had set down. It was a large military job, an oblong blue disk with rows of windows. One of its doors swung upward automatically on landing. It was large enough to carry twenty men, and its forward weapon array held twin plasma cannons and several smart missile mounts. No one had come with the flier, so obviously it was piloted by an AI. Maggie was not wearing her mantle, but she knew upon looking at the flier that this was a completely new machine, not more than a week old and designed for use by men, not some artifact left by the dronon.
So the Inhuman was building its own arsenal.
The Tekkar carried their bundles and went ahead, stopped to look down the road. The Derrits had come back to retrieve their dead. The whole pack of them were gathered out in the darkness far down the road, growling low and snarling.
But they seemed disinclined to charge up the road to the military transport and attack a squad of Tekkar.
Gallen, Orick, Maggie, and Ceravanne were herded behind by the Tekkar Lord, waving his gun. He’d put the spare in his belt.
Just as Maggie got to the main gate of Farra Kuur and stood under its black stone arch, Gallen stopped and looked back at the Tekkar Lord.
“Veriasse, kill them now!” he whispered.
The Tekkar Lord’s eyes suddenly rolled back in his head, and he leapt sideways and fired the dronon pulp pistol in a frenzy. It made burping noises as it fired, and Maggie looked to see a Tekkar take a hit to the head, opening a hole. The whole side of his face exploded outward, the shattered bones of his skull stretching the skin incredibly taut, and then his skull seemed to shrink in on itself, and he crumpled to the road.
Another Tekkar took a body hit, and the left side of his chest ripped away as the shell of the pulp gun exploded, spattering blood and bits of bone and lung all across the transport.
One of the Tekkar managed to pull a knife and fling it at his Lord, but it was a hasty throw, and the Tekkar Lord simply dodged aside, then finished shooting down his own men.
And then he pulled the spare gun from his belt and dropped both weapons, and merely stood. Maggie watched him in confusion, wondering if the Lord were changing sides. Down the mountain, the Derrits began to roar quizzically, as if trying to decide whether to charge.
“Quickly!” Gallen shouted. “Cut us free! There is no telling how long the mantle will be able to control him!”
Maggie grabbed the fallen knife from the road, went to Gallen and cut his bonds, then did the same for Ceravanne. Before Maggie could finish with Ceravanne, Gallen went to the Tekkar Lord, pulled the man’s knife, and plunged it into his heart.
The Tekkar dropped with a sigh, and Gallen grabbed the pulp pistols and his mantle. In moments he had hurried to the flier, and they began throwing in the packs that the Tekkar had carried, then leapt in and closed the doors just as the Derrits charged up the road.
“Vehicle, rise eighty yards and hold position!” Maggie commanded the flier’s AI.
The flier rose up in the air and hovered.
“I don’t understand.” Orick grumbled. “What happened?”
Gallen had already put his mantle back on, and he whispered, “Not any man can wield the power of a Lord Protector’s mantle. The mantle is a living machine, and it partakes of the desires and intents of its makers, and of those who use it. And like a Guide, it has some measure of control over its wearer. Most of the time, it gives me free rein to do as I please, but I have felt it tugging at my limbs, using me in battle as much as I use it. So when the Tekkar asked me to surrender it, I asked my mantle if it could protect me. It said that it could not serve an evil man. It warned me that it might be able to battle the Tekkar, once one of them put it on. I knew that the Tekkar would covet the thing, and eventually one would try to claim it, so I had only to wait my chance.”
Maggie looked out the window at the dead Tekkar strewn across the road. She recalled how the Tekkar Lord had innocuously obtained both the guns. She realized that Gallen’s mantle had been prodding him even then.
Maggie had understood that her mantle was designed for a special purpose, and that its abilities and memory were all aimed at fulfilling its own desires and objectives. She had felt her own mantle tugging at her mind, filling her with curiosity when she’d studied dronon technology, but she hadn’t quite grasped how symbiotic the relationship between man and mantle might be until now. And Maggie realized that she would need to begin studying mantles more explicitly, learning more of their creation, abilities, and desires.
Down on the road, the Derrits fell upon the bodies of the dead Tekkar, grabbing them and scurrying away. Food for their babies, Maggie thought.
“Where to now?” Maggie said.
Gallen looked at her quizzically, the green running lights of the flier soft on his face, and she smiled. “I’m not Inhuman, if that’s what you’re wondering, Gallen O’Day!”
“I didn’t imagine you would be,” Gallen said. “But one can never tell.”
After a moment of thought, he said, “We’ve got air transport, and we’ve got food. We might as well fly to Moree.”
“Surely we can’t just fly into the city,” Ceravanne said. “They’ll be waiting for us.”
“We can land nearby,” Gallen said. “Close, but not too dose.”
Ceravanne dosed her eyes, thinking. “I’m not sure, but I believe I know just the place.”
* * *
Chapter 29
Where should we go?” Maggie asked again, staring hard at Ceravanne, but Ceravanne was still thinking, unsure if hers was the right course.
“If I judge right,” Ceravanne said, “we cannot just go straight into Moree in this vehicle. We will have to set down outside the city. Is that right?” Gallen nodded curtly.
“And I have seen the dronon aircars streak across the sky like meteors,” Ceravanne said, “so that a journey of a thousand kilometers takes but an hour.”
“More like six minutes in this car,” Maggie said. “We need rest and food before we go into Moree, and a place of safety,” Ceravanne continued. “Could we go back to Northland for one day, to the Vale of the Bock on Starbourne Mountain?”
Maggie and Orick both dropped their jaws. They had been struggling so hard to reach Moree that both of them thought only in terms of that small goal, and so they had imagined landing as close as possible to that place.
“It might not be a bad idea,” Maggie said. “When this aircar doesn’t return on schedule, the Tekkar at Moree are going to become suspicious. They’ll close the gates tight, and start looking for us. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to stay away for a while.”
Gallen stared out the window, considering. “But every moment we waste only allows the Inhuman’s agents to get stronger. They’ve already got the Dronon hive cities, and now they are building armed and armored air transports. I think we should go in immediately.”
“It is hours till dawn,” Ceravanne said. “The Tekkar are awake, but most of them will be sleeping by morning. We should wait to infiltrate the city by daylight.”
Gallen nodded in acquiescence, and Maggie told the aircar to take them to Northland, to Starbourne Mountain. The aircar did not know the coordinates, so Ceravanne gave it an approximation, and the transport rose in the air and swept away. Ceravanne looked out her window and saw the small campfires and lights of villages down in the cities below, and she watched the clouds, like floating sheets of ice on a swollen winter river, sliding away beneath her. She had never been in an aircar before. Though the thing sounded noisy from the outside, there was absolute quiet within the vehicle, and this seemed somehow wondrous to her.
Gallen sighed, then said, “With all of their military buildup, I don’t understand why the hosts of the Inhuman haven’t attacked Northland yet.”
“Perhaps they are afraid that Northland is stronger than they know,” Ceravanne said. “In the City of Life, we have long allowed our guards to carry weapons that are restricted elsewhere on the planet, and our resistance fighters became expert at using those weapons on the dronon, and at sabotaging the dronon walking hive cities.”
“Even with that,” Gallen said, raising a brow, “I suspect that the Inhuman has amassed enough weaponry to wipe out your people. Something else is holding it back.”
There was a long moment of silence, and at last Ceravanne said, “Could it be compassion?”
Gallen studied her a moment, wondering. “Why would you say that?”
Ceravanne shrugged a little. “It was something the Tekkar said when Orick told him that I was the Swallow. He said that the Swallow had already returned to Moree, and had gathered her armies.”
Gallen whispered, “And she was set to harvest the stars?”
Ceravanne nodded. Gallen had been so convinced that the Harvester was a machine that for a moment he did not understand what she implied.
“Could it be that the dronon have set up an imposter?” Maggie asked Ceravanne. “Someone who could take advantage of your reputation.”
Gallen blurted out, “Why would they bother, when they could have the real thing? They would only need to clone Ceravanne and fill her with the Inhuman’s memories—and they’d have their Harvester.” He spoke the thought as quickly as it came to him. And finally, she saw that Gallen understood.
Orick gasped, and Maggie looked crestfallen as together they saw the simplicity of it. Ceravanne turned away, for she could not face them.
Gallen looked into Ceravanne’s eyes and said more gently, perhaps only realizing the truth now, “And that is why you insisted on coming with us, isn’t it? You knew that the Harvester is not a machine. You came to face your darker self?”
Ceravanne hesitated to speak, and Maggie shook her head in denial. “Certainly the dronon couldn’t turn a Tharrin—even with the Inhuman’s conditioning. It wasn’t able to turn me!”
Ceravanne wondered, as she had wondered on countless nights, just how susceptible she herself might be to the Inhuman’s persuasion. The Inhuman had come after her again and again with such persistence, and always she’d managed to kill herself to avoid being taken. But she had not been able to defend her dead body. The dronon had had countless opportunities to recover her genome, create a clone, and fill it with whatever thoughts or memories they desired.
Ceravanne looked into Maggie’s dark eyes. The young woman had been losing weight due to the rigors of their journey, and for the first time Ceravanne really noticed how this was wearing at her. “I have never wanted to talk to you about these things until now,” Ceravanne said. “I didn’t want to betray how much I knew of the Inhuman, nor did I want to betray my plans on how to deal with it once we reach Moree. You see, there was always the possibility that one of you could be turned. But now Orick and I are the only ones who have not received the Inhuman’s Word, and Maggie, you and Gallen will need to continue my battle without me, should I die.”
Ceravanne looked deep into Maggie’s eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “Maggie, you are wrong if you think we Tharrin can withstand the Inhuman’s Word. The sad truth is that the Inhuman’s Word, as a weapon, has proven to be more effective against my people than any others. It was designed to persuade us to join the dronon’s cause. It is almost by accident that the Word has also worked so well against the Tekkar and other races.”
“Oh, Ceravanne,” Maggie said, and she crossed the hull of the ship, took Ceravanne in her arms, and for one sweet moment, Ceravanne wept and let Maggie embrace her.
“We are our bodies,” Ceravanne whispered close to Maggie’s ear. “You see, the Tharrin were made to serve mankind, and men, by their very nature, are predispositioned to serve us in return. The dronon knew that if they could control us, we Tharrin might hold the key to controlling mankind. None of us can escape what we are. And in some cases, we cannot escape what we feel, what we must do.”
Ceravanne wiped her eyes, leaned back, and looked at Maggie. “The Inhuman argues for greater compassion, and to the Tharrin its arguments seem persuasive, for the Tharrin have always sought to rule with compassion above all else. And so the dronon use our most basic needs to undermine us. But the Inhuman’s Word does more to us than that—it seeks to manipulate its victims subconsciously. It convinces them that only by surrendering their individual freedom can they hope to serve mankind with total compassion—”
Gallen and Maggie both said at once, “By best serving the state, we best serve mankind.” They looked into each other’s eyes, recognizing that the idea they’d spoken had not been their own, but had been planted in them by the Inhuman.
“Exactly,” Ceravanne said. “But of course when the state becomes supreme, it inevitably becomes corrupt, catering to some indefinable mass rather than to the individual. By trying to serve everyone, ultimately it serves no one well. You’ve seen how ruthless the Tekkar are, yet even they believe that their ruthlessness toward others is in fact a compassionate service to the state.
“The dronon do not care about this flaw in their system, for they are hopelessly enthralled by their Golden Queen, and they have no ideals beyond serving her. But we Tharrin agonize over the problem. We are trained to consistently review our actions so that we leave humans as much individual ability to make choices as they desire—”
“But you can never leave us totally free,” Maggie said. “You always have the desire to manipulate us. I’ve seen it in the way that you treat Gallen.”
“I was wrong to try to control him,” Ceravanne said. “If I had not felt that my own world was at stake, I would not have done it. I … was so afraid, that I was not thinking well. What I did was contemptible. Please forgive me.”
Maggie watched her, and though her expression showed only compassion, there was a hardness in her eyes. She might forgive Ceravanne, but she no longer trusted her completely; and she would not forget what Ceravanne had done.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Maggie said. “How do I know you are not trying to manipulate me now?”
Ceravanne studied Maggie and considered how she might best address this question. She could have said something to placate the woman, but she did not want to frost the hard facts with sweet-tasting half-truths. “I am trying to manipulate you, of course,” Ceravanne said. “I have shown you my world’s need, and I have asked you to enlist with me and risk your lives in my cause. But I have not tried to deceive you about the dangers involved. I ask you to come willingly.
“But of course,” Ceravanne continued, “on the larger scale we must also consider your biological needs, your inborn desire to serve your fellow man. That is what motivates you now. And in fact, Maggie, I suspect that whether I am a Tharrin or not makes little difference at the moment. If I were a Derrit leading you on this quest, you would still follow me, despite my odor and ungainly appearance.
“But as to the larger question as to whether you are free, of course we cannot lead men who are totally free, because none of us is free of the basic human desires that define what we are. So, ultimately, none of us are free, and all must share responsibility for our group acts.
“Perhaps only if you were a Tharrin could you understand completely how dependent we are upon one another—and how much responsibility a leader has for the group: if I call a man into battle, and we win, I must always wonder if I’ve done the right thing, if my enemies deserved death. But if we lose the fight, and the man I’ve called into battle dies, then I have to wonder if I’m responsible.” Ceravanne took Maggie’s hand and squeezed it. Maggie sat down beside her on the soft, green bench. “I can ask myself, Did the man die because our enemies were too strong? Did the man die because he was too weak or too unprepared? Or did the man die because I failed to resolve the conflict peacefully long before that?
“It may be that in any given defeat, I am totally at fault. It may be that the man died because of all my failures. And so when we resort to battle, we Tharrin always count ourselves as having lost the conflict, for we are ill prepared to tolerate such guilt.
“For this reason, we prefer never to resolve conflicts through violence. Often we accept the responsibilities of leadership only so long as they do not lead into battle.
“This resolve is so strong that when my people here on Tremonthin saw what the Inhuman could do, most of my brothers and sisters removed the records of their genome and their memories from the City of Life, then destroyed themselves outright in order to avoid capture. We had to avoid becoming pawns in the dronon’s game.”
Orick had been sitting quietly on the floor, resting, but he perked his head up, raised his nose questioningly in the air. “But you said earlier that the dronon had
killed
your people?”
“I’ve never said ‘killed.’ They
destroyed
my people,” Ceravanne corrected. “Those that they did convert became … monsters, creatures that we Tharrin find reprehensible. And so they were no longer Tharrin. And by forcing upon us this conflict, others of my people were forced to seek oblivion. I did not lie when I said they destroyed us.”
“How many Tharrin are under the Inhuman’s domination?” Gallen said.
“The Resistance killed the others. As for the Harvester—I am still not even certain that she is Tharrin,” Ceravanne said, “though I have greatly suspected that my sister is there … But if they do have my clone, it is just one.”
Gallen’s focus turned inward for a moment, and he rocked in his seat. The flier was equipped with benches with thick green cushions that were very comfortable, and he leaned back casually and said, “When we first met, you suspected that you wanted me to kill your dark sister?”
Ceravanne nodded. She knew that to their eyes, she still looked very much like a child of fourteen. She’d thought that by keeping a younger body, it might afford her some protection, provide something of a disguise. Adults in power tended to discount youth. And yet she had also felt the need to try to attract Gallen sexually. “I knew when we met that you might have to fight off the influence of the Inhuman, and that you might be forced to kill my dark twin. I wanted your commitment for those things only.”
She did not admit that she wanted him because she’d known immediately that he was the clone of her beloved Belorian, and that she was in love with the image of the man she remembered, and that she hoped that Gallen might become that man still. Perhaps both he and Maggie might recall her reasons, but Ceravanne spared reminding them of this sad fact. She spared reminding them most of all because as she looked at Gallen, saw how faithful he’d remained to Maggie, he reminded her more than ever of Belorian. Indeed, he had been reborn both in body and spirit, but had given himself to another, and Ceravanne could not seek his affection in good conscience, though the pain of being so dose to him tore at her heart. And so she was resolved that she would leave them gracefully, with a lie.
“So,” Gallen said, “Maggie and I have tasted the persuasions of the Inhuman, but you, Ceravanne, still seem to know our enemy better than either of us can. What is the Harvester’s next step?”
“I’m not certain. I cannot guess what memories my done might have, and those memories could turn her on paths that I might not anticipate,” Ceravanne said. “But I fear that she may have all of my memories, along with those of the Inhuman. But even if she doesn’t, as the Bock were fond of reminding me, we are our bodies. I know what she feels. I may know how she thinks. And so I imagine myself in her place … If I were the Harvester, I would try to minimize the amount of force needed for the operation. I would seek converts, not corpses.”