Read Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) Online
Authors: David Farland
The Harvester cried out for aid, and her guard spun and rushed toward her. Ceravanne saw Orick leap in behind the guard, catch the Tekkar’s rear leg in his teeth, and shake the man vigorously. With a mighty heave of his neck, Orick threw the Tekkar against the near wall, and bones snapped.
The Bock lunged forward past Orick, trying to throw himself between the women. With his long fingers, he grabbed for the knife as it arced toward Ceravanne a second time, reaching up. The knife pierced his hand, driving deeply along the outside of his palm. Bright blood spattered over his arm, and he backed away from the Harvester.
“She’s … innocent! You’re both innocent!” the Bock cried. The Harvester stared at the Bock, eyes wide, and staggered backward, running from her deed.
Ceravanne stood, watching the doomed Bock collapse at her feet. “Ah,” he muttered courageously, making a show as if the wound were a scratch, backing away. “I …” Confusion crossed his face, and he sat down heavily, his many knees buckling. “What?”
“I’ve killed you,” the Harvester cried, as if the words were torn from her throat.
Ceravanne felt her heart pounding fiercely in her chest, but she couldn’t breathe. She fell to her knees beside the Bock, hoping to comfort him.
Her eyes filled with tears, and the Bock looked up at her incredulous. “How? No, it’s a small wound!”
“With the juice of deathfruit in it,” the Harvester whispered.
The Bock fell back, gasping, and looked up.
And in that second, the Harvester dropped her knife to the floor. Ceravanne stood there stunned, holding the Bock, as the Harvester cried out from the core of her soul, and the cry seemed to echo from some recess in Ceravanne’s mind. It was a scream that was unlike anything she had ever heard—almost bestial.
The Bock looked up, and his brown eyes did not focus. He stared blindly at the ceiling. “Wha … gulls crying?” Ceravanne knelt, her heart pounding, blinded by tears. The Bock looked up and said, “Ah, the cry of a child as it dies into an adult.”
Then his voice rattled, and he went still.
The ground twisted beneath her, and Ceravanne fell forward, still weeping.
Ceravanne had come hoping to find common ground with the Harvester. She’d known that somewhere, despite the Inhuman’s manipulations, its distortions and outright lies, there had to be some core, some essential, unchanging element, that would remain the same in them.
And as the Bock died, the one man both Ceravanne and the Harvester had loved most in this life, the Harvester was touched deep in her soul, in a place where the Inhuman could not enter.
The Harvester crawled on her knees toward the Bock. Then Ceravanne grabbed the mantle of the Inhuman, pulled off the gold clip that her technicians had told her would be its key, and laid the Inhuman over the Bock’s face like a burial shroud.
Suddenly freed from the Inhuman’s influence, Gallen leapt up, came to Ceravanne’s side and held her a moment. Ceravanne was trying to snap the key onto a corner of her own mantle, but her hands were shaking too badly. So Gallen took the key from her hands.
From one of the side doors, Ceravanne could hear shouting as several of the Tekkar tried to clear rubble, gain entrance to the great hall. “Quickly, put the key on my mantle,” Ceravanne whispered, “if you love truth, if you seek rest.”
Gallen took Ceravanne’s mantle from her, placed its golden net over his own head. Then he sat down, arms wrapped around his knees, snapped the key onto the mantle’s golden rings, and lived another hundred lifetimes.
For nearly two hours, Ceravanne sat with Orick. The Bock’s body cooled, and Ceravanne cleaned it up, weeping softly. She could not keep from touching him, and for a long hour after the body was cleaned, Orick nuzzled her, pressing his nose under her arm.
Orick could not believe how badly the day had gone. Gallen had not been able to fight the Inhuman, and Maggie was dead. Both Ceravanne and the Harvester had lost the man they loved, and the city of Moree was in ruins. Orick had hoped for much better, and it left a great gaping hole in his heart, to see all the pain that others would have to endure.
He kept looking over at Gallen, who sat with his arms wrapped about his knees, his forehead bowed to one knee, with the great golden mantle draped over his head and shoulders, wearing a look as if he were some philosopher, exhausted from profound thought. And in a way, Orick feared that. The teaching machines on Fale had changed him some. The Inhuman had sought to rip away his free will. And now, he would waken and be something new.
Everyone Orick loved most was being taken from him.
He had begun to fear that terrible light that was growing in Gallen’s pale eyes. Now he felt it keenest. A few short weeks ago, Gallen had been little more than a boy who had to cope with his incredible talent for battle and his desire to set the world right. Now, he was growing into something new, something unpredictable.
So Orick sat and thought, trying to comfort Ceravanne. Orick remembered that when the Lady Everynne had connected with the omni-mind, she’d wakened after the initial shock, and she’d become something powerful—a goddess, with nearly unlimited knowledge. In his own smaller way, Orick knew, Gallen was doing the same, step by step. The light was steadily growing in his eyes, and Orick could see what he was becoming, could see how he was leaving ordinary men behind, leaving Orick behind.
When Ceravanne’s tears had eased some, Orick asked gently, “When Gallen wakes, how will he be changed? What will he become?”
“The demons inside him should never bother him again,” Ceravanne whispered. “We didn’t alter the memories much, just restored the true versions, so that Gallen may see upon reflection our judges were not harsh. When Gallen wakes, everyone will know that I’ve returned to make peace among the peoples. Some may resent me for it. Some may still hold allegiance to the Inhuman, but we’ve removed the hidden thought structures that the Inhuman inserted into its hosts. People will be free to make up their own minds.”
Ceravanne sat, her arms wrapped around her Bock. “And what of those who do resent you?” Orick asked. “What if some of the Tekkar try to kill you?”
“I suspect that they will,” Ceravanne said. “I’ve been killed before, but always I’ve been reborn. Still, such actions anger the faithful. The Rodim were destroyed as a people for such acts. The Tekkar know what will happen to them if they are too harsh.”
Orick licked Ceravanne’s hand, and together they waited for the awakening.
* * *
Chapter 32
In the recesses of his mind, Gallen lived through the days of Druin after the fall of Indallian. He rode his huge war-horse through the forests in his youth, and suffered the pangs of lost loves, he fought many battles and learned to crave blood as much as he craved the wider world. He united many people, before he was crippled by a spear in the back.
As an old man, he became frustrated in his designs. Many admired him as a man of learning, for he could do little more than lie in his bed and study. He became devoted to the welfare of his people, yet he dreamed of walking again, of visiting the stars.
He learned to hate the walls of his bedchamber, and so he sent messengers to the City of Life and hired travelers from other worlds to come and be his tutors. He began acquiring metals to build his starships, and studied the designs.
When word reached him that the Immortals planned to stop him, he built cannons to guard his city, and great were the battles waged against him, until in ruin he was forced to put aside his weapons.
In old age, his men took him to the City of Life, and there sought the rebirth. And the judges found him unworthy. Still, they took pity on him, and gave him back his legs, sending him away. He took his gift, but turned and cursed his judges.
Thus Druin wandered far, and never visited his realm again. So it went, life after life, Gallen saw the portion of meanness in character that the Dronon had chosen to hide.
And then Ceravanne’s mantle showed Gallen other lives, the lives lived by some of those who had won the rebirth—Tottenan the Wise, from the race of the Atonkin, who felt no desire to dominate other peoples. He spent his days buying old swords and melting the steel to be used in building nails.
And Gallen recalled the life of Zemette, a shipbuilder of weak mind but great heart, a man who somehow understood by nature how to be happy, who used all of his money to buy slaves from the southlands, so that he could set them free.
And Gallen lived the life of Thrennen Ka, a Derrit who sought to teach farming to her own people.
Over and over, the lives came to him, and he was shown an equal portion of the divine and the damned. And while the dronon whispered to him that all men were equal, and therefore should serve their new dronon overlords, Gallen saw that all men were given time to make of themselves what they would, and that while some became vile, and others merely consumed, always there were a few who earnestly strove to make the world better for all, and such people were rewarded in the City of Life. And thus Ceravanne’s mantle sought to make Gallen a wiser man, full of hope and experience, and then it left him.
When Gallen finally woke, raising his head so that Ceravanne’s mantle jingled, Orick came to his side. There was a noise reverberating through the darkened hive, and the shadows jangled to the querulous notes of people waking to a new world in wonder.
And when the Harvester woke, Ceravanne hungered for a private conference with her sister. So they sat close together and held one another and cried. Gallen sat listening to the women talk.
“I’ve killed with my own hands,” the Harvester whispered, almost a wail. “I need cleansing. Can you feel it?”
“Five hundred years will not suffice, “Ceravanne agreed, not concealing the worry in her voice. “I would come with you, aid you if I could. But one of us must stay here. The Swallow must return as promised, and bring peace with her.”
“I know that you still hurt for the Rodim,” the Harvester said. “Your healing is not complete. How can we bring peace, when we feel none ourselves?”
Ceravanne opened her mouth, but spoke no answer for a moment. “We are our bodies,” she whispered at last. “Neither of us can escape our guilt. And both of us must seek to establish peace in our turns. You go to Northland, to the Vale of the Bock.” Ceravanne went to her pack, fumbled out a small seed. She held the unborn Bock up with evident care, as if it were a great treasure. “Plant this in the Vale. And there you can find peace for both of us.”
The Harvester took the seed, held it up in wonder, then grabbed Ceravanne, hugged her fiercely, and whispered, “Thank you. Thank you. Look for me again in summer, in some distant year, when both our hearts are lighter. A Bock will come with me.”
They held each other, crying softly for a moment, and Gallen petted Orick’s head, stroking it softly. There were cries in the land again, the sound of Tekkar awakening, and Gallen was looking off into the distance, into the shadows of the corner of the room. He did not mention Maggie’s name, though his heart was heavy for her.
Then the main door to the throne room squeaked on its hinges, and Gallen glanced over, expecting to see some Tekkar.
Maggie poked her head into the room.
“Maggie!” Orick shouted, bounding toward her. “I thought you got killed.” Orick reached her, sat on all fours and licked her hands, wanting to jump up and hug her, but knowing she would fall over if he did. She bent forward and kissed his forehead. “Very nearly, but the AI ejected me before the car blew.”
She stood looking at Gallen across the room, and neither one of them spoke or moved for several long seconds.
“I was afraid for you,” Gallen said at last.
“I love you, too,” Maggie said, her lower lip trembling, and they rushed into each other’s arms.
He was surprised how, even now, her touch could be electric. He kissed her, looked deep into her face, and was surprised at what he saw. There was a peace in her eyes that had never been a part of Maggie Flynn before, a new clarity and softness.
The hallways leading to the Harvester’s chamber had begun to fill with people, and Gallen could hear them talking reverently, saying, “The Swallow, yes, she’s in here.” They stood outside the doors, afraid to come in, until Ceravanne rose to greet them.
They slept that night under the bright stars of Tremonthin, with the Tekkar camped around them. The people knew the Swallow from ancient memories downloaded into their skulls, and they showed her great reverence. The Tekkar vied for the honor to become her protectors, and chefs brought her their finest meals.
Maggie looked about, and it was hard to miss the adulation shining in the eyes of the people. But all of it was for Ceravanne. Gallen, Maggie, and Orick were all but strangers in the city, people who were obvious friends to the Swallow, nothing more.
The Harvester had dressed in black robes and a hood to hide her face, and she went out into the darkness beside the river, and for long she stood alone in the moonlight.
And so at last when Maggie and Gallen staggered off to sleep in a thicket, Maggie listened to the sounds of the night, and for the first time on this world, she slept unafraid.
In the morning, they had a short funeral where they buried the Bock beside a small river. And because the Swallow herself came to the funeral, everyone from the city of Moree turned out.
Ceravanne spoke his eulogies, praising the Bock so that everyone within listening range felt as if they’d lost something important without ever knowing exactly what it was.
An engraver carved a large stone from the river’s bank for the Bock, showing a treelike figure with his hands raised toward the suns, and they left it over the gravesite, beside the road, where folks would reckon it a significant landmark in the city for a thousand years.
Ceravanne offered to send Gallen and Maggie back to Northland in a flyer, but after a brief conference, they all decided that they were in no hurry. The dronon would be hunting for Gallen and Maggie across the worlds, and Tremonthin seemed as good a place to hide as any.
Orick voiced the suspicion that both Maggie and Gallen were loath to leave because they shared so many memories of this land, and Maggie thought back through the lives she’d lived here, and did not deny it.
And so Ceravanne gave them a fine cart and a pair of horses, and Gallen, Maggie, and Orick prepared to head to Northland with the Harvester.
They were in no hurry, but Maggie found that there was a great weight upon her. She needed to go north, to the City of Life, to petition the Immortals in Tallea’s behalf, seeking her rebirth.
Ceravanne came to give her final farewell to them before they departed. She thanked them profusely for their help, and wished them good fortune. She gave them many gifts from the hands of the people of the city—warm blankets for their journey, good food and clothes, a bag of coins.
She wept as she hugged them goodbye, and then she was hustled off into the city by her Tekkar guardians, all dressed in their black robes, their faces hooded from sunlight.
They walked away in a tight knot, almost as if Ceravanne were a prisoner rather than a dignitary, and something about it gave Maggie the chills.
And in the afternoon sunlight, Maggie watched them heading back to the dark catacombs of Moree, leaving Maggie, Gallen, Orick, and the Harvester to make their own way back across the seas to Northland, and whatever destinations might lie beyond.
In the bright sunlight, Maggie watched Ceravanne waving goodbye from up a slope, a streak of lightning in her blue dress, with her platinum hair, all against the dark lines of the hills of Moree, and Maggie felt a profound sense of distress. Though Ceravanne’s mantle had perhaps tamed the hosts of the Inhuman, Ceravanne herself was staying among the Tekkar, men who by their very nature were little more than monsters.
Maggie looked up at Gallen in frustration. “Why is she staying with them?” she asked in dismay. “That’s no proper reward for her labor.”
“She is staying with them because she must dismantle the armaments in Moree, tear down the starports,” the Harvester said softly. “She is going back with them, because governing them will be her greatest challenge. And if she is to rule this land in peace, she must first get them under her sway.”
“But … but Maggie’s right,” Orick grumbled. “She’s lost! A lifetime of work is all she has before her. What kind of reward is that?”
“Perhaps by your human perspective she has lost,” the Harvester whispered from beneath her dark hood, so that her soft words seemed to hang in the cool air about her face. “But Ceravanne is not human. She desires to serve, and now she has won that opportunity.”
And you have lost yours
, Maggie realized, studying the hooded woman.
Now Maggie saw what was really troubling her. Ceravanne had won only a new kind of captivity, just as Maggie and Gallen had. By defeating the Lords of the Swarm, she and Gallen had sought to win freedom, but all they had won was a responsibility that was too great to bear. She looked into Gallen’s face, and by his troubled look, she knew he was thinking the same.
Even now, the Lords of the dronon Swarms were hunting for Gallen and Maggie, and perhaps might soon be searching this planet. But Tremonthin was a big planet, easy to hide in.
So they headed home at a leisurely pace, while the fall grew steadily colder. A week later, when they crossed the Telgoods in their travels north, there was snow on the peaks, and a bitter nip in the air.
All during their journey home, they found peace in the land, and a new sense of brotherhood among the people of Babel. Where before they had received distrustful stares when they drove through a town, now they found merchants smiling and alehouses full of people who laughed and were quick to joke or sing or tell some outlandish story.
Indeed, Maggie found herself falling more and more deeply in love with the land, and one night, when she and Gallen had snuggled in a cozy bed at an inn, and a fire was burning in their hearth, she asked him as she had once before, “Gallen, if we ever escape the dronon completely, would you want to live here?”
“We’ve already lived in Babel for more than seven thousand years,” he whispered, and she saw that strange new peace in his eyes. “It’s my home. Yes, I could live here ten thousand more.”
And Maggie curled tighter against him, and felt that one thing at least had been settled. Now, if only she could figure a way to escape those damned dronon. But she feared that she would never be rid of the threat, not until they’d killed her.
And on their journey, though Maggie and Gallen continued to fall more and more deeply in love, and Maggie found greater contentment, she worried for Orick. In all of their travels, they had not found a single bear who could speak. Oh, on the trip home they once saw a bear walking along a lightly forested ridge in the wilderness, but when Orick called out to it, the creature growled stupidly and ran away, for it was only a simple animal, without Orick’s genetic upgrades.
A month later, when they reached the city of Queekusaw on the ocean shores, the whole land was blanketed in white, and snow was pounding the land. They left Babel on a slow freighter in the afternoon, on dark and wild seas, and Maggie watched the gray city fade behind a blanket of soft white.
They had a rough sea voyage, and Maggie took sick, vomiting every day. Five days later she was glad to be in Northland, where muddy roads were the greatest inconvenience a traveler had to contend with.
When they landed, they bought a new wagon, and that night, as they headed north, Orick, who had been very quiet for several days, came to Gallen and Maggie.
“Once we get to the City of Life and petition the judges there to give Tallea the rebirth, what is your heart set to do?”
“I don’t know,” Gallen said honestly. “Everynne has warned us that the Lords of the Swarms are searching for us, so no place is safe. And some of the servants of the Inhuman escaped in that starship during the battle at Moree. They might tell the dronon where we are-if Thomas doesn’t. For a while, anyway, we’ll have to keep moving, search for safer worlds. Why do you ask?”
“Well,” Orick growled, plainly very troubled, “you’ve been a good friend to me, Gallen. But I’m starting to wonder. I’m thinking maybe I should go home, to my own kind.”
“But Orick,” Maggie whispered, “I’m not sure there are more bears like you.”
Orick sniffed, and Maggie petted his snout, rubbed the thick black fur behind his ears. It was a cruel thing to have to say to him, but Maggie knew that Orick was terribly lonely, and she knew that the she-bears in Tihrglas would never give him the companionship he deserved.