Beyond the Gate

Chapter 24

Late that night after a brief and belated dinner at the inn at High Home, Ceravanne made arrangements with the innkeeper for Fenorah’s body to be conveyed back to Battic, then Gallen loaded the group into the wagon and led the travel beast downhill, under the blanketing fog.

Though it had good night vision, the. beast could not see in such total darkness, so Gallen led it by hand. At dawn, he left the main road heading west by way of what appeared to be an old hay trail through some fields, but the deserted track held, and for many hours the wagon rolled through the lonely woods, passing only a few shacks that belonged to woodsmen.

And all through the morning, Maggie watched Gallen in horror, studying him for signs of change. They were everywhere-in the stealthy way that he walked, almost unnaturally quiet; in the way he sometimes tilted his head to catch a sound; the new way that he spoke. Twice, when they passed small clear pools, Gallen stopped to wash his hands, and he would sit and inspect them long afterward. He’d always been tidy, but never like this.

Maggie complained about it once under her breath, whispering, “What is he doing?”

And Ceravanne whispered in her ear, “The Faylan people have olfactory nerves on their hands. They wash themselves so. I think it is a habit from another life. He will forget about it, in time.”

Because Gallen and Tallea feared Derrits in these woods, they made poor time, going little faster than a horse could pull, but the travelbeast was able to work all day at this pace. Twice they bogged down in lonely places and had to get off the wagon and push, and once they had to float the wagon across a broad river, but in the early afternoon they began climbing out of the wetlands to an ancient fortress on a small hill.

When they reached the hilltop, Gallen had them turn the wagon on its bottom and he removed a wheel so that it looked as if the wagon had been abandoned. “The scouts will be searching for us tonight,” he said. “We don’t want them to see anything suspicious.” And Maggie saw by this ruse that this new Gallen was craftier than the old.

The fortress was small-a simple watchtower that looked out over the moors and woods, several crumbling outbuildings beside the walls. Gallen let the travelbeast graze for a bit, then took it to an underground root cellar away from the main tower and penned it in for the night.

Maggie climbed the tower at dusk, and stood for a moment watching out, wishing that Gallen would come to be with her, come to put his arms around her. Doves had flown up to the tower’s tiled roof, and were fluttering about the broken window. Maggie could not see the distant mountains, where High Home sat on the slopes, and she found it difficult to believe that any scouts would come so far in a single night to search for them. But Gallen seemed certain.

When Maggie went downstairs, Gallen and the others were milling about the courtyard. Tallea had found the dungeon, and she brought up a huge turd as long as her arm, poked on a stick, and held it out for Gallen to see. “Much Derrit poop,” she said, “in dungeon.”

Goose bumps rose on the back of Maggie’s arms at the mention of Derrits, for even the Im giants had feared them, but Gallen seemed little concerned. “Fine, fine,” he said. “We’ll wet it down so that it looks and smells fresh, and put it in the tower and upper halls. The scouts will not be eager to search this place if they find it marked with Derrit spoor.”

So Gallen set himself the task of carrying the loathsome stuff upstairs while the others went below and ate a cold dinner. Maggie could find no place where the odious, garlicky scent of the Derrits did not permeate. It was terribly dark in the dungeon, the only light coming from the open door leading upstairs, and so before they closed the doors, she rushed outside and picked a great armload of straw to use as bedding.

When Gallen finished his task of moving the Derrit poop, he came below, and sealed them in for the night, barring the door from the inside with a rusty iron pole.

They sat for a long time. The only light in the room came from Gallen’s mask, a shimmering piece of starlight. Maggie did not find it comforting, for Gallen sat away from her, as if they were strangers.

Maggie found herself getting nervous, till Gallen began singing softly, song after song from their home on Tihrglas, until her heart nearly broke at the sweet memory. Everything here was getting out of control. Everything here was not as she’d imagined. And so she dreamed of the clean mountain rivers rushing under the lowering pines, the sky so blue that she could not quite hold it in her memory.

When the others had fallen asleep, Maggie crept to Gallen’s side, held his hand, and looked up into his face.

“Gallen,” she whispered. “I want to tell you I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he said, not turning to look at her.

“I’ve, I’ve been thinking hard on it-and I’m pretty sure that I could have stopped the Inhuman from downloading its memories to you. “

“How?” Gallen asked. “If I’d cut the antenna sooner, yesterday morning perhaps, the Inhuman would not have known how to contact you. It never would have received a signal from the Word.”

“Why didn’t you do that, then?” Gallen said, his voice hard. He didn’t turn to look at her.

“I-wasn’t certain that I could get to the transmitter. I was hoping our mantles would block the Inhuman’s transmissions. I didn’t want to have to lay into you with that knife!”

“You wanted to spare me pain?” Gallen asked.

“Yes!” Maggie said, and she squeezed his hand.

Gallen smiled at her, barely turned in her direction. “Then you are apologizing for having a good heart?”

“I’m apologizing for being wrong,” Maggie said. “For being weak.”

“Apology accepted.” Gallen turned to her then, and Maggie hoped that he would take her in his arms, but instead he held himself aloof, as if he were a stranger. “And your mistake may yet cause the downfall of the Inhuman,” Gallen said. “Because I know its thoughts, its ways, we have a greater hope of defeating it. Now, go to sleep, and I will keep watch.”

He reached out and patted her hand, as if she were a child. Maggie curled up on the straw and tried to sleep, disturbed by a steady drip, drip, drip of water falling into a corner from the sweaty walls.

Until at long last, she fell asleep for a while, then woke to a scratching noise. At first she thought it only a rodent gnawing on some old wood upstairs. But it came steadily, and she looked around. She could see little enough by the light of Gallen’s mask, but soon she realized that while rolling around in her sleep, she had misjudged where the door was. What she had taken to be a far corner of the building was in fact the bolted door directly above them.

Maggie got up warily, wondered what to do. The insistent scratching was from something large. She went to Gallen, and pushed him gently in his sleep, praying that he would not waken with a shout.

To her relief, Gallen merely opened his eyes, took one look at Maggie, and sat listening for a moment.

Suddenly Gallen snarled, letting a low rumble escape his throat. It was a sound distinctly nonhuman, like some savage animal, and the noise frightened her. Then in a harsh voice he shouted, “Ghisna, ghisna-siisum,” and leapt up the stairs and began fumbling with the bolt.

Something shrieked behind the door. There was the sound of scurrying feet and flapping wings … followed by silence. Ceravanne woke up, as did Orick and Tallea. “What’s wrong?” Ceravanne asked.

“A scout was here,” Gallen whispered, “and it thinks it was almost eaten by a tribe of Derrits. It will not be back tonight. Quiet, now. Go back to sleep.”

Maggie lay down again, but Gallen did not follow his own advice. The last thing Maggie saw before she fell into a deep slumber was Gallen’s mask glowing in the dark as Gallen watched the stairs, accompanied by the drip, drip, drip from the seeping wall.

Just before dawn, Gallen roused the group and began preparing to break camp. He went out and righted the wagon with Orick’s help, then harnessed the travel beast.

They headed west again, and by midday they climbed up out of the valley floor to an ancient stone highway, swept by the wind. This road headed south once more, and it led through a bleak grassy landscape where there was little shelter from prying eyes. On it, their travel beast raced like the wind, and Gallen dared not slow down, though Tallea warned him repeatedly to beware of Derrit traps.

During the day, Maggie asked Gallen how he’d been so familiar with the old stone fortress, and he explained, “I played there as a child. My mother went there daily, to take provisions to my father, who was kept prisoner in the dungeon.”

Maggie did not ask him more about who those memories had belonged to, and Gallen offered no more explanation.

Shortly before dusk, Gallen pulled the wagon off the road, then he flipped it and removed the wheel again, and led the group up a narrow defile to a small cleft that went back twenty meters into the rock. Scrub oak covered the opening so fully that when they got inside, they could not see out. Nevertheless, Gallen insisted on fortifying the entrance by stacking stones around it.

As he stacked the rocks, Gallen said, “If I know of this place, then the servants of the Inhuman may recall it, too. I think it will be safe, but we must still keep watch!”

“To me, it seems more dangerous to stay here than to find somewhere else,” Ceravanne warned him softly.

“Perhaps,” Gallen said, “but last night I learned a lesson. I went to a place familiar to me, and the Inhuman searched that place. I hope not to repeat that experience. I’ve never actually visited this cavern in one of my former lives. Indeed, I was told of it only once, and sought it, but never found it. It wasn’t until weeks later that I guessed where it might be. So my memories of this place are tenuous. I hope that the Inhuman’s servants will not even consider searching for this old haunt.”

They ate another cold dinner, and afterward Orick slept on guard near the entrance of the cave, while Gallen curled up next to him and finally took some rest.

Maggie wondered at this, for it had been two nights now since Gallen had held her, and she felt that her new husband was a stranger. She tended the fire and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees for a long time, watching Gallen’s sleeping form and thinking.

Ceravanne and Tallea had been talking softly together, and Tallea must have seen how Maggie watched Gallen. “Not worry,” Tallea said. “He remembers love for you.”

“Are you sure?” Maggie wondered aloud. She did not fear that Gallen would hear her. He was so tired, he was dead to the world.

“If not,” Tallea said, “he would not try save us.”

“She’s right,” Ceravanne offered. “It takes a great deal of willpower for someone to fight off the Inhuman’s conditioning. The fact that he is working so hard is a sign of his commitment to you.”

Maggie bit her lip, feeling that something was still terribly wrong. “Aye, he’s fighting the Inhuman, but there’s something amiss. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t kiss me. It’s keeping his distance that he is.”

Ceravanne frowned, and Maggie could see that this news dismayed her. “Maggie, I think he loves you more than you give him credit for.” Something in the way that she said it, something in the way that her voice quavered, made Maggie curious. “Why do you say that?”

Ceravanne took a deep breath. “I have something I must confess: twice now, I’ve asked Gallen to give me his heart. I wanted him to give himself to me completely, just in case this happened. I wanted him to bond with me more strongly than he might with the Inhuman.”

Maggie looked at the Tharrin and knew that Ceravanne was talking about more than just some mental bonding. The Tharrin was admitting that she had sought Gallen’s complete love and devotion. She’d tried to seduce him. “But,” Ceravanne continued, “Gallen has already given his heart to you. You’re the reason he fights the Inhuman now. But if he isn’t seeking you out, if he isn’t touching you, you need to go to him. In his mind, he’s been separated from you for a hundred lifetimes. The dronon have tried to put an incredible amount of emotional distance between you. He needs to fall in love with you all over again. You need to remind him why he loved you in the first place.”

Maggie bit her lip, looked around the cave desperately. Tears came to her eyes, and Tallea went to her side, put her hand on Maggie’s shoulder.

“Why cry?” Tallea asked.

Maggie shook her head. “That’s not Gallen anymore. That’s not the man I married. He doesn’t talk like Gallen, or move like him. He’s six thousand years old.” Maggie did not dare say what she was thinking. Ceravanne had more to offer Gallen than she did. Ceravanne was more beautiful than Maggie, and the lure of her pheromones could undermine a man’s resolve. Ceravanne, like Gallen, had apparently lived for thousands of years. On the face of it, she was a better match for him, and something in Maggie made her wonder if Ceravanne hadn’t tried to seduce him based upon such cold reasoning.

“Why did you do it?” Maggie said bitterly. “Why did you try to make Gallen love you if you knew that he already loved me?”

Ceravanne sat across the fire and licked her lips as she considered her response. “The first time it happened was when the Bock brought him to me. I didn’t know then that he loved you.”

“And the second time?”

She took a deep breath. “Was three nights ago.” Maggie considered the depth of the betrayal. She had a strong desire to pull a knife and gut the Tharrin right at the moment, but by telling Maggie of her betrayal, Ceravanne was also promising never to do it again. Still, a month earlier, the Lady Everynne had lured Gallen into her bed, and now Ceravanne was trying to do the same. Maggie wondered if all Tharrin were inherently untrustworthy that way. “Why did you do it?” Maggie asked. “Why do you Tharrin do this?”

Ceravanne was breathing hard, and she looked away, but she knew that she owed Maggie an answer. “I could tell you that it is because of Belorian, because Gallen looks like Belorian, and I love him still. It was dark, and I was frightened and lonely, as frightened and lonely as I have felt in five hundred years, and out of the goodness of his heart, Gallen was trying to comfort me. That was temptation enough for what I did.

“But …” Ceravanne gasped as if the truth were being physically wrung out of her. “If we Tharrin have a weakness, it is one that our human makers designed into us. Maggie, you know that we exude pheromones that attract you humans to us. You know that we are constantly aware of how we look, of a thousand tiny ways that our expressions and actions can manipulate you. But there is something else about us that you must know: as much as humans desire to serve us, we also desire to be served. I … crave devotion, as you crave air. I sometimes wish that I could be different, that I could be free of this, that I could be dead.”

And suddenly, for Maggie it all made sense. The Tharrin had been formed to be leaders. They’d been given wisdom, beauty, an innate ability to sway others. But all of that would have been worthless if they didn’t also, to some degree, crave power.

“We are our bodies,” Ceravanne whispered. “We are all imprisoned in a cage of flesh, doomed to sometimes think and act in ways we would prefer not to. You, I, Gallen, the Inhuman. Maggie, I hate myself for what I tried to do, and I am grateful to Gallen for resisting me. I won’t let this happen again.”

Maggie took her fists and rubbed her eyes with them. It was so late, and she was confused. She wanted to be angry, and it might have been that she was tired, or it might have had more to do with Ceravanne’s ability to manipulate her, or it might have been that it was just the right thing to do. In any case, Maggie just shook her head. “All right, then,” she said, and she went over to Gallen and lay beside her husband.

My husband, she thought. Mine. And I won’t let any damned Tharrin or any damned Inhuman take him away from me.

She slept soundly that night, with no disturbing visitors. And such was Gallen’s woodsmanship that for the next day, they saw no sign of pursuit. The only evidence that someone might live in this region came when they passed a small stream, and enormous footprints could be seen in the mud. Tallea was driving the team, and Orick sat beside her, but when Orick asked what made the tracks, she only urged the horses faster and said, “You don’t want to know.”

Maggie was sitting in the back of the wagon, and she’d been holding Gallen’s hand, and she squeezed it as they passed the muddy tracks, and Gallen squeezed her hand back. He sat watching her for a bit as the wagon rolled away, and at last he bent forward and kissed her, experimentally, as if it were the first time.

On the evening of the third day out from High Home, Gallen left the ancient highway, taking the wagon up a narrow pass, beside ruins so ancient that no single building still stood.

For the first time, Ceravanne seemed uncertain of his direction. “Where are we going?” she asked. “Are you heading to Ophat? The Nigangi Pass is down below to the east.”

“And it may be closed to us,” Gallen said. “So we’re heading to Ophat. I need to get some height, and from this peak, I should be able to see all of the way from here to Moree.”

Thus he led them up an ever steeper trail, past ancient ruins above the tree line. Long the travelbeast climbed, until it was exhausted, foam dripping from its mouth. Often the road was ruined, and portions had dropped from the sides of the treacherous cliff to the chasms beneath.

Still, the road wound on, up through cold ruins where bitter winds blew among the rocks until at last they reached one sheltered niche between two arms of the mountain. There, some ancient hallways still stood, carved back under recesses of stone, a hundred meters in from the treacherous road. There was a great pillared hall, and beside each of its massive doors was a carved image of a somber giant in breastplates, carrying heavy spears in one hand, a gem in the other. Ancient cobblestones littered a broad courtyard, empty of all but the sparest dead grasses.

The stonework here was cracked and old, far older, Maggie guessed, than anything that she had seen before.

“The travelbeast can safely climb no higher,” Gallen said, “and forage is scarce enough here as it is. You can camp inside the hallway, and may even build a small fire. No scouts will trouble you here tonight.”

“Why is that?” Orick asked.

“We have been climbing for the past four days, and now we are at nearly three thousand meters on this peak. The scouts’ wings give them little purchase in such thin air. Though they could walk up the road as we do, they are not likely to bother. Besides, we are on the far side of the mountain from where they will be searching.”

So Gallen had them unload the wagon and let the travel beast graze in the courtyard. Huge cisterns in the courtyard were full of water, though a green moss had built up all along the basins. Still it seemed drinkable.

Maggie went inside the ancient palace and found that some passages led to caves that delved deep under the mountain. Some Derrit dung littered the great hall, but it was old, dry dung that could have been there for years. Still, Gallen insisted on securing a defensible room, and he left Tallea in charge.

“I have much scouting to do on my own tonight,” Gallen said rather formally, “and I will be climbing the road higher. You should be all right.”

“I’m coming with you,” Maggie said.

“That isn’t necessary,” Gallen said, and he looked into her eyes with some relief, as if he’d wanted to beg her to come, but was somehow afraid that she wouldn’t. “It will be bitter cold up on the mountaintop, and I’m not even sure if there’s a shelter.”

“I’m not going because it’s necessary. I’m going because it’s desirable,” Maggie said. She took his arm in hers. “And I’ll just have to trust you to keep me warm.”

Before they left, Maggie kissed Orick on the snout, and Gallen patted his head, and then they were gone, heading out the doorway to the tower atop the mountain.

Something about the formality of their departure bothered Orick. It was as if they were newlyweds, scurrying off for their honeymoon. In a way, they were formally bidding the rest of the world good-bye. Orick felt a ponderous emptiness in his chest, for Gallen had been his closest friend, and now Orick felt somehow deserted. He went and curled up on the floor feeling empty and barren.

Ceravanne must have sensed his mood, for she came to him after a while, put her thin arms around him.

“Why do you think he did that, went off without me?” Orick asked.

“It may have been my influence,” Ceravanne whispered. “I strengthened Maggie’s bond to him when I let him touch my skin. The Inhuman tried to break that bond in him, but I think Maggie has reawakened it. It is a terrible thing to be alone when you become so deeply bonded. Gallen needs her now, as he needs water or air. And I suspect that she has needed him as badly all along. We should rejoice that they have each other.”

Orick listened to the words, but found little comfort in them.

“And maybe it is also the fear of battle,” Ceravanne said at last. “We are about to cross the Telgood Mountains, into the desert of Moree. None of us can be sure what our future holds. So he seeks to show his love for her, in case he dies.”

Orick just grunted, and Ceravanne went back beside the fire. A burning cold was seeping through the stone walls, though Orick hardly minded. But a minute later, Tallea came and knelt beside him.

“When I young, I live in crèche,” Tallea whispered into his ear. “My sister slept with me, fought beside me, for many years. When grow, she go to marriage, I go to war. It hurt, when she slept with another.”

Orick didn’t answer, but Tallea went on. “Someday, you find bear woman to sleep with?” She said it half in comfort, half as question.

“No,” Orick whispered. “Bear women don’t love the way that human women do.”

“Oh, very sad,” Tallea said, and to Orick’s surprise, she lay down beside him, curled up against his thick fur. And she just held him, like a friend, until he fell asleep.

For his part, Gallen took Maggie up an ancient stair, and on his back he carried firewood and some blankets. There, at the peak of the mountain, the memories newly downloaded in his head told him an ancient race with powerful vision had once built a tower to keep watch over the valleys below.

Indeed, he found the tower as legend said, though it was but a small, cylindrical shack carved from stone, stuck between a crevice in the rocks. Still, it contained two large beds carved into stone, and a dome-shaped fire chamber with a tiny chimney. Gallen built a good fire, and soon the room was surprisingly warm.

And there by the fire, wrapped in blankets, he made love to his wife and lay with her, holding her tenderly long after she fell asleep.

Once, just before she closed her eyes, she asked, “When the Inhuman finished downloading, and you came back to the stable at the inn, how long did it take you to decide to stay with us?”

“I decided when I saw how you feared me,” he whispered honestly. “Until then I was unsure who I would keep allegiance with. But I could not stand to see you fear me.”

“Oh,” Maggie whispered, and she fell asleep, never guessing what a truly difficult decision that had been for him to make. At times, the sea of voices, the memories, still threatened to overwhelm him. But always there seemed to be one bright comer in his mind where he could retreat, and in that place his memories were clear, and he could recall what the dronon had done on his home world and on other worlds, and in this way he could bear witness against it.

And somehow, that helped. One by one, the voices in his head were going silent, like candle flames snuffed out under his finger. Over the past few days, his thoughts had begun to clear.

And yet he was afraid that somehow he would slip back into that dark place in his mind. He feared it, and he needed Maggie to help him remain strong.

So Gallen lay and thought for a long time, recalling the dronon’s atrocities, planning for the days ahead. He still had the Harvester to contend with, and if he guessed right, it was an ancient killing machine. So he let his mantle read out the files on its weaponry and defense systems.

Afterward, in the cold night, he wrapped his black robes around him, and took his mantle, and went out under the stars. It was bitter cold, and he softly spoke to his robe, asking it to reflect all heat back to his body.

He climbed to the top of the small tower, and there he sat upon a simple stone dais. And if anyone had seen him there, wrapped in dark robes, gazing out over the land, they would have thought him only to be an image carved in stone, so little did he move, for he closed his eyes and let his mantle gaze for him.

The sky was clear of clouds below him, and for a long while he sat, letting his sensors pick up sights and feed the magnified images to his mind. Letting the mantle scan radio frequencies, so that he could listen to the Inhuman’s distant communications.

What he saw and heard disturbed him. Down in the Nigangi Pass, only forty kilometers to the west, three hive cities scoured the land, calling to one another, searching for him, and all along the valley floor he could see the scouts, flapping on swift wings as they fluttered from ruins, to cave, to crowded inn.

To the south, in the deserts of Moree, he spotted seventeen more of the hive cities, crawling like great spiders across the land, heading north to war through the desert. He could see the glowing lights of their plasma engines, red in the night, and could see tiny figures of men running about the upper war decks.

He’d never imagined that the dronon had left such fearsome arsenals.

Yet far more disturbing than either of these were the armies. The whole south of Babel must have been coming northward, for warriors swarmed across the desert. He could see great armed encampments of giants in blood red robes, sleeping in the open beside huge bonfires. And beyond that were tent cities of the blue-skinned Adare warriors, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Vast armies of Tekkar marched through the night, running northward in their fluid gait, all swathed in black robes. And all of them were heading to the north and east, out to ports where they could cross the seas.

And their movements were stirring things up in the wilds. Twelve kilometers below, at the foot of the mountain, tribes of wild giant Derrits had gathered, apparently to defend themselves from the sudden encroachments of others. The giant Derrits were said to be solitary creatures, seldom traveling in more than small family groups. But Gallen spotted at least a hundred of the creatures in one great war band.

And down a curve of the mountain trail, a glowing figure walked. Gallen watched it, a scout with wings folded, scurrying up the road in small lunges, stopping every few meters to sniff. Indeed, as it studied the fresh wagon tracks, it seemed both hopeful and apprehensive. Gallen wondered why the creature had not spotted him-it was only six kilometers down the road until he recalled that he’d asked his robe to reflect all of his body heat inward. Obviously, it cut down his infrared signature to the point that the scout could not detect him.

But most disturbing of all to Gallen was the great city of Moree, eight hundred kilometers distant. At such a great span, his mantle could make out little. Water vapors in the air, oxygen itself, formed a barrier.

Yet the images his mantle accumulated showed him one thing-five huge silver domes spread out equidistantly around the city. Gallen had seen such domes before, when he was on Fale, and so he recognized them.

The Inhuman was building starships.

Gallen sighed, and slipped from the tower, heading down to kill the scout.

* * *