Beyond the Gate

Chapter 31

That morning, after Gallen and Maggie announced their battle plans, Ceravanne took Gallen aside and argued against his method long and vigorously. Neither she nor the Bock could countenance the kind of attack he proposed. They were standing in the Vale of the Bock, beside the hot pools, which shone emerald in the morning light. It was a bright day, and fair here, and it seemed to Maggie somehow odd to be talking of such things in the bright sunlight. Around Maggie, Gallen, Ceravanne, and Orick, dozens of the Bock had gathered, and they stood nearly motionless in the morning sun, their hands upraised as if they were some strange priests gathered in convocation, offering up their prayers to Tremonthin’s double suns. But Ceravanne’s favorite Bock stood beside Gallen and Ceravanne, as if to referee the dispute.

“Remember, Gallen,” Ceravanne warned him, her voice shaking from emotion, “I want no violence, if we can avoid it. Not all of those infected by the Inhuman are evil. Like you, they are people, just people who were infected-by something they did not understand and something they lacked the ability to fight!”

Ceravanne’s eyes blazed, and Maggie was surprised, for she’d never seen a Tharrin show anger. “But if we fail here today, this world may not get another chance at freedom.”

“And I would rather lose my freedom than destroy one innocent life!” Ceravanne argued. She looked like only a young girl, with her pale green eyes blazing and her platinum-blond hair. For the first time since they met, Maggie sensed that Ceravanne was losing control, speaking openly of her deepest feelings.

“But you cannot make that choice for others,” Gallen shouted. “I won’t let you! I’ve already modified my plans so that I spare as many of the Tekkar as I feel safe in doing. If that does not gratify you, then I will leave you displeased! Perhaps I should take your mantle and fight this battle without you!”

“No, please!” Ceravanne said, and her voice faltered, as if she’d never considered the possibility that Gallen would go into battle without her. She begged, “I must come. Don’t deny me that. I’ve already seen all of my own people destroyed in this conflict. And far too many people of other races have been maimed or slaughtered. If I can save only one life, then it will be worth it. I’ve convinced the Bock to come with us. He too may offer some help.”

Gallen’s voice became softer. “Your Tharrin compassion does you merit, but it also is your greatest weakness. I wish you would stay out of this.”

“This world is my home,” Ceravanne said, and she knelt forward a little, almost as if bowing to Gallen, pleading. “I must serve it as I can. There are children in the Tekkar’s warrens. Innocents. Be gentle with them. Please, let me speak to the Harvester. Perhaps between us we can resolve this.”

Maggie watched Gallen, and though both she and Gallen had known that Ceravanne would argue for this, and both of them had agreed that they should leave her behind, such was the quality of Ceravanne’s voice, her ability to persuade, that Maggie suddenly found herself unable to argue against the woman. Indeed, to have done so would have been cruel.

Maggie knew that it was only a combination of pheromones, body language, and the use of voice that made them give in. And perhaps it was their own desires that Ceravanne was working on. But as Ceravanne leaned forward, looking like little more than a child herself, the sunlight falling on her golden hair, her words seemed to weave a powerful spell, so powerful that Gallen’s voice was stopped almost in mid-sentence. And suddenly Maggie saw why Ceravanne had been admired for millennia on this world. She’d helped bring peace to warring races for thousands of years, and such was the power of her presence that Maggie felt almost compelled to throw down the Dronon pulp gun she’d stowed in her waistband.

Ceravanne took Gallen’s hand. “Do you not think that the Harvester argues for peace against the Tekkar, even as I sue for peace with you now? Why else do you think they have not attacked Northland yet? We see now that they could easily take it,” Ceravanne said. And Maggie knew that it must be true. Ceravanne’s other self was suing for peace two thousand kilometers away. “Once we reach her throne room, there will be no need for weapons or battle. The Harvester will not let her people hurt you, if she sees me and the Bock in your retinue. That much, I feel confident, I can promise you.”

“Ceravanne is right,” the Bock urged in his slow voice, the brown-tinged leaves at his crown rustling in the morning wind. “She has experience with many races, even the Tekkar. I do not hesitate to put my own life in her hands.”

Gallen studied the Bock, his face still set and implacable. “All right, then,” he said. “I will give you a moment with the Harvester-no more. If you do not succeed in persuading her, I will kill her.”

Ceravanne closed her eyes gratefully, and sighed. She took Gallen’s hand and kissed it. “I-thank you,” she said, too overcome with gratitude to speak more, and Maggie wondered then if perhaps they had not given in too easily.

After they had discussed their plans once again, they saw the Riallna come down from the hill, bearing a breakfast of cheeses and fresh rolls filled with fruit.

They spread the food out into a circle and ate, watching one another in the morning light, and Maggie’s heart was full.

And Orick the bear ate his rolls with fruit, licking the jam from his upper lips so that his tongue almost wrapped around his snout.

Gallen and Maggie silently held hands as they ate, sharing secret glances. The Bock gathered down at the banks of the pool and stood with their toes stretching out into the water, while the Riallna washed their feet with a paste of nutrients.

And so it was that as they finished eating, a few meadowlarks began to sing, and Orick began to speak slowly. Maggie had always known that Orick wanted to be a priest, and she had imagined him as an ascetic, perhaps some monastic brother living in the woods. She’d never thought him to be one with any missionary tendencies, but he spoke softly to Ceravanne then of the things that were in his heart.

“You know,” he told her, “it hasn’t escaped my notice that you don’t have any proper churches here.”

“The Riallna have their temples, the Bock have their woods,” Ceravanne said. “And others build places to worship.”

“But what of Catholic churches?” Orick asked. “What of Christianity?”

“What is that?” Ceravanne asked. And Maggie suspected that because she respected the bear and saw him as a friend, she asked kindly, as if she were truly interested.

“I’ve had a mind to tell you about it,” Orick said, and then he told her of a young man named Jesus who, like her, sued for peace among mankind thousands of years ago, then gave his life for others. Orick told her how Jesus had died, betrayed by a friend, and how on the night before his death, he had broken bread and blessed wine, asking his disciples to always do this act in remembrance of his sacrifice.

Then, to Maggie’s surprise, the bear said, “Normally, I don’t have proper authority from the Church to do these things, but I think that they must be done. Today we go into Moree.” And with that apology he began singing the words to the Sacrament, and he took some rolls and passed them around, and Gallen fetched a skin of wine, and each of them took it.

Orick then gave a brief prayer, asking God to bless them on their journey and deliver them from harm, and Maggie felt the solemnity of the occasion.

After the sacrament they each made final preparations for the battle. Gallen checked his weapons, while the Bock stood gazing at the sky. Ceravanne laid her pack on the grass. She reached into it, put on a gray silk cloak with a deep hood. Then she unwrapped her mantle and put it on her head, its golden ringlets falling down her shoulders. Last of all, she pulled up the hood to her robe, to conceal her mantle.

Maggie saw that Orick was shaken, pacing nervously, but Ceravanne rumpled the coarse black hair on the back of his neck, and whispered, “Now, let us go, but not in haste, and not in fear. If we go to our deaths, remember that it is but a brief sleep.”

Those words held no comfort for Gallen, Orick, or Maggie. Though Maggie had a mantle herself, it could not save her, and Gallen already had Tallea’s memories stored in his own mantle. And Orick looked resigned. Though he had his faith to sustain him, Maggie knew he hungered for love and a life of peace, yet the road to any greater reward led down this dark path.

And suddenly Ceravanne caught her breath as she realized that what she had meant as a comforting word was only a cruel reminder to the others, since none had their memories recorded, none of them could be reborn, as Ceravanne could.

Orick growled lightly, and bounded forward to the aircar, followed by Ceravanne, the Bock, Gallen, and Maggie.

Maggie went to the cockpit, did a manual system’s check, and as she did so, Gallen came in behind her, and she slid back up out of the pilot’s seat, into his arms. They held each other for a long time. Gallen kissed her, brushing her forehead with his lips, and she leaned into him. “Promise me,” he whispered fervently, “that once you drop me off, you’ll get the transport away quickly. I don’t want you sitting there, a target for the dronon’s walking fortresses.”

“I may be brave, but I’m not stupid.” Maggie smiled up at him sweetly. “And you promise me-come back alive?”

“I guarantee, I plan to grow old with you,” Gallen whispered. Then they kissed so long and tenderly that Maggie was sure that the others must be getting impatient. Gallen was slow to leave, to close the bulkhead door behind him.

Maggie strapped herself into the pilot’s seat and had her mantle silently radio the ship’s AI, link intelligence with it so that the ship would know her commands before she could articulate them.

Their flight time would be short, a swift hop at low altitudes over the ocean, with the ship’s antidetection equipment operating at full capacity. Once they reached the Telgood Mountains, the ship’s intelligent missiles would fire, taking out their primary targets, if those were still available, or taking the secondary or tertiary targets that Maggie had already chosen.

And so they slipped quietly over the ocean for the next few minutes as Maggie’s mantle displayed the view ahead. The sky was clear until they reached the coasts of Babel, and there a thin line of dark clouds showed on the horizon, an approaching thunderstorm.

“Buckle in back there and prepare for rapid descent,” Maggie called to the others.

The aircar dropped low and screamed over the hills and valleys just above the treetops at mach 9. The clouds and rain obscured her vision out the windows, so Maggie relied completely on the head-up holo that her mantle displayed. The holo showed the Telgoods looming ahead, a line of bony white teeth, and Maggie fired her smart missiles, then opened her eyes and looked out the front windows to verify that they left. The missiles streaked ahead of her on antigrav, leaving a flash as the air around them became superheated.

The aircar whirled, dove through some narrow canyons, and the AI fired a burst on the incendiary cannons, blasting a lone wingman from its path. And suddenly the aircar seemed to leap in the air as it cleared a mountain, then lurched as it plummeted toward Moree.

“Four targets hit, three destroyed-” the AI flashed a message on her screen as soon as the ship had visuals. The head-up holo displayed the scene-three of the five dome-shaped spaceships going up in mushroom clouds. A fourth had been hit, but had not exploded. Maggie looked out the windows through a heavy rain, saw the trunk of fiery mushroom cloud begin billowing up as she passed, an incredible inferno. They were diving right through the periphery of its flames.

Two dronon walking fortresses had taken fire from the explosions. One was flying apart, huge metallic chunks spewing out in odd angles as its munitions blew. The other had flames boiling out its cargo hold and was trying to retreat from the white inferno that had once been a starship. The dronon walking fortress left a trail of flames and burning debris as it crawled away, looking for all the world like some great black spider in its death throes.

A smart missile was coming in from directly ahead, launched from one of the intact walking fortresses ten kilometers to the south, and Maggie almost subconsciously fired both plasma cannons, detonating the missile in midair so that a brilliant flash blinded her for a moment.

Their aircar was still dropping toward ground-toward the perpendicular rocky cliff face where the Harvester’s chambers should be-when the AI flashed a message in red letters through the head-up holodisplay: “Permission to abort mission?”

Maggie looked about desperately at the scene below, wondering why the AI would ask that, wondering why one of her missiles hadn’t taken out the Tekkar’s airfield instead of a starship, its secondary target. She looked toward the dun-colored fields below and saw the reason: none of the Tekkar’s military transports were on the field. They’d all been moved.

“No!” Maggie shouted in frustration, but her AI took that as a rejection of permission to abort, and in half a second they slammed to the ground, and her aircar began sending pulsed bursts of antigravity through the substrata.

Maggie looked out the windows, shouted, “Gallen, the airfield was clear! The Tekkar must have their transports out searching for us!”

But Gallen was already clearing the hold, with Orick, Ceravanne, and the Bock all following. Maggie silently willed her mantle to radio the message from mantle to mantle, and she looked around.

“Message received,” Gallen said through his mantle. “But we can’t stop now. Do what you can, then get out of here!”

Maggie wondered what to do. She couldn’t leave Gallen stranded here in Moree, but certainly the Tekkar airships, with a capability for mach 10 speeds, would be here in seconds. Even if they were out a hundred kilometers away, they could be here in thirty seconds.

Maggie bit her lip, studied her surroundings. For the moment, her ship was partly hidden under the rock cliff face to her south. To the north and east, the mushroom clouds from the exploding starships were growing redder and redder as their caps of smoke and flame rose higher into the thunderheads. Static discharges caused by the explosion were suddenly setting off a series of lightning blasts that spanned the sky. The door to the shuttle hummed shut, and almost unconsciously Maggie realized that a huge hole had had opened in the cliff face to her south. From inside the aircar, with the exterior sounds shielded, she heard and felt nothing as tons of rock slid down the face of the cliff, leaving a gaping hole.

Gallen, Ceravanne, and the others were running over the ground, and now that the hole was opened, the transport’s AI began emitting a cloud of Black Fog, a harmless aerial dye that blocked nearly all light.

At this moment, Maggie was supposed to move the hovercar, begin circling on a path around the Harvester’s subterranean throne room, collapsing the tunnels leading to the room so that the harvester and the Inhuman would be sealed off from aid, and from any avenues of escape.

Maggie swung the hovercar forward in a long arc, covered a kilometer in a matter of seconds, and watched as her aircar’s antigravity collapsed the tunnels ahead, leaving furrowed ruins.

Tunnels fell in and chambers opened in a regular pattern. Maggie had made nearly half the circle when an alarm sounded. Her AI flashed an image of two approaching aircraft, smart missiles blurring toward her.

Maggie had no missiles left to fire back, and it was too late to escape.

Orick was running up the hill behind Ceravanne and the Bock, with Gallen in the lead. A gritty rain hammered his snout, and red pillars of fire blazed across the countryside. All around them the ground had collapsed in pockets as tunnels and chambers caved in. In those places, Orick could see slabs of broken stone protruding from the ground. In many places across these fields, there were fires coming up out of the horrific rents, and dust rising from the earth. Armageddon. It looked like some vision of Armageddon.

Orick had seen that much of the damage was already done before their transport even landed-apparently the explosive power of the starships had been more than the architects of this city could have planned for.

Orick was running full tilt when suddenly the ground at his feet began to give way, and he lunged forward just as a tunnel collapsed beneath. In front of him a hundred yards there was a sound of splitting rock, and almost all of the face of the cliff just before the group began sliding down, as if it had been a sand castle dashed apart by a child’s foot.

The sounds of the splitting rock, the roaring infernos of the distant mushroom clouds, the blasts of lightening, the cries of people, the shaking of the earth-all rose together in an incredible tumult, and for one breathless moment Orick stopped to watch in the distance as one of the starships-a gigantic globe nearly half a mile across-lifted from the ground without any visible means of propulsion, heading upward for the safety of the stars.

Gallen stopped for a moment, and Orick could feel the ground weaving and bucking beneath his feet. The movement bothered the humans and the Bock more than it did Orick, and they stood balancing precariously.

Where the rock wall had collapsed, they could see at least six levels of rooms that had been in that part of the Tekkar’s city. At the highest level was a tall chamber, with forty-foot ceilings. The Harvester’s throne room. But to reach it they would have to climb the wall of broken rubble that lay before them, scaling the stones.

“That way!” Gallen shouted, pointing out a path over the rocks.

The whole world smelled of fire and smoke and broken stone.

Orick was vaguely aware of Tekkar running through those apartments, of wounded people crying out, but suddenly a wall of Black Fog swept over them as Maggie released their camouflage. And then they were swallowed by utter darkness.

Ceravanne pulled the glow globe from her pocket, and even its brilliant white light would not let them see more than five yards ahead. The aircar made a deep thrumming, grinding noise as it swung around to the southeast.

Gallen called to the others, telling them to form a group as they climbed. He was merely waiting for the ground to stop shaking, for rocks to quit sliding from the cliff wall above, and Orick hoped that as Maggie moved the aircar, it would become safer for them to begin running again.

And suddenly Orick heard the whine of rockets accelerating toward them, off toward the aircar. The rockets slammed into the car with a pinging noise, and a huge explosion lifted them all from their feet.

Orick looked toward the aircar for any sign of a flash or burning. But in the inky darkness, Orick could see nothing but a brief lightening of the darkness, and then bits of metal and rock and ash began to rain down upon them.

“Maggie!” Orick cried, and Gallen stood watching the empty space, a look of utter desolation on his face. “Maggie!” Orick called again, and he began to run toward the car.

“Stop!” Gallen shouted at Orick’s back, and when Orick turned to look at his face, Gallen turned away. “She’s gone,” he said. “She’s gone, and there’s nothing we can do.”

For one brief moment, it looked as if Gallen would crumple under his own weight. It looked as if some invisible support had been kicked out from beneath him, and he dropped partway to one knee. But then he lifted himself and began scrambling up the rocks. Orick heard Gallen sniff, saw him wipe at his eyes with his sleeve. Then Gallen pulled his dronon pulp gun, and his robes suddenly used their chameleon abilities to turn jet-black, to match the darkness.

Somehow, Orick found that he was unprepared for this. He’d imagined that if anyone would die in this battle, it would have been frail Ceravanne or the Bock or that maybe even Gallen would take on more than he could handle-but not Maggie.

“Gallen?” Orick cried at his back.

“She’s gone,” Gallen shouted, and he leapt forward to a boulder, then another, running up over the broken field of rubble without thought of stones still tumbling and crashing from the face of the cliff. Ceravanne ran behind him, calling for him to slow down, holding the light aloft, but she soon lost him in the dark.

And so she stopped and waited for the Bock and Orick to catch up. With his mantle, Gallen could see in the full darkness better than any man, and within seconds there was no sound of him.

Orick stopped beside Ceravanne, and the Bock made his way slowly over the rocks. Ceravanne nodded up toward where Gallen had run, and she muttered, “He’s in a foul mood. Can you track him for us?”

Orick grumbled, “Not with those damned robes on. They mask his scent. I can’t smell him.”

Ceravanne sighed in disgust. “Then we’ll track him by the corpses he leaves behind.”

They began scrambling up over the fallen rocks from the cliff, and it seemed to take minutes upon minutes to get anywhere. As they passed beneath the cliff, they could still hear boulders and scree falling through the darkness around them, but they did not see the dropping stones. By now, between the thunderheads, the Black Fog, and the deep shadows of the Tekkar’s city, the air around them was darker than any night.

And as they rushed through the rooms, Orick smelled blood ahead. The rooms were like nothing he had imagined: they had a peculiar fluid form to them, and the walls were covered with some white plaster. Orick could almost sense the sleek lines of some living creature, and he realized that the walls reminded him of nothing more than bones, as if they were in some vast hollowed-out bones.

There were torches lying about here and there, bodies crushed under falling rocks, tapestries sitting in heaps on the floor, wide silver washing or drinking vessels. And along the walls were thousands of small clay pots with long stems. Many had fallen over, and lay broken, with bits of ash and bone spilling out.

“What’s this?” Orick called as they ran.

Ceravanne said, “The dead. It is said that the kings of Moree were protected by the spirits of their dead.” And Orick saw that it was still true, more so than ever, for the Inhuman also relied upon those who had died for protection.

The group passed a Tekkar servant woman whose head was horribly crushed, part of her cheek ripped away, and she cried out from a swollen mouth, grasped the fur on Orick’s leg, begging aid. Orick looked into her deep purple eyes as he passed, saw how they were not focused, and knew that she would die whether he helped her or not. They reached some smoothly undulating stairs with golden handholds fastened to the wall, each shaped like the head of a dog. They rushed up several flights, climbing over debris, and Orick saw Gallen’s tracks in the dirt.

A moment later, they reached a landing and found the body of a Tekkar guard, his chest blown apart. And from up ahead there came shouting, followed by the burp of gunfire and the explosion of shells.

“This way,” Ceravanne cried, leaping over the corpse, and she redoubled her speed as she chased the sound of battle.

And Orick suddenly realized that Gallen was doing it all without him, that Gallen had rushed ahead and was avenging Maggie by killing the Harvester and the Inhuman. Always in the past, he had been left behind. He’d let Gallen fight the great battles and get the glory, and never had he minded.

But over the past days, he’d lost three friends. Grits had been left behind, and Tallea was now food for the Derrits, and Maggie had just been blown apart, and Orick decided that he’d rather be damned in hell than let Gallen take all the vengeance this time.

They reached a huge set of double doors, twenty feet tall and ten feet wide, made of thick wooden planks with great brass rings to pull on. The doors were already opened just wide enough for a thin man to squeeze through.

Lying at the foot of the doors were eleven or twelve Tekkar, sprawled in a bloody heap. Orick leapt up and grabbed a brass ring in his teeth, then pulled back the door, swung it wider.

Ceravanne held up the glow globe, and peered inside. There was a great chamber, sixty feet long, with ceilings forty feet high. The dim red lights scavenged from a dronon hive city glowed at the far end, and beneath the lights on a broad-backed throne of gold sat a small woman, her shoulders hunched, a golden mantle cascading over her shoulders.

Gallen himself was kneeling before the throne, his mantle spread before him on the floor, his dronon pulp pistol discarded at his side. Orick’s heart skipped a beat. Gallen had come all this way to protect them, to fight for them, and now Orick saw him kneeling, helpless before the Harvester. The heavy scent of the Harvester’s pheromones filled the room, sweet and cloying.

For her part, the Harvester seemed to be staring into Gallen’s face, and she looked up as Ceravanne and Orick entered, her sad green eyes gazing at them, so much like Ceravanne’s eyes.

All along the walls were doorways, and at each doorway stood a Tekkar guard, draped in black robes that were longer than the norm, holding a sword pointed down toward the floor. Four guards lay sprawled upon the carpet just inside the door, where Gallen had killed them.

The Harvester reached out toward them, made a pulling gesture, as the Inhuman’s agents often did when greeting one another, and said softly, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

The room’s lights shone over her platinum hair, sparkled in her pale green eyes. Ceravanne looked at herself, the Harvester.

The Harvester glanced about at Gallen and the others in confusion. “It took only four of you to cause so much destruction?”

Ceravanne nodded, and her heart pounded in her chest. She looked to both sides. The air in here was still heavy with the scent of the explosive charges from the dronon pulp gun, but there was a mustier smell of things long dead. As Ceravanne scanned the room, she recognized the source. What she had first thought to be Tekkar guards lining the walls were in fact the dead, mummified remains of Tekkar, their bodies dried, their faces painted over with some preservative lacquer. Gallen had already killed the living guards, yet he knelt before the Harvester’s throne, unmoving, and Ceravanne’s heart pounded within her.

“What are you doing?” Orick growled at Gallen. But Gallen did not move, did not answer.

“You have damaged him,” the Harvester said, and she reached down and removed Gallen’s mantle. “Someone tried to remove his Word, but enough of it is still intact. He is Inhuman still, and here in Moree, he cannot harm me.”

Ceravanne looked at Gallen in horror, saw that he was breathing heavily. He grunted, a faint cry, and Ceravanne realized that he was only holding still with a great struggle. The Inhuman held him.

“Who is he?” the Harvester asked, looking at Gallen’s face.

“Don’t you know?” Ceravanne asked. “He is Belorian.”

“No,” the Harvester said angrily. “Belorian is dead. His memories are lost.”

“Yet his genome lives,” Ceravanne said. “You know that much. And this one was reborn on a world like ours. He is Belorian in all but name.”

The Harvester looked at him thoughtfully. “I shall keep him, then, as my own.”

There was an electricity between the two women, almost sizzling. For long years, Ceravanne had wondered if even she could be subverted by the Inhuman, and now she saw the proof of it. If this woman remembered Belorian, then she could not be some empty-headed clone created by the dronon. This had to be Ceravanne’s older self, the woman who’d been lost a year ago. Ceravanne, with all her memories intact. Here was a Tharrin who proposed to rule a world of slaves, who claimed that she would keep Gallen as her personal pet, and yet Ceravanne wondered. Ceravanne and the Harvester were of the same flesh. How could they take such divergent paths? Though Ceravanne often felt the tug, the desire to manipulate others to her own ends, she had rejected that path a million times. It seemed to Ceravanne that at the very core of their being, there must be some commonality, some shred of decency that they still shared.

“We share much,” Ceravanne said, “but we do not share a belief that we can own others. I have come to reclaim you, my sister-self. I suspected that you could not be lost among the Tekkar. Even taken as a slave, you would soon make yourself queen.”

“There is nothing here to reclaim,” the Harvester whispered vehemently. “I am Inhuman now.”

“A lover of war?” Ceravanne whispered. “Then why have not the Tekkar already been unleashed on Northland? Instead you send spies, carrying copies of the Word. It is a frail weapon indeed, for one who professes not to value life. No, you lead a peaceful war, a beneficent war, and you tame the dogs that serve you.

“Even now, I suspect that you have guards ready to do your bidding. Have them cut us down, if you can. But I know that you can’t. No matter what the Inhuman has taught you, no matter how it has sought to turn you, we still share something.” Ceravanne pointed to her heart.

Silently, two Tekkar swordsmen walked out from behind the throne, confirming Ceravanne’s suspicions that there were more guards in the room. “You sneer when you speak of my converts,” the Harvester said. “I can hear your ill-conceived judgments in your voice.”

“It is unnatural for a Tharrin to take slaves,” Ceravanne said.

“The humans created us to be their slaves,” the Harvester spat. “Loving masters, wise stewards, beloved lords-or so they call us. But we were made to serve. We are their drudges.”

Is that what the Inhuman had taught her, Ceravanne wondered, contempt for mankind? “They love us, and we love them in return,” Ceravanne said. “Is that slavery, or something greater? We-you and I-have always given ourselves to them freely.”

“And what have they given you in return?” the Harvester spat.

“Their love, their companionship.” Ceravanne gestured toward Gallen and the others. “I came in the name of the Sparrow, and three people gave their lives that I might make this journey in safety. What greater love could I ask of them? What less could I give in return?”

‘‘Judgment!’’ the Harvester said. “Control! For ages you have sought to bring peace to this land. For generations you sought to bring the peoples of Babel together in harmony! And you failed! You failed with the Rodim, and for centuries have felt the worms of guilt eating at your soul. You have sought to bring about peace and happiness among mankind, but how can there be peace when there is no self-control? The Immortal Lords in the City of Life created the Rodim. They created the Tekkar. They created the Derrits and the Andwe and the Fyyrdoken-all without wisdom, always knowing the misery that such creatures would cause. For millennia they have set evils loose upon the world, ignoring your counsel if they ever deigned to seek it. You know that they are but ignorant children when compared to you. You would not give a child a surgeon’s knife to play with, but you have given mankind their liberty, knowing that with their liberty they would create the instruments of their own destruction. But in one year, I’ve accomplished more for the cause of peace than you ever did.”

“But at what price?” Ceravanne said weakly. “You enslave millions to control a few. You hobble mankind so that a few evil people cannot run free. Is it worth it?”

“Yes!” the Harvester shouted. “Worth it and more! There will be generations born in peace, people who never know discontent or suffering!”

Ceravanne listened to those words, and they cut her to the soul. Oh, how she had yearned to bring about such a change. For centuries the temptation had gnawed at her, to grasp control and put an end to as much human misery as possible. It did little good for the humans to create Tharrin leaders, and then continue their barbaric ways, killing one another and squabbling over soil as if nothing had changed. But the Tharrin hoped to lead men into some golden era of peace, not sit in judgment on them as if they were children.

And yet, and yet, Ceravanne knew that to seize control, even in the attempt to bring greater peace to mankind, would be to destroy the very people she most loved.

She gestured toward Gallen and the Bock. “You feign hardness and anger, but I know you. I have brought you the two men you have loved most in your life-Belorian and the Bock. Men whom you love, but men who love freedom more than they value their own lives. They’ve come to stop you. If you still love them, if you seek to strip from them their humanity, then be merciful to them. Give them the death they would prefer, rather than the slavery you offer! I say once again-cut us down and be done with it!”

The Harvester began shaking, and her gaze turned deeply inward, as if she were fighting some mighty battle. Her mouth opened, as if against her will, and she made a fist, pointed her finger at the Bock as if to speak the command for her guards to slay him, and lowered her eyes.

“It’s her mantle!” Orick shouted. “It’s controlling her! Take it!”

Gallen raised his head, and he was shaking mightily, his muscles spasming.

Ceravanne imagined the net of tiny wires in the woman’s head, like those she had seen in Gallen. The Inhuman might be broadcasting the Harvester’s every thought, every action, until she was no more than a puppet, moved at its whim. But if that were true, then all of them would be dead by now. And so she realized that the Inhuman was unable to control its subjects fully. It struggled to hold both Gallen and the Harvester at once.

Orick bounded forward.

“No!” the Harvester shouted, and a Tekkar guard obediently leapt to intercept the bear.

Gallen snatched his pulp gun, shot the Tekkar as he rushed past, and the bullet popped under his right eye. His skull cracked and expanded outward for a moment like a burgeoning wine bag, and shards of bone ruptured the skin. His eyes flew out, and smoke issued from the holes. His upper teeth broke off unevenly, spitting out to the floor. White shards of skull cut through skin, and blood spattered Ceravanne’s face.

The Tekkar guard crumpled in ruin, and Ceravanne screamed in horror at the sight. Time seemed to slow.

Gallen cried out, and the gun fell from his hand as the Inhuman regained control. Suddenly Gallen dropped back to one knee.

Orick stopped halfway to the Harvester’s throne as the second guard rushed forward, swinging his sword in complex arcs.

The Harvester merely stood, watching them all, and Ceravanne studied her every tiny gesture, every seemingly unconscious movement of the eyes. The Harvester had not cried out at the horrible sight of her guard, crumpling in ruin. The image of it had struck Ceravanne to the very core, but the Harvester was merely watching. And suddenly Ceravanne felt very uneasy. She had come here imagining that she and the Harvester were one, single organisms that had branched out on different paths. But now she wondered just how far they might have diverged. The Harvester stood rigid, trembling, but the murder of a man before her eyes had not seemed to cause her undue discomfort.

Ceravanne knew that the Inhuman planted memories from the lives of warriors in its victims, but now she wondered what that would be like, wondered how the horror of committing such atrocities would leave their mark on the Harvester.

In ages past, Ceravanne had turned her back on the Rodim, let their kind be slaughtered, removed from the face of the earth. It had not been a sin of commission. She had killed no one herself, had never even seen a Rodim die. But she forced herself to remain silent as the slaughter began. It had taken all of her will, sapped her strength, left her unable to sleep for thousands of nights afterward. She could not imagine ever committing a crime more horrible than what she had done.

But the Harvester stood before her, and she bore memories of war, of her own hands bathed in another’s blood. Somehow, Ceravanne had imagined that the Harvester would be able to disassociate herself from such memories, to recognize that she had never committed such atrocities.

But Ceravanne knew better than that. The peoples of Babel had been created because of the Tharrin’s inaction, their unwillingness to control mankind. If the Tharrin asserted more control, they could end this madness. Human misery was the gauge of Tharrin inadequacy.

And so Ceravanne felt the stain of blood upon her, the stain of blood for every man who had ever died under the sword, the guilt of every good man who was forced to kill in order to defend himself. The stain was always there. Ceravanne could feel her conscience whispering to her, though she tried to block it from her mind.

But how much more horrible would it be to have the Inhuman show her true waste and destruction, to live through the horrors of becoming a killer, to suffer the atrocities committed by others? How could Ceravanne bear it, if the Inhuman were to show her the misery her people suffered? How could the Harvester even bear to stand, to breathe, to speak while under the weight of such guilt. It was not the lies that the Inhuman told that so much bothered Ceravanne, it was the threat of all the damning truths. How could anyone bear it?

Indeed, the Harvester only stood gazing at the room, and the muscles at her mouth twitched. She drew weak, rapid breaths, and her eyes gazed around in bewilderment.

The Harvester was struggling for control, struggling against the Inhuman.

Gallen climbed to his feet, turned and looked at Ceravanne. His eyes had rolled back in his head, and slowly, as if fighting a great battle with himself, he whispered, “Leave us!”

“Gallen?” Orick said, gazing deep into his eyes. “Are you in there?”

Gallen said nothing intelligible, but his voice gurgled. And Ceravanne looked at Gallen’s mantle on the floor, realized that his mantle was still fighting, trying to block the Inhuman’s signals, just as Gallen was still struggling against it.

Ceravanne stepped forward. The Tekkar guard swung his sword menacingly, still blocking the path, and though the guard would not let Orick pass, Ceravanne suspected that she herself might have a better chance of reaching the Harvester.

Ceravanne crossed the room, pulled back her hood, and the Tekkar stood looking at her in her splendor. She hesitated for a moment, waiting for her scent to fill the air around her, so that her powerful pheromones would have time to work on the Tekkar. By nature, Ceravanne was aware of subtle forms of manipulation. Tone of voice, gestures, scent-all worked together to create a mood.

The Tekkar stopped swinging his sword, considering, and Ceravanne watched his purple eyes. There was a hint of widening, as if the Tekkar were surprised by her lack of fear, but his eyes did not stare beyond her, losing their focus, as so often happens when one is planning to kill. Ceravanne held her hands together and hunched her shoulders, making herself seem smaller. It was a pose that spoke at once of unconscious authority and vulnerability. Her beauty and scent confused the Tekkar with a sensual aura. Ceravanne had called mortal enemies together and got them forging alliances within minutes, yet even after thousands of years of experience, she could not be sure that her persuasive powers would work on the Tekkar.

“Let me pass,” Ceravanne said softly, as if reminding him that she had the perfect right to command. “I will not harm you, and I do not believe you wish to harm me. There has been too much violence already.”

The Tekkar’s lips parted and he looked back to the Harvester in confusion, and in that moment of hesitation, Ceravanne crossed the room, stood at Gallen’s side, rested her hand on his shoulder, and looked up into the face of the Harvester. There was sweat running down the woman’s forehead, and she held her jaw clenched, trembling. “Fight it,” Ceravanne whispered vehemently to both Gallen and the Harvester.

“Fight with your whole souls.” Ceravanne stepped toward her, and the Harvester reached for the knife on her hip.

“Please, not one more life!” the Bock said, holding its arms high. “I beg of the Ceravanne who once was, do not let this Inhuman force you into taking one more life!”

The Harvester stood, and beads of sweat began dotting her forehead. “I can’t … stop it. I can’t hold … it!”

Ceravanne pulled back her hood, exposing her own mantle. “Yes you can, for a moment, at great cost. And in that moment, you are free. I’ve spoken with those technicians who designed the Inhuman,” she whispered. “The memories it shows you are flawed, and all of its conclusions are lies. You are not responsible for the sum of human misery. I’ve come to bring you truth. Put on this mantle, and let it teach you peace. It will free you.”

She began walking slowly toward the Harvester, who looked toward the exits. Ceravanne feared that she would jump and flee down one of those corridors. The Tekkar guard moved uneasily, as if to intercept Ceravanne, and the Bock hurried toward the throne.

The Harvester raised her hands, as if to ward Ceravanne away. “No,” she whispered. “Leave now! I do not want to hurt you!”

“And I do not want to hurt you,” Ceravanne said softly, all feigned vocal tones aside. The Harvester would know if she lied.

The Tekkar guard moved to intercept the Bock, and the Harvester cried, “Stop him!” The Bock stopped beside Orick, unable to advance farther.

The Harvester pulled her dagger from her hip sheath, and its shining curved blade gleamed wickedly. Ceravanne recalled how deeply it had bit into her in the past, the cold poison at its tip. “I have killed myself before,” the Harvester whispered.

“Yes, to avoid being infected by the Inhuman,” Ceravanne answered sadly, realizing that her sister-self was planning suicide. “The Swallow has returned to her ancient land of Indallian. She came to bring peace and unite her people. But you’re infected by that which we both fear. If this is all you can do to save us, then do what you must. I forgive you.”

And Ceravanne saw the pain on the Harvester’s face as her muscles worked against her. She marveled at the Harvester’s struggle for control, for few could hope to fight the domination of a machine designed to manipulate the human will, and Ceravanne knew that the Harvester must have been fighting the Inhuman’s control for months.

“Forgive me and die,” the Harvester said, and she leapt at Ceravanne. In that brief instant, Ceravanne saw her mistake.

The Tharrin compunction against taking a human life was nearly unbreakable, but it did not extend to self, and the Harvester viewed Ceravanne as self. And in that instant, Ceravanne saw that the Harvester was relinquishing control. She could not have moved so swiftly otherwise. Indeed, for that brief moment, she was the Inhuman.

And a sudden shocking urge welled up inside Ceravanne. For one moment, she wished the Harvester dead. She wanted to hide the ugliness of what she had become from the world. Expunge it. Make it as if it had never been. While humans feared most the death of the body, Ceravanne feared more for the death of her soul, and she wanted now to unmake the thing she had become.

“No!” the Bock shouted, rushing toward them.

Ceravanne grasped the Harvester’s hand as her knife plunged downward. And for a moment they struggled, fighting for control of the knife. The Harvester’s face was a mask of determination and rage, the face of a stranger. Ceravanne turned and kicked at the older woman’s legs, trying to unbalance her, and very nearly succeeded in driving the knife into the Harvester’s neck.

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.

* * *