Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) (33 page)
Read Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) Online
Authors: David Farland
“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.
* * *
Chapter 25
“I don’t like it,” Ceravanne said the next morning, in the great hall.
“The Tower Road is our best chance,” Gallen urged, standing over the corpse of a dead scout. “The servants of the Inhuman have little knowledge of it. I remember it as a dark and dangerous track, a place of terror—one I would not willingly brave again. I was lost in the tunnels under the city of Indallian once, for many days—and so I think that the servants of the Inhuman will avoid the place. But you, Ceravanne, must have used the road. You were the queen of this land.”
“That was five hundred years ago,” Ceravanne said. “Even then, the road through the Hollow Hills was a maze. Few dared the tunnels without guides. And now, who knows what might live there? Derrits at the least would lurk in those caves, but many another folk are accustomed to the dark. What if the Tekkar have established an outpost? And even when the road lies aboveground, one must beware of wingmen. They’ve a strong taste for blood.”
“Yet the valleys of Moree are awash with the armies of the Inhuman,” Gallen said. “The word has gone out that a Lord Protector seeks Moree. Scouts by the hundreds are scouring the land for us, and by our poor chance, great armies are moving through the night. We cannot go over the open roads. Already, one scout has found our wagon tracks. We must get through to Moree.”
“And you think that it is better to face a hidden danger than a known one?”
“When the known danger is overwhelming, yes,” Gallen said.
“I don’t understand,” Orick said. “What are you two arguing about?” Gallen had done a bit of scouting last night, and had decided to use an old trail, the Tower Road, to get closer to Moree. The rest of the group was willing to follow him blindly, but Ceravanne had blown up at the news.
She said, “The Tower Road is an old road that united Ophat with the underground city of Indallian, which lies west of here, under the Hollow Hills. From there, the road leads farther west, through the Telgood Mountains to the very edge of Moree itself.”
“I don’t understand,” Orick said. “I thought we were already in Indallian. Is Indallian a city, or a country?”
“Both,” Ceravanne said. “Long ago, there were many city-states in this part of the world, so the name of the Capitol was often the same as that of a country. We are already within the ancient borders of the land of Indallian, now Gallen wants to go through the city, under the Hollow Hills. But as Fenorah warned, the city is a perilous place, and has been for centuries. None go there nowadays.”
Ceravanne looked about the room to the others. “We could take the Tower Road.” She sighed. “But much of it lies underground—through forty kilometers of stone. You, Caldurian, what do you say?”
“Indallian is legend to me,” Tallea said. “I not know if holds danger.” Yet she feared it. Many races lived underground, and they could see in the dark. As aboveground, the most peaceful peoples tended to die out, while the fierce races thrived. And if Tallea had to fight underground, she knew she would be at a disadvantage. Indeed, her wounds were not all healed yet, though she found she could swing her sword.
“It is not a legend to me,” Ceravanne said. “For eight thousand years, the city called to various peoples, and the Hollow Hills were carved with measureless tunnels. For long, it was but a peaceful city where folk of the underworld lived in harmony. Then the emeralds were discovered, and peoples flocked to the city in ever greater numbers. Even in its glory, when the city of Indallian was under my full sway, it was said that ‘no man knows Indallian,’ for no one could explore all of the many caverns in one lifetime. Indeed, there were rumors of strange and malevolent peoples inhabiting the far bounds of the realm even then.
“And I will be honest with you all,” Ceravanne concluded, visibly shaking. “I fear that place.”
“Still, three hundred years ago, I heard rumors,” Gallen said, “that one could travel the Tower Road for over five hundred kilometers—from Ophat to White Reed. And that is a crucial stretch in our journey. And you must consider this—the Telgood Mountains form a formidable obstacle. No army could cross it on foot, not even an army of Tekkar, so the mountains themselves will form a wall to protect us.”
“So that is why you brought us to this entrance,” Ceravanne said, gazing away toward the back halls. “I suspected as much. Yet the road is dangerous. In many places aboveground, it will have crumbled away. And belowground, many of the caverns have fallen in, floors have collapsed into chambers beneath. There is good reason that no one has taken that track in ages. And when we do reach the city of Indallian, what will we do for light?”
Gallen reached into the pocket of his robe, pulled out a small crystal globe, and squeezed it. A brilliant white light shone from his gloved fingers. “I see,” Ceravanne breathed. “Technologies from other worlds. And you are determined to leave the travelbeast behind?”
“I am,” Gallen said. “The closer we get to Moree, the more impossible it becomes to travel openly, and the beast only marks us. Do you think you can guide us?”
“Perhaps.” Ceravanne breathed deeply. “The road is easy enough to follow aboveground, and I know some paths below, though I am not certain they will be open.”
And with that, they were off. Gallen went out to the travelbeast and whispered in its ear, pointing back north, and in a moment it nodded its shaggy head and raced down the mountain road.
Then they packed, and headed to a hallway where a statue of a giant stood guard beside a great stone door. Gallen pulled mightily on the handle, and cold air hit them, smelling of dampness and minerals. Ceravanne held up Gallen’s glowing globe, and gazed down a stair that curved into the dark, and they began to descend, and to Tallea, the Tharrin looked as if she were a goddess, carrying a star in her hand.
“Wait,” Gallen said, and his voice echoed through the corridors. He went back to the room, hoisted the dead scout on his back. “We’ll leave it down below, where other scouts will not find it.”
Then they began their descent. The stair went on and on, and Ceravanne led through the dark at almost a run. Their footsteps echoed off the stone. Tallea was acutely conscious of the noise they made, and she strained her ears for sound of pursuit.
Twice, during the long race down, they passed side tunnels of poor make that had been dug in more recent years, and from one of them they smelled the acrid stench of Derrit dung and cold ashes.
Beside that door, Gallen cast down the dead scout, leaving it as a meal for the beasts, and once again, as she had over the past several days, Tallea saw the craftiness in what he did. The Derrits would certainly prefer the carrion of a recent kill to hunting a party of armed men with bright lights and sharp swords.
The tunnel seemed endlessly long, and the cold of the rock seeped into her bones. Even as she ran, Tallea could not seem to warm enough to fight this cold.
In two hours they came out of the cavern under the mountain’s shadow and found themselves on a broad road in the sunlight. Over the ages, stones had rolled down the hillside, so that in many places it would have been impassable by horse, but they were able to run and climb on foot.
Tallea’s side ached from her recent wound, and though the sun warmed her a bit, she found that it didn’t warm the wound. Instead, it burned like ice all along its length.
Still, they ran for hours, passing through more tunnels. Gallen took the lead, and twice he warned the others of Derrit traps—deep pits overlaid with a framework of twigs, then covered with hides and dust.
Tallea was glad for Gallen’s sharp eyes, for she herself spent her time watching the skies for sign of wingmen, and secretly she felt relieved each time they were forced to make their way through a tunnel.
Thus, they spent the day running, and camped in a tunnel by dark. Tallea’s wound throbbed through the night, and it heated up, as if it had become infected. She slept poorly, but was forced to run again at dawn.
That day, the road took a long, steady climb, higher into the bleak, gray mountains, so that the air was frigid, and they ran along a ridge that was incredibly steep and long. The mountain rose on their left like a wall, and dropped for five hundred meters below them. In places along the road, they found the splayed prints of mountain sheep, but no other sign of use.
That day they passed two ancient outposts, high stone citadels along Tower Road, and on one crenellated tower, twigs and leaves stuck out like a great nest, three meters across. Only a wingman could have carried such large sticks so far from the valley below.
Gallen called a halt, then crept up the crumbling stone stairs to the tower himself, with Tallea and Orick behind. The nest was old, the twigs whitened by age and rotted so that they could hold no weight, proving that the nest had been abandoned for years. But among the yellowed bones of sheep and deer was a human arm and skull, with tatters from a bloody wool tunic.
They climbed back down, hurried on their way, watching the skies. Gallen rounded one long arm of the mountain ridge, then dropped to the ground, warning the others with a wave of his hand to stay back.
Tallea dropped and crawled forward, and together they looked over the bluff. A wild white river churned through a gorge far below, and pines climbed halfway up the mountains in a green haze.
Sweeping over the canyon in wide, lazy circles, a lone wingman hunted on leather wings. Tallea watched the creature. Its underbelly was pale blue in color, so that it was hard to spot from below, but its back was a mottled gray and green. If it had been sitting high in a tree, with its wings folded, it would have been hard to spot from the ground. But from above, while in flight, it was easily discernible.
“It’s watching the valley,” Gallen said, “hunting for deer or wolves. We’re lucky that it’s below us.”
“Not much eat up here,” Tallea agreed. The wingman would not bother hunting this high road through the barren, gray mountains. She watched the creature, and wondered. According to common wisdom, all of the races on Tremonthin had been adapted from human stock to live on other worlds. But of all the peoples in Babel, she found the wingmen to be the strangest. They did not look humanoid at all. The creature was large, perhaps ten meters from wing tip to wing tip—much larger than scouts. It had a broad tail that it used as a rudder as it flew, and fierce, razor-sharp hooks of a bloody red were attached to its wings. Its long flat head was filled with great teeth that Tallea could see even from this far distance, and its scaly hide was nearly proof against a blade. And it was said that the wingmen saw other peoples not as kin, but only as food. One could sometimes reason with a Derrit, but never with a wingman.
They watched the creature circling the valley. It did not move farther west or east, nor did it seem inclined to climb higher. “I think,” Gallen whispered, “that it must have seen some prey down there in the trees. It’s probably waiting for it to come back into the open. It could keep circling like this all day.”
“Agreed,” Tallea said.
“We’ll keep low, crawl on our bellies if we must. We’re only eight kilometers from the gate down into the city of Indallian.”
Tallea looked ahead, feeling exultant. They had traveled far and fast in the past two days. The road snaked along the ridge, vertical cliffs above and below, following a U-shaped bend in the mountain. But Gallen was right—in the distance the road met with a great iron door in the rock, a door that stood closed.
“This foolish,” Tallea said. “We don’t even have bow.”
“There is only one wingman,” Gallen said, “not a flock. And I have my incendiary rifle.” Tallea had seen how much damage that weapon had caused on the ship, and she didn’t doubt that it would send a wingman tumbling in flames.
“How many fire arrows have?” Tallea asked.
“Six,” Gallen whispered. “And I may need to save two of those—one to slay the Harvester, one for the Inhuman.”
Tallea nodded grimly. Only one wingman—as far as she could see. But there might be dozens more around the next ridge, out of sight, or others roosting in trees below. It was autumn, when the wingmen often flocked together to head south.
“What of door?” Tallea asked, nodding toward the iron door in the distance. “What if is locked?”
Gallen bit his lip and did not answer.
Tallea’s wound was icy as it rubbed against the cold stone, and she felt deeply troubled. She recalled how the cold blade of the giant had pierced her aboard ship, and it almost felt to her as if the wound were alive, calling out for her demise.
She looked up the road ahead. The thin afternoon sun shone all along its length. There were few shadows thrown from rocks to hide in. Gallen’s robe had turned slate-gray, the color of the stones, and Tallea wished that all of them wore such robes to hide them.
“All right,” she agreed. “We go on bellies.”
Gallen signaled the others to come forward and drop low, and he crawled to the far edge of the road, inching along the stone wall.
The others followed. Tallea took up the rear guard, and the arduous journey began. The stones here had a peculiar, powdery scent, and they were cold and sharp, cutting into Tallea’s hands and knees, and the coldness of the stone was peculiar. Tallea calculated by the angle of the suns that light had been shining on the road for hours, yet it had not warmed. Apparently, the cold in the rocks went too deep for that.
Orick took the journey easily enough, inching forward, his big rump in the air.
After two kilometers, Tallea began to notice blood on the trail. Maggie had cut her hand on sharp rocks. It was rumored that the wingmen could smell blood at great distances, but it was only a small amount. Still, Tallea felt uneasy.
Another kilometer down the road, Derrit spoor was on the ledge, the first Tallea had seen in nearly two days, and it was fresh.
Normally the sight would not have left her feeling so uncomfortable, but at the moment, Tallea was struggling to hug the rock wall as closely as possible, afraid that the wingman might spot them. She couldn’t bear the thought of fighting a Derrit.
She could do nothing but crawl ahead. A croaking sound echoed up from the valley below, one wingman calling to another. Gallen waved his hand, called a stop. He inched forward to the edge of the cliff, and alarm became evident on his face.
