Stargate (33 page)

“You poor, deluded little fool,” he snapped back, his voice shaking with the intensity of his rage. “Playing at purity and loyalty so blindly while the rest of the universe bows its head to me! I have offered you unlimited might, an omnipotence undreamed of, and I will not do so again. A moment of magnanimity stayed my hand, but I need not have paused to speak kindly to you. Think of the chance you have let go by in the years to come. I will shut you up in the mountain. I will slow time and make you feel it as the mortals do, so that every second passing is like eternity itself, and I will fill the minutes with such yearning for me that neither peace nor sanity will come to you again. I will cause this moment to be relived by you, over and over, so that you may fully taste the consequences of your arrogant error.”

He surged toward her as he spoke, and she cried out, pulling her hair to hide her eyes, for the turgid gray and red light swirling around him had turned to rivers of blackness flowing around his knees, curling about his waist, licking from the gaunt, sickly paleness of his face. His mouth became a yawning cavern, and forked tongues of black fire slipped between his teeth as he croaked at her. His eyes had vanished, and in the sockets churned more fire, orange and black flames leaping. He was all the more horrible because the charred and ruined remnant of his beauty mingled with the thing he had become, and it was of Ghakazian that Sholia thought as she shrank away, Ghakazian at his Gate-closing, speaking silently to her of the ravished trance of death, the wooing compulsion to submission singing madly and unrestrainedly through his polluted glory.

She fell to her knees, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, groveling before him on the pavement, which had cracked and blackened under his feet, and he bent over her and screamed, “I will stay on Sholl I made it and it is mine! For ages beyond ages I have craved to feel it under my thumb, and I will prowl the fringes of the universe no longer! But you I will grind under my heel, Sholia, and surely you will wish that I had never formed you!” He turned and strode to the top of the stair, pulling his oily wreath of unfire with him. Raising his arms, he seemed to grow, a tower of menace that dwarfed the pillars, vaster than the mountain, more arid and desolate than the plain across which his shadow spread. “Shol!” he roared, and his voice boomed out. Once more the Towers of Peace shook on their deep foundations, and the city trembled.

Then a madness came upon the inhabitants of Shol, who woke from their trance of death to find death rushing to meet them. The Ghakan essences had thrust the weaker Sholan minds behind them and rose up to slay, the voice of the Unmaker boiling and bursting within them, a red goad of destruction. Mothers turned on children, kitchen knives in their hands; wives saw their husbands lurch toward them, hands curving for their necks. In the boats, out where the nomads rode, in the mines, beside the ocean death struck with a frenzied arm. The city began to scream. Blood streamered pink in the water. The Unmaker shouted to Sholia without turning, “You see? You hear? You dared to refuse me?” Then he laughed, and Sholia turned her head away and covered her ears.

At the moment of stillness Ghakazian stood on the plain, his heart racing with excitement. Sholia had disappeared into the Hall of Waiting, but he was certain that in spite of her words she would not close the Gate. His time of testing had come. Watching the birds wheel and settle unsteadily on the grass, he wondered whether he should follow his people into the city, go back into the palace, or simply wait and see what Sholia would do. He decided to wait. The path crossing the plain was too vulnerable. He lifted his shoulders uneasily, trying to free them of the same weight that kept the birds silent. He found it difficult to breathe. Apprehensively he glanced toward the entrance to the Gate. Plumes of gray mist trickled from the Hall of Waiting, and through them Sholia came running. Seized with a momentary panic, Ghakazian rushed to hide behind the frail cover of the shrubs before the palace. He knew that Sholia saw him as she fled up the palace stair, but she no longer concerned him, for out of the Hall a thicker smoke began to pour, clouding the being who followed her.

Time stood still. Ghakazian berated himself for his weakness, knowing that he must soon be vindicated, but his will had deserted him. Then he heard footsteps above, and with all the strength he possessed, he looked up.

Sholia and the Unmaker emerged from the dimness of the entrance hall, he with his hand on her arm, and behind Ghakazian's undeniable throb of joy at the sight of the one who had made him was a swift-rising wave of exultation. The Book spoke true! he thought feverishly. I remember! I saw myself thus, hiding behind the shrub, hiding behind Rilla's slender form, while the two of them welcomed each other. Through Rilla's dark eyes he watched them talking together while behind him he felt Shol tensed on the edge of its doom. The Ghakans are ready, he told himself. At any moment now they will begin to kill, and I must mount the stair and face the Unmaker. A thrill of anticipation mixed with fear went through him but quickly died, leaving puzzlement, for the Unmaker had suddenly rushed at Sholia, who stumbled back and fell before him, her face ashen. Then the Unmaker changed before Ghakazian's eyes. Black he became, and very terrible, and he leaned over Sholia like a hungry predator that pauses in its moment of triumph to relish every throe of its victim.

All at once Ghakazian felt something move in his mind, shift from its place, and as it jerked it rearranged his thoughts, dropping them into new positions, giving them new colors. He felt as though he had been lifted and taken apart, then settled gently in his former place, but he was not the same. He understood. The truth burst upon him, and he gripped the coarse branches of the shrub with both strong, feminine hands to keep himself from howling aloud. No! he thought aghast. It cannot be! I have done all as the Book commanded, and the Book is under the Law. It cannot lie. No, Ghakazian, it did not lie, something sane and cool whispered inside him. It showed you here, behind the bush. It showed them there, talking together before the palace. These things have come to pass. But you shaped the naked visions in the Book with your own imagination. You were the liar, not the Book. The future has become the present, and you have been led to your own destruction.

He tore his hands from the shrub and put them over his mouth, rocking to and fro, moaning to himself in shock and horror, and at that moment the Unmaker turned and spoke to Shol. A knife twisted in Ghakazian's heart, but before he could fully appreciate what he knew would happen next, the city erupted. Screams rent the air, voices thin with panic filled the streets with pleas for mercy, and the sighs of death were drowned in the tumult. Ghakazian cast himself full length on the ground, but he could not weep. I have been duped, he said to himself, but it is too late to redeem myself. Very well. I am lost, and nothing I do matters anymore. I will wait, and perhaps I may still find vindication and a measure of peace here on Shol. I must not care anymore. Bitterness and self-loathing darkened his mind. He dragged himself from the ground and began to shamble across the plain.

Sholia lay faint and exhausted, her cheek pressed to the tiling, which filled her nostrils with the stench of burnt stone. Shudders had gripped her body as he bent over her, but now he had left her to go to the lip of the steps, and the sound of his great voice bellowing out over the plain was somehow more terrible than the nakedness she had felt under the glare of his eyes. Shol woke to chaos, but she hardly heard it. What shall I do? she moaned under her breath. Oh, what shall I do? Painfully she dragged herself up again onto hands and knees, the black-streaked, icy sun-discs swinging from her neck, and began to crawl toward him. Fear was like chains around her ankles, holding her back, and mists of terror caused the sweat to run, golden and wet, down her spine, but she struggled to cover the short distance between herself and his black-clouded legs as he looked out over Shol and laughed. He spoke to her, but his words made no sense, thickening the curtain of dread in her heart. She did not know what she would do when she reached him, but she must not lie on the smoking stone in cowardly surrender.

Then, when if she had managed to raise a hand, she could have touched him, something spoke to her. A small, level voice came clear and sweet into her mind, bringing with it a breath of sunshine and warm laughter, and she came to a halt in amazement. You have two suns, it said. You have two suns. She felt a little strength return to her. Of course, she thought as she fought to stand upright, the pain of his fire all around her now. But, oh, my beautiful suns. He heard her rise and swung to face her, and she placed one hand on her sun-discs and steadied herself against the balustrade of the stair with the other. “I will give you one opportunity to leave Shol of your own volition,” she said to him levelly. “If you refuse, I will throw you out.”

For one moment the wheels of orange and black in his sockets became the eyes that she remembered, two hard orbs that reflected his momentary astonishment. “Can the created command the creator?” he sneered. “You are pitiful, Sholia. Bow before me!”

“I have two suns,” she whispered faintly, clutching the sun-discs as though she would crush them, and it seemed to her that with the frantic tightening of her fingers a tiny glow of new heat was born within them. “Two suns, Unmaker,” she said again, and all at once doubt clouded the ravaged face. For a long time she met his gaze, and he poured into her all the dread and fear he could muster, but one of the sun-disc's golden fire was growing under her hand, and she stood her ground. Below them on the plain the people of Shol toppled through the gate beside the Towers and ran aimlessly, some falling, some staggering in the direction of the cave-hollowed mountain, but sun-lord and Unmaker faced one another oblivious.

Finally he stirred and smiled at her slowly. “I made the suns also,” he said, but she took no notice of the hint of supreme power behind the words, for the voice had left a seed of courage in her, and she knew that come what may, he would fill her mind with unspoken lies and doubt-filled dreams no longer.

“Will you go?” she asked quietly, though her heart pounded as though it would burst, and he shook his head.

“Shol is mine, and here I stay.”

She closed her eyes and, feeling outward for the sun she had so lately fled to for comfort and renewal, spoke to it softly. Oh, my sun, listen to me. I ask for all your power, all your light, though it may mean the end of both for you. I hold out my hands to you now. Place yourself in them and obey me, I beg, for the saving of Shol and the continued preservation of Danar. If it is to be so, will you accept your death from me? She lifted her hands, palms upward, and again the Unmaker laughed, but she ignored his scorn, for a gentle, willing presence feathered out into her mind, and she felt her fingers spark and tremble. Then she heard the voice of her sun for the first and last time, thick and hot.
I know it all,
it breathed.
I give.

“How much you have broken!” she said aloud to the Unmaker. “How many long partings you have caused, in pain and sorrow!” Gaining her full height, she spoke one quiet word. Light burst from her, kindling in her hair, shooting white from her fingers, shining with a dazzling suddenness on her face.

The Unmaker stepped back, still smiling, as though he would humor her for a moment, but the smile left his face when she spoke again, for a sheet of flames leaped up around her, stretching from balustrade to pillar, crackling hot and new between them. “So you wish to play with your pretty toy!” he shouted. “But the game does not beguile me, Sholia. You are like a mortal who tries to hold back the wind with his naked palms.”

She saw him draw in a deep breath, and when he exhaled, a gush of blackness vomited from his mouth and turned back on him, and through the wavering shimmer of her own fire she saw it burst into spears of dark flame. He had not walled himself off as she had done. His very body seemed to erupt. He grew taller, a living tongue of writhing heat that was more bitterly cold than space itself. Only his face remained visibly the same, a livid, haggard oval staring at her from its heart. He moved his arms, sending waves of ice toward her, and her own fire turned from yellow to red and began to sink. The fire that would have seared all life from a mortal man was powerless to beat down the source of all fire, and Sholia cast about desperately in her mind to bring forth every word of power once taught to her but never used. The Unmaker shivered toward her, and she felt her skin go numb as he approached, but she held firm, and her tongue found another command. Hold for me, my sun, she begged. Give me not only your fire but your being also.

High above Shol the sun began to swell. It grew and began to throb, filling the sky with a pulsing whiteness, and though the wall of flame sank into nothing and vanished, the palace began to heat. The stone beneath her feet grew warm, and behind her she heard the cracking of pillars, the startled settling of walls and ceilings. He knew what she was about to do. “You will destroy yourself!” he screamed, but she, feeling her blood flow faster and hotter and her mind begin to hum, answered calmly, “So be it.” She would have spoken further, but the humming grew, taking into itself the power to form speech. She could no longer hear, and the blood driving through her body was like molten metal, flooding into every organ, changing, transmuting. He saw her gasping, and the breath that left her mouth flickered blue, but she did not halt the sun that poured its sentience into her as she had asked.

Her skin became transparent, and for just a moment he could see her veins and bones, the shuddering, laboring heart, the blue-filled lungs, the shriveling tongue and seething brain, all gushing a blinding white light that caused the fires that blazed behind his own eyes to cringe and falter. Then she seemed to explode with a sound like the collision of two suns. Rays of light burst from her, and he shrieked and, hiding his face, ran down the stair. The grass on the plain caught fire, little rivulets of red flame running swiftly over the earth like ribbons. At the foot of the sheer cliff into which the palace had been built, the trees flamed out suddenly like guttering red candles. The uppermost tiers of the city and the spires of the Towers of Peace blackened, crumbled, and began to pitch forward slowly to come crashing down. The sun, bereft of its essence, began to teeter in the sky. Back and forth it wobbled drunkenly, caught up in the throes of its death, and Shol was dragged with it. The earth shook. The mountain cracked and smoked. But the column of wild, whirling energy that was now both the sun and the sun-lord descended the steps, passing steadily through the sparks and falling branches.