Stargate (49 page)

“The purpose will be mine,” he said grimly, “but the hand will not be mortal. Yarne, come here.”

For a second Ghakazian was puzzled, but then he sprang between them. “Yarne does what I command,” he said coldly. “He does nothing of his own volition except the small things that belong to Yarne's memory. I command the Gate!”

“Wait.” Sholia's voice came low under the echoes of Ghakazian's. “This Gate is on my world, and therefore it is under my direct jurisdiction.” She seemed to be speaking to herself, frowning. “You were able to move it only because I was not here to stop you. It will obey me now, as it has in the past, and I need no sun's power. I cannot keep it open as it once was, but I can override your demands, Ghakazian, if I choose.”

“But you will not choose, will you?” Ghakazian said, and all at once it seemed to Danarion that the Hall, long asleep, had suddenly woken and was listening avidly. “You will not harm me, Sholia. Remember how I used to come to Shol, and we would walk arm in arm by the water, watching the ships? And you came to Ghaka, and I took you on my back and flew with you down my long valleys. We loved each other. Will you betray me now?” He flung his arms wide, and the brocade rustled. “This is all I have, the only life I will ever know. If the Messengers take me, they will annihilate me. Let me live, Sholia, let me live!”

All the old compelling sweetness was in his voice then, all the strength and vibrant beauty that he had once been, and it brought vividly to Danarion a picture of him standing in his own hall on Ghaka, wings spread wide, brown hair blowing in the draughts of the funnel, feet planted solidly against the rock, his face alive with the joy of his being. Sholia's eyes were closed and her hands outstretched in pleading.

Danarion knew then that he must not interfere. The situation had gone beyond his authority, and this final scene must be played out without him. He had been nothing but a catalyst after all, come to Shol to draw these two together as though his part had been foreordained. He held the knife and waited.

“You speak to me of betrayal,” she said, still with eyes closed. “You came to Shol with my destruction in your heart, and you broke me and rocked my world to its foundations.”

“I did not know! I was deceived!”

“And did you never doubt?”

At that he was silent. She opened her eyes and, walking to Danarion, took the knife from between his fingers and held it out to Yarne. “Take it and kill the Lady,” she said curtly, but her tears continued to fall. Ghakazian made as if to speak and then changed his mind. He drew himself up, and his eyes began to deepen and glow. Danarion felt the power of his will bent now on Yarne, and Sholia was oppressed by it also. She put a hand on Yarne's throat and stood firm. The room seemed to heat with their silent battle, and sweat ran suddenly down Danarion's back. Ghakazian spoke once. “Pitiless!” he whispered, and Sholia answered, “My trust in you is long dead.”

Yarne had begun to tremble. Groans broke from him as he swayed to and fro, and his empty eyes swiveled to his Lady and back again. Slowly, every inch an agony, his hand came out, and he took the knife. For a long moment its point wavered; then, with a shriek of torment, Yarne flung himself upon Ghakazian. The blade glimmered dully as he raised it and struck, and Ghakazian staggered back and fell to his knees, blood gushing from his throat. The Hall was immediately filled with the sound of the beating of the Gate, and each stroke was like the colliding of worlds. Danarion could not bear it, and he cowered down, his hands over his ears, but Sholia was unmoved.

A wind came howling, dashing against the walls, slamming against the frail bodies. Glancing up through wind-blurred eyes, Danarion saw that a hole had opened in Yarne and was rapidly growing, a black vortex of power out of which the wind screamed and the pulse slammed louder and faster. Then Danarion was engulfed. He found himself clinging to the lip of the Gate, sick with terror, for below him was the awesome nothingness of space. He fought to retain his hold, fingers and toes scrabbling frantically against stone.

From inside the Hall Sholia cried out in wonder. “The stars! And an open Gate! Oh, I want to go home, I want to fall through, even though I should die!”

Then Danarion found himself being hurtled bodily back into the Hall, falling and rolling, crying out as his body struck rock. A Messenger stood blocking the Gate, its colors writhing green, blue, and gold against the cold backdrop of the stars. It said nothing but simply waited. Pulling himself painfully to his feet beside Sholia, Danarion saw that Yarne was still the Gate, his arms stretched out, his head tilted back, his features contorted in agony. The emptiness within him that Danarion had sensed so many times was now ablaze with stars. The torment was not of his body. The Gate itself was wracked. Danarion turned to Ghakazian. The small corpse lay huddled at Sholia's feet, looking as frail and light as an autumn leaf, a crumpled pile of garish red brocade from which a white head lolled. The hair had loosed and now fell in a black silken shower over Sholia's feet. Over it an image towered, dark and indistinct to Chilka's mortal eyes but clear to Danarion who saw the lordly sweep of Ghakazian's wings framing Rilla's sad, shadowed face. “Now call them out, Ghakazian,” Sholia commanded. “Let them go wherever the Messenger decrees. Will you go also?”

The image smiled with Ghakazian's wry twist to the nebulous mouth, and Danarion heard its answer in his mind. I have no choice anymore. I will go. The wings suddenly flared, a canopy of darkness. The eyes closed. Danarion felt the power of Ghakazian's call go rushing by him, increasing in strength as it went, and for what seemed an eternity there was peace in the Hall. The Messenger veiled the stars, and they shimmered many-colored in its net. The others were still.

Presently Sholia whispered, “Stand aside, Danarion,” and he obeyed.

The air in the Hall became colder, and eddies trembled through it like swirling currents of icy water. The light, already dim, became murky, and Danarion realized that darkly transparent shapes were moving between him and the small square of sun at the entrance, their outlines barely visible. The Hall began to fill with a murmuring host. Frail wings rose and fell, flickers like dust motes catching light in the chill breeze. Faces hovered on the edge of his vision, there and gone before he could make out what he had seen. He pressed himself against the wall as winged and wingless flowed past him to the Gate, their thoughts a river of timidity, relief, eagerness, and regret washing over him. He did not know how long he stood afraid to move, stiff and numb. It could have been a day or a Shol-year, and still the essences came.

Just when he was certain he could bear the cold and his aching body no longer, the Hall began to brighten and warm. He bent to rub his shaking knees, glancing at Ghakazian, and saw one last wingless shape quivering before the Gate. The Messenger had glided forward to prevent its leaving, and its bewilderment rippled in Danarion's mind.

So you are the victor after all, Tagar, Ghakazian said, though the mouth remained closed. Your integrity has outlasted the fall of two worlds, and you are here to see the one who cast you down destroyed in his turn. It seems you are to receive what I may not. I wish you joy of it.

Tagar had no time to reply, for the Messenger was changing, having thinned and begun to curl around the man-shaped blur, its color deepening to a rich blue shot through with gold. Danarion stared, holding his breath. The gold splinters slowly formed ribs, a spine, the long bones of limbs, and curved gracefully to form a skull, and he found himself gazing at a golden skeleton that gleamed in the dim Hall. The blue of the Messenger gradually solidified, shrinking and lightening in color to lay itself over the bones, forming muscles, tendons, sinews. A heart began to beat, and Danarion could see the sudden rush of new blood along the myriad arteries. The Messenger withdrew, pulling itself away from its work and resuming its normal state, pulsing gently. Then a flare of brilliant red leaped from it, and a flush of skin spread over the body, hiding the bones and organs, clothing the outflung hands and fine-sculpted face, and Danarion saw eyes appear suddenly, burning with astonishment and delight. A young man turned to them, laughing, his hands flying over his thick brown hair, his unlined cheeks, the straight set of his shoulders. “It is I, Tagar!” he shouted. “Look at me!” He fell on his knees before the Messenger and then looked up at Ghakazian. “I love you still,” he whispered. Bounding to his feet, he ran joyously from the Hall and into Shol's bright, warming sunlight.

At last only Ghakazian, Sholia, and Danarion remained. Ghakazian looked to the Gate and then to the others, and gravely he smiled. Farewell forever, he rustled in their minds. They saw the Messenger lean inward, and Ghakazian incline himself toward the Gate, wings folding slowly, and he was gone. The Gate was clear. Sholia gazed through it and could not speak, and Danarion strained to catch a last glimpse of the one he had loved.

Scarcely had Ghakazian vanished when a voice came from behind them, and they whirled. Another Messenger waited, its smoke filling the Hall with haze and a whiff of far realms.

It is your turn, Danarion,
it said without inflection.
Your task is over. I will take you back to Danar.

“But I am not ready!” he blurted, fighting to recover. “I need time, I must prepare myself, I …”

There is no time. He is aware.

Sholia blanched, and fear lanced at Danarion. He is aware. Of course. The Gate is open, and the way into Shol is once more paved for him. But I am not ready!

He turned his back on Messenger and Gate, unleashing a flood of emotions. To go, leaving Chilka's body on the floor of the Hall like something used up, something worthless. No, not Chilka's body only. My body as well. He fingered his scars, the tender bruises on his chest. He ran a hand through his wiry hair and touched the contours of his face. “Give me an hour,” he said haltingly, grief strangling him.

No, the Messenger said. You
endanger me as well as Shol.

Something in Danarion broke then. “I care nothing for you,” he shouted, “as you care nothing for me! What is your danger to me? Nothing, nothing! It is my blood flowing beneath this skin, my heart beating under the bruises I have suffered, my voice rich with the life that throbs through my body. My body! My own! You ask me to leave a son I love, a woman I know only in memories and will never hold in my arms again. Give me one hour, you creature without mercy!” The spectrum of bright colors shifted, dimmed, became swirls of misty gray. “I have sacrificed my innocence on Shol,” he finished brokenly. “Grant me one hour.”

Very well.
The reply came in the same timbreless half-whisper. I
will take you to the lake.

Sholia stepped to him, and they embraced. For the last time he held her tightly, inhaling her warmth, her hair against his mouth, and then he pushed her gently away. “Hang bells in Shaban,” he said. “I would like to know that they are ringing when I think of the wind coming in off the ocean.” He kissed her and surrendered himself to the Messenger.

The lake lay as he had first seen it, a dank, rough oval on whose banks sullen bushes straggled, the sparse grass on its edge giving way to churned sand pitted with scattered rocks. In the distance loomed the mountains where Nenan and Lallin waited for him, where Sadal and Candar and the others had come seeking game and finding a mystery. He smiled wryly and began to pace slowly, his eyes on the spot where Chilka had lain dead, his agony past. He fancied that the bushes were still snapped and broken where the soldiers had trampled them, looking for his bag, but of course it could not be. Spring was coming. It had been high summer then, the earth parched, the sun pitilessly hot. He had been so thirsty … Danarion stood still. The lake smelled stagnant, but the odor of the wind was very good, bracing and cold with the flavor of the season in it and a hint of the ocean, and he shook back his hair and let it play on his neck. He bent and dug his hands into the sand, big hands, able to draw a bow and write notes, touch a son's face, draw passion from a woman, lift water to his mouth. He stood again and turned. “I am ready,” he said simply. He waited while the Messenger reached for him, its hot net snaking around him. The landscape began to slip out of focus as he was torn from Chilka's body. In an instant of panic he tried to cling to the warm friendliness of the cells that were relinquishing him so painfully, but the Messenger could not be resisted, and with a last jolt Danarion found himself standing on the grass, Chilka face down beside him.

Chilka wriggled forward, his bag tossed aside, his hands straining eagerly. Water at last, he thought, but before he drank, he lay with his face to the sand until his breath had slowed and his legs ceased to throb. I have run a long way, he thought. Not much farther now, and I'll be safe. Farewell, Ishban, may every two-mind in you rot. I'm so thirsty! The sun on my head is burning. He had stopped panting. He pulled himself to the very edge of the lake, leaning out to where his reflection met him, dark in the brackish water, and although he wrinkled his nose in disgust, he dipped his hands, and the reflection broke, rippling into fragments. He lifted the water to his mouth. So good, he thought, sucking at it and cupping his hands for more. So very good.

“Water tastes good when you're thirsty, no matter where it's from,” a voice from above him said. Chilka cried out in shock, rolled over, and leaped to his feet. He looked about wildly for his bag and the knife it contained, and the stranger chuckled. “No need for it now,” he said. “And you can stop running and walk home. There will be no pursuit, Chilka, I promise you.”

Chilka blinked at him suspiciously. He was tall, with golden eyes and long brown hair. Across his breast he wore a rich jewel that blazed in the cold sunlight. He was smiling warmly, and somehow Chilka found himself smiling back, his suspicions dissipating.