Children of the Gates

by Andre Norton

  Then. . . .

  Instinctively she braced her body as one preparing for defense. For out of the air—not in her mind, but rather in words she could understand, though they had a different accent from true Yurth speech—there came a message.

  “Welcome, Yurth blood. Take up the burden of your sin and shame and learn to walk with it. Go you forward to the place of learning.”

  “Who are you?” Her voice was shaken, thin. There came no answer to her question. Nor would there be, some sense within her knew.

  The Raski rolled over on the floor, lay staring up at her. There was no cloudiness in his eyes now, rather a fierce, demanding intelligence. He pulled away, to sit up, looking about him as a trapped animal might search for a way out of a cage.

  From the doorway sounded once more the scraping of metal. The Raski whirled but he did not even have time to get to his feet. Inexorably the door slid shut, they were sealed into this place.

  “Where are we?” He used the common tongue forged between Raski and Yurth.

  Elossa answered with the truth. “I do not know. There was a city . . . in ruins . . . but that you know . . .” She watched him carefully. It was true that sometimes some inner safeguard could wipe from memory all trace of the immediate past—if that memory threatened the well-being of the mind. To her ear his bewilderment suggested this might have happened to him.

  He did not answer at once. Instead he surveyed what lay about them, the smooth walls which stretched away to form a narrow hall, no break in them. He frowned as his gaze returned to her.

  “City—” he repeated. “Do not tell me we are in Coldath of the King.”

  “Another place, older, far older.” She thought that the King-Head’s capital which he named might have been lost in this place when it had been a home for men.

  He put his hand to his head. “I am Stans of the House of Philbur.” He spoke to himself, she knew, rather than to her, reassuring himself of his own identity. “I was hunting and. . . .”

  His head came up again. “I saw you pass. I was warned that when any Yurth sought the mountains I must be prepared to follow. . . .”

  “Why?” she asked, disturbed and surprised. This was a breaking of an old tradition and had an ominous sound.

  “To discover whence comes your devil-power,” he replied without hesitation. “There was . . . surely there was a sargon.” His hand went to his side where her plaster still clung to his flesh. “That I did not dream.”

  “There was a sargon,” Elossa assented.

  “And you tended this.” His hand continued to rest upon his side. “Why? Your people and mine are ever unfriends.”

  “We are not unfriends enough to watch a man die when we might aid him.” There was no need to explain her own part in his wounding.

  “No, you are content to be murderers!” He spat the words into her face.

  7

  “Murderers?” Elossa echoed. “Why do you name us that, Stans of the House of Philbur? When has any of the Yurth brought death to your people? When your King-Head came hunting us, swearing to kill us all, man, woman, child, we defended ourselves, not with drawn steel, but with illusion which clouds the mind for a space, yes, but does not kill.”

  “You are the Sky Devils.” He arose, bracing his shoulders against the wall of that hall, facing her as a man might face great peril when his hands were empty of any weapon.

  “I do not know your sky devils,” she returned. “Nor do I mean any harm to you, Stans. I have come hither by the custom of the Yurth and for no reason which means ill to you and yours.” She was eager to get on, to obey the voice which had welcomed her here. That compulsion which had led her to the mountains, and, in turn to the dome, had become an overwhelming urge to go on to some inner place which would show to her what she must learn.

  “The custom of the Yurth!” His mouth moved as if he would spit upon her even as had the girl in the town. Anger blazed out of him, but it was not that madness which had controlled him in the ruins. This was natural and not the result of possession.

  “Yes, the custom of the Yurth,” Elossa returned quietly. “I must complete my Pilgrimage. Do I go in peace to do that? Or is it that I must set mind-bonds upon you?” She believed that she really could not do so. Her energy was far too sapped by what she had called upon to aid her in escape. But she must not let him realize that, and she knew that, above all else, the Raski feared mind-touch for any reason.

  However, she could not read any fear in him now. Had he realized in some manner that her threat was an empty one?

  “You go.” He stood away from the wall. “I also come.”

  To refuse him would mean a confrontation either at mind level (which she was very dubious about winning) or on the physical plane. Though her thin body could endure much, the thought of such a contact by force was one any Yurth would find revolting. Touch, except for very special reasons and at times when one was completely relaxed, no Yurth could long endure.

  She did not know what lay before her; that it was an ordeal, a testing of her kind she did not doubt. What might it be for a Raski intruder? She could envision traps, defenses against one of another race or species which could slay—either mind or body or both. All she could do was warn.

  “This is a sacred place of my people.” She used the term which he must understand. Though the Yurth had no temples, worshipped no gods that had any symbols, they recognized forces for good and evil, perhaps too removed from human kind to be called upon. The Raski did have shrines, though what gods or goddesses those harbored the Yurth neither knew nor cared. “Do your temples not have sites of Power which are closed to unbelievers?”

  He shook his head. “The Halls of Randam are open to all—even to Yurth, should such come.”

  She sighed. “I do not know what barriers for a Raski may be raised here. I warn, I cannot foresee.”

  His head was held proudly—high. “Warn me not, Yurth woman! Nor believe that where you go I fear to follow. Once my House dwelt in Kal-Nath-Tan.” He made a gesture toward the door through which they had come. “Kal-Nath-Tan which the sky-devils slew with their fire, their wind of death. It is told in the Hearth-room on my clan house that we once sat in the High Seat of that city and all within raised shield and sword when they cried upon our name. I am the last to bear the sword and wear the name that I do. It would seem that Randam has ordained that I be the one to venture into the heart of the sky-devil’s own place.

  “Other men of the clan have come seeking. Yes, we have followed Yurth hither. One in each generation has been bred and trained to do so.” He stood away from the wall, straight and tall, his pride of blood enwrapping him as might the state cloak of the King-Head. “This was my geas set upon me by the very blood within my veins. Galdor rules in the plains. He sits in a village of mud and ill-laid stone. While his House of Stitar was even not numbered in the shrine of Kal-Nath-Tan. I am no shieldman of Galdor’s. We of Philbur’s blood raise no voice in his hall. But it is said in the Book of Ka-Nath which is our treasure: there shall rise a new people in the days to come and they will rebuild what once was. Thus we have sent the Son of Philbert each generation to test the worth of that prophecy.”

  Oddly he seemed to grow before her eyes, not in body but in that emanation of spirit to which the Yurth were sensitive. This was no hunter, no common plains dweller. There was that in her which recognized a quality which she had not been aware any Raski possessed. That what he said he believed to be the truth she did not question. Nor was it beyond possibility. The very fact that he had been so possessed by the hatred and need for vengeance which hung like a cloud of swamp fog here could be because of some ancient blood tie with the long dead.

  “I do not deny your courage, nor that you are of the blood of those who once dwelt in this place you give name to, but this is Yurth.” She gestured to what lay about them. “Yurth may have set defenses. . . .”

  “The which may act against me,” he interrupted her quickly. “That is true. Yet it
is set upon me—a geas as I have said—that I must go where the Yurth who comes here goes. Never before has one of us been able to penetrate within this place. Yurth has died, and so have those of the House of Philbur, but none of my clan have won so far. You cannot keep me from this now.”

  She could, Elossa thought. It was plain that this Raski did not understand the breadth and depth of Yurth mind control. Only in her at this moment there was not enough strength to take him over or immobilize him against his will. She schooled herself against any concern. He swore he would do this thing; very well, let any ill results from his folly be upon his own head. This time she was in no manner to be held in blame.

  Elossa turned and started down the hall. She was aware, without turning to look, that Stans followed. It was time to forget about him, to concentrate all which remained of her near-exhausted Upper Sense on what lay ahead.

  She opened her mind fully, waiting to pick up a guide. Elossa fully expected to find such, but nothing came in reply to her questing. The dome might be as sterile and dead as the ruins her companion had named Kal-Nath-Tan. The hall ended in what appeared to be blank wall.

  Still this was the only way and she must follow it to the end. However, as she was still a step or two away from that dead end, the wall broke open along a line she had not seen, a part of it moving to her left and leaving the way open.

  There was a light within this place which came from no bowl lamp or torch, rather from the ways themselves. So now she did not face darkness, rather a well in which a stair wound around to a center pole. Part of it went down, the rest climbed to disappear through a hole above. Elossa hesitated and then made her choice to go up.

  The climb was not too long, bringing her out in a room where she stood looking around her with a heart which suddenly beat faster. This chamber was totally unlike the bare caves of the Yurth or their summer-time huts of woven branches, just as it was different from the squat, dull dwelling of the Raski.

  It was not bare. Around the circular walls stood set boards covered with opaque plates. Before these, at intervals, were seats. While one section of the wall itself was a huge plate, much larger than all the rest, confronted by two seats side by side. Directly behind these twin seats was a taller one of such importance that it drew her eyes in compelling way.

  Hardly knowing why she did, Elossa crossed to stand with her hand resting on the back of the chair. Her touch alerted at last what she had been seeking—a guide. Once more there rang the deep “voice” which had greeted their entrance.

  “You of Yurth, you have come for the knowledge. Be seated and watch. No longer shall one of you look upon the stars which were once your heritage, now you shall see rather what was wrought on this world and what part those of your blood played in it. For it was recorded and it comes from out of memory banks—that you may learn. . . .”

  Elossa slipped into that throne-like seat. Before her stretched the wide screen. Now she collected her whirl of thought.

  “I am ready.” But she was not; there was a rising sense of something far more potent than uneasiness, this was the beginning of fear.

  On the opaque screen before her there was a flicker of light which spread out from a center point to cover the plaque. The light vanished. She looked out upon a vast stretch of darkness in which there were only a few clusters of tiny, brilliant points.

  “The star ship Farhome, in the colony service of the Empire, Year 7052 A.F.” Impersonal that voice, with nothing of human in it. “Returning from placing a colonial group on the third planet of the Sun Hagnaptum, three months out in flight from base.”

  A star ship! Elossa licked her lips. Stars there were to be seen, yes. Also she had been taught that far away and small as they looked in the night sky, they were in truth suns, each perhaps with worlds, such as this on which she now stood, locked in patterns of orbit about them. But never had it been suggested to her that man might actually cross the vast void of space to visit another of those planets.

  “On the fifth time cycle,” continued the voice, “there was radar contact made with an unknown object. This was identified as an artifact of unknown origin.”

  On the surface of the picture before her came into view a small object which grew quickly larger and larger, leaping toward the screen she watched until she involuntarily flinched.

  “Evasive tactics proved valueless. There was crippling contact made. A quarter of the crew of the Farhome were killed or injured by that encounter. It was necessary to set down on the nearest planet, since the matter transferer was completely wrecked.

  “There was a planet just within range which offered a possible refuge.”

  Now a globe snapped into view, grew larger and larger, until first it filled the screen, and then continued to enlarge in one portion, Elossa could see, until mountains and plains were thoroughly visible.

  “A site away from any inhabited section was chosen for a landing. Unfortunately there was a human error in the data given the computer control. The landing was ill-chosen.”

  Another change appeared in the picture. Rushing toward her now were mountains, cupping a piece of level territory. Situated there—the city! Surely that was, though strange when viewed from the air above and so, to her, out of focus, the same city she had seen in her dream.

  Faster and faster the picture produced more details, spread out farther. They were coming down on the city! No!

  Elossa cried that aloud and heard her voice ring around the chamber. Fire spread outward in a great fan, bit down into the city. Then all was fire, and, in that instant, the screen went dead.

  “More of the ship’s people were killed by a bad landing,” the voice continued. “The ship itself could not be raised from where it had crashed. The city. . . .”

  Once more the screen came alive and Elossa looked upon horror. She could not even control her eyes to close them against that view. Fire—the impact of the globe ship itself—death spread outward from where it had set down.

  “The city,” continued the voice, “was slain. Those who survived were in shock. All they had left was mad hatred for what had been done to them. They were warped, maddened by the blow. Their condition was an infection, a disease.”

  Elossa witnessed, unable to turn away, other terrors. The issuing forth of the ship’s people to try to aid, their hunting down and slaying by the insane natives. Then came degeneration of those natives, eaten by a trauma which spread outward from the dead city, infecting all that came in touch with its fleeing people, the fall of a civilization.

  The people of the ship, the handful that remained, gathered together, accepted the burden of the wrong they had done. Though it was the fault of only one, yet they took upon them all the responsibility. The girl saw them using certain machines within the ship, deliberately turning upon themselves a power she could not understand, resulting in the punishment they sought. Never again could those so treated by the machines hope to rise to the stars. They were earthbound on the world they had ravished, whose people they had broken.

  However, from the use of the machines which forbade them flight there came something else. Within them awoke the Upper Sense, as if some mercy had been so extended to lighten the burden of their exile.

  “There is a reason for everything,” the voice continued. “As yet Yurth blood have not found the final path they must walk. It is laid upon them never to stop the seeking. It may be given to you, who have made the Pilgrimage now, to find that path, to bring into light all those who struggled in the darkness. Search—for some time there will be such a discovery.”

  The voice was still. Elossa knew without being told that it would not speak to her again. There flowed in upon her such a sense of loss and loneliness that she cried out, bowed her head to cover her face with her hands. Tears flowed to wet the palms of those hands. It was such a loss which even the death of someone she was kin to could not equal. For among the Yurth there were no close ties, each was alone within himself, locked, she saw now, in a prison she had neve
r understood before. Until this moment she had accepted this loneliness without being aware of it. That, too, the machine which had awakened the Upper Sense had left with them as dour punishment.

  She could feel now, deep in the innermost part of her a glimmering of need. What need? Why must the punishment be laid upon them over and over, generation after generation? What was it that they must seek in order to be entirely free? If not to reach the stars from which they had been exiled, then here, that they need not always walk apart—even separate always from their own kind?

  “What must we do?” Elossa dropped her hands, and stared at the dark and lifeless screen. She had not used mind-speech, her demand had been aloud, delivered to the dead silence of the room.

  8

  Elossa did not expect any answer. She was certain she would never hear that voice again. Whatever result might come from this widening of her knowledge would be born from her thoughts and actions alone. Slowly she arose from the chair. Just as the Upper Sense had been drained by her exertions to reach this end of her quest, so now was hope and belief in the future ebbing from her.

  What was left for the Yurth? They, whose blood had once dared the star ways, were planted forever on a world which hated them—outcasts and wanderers. Of what purpose were they? Better that they take steps now to erase their existence. . . .

  Bleak and bitter thoughts, yet they clung to her mind, made the world look gray and cold.

  “Sky-devil!”

  Elossa turned to meet the eyes of the Raski. She had forgotten him. Had he seen what she had been forced to witness, the destruction of the world which had been that of his blood and kin?

  She held up her hands, empty and palm out. “Did you see?”

  Had the pictures on the screen been for her alone, cast there by a mental force denied his kind? Now he tramped forward. The madness did not haunt his eyes, he was all man, not possessed by any emanation from the dead. His face was sternly set—and she could no longer use a mind probe to read his thoughts! It was as if he, too, had one of the barriers the Yurth could set about them.