At his back, he heard Mason Flaherty's sudden scream and the sickening sound of a sword slashing through flesh, snicking through bone. Once, twice, and the head was off. Sully had done a poor job of it.
Gallen reached the edge of the woods, and there he stood panting. Hot, bitter tears were streaming down his face, and he found himself breathing heavily, gasping. He hadn't cried in ages, not since that first time he'd been forced to kill a highwayman three years before. Then, he'd cried because he'd felt that somehow he'd been robbed of his innocence, but with every killing since then, he'd felt justified.
Now, more than ever, he could feel that his innocence had been stripped away. He'd just killed three men, and though they were highwaymen and would have used their testimony to nail him to the inverted cross, still they had not held any weapons, and because of their ignorance, they had been powerless against him.
Gallen rushed up the hillside, under the shelter of an old apple grove. There he fell to his knees and began praying sincerely for the first time in years, begging God for forgiveness.
And as he prayed with his eyes closed, the amplified words hissing from his microphone, he suddenly saw a weak light before him. He opened his eyes. A pale-blue glowing figure stood before him, leaning against the tree. A wight.
Two weeks ago, the sight would have frozen his heart. But now he knew that it was only a creature formed from luminescent nanotech devices, like the glowing mask he wore from Fale. Yet this creature had the thoughts and memories of a long-dead human inhabiting it. It was a heavyset man with lambchop sideburns.
"I don't know who you are," the wight said, in a deep voice, "but this is an interdicted planet. By charter, you cannot be carrying the kinds of weapons you have on you."
"Then why don't you take them from me?" Gallen said. He didn't need a sword. His mantle whispered that it could incapacitate the creature with a burst of radio waves at any time.
"Och, there's not much that I can do against the likes of you," the wight answered. "But I can raise the hue and cry against you. I'll call you a demon. At my word, every townsman in a thousand miles would come marching to war against you. Sooner or later, we'd get you."
"You would let that many people die—just to rid this world of one man?" Gallen whispered.
The wight didn't answer. "We've chosen how we will live here on Tihrglas."
"Eighteen thousand years ago you chose how you will live. But you're dead, and this isn't your world anymore," Gallen said.
"It is filled with our children. If they wish to change the planetary charter, they may do so." "Yet you don't even let them know that there are worlds beyond this. How can they choose?"
The wight sat down a few feet from Gallen, folded his hands into a steeple and stared at them thoughtfully. "You know of the worlds beyond this, of the wars and horrors found in the universe. Of what value is such knowledge? Our people lead simple lives, free of care. It is a commodity that cannot be purchased."
Things had changed much in the past eighteen thousand years. New sub-races of humanity had been engineered. The Tharrin had been created and given leadership of most planets, ending the petty conflicts and wars that the galaxy had endured under the corporate governors so long before. Gallen did not know much about how the galaxy had been run millennia ago, and he wondered how much the wights understood about how it functioned now.
"I fear," Gallen said, "that much has changed in eighteen thousand years. When you built this world, if I remember my history right, corporate wars raged between planets, but mankind has come far toward making peace with itself."
The wight smiled wryly. "From your words, I guess that mankind has not managed to bring about perfect peace?"
"As long as men are free to do evil, and have the power to do so, there will be evil," Gallen answered. "But the evils of today are perpetrated on a smaller scale than in the past."
"In other words, you've cut the balls off the bigger predators. You've taken away their power."
Gallen considered a moment. He'd seen how heavily modified the Tharrin were, and in a sense they were no longer even human. Yes, mankind had stripped their leaders of the capacity to do evil. "We've modified mankind to some extent. Most people do not have the same level of desire to do evil that your people had in your time."
"Aye, we knew it would be done. It was such a seductive solution to the problem, that we knew others would not resist the temptation. You can place evil men in jail, or you can make the flesh a prison in itself where evil cannot enter. There's not much difference. But you're still restricting people's freedom."
So you created bars of ignorance, Gallen thought, and imprisoned them anyway. "The point is," Gallen said, "that the universe is not so dangerous now as it was in your day. Perhaps it is time for your children to join it."
"Mark my words—" the wight said, suddenly angry, "if our feral children go into the universe, in two generations they'll pose such a threat that none of your peaceful planets would want them!"
Gallen studied the wight, and realized that he had a point. Gallen had just seen the face of evil on his own world, and if highwaymen like the Flahertys were given power, they would take their criminal ways out into the larger galaxy. He envisioned pirating fleets and judges who had been purchased.
In the greater universe, others had chosen to reengineer their children, rid them of the desire to dominate and oppress others. On some worlds, he knew, huge police forces had been created to handle the problem. No matter how you looked at it, bars had been created, and Gallen's ancestors had chosen to control their children by giving them an inheritance of ignorance. Perhaps they had been right to retreat from the future.
Yet Gallen and Maggie had both seen the larger universe, and they had grown from it. Gallen had come home only to find that there was nothing left for him here. He had few friends. And something inside him had changed. He'd outgrown this place, and he felt free to leave now.
He thought of the Tharrin woman, Ceravanne, whom Everynne had shown him on Tremonthin, and he was suddenly eager to be off.
Gallen sighed, looked at the wight. He was an older man who had graying hairs among his sideburns, someone who looked as if the heavy burdens of life had bent him low. "If the only other worlds out there were inhabited only by humans," Gallen said, "then perhaps I would be content to admit that this world should stay as it is. But there is a race of beings called the dronon, and they will come here. Perhaps, someday, they will come to war against this world. If they do, your people will need to grow up, or they will be destroyed."
The wight gave Gallen a calculating look. "We saw one of your dronon not two weeks ago, and wondered how it came to be. I'll take this bit of news to Conclave. Perhaps we must reconsider how this world is run." He stood up.
"And I," Gallen said, rising, "will leave this world with all possible haste, without alerting anyone else here of the universe beyond."
"Not just like that," the wight said, shaking his head. "I'll not let you go at your own pace. We'll escort you, if you please. Just tell us where your ship is."
Suddenly, there was an uproar in town. Gallen looked back down over the small seaport. Hundreds of glowing wights were striding through the edge of town, past the fires and tent cities. The townsfolk were terrified. The wights only came to town if a priest tied someone to a tree for breaking the laws found in the Tome. And a person taken for such an offense never returned.
"My mother lives down there," Gallen sighed, realizing that the wight must have had a built-in transmitter. It must have called its companions. "I'll go down to say good-bye."
"I wish you wouldn't," the wight said with just a hint of force. "You can't stop me," Gallen replied. "You wear the mantle of a Lord Protector," the wight said. "If you would protect those people below, then you will leave now. It is against the law to wear such mantles on this world. You know that. And things have already gotten out of hand—what with off-worlders coming through the gates. But things aren't too bad. For now, we
will clean up the evidence of off-world intruders, and in a generation these shenanigans will all be forgotten, the stuff of legend. But if you go back to town and pollute those folks down there with more knowledge, we will be forced to eradicate them."
Gallen studied the wight's face. The old creature was not bluffing. Gallen pulled out the glowing mask of Fale, considered putting it back on his face, but decided against it, and then walked unmasked down through the apple grove in long easy strides.
As he passed the china shop, he looked into its windows and thought, I shall never see this place again. And as he passed the quay with its little boats pulled up onto the pebbled beach, he inhaled the sea air. He moved like a wraith through the streets, and all ahead of him, people stepped aside, and the wights drifted in behind him.
He stopped at his own home, and his mother stood outside the door of the little pine house-tree, looking more haggard and world-weary than he'd ever seen her. He hugged her briefly. "I don't know if I'll ever be back," he whispered into her ear as he stooped to hug her, and she reached up and managed to hug him around the ribs.
"Where will you go?" she demanded in a tone of disbelief.
"To another world, to dance with the fairy folk and fight demons." She squeezed him tight. "Be good," was all she managed to say between sobs. Gallen reached into his pocket and pulled out his coin purse, gave it to her. "The money, wedding gifts, the inn-they're all yours," he said.
Then he went into the house, retrieved his sword, daggers, and the incendiary rifle he'd brought home from his previous trip. Maggie had already gone to fetch her own things.
When Gallen got out of the house, Sheriff Sully came out of the crowd, and growled in a bitter voice. "You-you made me kill a man," he said, rubbing his hands on his shirt as if they'd been soiled.
"Not I," Gallen said. "I told you only to do with Mason Flaherty 'what you will.' You came here with murder on your mind, and murder is what you've accomplished."
Gallen pushed him away, and some of Sully's own men grabbed him, placed him under arrest.
Orick rushed to Gallen's side. "I'm with you, Gallen!" the bear called in his deep voice, and a young female bear padded along beside him. Gallen was glad to finally meet Grits.
Maggie Flynn was calling, "Out of my way! Get out of my way!" and Gallen could see her trying to break through the crowd over by the inn. Within moments she came huffing through the crowd with nothing but a small valise in her hand.
Her uncle Thomas nearly skipped at her side, and he came bustling up with his own bag in one hand, his lute over his shoulder, smiling. "'Tis good that I didn't even have time to unpack!" he told Gallen. Then he bowed to Gallen's mother and handed her his purse. "Everything that I own is now yours, good woman. Spend the money in good health."
Some wights had moved in behind the crowd. They'd gotten into the stables across the street from the inn, and they pulled out the bodies of the dead Vanquisher and Everynne's defender, then carried them toward the sea.
Father Brian pushed his way through the crowd, a look of profound fear on his face as he studied the wights who'd gathered behind Gallen. He looked as if he would speak, but he managed to say only, "God be with you, Gallen. I don't know what's happening here."
"Perhaps it's best if you never know. Look in on my mother from time to time, will you?"
Together, the little band began moving through town, and the townspeople parted to let them pass. Some of them shouted out, "God be with you, Gallen, Maggie," and "Go with God!" Their voices were high and troubled, like the voices of small birds that call querulously in the night.
It was obvious that the townspeople did not understand what was happening, but they were afraid. Only witches and sorcerers and those who knew too much were ever taken by wights, and they never returned.
Gallen looked about the town with a profound sense of loss, feeling as if someone had died. He wondered at his own numbness, at his sense of mourning, and knew that it was because everyone he had ever known, everyone he had loved and trusted and played with and hated, all of these people with their odd quirks and petty vices would be dead to him now.
And thus it was that he walked stiffly out of town, an army of wights dogging his step, a few loyal friends beside him. None of the townsfolk followed, for most of them feared that Gallen and his friends were going to their deaths, and none wished to share their fate. Gallen took out his glow globe and squeezed it, let it light his footsteps as they made their way into the forest.
Thomas stopped at the edge of the wood and whispered, "I want to give them one last song, Gallen." He sang thunderously, yet sweetly,
"Many roads I've traveled down,
And many more I'll follow,
Past lonely woods, and shadowed fens,
And fields too long a-fallow.
But when night breathes on the land,
"When fear makes my walk unstately,
I'll remember you, my friends,
And good times we've shared lately."
When he finished, Thomas waved good-bye, and the whole town shouted farewell.
"That was kind of you, Thomas," Maggie said as they walked, "to send them away with a song. It eased their hearts."
"Ah, well," Thomas said, "being as it costs me nothing, a song always makes a fine parting gift." After an hour they reached a secluded glen at the foot of a mountain. Lichens hung thick on the trees, and the leaf mold was heavy.
There, sheltered under the dark pines, lay Geata na Chruinne, an ancient arch of dark stone with dancing animals and glyphs carved into its side. The forest was alive with the blue and green lights of wights, circling the small group.
The air around the arch was cold, and Gallen fumbled through his pack until he found the gate key. He picked it up, realized that he didn't even know how to use it. He handed it to Maggie, asking, "Show me how to work this thing."
She thought a minute, punched in a sequence of numbers on the key, and suddenly the arch shimmered. A pale lavender light shone beneath it. Maggie handed the key back to Gallen and took her uncle Thomas's hand. "Come on. This way," she said.
They walked through together first, followed by Orick.
The small female bear stood and watched Orick go, apparently too afraid to follow. She had not voiced a word since they'd left town. Gallen bent and whispered into her ear. "There are marvelous worlds beyond the gate, but if you come, it is doubtful that you will ever return to this place. " He could see the confusion in her eyes.
"Tell Orick good-bye for me," she said, then she licked Gallen's face.
He sighed deeply, patted her head, then walked to the gate. She gave a short growl, lunged toward him just as he stepped into the cold light, and he realized that she had come too late, for she couldn't enter behind the key-bearer. Then he felt the familiar sensation of winds blowing, as if he were a leaf borne by turbulent storms between worlds.
Chapter 9
Orick stepped through the opal wind between the worlds and found himself in a clearing surrounded by a lush forest, thick with undergrowth. A cool dawn breeze whispered through the trees. Overhead in a sky full of lavender, twin suns rose above the forest, weaving shadows in the woods, while white birds swirled among the trees calling out in creaking voices.
Thomas was staring up with mouth open, and Orick remembered his own sense of awe upon first visiting Fale. "'Tis a sight to behold," Maggie whispered. And Thomas nodded, too dumbfounded to speak.
Orick looked behind him and suddenly a glowing white form appeared, like a mist streaming through the jungle, then Gallen strode into view, his face rigid and worn. The gate could not be seen from this side.
Orick waited, hoping that his bear friend Grits would come through, but the female had stayed behind. Orick gave a little bawl, and weaved his head back and forth as he tried to catch a scent of her.
"I'm sorry, Orick," Maggie said softly, coming to his side. She knelt by him, touched his brow. "She seemed so nice. And you've been looking for love so lon
g. I had hoped she would come."
"That's all right," Orick grumbled. Maggie seemed so distraught that he wanted to calm her. "I couldn't hope for any better from a she-bear. I left her alone with those sheriffs. How could I have hoped she would be more true to me?"
"She wanted to come, Orick," Gallen said. "But she was afraid. Don't blame yourself."
Maggie scratched behind his ears, and Orick licked her hand in gratitude.
Thomas stared about at the skyline. His lute case was strung over his shoulders, and he held to the strap with both hands, a gesture that showed his insecurity. Tall creepers climbed some of the trees, and a few orange birds began chattering loudly as they fed on berries.
Gallen knelt on a clump of grass, pulled out his map of worlds-a thin piece of film that showed a three-dimensional representation of Fale with tiny red gates displayed at various points. "We're not far from a gate to Tremonthin," he said, a tone of relief in his voice. "It's about two thousand kilometers. We'll need to go into town, hire a vehicle."
"What is a kilometer?" Thomas asked.
"Just a stupid way to measure things," Orick grumbled.
"It's a little less than half a mile," Gallen said.
"Do you think it's safe to go into town?" Maggie asked. She had put down her pack—for they'd just walked with them for an hour—and she was looking to Gallen.
Gallen shrugged. “I’ll not lie. It has been only a week in this time-line since you and I defeated the Lord of the Swarm. The dronon should have abandoned their military installations here or Fale, but that doesn’t mean that we’re safe.”
“Well, now, you’re the optimist today,” Orick said.
Gallen hung his head, downcast. Maggie knelt next to him, touched his knee. Orick looked into Gallen’s pale blue eyes, and for a moment he felt as if he were looking into the eyes of a stranger, there was so much pain behind them.
Beyond The Gate - Book 2 of the Golden Queen Series Page 10
