Stargate

by Pauline Gedge

  Now the Gate was visible, two corions facing each other across its width, and through it Ixelion could see the darkness frosted by cold starlight, as though he stood on Lix and saw the ice and crystals rearing glittering and exotically beautiful against deep space. He crossed the threshold, and the corions did not move. For one moment he paused, looking over the whole vast sweep of the All, the rock of Danar beneath his feet; then he leaped outward, calling to his sun. Bear me, carry me, bring me! he mouthed. I am wounded, I want to come home. He felt its response, a gentle, enquiring tug which became a grasp that tightened, a fierce clutch of protection that gathered him ever faster into its blazing light. For one moment he saw it, a conflagration, a rolling ball of searing whiteness. He thought that he flung out his arms to it and shouted, but in the weird, timeless confines of the invisible corridor he knew that he had no arms, no mouth, no body. I hurt! he told it. Heal me! But he knew also that healing was not in the suns, as it was not in him.

  Then he came to rest before his Gate. With a regret that he had never known he thought of the mists of Ixel, which shrouded his sun and kept its full glory veiled from him. He stepped under the arch, and the murmur of the water rose to enfold him again.

  At the mouth of the tunnel Sillix was waiting for him, sitting in the river where it poured in a smooth gush over the stone lip. Rain pattered on his head and dripped from his shoulders. When he saw Ixelion emerge, he rose, scattering droplets like sprayed flowers, shaking back his hair. Ixelion barely noticed him, and Sillix padded quickly to take his arm.

  “Sun-lord,” he said breathlessly. “Oh, thanks be to the Worldmaker! I have been waiting here at the Gate for two long months.”

  Ixelion stopped and turned, fighting irritability. “What is it, Sillix? I am in haste, I must go at once to my halls. Have you been there in my absence?” he finished roughly and Sillix drew back a little, astonished.

  “No, lord, of course not! You know that I cannot enter when you are away at council.”

  “Well, what is it, then?”

  Sillix’s webbed fingers touched his arm again, a brush of reassurance, a tentative, soft caress. “The fish are not right, Ixelion. I cannot say exactly what I mean, but they are washed up on the sands and do not move. We cannot eat them. They do not taste right.”

  Ixelion felt as though a cool, foreign hand had curved itself around his heart. Swiftly he scanned the divided, meandering river, the fog-clothed, flower-heavy forest, the tips of his towers, and the odd dull glint of diffused light on the half-hidden houses of the people. His eyes encountered nothing strange, nothing new. But he was conscious of change as his glance returned to Sillix’s trusting, relieved face. It was in the air, in the water, dissolving with the mist, unfolding with the colorless, complex blooms, a dullness, a tinge of weariness. It was within himself. Terror filled him, became one with the change, became another new emotion, despair. He did not as yet savor it slowly, in self-pity. He stalked warily around it in his mind, suspicious, afraid, winds of past and future tugging drearily at him. I have done nothing! he protested silently. I have protected the council, I have saved Janthis and the others from the danger of destruction! I, Ixelion, have done this great, this noble thing!

  Suddenly he became aware that he was glaring deep into Sillix’s eyes. “Very well,” he said with effort. “I will come and see the fish. They are sick, Sillix.”

  “Sick, sun-lord?”

  Ixelion tore his gaze from the uncomprehending, dumb beauty of Sillix’s rain-drenched face. “Show me,” he ordered, and followed Sillix toward the forest and the ocean beyond.

  The fish were lying on the broad sweep of the beach, cast up by the tide among the untidy streamers of dark seaweed. There were not many, a scattering of still, glinting shapes, but Ixelion could smell them long before he bent, and out where the ocean rocked toward the sand he saw more of them floating quietly, unresisting, waiting to be thrown up in their turn. Sillix stood by as Ixelion lifted one of them. The pale eye flicked once, the fish flapped in his hand and then lay motionless, dying. Ixelion placed it gently back on the sand and straightened.

  “What of the rivers?” he asked brusquely.

  Sillix stepped to him, and Ixelion again felt his need to touch, to be comforted. “The fish of the rivers are as they were, also the fish out in the depths where my son dives. It is only these, close in to the shore. The small ones. What shall we do?”

  “Bury them in the sand, and keep burying until no more are left by the tide. It is nothing, Sillix, a moment of imbalance, that is all. Have you eaten any?”

  “We tried, but they tasted sour. Is the seaweed good?”

  Suddenly Ixelion was overwhelmed by an urge to shout into the innocent face, to see shock in the bland, trusting eyes, but he struggled with his panic, his teeth clenched, his eyes on the fish at his feet.

  “Yes, the seaweed is good,” he answered. “Do what I tell you now, and don’t eat any more of them. I must go.”

  Sillix reached out for the sun-disc lying on Ixelion’s breast, but Ixelion had already swung away. Sillix’s webbed hand dropped to his side, and he watched Ixelion disappear under the forest’s dripping eaves, dragging yellow shreds of sunlight behind him.

  The water flowing out the doors of the palace was silky-cold and dark, and the hall was filled with green gloom. Ixelion stood on the threshold and shivered, listening to the voice of Ixel as he had never listened before. Even the fogs murmur, he said to himself. The flowers creak open, displaying their limp, pallid petals. The trees and vines suck at the sloppy soil with wet, greedy words. My hair squeaks under my hands, damp, limp, cold. As he stood there a picture came into his mind. He saw Sholia walking along the wide paved road that ran down through her city’s tall buildings to the harbor, her escort fell in behind and before her, carrying flags embroidered with Shol’s two suns, the gold thread and blue background shining as the wind pulled them taut. Her people came running, and they bowed before her, worshiping. She waved, pacing lightly and slowly down to where her ocean sparkled, sapphire and white. Sapphire and white, Ixelion thought, coming to himself. Her people honor her, pile gifts before her, fete her in great ceremonies, yet she is no more powerful than I, her brother. The water swirling about his ankles suddenly filled him with distaste, and he strode forward shouting, “Light! Give me light and warmth!” Immediately the sun responded. He ran quickly through the hall, along his passages, up his stairs, until he found himself beside the deep pool high above Ixel. Out beyond the rim of the huge window his world lay clasped in an embrace of rain and dimness. Is it still there? he asked himself breathlessly. Is it still safe? Walking softly, as though not to disturb something dreadful and unnamed, he went to his chest and, dropping on one knee, raised the lid. It was still there, resting innocently in shadow, a small gray metal box with a hinged, rimless lid. For a long time he gazed at it, many thoughts flitting through his mind, behind them all a growing desire to hold it, cradle it, that same desire that had flared new and hot when Falia spoke of it. A treasure of death. Did the secret of death, then, lie under his gaze?

  Finally he lifted a hand, and the lid of the chest banged shut. Sighing, he rose and stepped into his pool. The water closed over his head like a waiting caress. He sank to the bottom and lay on his back, his breath stilled, his eyes open, his hands moving with the minute swells caused by the river that fell down the wall and splashed into the pool. He did not direct his mind, did not know what thoughts to command. He saw Sillix, and the dying fish. He saw Danarion’s face, watching him at the council table. He saw himself, walking up the steps of Falia’s palace, whole and free, unfettered by despair, greed, or anger, and he saw himself walking down again, Falia behind him, his mind already sown with the Unmaker’s will. Then, all at once, he was on Shol, standing at the foot of the mountains, green fields stretching away before him, rippling in wind and sunlight. His hair was warm and flowing free, his feet were sunk in warm earth. He smelled the dryness, the heat, the strong twin suns pouring o
ver him undiluted. “Oh,” he breathed, lifting face and arms to the burning blue sky. “Oh, what delight, what unutterable pleasure.” Blue and white, not gray, not gray … Ixel was a wet, cold dream, dissolving in his mind like its own mists. Sholia should share this world with me. She has two suns, after all. I do not belong on Ixel, a poor world where my sun and I can never meet face to face.

  Light as a bubble, he drew his feet out of the soil’s grip and glided forward, scented wind filling him with intoxication, sun glittering in his pale eyes. He floated over the fields toward the lip of the cliff he somehow knew was there, and suddenly the ocean was below him, a rich carpet of blue and green, whitecaps dazzling to his unaccustomed gaze. A ship was passing the headland, whitewash gleaming as its prow split the water, its golden sails billowing. Singing rose to him faintly, calling up a vast longing within him, an unformed sadness. Just as he was poised to drift down closer to the ship, he found himself looking up through cool greenness, surrounded by the quiet words of the water in his pool.

  He rose in one clumsy, anguished movement, jealousy curdling inside him, his nostrils still quivering with Shol’s sweet, hot air. I did not command that vision, he thought, standing trembling on the edge of the pool. Where did it come from? But he knew, he knew.

  “Enough!” he called aloud. “I will take the treasure to Danar, and so be myself once more. Then the fish will not die, and change will once more wheel about me, not inside me.” He stumbled to the chest, wrenched it open, and lifted out the casket with fingers that shook. It weighed heavy in his hands, heavier than it ever had before, the steady sunlight in the room making no gleam on its dull surface, and it seemed to Ixelion that he held in his grasp something entirely Other, something outside and beyond the universe. It was aloof, lying there quietly waiting for him to make his choice.

  But if I take it now, he thought, then I will never know what it is. May I not just look at it, just once? No! something in him shrieked, wild with fear. No, no! But other voices clamored, voices of envy and lust. They hold you light, Ixelion, the rest of them. You are the sun-lord of a worthless world full of simple people, far from the wonders of Danar, the riches of Shol. What is the crystal of Lix compared to the fragrant woods of Danar, the breathtaking stones and metals of Shol? You are worthless to all but your simpering, stupid people, who worship you because they know no better. Do you not deserve a little dignity? A brighter sun? A drier world? Does Janthis give your words as grave a consideration as Ghakazian’s? He writhed in the grip of the words that came whispering, pouring into his mind, trying to catch the screaming denial behind them all and hold on to it, and so gain the strength to say with his mouth what he knew he should say, but all he could see was the vision of Sholia, encompassed by all the pomp of Shol, and himself gliding over verdure in full, hot light.

  Staggering, head down, he went to the window and collapsed onto the sill, the casket tight in his grip. Raising his head, he looked out. Evening was falling. It seemed to him as though evening was always falling on Ixel, the sun always divorced from the earth, the rain always pattering, the mists always hanging in the trees, the rooms of his palace, his hair; he even fancied that it seeped into his body, making it thick and cold.

  He tried once more to save himself. I was made for this world, he said to himself. My body is thin and supple as a fish. My feet and hands cleave the water as cleanly as those of my people. My lungs recognize both air and water. I am Ixel, its soul, its life. I was fashioned out of the water and the soil. Yet your blood is the royal blood of the sun, the insidious voice whispered back, and though the earth of Ixel is your mother and the Worldmaker your father, the sun is your other self. You long for it, you desire its heat, you thirst for dry land beneath your feet. “Yes,” Ixelion whispered back. “Now I do. Once I was content, but no longer. Why should I, out of all my kin, be so deprived?”

  He shut his eyes, and his hand moved to grasp the lid, lifted it, laid it back gently. Blindly he explored the thing that lay exposed in the casket. He felt a coolness and indentations of many shapes. He did not know what he had expected. A circlet of power, perhaps, or a vial full of some strange, magical elixir. Something potent that would burn his hand or explode knowledge in his face. But not this puzzling labyrinth of tiny hills and valleys. With a last shudder he opened his eyes and looked down.

  At first he could not understand what he was seeing, it was so simple, so ordinary, and he let out his breath in relief, feeling an urge to laugh. Falia, for some reason of her own, had tricked him, lied to him yet again. Then, like a wave of fresh terror, the indentations suddenly came together to form a pattern. Dread shivered over him, prickling in his hair, drying his mouth, and he slammed the lid shut and rose. Throwing back his head, he screamed and screamed again, the sound echoing out to fill his chambers with agony. The sun dimmed and struggled to rekindle, but Ixelion did not notice. He pounded his fist on the closed lid, crying. “Not this!” he wept. “No! No! Ah, not this!” The words came back to him softly, sibilantly, mingled with the fountains, slid down the walls and curved with the water that fell between the balustrades to flow over the floor of the hall and out into the river.

  He stumbled to his feet and ran, the casket held out before him in both hands. Down to his hall, out the vaulting door, into the darkness, still weeping. Straight to the Gate he sped, slipping on wet undergrowth, pushing aside the flower-ridden tree branches with his slim shoulders, splashing up the river to where it became imprisoned in the torchlit tunnel that led to the Gate. The guards saw him come and stood upright, the light flooding from him catching fire on their capes of scale, and he went by them like a wind, eyes wide with panic. Then, on the rocky lip of Ixel, out beyond the Gate, teetering on the edge of the universe, he stopped. If I take it to Danar, it will torment Janthis until he is impelled to open it, and then the Gate on Danar will have to be closed and the halls of the sun-lords will be inaccessible to the rest of us forever, he thought. The risk is too great. I will keep it here on poor, wet Ixel, least of the Unmaker’s concerns, where his malevolent eye seldom turns. All at once Ixelion’s feverish horror left him, and he felt as though a weight had rolled from his back to go tumbling out into space. His spine straightened. Slowly he turned back through his Gate and walked home smiling in relief, the treasure tucked under one arm. He was not aware that his world had grown darker, a steady dark like a soft twilight.

  As soon as he stepped under the portals of his doors, he knew that he was not alone. He stopped dead, fingers tightening around the treasure, eyes darting about the hall, but the water poured on gently, the mist hung very still high above. Was Sillix above in the high chamber, with more calamitous news? Angrily Ixelion waded through the hall and up the broad, water-filled ways to his topmost room, wanting only to deal with Sillix and his whines so he could be alone. He was so preoccupied with the certainty that Sillix stood beside his pool, that meek smile on his face, that he strode under the dripping stone without caution. Then he came to an abrupt halt.

  A man stood beside his pool. No, it was not a man but a Trader. Ixelion could see the outline of the window and the drizzle-drowned forest roof blurring through the semitransparent body, the long arms and legs. Around the opalescent head went a voluminous scarf, the mark of a Trader, and with a queer convulsion of his heart Ixelion saw that it was black, the ends slashed in brilliant orange. He could not move. He felt as though he had suddenly become one with the water that swirled and trickled around them both; he was melting, oozing into the endless, restless flow.

  “Who are you?” he croaked. “How did you get in here? My halls are sealed.”

  The Trader inclined his head, and the lipless mouth smiled briefly. “I greet you, Ixelion, sun-lord. As you can see, I am but a Trader, and in answer to your second question, which you ought to be able to answer for yourself, I am not hindered by any seal. I am not mortal and I am not immortal.”

  “Well, what do you want?” Ixelion rejoined sharply, the awful cloud of fear lifting a li
ttle. “If you seek crystal to take to other worlds, you must see the miners on Lix.”

  The Trader’s smile grew broader. “I do not seek goods for trade, sun-lord. I have come for something that does not belong to you, that is forbidden to all those of the suns. I gave it to Falia to take to the council, but she did not take it to Danar, did she, Ixelion? She gave it to you, wicked Falia. Now I will take it to Janthis myself.”

  Ixelion drew in a deep, shaking breath, his mind racing, the treasure in his grasp suddenly heavy and bitter cold, as it had been once before this day. He did not speak; he could not. But she slew you, he thought. She killed, she destroyed you. The Trader from Tran.

  “Come,” the Trader said more briskly, his strange, slitted eyes glittering. “Give it to me and I will be on my way. I serve neither black fire nor the council. I serve only the Law, and the Law states that what you have in your hands is forbidden to you until the end of the ages.”

  Ixelion swallowed, his fingers tightening about the casket protectively. “Tran,” he whispered. The Trader nodded, smiling again, and rounded the pool to stand close to Ixelion, his body shimmering like a waterfall. “I carried it from the ruin of Tran,” he said. “I was in haste and did not know whether the Unmaker had knowledge of the thing I found in the smoke and fire. I took it to Falia, believing that in her hands it would be safe, for Fallan’s Gate was still open. I did not relish being consumed by black fire.” His smile split his face, and Ixelion suddenly hated that smile. “I was consumed by white fire instead”—he chuckled—“but I am many, Ixelion. I am like the Messengers, not understood by the worlds, a creature of deep space, tolerated because of the work I do, but I am less respected than the Messengers. And rightly so. I do not die easily, even as the sun-lords do not, for I can make my body thin, so thin that fire passes through me, or thick as a tree to withstand time. I died on Fallan,” he sneered. “Oh, yes. I am not as strong as a sun-lord, or as powerful, but I have many lives. Enough talk. Give me the precious thing, and I will be gone.”