Stargate

by Pauline Gedge

  Outside on Ghaka the sun sank, and as the last of its light left the hall, Mirak dropped through the funnel and came to stand warily before him. They eyed each other in the soft twilight.

  “It is done,” Mirak said. “They listened, but they did not believe. We had to throw them over as you commanded.”

  “It is done,” Ghakazian echoed, and Mirak heard weariness, even boredom in the deep tones. The body of the sun-lord seemed heavier somehow, and the graceful limbs worked sluggishly, as though the sun-fired blood that used to race through his veins had begun to cool and lose its potency. “So the valleys are empty, but the roads …” He stopped and licked his lips with a dry tongue. “The roads are full, and the Gate stair is crowded. Now we come to the final moment. I and I alone will make the skies as empty as the earth. Will you die here, Mirak, or will you go home to Maram?”

  Mirak began to back away. “I had thought …” he croaked, but Ghakazian cut him short.

  “I do not ask you to think,” he sneered. “Did you think that you would pass the Gate in your handsome body, with your glorious black wings? No, you did not, and yet you hoped to, didn’t you? It is your choice, Mirak. Because of my regard for you I will allow the fire to pass you by, and if you wish, you may remain alone on Ghaka, and all the sky will be yours forever. Have you lost the courage to stand by me on Shol? Did you think that I was playing a little game?”

  The sneer had twisted Ghakazian’s full lips into a grimace, but Mirak did not see. Nor had he heard but one word which had stamped itself on his consciousness and was eating deeper into his brain.

  Fire.

  Fire, the sun-lord had said.

  He tried to answer, choked on the sudden fear that rose to engorge his throat, then turned and ran, tripping as he fell out under the arch, plummeting through the clouds like a flung stone before he found his balance and clumsily opened his wings. Only the reflexes of his muscles kept him flying. He was numb with fear. He tumbled onto the little lip of rock before his cave, fell to his knees, and with wings drooping crawled to find a corner to fit his back against. I knew, he thought desperately to himself. Of course I knew. But I was blind and stupid then. I do not want to give up my body. I do not want to die.

  Ghakazian walked to his arch and looked out. Clouds moved quickly under him, as though hurrying to some unknown meeting, and as the sky cleared he saw the vague humps of the peaks crowned with the ancestors, their tips silvered in starlight while below, the mountains shivered down into blackness. Nothing moved under his piercing eye. The air smelled stale and used up.

  He shook out his feathers, steadied himself on the edge of nothingness, and held both arms before him, rigid from fingertips to shoulders. Before he spoke, he found his mind wandering to the day when he had returned to Ghaka from the closing of Ixel’s Gate and had hovered by Mirak’s cave entrance. He had called gaily, and Mirak had come out to stand before him, tall and brown, healthy and smiling, hair straggling black over gleaming wings, amber eyes alight with pleasure. He had asked for rain. At that memory Ghakazian’s arms loosened for a moment. He heard Mirak’s voice again, young and strong and full of an innocent excitement: Hira, Maram! It is going to rain.

  Mirak has changed since then, he thought. He cowers when I look at him, he whines when I speak. We have all changed. Annoyance shot through him as he saw Mirak run once more from the hall, bent over like a craven beast, and his arms stiffened again. His chin rose.

  “It is going to rain,” he hissed aloud. “Oh, yes, Mirak, it is going to rain. But this time you will not welcome it, and then … Then for the Gate.”

  He called to his sun. He did not address it as a brother but commanded sharply as a master, clearing his mind of all save the link that joined them. He felt its enquiring, glad quiver, and greeted it silently. Then he spoke again with a slow, deliberate emphasis, putting together words of antagonism and destruction never heard before on Ghaka. The drifting clouds suddenly raced away from him. Even the night darkness seemed to let go its hold of his feet and slip farther down the mountain. The sun hesitated, its doubt a mushroom burgeoning in him, and it probed his command shyly.

  He repeated the order abruptly, pushing away the little flurries of affection, and then he heard its voice. Like a liquid tongue of flame drawn from a fire, like hot yellow syrup pouring slowly, it oozed over him.

  No, it breathed, a scalding sigh. No, Ghakazian.

  For a moment he was numb with shock. In all the eons since he and the sun had burst into life, it had never spoken to him, and he had not known, or had forgotten, that the suns could form words. He had loved it as a lamb, a puppy, a young and playful being brimming with an eagerness to please and to be loved by him, though the Worldmaker had in fact taken from its own energies to create him.

  He became angry. “You must obey me!” he snarled. “You are unable to refuse. I have power over you, and you dare not deny me!”

  He stood still, and its anxious turbulence made him close his eyes. It whimpered softly, it sighed, and he felt its presence leave him. Its last impression on him was one of hurt, of wounding, but he brushed aside its sorrow.

  There was a pause. He waited patiently. Then out of the darkness a rain began to fall. Slowly and lazily at first, then faster it came, a hail of orange balls sizzling and leaping around him. Briefly he was reminded of the bursting of the haeli pods on Danar when in fragrant red fire the seeds were showered into the autumn air. The calm night broke into dancing, brilliant light which caused the shadows to gyrate as though the mountains themselves were tugging free of the earth and the valleys were heaving up and down like an ocean. A wind came too, a searing, humming blast that scorched the grass and shriveled the leaves on the tossing trees. Still Ghakazian waited. Night was dismissed. Wherever his glance traveled, there was light, not the bright sunlight of a summer day but the harsh, unreal glow of naked fire. He spoke again, and with a hiss the balls rolled away from him, crackling through the smoking air, seeking something to devour. One by one they found the caves that honeycombed the crags and peaks, and with a crash and a hungry hot roar they entered. Ghakazian folded his arms and leaned against his archway.

  Then the screaming began. Not the constant, sullen whine of friction but the spasmodic outcry of flesh in agony. All at once the cave mouths were candle-lit, the sides of the mountains flickered in reflection. The winged ones staggered over their thresholds. One by one they toppled, wings streaming fire, flames sparking in brittle hair, skin blackening. Rain fell again from crag to scorched earth, now a shower of jerking, red-wrapped bodies. The tiny bonfires that littered the floors of the valleys burned fiercely for a while, and one by one died away. Darkness crept back, laden now with the stench of bubbling flesh and a curling, oily smoke. “Sun,” Ghakazian whispered. “Sun?” But the sun did not respond. There was a rumble like thunder very far away, and then silence.

  Ghakazian spread his wings and, taking to the sky, circled the crags slowly. The cave mouths gaped at him, dark and empty, and the sides of the mountains were smeared in wet soot that dribbled downward like black tears. Satisfied, he beat his way toward the Gate, arrowing swiftly over road and river, knowing that though Ghaka seemed to lie vacant and exhausted beneath him, he was not alone. He flew steadily until the Gate mountain loomed ahead. He slackened his pace, fluttered carefully up the face of the peak, and when he found a small ledge that jutted halfway up it, he alighted, standing easily and looking out over the approach road and the wide vista of valley that opened to each side of it.

  The night was waning. He had not been aware of the passage of time, but now a grayness was spreading slowly like a pool over the sky and would soon seep down to the land also. He rested for a while, reviewing the night and the afternoon before it, and as he pondered a feeling of impending climax grew in him, a slow tide of creeping doom that he welcomed. I have come far, he said to himself, since I first took the Book from Ixelion’s damp floor. It was fate that moved my hand that day. He did not ask himself just what he
meant by fate, and though he had never used the word before, it gave him a quick flash of security, an assurance that he had taken the right path. Now, he thought. They are there below me. They wait without volition of their own, without substance, and before my sulky sun rises on Ghaka, my people will have conquered the Gates. They will be on Shol. I have done more in the cause of light and truth in one month than the council has been able to do in a hundred thousand. Now it is time.

  He glanced out at the horizon. The soft light had strengthened, pushing through the thinning smoke, and the accompanying breeze wafted the foul odors away from the Gate mountain. Ghakazian looked down and laughed out loud. Now the riddle in the Book is solved, he thought. I am about to address an army though the valley before me and the road winding through it is deserted and still. Oh, wise Book! Oh, mighty Ghakazian, that I should have put my faith in it, and in my intellect. “Mirak!” he shouted, the name echoing mournful and thin against the rocks. “Come up to me! Now you may stand beside me and receive your destiny from my hands!”

  No voice answered him. No bustle of eager wings cut the hush of early morning. But Ghakazian felt the ledge suddenly fill with a cold presence, and the shadow in which he stood acquired a sentience. He was not afraid. He had done this thing. He was the master.

  “Tagar!” he called again. “Old one skulking by the Gate! I adjure you now to come!” For a fleeting second he believed that he felt ice brush his face, and then the shadow glowered around him with an unmistakable hostility that prickled his spine. “You can do nothing, Tagar,” he remarked cheerfully. “Where are your hands, your strong legs? You and Mirak must lead the people to Shol. Find bodies in the palace. I will come later.”

  A whisper threaded the air behind him, but he ignored it, full of contempt for them both. He planted his feet firmly on the edge of the perch and his hands on his hips and spoke, his voice rising melodious and rich to ring out over the countryside.

  “People of Ghaka, I salute you!” he said. “Now I will tell you why I have torn you from your bodies. Tragedy and evil are swallowing up the universe. The one who made you now hates you and tries with all his power to unmake you, to turn the good to corruption, to make you slaves instead of free. The end is coming. The destiny of the universe lies in the balance. Shol is the battleground, you are the warriors. I call on you to fight for truth, for goodness, for all that is right.” He paused, feeling for more words, and the breeze seemed to bring him a soft moaning, a low, murmurous wailing that troubled the air and entered him to fill him with unease. But I own them, I control them, he whispered to himself. The edge of warning in the sound of their misery cannot touch me. Oh? something else in him queried mockingly. You have unleashed a power on the universe unknown before now, an untimely birth, a monster. You manipulate things you do not understand. Have you more skill than the Messengers to transform?

  Forcefully he shoved away the niggle of doubt. The Book spoke to me, he reminded himself. The treasure is my guide. I am doing right. It has shown me how. He spoke again, but behind his thoughts he saw the Messengers, and he knew that he feared them.

  “Sholia and the Unmaker will rule the universe if we do nothing!” he shouted. “We must go to Shol and make war and save Shol …”

  Suddenly his words choked him. He felt a tunnel enclose him. He thrashed, panic-stricken, to loose his mind from the suffocating weight pressing on it. At the end of the tunnel was light, and in that light he saw himself standing on the ledge addressing the invisible throng below, his arms gesticulating, his body pale in the dawn. Fighting for breath, he groped toward the vision, but it flickered out. Darkness filled his eyes. Then the light was back, presenting to him the same vision. He saw himself go through the same motions, vanish, come back to repeat it all three, then four times. Sweat sprang out on his forehead, for with the vision came a consciousness of time stretching, spiraling into the darkness of the future only to snap back and begin again the long, slow reach to the same beginning.

  Trapped! he screamed soundlessly. Doomed to gather them in pain and horror, speak to them like this, gather and speak, gather and speak, forever? How many times in the past have I stood here, Mirak and Tagar beside me? Lived through the terror of their deaths? In a moment of insight rising from some part of him still untouched by what he had become, he knew that the Book was doing this thing to him, showing him its true purpose, the peculiar remorse and disillusionment that came hand in hand with the knowledge it bestowed. I did not ask to know! He writhed. You chose me, forced yourself upon me. I did not choose!

  You chose, the clear beam of self-revelation rustled back. But you can choose no longer. You are a prisoner of the Book. The Future is fixed for you, and you cannot turn aside into another path. You have seen, and in seeing you have fastened the chains of an irreversible time around your neck. Now you know why the Book was forbidden to the people of the suns.

  Ghakazian tried to close his eyes against the tiny figure of himself on the ledge but could not. Mercy! he begged, but even that cry was directed only at himself. For an age he crouched, tossed relentlessly, and then the tunnel was gone. The sun had risen. In awe, with a weakness sobbing in him, he struggled to his feet and looked at it. It had not sailed hot and yellow into the sky. It had crept unwillingly, its light muted now to an angry purple, and the dawn’s light rippled purple also, giving to mountain and valley alike the hue of an everlasting sunset. Like Fallan’s sun, Ghakazian thought, appalled. I remember the color of its sickness. But what have I done that my sun should be stricken so? Is it a punishment for looking in the Book? He backed away from the lip of the ledge, the devastation of sun and planet above and below him, the haunted shadow behind and beside him. He felt as though he alone was whole, caught at the center of a radiating disintegration.

  “Go through the Gate!” he shouted. “Call to the suns of Shol, and they will carry you! I, Ghakazian your ruler, command you to obey!”

  Then the invisible presences that had shared the ledge with him were gone. Shivering, he slumped upon it, while beside him on the Gate stair he heard a shuffle begin. Road and valley drained of their last life. The drift of menace wound slowly around the mountain, and while Ghakazian trembled and averted his eyes it poured through the Gate and was gone.

  10

  The Trader passed through Danar’s Gate and paused for a moment, stepping out of the stream of travelers coming and going. He looked toward the entrance to the tunnel, where hot summer sun beamed out of a cloudless blue sky and warmed the stone flags of the tunnel for as far as its rays could reach. Delicately he inhaled the season, dust and the pungent, lingering odor of haeli flowers in full bloom, crushed grass, sun-licked mortal skin. He ought to have been able to calculate in an instant how many days had passed while he flashed down the corridor between the Gates of both worlds. He frowned. It cannot be more than four days, he thought. Probably only three. Surely it does not matter, surely three days will make little difference in the long run. He reached inside himself, thickening his body for the onslaught of Danar’s atmosphere, and felt his bundle grow heavy on his shoulders. Shrugging it off, he spoke to one of the corions, who yawned under the sun-crowned arch.

  “I would like to leave this here,” he said politely. “Would it trouble you to see that it is not moved or trodden upon?”

  The corion explored its teeth with a long tongue. “It would not trouble me, Trader,” it replied. “Did you bring Storn’s sleeping mat?”

  “I did, but Storn will not be in any hurry for it. Winter is far off. I thank you.”

  He lowered his load behind the beast, nodded, made his way to the sun-crowned tunnel, and set off across the soaring parapet that met the long stair to the palace. Below him and to the right the Time-forest murmured languorously in the noon drowsiness, its shelter a deep blue, inviting shade where one or two corions stretched lazily. Because of the thickness of the leaves the Trader could catch no glimpse of the city beyond. He turned away and mounted the steps, finding himself suddenly alon
e. The crowds, which had no business with immortals, had come out from the Gate, turned away from the slim parapet, and descended the stair that skirted the forest and brought them to a road that led to the heart of the city. Gradually their laughter and conversation died away, and he walked across the terrace of the palace, under the short noon shadow of the frontal pillars, and across the cool gloom of the empty entrance hall.

  It took him a long time to come to the place where the two immortals of Danar met with the citizens of their world, but at last he stood under the blue gold-etched ceiling. He did not sit but moved to the small table, picked up a bell, and rang it once. Sweetly the tone tinkled out and dispersed, leaving silence. He continued to stand by the table, a column of paleness, his luminosity so quenched in the fierce sunshine that a casual glance into the room would not have revealed him. Only his blue scarf and the round glitter of his eyes shone iridescent and visible.

  Presently a door at the far end opened and closed, and Janthis strode toward him, a smile lighting the stern lips. He came up and bowed, and the Trader answered the courtesy with a fluid bending of his own.

  Trader, you are welcome here, Janthis said, his mouth not moving. The words had come straight from his mind, and the Trader heard them clear and true in his head. He spoke again, still smiling. Have you come to open the Books of Lore?

  The Trader suddenly quivered, and when he was still again, he turned away from Janthis, answering without sound, the ends of the voluminous scarf stirring over his back. The smile faded from Janthis’s face. Tell me, he said quietly.