There is an evil on Ghaka. A Law has been broken.
The old familiar feeling of inadequacy and hopelessness settled around Janthis like a garment that he thought he had thrown away but found he had not. The Trader felt it curling into his own mind, transmitted whole and dreary from the other.
What Law?
The Law pertaining to the mortals, which states that a mortal shall go whole to the Gate when his time has come, and that a Messenger shall see to the transmuting of flesh and essence together.
I do not understand.
Still the Trader would not turn around. I saw flesh without essence on Ghaka, he said, his thin lips pressed together. And by the Gate there was an essence that waited without flesh.
Janthis allowed himself the privacy of a moment of sheer despair. Oh, Ghakazian, not you! I do not accept this. Somewhere the Trader is in error.
Were flesh and essence the same?
Yes. I knew this mortal well. His name is Tagar, and he was the oldest and wisest of the wingless ones on Ghaka. His descendants are many, and he was greatly respected by all men, winged and wingless alike.
Too old and too wise to break a Law, Trader? You know how easily in these ages a Law may be broken. Perhaps you had been on Ghaka too long and were confused. Perhaps Tagar was asleep, and in the shadows by the Gate you mistook your own thoughts for the wavering call of an essence.
Now the Trader turned swiftly to face the immortal. Denial blazed suddenly from his eyes, but his answer was gentle. Do not delude yourself, Janthis. The thought dropped quietly into Janthis’s agitated mind. I am not a fallen mortal led into error by every sense, not able to trust what I see or hear. If I say I saw Tagar propped against a mountain, swollen and stinking, then I saw him. And if I say I heard his essence entreat me in the darkness by the Gate, then I am not mistaken. Nor do I lie, because I worship only the Law, and the Law cannot lie. I have fled the creeping fringes of black fire before. I know. I know.
Did you see Ghakazian while you were there?
I did not. I traveled the valleys, trading. I heard a profound and strange silence. I felt a threat in the rustle of wings over my head, and a need to hide. Ghaka has fallen.
No! The word burst in the Trader’s brain, and he winced. It has happened before that the Unmaker’s will has seeped through a Gate, darkening the minds of mortals and causing them to falter without the knowledge or consent of the sun-lord. Such a falling can be cured. That at least is within our power.
The Trader mentally shrugged. Such a thing would never have happened to Tagar, he said aloud, his voice a timbreless whistle in the hot air of the room. He would never have embraced the subtle blandishments of the Unmaker’s vanguard. He would have recognized their disguise and dismissed them without ever knowing the true importance of the step he took. He of all mortals on Ghaka was whole and innocent.
Then how do you explain to me what you saw? Janthis’s voice was level.
You need no explanation, the Trader replied. Someone murdered Tagar.
Silence fell between them. They considered each other without seeing. Who? Janthis thought to himself. Ghakazian knows the dangers. At each Gate-closing they have been impressed more deeply into each one of us. Suddenly he remembered that Ghakazian had come and asked permission to read the Books of Lore, and with a chill he now wondered why. I am not equipped to lead the council, he thought sadly. I fear the fire, we all fear it, but my knowledge of it ought to be the greater because I lead, yet I do not trust myself. I knew the Worldmaker as the others did not. His mind was open to me. It would be open again, I know, if I wished, but I am not strong enough to read it and retreat unscathed. The Trader broke in on his thoughts.
I do not know what is happening on Ghaka, he said. That is your concern. I only know that I am affronted and diminished because a Law has been broken. I do not tell you your business, nor do I offer you anything but my words to be accepted or rejected as you choose.
Pride does not suit you, Janthis replied. It is not impossible to corrupt a Trader, though you and your kin would wish it were not so. Have you forgotten the Trader from Tran?
No, I have not. The Trader sighed, his body pulsing, floor and wall shivering through him. It must have been a powerful thing indeed, the cause of his fall. I am sorry. I have traveled the worlds for too long without a respite.
I will order Ghakazian here, Janthis went on reluctantly. Where will you go?
I have to deliver some goods on Danar, and then … I do not know. Perhaps I will walk on the oceans of Shol for a while, or go home to my own realm. Trading is no longer good. Only Danar and Shol remain.
There are other worlds.
Yes. Far out in the universe, far from the dark side. Worlds the Worldmaker left unfinished. Worlds of molten rock, worlds covered in water, worlds without mortals, worlds full of strange beasts. The ones out there have no sun-lords to sit in council. They are of no use for trade. If Shol and Danar fall, it means the end of everything and the beginning of nothing. I think I will go home.
Thank you.
They smiled at each other as equals, bowed, and then the Trader tightened his body and floated from the room. Janthis continued to stand in the quiet, sun-drenched room, but no thoughts would come. Presently he went through the door and down a passage and emerged into the vast stillness of the council chamber. He climbed to the dais and, picking up the silver hammer, struck the sun-disc once. Then he went and sat in his chair, his hands covering the cold sun-ball on the table, the sound of the gong throbbing in his ears. I am tired, he thought in surprise. I, who never grow old or change, am weary.
Danarion came first, walking lightly into the chamber, his golden eyes still glowing from the summer brilliance of the sun. He came up to Janthis and smiled, but his smile was not returned, and he took his seat at the other’s left hand, settling easily into a patient stillness. Sholia entered next, her long, gossamer-thin gown shimmering many colors in her own bright aura. She greeted them and slipped quickly into her chair, and her eyes flitted around the high windows.
“Ghakazian isn’t here yet?” she said, and Janthis stirred at last, his hands leaving the sun-ball to fold themselves crisply on the table.
“He may not come,” he replied brusquely.
Danarion’s head came up. Sholia’s gaze swiveled to him in puzzlement.
“Why ever not?” she asked. “He may find the council meetings irksome—you know how restless he is—but he would not disobey you.”
Janthis’s eyes met Danarion’s in a brief moment of understanding, and Danarion paled and looked away.
“A Trader has just visited me,” Janthis went on. “He came here straight from Ghaka. He tells me that murder has been done there.”
Still Sholia did not see. “He told you what? How odd the Traders are, with their preoccupation with the Law and their exotic stories! I have always meant to read the Books of Lore pertaining to them, for I often feel that I should know them better. Sometimes they surprise me …”
“Sholia.” The word was a command to silence, and Sholia bit her lip, her hair curtaining her face as she bent toward the table. “I said murder,” Janthis went on quietly. “All is not well on Ghaka, and I have called this meeting in order to put some questions to Ghakazian.”
“He is a sun-lord!” Sholia burst out. “What is a Trader compared to him? A Trader can be mistaken!” Then her hands came up to cover her face.
“Don’t be hasty,” Danarion said to her gently. “Murder on Ghaka does not necessarily mean the corruption of the sun-lord, you know that. Let us wait and see what Ghakazian has to say. Even now he may be moving to cut away an isolated evil. You dwell too often on your fears.”
The hands slid slowly downward, and Sholia smiled at him faintly. “You are right, of course. When he comes, he will refute the Trader.”
Sharp words rose to Janthis’s tongue, but he swallowed them, studying the smooth, light-filled face and emerald eyes with care. Sholia had once been full of a cool dignit
y. But Janthis, standing back from the eons behind her, saw that she had changed. She was no longer balanced. Even in the timeless space of the sun-lords’ palace she projected a mortal diffidence that did not belong to her nature. Well, he thought, I suppose that some change in all of us was inevitable. When the Worldmaker’s nature became twisted, when he chose to claim all that he had done for his own, change rocked the universe. Though we cannot be touched in any specific way unless we wish it, still the breath of Unmaking must affect us. To remain invulnerable is impossible. To stay as we are is a struggle.
Sholia felt his gaze on her and sat straighter, her smile broadening determinedly. “In a way we all lean on Ghakazian’s loud strength,” she said. “We take courage from his arguments. Let us wait and see.”
They waited. As noon slipped into afternoon the sun left the hall to trickle down the stone walls outside, but the three at the table kept their light to illumine the dim room. Finally Danarion sighed. “Call him again,” he said, and Janthis rose, picking up the silver hammer. But before he could strike the disc, there was a sudden flurry of busy sound, and Ghakazian himself dropped from a window high above, glided down, and alighted by the table. He did not take his place beside Sholia. Instead he swaggered to the foot of the dais, where Janthis had laid down the hammer and was turning. They all looked at him aghast. The golden light that had always welled through his brown skin and had cast a warm, red-gold pool around him now pushed feebly outward in dull orange, ragged streamers. The brittle hair was straggling down over his shoulders, framing a face whose breathtaking, pure aquilinity had thinned and hardened into the sharpness of incipient cruelty. Around the mouth went two distinct, deep lines like clefts in one of his own mountains.
The eyes had not changed. They still glittered with the alertness of a bird, but that watchfulness now had a quality of greed, the predatory gleam of a thing of prey. Only the wings still rose majestic and beautiful above and beside the proud head, the feathers folding sleek and warm into each other. Janthis’s eyes flew to the sun-disc suspended on the chest. More orange flames whirled within it, tinged in black.
“Ghakazian …” Sholia whispered. He glanced at her contemptuously and then away. “Well,” he said. “You called me and I have come. For more useless talk, more senseless sifting in the rubble of the worlds. But this time you will all be silent and listen to me.”
“So the Trader was right,” Danarion breathed, horrified, and Ghakazian rounded on him. For one moment fear flared in the sullen flicker of his fire.
“What Trader!” he snapped, but Danarion, eyes full of this terrible disintegration, could say no more. Janthis answered.
“A Trader came here straight from Ghaka,” he said. “He told me of a murder. Ghakazian, what has happened to you, and how?”
Ghakazian laughed bitterly. “What? And how? I can tell you what will happen to you and how, and I think you ought to heed me. I have something precious in my possession. Falia did not have the strength to use it right, and neither did poor Ixelion, but I had the courage, I did not quail when I learned from it what is going to befall. You!” He rounded on Sholia, pointing a rigid finger, his lips curled in an angry sneer. “I loved you! You and I were like Ixelion and Falia, brother and sister and more than brother and sister. Yet I know you now as I never did before. Traitor! You and the Unmaker will council together, and he will come at last to Shol, as in his black heart he has always longed to do, and take it for his own!”
Sholia rose shakily from her chair and backed away, white to the lips. “Ghakazian, you rave,” she whispered, and then the others shook off the spell of shock, and Janthis ran down the steps from the dais and raised a hand to Ghakazian. One quiet word of coercion left his lips, and Ghakazian’s arm fell to his side.
“You are forbidden to do that!” Ghakazian snarled.
“It is not for you to question me,” Janthis replied coolly. “Now, Ghakazian, we will listen to you. You are a threat to each of us here whether you believe it or not. Take your place at the table. Sholia, sit down.” She did so, still shaking, tears not far away, and Ghakazian moved grudgingly to stand in his accustomed place. “Now where does this mad accusation against Sholia come from?”
“Mad? I will tell you who is mad!” Ghakazian exploded. “You, Janthis, you! I come to ask you for the last time. Will you waken the mortals to their true danger, and make armies, and stand against the Unmaker?”
Janthis’s shoulders slumped. “I have told you before, we have no weapons with which to fight,” he said tiredly. “It is forbidden to take their innocence away from the mortal people.”
“But we do have a weapon,” Ghakazian hissed softly as he reached behind him and drew something from his belt, “a most precious, most powerful weapon. Falia gave it to Ixelion, and I took it from Ixelion’s floor when you and I, Danarion, went to Ixel to raise him and could not. I do not need it anymore. Here, Janthis. I give it to you.”
Malice darkened the once-handsome face, and Janthis noticed that now tipping the fingers of the hand that extended to him were talons, long, curved nails that clicked against one another. Sickness washed over him. I cannot be invaded unless I will it to be, he reminded himself. I can take this thing without hurt. Slowly he reached out, and as he took the offering Ghakazian chuckled.
“I have read it,” he said. “I know all, I can see all. I am now the master of fate.” But as he spoke he caught the glint of sunlight on a bracelet Sholia was wearing. It was a band of thick gold studded with red gems. He knew that he had never seen it before, and yet he had, and for a second time he felt the suffocating tunnel begin to close around him, forcing his eyes and his mind to look in one direction only. He remembered then that the Book had shown him this moment also, his standing here addressing a shocked and aching council, and the sun sparkling on Sholia’s wrist. Before he could scream, the moment had passed, and the room opened out again behind and beside him. Janthis was standing with the Book in his hands, feeling it reverently, his eyes wide.
“The Book of What Will Be,” he said wonderingly. “Now I understand. Of course. Only this treasure could have brought about the fall of three worlds so swiftly. Where was it found? Who found it?”
“It came from Tranin, naturally,” Danarion said thickly, his eyes riveted on the Book. “Don’t you remember? It is all in Fallan’s Annals.”
Then Sholia leaped to her feet. “Throw it away, Janthis!” she shouted. “It is forbidden! Do not look at it, I beg you. Ghakazian tempts you, oh, surely you see it!” She crumpled, tears pouring down her cheeks. “It is all over, all finished,” she sobbed, sinking back into her chair. “One by one the Unmaker has plucked us out. He has conquered.”
“No,” Janthis responded softly. “Be comforted, Sholia. He is not yet the victor. If Ghakazian had brought the Book to you on Shol, what would you have done? How long could you have resisted its call? But he did not bring it to you. It lies here in my hands, the treasure of the ages, and here it will stay. I know that the Lawmaker himself has decreed that though the past and present may lie open to us, the future must be forever dark. I will not disobey him.”
Ghakazian was convulsed. Eagerly he pressed forward, leaning far over the table. “That was before the Worldmaker fell!” he shouted. “In his falling much was changed. The old order cannot stand. There are Laws that cannot now apply to us. We must use every means at our disposal to fight with. Why can’t you see that this thing was delivered into our hands to serve us in our greatest need! Perhaps the Lawmaker himself caused it to be found!”
“In that case,” Danarion replied acidly, “why did the finding of it bring horror and death to Fallan and Ixel? And,” he finished deliberately, “to Ghaka?”
After a long silence Ghakazian stood up nonchalantly and folded his arms. “I have read it,” he remarked. “I can tell you what it says. The Unmaker will enter Shol, and you, Sholia, will welcome him. Take my advice, Janthis. Guard Shol. That is what he is greedy for. Make armies to throng it. Meet the Unm
aker once and for all. Let the struggle come to a climax.”
With great respect Janthis laid the Book before him on the table, and whether it was because of the sheen and smoothness of the binding reflecting his own light or because the Book had light of its own to share, the sun-ball beside it glowed briefly yellow and warm, a moment of pale resurrection.
“You are blind, Ghakazian,” he said with difficulty, close to tears himself. “You are deaf also, and sick. Can’t you see that the Unmaker has seduced you? Whatever you have done to Ghaka cannot be undone. Your Gate must be closed.”
Sholia expected a violent outburst of protest from Ghakazian, but he simply began to smile, a slow secretive smile. Looking at him, she felt a vague and new anxiety wake in her to stand beside the others in her mind and add its clamor to the fears already lodged there. He knows something that we do not, she thought. Something that he has done. She put her conjecture into Janthis’s mind, and though he acknowledged it with a faint nod, he did not share her sudden certainty. He knew more about the Book of What Will Be and its powers than any of them, how Ghakazian’s mind would be full of visions and strange dreams. All the same, Ghakazian’s reaction puzzled him. He has fallen far indeed, he thought, if the closing of his own Gate can cause him so little pain.
“Very well,” Ghakazian said airily. “Come and close my Gate. I do not care. It does not matter anymore. I will still have Ghaka.”
“An imprisoned world!” Danarion snapped. “Have you no regard for the people in your care, Ghakazian?”
“But of course I do!” Ghakazian’s smile beamed out, still full of hidden satisfaction. “Go ahead and close the Gate. They and I will survive together.”
Janthis turned to Danarion. “We will go to Ghaka at once,” he said. “Danarion, call Storn.”
Danarion sent his thought ranging over Danar, seeking the great beast. At last he found it. Come, he asked gently. You are needed in the palace, Storn.
Stargate Page 16
