Stargate

by Pauline Gedge

  Shol was peaceful under a winter sky of broken gray cloud. Beyond the Hall of Waiting, across the short, naked plain where the land ran level before it fell away into the serried ridges that held the mighty city of Shaban, the ocean gave back to the sky an oily reflection of ruffled stars. Beside the Hall, at a stone’s throw from the doors, Sholia’s vast palace, which had been hollowed out of the mountain itself, glowed with borrowed sunlight. The palace looked out in one slow sweep upon the plain, the uppermost towers of the city, the curving bay, and the sea.

  The essences left the doors and began to spread and drift, a nebulous cloud that rolled without sound toward the city, reaching the bastions where the flags flew, curling to fill the steep, winding streets, and tentatively brushing against closed doors. A new wind went with them, a moan of seeking and purpose. Behind the doors the inhabitants looked up from their evening meals. Some went to windows and thought they saw the lights of the part of the city on the next tier below them mist gray for a moment. All remarked that the wind was rising, and perhaps it would rain. The city was soon murmurous with unease. The foreign breath blew upon the ships anchored at the docks and seeped inside them, and portions of the cloud skirted the city and were lost in the hinterland and the forests beyond, still seeking. The keepers of the trees, the tillers of the soil, the Sholans who wandered the no-man’s-land with their tents and horses shivered and looked about them in a sudden, sourceless disquiet.

  But the essences of Tagar, Natil, Rintar, and Tagin and those of Mirak, Maram, and Hira left the Hall of Waiting and moved to where Sholia’s terraces cut a broad stepped way from her many-arched doors to the floor of the plateau before the mountain. Shrubs lined the terrace, bunches of tubbed shadow, and between them the forlorn shades floated upward, Ghakazian’s command to find bodies driving them, their own pitiful need a whip flaying against the bitter formlessness of their minds. They did not know that Sholia was still on Danar, listening with the rest of the council to their sun-lord’s degradation. They felt her in the beams of light that spilled down the steps to greet them, in the warm air of her many chambers. Her presence permeated the painted walls and rustled in the gay hangings. As they parted and glided on separate ways they knew themselves more thin and insubstantial against her rich wholeness than they had against the incomprehensible energies of space. But they also felt the presence of their own kind, solid and comforting, and the need to knit essence and body together again was like a cold knife slicing through them. One by one they were drawn away from Sholia’s high chambers, down long passages that narrowed to mortal dimensions and were now lit with lamps bracketed on the walls. So they found at last the feast they had sought.

  Mirak found himself at the end of a long, brightly lit passage. Muffled chatter and laughter came to him from behind the closed doors that lined it, intensifying his wretchedness, and he turned for the frail comfort of Maram’s presence to find that he was alone. Indecision filled him. He wanted to enter the rooms, to be greeted with welcoming smiles, but he also wanted to cling to some dark corner, to hide. He had just decided to go back down the dark staircase behind him when a door opened and a young man came out and began to stride briskly along the passage. He wore a soft white tunic that swung loosely against his long legs, and the lamplight glowed in his pale golden hair. Vitality surged in his every step, and Mirak was drawn to follow. The young man flung open another door, speaking gaily to someone within, and Mirak watched, jealousy and longing spurting through him. He drifted closer. The man turned and came back along the passage, but Mirak answered the invitation of the still open door that splashed such friendly light across the corridor. Another mortal, brown-haired, young, and full of warm life, was preparing to rest. Mirak went to hang in the black-patched corner by the bed, watching the man’s slow, contented movements. Presently he lay down with a sigh, and Mirak trembled, seeing himself, Hira, and Maram standing in their cave on Ghaka, hands folded like this man’s, eyes open but no longer seeing, minds resting in whatever pleasant visions they had chosen.

  He drew nearer to the man on the bed. Star radiance glimmered pale on the rings he wore, as though he held a white spell in his limp fingers, and his breast rose and fell gently. Mirak looked at him for a long time, wondering, torn between desire for a place to regain power over the world surrounding him and a small, insistent voice in his mind that bade him turn and flee to the Gate and fling himself back into the clutches of the corridor. He shuddered. Not that! he vowed. Never again the mad terror of the unplace where mortals do not belong. Quickly he made up his mind and, drifting low, bent over the tranquil form. He whispered, though not with the mouth he no longer owned, and his words scratched against the door of the room where the man’s mind rested.

  In the whiteness of silence Melfidor felt a tremor, and his mind ceased its work of regeneration and listened. The tremor came again, and Melfidor’s mind turned from the depths of his body, rose to the door, and demanded to see. The room where he lay was not disturbed. Night had deepened, strengthening the blue-white light of the stars. The lamp on the desk had gone out. Shadows splashed the walls in long streamers of blackness. He glanced at himself and saw that no one was in the room. His mind withdrew behind its door, puzzled, but his essence knew he was not alone. Something had formed itself by the bed, and it quested him. The sun-lord often called him without sound, but she always spoke directly into his conscious thoughts and did not send a part of herself to fetch him. This thing near him was not of the light. Its presence did not fill him with gladness and warmth; rather, the room seemed suddenly to chill him. The impression it gave was one of cold space—not the busy space between Shol and its sister worlds, but the empty dread of timelessness, and it put forth sadness shot with fear and danger. He felt he ought to shut all the doors of his interior being, but the thing conveyed also the raw misery of a need, and Melfidor, in his innocence, was troubled. “What? What?” he whispered back. As soon as he acknowledged its presence, he could see it more clearly. It had the form of a man, and because he had never known a kind of death other than the completeness of Sholan death, he did not recognize, indeed he was incapable of discerning the wretchedness of division.

  But he knew that this was no ordinary man. The door of his office had not been opened, and the thing bending over him was insubstantial, like a Trader. But a Trader’s body was a pale, iridescent beauty. This presence was transparently thin and dark, though dull light of a kind seemed to permeate it, and its contours were forever blurring, as though it fought for definition but could not gain it. Its eyes were hollows of darkness, its mouth a line of blackness, but it was the wings that convinced Melfidor that he was sharing his room with a being from beyond all worlds. They rose to fill the shadows, the color of night on the ocean, wavering high, their outlines continually shifting as though they sought to brush aside the ceiling and spread free. He was not afraid, but he was anxious. “What are you?” he asked.

  The being bent lower until its visage seemed to fill the doorway behind which his mind watched it. I am a dream, Melfidor, it said.

  “But I did not command such a magical dream. Indeed, I commanded no dream at all. Just silence and mending.”

  Call me a vision, then, sent to you to give you a dream such as you have never had before.

  “I do not want to dream tonight. Who sent you?”

  It is a gift from your sun-lord, the presence said. Have you never wondered how mortals from other worlds live? She sent me to give you a glimpse of the rest of the universe.

  Melfidor was about to reply that he had never wondered any such thing, but suddenly it seemed to him that he had indeed spent much time gazing at the constellations in the short summer nights, and he was filled with what seemed to be painful and familiar emotions: yearning for the forbidden journeys through the stars; hours of waking dreams in which he strove to put together all he had heard from Sholia and the Traders about the marvels that lay beyond the Gate; and under it all a bitterness that these things should be denied
him because he was mortal. No! he told himself, bewildered. I have never looked at the stars with anything but wonder at their beauty. I have listened to the Traders tell their stories and have been glad to be Sholan. Yet he could not deny the tumult of memories and saw himself clearly, lying in the warm grass at midsummer, eyes fixed on the crowded night sky and longing, wishing.

  “Are you a mind-picture?”

  Not altogether. I come to you from Ghaka, the being replied.

  Melfidor shivered. Ghaka. A Trader had brought him a feather from Ghaka once. He still had it somewhere. A long, curved, soft thing, brown in shade but bursting into dark greens and many shades of deep gold under sunlight. He had never wondered then what it would be like to fly, but now …

  See, the thing from Ghaka hissed, coming close again. I will show you myself.

  Unwilling, yet already drawn into a web of curiosity, Melfidor’s mind stepped back, surrendering the door, and he felt the other’s mind come through. His consciousness woke, but not to the dark office. All at once he was standing in the middle of a field, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the brilliant sunshine, the other holding his hair in a bracing, steady wind that tried to fling it free. At his back were many strange mountains, not thick and heavy and mounting in great bulk like the mountains of Shol, but thin and sheer, sharp peaks piercing the blueness of the sky, separate crags honeycombed with caves and crowded close together. Before him a wide valley snaked, dotted with sheep and streaked in gray, winding roads that led to houses set behind low stone walls. The air smelled dry and light, and full of nameless herbs. His head was flung back, and there, dropping rapidly toward him, was a giant bird. As it came plummeting nearer he saw that it was not a bird but it was a winged man. His limbs were curled beneath him, knees to chest, arms folded, and the wings were tight and thin along the bent spine. Just as Melfidor was about to cry out in alarm, for it seemed to him that the man’s speed would smash him into the ground, he heard a cry of triumph and delight, and the wings unfurled with a crack like canvas sails suddenly taking the wind. The limbs opened wide, legs trailing, arms flung out in a gesture of complete, exultant freedom, and the head rose. “Oh, Ghaka!” the winged man shouted. “Oh, freedom!” He turned and became vertical, eyes closed, face to the sun. His wings beat against the air, and he rose, soaring slowly and majestically, then glided down again. Melfidor could hear him singing, a high hum that mingled with the sound of his swishing feathers to make a wild, compelling music. Melfidor thought it the most beautiful sound he had ever heard, and his heart leaped in yearning to be up there also, held by the winds, caressed by the sun. Suddenly the singer swooped down and alighted before Melfidor, smiling and panting a little, his hair catching in the upswept wings, his eyes fiery with joy. “Would you like to ride up there with me?” the man asked, and with a gasp of pleasure Melfidor held out his arms.

  Then the vision was gone. Color and youth drained quickly from the brown face, and Melfidor found himself again looking into the hollows of fleshless eyes, while impotent dark shadows moved where the wings had rustled in the wind. He was in his body, in his office, his conscious self now shared with the stranger, the rest of his mind trying to understand what was happening to him. But the question was not part of the dream. It was repeated softly: Would you like to ride with me? Or rather, would you like to be me, Melfidor, and ride the gliding winds for yourself?

  At the back of Melfidor’s mind, there by the second, farther door that sheltered his consciousness, a warning woke. This is not memory at work, for in memory there are no mysteries, though I encompass the thoughts and actions of my forebears. This is not dream, for dream is my servant and can be summoned and dismissed at will. This is something new. Is it a part of my growth, an opening up within myself? He was unable to determine whether it was a good or an evil without the help of the sun-lord. He considered dismissing the thing that was already so at ease in his consciousness, but at the thought he faced a terrible sense of loss. I will tell Baltor in the morning, he decided, not caring that the thing now shared his thoughts. But tonight … tonight I will fly.

  “You have offered me a chance to ride the winds for myself,” he said. “I accept with thanks.”

  The dream smiled. “That is good. Now open the rest of your inner self to me, Melfidor.”

  Melfidor hesitated, and the room enclosing his resting body seemed to become very still, as though for a moment night had ceased to move toward morning and the whole of Shol had taken a deep breath. “Why?” he whispered.

  “How can you truly see the ground below or hear the sound of wind in your wings or sing my song or feel the exhilaration unless consciousness be joined to flesh essence, imagination? Open. Open!”

  Melfidor was reluctant, and yet the desire to see, hear, and feel it all again was overpowering. He turned to the door that sheltered mind and essence behind his consciousness, and the unknown thing from Ghaka rushed after him. Obediently the door swung wide, and Melfidor blinked, coming to himself. The room was still dark, and the quiet of night still shrouded the outside world. He flexed his fingers and began to sit up, and then he felt the thing pounce. With lightning speed it forced its way past his mind, and at the last moment Melfidor screamed, knowing what he had done, the swiftly flowing alien thing within him suffocating him, forcing mind and consciousness back as it filled him. Frantically he strove to slam the door, but it was too late. Darkness deluged him.

  Mirak slowly opened his eyes and smiled. He rose from the bed and stood, numb with relief and satisfaction, feeling the blood course through his legs. He lifted his hands and looked at them, admiring the rings on his slim fingers, and then put them to his face, exploring its contours. What color are my eyes? he wondered. He pulled his hair forward, and it shone dully, a dim brown that would take life from the sunlight of day. Then he laughed softly. I am Mirak. I am Melfidor. I am Mirak-Melfidor, Melfidor still, Melfidor also. I know that you lurk within me, Sholan, blind, deaf, and dumb, a barren seed. How good, how good it is to see and breathe, to hear and feel! Come quickly, dawn, so I can be warmed by sun once more! He wanted to run to the window, spring from the casement, and soar free over this unknown world. He flexed his wings but lost his balance, sitting back on the bed with a bump. My wings. Of course they are gone, what else could I expect? For the first time he truly faced the burden of that loss with all it would mean down the long years ahead. He forgot Ghakazian’s light promise of power on Ghaka, forgot why he was here in another man’s body on an alien world. He sat on the bed and grieved for his freedom, and Melfidor struggled once in his mind and was still.

  Shol was a place of haunting and dread that night. In palace and home, out on the windy plains, in ships caught in the lull of windless hours, it changed, and in the morning an alien race greeted the sun with greed appeased. Not all Sholans had been lured into captivity, for the population of Shol was far greater than that of Ghaka. When the families of the city sat down together to eat the early meal, children chattered to parents who remained unusually silent. Lovers stirred drowsily and then drew away from each other, a sudden unfamiliarity rising between them. The nomads led their horses to water, doused the cooking fires, and packed away their gear, though some stood by the river or smoking ashes, heavy-eyed and sluggish, as though the morning had come too soon. On the docks the dawn bustle was strangely cheerless. Fishermen sat in their boats with nets in their hands and did not move. Captains shouted at crews who fumbled at their work in dull perplexity. And in the palace Melfidor, Veltim, Chantis, Fitrec, the men and women who under Sholia held the reins of Shol in their firm hands, slipped from their rooms and wandered the high chambers and sunny balconies, avoiding one another, rediscovering the feel of a crisp winter wind on their skin and the inexpressible comfort of firm floors beneath their feet.

  Only Baltor rose with the dawn full of new vigor. He flung wide the windows of his room, singing absently to himself, and when he had eaten, he cloaked himself and went out of the palace, running easily down
the terrace stair and crossing the plain to the Towers of Peace. When he reached it, he paused, looking out and down over Shaban, now bathed in warm sunlight. The winter breeze tickled the bells strung from every curling eave, and their music came to him, a constant, pleasing tinkle of tuneless delicacy. Whitecaps raced for the beaches and slapped under the wooden piers of the docks. Up and down the steep, stepped roads the people moved, slow and unhurried, and Baltor saw nothing amiss in a scene he had witnessed thousands of times. He swung the gate wide and passed through.

  Baltor was untouched. Tagar had drifted into his room and had hovered over him for a long time, watching the face whose lines so nearly resembled his own. The black and silver hair had been spread wide on the pillow; the open, unseeing eyes were blank. With a mounting sorrow that numbed his need for flesh, Tagar knew that he was looking at himself as he had been on Ghaka, old and full of good knowledge, wise in the ways of mortals, ready to face the Messenger without rancor or regrets. He thought of this man’s children, and their children. He thought of Natil and the quiet loveliness of Rintar. The more he pondered, the more reluctant he became to tear apart this life, so rich in living. If I do not enter this man, I shall never again feel fire or sun or walk the valleys of Shol as I did on Ghaka. But he could not. He stayed beside Baltor for the rest of the night, his misery growing, and when dawn changed the darkness to paleness, he turned and fled. Down through the morning-drowsy, empty chambers, through the entrance hall, out upon the terrace he glided, a howl of agony, and before the sun rimmed the horizon, he had vanished into the lonely shadows of Shol’s mountains.

  I will do anything to keep this, Mirak thought, looking out from a balcony cut high in the side of the mountain, an empty room behind him and the eyes of Melfidor scanning the brown plain below. If there is to be war, then I will fight as Ghakazian wished, but I will never give up my body again. It did not disturb him, whose keen Ghaka-sight had been able to recognize the quick dart of a field mouse from far above the level of the crag peaks, that he could not discern what manner of animal ran through the brittle grass a mile below. Already his essence was fusing with Melfidor’s body, each penetrating the other, each taking color and direction from the other. Mirak’s unconscious self was at work in Melfidor’s memory and thoughts, selecting for itself a personality and the invisible fleshing of a foreign past. I am a shipbuilder. I like to sail and fish. I am the sun-lord’s confidant. Emotions came with this shaping of a new man, but many of them were so alien to Mirak’s essence that he shied away from them. A vision of paper and black ink spread out under his hands brought a wave of satisfaction, a pleasure of the mind that Mirak could not understand. The flood of worship spilling over his whole being at the thought of Sholia was easier to comprehend, but Mirak could not separate it from his own fearful scrabbling at the feet of Ghakazian’s manipulative power, and the pure glow of Melfidor’s reverence became ringed with a groveling, sick humility. Mirak had no feeling at all for water, but while Melfidor’s love of the ocean tired him, he was able to blend it with his similar delight in the equally vast sweep of his own element, the sky, though that, too, was reduced by the memory of his last flaming fall. He pulled faces out of Melfidor’s thoughts, put names to them, but could not untangle the complex auras around each one. He fingered Melfidor’s long memory, the thread of kin-thoughts, and found there a people whose very atmosphere, the dreams they had conjured, the things they had done were offensive in their otherness.