Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2)

by David Farland

  She passed by a room where wind blew in fiercely from a hole, a deathly chill, and Ceravanne was just behind Tallea, at the back of the group, holding aloft the light to ward off any more Derrits.

  Their shadows danced madly upon the floor and the walls of the corridor, and then they ran into an open hallway, where suddenly the floor fell out from beneath Tallea.

  There was a flash of darkness, and she found herself hurtling down—a rough hide and dirt falling all around her—then she landed with a jolt, and a searing pain shot through her back and arm.

  For one brief moment she lay looking up, and Maggie shouted, “My God!” and was staring down into the pit. It had to be a good five meters to the top, Tallea thought. Ceravanne called, “Are you all right?”

  Tallea felt very confused. She could see the light above her, and her ears were ringing. She was breathing hard, panting, and a sweat had broken out on her forehead. She felt as if she’d landed on a rock, and it was digging into her back, but it hurt when she tried to move off it, and something held her in place. She tried to answer, but no words would come out.

  “Are you all right?” Ceravanne repeated, and she held the light above her head so that she could see down into the pit.

  “Derrit … Derrit trap,” Tallea managed to say, and she felt lucky to say that much. She wanted to count her good fortune at being alive, but when Ceravanne’s light shone on her, Tallea looked down at her own legs. A pointed stake as wide as her hand was poking up through her belly, and another pierced through the meat of her right arm. A third came through her leg just below the hip, but she could not feel it.

  She could feel nothing below the waist. Her back was broken. She closed her eyes, listened. There was the roaring of Derrits in the far room, and it was getting closer. Gallen shouted something, and Orick roared in return, and Tallea’s heart sang with joy at the sound. At least Orick will live, she realized, and she looked back up at the concerned faces of the women.

  “Leave me,” Tallea said, and her voice came out as a croak, barely audible above the yelling.

  “Not yet,” Ceravanne said, and she stood fast beside the pit.

  There was more shrieking, more cries, and one final wailing roar. A few moments later Gallen and Orick came and looked down into the pit. Both of them were covered with blood, but little of it was their own.

  “Three Derrits?” Tallea asked when she saw Gallen. “Perhaps a record.”

  Gallen’s face was sad. Tallea felt light-headed, as if she were floating, and she almost thought she could float up to them, tell them that it was all right.

  “What can we do for you?” Gallen asked, and Tallea tried to think of an answer.

  “There must be something we can do for you,” Maggie said, but even kind Ceravanne shook her head no.

  “We’re losing her,” Maggie whispered.

  “Save me!” Tallea found herself asking.

  “There is nothing we can do,” Orick said solemnly, and the bear had tears in his eyes. Tallea coughed, tried to speak. “They say, in City of Life, Immortals with mantles can save people. Save me!”

  And then Maggie’s eyes opened, and Tallea realized that with all of his lore, even Gallen had not realized what she was asking.

  “Not all mantles have this power,” Ceravanne said.

  “Of course,” Maggie said. “We can download her memories into Gallen’s mantle!”

  “Yes, the rebirthing,” Tallea pleaded.

  Gallen held up the cloth woven of black rings, its glittering diadems shining in the light. “Can you catch it?”

  Tallea nodded, and Gallen dropped the mantle onto her chest. Feebly, with her left hand, Tallea grasped the mantle and placed it on her forehead. Maggie called, “Command it to save you.”

  “Save me,” Tallea begged. “Save me.”

  The silver rings sat cold upon her forehead, and she felt no different. She fell asleep for a moment, and she saw bright images: flashes of her childhood when she picnicked at a pond in carefree days. The time she first learned to hone a sword blade. A great meteor that she once observed streaking across the night sky for several minutes.

  And then Gallen was beside her, stroking her head. He’d climbed down into the pit, though she had no idea how. He picked up the mantle, showed her a gem in the center where the mantle sat on his forehead, a gem that gleamed palest green with its own light.

  “See this,” Gallen said, pointing at the gem. “These are all of the memories that make you. All of your hopes and dreams. And I shall take a hair from your head, to remake you.”

  Tallea tried to thank him, but no words came from her mouth.

  “Quiet now,” he said, and he kissed her softly on the forehead. “The great wheel turns without you now for a while. Until you wake again.”

  She closed her eyes, and for a long time it was a struggle to breathe. She thought of one last thing she wanted to ask of the others, a gift she dearly wanted to give to Orick. But Gallen must have left her, for when she next opened her eyes, it was dark, and the stone floor beneath her was cold, so cold that it felt as if it were sucking all the heat from her.

  * * *

  Chapter 26

  Though the remaining journey through the passageways of the city of Indallian took only a few hours, to Maggie it seemed to last forever. Gallen took the lead, watching for traps while Ceravanne told him which passages to take, and once more they heard the roaring of Derrits in distant recesses, but the company eluded them by slipping through passageways too small and narrow for the Derrits to negotiate.

  Once, when they stopped to rest in an ancient hallway where dried and faded tapestries still hung on some walls, Gallen said, “I’d hoped we wouldn’t find so many Derrits here. I saw a tribe of them in the Nigangi Pass. I think that the movements of armies has driven them here.”

  “With nothing but dirt to chew on for these past few weeks,” Ceravanne said, “they’ll be mad with hunger. How many did you see in Nigangi Pass?”

  “Perhaps a hundred of them.”

  Ceravanne squinted her eyes, and her mouth opened in a little O of shock. “So many? Derrits only band like that in fear.”

  Yet Maggie had to wonder how many might be hereabout. They’d fought off three Derrits and been chased by more. Perhaps Ceravanne was thinking along the same lines.

  “We’ll have to take care,” Ceravanne whispered. “We may be the only food these Derrits see this winter—though they are known to feed on their own young, if necessary.”

  “What are you saying?” Orick asked.

  “They’ll hesitate to follow us into the sunlight,” Ceravanne said, “but surely they will be hunting us tonight, and perhaps they will dog our trail for weeks to come. We can only hope that their band is smaller than the one Gallen saw in Nigangi.”

  “Right then, let’s move out quietly,” Gallen said, and Ceravanne held the glow globe aloft while Gallen led the way.

  Thus it was that the group came out of the city of Indallian at sunset and found themselves on a long gray road. But they were still too close to the lairs of the Derrits, and Gallen kept them moving at a run over the long road for many hours, until the pack on Maggie’s back felt as if it would burrow into her flesh, and her legs felt as massive and unyielding as stone.

  At last, well past midnight, they could run no more. They came to an ancient guard tower dug into the mountain alongside the road, and prepared to make camp there. It was a good spot, out on a spur of a mountain ridge where they could see the road gouged into the cliff for four or five kilometers in each direction. The Derrits would not be able to come upon them unawares, so long as someone kept watch.

  Maggie shrugged off her pack as soon as she got in the door of the guard room, then merely threw herself on the ground in exhaustion, glad to sleep on the rocks. She was almost blind with fatigue, still numbed with grief at Tallea’s death.

  But Gallen took her elbow and lifted her up. “Come,” he whispered, “just a bit farther.”

&nb
sp; “No,” Maggie whispered, but she was too tired to argue, so she let him guide her and the others to. the back of the guard room, into a tiny shelter that had once been used as an armory. There, he got out the packs and began laying out blankets.

  Maggie stood watching him stupidly for a moment, wondering why he bothered, and then said at last, “Wait, let me help.”

  “I can get it,” Gallen said, spreading out the last blanket. He began setting out the food and wine, and Maggie watched him and realized that for the past couple of days, whenever it was time to eat, Tallea had been quietly preparing the food. She’d taken that as her job, and now she was gone. It didn’t seem fair that Tallea should be dead, while all of them walked around.

  “Sit down and get some food in you,” Gallen said. “You’ll need your energy tomorrow.”

  “What if the Derrits come tonight?” Maggie said.

  “I’ll stand watch,” Gallen whispered, looking up at her.

  But she knew that he could not run all day and then stand watch all night. Indeed, he had dark circles under his eyes already, and Orick had been keeping more than his fair share of watches. And though Ceravanne was bright and intelligent, she was so small that Maggie feared the woman would be useless in battle.

  Which meant that Maggie would need to take over some of Tallea’s duties. Maggie felt the loss of Tallea as a sharp pain that sucked the air from her, and she realized that Tallea’s death had given her an added responsibility. Tallea had saved them more than once. Maggie had felt secure with her solid presence on the ship as she guarded their door each night. And certainly Gallen would have been overwhelmed in battle with the Derrits and the wingmen had Tallea not come to his aid. Always, Maggie had imagined that Gallen and Orick could hold their own in any skirmish, but Gallen had never had to fight anything as big as a Derrit, or as swift as a Tekkar.

  Maggie closed her eyes momentarily, and felt a slight disorientation, as if she were falling. And suddenly she found herself back in the hive city on Dronon, and ten thousand dronon warriors surrounded her in the dark arena at the city’s belly, their mouthfingers clicking as they chanted in unison. The air was heavy with the biting scent of their stomach acids, and only a dim red light of their glow globes in the high ceiling lit the room.

  Gallen was battling a dronon Lord Vanquisher who had spat his stomach acids into Gallen’s face, so that Gallen stood with his flesh blistering, blinded as Veriasse had stood blinded in his final battle, while the dronon Lord swooped overhead, slashing with his battle arms.

  And in the dream, Gallen listened intently as the dronon Lord made his approach, and he leapt incredibly high and kicked at the Lord Vanquisher one final time. Their bodies blurred together as they collided, and there was a spray of blood—both red and green—and Gallen tumbled back to the ground, the flesh ripped off half his face, to reveal a pale blue mask underneath. He was no longer breathing.

  The Lord Vanquisher tumbled to the ground beyond him, wounded, the exoskeleton of his skull badly crushed, so that white ooze dripped from it. His left front cluster of eyes was shattered, and one of the sensor whips beneath his mouth had been snapped off. The Lord Vanquisher was almost dead, and he flapped his pee-colored wings experimentally, but was unable to lift his weight off the ground.

  All around the room, the dronon’s voices were raised in a gentle roar of clacking, as if rocks were falling onto the metal floor, and the Lord Vanquisher turned toward Maggie and raised his serrated battle arms high for a killing blow, then began stalking toward her.

  And Maggie looked up at him helplessly, feebly, knowing that she would die, just as surely as Gallen had executed the dronon’s weak and bloated Golden Queen after defeating her Lord Vanquisher.

  And as the Lord Vanquisher came to destroy her, Maggie heard a voice whisper in the back of her mind, “This is what becomes of the Lords of the Swarm. Prepare.”

  Maggie’s heart began hammering wildly, and she looked about, suddenly realized that she’d fallen asleep on her feet, and dreamed a dream that she knew she’d had on many nights before but had been so terrible, she’d put it from her mind.

  Perhaps her own feelings of inadequacy now brought it to the surface. Without Tallea to guard her, Maggie realized that the time had come for her to learn to fight for herself.

  They ate a brief dinner, and Gallen urged Maggie to bed.

  “You sleep,” Maggie whispered. “I’ll take the first watch.”

  “Are you certain?” Gallen said, eyeing her carefully.

  “I feel better with some food in me. I’ll thank you for the loan of your weapons though, and your mantle,” Maggie said.

  Gallen gave her his sword and incendiary rifle, then Maggie put on his mantle. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  Maggie nodded. “I have to start sometime,” she said and went into the large guard chamber where slits cut into the stone let her watch out into the darkness. The moons were out, but the road was deep in shadows, and Maggie wished that she could see better. Suddenly the whole scene lightened as Gallen’s mantle complied with her wishes, and Maggie watched the snaking road. There was nothing alive out there except an owl that swooped silently down the length of the road, hunting for mice.

  In moments, Maggie heard Gallen and Ceravanne settle down to rest, but Orick whined and barked, as bears will when they cry.

  Maggie went back to check on him, and he was sitting up beside the door, shaking with the hurt. With the mantle on, she could see the tears in his eyes, and Maggie realized that Orick’s feelings for Tallea had been stronger than she’d known, and no one had thought to try to comfort him.

  “Are you thinking of Tallea?” Maggie whispered, and Orick nodded. Maggie patted his head, then petted him behind the ears. “She was a good one. We will all miss her.”

  “I know,” Orick grumbled.

  There was a rustling in the far corner as Ceravanne came awake, and sat up and looked over toward them, as did Gallen. “Do not be too hasty to grieve for Tallea,” Ceravanne said from across the room. “Death is but a temporary state for many. She lived her life to the benefit of others, and she died to save us. The Immortals will be loath to let her perish.”

  “But she feels dead to me,” Orick grumbled.

  “Think of her as a friend who sleeps, but who will waken again.”

  “Aye, but when she wakes again, she wants to be a Roamer. She’ll be different.”

  “I should think you wouldn’t mind the differences,” Ceravanne said. “She’ll have fur, and she’ll look more like you. You were becoming close friends. I should think that when she is a Roamer, you will be closer still.”

  “Och, she may resemble me,” Orick said, “but I have to wonder what thoughts will lodge in her head. Certainly not human thoughts. And what will her heart feel? No, Tallea is gone forever.”

  Maggie patted his head. “By her own will she is gone,” she whispered. “She died well, as she wanted. We should be happy for her in that. But I think she lived a sad life. She wanted others to depend on her, to own them and be owned—too much. It was a burden for her.”

  “So it’s love you’re accusing her of?” Orick said. “And I should be happy that she’ll feel it no more?”

  No one spoke for a long moment, and at last Gallen said softly, “I lived as a Roamer once. You are right to mourn for her, Orick. Roamers feel a certain closeness, but it is not love, and so Tallea now loses some of her humanity. Still, they can be happy. They revel in their own freedom, and their days pass quickly because they are unencumbered. She will learn to hunt for grass seeds on the plain, and squat beneath wide trees in a fireless camp, where she will have no care while she sings at the stars.

  “And so, while you mourn her, take care not to mourn too long. This is the reward she has chosen, and if you had ever suffered under the emotional encumbrances of a Caldurian, perhaps you would feel that she has chosen wisely.”

  Orick thought for a long time, and his spirits seemed to lift a little. Maggie quickly kiss
ed him on the snout, and when Orick said, “You know, I’m at least as hungry as those Derrits,” she knew that he was feeling better, but he was also reminding her of her duty.

  She went back and watched the road, letting the others sleep through the long night. And as she waited, she clasped her hands and twisted, exercising her wrists as she often saw Gallen do, and she whispered of her need to Gallen’s mantle, saying, “Teach me!”

  And so during that night, she moved in the darkness, exercising her body in new ways, swinging Gallen’s sword as best she could while the mantle sent her visions of foes.

  Only once that night did she spot a Derrit—a great brute of a male walking down a ridge on the far side of the canyon, carrying a greatsword in one hand, with a war hammer in the other.

  * * *

  Chapter 27

  Two hours before dawn, Gallen woke Orick with a kick. And Orick lay on the floor while Ceravanne packed, listening to the others talk in the main room of the guard shack. Maggie had chanced a small fire in the guard house and made a quick breakfast of cooked oats with cinnamon. It was their first hot meal in days, and to tell the truth, they would not have risked the smoke from a fire except that they had eaten all else. The cheeses were gone, as were the wine and corn, the plums and peaches. They were down to apples and oats, and they couldn’t tell when they’d eat a cooked meal again. So it was the oats.

  Orick had been living off his store of winter fat for days now, and he was beginning to feel a gnawing hunger that the others would soon share. Yet bears are tough, and Orick knew that the hunger that was a mere annoyance for him would quickly become dangerous for the others.

  He was lying on the floor, thinking of these things, when Gallen came back and kicked him again. “Wake up, sleepy,” Gallen said, laughing. Orick felt as if he’d hardly slept at all, and he grumbled to Gallen, “Why must you rouse me so early? I’m dead tired.”