Beyond The Gate - Book 2 of the Golden Queen Series

by David Farland

  “See here, lad—” Orick told Gallen, “just because you’ve got kicked off your own home world, you don’t have to wilt. Things can’t be worse than last time we were here.”

  Gallen smiled up at him. “Aye, you’re right, Orick. But we must take care. We have enemies here—men who were evil before the dronon ever set hand to corrupt them. Lord Karthenor and men of his ilk may hold power, for all we know.”

  “Och, well, if he does,” Orick said, “I’ll bit his butt so hard he’ll never want to sit on a toilet again!”

  “Yet Orick’s playful threats could not brighten the mood. Karthenor had been a powerful servant to the dronon rulers, perhaps powerful enough to wrest control even after the dronon retreated.

  “So, Gallen, you’ve taken my money and led me astray, have you?” Thomas said. “I thought you said this was a decent sort of place, where folks live forever?”

  “I also said there were great dangers here,” Gallen reminded him. “Some folks here do live a mighty long time, but you still have to take care . . .”

  “Ah, don’t listen to him,” Orick said. “It’s good enough for the likes of us. You’ll never taste better food, and they pass it out free to strangers as a courtesy. Why, it’s so easy to grow here, that they esteem food as nothing. That’s why they give it away.”

  “Really?” Thomas asked, his face showing that he doubted Orick’s every word. Now, some bears have a reputation for stretching the truth, but Orick had never been that kind of bear, so Thomas’s raised brows got Orick riled.

  “It is indeed the truth!” Orick said. “And I’ll you something else: there’s wonders here that a pudding-head like you couldn’t imagine—”

  “Tell me about them as we walk, then.” Thomas laughed, and with that laugh, Orick looked up. It seemed to him that Thomas was somehow a younger man, less weathered and worn than he had been just hours before, and Orick began to tell Thomas of the things he’d seen on his last trip here.

  Maggie donned her own mantle and the cinnamon-colored robes of a technician. In moments they were off, striding through the forest. Gray lizards skittered from their feet, and as they marched, Orick used his keen nose to follow the trail they’d blazed on their journey here two weeks earlier.

  Orick told Thomas of the wonders he would behold here of Fale—of starships and men who wore wings, of teaching machines and ancient merchants who lived for ten thousand years, of machines that let one speak with the dead or breathe underwater, and of horrifying weapons that could burn worlds to ashes. He described the armies of insectlike dronon that had infested the place and boasted of the heroic efforts of common people who sought to end their tyranny. He told how Gallen had defeated the dronon Lords of the Swarm in single combat, when even the brilliant Lord Protector Veriasse had failed the challenge, and Orick minimized his own part in all these affairs. For a long while he described the Tharrin woman Everynne, who now reigned as Maggie's regent, as far as the dronon were concerned, over the ten thousand worlds.

  From time to time, Orick would pause along the path to eat a slug or a large wood snail. In two hours he had just begun to fill in the details of what Thomas should know when the group reached a small cliff that looked out over Toohkansay, a sprawling purplish-green city grown from a coral-like plant. It stretched like beach foam across the hills, spanning a wide river. They climbed down the cliff and walked to the city along a ruby road, past rich farms. Hovercars and magcars sped past them, much to the wonder and dismay of Thomas.

  And when they reached the outskirts of the city, little had changed. They could still smell the sweet fragrance of foods from a roadside cantina, music swelled from the city walls, and within the shadows under the city gates they could discern human-looking inhabitants from various stock (the impish Wodari with their large eyes, tall bald men out of Bonab who wore nothing but tattoos), along with gold serving droids that still reminded Orick of men in armor.

  Several Lords of Fale sat together at one table in the shade of the cupola outside the inn. They wore the multicolored robes of merchants, with masks of palest lavender.

  Thomas stopped and surveyed the scene, his mouth gaping in wonder, as if he'd just reached the gates of heaven and feared that Saint Peter would come out and wrestle him for the right to enter.

  And as the group approached the archway that led into the cantina, one woman looked up from her table and gasped, "Gallen? Maggie? Orick?"

  Orick had never seen the woman before, of that he was certain, but immediately the diners at all the tables turned to stare. Here and there among the crowd, people shouted, "It's them!" "They've returned!" "Welcome!"

  And suddenly a human tide surged from the inn, people shouting, hugging them, giving thanks. A Lord of Ethics, wearing her purple robes of office, rushed to Maggie and fell at her knees, kissing them and then kissing Orick's paw, thanking them all for their part in ending the long siege by the dronon.

  As the cry went up, a clamor issued from the city, and soon there were hundreds upon hundreds of people shouting the good news, their voices swelling and blending together in a roar.

  When Gallen had first defeated the dronon's Golden Queen and her escort, he'd received accolades from the ambassadors of ten dozen worlds, but Orick had never witnessed anything like this, not this overwhelming, spontaneous outpouring of gratitude.

  Someone picked Gallen up on his shoulders, and for one moment Orick saw his golden hair limned in the morning light. Orick suddenly envied the man—a hero on ten thousand worlds—while Orick didn't even know if he'd won the title of Primal Bear of Obhiann and Morgan counties. Only two days before, Orick had been reading the parable of the talents in the Bible, and he wondered if he himself was progressing as God would have him. So often, Orick was content to be—well, just Orick. And somehow that didn't seem enough. He silently vowed to do better.

  But just as suddenly, Orick too was lifted by strong hands, and he and Gallen and Maggie and Thomas were carried upon human shoulders into the city.

  Orick bawled out for the people to let him go, for it was rather precarious for a fat bear to be carried by humans, but to his delight, they ignored his pleas.

  Orick looked forward, and Gallen smiled, pleased but embarrassed by this show of affection, and Orick felt glad for him. Gallen had been cast off from his own world, but it appeared now that he'd won back more than he'd lost.

  Maggie, for her part, looked resplendent, a huge grin on her face that you couldn't clean off with lye soap. And Thomas shouted to Orick in glee, "Some welcome, eh, Orick?"

  They entered the city of Toohkansay with great fanfare and were treated to feasts. And that night, painters decorated the sky with incandescent clouds of plasma in Gallen's and Maggie's honor. A band of twelve people from various worlds played beautiful instruments that could sing as sweetly as birds or cut a man to the heart, and Thomas took up his lute and played and sang with them, astonishing the people of Toohkansay with his prowess. Upon hearing a ballad that Thomas had composed, a Master Musician honored Thomas by giving him his own mantle, as "just recompense" for the performance. As soon as Thomas had placed the silver mantle upon his head, his eyes began to water as he learned the music of the universe.

  Shortly afterward, Thomas was forced to ask Gallen to take him to his rooms for the night, for he needed seclusion.

  "I think it's time for all of us to make a night of it," Gallen said. The mayor of Toohkansay himself offered to escort them to an inn that had the finest rooms in the city, and when they reached the door, he asked Gallen if there was anything he needed for the night.

  Gallen said, "I need access to an ansible. I must talk with Lady Everynne." "Even with an ansible, it takes several hours to send messages so far," the mayor said. He was a tall, bald man whose skin shone as if it were oiled. "Is there a question you have, so that we can ask a response?"

  "She set me a task. Tell her that I would like more direction. I'll want to review her response in private."

  "As you wish,"
the mayor said, then he departed.

  Gallen and Maggie took one room as man and wife, and they went in.

  Orick and Thomas were each given separate rooms across a wide hallway, and they stood for a moment. Thomas closed his eyes and whispered, "Ah, Orick, have you heard the fine music here?" And Orick knew that Thomas was listening through his mantle.

  "I've heard some," Orick said.

  Thomas shook his head, as if words could not convey what he wanted to say. "I can hear the music of ten thousand worlds, composed over the past thirty-eight thousand years . . . All of my life has been so . . . cramped, so stilted." Hot tears were flowing from his eyes, and Thomas was weeping bitterly. "How could I have been so blind? There is so much to explore!"

  "How do you mean?"

  "We're babes, Orick! On Tihrglas, I thought I was at the end of my life. But I'll need an eternity to perfect my skills as a musician, and another to compose my songs!"

  Orick looked up at Thomas, at the gray streaks in his hair, and he could see that the aging man was at the beginning of his own incredible adventure. At this very moment, Thomas had his foot stuck in the door of heaven, and he was set to put his shoulder to that door and force it open.

  "Well, then," Orick said, for lack of anything better to say, "it's good night to you." Orick went into his own room, and he sat and thought. Thomas, right now, Orick was sure, was in his room getting his head crammed full of knowledge, probably weeping his eyes out for joy. Gallen was hailed as the hero of ten thousand worlds and was most likely frolicking with the woman he loved most in life.

  And Orick, well, Orick tried to sleep on a soft bed, but found it to be too odd. It was large enough, but it hadn't been made to hold a bear, and he sank so low into it that he kept having a spooky feeling that he might drown. So instead he lay on the floor beneath an open window, watching the galaxies pinwheeling overhead, and skyships streaking through the night like meteors. He wondered if he would ever find happiness.

  When Orick had been a cub, his mother once told him a tale. She'd said that the hummingbird was the sweetest-tasting of all fowl, for it alone of all birds fed upon the nectar of flowers. She'd said that the sweetest honey tasted bland in comparison.

  And so Orick had taken to hiding in a thicket of summer lilies, leaping up after hummingbirds whenever he heard the trill of their wings. But no matter how well he hid, or how quickly he leapt, the hummingbirds would always lift themselves just out of his reach.

  Orick drifted asleep, dreaming of jumping, jumping, leaping impossibly high to catch honey-scented hummingbirds, which he held gingerly in his teeth, savoring them.

  He heard a chiming noise as Gallen's door opened across the hall, and Orick got up groggily, stepped out into the dark arching corridors of the inn, where gems in the ceiling lit the dim way.

  Gallen was standing in the corridor, fully dressed in the black of a Lord Protector.

  "What are you about?" Orick asked.

  "Shhh . . ." Gallen signaled for Orick to follow him, and they crept down the familiar streets. It was soon obvious to Orick where Gallen was heading: to the quarters where Lord Karthenor dwelt with his aberlains.

  But when they reached those offices where Lord Karthenor had enslaved Maggie and dozens of other workers, the huildings were stripped bare. The Dronon guards were gone, the machinery removed.

  Gallen walked through a dozen dark rooms, until he reached the last, then stood, staring into nothingness.

  "Couldn't sleep, thinking about him?" Orick asked.

  "I wondered if he was still here. He would have heard that Maggie and I were back." "From the scent, I'd say he's been gone a while," Orick said. "The aberlains probably left the day the dronon pulled out."

  "Maggie says that the women on this world will conceive children built in the image of the dronon hive," Gallen said distantly. "Some women will have swollen bellies, and they will be breeders, giving birth to six or eight children at a time, as if they were hound bitches.

  "Other women will be born to labor, never able to give themselves to a man in love, barren except for an irresistible craving to work from dawn to dusk.

  "Some men will be thinkers and planners.

  "And some men will be born to war, bred to fight and hate and bully others into worshiping the dronon Golden Queen. And all of this happened because people like Lord Karthenor were willing to sell mankind's secrets to the dronon.

  "In all probability, we will suffer for a thousand generations for what Karthenor and his aberlains have done."

  Orick didn't understand much about how Karthenor and his aberlains manipulated unborn children into becoming something so strange, but he knew that Karthenor had done unmentionable evil. He'd known it from the moment when Karthenor had placed his Guide upon Maggie's head, enslaving her so that she could be his worker. "Aye, no beating would be great enough to suffice for that man," Orick grumbled.

  Behind them, someone cleared his throat, and Orick turned. A man stood in the shadows in a comer, a man wearing the robes and mantle of a Lord Protector. His robes had so blended into the night, that Orick had not seen him. And Orick could still not smell his scent. "Perhaps he is already paying a penalty," he said.

  Gallen turned and studied the stranger.

  "I'm Laranac," the man said, "a Lord Protector for this world."

  "Do you know where Karthenor is?" Gallen asked. "He left in great haste, I believe, when the dronon evacuated, taking many of his creations—and his slaves—with him."

  Gallen frowned. "How can that be? I've been in a dronon hive city; the stench of their stomach acids fills the air. And the acids dry into a fine powder that blankets everything. A closed ship would be—impossible to bear."

  Laranac nodded. "Their kind and ours were not meant to live together. Karthenor knew that. Yet he will suffer for his choice, constantly burning from the acids on the dronon hive ships. The nanodocs in his blood will keep him alive, but at what price? I suspect his exile is a great torment to him."

  "A fit ending for the man, as far as I'm concerned," Orick said. "Death would have been too nice."

  "No, this is not his end," Gallen whispered, "only a reprieve in torment. Such a painful exile will only madden him, make him want to return that much more quickly."

  "And so I keep watch on this place," Laranac said, "hoping for his return. I found a cache of weapons and credit chips hidden in a secret room behind that wall. If Karthenor returns, he will come searching for it, but all he will find is me. I will give him death, when next I see him."

  "What of the law?" Gallen asked. "Will you give the man no trial?"

  "His memories were on file, along with his gene samples, so that the dronon could rebuild him if he died. Those memories were all the evidence we needed. Karthenor has already been convicted and sentenced to death. I wait now only to mete out his punishment."

  Orick considered this bit of news on how evil men were tried here on Tremonthin, and he thought it much better than what had happened with Gallen, back home.

  Gallen smiled up at Laranac. "You'll not mete out his punishment, if I get to him first."

  "That is unlikely," Laranac said. Gallen mused, "I am Lord of the Swarm. If I asked the dronon to turn him over, they would do it on a moment's notice." Orick did not like the idea of having to deal with the dronon. He never wanted to see one of their black carapaces again.

  Laranac smiled back at Gallen. "Then do it. Karthenor is a dangerous man, and the fact that he is on a dronon starship hardly hinders his work. He must be stopped."

  "Soon," Gallen said. "I'll make arrangements. But I've urgent business elsewhere for the moment. If it takes a week for him to be delivered, I'm afraid I can't be here to meet Karthenor at the spaceport."

  "I can," Laranac said. "Send for him."

  "I will, first thing tomorrow. Until then, keep watching this place," Gallen said. "And I shall sleep better tonight."

  Gallen turned to leave, but Laranac caught his arm. "Be careful," Laranac whis
pered fervently. "A new government is forming on this world, one that recognizes the Lady Everynne as Semmaritte's heir and as a rightful judge. They are eager to join once again in the Consortium of Worlds. But there are other voices crying to be heard on the councils. There are other Karthenors on the loose-brutal people who lost profit and prestige when the dronon evacuated. Such people would not bear you into the city upon their shoulders. They would rather trample you under their feet."

  "You think I am in danger?" Gallen asked.

  "The mayor of Toohkansay is protecting you now, the best he knows how. But if you left soon, you would be doing him a favor—and perhaps you would save your own lives."

  Gallen nodded almost imperceptibly. Gallen and Orick returned to their chambers, and when Orick was alone, he offered up more than his usual nightly prayers.

  The next day dawned bright and clear. Gallen sent a message to Everynne to be relayed to the dronon Vanquishers, asking that Karthenor and any other such humans carried away in Dronon ships be returned to their home worlds for judging and sentencing.

  For a bit in the morning, Orick was edgy, watchful, but the mood soon vanished like the morning mists burning off the wide river. The celebrations continued all throughout the day, and Orick found it difficult under such circumstances to believe that anyone would wish Maggie and Gallen harm.

  On the contrary, at every turn people sought Maggie and Gallen out to offer favors. The finest clothiers arrayed Gallen, Maggie, and Maggie's honored uncle Thomas in their best wares, and perfumers brought their most exotic scents. Musicians and actors played before them, while chefs plied them with fine food and technologists brought tokens of knowledge for Gallen and Maggie to place in their mantles.

  Those who were poor came and told tales of woe, describing the horrible tyranny they had suffered under the dronon. Those who were weak, or deformed, or belligerent, or brave had been annihilated under dronon rule. Their bodies were processed for fertilizer by unfeeling dronon overlords.