Beyond The Gate - Book 2 of the Golden Queen Series

by David Farland

  "I don't understand," Orick said. "I thought we were already in Indallian. Is Indallian a city, or a country?"

  "Both," Ceravanne said. "Long ago, there were many city-states in this part of the world, so the name of the Capitol was often the same as that of a country. We are already within the ancient borders of the land of Indallian, now Gallen wants to go through the city, under the Hollow Hills. But as Fenorah warned, the city is a perilous place, and has been for centuries. None go there nowadays."

  Ceravanne looked about the room to the others. "We could take the Tower Road." She sighed. "But much of it lies underground—through forty kilometers of stone. You, Caldurian, what do you say?"

  "Indallian is legend to me," Tallea said. "I not know if holds danger." Yet she feared it. Many races lived underground, and they could see in the dark. As aboveground, the most peaceful peoples tended to die out, while the fierce races thrived. And if Tallea had to fight underground, she knew she would be at a disadvantage. Indeed, her wounds were not all healed yet, though she found she could swing her sword.

  "It is not a legend to me," Ceravanne said. "For eight thousand years, the city called to various peoples, and the Hollow Hills were carved with measureless tunnels. For long, it was but a peaceful city where folk of the underworld lived in harmony. Then the emeralds were discovered, and peoples flocked to the city in ever greater numbers. Even in its glory, when the city of Indallian was under my full sway, it was said that 'no man knows Indallian,' for no one could explore all of the many caverns in one lifetime. Indeed, there were rumors of strange and malevolent peoples inhabiting the far bounds of the realm even then.

  "And I will be honest with you all," Ceravanne concluded, visibly shaking. "I fear that place."

  "Still, three hundred years ago, I heard rumors," Gallen said, "that one could travel the Tower Road for over five hundred kilometers—from Ophat to White Reed. And that is a crucial stretch in our journey. And you must consider this—the Telgood Mountains form a formidable obstacle. No army could cross it on foot, not even an army of Tekkar, so the mountains themselves will form a wall to protect us."

  "So that is why you brought us to this entrance," Ceravanne said, gazing away toward the back halls. "I suspected as much. Yet the road is dangerous. In many places aboveground, it will have crumbled away. And belowground, many of the caverns have fallen in, floors have collapsed into chambers beneath. There is good reason that no one has taken that track in ages. And when we do reach the city of Indallian, what will we do for light?"

  Gallen reached into the pocket of his robe, pulled out a small crystal globe, and squeezed it. A brilliant white light shone from his gloved fingers. "I see," Ceravanne breathed. "Technologies from other worlds. And you are determined to leave the travelbeast behind?"

  "I am," Gallen said. "The closer we get to Moree, the more impossible it becomes to travel openly, and the beast only marks us. Do you think you can guide us?"

  "Perhaps." Ceravanne breathed deeply. "The road is easy enough to follow aboveground, and I know some paths below, though I am not certain they will be open."

  And with that, they were off. Gallen went out to the travelbeast and whispered in its ear, pointing back north, and in a moment it nodded its shaggy head and raced down the mountain road.

  Then they packed, and headed to a hallway where a statue of a giant stood guard beside a great stone door. Gallen pulled mightily on the handle, and cold air hit them, smelling of dampness and minerals. Ceravanne held up Gallen's glowing globe, and gazed down a stair that curved into the dark, and they began to descend, and to Tallea, the Tharrin looked as if she were a goddess, carrying a star in her hand.

  "Wait," Gallen said, and his voice echoed through the corridors. He went back to the room, hoisted the dead scout on his back. "We'll leave it down below, where other scouts will not find it."

  Then they began their descent. The stair went on and on, and Ceravanne led through the dark at almost a run. Their footsteps echoed off the stone. Tallea was acutely conscious of the noise they made, and she strained her ears for sound of pursuit.

  Twice, during the long race down, they passed side tunnels of poor make that had been dug in more recent years, and from one of them they smelled the acrid stench of Derrit dung and cold ashes.

  Beside that door, Gallen cast down the dead scout, leaving it as a meal for the beasts, and once again, as she had over the past several days, Tallea saw the craftiness in what he did. The Derrits would certainly prefer the carrion of a recent kill to hunting a party of armed men with bright lights and sharp swords.

  The tunnel seemed endlessly long, and the cold of the rock seeped into her bones. Even as she ran, Tallea could not seem to warm enough to fight this cold.

  In two hours they came out of the cavern under the mountain's shadow and found themselves on a broad road in the sunlight. Over the ages, stones had rolled down the hillside, so that in many places it would have been impassable by horse, but they were able to run and climb on foot.

  Tallea's side ached from her recent wound, and though the sun warmed her a bit, she found that it didn't warm the wound. Instead, it burned like ice all along its length.

  Still, they ran for hours, passing through more tunnels. Gallen took the lead, and twice he warned the others of Derrit traps—deep pits overlaid with a framework of twigs, then covered with hides and dust.

  Tallea was glad for Gallen's sharp eyes, for she herself spent her time watching the skies for sign of wingmen, and secretly she felt relieved each time they were forced to make their way through a tunnel.

  Thus, they spent the day running, and camped in a tunnel by dark. Tallea's wound throbbed through the night, and it heated up, as if it had become infected. She slept poorly, but was forced to run again at dawn.

  That day, the road took a long, steady climb, higher into the bleak, gray mountains, so that the air was frigid, and they ran along a ridge that was incredibly steep and long. The mountain rose on their left like a wall, and dropped for five hundred meters below them. In places along the road, they found the splayed prints of mountain sheep, but no other sign of use.

  That day they passed two ancient outposts, high stone citadels along Tower Road, and on one crenellated tower, twigs and leaves stuck out like a great nest, three meters across. Only a wingman could have carried such large sticks so far from the valley below.

  Gallen called a halt, then crept up the crumbling stone stairs to the tower himself, with Tallea and Orick behind. The nest was old, the twigs whitened by age and rotted so that they could hold no weight, proving that the nest had been abandoned for years. But among the yellowed bones of sheep and deer was a human arm and skull, with tatters from a bloody wool tunic.

  They climbed back down, hurried on their way, watching the skies. Gallen rounded one long arm of the mountain ridge, then dropped to the ground, warning the others with a wave of his hand to stay back.

  Tallea dropped and crawled forward, and together they looked over the bluff. A wild white river churned through a gorge far below, and pines climbed halfway up the mountains in a green haze.

  Sweeping over the canyon in wide, lazy circles, a lone wingman hunted on leather wings. Tallea watched the creature. Its underbelly was pale blue in color, so that it was hard to spot from below, but its back was a mottled gray and green. If it had been sitting high in a tree, with its wings folded, it would have been hard to spot from the ground. But from above, while in flight, it was easily discernable.

  "It's watching the valley," Gallen said, "hunting for deer or wolves. We're lucky that it's below us."

  "Not much eat up here," Tallea agreed. The wingman would not bother hunting this high road through the barren, gray mountains. She watched the creature, and wondered. According to common wisdom, all of the races on Tremonthin had been adapted from human stock to live on other worlds. But of all the peoples in Babel, she found the wingmen to be the strangest. They did not look humanoid at all. The creature was large, perhaps ten mete
rs from wing tip to wing tip—much larger than scouts. It had a broad tail that it used as a rudder as it flew, and fierce, razor-sharp hooks of a bloody red were attached to its wings. Its long flat head was filled with great teeth that Tallea could see even from this far distance, and its scaly hide was nearly proof against a blade. And it was said that the wingmen saw other peoples not as kin, but only as food. One could sometimes reason with a Derrit, but never with a wingman.

  They watched the creature circling the valley. It did not move farther west or east, nor did it seem inclined to climb higher. "I think," Gallen whispered, "that it must have seen some prey down there in the trees. It's probably waiting for it to come back into the open. It could keep circling like this all day."

  "Agreed," Tallea said.

  "We'll keep low, crawl on our bellies if we must. We're only eight kilometers from the gate down into the city of Indallian."

  Tallea looked ahead, feeling exultant. They had traveled far and fast in the past two days. The road snaked along the ridge, vertical cliffs above and below, following a U-shaped bend in the mountain. But Gallen was right—in the distance the road met with a great iron door in the rock, a door that stood closed.

  "This foolish," Tallea said. "We don't even have bow."

  "There is only one wingman," Gallen said, "not a flock. And I have my incendiary rifle." Tallea had seen how much damage that weapon had caused on the ship, and she didn't doubt that it would send a wingman tumbling in flames.

  "How many fire arrows have?" Tallea asked.

  "Six," Gallen whispered. "And I may need to save two of those-one to slay the Harvester, one for the Inhuman."

  Tallea nodded grimly. Only one wingman—as far as she could see. But there might be dozens more around the next ridge, out of sight, or others roosting in trees below. It was autumn, when the wingmen often flocked together to head south.

  "What of door?" Tallea asked, nodding toward the iron door in the distance. "What if is locked?"

  Gallen bit his lip and did not answer.

  Tallea's wound was icy as it rubbed against the cold stone, and she felt deeply troubled. She recalled how the cold blade of the giant had pierced her aboard ship, and it almost felt to her as if the wound were alive, calling out for her demise.

  She looked up the road ahead. The thin afternoon sun shone all along its length. There were few shadows thrown from rocks to hide in. Gallen's robe had turned slate-gray, the color of the stones, and Tallea wished that all of them wore such robes to hide them.

  "All right," she agreed. "We go on bellies."

  Gallen signaled the others to come forward and drop low, and he crawled to the far edge of the road, inching along the stone wall.

  The others followed. Tallea took up the rear guard, and the arduous journey began. The stones here had a peculiar, powdery scent, and they were cold and sharp, cutting into Tallea's hands and knees, and the coldness of the stone was peculiar. Tallea calculated by the angle of the suns that light had been shining on the road for hours, yet it had not warmed. Apparently, the cold in the rocks went too deep for that.

  Orick took the journey easily enough, inching forward, his big rump in the air.

  After two kilometers, Tallea began to notice blood on the trail. Maggie had cut her hand on sharp rocks. It was rumored that the wingmen could smell blood at great distances, but it was only a small amount. Still, Tallea felt uneasy.

  Another kilometer down the road, Derrit spoor was on the ledge, the first Tallea had seen in nearly two days, and it was fresh.

  Normally the sight would not have left her feeling so uncomfortable, but at the moment, Tallea was struggling to hug the rock wall as closely as possible, afraid that the wingman might spot them. She couldn't bear the thought of fighting a Derrit.

  She could do nothing but crawl ahead. A croaking sound echoed up from the valley below, one wingman calling to another. Gallen waved his hand, called a stop. He inched forward to the edge of the cliff, and alarm became evident on his face.

  He inched back, held up three fingers. Three wingmen now. Tallea looked up at Maggie's hand. Fresh blood was dripping from the deep wound in her palm. Tallea gestured at her, pointed to her nose and mouthed the words, "Smell your blood. They smell blood."

  Maggie's face paled, and she clenched her other hand over the wound. Ceravanne brought out a small piece of white cloth from her pack, gave it to Maggie to use as a bandage.

  In a moment, they were on their knees again, scurrying ever faster along the road. They made it past the bend in the road, almost five kilometers, when Gallen suddenly stopped. A lone wingman rose, riding the thermal updrafts from the valley below.

  Tallea and the others froze, crouched against the stone wall, and the wingman rose on up. Like many animals, the wingman looked mostly for signs of movement, and at the moment, the creature was in full sunlight, while they were in shadows.

  Tallea's heart pounded, and she tried to still her breathing, tried to stop the pounding, as the wingman flew along the ridge, then swept up over the mountain, sniffing loudly for the scent of blood.

  Then Gallen was on his feet, motioning to them. "Run!" Orick raced ahead of Gallen, running toward the door faster than any human could, while Maggie and Ceravanne hurried forward.

  Tallea jumped up so quickly that one of her mending muscles must have ripped, for she felt a searing pain in her side. Still, she managed to run forward for nearly two minutes.

  Suddenly Gallen shouted, turned toward Tallea and fired near her head. A searing ball of flame shot three meters over her, hotter than any oven, and a croaking scream sounded. She turned to see a wingman, mouth open, swooping toward her, the white flames from Gallen's rifle billowing in its mouth. The wingman crashed into the road not five meters behind her, bounced, and flopped over the cliff.

  They were nearly to the door. Tallea lurched forward, and saw more wingmen rising up from the valley floor, searching for the cause of the commotion. Five of them.

  Gallen leapt over a smattering of fallen rocks, but Ceravanne tripped on one, fell onto others. Maggie grabbed her arm and nearly carried her, and Ceravanne was weeping from the pain.

  Orick reached the iron door and stood looking at it.

  Tallea felt a shadow, ducked and pulled her sword, swinging. A wingman was diving straight down from the precipice above, swooping over her, and it had extended the long red claw on its wing tip, hoping to snag her and sweep her off the road, over the bluff.

  She twisted her sword inward, hoping to strike through flesh and bone instead of just claw. Her sword tip struck the scaly leather of its wing, and she was surprised at the fierce jolt, for it cut the beast but also tore the sword from her hand.

  The wingman screamed in pain and s:wept past her, careening onto the road. Her sword clattered over the cliff, and Tallea drew her dagger, leapt past the wingman as it tried to get up.

  She looked back, and the wingman screamed in anger, a roar that seemed to shake the very stone, and then it was after her, loping on clumsy feet, dragging its shattered wing.

  Ahead of her, Gallen and Orick were at the iron door. They both pulled at its enormous handles to no avail. And then Maggie was with them, and Ceravanne, and they all stood in a tight knot.

  A wingman swooped up from the valley in front of Tallea, trying to cut her off from the rest of the group, but she ducked under it, and suddenly all of them stood together outside the iron door.

  Gallen held his incendiary rifle, looked back down the road. The wounded wingman was eight meters away, and when Gallen confronted it with his weapon, the wingman hissed and stopped.

  "You don't want to die," Gallen shouted at the creature, aiming his weapon at it. The wingman shrieked, raising its long neck into the air, teeth flashing. It watched Gallen with intelligent eyes, bright red, gleaming like rubies.

  "Leave now, or die!" Gallen shouted.

  The wingman watched him a second, its eyes filled with rage, then leapt over the side of the road, flapping clumsily
toward the valley below.

  "Who says you can't reason with a wingman?" Gallen asked, smiling toward Ceravanne. Then a huge stone fell and shattered at his feet.

  Tallea looked up. A wingman was in the air, two hundred meters above them, and another swept over the ridge and dropped a large stone.

  "Get under cover!" Gallen cried. And Tallea went to the door, pulled at it.

  "It's locked!" Ceravanne said. "We need the key."

  "But who would have locked it?" Maggie asked.

  Tallea looked at the door. The lock was a mess of rust. Above the door was fancy scrollwork all along the lintel, images of twin suns rising above fields of wheat. At one time, gems might have adorned the centerpiece of each sun, but the gems had long ago been pried free.

  Gallen studied the door for half a second. "Everyone grab the handles and pull," he said. "This lock can't hold us."

  But despite their efforts, the door would not open.

  "Watch out!" Ceravanne called, and she pushed Tallea backward. Tallea looked up, saw a wingman swooping toward them, a rock tumbling in the air, and she marveled to see such a deadly rain fall from such beautiful blue skies.

  She dodged, and the stone hit the lintel of the door with a clang, then split and bounced to the ground. Rust drifted off the door in a thin sheet.

  "Hey," Orick grumbled. "I'm not handy at pulling doors open, but I'm pretty good at knocking them down!"

  The bear ran back to the ledge, then charged the door, slamming all of his weight against it.

  The door creaked, and there was a• snapping, and when Orick dizzily backed away from it, the door had cracked open a finger's width.

  Three wingmen slid overhead, dropping stones in rapid succession, and Gallen stared up at them, raised his weapon as if trying to decide whether to use the last of his ammunition. Orick backed up and roared as he charged the door again.

  The lock snapped, and one half of the door buckled under his weight. The bear climbed up onto all fours groggily and shook himself.