For weeks, she'd told Thomas that ifhe wanted some fun, he should go to the "recreation center." Thomas felt his face burn with embarrassment at such words. Though the folks on Fale spoke the same tongue as Thomas, they spoke with an odd accent, and Thomas sometimes found that the way they combined words varied from his custom. Back on Tihrglas, the term recreation center was a euphemism he would not have used in front of a lady. It referred to the secluded homes of single women notorious for letting any man into their beds. For a traveling man, the name of such, a woman was worth gold, for such a woman not only would feed a man for a day or two, but provided some good sport. So Thomas often traded names of such women with minstrels, saying, "I'll be wandering down Gort Ard way. You would not have the name of a recreation center, would you?" To which the minstrel would reply, "There's always Mary Mimsey O'Keefe."
It caused Thomas no little embarrassment that Lady Wimisonne urged him to go to another "recreation center." Each time she did, Thomas asked if she'd tired of his company. Always she laughed his question away, but finally Thomas feared she really must be weary of him, so while she stepped out for an afternoon, he packed his bags and went to the recreation center, only to discover it was just a pub.
Strange place, Fale. Strange and wonderful, Thomas decided for the hundredth time.
There, he drank his fill, sang to an appreciative audience, and laughed the night away. The Dronon were gone, Fale was his once more, and back at home, Lady Wimisonne would welcome him back to her bed energetically.
But when he stepped from the pub, clothes and instrument cases in hand, he was surprised by a shadowy figure who stepped up behind him. "Thomas Flynn?" a man asked.
"Yes?" Thomas turned to confront the fellow. Thomas never made it. A light flashed, and a sharp pain erupted in his shoulder, and he fell.
Three months later, Thomas Flynn sat slumped in a chair, a black blindfold covering his eyes, hands chained behind his back. His stomach cramped painfully.
Thomas felt a fool. It didn't matter if his captors were Dronon or their lackeys. Bagged is bagged.
So he sat chained to a chair in some financial minister's basement.
Thomas had resolved never to speak. But resolutions didn't matter. On the very first night of his capture, Thomas's interrogator simply placed a circlet on Thomas's head. Thomas had felt a prick at the back of his neck as the machine sent tendrils to infiltrate his brain, then Thomas listened as he told his interrogators everything.
Ignorance, that's what did Thomas in. Who ever heard of Guides and nanoware and all the interrogator's nasty tricks?
Of course, Thomas told the interrogator that Gallen and Maggie had gone to Tremonthin. He'd told them where Maggie had lived for seventeen years—even naming the room where she slept at Mahoney's Inn, in the city Clere, of County Morgan, on Tihrglas.
As he betrayed his niece over the weeks, Thomas became weighed down with guilt. He hoped his answers would do no harm. What did the Dronon care where Maggie was born? She'd never return home. As for her destination, Thomas could only hope that the young folks had accomplished their mission on Tremonthin and escaped.
Yet it rankled Thomas. Treachery. Treachery. Thomas's body betrayed him by speaking. The Dronon collaborators wrenched Maggie's secrets from him.
I am a fool, Thomas had thought bitterly a thousand times in the past weeks. Dying a brave death on Tremonthin would have been infinitely preferable to this.
Three times now I have betrayed Maggie. I betrayed her in her youth when her mother died, by leaving her in the care of strangers. As her only living relative, I only came to claim her when she won an inheritance.
I betrayed her again when I refused to join her quest to Tremonthin. In my naïveté, I imagined I knew more than she.
And I betrayed her at last by answering every question the Dronon's interrogator put to me.
Over and over, Thomas considered his betrayal, until he imagined that if the Dronon ever unchained his hands, he would strangle himself.
But for now he only sat, starving, choking on the scent of his own excrement—for the interrogator left him in filth. Until, finally, he heard the door open to his cell. Briefly, Thomas hoped his captors would finally kill him.
His head hung sideways, and though his tongue felt swollen dry, Thomas Flynn began to sing the words to an aria written by an ancient composer named Acuon of Freewater. It was a haunting melody with intricate musical phrases that seemed to meander then would thunder back to their major themes clothed in new majesty, having accrued power in their travels. It was a song of defiance.
A person walked in, stirring the air, padding on soft feet. It did not sound like the heavy boots of his interrogator. Thomas heard a lighter tread. A scent filled the room, a restrained sweetness. The intruder tiptoed around Thomas, never speaking. Thomas took a deep breath.
It was Maggie, his niece—he felt sure. He could smell her wool shawl, the scent of her dark red hair, all mingled with a rich fragrance of perfume she'd got off-world.
The sense of smell is such a strange thing. Most people hardly notice how much they rely on it, how easily a scent is remembered.
After all these weeks, all the answers the Dronon had forced from him, Maggie was here.
Thomas's heart sank. Captured. She'd been captured; held prisoner with him. The Dronon would kill her. The Lords of the Seventh Swarm would force Gallen to fight, for Gallen and Maggie held the title of "Lords of the Sixth Swarm." The Dronon imagined that by winning this title, they would gain legal claim to the worlds of man.
Of course when Gallen lost the battle, the Dronon would also kill Maggie. Thomas's ignorance would lead to the death of his only kin.
"Maggie?" Thomas cried, straining against his blindfold. "I'm sorry! They made me tell. I tried to hold back. I tried to be quiet! Can you forgive me, lass?"
She did not answer. Only circled him, lightly brushing his shoulder with her woolen shawl, padding around him.
"Maggie?" he pleaded once again.
She reached out, tugged vainly for a moment at his blindfold, then pulled it away, raking the skin around his eyes with her long nails.
The figure standing before Thomas was not Maggie. Instead, a man all dressed in black robes stood, a man in a golden mask. It was the kind of mask common on Fale, a thin film of incandescent material. Behind the mask were deep brown eyes. Thomas's interrogator, Lord Karthenor.
"Forgive the minor deception," Karthenor said. "The Lords of the Seventh Swarm wanted assurance that they had Maggie's scent right."
Karthenor raised a small perfume bottle, then sprayed it on his wrist, held it up for Thomas. It smelled like Maggie, as true and clear as if she were in the room.
"A person's scent is marvelous," Karthenor said, "as distinctive as a retinal scan, as individual as genetic mapping. Yet we leave it wherever we go."
"How, how did you do this?" Thomas asked.
"You did it," Karthenor laughed. "We had only to send emissaries to Tihrglas, to collect samples of her body oils from the comforter on her bed. Recreating her scent is a minor thing.
"For this, I thank you. Now our Dronon Seekers will be able to track Maggie across the worlds."
"Och, damn your sorry hide!" Thomas shouted. "I hope you never catch her. If I were free, I'd break your spine!"
Karthenor smiled benignly, glanced up to the silver circlet weighing on Thomas's head. With the Guide on, Thomas could not fight, could not flee. Yet Karthenor still kept Thomas chained. Thomas could only imagine one reason for the shackles: meanness. A minor torture.
Karthenor mused, "If you were free, I'm sure you would do more than merely break my spine. But you will never be free again."
Chapter 2
"Och, this is no proper place for a bear," Orick growled. He sniffed at the dead monster at his feet.
The creature looked like some huge gray slime mold. It had just come slithering out of the stream not forty feet distant, and Gallen had been forced to fry it with his ince
ndiary rifle. Now it lay, burned and quivering, just outside camp. It was the third monster Gallen had killed in the past three hours.
Orick shook his head, wondering if the slime was edible. "My mother always said that you'd bring me to Ruin, Gallen, and here we are."
"It's just the name for the planet—because of all the alien ruins hereabouts," Gallen said. He grunted, pulling at some vines near the edge of camp, trying to get them from the ground so that he could burn them for a campfire. The little bear, Tallea, went to his side and began pulling with her teeth, trying to help Gallen out.
Orick glanced off at the skyline. Ruin was a strange world—too far from its primary sun, which sat directly overhead like a child's purple ball. It gave the landscape a violet hue.
Here, strewn across the desert, were huge red boulders, shaped like eggs, lying in the sand, and farther in the distance, a wind-sculpted sandstone mesa rose above the desert floor like some castle. Odd bushes grew all around—some sprouting like hair, others all thick and rubbery. The plants filled the air with alien scents.
Only the sound of the stream, burbling as brooks will, reminded Orick of home. No, Ruin was no proper place for a bear. Still, Orick wouldn't have minded it so much if he could actually see some of these famo~s ruins that the planet was named after, but Orick had no such luck. It was, after all, just another alien landscape.
The gray mold at Orick's feet quivered, whether in dying throes or in an attempt to escape, he didn't know.
"Maybe we should move the camp away from the brook," Orick said. "I think it attracts predators."
Gallen didn't answer. He'd got some of the dead vines over in front of the spaceship and was trying to set them afire. Tallea was out looking for more wood. Perhaps Gallen was building a fire in the hope of scaring off predators. Perhaps he did it because they planned on camping here, next to this stream, and Gallen was just used to having a campfire. They didn't really need a fire, as far as Orick could tell. Though he'd grown sick of riding in a spaceship this past few weeks, he still thought it safer to sleep in there than to sleep out here in the open, on an alien world.
Why couldn't Gallen find some nicer planet to camp on? Surely there were worlds in the process of being terraformed hereabouts, places where forests grew and the grass was green. Proper places for a bear. But, no, Maggie wanted this planet because it wasn't listed as inhabitable on the star charts: "A good place to hide from the Dronon," she said. They were already well quit of the Milky Way. Here in the Carina Galaxy, they'd come to the fringe worlds, on the edge of civilization.
Gallen quit fiddling with the wood, looked up at the ship. The Nightswift's landing lights blinked violet and ivory. It was a sleek ship, some sixty meters long and thirty wide.
The headdress of black ringlets that Gallen wore over his long hair glittered in the soft lights, the crystal disks of memory for his mantle jiggling as he drew ragged breaths. A single sapphire gem began to glow in the center of Gallen's mantle. Gallen had just chosen that moment to download his memories into his mantle so that if he died, his memories could be placed into a clone.
After a few heartbeats, the gem quit blazing so fiercely. Maggie was still in the ship, resting. Being nearly five months pregnant was taking its toll on her energy levels.
Gallen gazed down at Orick. "I've been thinking," he said softly, so as not to be heard through the ship's open door. "We could move this ship to another camp—or maybe we could go back the way we came. It's time to quit running from the Dronon. I have to fight them sometime."
Orick had been Gallen's friend for years, yet he felt no less loyal to Maggie. He didn't like having to side with one or the other.
Orick said, "Fighting is too risky. For every minute you keep running, that's another moment of freedom you give to every man and woman in the galaxy."
"That's where Maggie is wrong!" Gallen said, voicing an argument that had been going on for weeks. "The Oronon are setting outposts on every world, searching for us. They're killing those who help hide us. The very threat of invasion keeps our people in fear: what kind of freedom is that?"
"It's a devil's bargain," Orick agreed, "but you have to admit, Gallen, you don't have an answer to this problem." He looked down at the quivering mold, pondering.
"What do you mean, I have no answer?" Gallen said. "I just told you my answer."
"I know, I heard you. Kill Kintiniklintit. But you've been killing outlaws and usurpers ever since we met," Orick grumbled. "And what has it got you? You killed the Lords of the Sixth Swarm, and now you want to face the Lords of the Seventh Swarm. And when you beat them, maybe you'l1 have to fight some more, or maybe you can go back to killing folks who are no better than Oronon, though they have human shapes. And do you know what it's got you, Gallen: you're a slave. You're a miserable slave!"
"A slave?" Gallen said, amused by Orick's tirade. "Maybe so, but . . . I was born to be a Lord Protector."
"Yeah, so you're a clone of some famous Lord Protector," Orick grumbled. "That doesn't mean you have to follow in his footsteps. As I remember the story, didn't he eventually get martyred? Are you going to follow in his footsteps? Are you going to let somebody else decide how you'll live your life."
"What else can I do?" Gallen said. He began pacing, hardly daring to look at Orick.
And at that moment, the answer came to Orick, an answer he had felt in the depths of his soul but never had been quite able to voice to Gallen. "Ignore evil," Orick said. "Jesus said to forgive others. If a man comes to you, though he has sinned seventy times seven, and asks forgiveness, then you forgive. Ignore evil."
Gallen shook his head angrily. "I disagree! 'Resist Satan, and he will flee from you'! God strengthened David so he could slay Goliath. God ordered Joshua to destroy the Hittites and the Jebusites."
Orick grinned, a glint in his eye. "The devil quotes Scripture, too. You're not a religious man, Gallen. When did you start quoting Scripture?"
Gallen laughed. "I warmed my share of pews as a kid. You forget, I've got more than one priest in my family."
Orick felt chagrined. He said softly, "Sometimes, sometimes God has commanded men to fight. But I'd like to know Gallen, are you so eager to fight because that's what God wants of you, or is it just in your nature? Sometimes God tells people to run, too. Moses took the children of Israel and fled from Pharaoh. Joseph and Mary were told to flee Israel when Herod sent his soldiers to slaughter the babes. Sometimes you should run from evil. Maggie's right in this, in asking you to run. Her life is at risk as much as your own. And there's the babe to worry about. She has to make the choice for her own life."
Gallen opened his mouth to argue, yet nothing came out.
Orick looked up at Gallen, then shook his head in despair. "Gallen, my oldest and dearest friend, I think it's time for me to leave you."
There, he'd said it. He'd been thinking it for months, and now he'd finally said it.
"Leave?" Gallen asked, astonished. "Where would you go?"
"Anywhere. We've been on a dozen fine planets. Home, maybe. Back to Tihrglas."
Gallen's mouth just worked of its own accord, as if he would speak but couldn't find the words. He'd been totally unprepared.
Orick felt—weary, sick at heart. "Oh, don't you see it, Gallen? I've been thinking about this for months. The night the Dronon came to Tihrglas, I almost left you for good. You know I've always wanted to be a priest. I wanted to serve God, but you've become a slave to evil, and I can't watch it anymore. You sicken me, my friend. You're destroying yourself!"
Orick's eyes watered with tears. It hurt to say these things.
"What do you mean, I sicken you?" Gallen asked. "I haven't changed."
"Oh yes you have!" Orick said. "Remember the day we first met?"
Gallen looked at Orick, confused, and shook his head.
Orick reminded him. "We were on that hot August road that runs through the hills by the mill outside Gort Ard, and you was hunting for that killer, Dan'l O'Leary?"
&nb
sp; "You mean the very first time we met?" Gallen asked. "You were with that friar, what's-his-name."
"Friar Bannon," Orick said, remembering the thin old fellow with the rotting teeth, his head shaved bald. "A godly man-one of the best there has ever been."
It had been a scorcher of a day, and Gallen was tracking a murderer and had lost the boy's trail somewhere along the road. Dan'l O'Leary had managed to leap off the margin of the highway into some brush. Gallen could not discover his trail. Yet Gallen also knew the general area where the boy had vanished, and he'd asked Orick to sniff the killer out.
Now, Friar Bannon had known the killer. Dan'l O'Leary was only fifteen, but he was a big kid, and dumb. The kind who figured it was easier to make it as a highwayman than as a farmer. So one summer's night he waylaid a wealthy traveler, brandishing a cudgel. When the fellow was slow to get his purse open, Dan'l hit him in the head, hoping to subdue him, but in his excitement he hit the fellow too hard, knocking his brains all over the dirt road.
While Dan'l stood over the corpse, looking for coins hidden in the man's boots, his own mother rounded the bend in the road and discovered her son was a murderer.
In her shame, she ran into town and told everyone what had happened. Dan'l took off into the woods, where he foraged off the land and sometimes visited Friar Bannon, telling how he was tom by the desire to return home, wanting to repent, knowing he'd hang if he did, suffering from the pain of a damned soul. So it was that Orick came upon Gallen, hunting for the killer, and Gallen asked Orick to sniff the boy out.
"What will you do to him if you catch him?" Orick had asked, for Orick was a young bear, and having heard of the boy's grief from Friar Bannon, he was not sure if it would be appropriate to help apprehend the youngster. Friar Bannon felt convinced that the boy would repent, and he hoped that the law would be lenient with the child—perhaps give him a good beating rather than a hanging. The murder was a youthful mistake, after all, not the act of a hardened criminal.
Beyond The Gate - Book 2 of the Golden Queen Series Page 46