Janthis turned to Ixelion. “The records,” he said. “Did she give them to you?”
Suddenly Ixelion remembered the box that he still held. The records, and something else. A treasure. A thing of destruction. He wanted to hand the box to Janthis, but unaccountably his fingers tightened on it. I will take it home for one night and sit with it on my lap as she did, in memory of her, he thought to himself. I will cradle it and look out upon Fallan in the star-studded sky. I will go back to that day when we sat together on her stone stair and talked so happily of nothing. He nodded reluctantly to Janthis.
“I have them. I would like to read them before I bring them to the council. Is it permitted?”
Janthis looked long at the box now wrapped in Ixelion’s long arms but finally gave his consent. “Do not neglect your people while you mourn, Ixelion,” he warned. “Do not forget that though a night passes slowly in your palace, the years flow swiftly on your world.”
Ixelion glanced at him sharply. “I learned this long ago,” he answered. “Why do you speak to me as though I were a mortal?”
For a moment despair passed behind Janthis’s dark eyes. “I am afraid,” he replied simply as he recovered and smiled at Ixelion in apology. “Go home, all of you,” he said. “The danger has been held at bay yet again.”
Ixelion opened his eyes. Fleetingly Janthis’s face hung before him in the dim room, the lips still parted in speech, and then there was nothing but the endless gush and roil of water and his own hands caressing the Annals. She should have taken the treasure from the Trader and run with it to Janthis, he thought. Why that sudden need to look at it, the selfishness, and then the greatest of transgressions? But that same need was curdling in him again as it had done for the one warped moment when she had spoken of the thing that now lay quiescent at his feet, and he knew that he must never speak with her on that last day again. Feeling thin and somehow drained he lifted the book from his lap and held it against his cheek. Falia. The monotonous chatter of his waterfalls and streams wove with the sick vestiges of longing still tugging at him, and suddenly he wanted to stand and shout “Stop! No more water! Give me silence!” as though he might slay the desire to bend and pick up the box if he could only end the sound of water. A council meeting was due soon, he knew. He would be called, and until then he had only to place the Annals and the other thing in his chest and firmly close the lid. I must take the Annals in the wooden box, he thought suddenly. Someone must have seen it in my hands by Fallan’s Gate. I would like to keep it. It is so beautiful, so warm and dry. But to keep the box I must first remove the treasure. His spine seemed to bend of its own accord, and his hands reached down, trembling. Then he realized what he was doing and sprang up, dropping the Annals into the box with head averted and shutting the lid and fastening the hasp. I am playing with death, he thought, horrified. Walking into his three-walled room, he flung the box into the chest and dove into the rocking coolness of the pool. I will spend more time with Sillix, he vowed. I will not be alone. He swam determinedly, refusing to bring forward the other thought that hovered behind the image of Sillix.
Sillix will keep me from myself.
Sillix will prevent me from being alone.
2
Danarion paced slowly under the spreading haeli trees, their golden leaves whispering sleepily above him, their red, sticky buds exuding a fragrance that would linger on his body and in his nostrils for the rest of the day. Ten dark and sullen years had passed on Fallan since its Gate was closed, but only one winter on Danar, and now spring had come. The endless forests glowed yellow and flame, the corions dozed, drugged by the scent of the birthing blossoms, and the people sat far into each mild, sweet night, unwilling to pass into unconsciousness and miss a moment of the unfolding of the season. Green and blue birds followed him, singing wantonly around his head, swooping recklessly to brush his shoulders. Once in a while he sang with them absently, his eyes on his feet. Falia’s cold necklet was in his hand, a weight of preoccupation, the only token of fear and failure on Danar, and though it offended his fingers and filled him with distaste, he carried it with conscious care. The necklet itself was not repugnant. The finest craftsmen on Shol had made it as they had made all the others, with every skill and vision they had possessed, and it was as consummately wrought as the Worldmaker’s weaving of the stars’ glory. Thin gold links hung with pearls and fastened with Lix crystal went around the neck, and hanging on two gossamer-thin filaments of golden webbing was the sun-disc, rayed also in the pale, glittering stone that was Ixel’s only wealth. Each necklet was distinct, for the craftsmen had put something of each wearer’s world into it. Falia’s had links shaped like tiny horses, the eye of each animal a splinter of green emerald, each flaring tail streaked in silver. The Worldmaker had finished each necklet with benevolent spells of power. Power for preserving, for interpreting and upholding, power for peace and order. But no power to heal, Danarion thought grimly. Why should he have given us that? In those days there were no hurts. The necklet hurt him now, wreathed as it was in invisible coils of deceit and corruption, and he quickened his pace. At a word from him the teasing birds drew away, hovering for a moment before they flitted to be lost in the foliage, and he rounded the last bend, which would take him to the edge of the forest and the city beyond.
Halfway along he stopped. A corion lay across the path, blocking his way, its golden fur dappled in sunlight. It was spread-eagled luxuriously, its long-clawed limbs loose in the grass, its tressed tail curved along its back, the crest of green feathers on its head now lying like a shimmering cap to curl beneath its pointed ears and under its chin. Danarion hesitated, smiling, his heart suddenly lightened at the sight of the great beast so indolently at ease, so free from necessity or any care. The corion sighed, its huge ribs rising and falling, and opened one azure eye lazily. It sighed again ostentatiously, and the black tongue came out to explore the furred and feathered nose, revealing sharp white teeth. It yawned with a show of mild annoyance, and raised its head.
“So it is you, Danarion,” it said in a voice as rich and dark as the roots of the trees that dug deep beneath it. “I suppose that you want me to move so that you can get past me.”
Danarion stepped up to it and bowed slightly. One did not fear a corion, but one did accord it respect and regard it with awe, speaking to it politely, for its dignity and self-possession demanded a certain manner of approach. Danarion had always wanted to put his arms around one and bury his face in its warm fur, but he had never been invited to do so and probably never would be.
“I would not dream of disturbing you, Storn,” he replied. “I can go around you if you do not feel like rising.”
“Of course I do not feel like rising,” Storn retorted, with a rumble of laughter. “But for you, sun-lord, I will rouse myself from this pleasant torpor. What a day it is!” The corion rippled easily onto its haunches and flexed its crumpled green wings. “I can never decide whether I like better the days of buds and smells or the time of the seed-fires. Are you going to council today?”
“I am.”
“I feel sorry for you. It is much too lovely a morning to do any thinking. I myself have just returned from Yantar, where I visited the high thorn groves. They are in bloom, and the hills are covered in white. Very pretty. The Gate was busy. Many people are coming to Danar to see the haeli trees in bud.” The corion suddenly cocked a knowing eye at Danarion, and the feathers on its head flared out. “You were away for a long time last autumn, and Janthis too. Can it be that there is a new world in the making?”
Danarion shook his head, sadness once more filling him, his throat swelling with remorse. He answered as steadily as he could. “Unfortunately there is no new world about to burst forth in the All, Storn. Janthis and I were on Fallan.”
“Oh,” said Storn with disappointment. “Then I have no further interest in the matter.” The beast stifled another yawn. “No doubt Fallan is wondrous to the people who inhabit it, but I am content with Danar. What
do you have in your hand?”
Danarion rebuked Storn gently. “It is business for the council,” he said in a tone that clearly forbade another question.
“Ah,” Storn remarked. “I only mentioned it because it smells …” The feathers flattened and rose again and the tail curled tighter as the creature tried to select the right word to describe what its nostrils told it about the thing Danarion held so tightly.
“It smells … foreign.”
“It is indeed foreign,” Danarion finished, bowing once again. “I apologize for disturbing your rest, Storn. My house is open to you always.”
The corion watched him go for a moment, but once more the warmth of the sun and the thick fragrance of the haeli buds insinuated themselves behind its eyes, and it closed them, slipping into the long grass and its dreams simultaneously. The next traveler along the path had to detour in under the trees, for Storn would move for no one else that day.
Danarion climbed the steep streets of the city, answering all greetings with a word and a smile, but he did not stop to finger cloth or run his eye over the jewelers’ wares as he usually did. He moved briskly between the lofty wooden buildings, their carved walls glowing soft blue in the sun, the veins and knots sparking gold. He glanced neither to right nor left at the doorways that invited passersby into courtyards full of fruit trees and children running in the shade or murmurous with the splash and tinkle of fountains. He stopped once to let a cart laden with fat purple vegetables go by. It was drawn by four youths clad in the short blue tunics of summer who saluted him, laughing, as they went. A young corion rode atop the load, its tail resting against its paws, the intermingling gold fur and green feathers gleaming, and it inclined its head to him gravely. He walked on, crossed a square drowned in sleepy sunlight and empty of people, stepped quietly by a group of two men and a woman sitting on the ground, their eyes tightly closed, their fingertips meeting together, and came at last to the belt of trees that separated the mortal people from the domain of the sun-lords.
He entered the Time-forest’s golden shade where nothing lived but the trees themselves, feeling time swirl for a moment around him like a gust of wind, the swift passage of mortal time tugging at his heels and the majestic, slow movement of his own powerful time surging to meet him. The wood was not forbidden to mortals, nor the mighty crenellated towers of the city within a city that rose beyond it, but few mortals chose to take this route to the Gate. It was too silent, too fraught with an unfamiliar mystery that spoke to them of things they were not created to understand.
Now he could see the foot of the stair between the bluish trunks and fluttering leaves, and his eye traveled upward. Tower piled on tower, walls enfolding walls, wings flung out to more towers and more walls, the palace on Danar was a city carved out of gray stone, designed in the beginning to be the hub of the universe. Shol sat in the center, but Danar had been the council’s meeting place since the Worldmaker had spoken Danarion and his sun into life.
Danarion began to climb the stairs leading up to Danar’s Gate, five hundred here, five hundred on the other side of the palace, one step for each sun-lord in the universe, a name carved deep into each step. Once these stairs had never been free of the weight of immortal feet, and when night fell, the sun-people passing up and down them had lit the darkness with a vision of stars that had fallen to earth. Now those brilliant beings were only names stamped into rock. Only five remained. The rest served black fire behind closed Gates, or had fought until their suns exploded, or had vanished in the place of the Messengers. Those names glided under Danarion’s feet, each conjuring a face, a world, something unique that would never be replaced, time that had passed and could not be wound back. Mallan, Kallar, Firor, Nagerix, Sigrandor, Falia …
Danarion came to the first break in the stair. Here two corions sat on watch, one at either side of the silver-patterned stone, their eyes sternly facing out over the treetops, their mouths firmly shut, their crests rising, their wings unfurled. If it had not been for the gentle rise and fall of their chests, they might have been taken for stone themselves. Danarion did not disturb their vigilance. He went on climbing and at last reached the terrace, also guarded by a row of corions. He went straight in under the arch, through the empty entrance hall beyond which threw back to him his mournful tread, across a courtyard, up steps, and along a passage whose gilt-traced walls and floor tiled in crystal spoke of solemnity and power. A thousand sun-people had strolled laughing through the palace’s high passages, filling its echoing stone vastness with vitality and light, bright jewels and drifting hair, a kaleidoscope of beauty and color flowing in and out of the halls and under the banner-hung arches. In the center was the enormous, clerestoried copper dome to which, in the end, each passage led. Under its ceiling the black marble table stretched, bounded by a thousand stone chairs. On a dais at the head was the raised seat that would never be filled again and behind it, like a solid halo, a giant gold sun that measured the wall in a great circular sweep. To right and left, at the base of the sun, were doors. One led into Janthis’s chamber. The other would never open again. Danarion caught up with Sholia, and hearing him come, she slowed and turned with a smile, the two discs hanging from her necklet sparkling gaily.
“Danarion! I went down into the city this morning. It has grown since I was last here, and the horses brought from Fallan all those years ago have multiplied beyond all expectations. The foals are being born with golden eyes, though, like your people. Have you noticed?”
He laughed. “Of course I noticed. How are things on Shol?”
“Untouched,” she replied simply, and they both sobered, pacing out of the passage and onto the gleaming black floor of the council hall. The great circular room was empty. Sunlight lay in long falls of gold poured through the clerestory windows ringing the dome, was reflected back by the smooth, glassy surface of the floor, and slid palely over the jeweled ceiling. Before them stretched the stone table, the expectant, empty seats. They walked slowly behind the rows. On the table, fronting each chair, were the necklets of those who had fallen, casting their own reflections on the polished surface so that each one seemed sunk deep into the blackness. Danarion did not need to count them, for he had been present at the closing of all these Gates, as had Sholia. Though he sometimes stood in a trance in the halls and corridors of the palace, walking again on worlds that had long ago become inaccessible, forbidden to his body, he never relived their last days.
It took a long time to reach the head of the table, passing under shadow and out again, drawn into the aura of dominance that still surrounded the massive raised chair, but at last they reached their seats and settled themselves, looking back down the acres of shining black marble, the silent further caverns of the room. Sholia sighed, one hand on her throat, and sat still, her eyes closed, her golden hair resting softly around her. Danarion laid Falia’s necklet on the table before him, glad to relinquish it, and waited. Presently Ixelion arrived, walking quickly. He did not greet them, and they did not look at him. He slid into his chair, put his elbows on the table, and slipped his pointed chin into his webbed hands. The great, empty chair enveloped them in its brooding atmosphere. More than once, out of his own longing, Danarion had thought that he caught a glimpse of a presence sitting there, the nebulous outlines of the form he loved, but if he turned his head, he saw nothing but dark stars and trees, faces and beasts, carved in mute profusion on the solid stone.
He knew that he should discipline his mind in that moment, throw off the heaviness of melancholy insinuating itself beneath his control, but he did not. He allowed himself to slip into the past, to a time of peace long gone, not reliving it as he was capable of doing, but hovering outside the scene, as the mortals did when they wanted to retrieve a memory. He was standing behind his own chair, looking at himself seated, talking to Sigrandor opposite him. Sigrandor’s ruby eyes were glittering with mirth, and his red-gold flames fluttered and danced across the table like lively children. Chatter and laughter filled the
dome. Tranin was leaning close to Falia, whose silver hair hid her silken green shoulders, and over them all Ghakazian circled, the beat of his brown wings fanning them, his necklet hanging, his naked limbs spread wide, unwilling to remain still. Janthis had his face turned to the being in the great chair, his sun-ball blazing in his hands. And in the great chair the Worldmaker sat, his arms folded, smiling as he surveyed the full table. I must look long, something whispered at the back of Danarion’s mind. This is a memory, this is the last day he took his place with us, the last day a thousand sun-lords met together. Ah, so beautiful you are, so full of light and goodness! I will never love any as I worship you! His heart full, he saw the Worldmaker rise. Immediately all talking ceased, and Ghakazian glided down to stand at his place at the table.
“Well!” said the Worldmaker, and his voice quivered in their veins like wild music.
“Is it good, all that I have made? You, my first ones, are you satisfied?”
“It is good!” they called back to him.
“And are you content to know that you belong to me?”
Suddenly Danarion sensed something, a change in the gentle tones, subtle and minute. His heart bounded in his chest, but in those days he had had no words to describe the emotion now inching through him. He tore his gaze away from the Worldmaker and glanced at Janthis. The smile had left his face, and in his hands the sun-ball shrank to a red glow. Danarion looked back at the Worldmaker, who still smiled, but something had grown in his eyes, a coolness, a hint of mockery. Of course we belong to him, Danarion thought, puzzled. What does he mean? Then a desolation swept over him. He wanted to reach out his arms and wail, but he did not know why. The Worldmaker raised his arms, and it seemed to Danarion that the light that blazed from his fingers flickered with black tongues for a moment.
Stargate Page 3