Has the Worldmaker returned? The query was eager.
No. Janthis has a task for you.
Storn’s disappointment flooded Danarion. Oh, I will come.
As they waited Ghakazian began to pace. Then the corion came stalking into the room, green wings flat along its back, its paws falling with soft thuds on the black floor. When it reached the foot of the table, it halted, settled onto its haunches, and let its eyes quickly roam them all, resting a moment longer on Ghakazian.
“Well,” it said. “You bid me come and here I am. What can I do?”
“We have a new task for you, Storn,” Janthis said. “Ghakazian has brought a most precious and powerful treasure to Danar, and it must be guarded at all times. The Lawmaker made it, but not for the eyes of mortals or immortals. Will you accept the care of it?”
“I will, of course, perform gladly any task you give me, Janthis,” Storn answered, whiskers quivering under the black nose. “Shall I take it to the mountain?”
“Only when you retire there for the winter. Then you must sleep with it beneath you. It will give you marvelous dreams. For the time being I will place it in a chamber by itself, down near the Books of Lore, I think, and you and your brethren must take turns to see that no one but myself enters the room where it is.”
“What is this thing?”
“It is a book. Come and see.”
Regally the corion padded to the head of the table. Its muzzle passed over the Book enquiringly, ears flattening and rising in concentration.
“Indeed, he made it,” Storn commented at last. “How good and rich it smells, like a haeli forest after rain! But there are other odors here, Janthis. They are not so pleasant.”
“The Book has been on a long journey,” Janthis responded seriously, though his eyes twinkled at Storn. “Go now, Storn, and tomorrow you can begin your vigil. Choose other guardians well. This task is not simply a matter of custom, like the guarding of Gate or palace. The fate of Danar depends on your watchfulness.”
“I understand,” the beast replied, “though who should want to open this Book without the Lawmaker’s permission I cannot imagine.” Storn turned and left the hall with a slow, sinuous dignity, and they heard the emerald wings crack open beyond the entrance.
“What a fool you are, Janthis,” Ghakazian said scornfully. “You would place the Book in the care of a vain and ignorant brute.”
“Your own vanity and ignorance have made you more brutish than you can possibly imagine!” Janthis cut back angrily.
The other two did not hear the sharp exchange of words. Their eyes were fixed on the Book.
Suddenly Janthis was aware of the intense silence around him, and seeing the blank eyes fastened on the Book, he took it, rose, and walking to his own door, thrust the Book within. Coming back, he was about to speak when Sholia forestalled him.
“You could read it, couldn’t you?” she faltered. “You used to stand between us and the Worldmaker. You have a place of your own in the scheme of things. Surely the Book is not forbidden to you? And then … when you had read it …”
“I could tell you what to do? No, Sholia. It has less power over me, but that does not change the Law. It will remain unopened forever, if that is to be.”
She heard the undertone of rebuke and subsided into a chastened silence, but in her and in Danarion the desire to fondle and touch it had been lit and would smolder.
“We have wasted enough time,” Janthis went on. “We will go now to Ghaka. You know your choice, Ghakazian. You can come with us and be immured behind your Gate, or you can go from here with a Messenger and be judged.”
“So that the Messengers may annihilate me? No, I will not. They hate us, the strange ones. Their judgments are not fair. They want to be done with the trivialities of mortal and immortal alike and have the universe to themselves. I will return to Ghaka. It is my home.” No sorrow for Ghaka colored his words, and there was no trace of remorse in the hard face.
They all rose and without further comment left the hall. Ghakazian went first. He knew that if he tried to catapult himself through Danar’s Gate and escape, he would be quietly and firmly prevented. In any case, he thought, where can I go? I do not want to reach Shol as I am. That is a new problem, but I can ponder it when this little move in the game is over.
One by one they passed under the massive stone sun raying out over their heads, paced the Gate tunnel, and vanished into the blackness of space, calling to Ghaka’s sun. Long before their feet touched the spur hanging in the void, they saw and felt Ghaka’s agony. The sun’s pull was weak and erratic, jerking them violently, and its light did not grow and fill their vision with its roaring energy. It beat an angry purple, its perimeter bulging and sinking like the heaving of an ocean. Ghakazian was unconcerned, and he alighted smiling. The others followed, grim-lipped. They became aware of a Messenger’s presence, its thin plume of fragrant smoke rising, its ribbons of iridescent color quickly weaving a tall, vibrating shape.
Uneasiness fell on all of them. They bowed low to it, but it did not speak. Only Ghakazian remained upright, regarding it impudently, his foot tapping.
“Well,” he said. “Let us conclude this silly pretense. Why we bothered to close Gate after Gate down all the long ages is beyond my comprehension. It would have been better to leave them open and so spare ourselves all the anguish. One mighty flood through all the worlds, and a quick ending.” In spite of his words he glanced at the Messenger and found his heart beating fast. He spun on his heel and strode in under the portals of the Gate, turning to face them when he was inside.
“I would like to speak to some of his mortals,” Danarion said. Janthis nodded, and Danarion stepped past Ghakazian and was lost to sight. The others waited anxiously. Janthis turned his back on the Gate and gazed out into the stars, brooding. Sholia could not take her eyes off Ghakazian’s shadowed face. His feeble and sickly light played fitfully on the rock above his head but could not pierce the deeper dimness of the tunnel. Unwillingly he found his own gaze meeting hers, and he felt great sadness for the last time. I wish that it did not have to be this way, he said to her in his mind, and she saw the tight face soften. I would give anything to be as I once was, but what is the use? I have done what I had to do. I have sacrificed myself. I have loved you, Sholia. I have been Ghaka’s good, I have gloried in my charge, but in order to be the good of the universe I have diminished myself and Ghaka. Forgive me.
She did not argue with him. Her heart was too full of yearning for all that had been and would not come again. I have loved you also, she whispered back in her mind. Now who will take my hand and lead me from the mist of my own terror? Only in the past will we be together, and always the present will wait for me, beckoning me back to duty and my own battles. Nurse your sun back to health, Ghakazian. Do not let it die. I could not bear it if I knew that your fire had gone from the All.
But it was useless, as she was well aware. He could not heal his sun, and even if he had been able to, the link of love and trust between them had worn too thin. She walked through the Gate and put her arms around him, laying her head beneath his shoulder. For a moment he responded, both his arms and his great wings enfolding her. She fought the panic that mingled with her need to embrace him one last time, for his body was as chill as space itself and fed a breath of desolation into her veins. Then he pushed her away. I will survive, he said to her silently. I am immortal. I am a god. She turned and left him, and until Danarion returned, she stood beside Janthis, head hanging. When Danarion came back, he was pale and silent.
“Did you see them, did you speak to them?” Janthis asked him.
“I saw them. I did not speak to them,” was all he said. They waited for more, but Danarion closed his mouth. For a while there was a silence, full of thoughts of the past, that all were reluctant to break. But finally Danarion held out a hand. Ghakazian knew what was required of him. Impatiently he pulled his necklet over his head and dropped it into Danarion’s palm. The words of ad
monition and accusation would not come to Janthis’s tongue. Danarion and Sholia drew close to him, a trio of light, and all three turned their faces for the last time to Ghakazian and the world of Ghaka beyond him.
“Close your Gate, Ghakazian,” Janthis commanded sternly, and at the words all emotion left them. Ghakazian began to laugh, but they took no notice. They waited unrelenting, and finally he stopped snickering.
“I suppose there is enough power left in my sun to close the Gate,” He choked, still shaking with mirth. “Oh, very well. I am not particularly sorry that I will never see any of you again. I have grown very tired of your never-changing company.” Nonchalantly he raised his arms and stood straight. “Come to me, sun, and obey me this last time!” he shouted, and slowly the air around him began to fill with a sliding, glancing violet light that coiled about him, waiting for direction. He clapped his hands, then held them out toward the Gate. “I, Ghakazian, lord of Ghaka, close my Gate!” he shouted. “Henceforth neither mortal nor immortal, Maker nor Messenger nor any created thing may enter here. The stars are forbidden to the people of Ghaka”—here he paused and seemed about to burst into private laughter again, but he controlled himself and went on gaily—“and Ghaka is forbidden to the people of the stars. Close, my Gate, close! It does not matter. None of it matters in the least. I do not need you anymore.”
For the briefest moment there was a cessation of all breath and movement. Then a wind came howling out of the cave tunnel, whipping at the light, swirling the purple color this way and that. Ghakazian folded his arms, fluffed out his wings, and began to laugh again quietly, watching. Light and wind seemed to find a center in the Gate arch and jostled and shrieked between keystone and rock floor before the sound of the wind died into a rustling and the violet light formed shapes. Suddenly the Gate was dense with birds that fluttered and flapped against one another, fighting to free themselves from the press of those struggling next to them. Wings thrashed helplessly. The whole space of the Gate itself seethed with violet feathers.
The rustling began to die away. The color faded to the gray of stone, and the birds hardened rapidly into carvings, each tiny head, each outflung wing etched delicately and brilliantly, filling the Gate. The sun-lords did not wait to see the final stamp of warning appear. They turned away, each of them carrying the indelible imprint of Ghakazian standing negligently just within the Gate, arms folded on his dark chest, a smile of secret satisfaction on his face, and his wings flung wide, to fill their vision with a remembrance of his beauty.
11
Melfidor rose from his desk, stretched until his bones cracked, and with a sigh of contentment turned to the window. In daylight, from his office high in Sholia’s palace, he could see nothing of Shaban, only the changing shades of grass as wind, cloud, and sun passed over the level plain running from the terraces, but often at night the lights in the Towers of Peace glimmered fitfully. He watched them now as they pricked against the evening. Tomorrow I will take out my boat, since Sholia is still absent, he thought. I can get around the headland and fish for a while. Chantis won’t mind. There’s nothing much left to do, now that winter has come and everyone has stopped caring about feasting. When Sholia returns, I must show her my plans for the new ships. I might even ask her if I can captain one of them myself. After all, my ancestor sailed to the farther shore and brought back the first copper to be seen in Shaban. Now the mines send us copper every day. He smiled, wandering for a moment in his ancestor’s memory, which showed him a weathered ship dipping beneath his feet and a thin line of land, gray against a wide, sun-washed horizon. He leaned against the stone sill and whistled softly. Or perhaps I will go through the Gate tomorrow instead and visit my family and bring back fruit for Rilla. My father will ask politely of the doings in Shaban and whether or not the plains people have tarried here on their way to their winter quarters, and my mother will tell me again how the first member of her family saw the sun-lord say farewell to the Worldmaker before the Hall of Waiting, but both of them will have eyes full of the ripeness of their orchards and noses full of the smell of fruit hanging heavy to be picked, and neither will really care how Shol is faring.
He heard the swift patter of feet approaching his door, and as he turned it opened, letting in a flood of lamplight and the figure of Yarne.
“Melfidor, are you finished here for the day?” the younger man called across the room. “I’m going home now. Come down to the house and eat with me.”
Melfidor left the window and moved within the shaft of light. “Thank you, Yarne, but I don’t think I will. My mind is too weary. Perhaps tomorrow night.”
“Rilla is sure to be there. I know you haven’t seen her in four days.”
Melfidor smiled at the sheer breathtaking beauty of Yarne’s gleaming white-gold hair, the smooth skin molded so perfectly over delicate bones, the clear blue eyes. “Your sister is busy embroidering another masterpiece. When she wants my company, she’ll let me know.”
“Well, at least take a day off tomorrow and come riding with me,” Yarne urged. “A few hours away from all this”—he waved a graceful hand in the direction of the littered desk—“will do vou good.”
“I might, if Sholia hasn’t returned by then.”
“Where did she go?”
“To Danar, I think. Janthis called her.”
An immediate reverence straightened the engaging smile. “I wish he would come to Shol sometimes.”
“You can see him in your memory.”
“Not very well. My ancestor stood behind the crowd, and all he caught of Janthis was a glimpse of half his head.” Yarne grinned ruefully and went to the door. “I can’t persuade you to come with me?”
“Good night, Yarne. Give Rilla my love.”
“Of course. And don’t forget that my father, Baltor, is giving his farewell feast in three days time. A Messenger is coming for him. I hope the sun-lord is back by then.”
“She will be. Go and eat!”
Yarne nodded and left, and Melfidor slowly paced to his bed, turning to survey the room, dark now but for a thin spear of light on the desk and a faint glow of starlight outlining the window. So Baltor was leaving them. He could not remember a time when he had not been able to look up to the highest parapet and see him pacing, the sun-lord by his side. It would be odd to see her there alone, unchanged as always. The picture gave him a sudden spasm of unreality. Shaking his head, he lay down, folded his arms on his breast, and closed his eyes. A farewell feast, and half of Shaban will be there to watch Baltor withdraw into his last mortal thoughts. That will be good. How empty my mind feels, how scoured! I command a night without dream, a night of utter silence and knitting-together. He opened his eyes again but now did not see the warm shadows of his room. The silence he had called covered him like a blanket. He sank into a state of rest, withdrawing to the place where no thoughts or dreams were, leaving consciousness as though he had walked out of a room and deliberately shut a door behind him, but in that room his body repaired the damages of the day and his mind renewed itself.
The Gate on Shol was not guarded. The heavy copper doors stood open upon the universe, and through them a traveler could glimpse the first intimation of Shol’s wealth and magnificence. The Gate had no passage but led directly from one dimension to another, so that one who alighted before it, his back to the panorama of white stars and deep black space, faced the busy, full-lighted opulence of the Hall of Waiting. There travelers said their farewells, gathered their bundles together, and shared one last cup, with laughter that echoed to the haeli-timbered roof. The Hall of Waiting had a smaller entry upon whose lintel and stoop the reliefs formed the same pictures as those on the larger ones framing the Gate. On either side of the door the dark-pink copper showed the rising tiers of the city of Shaban, while across the stoop ships sailed a copper ocean the color of hot bronze in a drowsy noon. Above the heads of those who came and went stars pricked a gleaming red sky, seeming to twinkle as lamplight and torchlight slid across the solid
copper and were netted in the artist’s careful grooves. Upon each Gate door were two overlapping suns with Sholia’s face etched in the center, her hair spilling out to become the rays of the suns themselves. To the mortals who brushed against that giant face it was beautiful, not with the implied surrender of a feminine curve to the cheek or a frozen tremble of acquiescence in the parted lips but with the stern otherworldliness of a god. The doors could not be closed, and the giant square piece of the universe seen through it seemed to hang on the wall of the Hall of Waiting like an improbably cold and alien painting.
The bodiless army from Ghaka came to Shol’s Gate on a winter evening. The Hall of Waiting was deserted. Lamps flickered in the damp wind, their light skidding unimpeded across the gleaming reaches of the vast floor, and only the sound of their guttering disturbed the quiet of the hour past sunset. Like a whispering, invisible river the unseen host hesitated, flooding to fill the Gate. Eyeless, the essences saw into the Hall. Without skin they felt the eddying of air around them. The journey from Ghaka had been a nightmare that had carried them through the unimagined terror of deep space and so to the threshold of a world they had only heard of from the lips of the sun-people. They had seen their own sun hanging behind them, grim and dying. They had seen Shol’s twins rush toward them, orbs of white fire, and though they knew that they existed without eyes to be blinded or flesh to scorch, yet they had screamed without mouths to see and feel the forbidden, the frontier of a reality into which they had not been made to plunge.
But the corridor had brought them to Shol. They hovered on the edge of a world brimming with new flesh, with grass to press beneath boned and sinewed feet, with odors of flower and food to draw into solid nostrils, and they were hungry. For a long moment they paused, sensing their surroundings, until with a common need to clothe themselves in sensibility they passed under the Gate, spread out to fill the Hall, and began to trickle through the farther doors.
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