“So they made an artificial intelligence that stores the memories of dronon technicians, along with those of nonhumans from our southern continent.
“And this artificial intelligence is struggling to infect our people with a new world view—a complex web of memories and beliefs and lies that lead those infected to convert to the doctrines of the Inhuman,” Ceravanne sighed. “We couldn’t fight such sophisticated weaponry.”
“Then why don’t you get better weapons?” Gallen blurted out. “Bring in forces from off-world.”
Ceravanne looked pointedly at Gallen. “Our world is distant from others. Even with the fastest ships—and such ships are on their way—it will take months for help to arrive. Even then, it will be hard to mount an attack on Babel. It was created as a refuge for nonhumans, and many of the species there fear us. If we attacked in force, they would see it as an invasion and would seek to turn us away. So even those we count as allies could turn against us. But more importantly, many of the nonhumans in Babel are genetically upgraded. They are stronger and faster than us, tougher, and often more cunning. We could not defeat them on their own ground. We can hardly hope to repel an invasion.”
“So you want me to sneak into the southlands and destroy this Inhuman, this machine?” Gallen asked. Ceravanne studied him a moment, then looked down at her feet. Her jaw trembled, and an expression of utter hopelessness crossed her face. “Oh, Gallen, I wish that were all I was asking of you.…”
Gallen went to her, knelt and put his hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. She looked up, reached up with one hand and stroked his cheek, then kissed him softly.
For one long moment, he allowed it—reveling in the sweet, intense taste of her lips—then pulled back sharply, as if he’d been struck. He wiped her kiss from his mouth with the back of his arm, yet the scent of her pheromones lingered, and he had to remind himself that as a Tharrin she was made so that he would love her. “I, I—” He fumbled for an explanation. “I’m married.”
“I need you!” Ceravanne said fiercely. “I need you to give yourself to me completely. Gallen—I don’t know everything about the Inhuman, but I believe that it is more dangerous than you or I can imagine. It isn’t just a machine, it is a technology that has fused the minds of millions of beings—and they will oppose you. It is not just the machine, it is the talents and wisdom and hopes of all those people. I can’t tell you what I think I must ask you to do for me! But I need you to trust me. If my guess is correct, it will be harder than anything you can imagine. I need you!”
Gallen studied her face. It was obvious that she planned to face this challenge with him, that she did not want to reveal her part in this fight. It annoyed him that she would hold her plans so secret, but looking into her eyes, he suddenly realized that he trusted her. “It seems that I do trust the Tharrin completely,” Gallen said. “Or at least I trust you. I’ll do whatever you ask—but don’t ask me to give you my heart.”
“I need that most of all!” Ceravanne whispered fiercely. “I need a Lord Protector to serve me wholly. Listen: in Moree there is a leader, a very powerful person that the servants of the Inhuman call ‘the Harvester.’”
That name struck a chord in Gallen, and he found his heart pounding. He was sure he’d never heard of this Harvester—yet he suddenly remembered something, a bit of information that only his mantle could have planted in his memory.
“Are you sure it’s human?” Gallen asked. “A thousand years ago, on a planet from the Chenowi system, a few hundred machines were built, machines called the Harvesters. They are nanotech devices which carry downloaded human memories. They can assume dozens of forms, change colors. They were designed to be the ultimate assassins. Over the centuries, most of them have been destroyed. But on a low-tech world like this, a Harvester would be almost invulnerable. It’s possible that one survives here.”
This bit of news seemed to disconcert Ceravanne. “I—never considered such a possibility,” she said.
“I’ll have to kill it,” Gallen said, almost certain that this Harvester was more than a mere person. Ceravanne looked up at him, startled, and there was resignation in her eyes. Though she was a Tharrin, and could never bring herself to harm another, she understood the need for killing at times. Still, she seemed tormented. “I hope it does not come to that,” Ceravanne whispered, and Gallen wondered at her naïveté. “But if it does, it won’t be easy. At the very least, I suspect that you will bear scars from this—scars on your soul, scars that you will abhor. I … am loath to ask this of you.”
“I’ve killed before,” Gallen said calmly, wondering what Ceravanne knew of this Harvester, and even as he said it, he remembered the three men back home, the empty-headed oafs who had forced his hand by testifying against him. He still felt marred by those killings, stained.
* * *
Chapter 12
Orick woke at the doorway to the store, his vision blurred. He could smell the cobbled roads thick with dust and tiny flakes of dried manure from sheep and some other animal, and Orick wished that he could stand up and walk on his hind feet, put a little distance between himself and that unclean scent.
A whistle blew, and its sound was a cold wind that froze Orick to the heart.
The Inhuman, Orick remembered. The hair on the back of his neck bristled, and Orick opened his eyes, spotted Maggie in a patch of moonlight, lying on her back in the street, corpses stacked around her. A tall fellow hunched over her, holding what looked to be a broad dagger at her throat.
Orick lay for just a moment, and suddenly there was a shout from down the street, the way they had come. Two forms moved in the shadows—one was the familiar shape of the Bock, the other was a giant, and they were running, but they were too far away to help Maggie before the villain could cut her throat.
Orick jumped up and charged, digging his claws into the floor planks for all the purchase he could get, bounding forward so that parts of a broad wooden door were flung away from him. Orick roared, and the fellow glanced up from Maggie, then fled down the road, between two buildings. Orick lunged after him, and the fellow grunted and zigzagged into the shadows.
A giant bat swooped in front of Orick, trying to distract him, and Orick stood up, swatted at the creature, catching a corner of its wing. The bat veered away clumsily.
Orick was so angry he felt as if he were invulnerable, as if he could run forever, and he continued to chase Maggie’s attacker, rushing till he could nearly take the man’s neck in his teeth.
The fellow glanced over his back, shouted “No!” and, in a burst of redoubled speed, made it around a corner and jumped over a high wall. Orick came up short against the wall, knowing he couldn’t make it, and decided that it was best to go care for Maggie.
He rushed through the streets to Maggie, found her on her back, holding some strange insect in her hand, keeping it at a distance. Her face was pale, frightened. The giant and the Bock stood over her, gasping for breath.
“What is that thing?” Orick asked. The insect was mantis-like in appearance, but its front legs were oversized. Maggie had them pinched firmly.
“I’m not sure,” Maggie said. “It looks like a machine, but I’m not sure what it does.”
“That is an Inhuman’s Word,” the giant said in a deep voice, taking the thing from Maggie’s fingers and smashing it. “It turns a man into an Inhuman. You had better watch out. There might be more.”
The giant immediately began dusting off Maggie’s back while watching for the bugs on the street.
When he was sure she was clean, Maggie retrieved Gallen’s sword. One of the insects was there beneath it. It began to scurry over the cobblestones, so she swatted it with the flat of the sword. After more searching, she decided there had only been two Words. Up the street from them, that damned batlike creature had made it to the top of a building, and it blew its whistle in three sharp bursts.
Maggie looked up at the giant bat. “Shut off the whistling already, damn you!” she shouted
. “If any more of your black-hearted friends come around, we’ll give them just what we gave the others!”
The scout looked down at them in the moonlight, his eyes glowing golden. He growled, “You’ll pay for dessstroying the Wordsss.” He let his whistle dangle from a chain about his neck, glared at Maggie for a moment, rubbed his face with the little black hands at the joint of his wings, then hurled himself from the building, swooping just over their heads.
Orick wished that Maggie had been carrying a stick or something. One good knock on the head would have busted the creature’s skull open like an acorn.
“I am sorry that I got back so late,” the Bock told them, waving its arms emphatically. “When we reached the meadow, you had already left. We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
Maggie shook her head. “No harm done,” she said, hefting her packs. “Let’s go.” They began hurrying north, but the Bock was striding along slowly. The giant walked ahead, leading the way, his huge sword in hand. He stopped at each side street, checking both ways.
“Can you hurry?” Maggie said, trying to help the Bock along by pulling at its arm. “I’m sorry,” the Bock said. “I have no energy after dark. There were huge clouds at sunset, and it slowed us. I should have found you long ago!” Orick looked at the creature-half man, half plant. They could not leave it behind, and they could hardly wait for the thing to move at its own pace. Maggie was sweating heartily from her fight, from her fear. She looked at Orick a moment. “Orick, could you have a go at giving him a ride?”
Orick considered. His ears were ringing, and he felt woozy from the bump on his head, but he could probably carry the man. Still, just because he had four legs, it didn’t mean he’d let people treat him like a pack mule. “All right,” he grumbled, “but it’s undignified.”
Maggie helped the creature on. Orick ran with Maggie at his tail, and they managed to make good time with the giant leading the way. They were running into the wind, and once Orick smelled the fresh scent of strangers ahead. Orick called to the giant, then turned aside, lurching off around several blocks, certain that he’d avoided an ambush. As if to prove his point, moments later he heard excited whistling behind him as the batlike scout realized what had happened. Just then, the giant had Orick duck into a little side alley that led to a warehouse, and within moments they were inside.
Maggie closed the door tight behind her, threw the bolt home, and sagged against it in the dark. There were no lanterns, no lights in the building at all, and the dark was utterly impenetrable. Orick half turned. He could smell her warm sweat, and she was breathing hard, as much from fright as from the exertion. He couldn’t smell any other people in the hall, though Gallen had passed here shortly. There would be no ambush waiting ahead of them.
“Orick?” Maggie said. “Where are you?”
“Here,” he grumbled.
“Come here, where I can touch you.”
Orick ambled to her, and Maggie petted his snout affectionately. It was one of the most intimate pettings she had ever given him, and he closed his eyes, relishing the way she scratched him. He groaned with pleasure, and Maggie bent down and kissed him full on the snout. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re welcome at my table anytime. You really saved me.”
And at those kind words, Orick’s heart warmed. He led Maggie, the giant, and the Bock down the maze of twisted halls in something of a blur, until he got to a door. He could see candlelight winking through the cracks, and the Bock called out softly for Gallen.
Gallen slid the bolt, pulled the door open, and at sight of the blood on Orick’s face he cried, “What happened to you?”
Maggie told them then of their skirmish with the servants of the Inhuman, and Ceravanne frowned and paced the room, then had Gallen and Rougaire check Orick and Maggie for neck wounds.
When she was satisfied, Ceravanne shook her head, plainly worried. “I had hoped to wait here for a few days so that we could provision our trip at our ease, receive counsel from the Lords in the City of Life. But we will have to leave first thing in the morning.”
“Why?” Orick asked.
“Their scout has your scent,” Ceravanne said. “It will call its fellows, and by dawn there may be a dozen or more of them hunting for you and Maggie. The Inhuman will not hold harmless those who have slain its members. We must flee at dawn.”
* * *
Chapter 13
Zell’a Cree heard the shrill warning of the scout’s whistle from over a mile away, and rushed through the darkened streets until his infrared vision could make out the fiery forms of his men. He came upon the corpses of his men, pack brothers lying in pools of their own blood. Their bodies glowed like faint embers, and the blood still hot in their veins was like twisted rivers of light under their skin.
Besides the scout Ssaz, who sat nursing an injured wing from the stone gutters of a building, three other hunters from Zell’a Cree’s pack had gathered—two were unnamed Tekkars, swathed in black robes cut at the thighs, wearing tall leather boots tied above the knees. The Tekkars’ purple eyes gleamed darkly from their shadowed hoods. The third was a small man named Ewod who might have been human, except that he wore fur-lined winter robes on a balmy evening and his skin was pale yellow. He stared at the ruined corpses and shook, and Zell’a Cree watched him closely. He had seldom seen so much fear upon the face of a man.
Zell’a Cree felt calm himself. Fear had been bred out of his people thousands of years ago. He had never wakened with his heart thumping from a bad dream, had never felt an uneasy tingling at the sound of running feet in a dark alley. And now, looking at his brothers, he felt only sadness, a profound loss at such a waste.
He went to the corpses, closed the staring eyes. “The wheel turns, and we must now travel the road without you. Come to us when you can,” he whispered to the dead, bidding them to seek rebirth soon, then reached into his travel pouch and brought out wafers of bread and placed one in the mouth of each of his dead comrades to feed them on their spirit journeys.
Zell’a Cree was disturbed by the sounds of the little man, Ewod, crying, and Zell’a Cree also wanted to weep at the waste of life. But as leader of this hunting pack, he could not afford the luxury.
“Don’t dawdle,” the scout Ssaz hissed at them from its perch, its canines gleaming as gold as its eyes in the moonlight. Zell’a Cree could smell the sweet copper scent of its blood, but couldn’t immediately see the wound. “The humansss may return, hunting usss thisss time!”
“What happened?” Zell’a Cree spoke only in a hushed whisper. All of the men here had hearing far keener than any human.
Ewod said, “Me and my brothers chanced upon a bear and a young woman, and we thought they would make easy converts. The bear wounded himself trying to escape, but the girl came at us with a sword and slew my brothers before they could react.”
“Fools!” one of the Tekkar spat, his voice the sound of loose gravel shifting under one’s feet. Because the Tekkar did not name themselves, Zell’a Cree was forced to bestow names upon them in order to keep them straight. He called this one Red Hand, for the man had his right hand dyed red. “They should have taken more care. They deserved to die!”
“No one deserves death,” Zell’a Cree said.
“The humans who did this deserve to die!” Red Hand countered. “We must make an example of them, teach the humans to fear us.”
Zell’a Cree knew that the humans no longer walked abroad at night because they were afraid of his hunting pack, and it was only that fear that made it possible for his people to penetrate so deeply into the human lands. If the humans banded together and went abroad in the dark, his hunters would be no match for them. But the humans did not know this, and so fear protected Zell’a Cree’s men. He could not gainsay Red Hand’s argument, no matter how repulsive he might find it.
“What do the rest of you think?” Zell’a Cree asked, hoping that the imaginative Ewod might be able to find a reason to extend mercy.
The second Tekk
ar, whom Zell’a Cree called Garrote because the man always kept a garrote wrapped at his waist to use as a belt, said, “If an Inhuman kills a human, the humans send their assassins to take vengeance. We should do no less.”
“And if we kill these humans, will we not be lowering ourselves to their standards?” Zell’a Cree said. “The way of the Inhuman is a way to peace.”
“Yes,” Ewod said nervously. “I tried to tell the humans that. But they feared the Word.”
Zell’a Cree glanced at his men. “The Inhuman does not seek vengeance, it seeks converts above all. Yet justice must also be done. We shall hunt this woman and offer her a choice: she may accept the Word, or lose her life.”
Zell’a Cree held his breath a moment, and his men grunted their assent. The Tekkar immediately raised their heads, trying to catch the woman’s scent, but whereas their night vision was stronger than Zell’a Cree’s, his sense of smell far outmatched theirs. He could smell the woman now, the subtle aroma of strange perfumes about her, like nothing he’d ever come across before. And he could smell the bear, its heavy fur.
He rushed down the street, under the cover of darkness, his men flitting behind him like shadows. For nearly an hour he tracked them through the streets. It was a difficult task, even for Zell’a Cree, for it was not long past dusk, and the odors of thousands of travelers were still fresh on the night air.
Their scout flew ahead, and once he spotted the humans and they tried to set a hasty ambush, but the humans turned aside from their course.
Still, it was not hard to pick up their trail again. Zell’a Cree held to the exotic scent of the woman, a scent utterly alien, until at last he came to a warehouse that covered most of a block. It was an old stone building that had once been a great covered market, but now the huge arched doorways had been filled with new brick, leaving but one small opening under a portico.
Bending near the door, Zell’a Cree tasted the scent—and discovered the earthy vegetable odor of Bock. He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes, so that he would remember those smells, recognize their owners as if they were old friends.
Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) Page 16