Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2)

by David Farland

  “Unh,” Zell’a Cree grunted, twisted his head to try to get his lips to the water. Gallen held his hands down lower, and to his surprise, Zell’a Cree tried to sit up to drink, put a hand on Gallen’s shoulder as he steadied himself.

  Gallen held his hands to the man’s mouth, let him drink it for a moment, and Zell’a Cree leaned back against the wall, his eyes focusing on Gallen. He seemed only a bluish shadow in the moonlight, all colors washed from his face, as if he were already fading into dust.

  The cicadas and crickets began singing in the still night, and a little breeze whipped through the streets, raising the hair on Gallen’s back.

  Zell’a Cree smiled weakly, stared up at the sky, and Gallen thought he would die now. “Thank you,” Zell’a Cree whispered as if addressing the universe, and then he looked into Gallen’s eyes. “It has been so long … so long since I have heard the voice of the Inhuman … but now, I know what it wants me to do.”

  Gallen leaned closer, curious, and looked into Zell’a Cree’s eyes. “What does it want from you?”

  Zell’a Cree reached up quickly, and there was the jingle of metal rings as he pulled at Gallen’s mantle. Gallen grabbed at the Tosken’s wrist, but like the Tekkar he was immensely strong—so their struggle lasted only a brief second, then the knowledge tokens flashed in the moonlight as Zell’a Cree ripped Gallen’s mantle free.

  It went sailing through the air and clanked against the wall of the bootmaker’s shop, and Gallen gasped and drove his sword into Zell’a Cree’s neck.

  For one moment, Gallen still could not feel the Inhuman’s presence. He was not lost in strangers’ memories, and for a brief few seconds he dared hope that the Inhuman would spare him, and he lurched toward his mantle in the moonlight.

  And then there was a surging in Gallen’s ears, dozens of voices clamoring, as if a tide were swelling from a distant shore. His arms and legs fell out beneath him, and Gallen could almost imagine that someone had reached into his body and pulled his spirit free. He felt disconnected—the sounds of crickets and cicadas suddenly ceased. Gallen crumpled to the ground, barely conscious of the fact that his head bounced off the dirt street.

  And he felt them come leaping and tumbling after him, the hosts of the Inhuman, the ghosts with their iron will. Until now, they had taken him gently, slowly, but now he could feel something akin to desperation emanating from the machine, the desire to crush him before he could resist.

  Far away he heard a desperate shriek, a harrowing wail that shook him and demanded aid, but Gallen hardly recognized that it was his own voice.

  It had been thirty minutes since Gallen jumped up and rushed from the inn. Maggie and the others had gone down to the stables where they found poor Fenorah lying in a pool of blood.

  Ceravanne was still beside his body, weeping, while Maggie tried to comfort her. Orick had headed south along the outskirts of town with Tallea, sniffing Gallen’s trail.

  At last Maggie went and stood outside the bam, hoping to see Gallen’s shadow against the white stucco walls in the moonlight.

  A maid from the kitchens was up at the inn, beckoning to her, urging Maggie to “Come back indoors, where it’s safe!”

  Then Maggie heard Gallen’s bloodcurdling scream.

  Gallen’s voice rang out over the small town, echoing from the hilltops and from the buildings so that she couldn’t be sure where it came from. Almost, it seemed to rise from the earth itself, but she thought it might have come from a ridge to the west.

  Maggie’s heart began pounding, and she looked about frantically. She wondered if it really had been Gallen’s voice—it had been blurred and distant, after all—but she knew that it was. It sounded like a death cry, as if he’d taken a mortal wound in the back, as Fenorah had done. She raced toward the sound for a moment, looked about hysterically, realized that anyone who could have killed Gallen could also kill her.

  And yet it didn’t matter. If Gallen was dead, she didn’t really care to live anymore.

  So she ran uphill, west toward the ridge, and began searching. For an hour she wandered through town, investigating every street, until she met Orick and Tallea coming up from the south of town.

  “Maggie, girl, what are you doing out here?” Orick demanded.

  “I heard Gallen scream,” she said.

  Orick and Tallea looked at each other. “We heard a shout some time back,” Orick said, “but I couldn’t say it was Gallen’s. It sounded to us as if it came from the north.”

  “No sign of Gallen?” Maggie asked.

  “Whoever he was chasing,” Orick said, “knew how to cover his scent. He ran me in circles, and his scent didn’t stick to the dust. And Gallen’s wearing that damned cloak of his, which hides all smell. So we’ve lost their trail.” Maggie filed that information away. She hadn’t known that a Lord Protector’s cloak masked his scent.

  “Maybe Gallen went back to inn,” Tallea said, and Maggie realized that she had been gone for over an hour. If Gallen were hurt, he’d have gone back to the inn, if he could.

  And it seemed her last hope. So they went back to the inn, down to the stables. A maid from the inn had brought a lantern down, and Fenorah had been washed and turned on his back. A clean quilt was stretched out over him, but it was too short for the giant, so that it covered his feet, but not his face.

  Shivering from a chill wind that was beginning to blow down the high mountain passes, the companions sat in the stable, waiting for Gallen’s return for several more minutes, until at last Ceravanne said in her clear voice, “All things pass away. It is time, my friends, to consider the possibility that Gallen is gone, and what that means to the quest.” She stood above Fenorah, and the lantern’s sharp light reflected from her angular face. She seemed somehow washed out, unreal under such light.

  “Are you saying we should leave without him?” Orick grumbled, rising to his hind feet. He sniffed the air once again, as was his habit when he felt nervous.

  “I hesitate to say it,” the Tharrin answered. “Gallen has not returned, and almost two hours have passed. I doubt he would stay away so long, if he were able to return to us.”

  “And if he’s dead, killer waiting for us,” Tallea muttered, resting her unsheathed sword by letting its tip settle into the floorboards under the straw.

  “And that means we have little choice but to press on as quickly as possible,” Ceravanne whispered. “But there is something else we must consider. If Gallen is dead, then his killer may have taken Gallen’s mantle. We will have someone with the powers of a Lord Protector hunting us, and he will have access to all of Gallen’s memories. He will know where we plan to go, what we plan to do.”

  “So you want us to stay and see if we can find Gallen’s body,” Maggie asked, “just to make sure we get his mantle?” And she knew Ceravanne was right. Knowledge is power, and the Lord Protector’s mantle would be a powerful weapon if it fell into the hands of the Inhuman.

  “I think,” Orick said, “you’re all worried for nothing. If Gallen is dead and his enemies took his weapons, why haven’t they come after us? He had his mantle, that fancy sword, and his incendiary rifle.”

  Maggie clung to his words, knowing they made some sense, hoping he was right. “Gallen may still be hunting,” she said at last. “He’s thorough when it comes to blackguards. He wouldn’t let one give him the slip.”

  “Aye, that’s possible,” Orick grumbled. “Down in County Toorary, Gallen tracked a cutthroat for three weeks, chased him two hundred miles.”

  Ceravanne licked her lips, looked out the open door southward. “Perhaps we should wait,” she said. “But there is something just as portentous that could have happened. Gallen has been very … deep in thought these past two days. We all know that his loyalties are wavering, hanging in the balance. He may have joined the Inhuman, or he may have gone in search of solitude while he considers his future course.”

  Maggie wanted to deny this, wanted to slap Ceravanne for even bringing up the possibilit
y, but this too seemed very likely. “I don’t think he’d leave me,” Maggie said, her voice small in the close darkness of the stable.

  “I would hope not,” Ceravanne offered, and she took Maggie’s hand in hers to offer comfort. “But he is under great pressure. You must remember that he is living with many other voices inside him, rich recollections of other loves. Those who become infected by the Word, they sometimes become lost in the … history that the Inhuman offers. Their small voices are drowned out by the bitterness and despair of the Inhuman. And I fear that Gallen may be susceptible to this. Those who are most susceptible are those who are weak of purpose, or weak of mind, and those who are simply inexperienced—the young. Gallen is neither weak of purpose nor stupid, but he is young.”

  “You forget,” Gallen said loudly from the far end of the room, “the others who are equally susceptible to the Inhuman’s domination.” Maggie turned, and Gallen stood in the front doorway to the stable, all draped in the black robes of a Lord Protector. Yet there was something terribly wrong. The way he stood—with a certain swaggering confidence as he leaned casually against the doorpost—was nothing like Gallen. Indeed, a terrible light seemed to blaze from his pale blue eyes, and he wore the mask of Fale. Yet strangest of all was his voice. It sounded deeper, and it resonated more, and all of his accent was gone. Where a few weeks ago he’d been a charming boy from County Morgan, now an older and wearier man stood. It seemed to Maggie suddenly that a stranger was wearing Gallen’s body, and that Gallen stood smiling, mocking their fears for him.

  “What others are susceptible to the Inhuman?” Ceravanne asked. Gallen waved his hand at her. “The trusting,” he spat, then waved to Orick. “The naive. And those who are actively evil.”

  Gallen reached into the pocket of his robe, pulled out his mantle, and its black rings and silver stones glimmered in the moonlight. He draped it over his head.

  “So, you are Inhuman now,” Ceravanne whispered, and Maggie found her heart pounding within her. “But you have never been any of those—naive, trusting, or evil.”

  Gallen straightened, and he seemed taller and more menacing to Maggie as he crossed the stable, gazed out to the south, over the wide valley below with its shroud of fog that glowed like gauze in the moonlight.

  “Yes,” Gallen said, staring to the south. “The Inhuman has tried to claim me as its own.” For a brief moment it looked as if he would collapse, and he held to the door frame as he struggled for control. Maggie could see the old Gallen. “And, my friends, it is good for us all that the Inhuman has finished its task—else I would not have suspected its plans, and we would have walked into a trap.

  “Maggie, come here.”

  Maggie went to his side and followed his eye. He took off his mantle, placed it on her head. “Listen to the radio frequencies on the higher end of the spectrum,” he said, “and look south to Bern’s Pass, beneath that far mountain, four hundred kilometers from here.”

  Four hundred kilometers? she wondered. She couldn’t imagine seeing that far. But Maggie concentrated, and the mantle brought a faint sound to her ears, bursts of radio signals squealing indiscernible messages. It was a code.

  She looked to their source, beneath the far mountains that suddenly appeared in her mind as she gazed, and Gallen’s mantle magnified the distant image. Something vast and black was crawling down a mountainside.

  “Dronon hive cities,” Maggie realized, “crawling toward us.”

  “Yes,” Gallen said. “They are far away, but they’re coming. Part of the memories the Inhuman gave me came from a dronon technician. All those who join the Inhuman know how to use dronon technologies, and now that the dronon have been forced to abandon this world, leaving the hive cities behind, the Inhuman hosts have taken them up. With these they will march against Northland, for the hive cities can also swim across the oceans, and here in Babel their guns are not dismantled.

  “So the dronon who abandoned this world betrayed it, leaving behind weapons for the Inhuman to use.” Gallen breathed deeply. “Ceravanne, your people are in far graver danger from the invaders than even you had imagined!”

  Maggie was watching the distant image of the dronon hive city, crawling down the mountainside like a huge spider, when a second crested the ridge. And then she saw something else, a knot of large birds in the darkness, their body heat registering white, hurtling across the distant valleys. She wondered how far away they were, and her mantle flashed an image before her eyes. Two hundred and twenty kilometers.

  “Gallen, there are scouts flying this way, hundreds of them.”

  “I know,” Gallen said. “The Inhuman is coming for you. It knows where we are, and because of the interference my mantle offered, it has guessed at our purpose.”

  “It could only have learned our location from the transmitter in your head,” Maggie said, and she looked at Gallen sharply.

  “I know,” Gallen admitted. “The Inhuman sent a message to Zell’a Cree in his last moments, telling him to pull off my mantle so that the downloading could be finished. The Inhuman could only have sent that message if it were tracking us and knew that Zell’a Cree and I were together.”

  “Of course,” Ceravanne whispered. “Then if it knows where you are,” Maggie said, “the Inhuman only has to follow you to find us.”

  Gallen looked about helplessly, threw up his hands. “Unless Maggie can remove the transmitter, or we can somehow block it, then you will have to leave me.”

  Gallen took Maggie’s hand, looked steadily into her eyes, and touched it to the back of his head. “Here is where the Word burrowed into my skull. I can feel a small bump there. It only makes sense that the transmitter is still outside the skull; the Inhuman would not try to beam messages through bone. Perhaps the tail end of the Word is the transmitter.”

  Maggie had suspected this possibility before, but dared not admit it. The implications horrified and sickened her. She didn’t want to have to pry this thing out of Gallen’s head. “I know what you’re going to ask, Gallen, and I can’t do it. The Word has inserted itself into your brain. I can’t just pull it out!”

  An image flashed through Maggie’s mind, a vision of neural wires slicing through the gray matter of Gallen’s brain as she pulled.

  “We have to try something,” Gallen said. “I want you to try now to cut away anything outside the skull. And if that doesn’t work, you must pry the Word out. I know it’s dangerous, but it is the only way for me to remain with you. Unless you do this, I might as well be dead.”

  Maggie looked nervously to the south. “What of the scouts?”

  “They will not make it here for several hours,” Gallen said. “And we can hide from them tomorrow.” When next he spoke, Gallen spoke not as himself, but as the Inhuman, and it was reflected in his demeanor. “For six thousand years, I’ve lived in this land. I can guide you to Moree like no others, except those infected by the Inhuman. But I cannot help you, unless you do this for me. And perhaps it will avail nothing.”

  Maggie looked to Ceravanne. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “I can, maybe,” Ceravanne said. “I’ve mended festering wounds, and I’m handy with a knife. But I’m not sure what you’ll require of me.”

  “Do you have any more Healing Earth?” Maggie asked.

  “A pinch, perhaps, no more,” Ceravanne said. “He can have a few drops of my blood.”

  Maggie wondered where to perform the surgery. It seemed ghastly to do it here in the stable, in the dim lamplight surrounding Fenorah’s pale corpse, but it sheltered them from the chilly night air and from prying eyes. Maggie looked for some clean straw. Some of the horses nickered querulously as she pulled the hay from a crib and sprinkled it on the floor. Ceravanne brought the lantern near, and Tallea brought her sharpest dagger from its sheath.

  Ceravanne bit her lower lip, and her hands shook as she did the cutting, opening the back of Gallen’s neck down to the blue-white bone. She pulled Gallen’s hair gently, opening the flaps of se
vered skin so that she could see more clearly, and Maggie had to use a bandage from her pack to daub the blood away.

  There was a small, perfectly circular hole in his skull, and two small wires dangled from what had once been the Word’s hind feet. Maggie couldn’t be sure what the wires were for, so she ran up to the wagon at the front of the inn and got her mantle of technology, then came back and looked closely at the wires. The sensors in her mantle magnified the image. From the Word’s hind legs, tiny microfilaments, like veins, had grown out in a gray web, wrapping themselves around Gallen’s skull. It was not a particularly powerful antenna for either receiving or transmitting information, but Gallen’s skull acted as something of a dish.

  “This is it,” Maggie said. “This is the antenna. This is a more complex design than I’d imagined, but it’s also easy to defeat—at least I think we can keep them from tracking us.”

  “Do it,” Gallen said.

  And to her own surprise, Maggie found that she was able to take the knife from Ceravanne. “It’s too intricate to do this without a mantle,” she explained. She severed the web in a circle, then dug out as much of the wiring as possible. She tried to clear her thoughts, concentrate only on doing the job. She watched for several seconds, to see if the web would grow back, but apparently this component of the nanotech weapon was too unsophisticated to regenerate. After thirty seconds, the wound so filled with blood that she could no longer see well.

  Maggie blotted it away again with the bandage. “I’m done,” she whispered.

  “Try to pry the Word out,” Gallen said.

  “There’s no need,” Maggie argued, imagining how the webs of metallic neurons would slice through his brain if she pulled. “I’ve already cut off the antenna.”

  “I don’t want it in me,” Gallen shouted, his voice muffled as he yelled into the straw. “Cut it out! Pull it out partway, if you can, and then cut it in half.” Maggie found herself breathing hard, imagining the possibilities for infection in the wound, the possibilities of brain damage. She touched the tail end of the Word with her knife, wondering if it could be pried out. Suddenly, as if it had been burned, the Word lunged forward into Gallen’s brain, and blood began gushing out from Gallen’s brain cavity.