David Farland - Beyond the Gate

Ceravanne nodded, and her heart pounded in her chest. She looked to both sides. The air in here was still heavy with the scent of the explosive charges from the dronon pulp gun, but there was a mustier smell of things long dead. As Ceravanne scanned the room, she recognized the source. What she had first thought to be Tekkar guards lining the walls were in fact the dead, mummified remains of Tekkar, their bodies dried, their faces painted over with some preservative lacquer. Gallen had already killed the living guards, yet he knelt before the Harvester’s throne, unmoving, and Ceravanne’s heart pounded within her.

“What are you doing?” Orick growled at Gallen. But Gallen did not move, did not answer.

“You have damaged him,” the Harvester said, and she reached down and removed Gallen’s mantle. “Someone tried to remove his Word, but enough of it is still intact. He is Inhuman still, and here in Moree, he cannot harm me.”

Ceravanne looked at Gallen in horror, saw that he was breathing heavily. He grunted, a faint cry, and Ceravanne realized that he was only holding still with a great struggle. The Inhuman held him.

“Who is he?” the Harvester asked, looking at Gallen’s face.

“Don’t you know?” Ceravanne asked. “He is Belorian.”

“No,” the Harvester said angrily. “Belorian is dead. His memories are lost.”

“Yet his genome lives,” Ceravanne said. “You know that much. And this one was reborn on a world like ours. He is Belorian in all but name.”

The Harvester looked at him thoughtfully. “I shall keep him, then, as my own.”

There was an electricity between the two women, almost sizzling. For long years, Ceravanne had wondered if even she could be subverted by the Inhuman, and now she saw the proof of it. If this woman remembered Belorian, then she could not be some empty-headed clone created by the dronon. This had to be Ceravanne’s older self, the woman who’d been lost a year ago. Ceravanne, with all her memories intact. Here was a Tharrin who proposed to rule a world of slaves, who claimed that she would keep Gallen as her personal pet, and yet Ceravanne wondered. Ceravanne and the Harvester were of the same flesh. How could they take such divergent paths? Though Ceravanne often felt the tug, the desire to manipulate others to her own ends, she had rejected that path a million times. It seemed to Ceravanne that at the very core of their being, there must be some commonality, some shred of decency that they still shared.

“We share much,” Ceravanne said, “but we do not share a belief that we can own others. I have come to reclaim you, my sister-self. I suspected that you could not be lost among the Tekkar. Even taken as a slave, you would soon make yourself queen.”

“There is nothing here to reclaim,” the Harvester whispered vehemently. “I am Inhuman now.”

“A lover of war?” Ceravanne whispered. “Then why have not the Tekkar already been unleashed on Northland? Instead you send spies, carrying copies of the Word. It is a frail weapon indeed, for one who professes not to value life. No, you lead a peaceful war, a beneficent war, and you tame the dogs that serve you.

“Even now, I suspect that you have guards ready to do your bidding. Have them cut us down, if you can. But I know that you can’t. No matter what the Inhuman has taught you, no matter how it has sought to turn you, we still share something.” Ceravanne pointed to her heart.

Silently, two Tekkar swordsmen walked out from behind the throne, confirming Ceravanne’s suspicions that there were more guards in the room. “You sneer when you speak of my converts,” the Harvester said. “I can hear your ill-conceived judgments in your voice.”

“It is unnatural for a Tharrin to take slaves,” Ceravanne said.

“The humans created us to be their slaves,” the Harvester spat. “Loving masters, wise stewards, beloved lords-or so they call us. But we were made to serve. We are their drudges.”

Is that what the Inhuman had taught her, Ceravanne wondered, contempt for mankind? “They love us, and we love them in return,” Ceravanne said. “Is that slavery, or something greater? We-you and I-have always given ourselves to them freely.”

“And what have they given you in return?” the Harvester spat.

“Their love, their companionship.” Ceravanne gestured toward Gallen and the others. “I came in the name of the Sparrow, and three people gave their lives that I might make this journey in safety. What greater love could I ask of them? What less could I give in return?”

‘‘Judgment!’’ the Harvester said. “Control! For ages you have sought to bring peace to this land. For generations you sought to bring the peoples of Babel together in harmony! And you failed! You failed with the Rodim, and for centuries have felt the worms of guilt eating at your soul. You have sought to bring about peace and happiness among mankind, but how can there be peace when there is no self-control? The Immortal Lords in the City of Life created the Rodim. They created the Tekkar. They created the Derrits and the Andwe and the Fyyrdoken-all without wisdom, always knowing the misery that such creatures would cause. For millennia they have set evils loose upon the world, ignoring your counsel if they ever deigned to seek it. You know that they are but ignorant children when compared to you. You would not give a child a surgeon’s knife to play with, but you have given mankind their liberty, knowing that with their liberty they would create the instruments of their own destruction. But in one year, I’ve accomplished more for the cause of peace than you ever did.”

“But at what price?” Ceravanne said weakly. “You enslave millions to control a few. You hobble mankind so that a few evil people cannot run free. Is it worth it?”

“Yes!” the Harvester shouted. “Worth it and more! There will be generations born in peace, people who never know discontent or suffering!”

Ceravanne listened to those words, and they cut her to the soul. Oh, how she had yearned to bring about such a change. For centuries the temptation had gnawed at her, to grasp control and put an end to as much human misery as possible. It did little good for the humans to create Tharrin leaders, and then continue their barbaric ways, killing one another and squabbling over soil as if nothing had changed. But the Tharrin hoped to lead men into some golden era of peace, not sit in judgment on them as if they were children.

And yet, and yet, Ceravanne knew that to seize control, even in the attempt to bring greater peace to mankind, would be to destroy the very people she most loved.

She gestured toward Gallen and the Bock. “You feign hardness and anger, but I know you. I have brought you the two men you have loved most in your life-Belorian and the Bock. Men whom you love, but men who love freedom more than they value their own lives. They’ve come to stop you. If you still love them, if you seek to strip from them their humanity, then be merciful to them. Give them the death they would prefer, rather than the slavery you offer! I say once again-cut us down and be done with it!”

The Harvester began shaking, and her gaze turned deeply inward, as if she were fighting some mighty battle. Her mouth opened, as if against her will, and she made a fist, pointed her finger at the Bock as if to speak the command for her guards to slay him, and lowered her eyes.

“It’s her mantle!” Orick shouted. “It’s controlling her! Take it!”

Gallen raised his head, and he was shaking mightily, his muscles spasming.

Ceravanne imagined the net of tiny wires in the woman’s head, like those she had seen in Gallen. The Inhuman might be broadcasting the Harvester’s every thought, every action, until she was no more than a puppet, moved at its whim. But if that were true, then all of them would be dead by now. And so she realized that the Inhuman was unable to control its subjects fully. It struggled to hold both Gallen and the Harvester at once.