David Farland - Beyond the Gate

The Harvester pulled her dagger from her hip sheath, and its shining curved blade gleamed wickedly. Ceravanne recalled how deeply it had bit into her in the past, the cold poison at its tip. “I have killed myself before,” the Harvester whispered.

“Yes, to avoid being infected by the Inhuman,” Ceravanne answered sadly, realizing that her sister-self was planning suicide. “The Swallow has returned to her ancient land of Indallian. She came to bring peace and unite her people. But you’re infected by that which we both fear. If this is all you can do to save us, then do what you must. I forgive you.”

And Ceravanne saw the pain on the Harvester’s face as her muscles worked against her. She marveled at the Harvester’s struggle for control, for few could hope to fight the domination of a machine designed to manipulate the human will, and Ceravanne knew that the Harvester must have been fighting the Inhuman’s control for months.

“Forgive me and die,” the Harvester said, and she leapt at Ceravanne. In that brief instant, Ceravanne saw her mistake.

The Tharrin compunction against taking a human life was nearly unbreakable, but it did not extend to self, and the Harvester viewed Ceravanne as self. And in that instant, Ceravanne saw that the Harvester was relinquishing control. She could not have moved so swiftly otherwise. Indeed, for that brief moment, she was the Inhuman.

And a sudden shocking urge welled up inside Ceravanne. For one moment, she wished the Harvester dead. She wanted to hide the ugliness of what she had become from the world. Expunge it. Make it as if it had never been. While humans feared most the death of the body, Ceravanne feared more for the death of her soul, and she wanted now to unmake the thing she had become.

“No!” the Bock shouted, rushing toward them.

Ceravanne grasped the Harvester’s hand as her knife plunged downward. And for a moment they struggled, fighting for control of the knife. The Harvester’s face was a mask of determination and rage, the face of a stranger. Ceravanne turned and kicked at the older woman’s legs, trying to unbalance her, and very nearly succeeded in driving the knife into the Harvester’s neck.

The Harvester cried out for aid, and her guard spun and rushed toward her. Ceravanne saw Orick leap in behind the guard, catch the Tekkar’s rear leg in his teeth, and shake the man vigorously. With a mighty heave of his neck, Orick threw the Tekkar against the near wall, and bones snapped.

The Bock lunged forward past Orick, trying to throw himself between the women. With his long fingers, he grabbed for the knife as it arced toward Ceravanne a second time, reaching up. The knife pierced his hand, driving deeply along the outside of his palm. Bright blood spattered over his arm, and he backed away from the Harvester.

“She’s … innocent! You’re both innocent!” the Bock cried. The Harvester stared at the Bock, eyes wide, and staggered backward, running from her deed.

Ceravanne stood, watching the doomed Bock collapse at her feet. “Ah,” he muttered courageously, making a show as if the wound were a scratch, backing away. “I …” Confusion crossed his face, and he sat down heavily, his many knees buckling. “What?”

“I’ve killed you,” the Harvester cried, as if the words were torn from her throat.

Ceravanne felt her heart pounding fiercely in her chest, but she couldn’t breathe. She fell to her knees beside the Bock, hoping to comfort him.

Her eyes filled with tears, and the Bock looked up at her incredulous. “How? No, it’s a small wound!”

“With the juice of deathfruit in it,” the Harvester whispered.

The Bock fell back, gasping, and looked up.

And in that second, the Harvester dropped her knife to the floor. Ceravanne stood there stunned, holding the Bock, as the Harvester cried out from the core of her soul, and the cry seemed to echo from some recess in Ceravanne’s mind. It was a scream that was unlike anything she had ever heard-almost bestial.

The Bock looked up, and his brown eyes did not focus. He stared blindly at the ceiling. “Wha … gulls crying?” Ceravanne knelt, her heart pounding, blinded by tears. The Bock looked up and said, “Ah, the cry of a child as it dies into an adult.”

Then his voice rattled, and he went still.

The ground twisted beneath her, and Ceravanne fell forward, still weeping.

Ceravanne had come hoping to find common ground with the Harvester. She’d known that somewhere, despite the Inhuman’s manipulations, its distortions and outright lies, there had to be some core, some essential, unchanging element, that would remain the same in them.

And as the Bock died, the one man both Ceravanne and the Harvester had loved most in this life, the Harvester was touched deep in her soul, in a place where the Inhuman could not enter.

The Harvester crawled on her knees toward the Bock. Then Ceravanne grabbed the mantle of the Inhuman, pulled off the gold clip that her technicians had told her would be its key, and laid the Inhuman over the Bock’s face like a burial shroud.

Suddenly freed from the Inhuman’s influence, Gallen leapt up, came to Ceravanne’s side and held her a moment. Ceravanne was trying to snap the key onto a corner of her own mantle, but her hands were shaking too badly. So Gallen took the key from her hands.

From one of the side doors, Ceravanne could hear shouting as several of the Tekkar tried to clear rubble, gain entrance to the great hall. “Quickly, put the key on my mantle,” Ceravanne whispered, “if you love truth, if you seek rest.”

Gallen took Ceravanne’s mantle from her, placed its golden net over his own head. Then he sat down, arms wrapped around his knees, snapped the key onto the mantle’s golden rings, and lived another hundred lifetimes.

For nearly two hours, Ceravanne sat with Orick. The Bock’s body cooled, and Ceravanne cleaned it up, weeping softly. She could not keep from touching him, and for a long hour after the body was cleaned, Orick nuzzled her, pressing his nose under her arm.

Orick could not believe how badly the day had gone. Gallen had not been able to fight the Inhuman, and Maggie was dead. Both Ceravanne and the Harvester had lost the man they loved, and the city of Moree was in ruins. Orick had hoped for much better, and it left a great gaping hole in his heart, to see all the pain that others would have to endure.

He kept looking over at Gallen, who sat with his arms wrapped about his knees, his forehead bowed to one knee, with the great golden mantle draped over his head and shoulders, wearing a look as if he were some philosopher, exhausted from profound thought. And in a way, Orick feared that. The teaching machines on Fale had changed him some. The Inhuman had sought to rip away his free will. And now, he would waken and be something new.

Everyone Orick loved most was being taken from him.

He had begun to fear that terrible light that was growing in Gallen’s pale eyes. Now he felt it keenest. A few short weeks ago, Gallen had been little more than a boy who had to cope with his incredible talent for battle and his desire to set the world right. Now, he was growing into something new, something unpredictable.

So Orick sat and thought, trying to comfort Ceravanne. Orick remembered that when the Lady Everynne had connected with the omni-mind, she’d wakened after the initial shock, and she’d become something powerful-a goddess, with nearly unlimited knowledge. In his own smaller way, Orick knew, Gallen was doing the same, step by step. The light was steadily growing in his eyes, and Orick could see what he was becoming, could see how he was leaving ordinary men behind, leaving Orick behind.

When Ceravanne’s tears had eased some, Orick asked gently, “When Gallen wakes, how will he be changed? What will he become?”