David Farland - Beyond the Gate

Thomas said to Gallen, “It’s time for you to go, young sir. I suspect you’re an honorable man, but it wouldn’t be proper for you to be skulking around here so late of the night without an escort.”

Thomas turned and disappeared into the common room through the swinging doors, giving them one last moment alone. Maggie was so mad she wanted to follow Thomas out and shout to his back as he walked up the stairs to count the money, but there were too many folks camped out on the floor of the common room, and she didn’t want to make a scene. So she just stood with her fists clenched until she realized that she still held a wet washrag and she had squeezed water from it onto her foot.

She spun and tossed the rag into the sink. “Well, how do you like him? ”

Gallen chuckled at Thomas’s back. “I see what you meant about wanting to stab him. ‘Skulking around’ he calls it. The nerve of him! Well, he’s a nuisance, all right. But don’t judge him too harshly. He thinks he’s making you rich, and you can’t fault him for that. And if your mother or father were alive, they wouldn’t be talking to you much different. They’d be against you marrying so young, too.”

“Oh, don’t take his side. He’s just a big tick trying to suck the blood from me, and he wants me to feel fine about it.”

“Any sixteen-year-old woman,” Gallen whispered, “who can steal a key to the Gate of the World, make her way across half a dozen planets, pilot a hovercar under a nuclear mushroom cloud, and face up to the Dronon Lords of the Swarm is surely a match for one dried-up old crooked uncle,” Gallen whispered. “I’m sure you can handle him.”

Maggie smiled, still angry, but subdued by weariness. “Sure, I’d gut him in a second if he wasn’t my only kin,” she teased. She buried her head in his chest, just resting her eyes, swaying gently. “Gallen, we’ve got to get out of here. I won’t stay here and be his slave, working in this place for another year!”

“Of course not,” Gallen said. He wrapped his strong arms around her and just held her. She could feel his heart beating strong and steady in his chest, smelled the clean scent of his cotton tunic. He didn’t speak for a long time. The cooking fire crackled as a log shifted.

“Let’s go lock up the stables,” he whispered. “We can talk in there.”

Maggie went to the cabinet where John Mahoney had kept his locks, took out the big iron lock that he used for the stables when he bothered to lock them at all. Gallen went to a peg by the back door, took down Maggie’s shawl and put it over her shoulders, and they hurried out under the boughs of the house-pine.

A blustery wind was blowing, and all under the tree that formed the inn there were tents pitched, and up on the hill north of town, Maggie could hear whinnying. She looked up, and spaced along the mountain road were lanterns as people wended their way down the road.

“This is madness,” Gallen whispered, watching the lanterns. “I’ve never seen the likes.”

They picked their way carefully around the side of the inn, went to the stable. A lamp burned inside, and a couple of young boys were staring into the wagon at the corpses. Gallen shooed them out.

In the stable, the horses were backed into their stalls, staring out with tired eyes. Gallen pulled the door tight, locked it with a cross-beam.

As soon as they were alone Maggie tumbled into Gallen’s arms and kissed him, a sweet, slow kiss. She’d been craving his touch all day, and now they just held each other, satisfying that urge. She shook as she held him, and Maggie found her eyes tearing, and Gallen whispered, “Oh, my sweet Maggie, what’s wrong?”

“Thomas,” she said. “He’s mucked it all up for us.”

“He can’t muck it all up, so long as we still love each other,” Gallen whispered. He pulled back, held her hand, and looked steadily into her eyes. “Maggie, we don’t really have to get married here. You and I could go to any world your heart fancies, and the marriage would be just as valid.”

Maggie’s heart skipped. “I know,” she said. Yet she felt cheated. Clere was her home. By tradition, a proper woman wouldn’t marry outside her own hometown, even if the groom came from another country. It was a matter of propriety. Only a girl who had come down with a child would marry in a far county, and if Maggie were to run off now, everyone would suspect her. And even though through her travels Maggie had learned that she no longer wanted to live on this world, she was saddened by what her friends and neighbors would think.

“Yes, I’ve always wanted to get married here,” she said. “I wanted to marry in my own hometown, dressed in white, with a priest.”

“I’ll talk to your uncle, tomorrow,” Gallen said, “press him for an early marriage. Maybe he’ll listen.” She looked up into his blue eyes, and with her fingers combed a wisp of his long hair back from his face.

Gallen pulled away from her, walked over to the wagon, looked down at the corpses of a green-skinned Vanquisher and one of Everynne’s personal guard, a beautiful female soldier. The night air was chill, and Gallen’s breath steamed from his mouth.

Maggie could tell that he had some distressing news to tell.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Maggie, I got a message from Everynne. She wants me to go to a planet called Tremonthin to protect someone, a Tharrin named Ceravanne. It’s important that I go soon.”

“Protect her from what?” Maggie asked. “The dronon?” She shivered involuntarily as she imagined the huge insect-like alien that the townsfolk had mistaken two weeks ago for Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies.

Gallen had defeated the dronon Lords in single combat, winning the title of Lords of the Swarm for himself and Maggie, and as the new queen of the dronon Swarm, Maggie had banished the dronon from the human-occupied worlds before she returned home to Tihrglas for her wedding.

Still, she imagined that some dronon would cause trouble. They didn’t think like humans at all. Certainly, when the next dronon hive queen matured, she would bring her Lord Escort to battle Gallen and Maggie, hoping to win back the title of Lords of the Swarm, believing that the title gave them the right to control ten thousand human-occupied worlds.

So Maggie’s return to Tihrglas served a purpose beyond allowing her wedding, for it kept her hidden from enemy dronon.

“No, it’s not the dronon,” Gallen said. “There is something called ‘the Inhuman’ on Tremonthin. I’m not sure what it is-a secret society, perhaps. A group of people seeking control.” Gallen’s jaw was set, rigid. Maggie knew that look. He was ready for a fight, and God forgive anyone who stood up to him.

“The Lady Semarritte warned me of Tremonthin before she died,” Maggie said. “She wanted us to go there, and she said that your skills as a warrior would be sorely tested.”

In the past two weeks, Gallen had been preparing for battle in ways that Maggie had never seen before. With this mantle of a Lord Protector that he wore during practice, this artificial intelligence that stored more information than a thousand libraries could hold, Gallen was learning secrets of combat that he’d never imagined. He said that he wanted to be more prepared when next he met the dronon, and Maggie suspected that he would be up for the test on Tremonthin. But the Lady Semarritte hadn’t seemed so sure.

Gallen seemed preoccupied as he looked at the corpses. Thomas had put the weapons from the dead Vanquisher and Everynne’s warrior atop the bodies. Gallen picked up the Vanquisher’s incendiary rifle. “We shouldn’t leave these weapons functional,” he said. “Some kid might pull the trigger and put the town to fire.” He cracked the rifle at the stock, pulled out its power pack and projectiles, then laid it back down.