David Farland - Beyond the Gate

Gallen did not consider. “I am the Lord Protector of this land. I come to protect the righteous, and to bring evil men to judgment.”

Gallen did not want to answer more questions, so he thrust his hand into a fold of his robes and pulled out the light globe he had taken from the corpses in Thomas Flynn’s stable the night before. He raised the globe aloft and squeezed so that a piercingly brilliant light burst over the town, and he stood as if in sunlight while all around him the townsfolk gasped and groaned, shielding their eyes.

“Behold the light of truth,” Gallen shouted. “No mere mortal can look upon it and lie, for he who lies shall be consumed in holy fire!

“You-” Gallen waved his sword toward Christian Bean. “You seek to kill a man by bearing false witness. You have admitted to church authorities that you are a robber. What boon were you granted for bearing false testimony?”

Christian Bean half stood, and the poor man began gasping in fear. Though it was a cool night, he was sweating profusely, and he stammered, “M-m-money. B-Bishop Mackey said he prayed, and God told him that Gallen was responsible for Father Heany’s death. He offered us each a hundred pounds to testify!”

Young Argent Flaherty was nodding his head hugely in agreement, and Gallen stepped closer. “Yet you are under the penalty of a whipping. How do you hope to live through such a beating?”

Christian Bean’s eyes opened wide, and he began wheezing heavily. He dropped his brown bottle of wine and his goblet, and he stumbled backward, moaning incoherently. Gallen advanced on young Argent Flaherty and pointed his sword. “Answer me, Argent Flaherty!”

“H-he promised to commute our sentences after the trial!”

“Yet you have sworn in your affidavits that you asked this boon, and that Bishop Mackey denied it?”

“We said that he ‘never spoke a promise to us’-and he never did! He wrote the promise in a note, then told us to word our testimony this way so that we wouldn’t be lying.”

“Keep silent!” Mason Flaherty shouted at his younger brother, grabbing the boy’s arm. “If you answer no questions, you’ll speak no lies!”

“Och, you child of a serpent!” Gallen sneered at Mason. “Hardly shall you escape the wrath of hell! What does it matter if you worded a portion of your testimony with half-truths, when the brunt of your tale is a lie? I was never summoned by the prayers of Gallen O’Day or any other man, nor have I opened the gates of hell. What of this tale you tell?”

Gallen pointed his sword at Christian Bean, who was writhing on the ground. He was so terrified that Gallen was sure he could get the man to speak, to admit to perjury, but Christian Bean looked up through slitted eyes, gulped at the air loudly, and suddenly grabbed his chest. He began shaking uncontrollably, muscles spasming in his legs, his eyes rolling back in his head. A deep rattling noise came from his throat, and Gallen suddenly realized that the man had just died of fright.

Young Argent Flaherty stared at Christian and gasped, lurched away, rushed toward the crowd. He tried to beat his way through, but several townspeople caught him. The boy pulled his knife and took a swing, and some worthy drew his own blade and plunged it in the lad’s ribs. He gave out a startled cry and sank to the ground.

Gallen went to Mason Flaherty, looked down at him steadily. The man was shaking, but stood his ground and met Gallen’s eyes. Gallen had never seen such controlled hatred in a man’s eyes.

“And you,” Gallen said. “You alone are left to bear witness. Tell us now: was your testimony false?”

Mason gritted his teeth, spat his words. “I’ll-Not-Speak-Of-It! You cannot force me to talk! Gallen O’Day killed my brother and my cousin, and I’ve got nothing to say to you!”

Gallen looked at this man and wished that Mason would give him some other choice. He couldn’t leave the man alive. The man had tried to kill him on the road, and he’d tried to do it in court. To let such a stubborn and evil man live would only bring trouble later on.

Gallen looked up at Sully. The sheriff stood beside the Lord Inquisitor, shaking. “Do with him what you will,” Gallen told the sheriff, and he turned and walked away.

As Gallen passed the front door of his home, he clenched his fist over the glow globe so that there was a bright flash, then he quit squeezing his glow globe so that the light suddenly failed, and he ripped off his mask and headed into the woods.

At his back, he heard Mason Flaherty’s sudden scream and the sickening sound of a sword slashing through flesh, snicking through bone. Once, twice, and the head was off. Sully had done a poor job of it.

Gallen reached the edge of the woods, and there he stood panting. Hot, bitter tears were streaming down his face, and he found himself breathing heavily, gasping. He hadn’t cried in ages, not since that first time he’d been forced to kill a highwayman three years before. Then, he’d cried because he’d felt that somehow he’d been robbed of his innocence, but with every killing since then, he’d felt justified.

Now, more than ever, he could feel that his innocence had been stripped away. He’d just killed three men, and though they were highwaymen and would have used their testimony to nail him to the inverted cross, still they had not held any weapons, and because of their ignorance, they had been powerless against him.

Gallen rushed up the hillside, under the shelter of an old apple grove. There he fell to his knees and began praying sincerely for the first time in years, begging God for forgiveness.

And as he prayed with his eyes closed, the amplified words hissing from his microphone, he suddenly saw a weak light before him. He opened his eyes. A pale-blue glowing figure stood before him, leaning against the tree. A wight.

Two weeks ago, the sight would have frozen his heart. But now he knew that it was only a creature formed from luminescent nanotech devices, like the glowing mask he wore from Fale. Yet this creature had the thoughts and memories of a long-dead human inhabiting it. It was a heavyset man with lamb chop sideburns.

“I don’t know who you are,” the wight said, in a deep voice, “but this is an interdicted planet. By charter, you cannot be carrying the kinds of weapons you have on you.”

“Then why don’t you take them from me?” Gallen said. He didn’t need a sword. His mantle whispered that it could incapacitate the creature with a burst of radio waves at any time.

“Och, there’s not much that I can do against the likes of you,” the wight answered. “But I can raise the hue and cry against you. I’ll call you a demon. At my word, every townsman in a thousand miles would come marching to war against you. Sooner or later, we’d get you.”

“You would let that many people die-just to rid this world of one man?” Gallen whispered.

The wight didn’t answer. “We’ve chosen how we will live here on Tihrglas.”

“Eighteen thousand years ago you chose how you will live. But you’re dead, and this isn’t your world anymore,” Gallen said.

“It is filled with our children. If they wish to change the planetary charter, they may do so.”

“Yet you don’t even let them know that there are worlds beyond this. How can they choose?”

The wight sat down a few feet from Gallen, folded his hands into a steeple and stared at them thoughtfully. “You know of the worlds beyond this, of the wars and horrors found in the universe. Of what value is such knowledge? Our people lead simple lives, free of care. It is a commodity that cannot be purchased.”

Things had changed much in the past eighteen thousand years. New sub-races of humanity had been engineered. The Tharrin had been created and given leadership of most planets, ending the petty conflicts and wars that the galaxy had endured under the corporate governors so long before. Gallen did not know much about how the galaxy had been run millennia ago, and he wondered how much the wights understood about how it functioned now.