David Farland - Beyond the Gate

“I fear,” Gallen said, “that much has changed in eighteen thousand years. When you built this world, if I remember my history right, corporate wars raged between planets, but mankind has come far toward making peace with itself.”

The wight smiled wryly. “From your words, I guess that mankind has not managed to bring about perfect peace?”

“As long as men are free to do evil, and have the power to do so, there will be evil,” Gallen answered. “But the evils of today are perpetrated on a smaller scale than in the past.”

“In other words, you’ve cut the balls off the bigger predators. You’ve taken away their power.”

Gallen considered a moment. He’d seen how heavily modified the Tharrin were, and in a sense they were no longer even human. Yes, mankind had stripped their leaders of the capacity to do evil. “We’ve modified mankind to some extent. Most people do not have the same level of desire to do evil that your people had in your time.”

“Aye, we knew it would be done. It was such a seductive solution to the problem, that we knew others would not resist the temptation. You can place evil men in jail, or you can make the flesh a prison in itself where evil cannot enter. There’s not much difference. But you’re still restricting people’s freedom.”

So you created bars of ignorance , Gallen thought, and imprisoned them anyway . “The point is,” Gallen said, “that the universe is not so dangerous now as it was in your day. Perhaps it is time for your children to join it.”

“Mark my words-” the wight said, suddenly angry, “if our feral children go into the universe, in two generations they’ll pose such a threat that none of your peaceful planets would want them!”

Gallen studied the wight, and realized that he had a point. Gallen had just seen the face of evil on his own world, and if highwaymen like the Flahertys were given power, they would take their criminal ways out into the larger galaxy. He envisioned pirating fleets and judges who had been purchased.

In the greater universe, others had chosen to reengineer their children, rid them of the desire to dominate and oppress others. On some worlds, he knew, huge police forces had been created to handle the problem. No matter how you looked at it, bars had been created, and Gallen’s ancestors had chosen to control their children by giving them an inheritance of ignorance. Perhaps they had been right to retreat from the future.

Yet Gallen and Maggie had both seen the larger universe, and they had grown from it. Gallen had come home only to find that there was nothing left for him here. He had few friends. And something inside him had changed. He’d outgrown this place, and he felt free to leave now.

He thought of the Tharrin woman, Ceravanne, whom Everynne had shown him on Tremonthin, and he was suddenly eager to be off.

Gallen sighed, looked at the wight. He was an older man who had graying hairs among his sideburns, someone who looked as if the heavy burdens of life had bent him low. “If the only other worlds out there were inhabited only by humans,” Gallen said, “then perhaps I would be content to admit that this world should stay as it is. But there is a race of beings called the dronon, and they will come here. Perhaps, someday, they will come to war against this world. If they do, your people will need to grow up, or they will be destroyed.”

The wight gave Gallen a calculating look. “We saw one of your dronon not two weeks ago, and wondered how it came to be. I’ll take this bit of news to Conclave. Perhaps we must reconsider how this world is run.” He stood up.

“And I,” Gallen said, rising, “will leave this world with all possible haste, without alerting anyone else here of the universe beyond.”

“Not just like that,” the wight said, shaking his head. “I’ll not let you go at your own pace. We’ll escort you, if you please. Just tell us where your ship is.”

Suddenly, there was an uproar in town. Gallen looked back down over the small seaport. Hundreds of glowing wights were striding through the edge of town, past the fires and tent cities. The townsfolk were terrified. The wights only came to town if a priest tied someone to a tree for breaking the laws found in the Tome. And a person taken for such an offense never returned.

“My mother lives down there,” Gallen sighed, realizing that the wight must have had a built-in transmitter. It must have called its companions. “I’ll go down to say good-bye.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” the wight said with just a hint of force. “You can’t stop me,” Gallen replied. “You wear the mantle of a Lord Protector,” the wight said. “If you would protect those people below, then you will leave now. It is against the law to wear such mantles on this world. You know that. And things have already gotten out of hand-what with off-worlders coming through the gates. But things aren’t too bad. For now, we will clean up the evidence of off-world intruders, and in a generation these shenanigans will all be forgotten, the stuff of legend. But if you go back to town and pollute those folks down there with more knowledge, we will be forced to eradicate them.”

Gallen studied the wight’s face. The old creature was not bluffing. Gallen pulled out the glowing mask of Fale, considered putting it back on his face, but decided against it, and then walked unmasked down through the apple grove in long easy strides.

As he passed the china shop, he looked into its windows and thought, I shall never see this place again . And as he passed the quay with its little boats pulled up onto the pebbled beach, he inhaled the sea air. He moved like a wraith through the streets, and all ahead of him, people stepped aside, and the wights drifted in behind him.

He stopped at his own home, and his mother stood outside the door of the little pine house-tree, looking more haggard and world-weary than he’d ever seen her. He hugged her briefly. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be back,” he whispered into her ear as he stooped to hug her, and she reached up and managed to hug him around the ribs.

“Where will you go?” she demanded in a tone of disbelief.

“To another world, to dance with the fairy folk and fight demons.” She squeezed him tight. “Be good,” was all she managed to say between sobs. Gallen reached into his pocket and pulled out his coin purse, gave it to her. “The money, wedding gifts, the inn-they’re all yours,” he said.

Then he went into the house, retrieved his sword, daggers, and the incendiary rifle he’d brought home from his previous trip. Maggie had already gone to fetch her own things.

When Gallen got out of the house, Sheriff Sully came out of the crowd, and growled in a bitter voice. “You-you made me kill a man,” he said, rubbing his hands on his shirt as if they’d been soiled.

“Not I,” Gallen said. “I told you only to do with Mason Flaherty ‘what you will.’ You came here with murder on your mind, and murder is what you’ve accomplished.”

Gallen pushed him away, and some of Sully’s own men grabbed him, placed him under arrest.

Orick rushed to Gallen’s side. “I’m with you, Gallen!” the bear called in his deep voice, and a young female bear padded along beside him. Gallen was glad to finally meet Grits.

Maggie Flynn was calling, “Out of my way! Get out of my way!” and Gallen could see her trying to break through the crowd over by the inn. Within moments she came huffing through the crowd with nothing but a small valise in her hand.

Her uncle Thomas nearly skipped at her side, and he came bustling up with his own bag in one hand, his lute over his shoulder, smiling. “‘Tis good that I didn’t even have time to unpack!” he told Gallen. Then he bowed to Gallen’s mother and handed her his purse. “Everything that I own is now yours, good woman. Spend the money in good health.”