David Farland - Beyond the Gate

“Och, well, if he does,” Orick said, “I’ll bite his butt so hard he’ll never want to sit on a toilet again!”

Yet Orick’s playful threats could not brighten the mood. Karthenor had been a powerful servant to the dronon rulers, perhaps powerful enough to wrest control even after the dronon retreated.

“So, Gallen, you’ve taken my money and led me astray, have you?” Thomas said. “I thought you said this was a decent sort of place, where folks live forever?”

“I also said there were great dangers here,” Gallen reminded him. “Some folks here do live a mighty long time, but you still have to take care.…”

“Ah, don’t listen to him,” Orick said. “It’s good enough for the likes of us. You’ll never taste better food, and they pass it out free to strangers as a courtesy. Why, it’s so easy to grow here, that they esteem food as nothing. That’s why they give it away.”

“Really?” Thomas asked, his face showing that he doubted Orick’s every word. Now, some bears have a reputation for stretching the truth, but Orick had never been that kind of bear, so Thomas’s raised brows got Orick riled.

“It is indeed the truth!” Orick said. “And I’ll you something else: there’s wonders here that a pudding-head like you couldn’t imagine-”

“Tell me about them as we walk, then.” Thomas laughed, and with that laugh, Orick looked up. It seemed to him that Thomas was somehow a younger man, less weathered and worn than he had been just hours before, and Orick began to tell Thomas of the things he’d seen on his last trip here.

Maggie donned her own mantle and the cinnamon-colored robes of a technician. In moments they were off, striding through the forest. Gray lizards skittered from their feet, and as they marched, Orick used his keen nose to follow the trail they’d blazed on their journey here two weeks earlier.

Orick told Thomas of the wonders he would behold here of Fale-of starships and men who wore wings, of teaching machines and ancient merchants who lived for ten thousand years, of machines that let one speak with the dead or breathe underwater, and of horrifying weapons that could burn worlds to ashes. He described the armies of insect-like dronon that had infested the place and boasted of the heroic efforts of common people who sought to end their tyranny. He told how Gallen had defeated the dronon Lords of the Swarm in single combat, when even the brilliant Lord Protector Veriasse had failed the challenge, and Orick minimized his own part in all these affairs. For a long while he described the Tharrin woman Everynne, who now reigned as Maggie’s regent, as far as the dronon were concerned, over the ten thousand worlds.

From time to time, Orick would pause along the path to eat a slug or a large wood snail. In two hours he had just begun to fill in the details of what Thomas should know when the group reached a small cliff that looked out over Toohkansay, a sprawling purplish-green city grown from a coral-like plant. It stretched like beach foam across the hills, spanning a wide river. They climbed down the cliff and walked to the city along a ruby road, past rich farms. Hovercars and magcars sped past them, much to the wonder and dismay of Thomas.

And when they reached the outskirts of the city, little had changed. They could still smell the sweet fragrance of foods from a roadside cantina, music swelled from the city walls, and within the shadows under the city gates they could discern human-looking inhabitants from various stock (the impish Woodari with their large eyes, tall bald men out of Bonab who wore nothing but tattoos), along with gold serving droids that still reminded Orick of men in armor.

Several Lords of Fale sat together at one table in the shade of the cupola outside the inn. They wore the multicolored robes of merchants, with masks of palest lavender.

Thomas stopped and surveyed the scene, his mouth gaping in wonder, as if he’d just reached the gates of heaven and feared that Saint Peter would come out and wrestle him for the right to enter.

And as the group approached the archway that led into the cantina, one woman looked up from her table and gasped, “Gallen? Maggie? Orick?”

Orick had never seen the woman before, of that he was certain, but immediately the diners at all the tables turned to stare. Here and there among the crowd, people shouted, “It’s them!”

“They’ve returned!”

“Welcome!”

And suddenly a human tide surged from the inn, people shouting, hugging them, giving thanks. A Lord of Ethics, wearing her purple robes of office, rushed to Maggie and fell at her knees, kissing them and then kissing Orick’s paw, thanking them all for their part in ending the long siege by the dronon.

As the cry went up, a clamor issued from the city, and soon there were hundreds upon hundreds of people shouting the good news, their voices swelling and blending together in a roar.

When Gallen had first defeated the dronon’s Golden Queen and her escort, he’d received accolades from the ambassadors of ten dozen worlds, but Orick had never witnessed anything like this, not this overwhelming, spontaneous outpouring of gratitude.

Someone picked Gallen up on his shoulders, and for one moment Orick saw his golden hair limned in the morning light. Orick suddenly envied the man-a hero on ten thousand worlds-while Orick didn’t even know if he’d won the title of Primal Bear of Obhiann and Morgan counties. Only two days before, Orick had been reading the parable of the talents in the Bible, and he wondered if he himself was progressing as God would have him. So often, Orick was content to be-well, just Orick. And somehow that didn’t seem enough. He silently vowed to do better.

But just as suddenly, Orick too was lifted by strong hands, and he and Gallen and Maggie and Thomas were carried upon human shoulders into the city.

Orick bawled out for the people to let him go, for it was rather precarious for a fat bear to be carried by humans, but to his delight, they ignored his pleas.

Orick looked forward, and Gallen smiled, pleased but embarrassed by this show of affection, and Orick felt glad for him. Gallen had been cast off from his own world, but it appeared now that he’d won back more than he’d lost.

Maggie, for her part, looked resplendent, a huge grin on her face that you couldn’t clean off with lye soap. And Thomas shouted to Orick in glee, “Some welcome, eh, Orick?”

They entered the city of Toohkansay with great fanfare and were treated to feasts. And that night, painters decorated the sky with incandescent clouds of plasma in Gallen’s and Maggie’s honor. A band of twelve people from various worlds played beautiful instruments that could sing as sweetly as birds or cut a man to the heart, and Thomas took up his lute and played and sang with them, astonishing the people of Toohkansay with his prowess. Upon hearing a ballad that Thomas had composed, a Master Musician honored Thomas by giving him his own mantle, as “just recompense” for the performance. As soon as Thomas had placed the silver mantle upon his head, his eyes began to water as he learned the music of the universe.

Shortly afterward, Thomas was forced to ask Gallen to take him to his rooms for the night, for he needed seclusion.

“I think it’s time for all of us to make a night of it,” Gallen said. The mayor of Toohkansay himself offered to escort them to an inn that had the finest rooms in the city, and when they reached the door, he asked Gallen if there was anything he needed for the night.

Gallen said, “I need access to an ansible. I must talk with Lady Everynne.”

“Even with an ansible, it takes several hours to send messages so far,” the mayor said. He was a tall, bald man whose skin shone as if it were oiled. “Is there a question you have, so that we can ask a response?”