David Farland - Beyond the Gate

“She set me a task. Tell her that I would like more direction. I’ll want to review her response in private.”

“As you wish,” the mayor said, then he departed.

Gallen and Maggie took one room as man and wife, and they went in.

Orick and Thomas were each given separate rooms across a wide hallway, and they stood for a moment. Thomas closed his eyes and whispered, “Ah, Orick, have you heard the fine music here?” And Orick knew that Thomas was listening through his mantle.

“I’ve heard some,” Orick said.

Thomas shook his head, as if words could not convey what he wanted to say. “I can hear the music of ten thousand worlds, composed over the past thirty-eight thousand years … All of my life has been so … cramped, so stilted.” Hot tears were flowing from his eyes, and Thomas was weeping bitterly. “How could I have been so blind? There is so much to explore!”

“How do you mean?”

“We’re babes, Orick! On Tihrglas, I thought I was at the end of my life. But I’ll need an eternity to perfect my skills as a musician, and another to compose my songs!”

Orick looked up at Thomas, at the gray streaks in his hair, and he could see that the aging man was at the beginning of his own incredible adventure. At this very moment, Thomas had his foot stuck in the door of heaven, and he was set to put his shoulder to that door and force it open.

“Well, then,” Orick said, for lack of anything better to say, “it’s good night to you.” Orick went into his own room, and he sat and thought. Thomas, right now, Orick was sure, was in his room getting his head crammed full of knowledge, probably weeping his eyes out for joy. Gallen was hailed as the hero of ten thousand worlds and was most likely frolicking with the woman he loved most in life.

And Orick, well, Orick tried to sleep on a soft bed, but found it to be too odd. It was large enough, but it hadn’t been made to hold a bear, and he sank so low into it that he kept having a spooky feeling that he might drown. So instead he lay on the floor beneath an open window, watching the galaxies pinwheeling overhead, and skyships streaking through the night like meteors. He wondered if he would ever find happiness.

When Orick had been a cub, his mother once told him a tale. She’d said that the hummingbird was the sweetest-tasting of all fowl, for it alone of all birds fed upon the nectar of flowers. She’d said that the sweetest honey tasted bland in comparison.

And so Orick had taken to hiding in a thicket of summer lilies, leaping up after hummingbirds whenever he heard the trill of their wings. But no matter how well he hid, or how quickly he leapt, the hummingbirds would always lift themselves just out of his reach.

Orick drifted asleep, dreaming of jumping, jumping, leaping impossibly high to catch honey-scented hummingbirds, which he held gingerly in his teeth, savoring them.

He heard a chiming noise as Gallen’s door opened across the hall, and Orick got up groggily, stepped out into the dark arching corridors of the inn, where gems in the ceiling lit the dim way.

Gallen was standing in the corridor, fully dressed in the black of a Lord Protector.

“What are you about?” Orick asked.

“Shhh …” Gallen signaled for Orick to follow him, and they crept down the familiar streets. It was soon obvious to Orick where Gallen was heading: to the quarters where Lord Karthenor dwelt with his aberlains.

But when they reached those offices where Lord Karthenor had enslaved Maggie and dozens of other workers, the buildings were stripped bare. The Dronon guards were gone, the machinery removed.

Gallen walked through a dozen dark rooms, until he reached the last, then stood, staring into nothingness.

“Couldn’t sleep, thinking about him?” Orick asked.

“I wondered if he was still here. He would have heard that Maggie and I were back.”

“From the scent, I’d say he’s been gone a while,” Orick said. “The aberlains probably left the day the dronon pulled out.”

“Maggie says that the women on this world will conceive children built in the image of the dronon hive,” Gallen said distantly. “Some women will have swollen bellies, and they will be breeders, giving birth to six or eight children at a time, as if they were hound bitches.

“Other women will be born to labor, never able to give themselves to a man in love, barren except for an irresistible craving to work from dawn to dusk.

“Some men will be thinkers and planners.

“And some men will be born to war, bred to fight and hate and bully others into worshiping the dronon Golden Queen. And all of this happened because people like Lord Karthenor were willing to sell mankind’s secrets to the dronon.

“In all probability, we will suffer for a thousand generations for what Karthenor and his aberlains have done.”

Orick didn’t understand much about how Karthenor and his aberlains manipulated unborn children into becoming something so strange, but he knew that Karthenor had done unmentionable evil. He’d known it from the moment when Karthenor had placed his Guide upon Maggie’s head, enslaving her so that she could be his worker. “Aye, no beating would be great enough to suffice for that man,” Orick grumbled.

Behind them, someone cleared his throat, and Orick turned. A man stood in the shadows in a comer, a man wearing the robes and mantle of a Lord Protector. His robes had so blended into the night, that Orick had not seen him. And Orick could still not smell his scent. “Perhaps he is already paying a penalty,” he said.

Gallen turned and studied the stranger.

“I’m Laranac,” the man said, “a Lord Protector for this world.”

“Do you know where Karthenor is?” Gallen asked.

“He left in great haste, I believe, when the dronon evacuated, taking many of his creations-and his slaves-with him.”

Gallen frowned. “How can that be? I’ve been in a dronon hive city; the stench of their stomach acids fills the air. And the acids dry into a fine powder that blankets everything. A closed ship would be-impossible to bear.”

Laranac nodded. “Their kind and ours were not meant to live together. Karthenor knew that. Yet he will suffer for his choice, constantly burning from the acids on the dronon hive ships. The nanodocs in his blood will keep him alive, but at what price? I suspect his exile is a great torment to him.”

“A fit ending for the man, as far as I’m concerned,” Orick said. “Death would have been too nice.”

“No, this is not his end,” Gallen whispered, “only a reprieve in torment. Such a painful exile will only madden him, make him want to return that much more quickly.”

“And so I keep watch on this place,” Laranac said, “hoping for his return. I found a cache of weapons and credit chips hidden in a secret room behind that wall. If Karthenor returns, he will come searching for it, but all he will find is me. I will give him death, when next I see him.”

“What of the law?” Gallen asked. “Will you give the man no trial?”

“His memories were on file, along with his gene samples, so that the dronon could rebuild him if he died. Those memories were all the evidence we needed. Karthenor has already been convicted and sentenced to death. I wait now only to mete out his punishment.”

Orick considered this bit of news on how evil men were tried here on Tremonthin, and he thought it much better than what had happened with Gallen, back home.

Gallen smiled up at Laranac. “You’ll not mete out his punishment, if I get to him first.”

“That is unlikely,” Laranac said.

Gallen mused, “I am Lord of the Swarm. If I asked the dronon to turn him over, they would do it on a moment’s notice.”

Orick did not like the idea of having to deal with the dronon. He never wanted to see one of their black carapaces again.