David Farland - Beyond the Gate

“I have been careful not to reveal that until now,” Ceravanne said.

“Well,” Fenorah said, “what I mean to say is-we had planned to take you inland for a hundred kilometers. But maybe we could go farther.”

“Yes,” one of the giants echoed.

“And what will you drink?” Gallen said. “Without seawater, you will die of thirst in a matter of days.”

“We could buy sea salt in the villages along the way, and add it to fresh water,” Fenorah said. “I have gone far inland in such a manner. Indeed, I brought a small pouch of salt just for such an emergency.”

“Bless you,” Ceravanne said, and tears suddenly shone in her eyes. “But I fear that it would put you in danger. Four giants, all searching for sea salt in those small villages? No, I would be asking too much.”

“One giant, then,” Fenorah said. “I am Lord Sheriff for this region, and I will accept the risk. I will run two thousand kilometers at your side, all the way to Moree.”

“There are vast deserts between here and Moree.” Ceravanne shook her head. “You will not find the salt you need to purchase, and even water may be scarce. No, my faithful friend, I cannot accept your life as a sacrifice.”

“It is mine to give,” Fenorah said.

“Then give it in service. Two hundred and eighty kilometers you may come, to High Home, where the Old King’s Road meets the Marbee Road. If we are in peril from the Inhuman’s servants, that is where we will most likely find them, and I would welcome your protection.”

“Agreed,” Fenorah said. “And now, we must be on our journey, for every second matters.”

With that, the giants leapt to their feet, and in a moment the travelbeast was harnessed. They did not clean their cooking pans, only pushed them under a bush for later retrieval, then Orick and the others climbed into the wagon.

The giants were no longer content merely to run loosely behind the wagon. Instead, two of them got behind and pushed, and in moments they were off, the wheels singing down the road, the travelbeast lowering its head and huffing as its hooves thundered over the bridge.

Orick looked out over the broad river, saw the folding wings of a fish eagle as it dove, and he gazed along the cliffs at the gray statues of the birds that rose above the trees, gazing out to sea, in to land, their wings and heads splotched green and white and yellow with lichens. Gallen sat beside Orick, an old friend and confidant, yet now Orick knew that Gallen was a stranger. Indeed, the man he’d befriended and trusted most was gone, if Orick understood correctly, becoming submerged under layer after layer of other beings.

Orick recalled how Jesus once met a man near the region of the Gadarenes who was afflicted with demons, and he spoke to the man, asking his name, and the man said, “Legion, for we are many.”

And Jesus commanded the demons to depart, and they begged to enter a herd of swine. So Jesus allowed it, and two thousand pigs immediately ran downhill into the raging sea and were drowned.

Ah, Gallen, Orick wondered. Will you let your demons pull you into the sea? And Orick wished that he were a priest, with the authority to cast out demons. Indeed, Gallen needed an exorcist now, as deeply as any man ever did.

But I’ve always been too weak to accept the priesthood, Orick realized. Too much tempted by the things of the world.

Orick looked at Gallen, all draped in black. And he wondered if he might yet have to fight Gallen at some lonely spot down this road.

Orick could not examine such possibilities for long, and somehow he found himself mourning for lost Profundis and the people who had lived in hard-won peace under these sun-drenched skies. For he knew that, like them, he would never see this place again.

* * *

For two hours that morning the giants ran west along the coast as Gallen drove the wagon. When the road abruptly turned south, heading between two low hills, the giants stopped to rest. All four of them went down to a calm sea, as blue and sparkling as sapphires, and waded into waves up to their chests. For ten minutes they stooped and slowly drank their fill. Afterward, each of them bathed, then clambered back up the long sandy beach, looking refreshed, but as bedraggled as if they’d washed up in a flood.

Then the group headed south through the wooded hills. Tallea was healing nicely, and she and Orick took advantage of the opportunity to rest, while Ceravanne only sat gazing out the back of the wagon.

Maggie had time to wonder. According to Gallen, during the previous night his mantle had begun picking up memories in short bursts, so she put on her own mantle of technology and questioned Gallen about the problem.

“Gallen,” she whispered as the travelbeast charged down the dirt road, rounding a corner, “you said that the Inhuman is switching frequencies, trying to communicate with you. Did it do that only last night, or has it continued today?”

“It kept up until just past dawn,” Gallen said, “then it stopped.”

That was good news, at least. As she’d imagined earlier, the Inhuman’s ability to transmit seemed hampered in daylight, so it would be safer to travel by day. But she didn’t like the fact that the frequencies were changing at all. “Dammit, Gallen, the Word is more complex than I thought: at the very least, it is equipped with a transmitter so that it can communicate with the Inhuman.”

“But how much can it communicate?” Gallen said. “Is it just telling the Inhuman ‘I’m here,’ or does it send more information?”

Maggie considered. She’d thrown away the broken Word she’d had in camp yesterday. If she had it in hand, she might have been able to find its memory. Most likely, it would have been a small crystal, and by knowing its size, she would have been able to calculate exactly how much information was stored in the Word. But she knew that it couldn’t have stored much. If the Word’s memory was large at all, she’d have noticed its crystal earlier. Which meant that it wasn’t equipped with much memory-probably just enough to walk and move and recognize potential targets. It was probably not much smarter than an insect, and it might have had a transmitter in it just so that it could let the Inhuman know when to begin sending messages and whether they had been properly received.

But what bothered Maggie was that the Word didn’t need much memory to do some rather devastating things. With its transmitter, it might be able to download Gallen’s memories, his thoughts and ideas, and inform the Inhuman. It might be able to send direct transmissions to let the Inhuman know what he saw, what he smelled, what he heard.

In other words, without his knowledge or approbation, Gallen could very well lead them all into a trap, all the while believing himself to be fighting the Inhuman’s sway.

“Gallen, I don’t know how much the Word in your skull might be able to communicate with the Inhuman,” Maggie said hopefully. “But from what I’ve seen, the agents of the Inhuman don’t work in concert. Information doesn’t seem to be transferred directly between people. So that transmitter can’t be sending much.”

“But …” Gallen said, “I can tell that something worries you.”

Maggie leaned close to Gallen and a wave of dizziness passed over her. What she was about to say was so horrific, so undesirable, that she could hardly express her fears. “If the Word has a transmitter built into it, I’ve got to believe that it was put there for a good reason. I don’t know how much memory the Inhuman has. It couldn’t possibly hope to control a million or fifty million people all at once, so it downloads thoughts to you and lets you all act as if you were autonomous. But what if you’re not? What if the Inhuman could read your mind? What if it could take control of your body the way that Karthenor’s Guide took control of me? It wouldn’t take a lot of memory for the Inhuman to control a couple dozen people.”