David Farland - Beyond the Gate

He got up, wanting to plan for the day’s coming battle, so headed out to the transport.

The suns were just rising in a soft violet haze over the mountains, and down the slope below the temple, the Bock had gathered near the pool, where they were dipping their feet into the pool’s edge.

Ceravanne was sitting down with them, dressed in a clean green tunic that one of the priestesses must have given her. She was talking energetically to the same Bock that Gallen had met before, though something odd was happening. When they’d first met a few weeks before, the Bock had been a dark green in color, but now the color of its skin was tinted with a grayish-brown, like the stalk of a plant that is dying. Gallen walked toward them.

The Bock spoke back to Ceravanne, slowly, in dreamy tones, telling her, “Too late, too late for me to come now. Winter is upon us … task falls to you!” Gallen stopped beside them for a moment, looked up at the green man, with his knobby joints, his long fingers splayed up toward the sun.

“Is everything all right?” Gallen asked Ceravanne.

She looked up at him. “The Bock are not awake yet. They have trouble this time of year. When the sun rises a bit more, and the blood warms in his veins, he will understand me more.”

“Can’t … can’t go,” the Bock said dreamily, the voice of an old man, long senile.

“I’ll leave you two, then,” Gallen said. He went to the transport, got Ceravanne’s map out for further study, laid it out on the floor, trying to imagine alternate routes into the Tekkar warren that might exist somewhere in the gray unknown spaces the map did not show.

In a few minutes, Maggie came to join him. “The Riallna are making breakfast for us,” she whispered, kneeling behind him. “I told them we’d be there in a while.” She too was wearing her mantle and a new green tunic, and she knelt over the map just behind him to his right. Gallen inhaled her clean scent, tasted her exotic perfumes from Fate, and was very conscious of the way her left breast pressed against his arm. He felt somehow old. I should be rutting with her, celebrating with her, instead of making plans for war, he considered, but he put the stray thought from his mind.

Maggie stroked him quickly up the spine with the back of her hand-an act that made the nerves tingle all along his body. It was an odd caress, one that the Worren women used to good effect in their lovemaking. They were a lusty people and Gallen smiled at some of his memories.

“I love it when you smile at private little dirty jokes like that,” Maggie said. She put both hands on his shoulders, knelt behind him, and nibbled his ear. “You know, darlin’,” she said in her rich brogue, “I know more tricks than any madam in Baille Sean. In fact, I’ll bet the Inhuman taught me more than the whole lot of them know together.”

Gallen licked his lips, considered what it would mean to have someone with the memories of an Inhuman as a lover. “Then I’d say our time here has been well spent for that, if for nothing else.”

Maggie giggled and twisted him down to the floor, then straddled him, commanded the car’s AI to close and lock the security door to the transport, then she smiled at Gallen and wiggled enticingly. “It would be a shame if we disturbed the others with all of our moaning and yelling, now wouldn’t it?”

Gallen nodded, and Maggie bent over and kissed him, and her breasts brushed against his chest. She just knelt there for a moment staring into his eyes, and then she began to untie his tunic slowly, sometimes reaching up to stroke his face or to snatch a kiss in gestures that he recalled from dozens of lovers over a hundred lifetimes. And yet being with her was better than being with any of the others, for Gallen saw that she knew all of the women he had ever loved, and with her gestures, she showed that she was willing to become all of them, to give what each had given before.

Gallen reached up and began to untie the strings on the front of her tunic, but Maggie shook her head, did it herself, and pulled off her clothes.

For the next half hour, Maggie led him on a tour of wonderland, and what they shared was as pure and beautiful as any moment he ever remembered. Somewhere in the lovemaking, he recalled some of the things he’d learned about women over the past six thousand years, and he began to give as good as he’d gotten, so that at the height of her excitement Maggie actually let out a jubilant shout of “Thank God and Gallen O’Day!” though when he teased her about it later, she denied recalling that she’d ever said it.

When they finished, Gallen held her for a long time, just lying on the cushions of the benches, and realized that for the first time in weeks he’d been able to completely forget about the Inhuman, about the world, and just enjoy the one woman he loved.

For a long time, he said nothing, till the suns began to shine higher through their window, and then Maggie said, “I was meaning to ask, what did you come in here for, anyway?”

“I was studying the map of Moree,” Gallen said, “trying to figure out how to get in, but I don’t see any easy path.”

Maggie smiled at him. “That’s because you’re looking at the wrong map.” She looked up toward the ceiling, to the crystal web in the cryotank above the doorway. “Car, can you see the map Gallen has here spread out on the floor?”

“Yes,” the car’s AI said.

“Show us a holo of the aerial view of Moree, as it was last night, and superimpose your image over the map.”

A holoimage appeared on the floor, an image of hills and trees in perfect miniature. Gallen sat up, and his feet sank into the landscape just below the knees, and he felt like a giant towering over the earth. The land around Moree was a yellow desert, with but one thin river flowing through it. Gallen could see individual Russian olive and juniper trees clumped among the rocks, and along the river was a veritable sea of cattails. By looking close, he could see the smoke holes from chimneys carved in rocks, along with the rare entrances where the Tekkar let in light to their world. Much of the land above the warrens was dedicated to farms that were carefully tended at night.

The starport facilities spread out on three sides of Moree, with five separate ships, like silver globes, set equidistantly around the city.

Crouching to the north, south, and west of Moree were three dronon walking fortresses, like huge black crabs guarding the carrion from which they would make a meal.

South of Moree were parked seven aircars, lozenge-shaped vehicles like the one they were in. “Wait a minute,” Gallen said, pondering the image. “Car, is this the total number of air vehicles that have been created?”

“Yes,” the car said.

Gallen looked closely at the holograph. The airfield at Moree was only lightly guarded by a handful of men-and they were best positioned for a ground assault.

“Do you see what I see?” Gallen asked Maggie. She looked at him craftily, and Gallen suspected that she did. “The Tekkar are ready to fend off a ground assault, but they’re not prepared to fight off an air attack.”

“Of course not,” Maggie said. “These are the first aircars they’ve ever owned, and they know that Northland has no air power. So they haven’t even considered how to best defend them. The servants of the Inhuman are relying on techniques and tactics they’ve learned over the past six thousand years-not the tactics your mantle knows.”

Gallen considered, questioned his mantle about the best way to assault the city from this transport. The other military fliers at Moree were parked too close to one another-a single rocket could blow them all into vapor. And the walking fortresses would not be able to defend the airfield from a smart missile fired a hundred kilometers away.