Stargate (16 page)

Hearing voices, he halted. Four winged ones waited between himself and his freedom, talking quietly together, lit dimly by such sunlight as Ghakazian had given them to illumine the cave. But it was not their presence that caused the Trader to quiver like strung pearls. Another consciousness permeated the shadows, and the Trader felt the wash of a terrible rage and an impotent power tug at him. For a moment he was afraid; then he turned to quest the darkness. “Who is there?” he called softly. “Who angers?” The rage disappeared, and then little flurries of sadness, pleas for help probed him. The winged ones chattered on, oblivious, but because the Trader was not a mortal, it was in his power to divine partially the hearts of essence and star, immortal and the Law, and he suddenly knew what waited, trapped, before the Gate. Tagar. The name echoed in his mind as though the man himself had spoken it, the voice anguished and full of betrayal. “I know,” the Trader whispered back. “I will go to Danar. I will tell them, Tagar.” Something moved in the black stillness, a flick of gray instantly gone, and the Trader shrugged his load of wool higher on his shoulders and walked boldly forward. The winged ones' conversation ceased, and they sprang to block the Gate as he emerged into the light, but when they saw the transparent body, the voluminous blue scarf wrapping the bald head, they relaxed.

“What do you take from Ghaka?” one of them asked him curiously, and he glanced from one to the other, seeing the smiles, the warm, friendly eyes. These young men were still whole. “I have wool for Shol, just a little, and a woven carpet for Storn of Danar to sleep on in the winter,” he answered politely. “Now let me pass.”

“Ghakazian said that none might pass,” another said anxiously in a low voice, and the smiles left their faces to be replaced by an embarrassed indecision. The Trader took a firm step and spoke loudly, aware of the time it had taken him to look at Tagar and climb the stair, aware also that other eyes must find the body and tell the sun-lord where it lay.

“I am a Trader,” he said firmly, pointing to his scarf with one twig-thin, shimmering arm. “I am not bound to obey any sun-lord as long as I obey the Law. Ghakazian's pronouncements have nothing to do with me.”

They consulted together, their whispers rising sibilant to feather out against the rough rock ceiling, and the Trader waited calmly, humming one of his tuneless songs. He knew that he could slip through their hands without effort if they chose to detain him, but he also knew that he was forbidden to do so. Presently they turned to him.

“We are sure that the sun-lord would not want us to detain a Trader,” one of them said, a twinkle in his eye, “and in any case you could never be held by such as us. Go to the Gate.”

The Trader bobbed his head and strode past them, passing under the arch and out to where floor and ceiling suddenly fled and his world waited to claim him. Lightly he stepped away from Ghaka. He knew that he would never set foot on it again.

With a curt word to his wife Mirak left his cave and dropped into Ghaka's night, unfurling his wings and swinging west to where Ghakazian's slim peak reared black and sharp against the lighter dimness of the sky. He flew steadily, roads meeting and parting like spiders' webs far below, until at last, allowing the uprush of air near the crag to pull him over the crest, he folded his wings and came to rest with supple grace on the inner ledge. Ghakazian was not there. Mirak leaned into the chill breath of the mountain, glided down to the archway, and passing through, walked across the dais. At the far end of the hall there was a glimmer of pale light, feeble as starlight on a moth's wing, and in it Ghakazian stood, one elbow in the palm of a hand, the other hand curved about his chin. His wings were unfurled and draped loosely around him, an untidy huddle of trailing feathers, and he was muttering quietly to himself. He did not hear Mirak approach until the other came into the fitful glow of light around him; then he started and whirled. Caught off guard, made anxious for the first time by the dark corners of his own domain, he shouted at Mirak, “What do you want?” Immediately he recovered himself and walked forward smiling warmly, reaching for Mirak's shoulders. “I did not mean to raise my voice to you,” he said. “I was deep in thought, and I was expecting no one. Perhaps I should seal my funnel as well as my door.”

Mirak drew away, hurt. “Would you close yourself off from me, sun-lord?” he said. “The Book states …”

“I know what the Book states!” Ghakazian snapped. “Do not forget just who you are, Mirak. I have deigned to take you into my confidence, but that does not mean you may regard yourself as my equal. I have no equal.”

Warily Mirak's eyes traveled Ghakazian. There was peevishness in the set of the wide mouth, a sullen caprice evident in the shrug of a brown shoulder and the way the eyes slid sharply to meet his own.

Ghakazian shook back his hair. “Why did you come, Mirak? I would have sent for you if I had needed you.”

“I could stay in the cave no longer,” Mirak confessed. “My mind was too full of all that I had read and heard. Why do we wait?”

Ghakazian opened his mouth, then checked himself. No. To tell Mirak about the Trader who still wandered somewhere over Ghaka's night-dusted roads would be to admit to him that he was afraid of the judgment of the council. Pah! he thought derisively. The council can council from now until the end of the universe and still do nothing but waste breath. Only I dare to perform, to do. He said gently, “Mirak, I want you to fly to the Gate and ask your brothers there whether any traveler has attempted to leave. Traveler, mind you,” he emphasized, holding up an admonitory finger. “Bring me word as soon as you know. Watch the roads as you go, and tell me also who moves along them and why.”

“But lord, I thought perhaps …”

“Do not argue!” Ghakazian felt his temples swell with the effort to remain reasonable and calm, and he looked at Mirak feeling a faint contempt not visible on his face. “Time is growing short. You must learn to do as you are told.” Ghakazian turned his back and began to pace again, head down, feathers trailing the smooth floor of the stone hall with a swish.

Miserably Mirak left him, leaping into the darkness. He has much to occupy his mind, he thought determinedly to himself as he left the high black sky and sought the lower, more turbulent air so that he could watch the roads. Time is growing short. How is it that time can now move faster? I do not understand these things, I can only obey him, trust him. There is a great work for us to do together.

Effortlessly he adjusted his flight to the constant eddies of night wind which played over fields and rushed through the clefts in the broken, serried feet of the mountains, soon turning toward the Gate crag far ahead, a spear of blackness. His eyes scanned the ground below him. Nothing stirred. No lights blinked up at him, no snatches of night song came to his ears. The wingless are silent tonight, he thought. Sulking perhaps, because of the once-wise Tagar and the closing of the Gate against them. I pity them, the mud-walkers, the sheep-herders. A rush of intoxication flushed warm through his limbs, and he smiled to himself, turning his head for a moment to watch the rhythmic rise and fall of his wings. When he looked back, he thought he saw a bulky shadow move on the crossroad below, where the road that snaked up into the widest valley met the larger thoroughfare that ran straight to the Gate stair. He darted low, veered, then came around again more slowly, almost grazing the earth. With head turned to scan the hedge he saw a shadow with more solidity than the streamers of darkness that tangled in the undergrowth. His feet found the road as he folded his wings, and he stood gleefully with arms outflung.

“I see you,” he called. “Come onto the road.”

Natil grimaced in bitterness. Rintar grasped his arm with a sudden convulsion of fear.

But Tagin crawled out immediately and sprang to his feet.

“Oh, it is you, Mirak!” he said. “Were you looking for us? We …” But he did not finish, for Natil scrambled after him and swept him into his arms.

“Why were you hiding in the hedge,” Mirak demanded disdainfully, “in the middle of the night? Where were you going?”

Mirak saw fear on Natil's face and a fleeting indecision. Then Natil pointed down the road.

“We are going to my brother's house, there beside the Gate mountain. Not that it is any of your business, Mirak. We mourn for Tagar. We are lonely.”

“Indeed,” Mirak sneered, but doubt clouded his features. “The Gate is closed to you, Natil.”

“But my brother's door is open, and you know perfectly well where he lives,” Natil replied patiently. “I must take the Gate road to reach his farm. Or would you have me drag my family across the fields just so that I may not be thought to be traveling to the Gate? This is all foolishness, Mirak. Why may we not go through to Roita in any case if we choose? Ghakazian can find us just as easily there as on Ghaka.”

Mirak's newfound compulsion to mock and bully swiftly ebbed. “He is not to be questioned,” he said lamely. “I know where your brother lives, of course I know. I took him into the sky once so that he could see his fields laid out before him, and he was grateful.” His smile came back, but this time it was rueful and engaging. “It is not my business to detain anyone,” he went on. “Oh, go on your way, Natil! I was curious, that is all.”

Natil set Tagin on his feet, took his hand, and walked away, Rintar following. Mirak watched them go until he saw them as he had first seen them, a patch of bulky shadow against the grayness of the road. Then he soared up, flashed over them, and was lost to sight.

Though he stayed close to the road, he glimpsed no other travelers. Soon the Gate stair was before him, a spiral of paleness interspersed with darkness that seemed to hold the mountain tightly in upon itself. He was about to twist himself vertically in order to skim the side of the mountain when again something caught his eye, and he dropped gently back onto the road and stood peering ahead to where the first step beckoned. There was a feeling of dank unapproachability between himself and the rock, an invisible stream of something that he could not interpret. A whiff of some distasteful odor came with it. He strained to see, but the mountain's star-shadow was deep, and for all his keen sight he could make out nothing. Summoning up his courage, he went closer. The smell intensified, and the feeling was like a barrier against him. If it had not been for Ghakazian's order to investigate the road, he would have taken wing, for a fear flowed into him also, but he squared his shoulders and stepped across the almost touchable line of shadow. His foot met resistance, something heavy and soft, but cold. He bent.

It took a long time for the reality of what he was seeing to gather into one perception, but as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he knew. Tagar was a lonely thing, the first fruit of a new and ugly seed. He said it would not be pleasant, Mirak thought incoherently, frozen with horror. I must accept this, I must not be less than he is. But the accepting was still buried under his new visions of pomp and power, and he could not see the bloating form of Tagar as a consequence.

He rose slowly, hardly daring to breathe, and backed carefully into starlight. He could no longer see it, but that did not matter; he knew it was huddled there. Softly, afraid to make the slightest sound, he took to the air, hovering for a moment to brush the soles of his feet where they had pressed Tagar's leg, and then with a shudder he careened upward, away, to where the air was fresh and clean.

He spent longer with his kin than he had intended, standing uneasily against the Gate cave wall and listening while they laughed and chattered, answering briefly when they spoke to him but otherwise gazing out through the Gate to the forbidding reaches of space. He was afraid to leave them and venture out into the night, where that thing crouched, but he felt almost as exposed and vulnerable where he was. There are shadows all over Ghaka, he thought, appalled, and when the sun-lord takes the essences, those shadows will become as full of terror as the foot of this mountain. He edged closer to the Gate, but no comfort was to be had out where the stars burned away. He will take my essence also, Mirak thought. I can only go with him to Shol if I agree to become like … Tagar. Agree? Do I have any choice? He cried out with pain as all at once, for the first time, the full import of what it would all mean came clear in his head. His companions had stopped talking and were looking at him, and like a drunken man he pushed himself away from the wall. “I must return to Ghakazian,” he said thickly. “I am expected.” He did not want to walk back into those shadows, but to reach free air he had to. Without another word he ran down the tunnel, to where the cave mouth glimmered faintly, a window on escape. Where is the essence of Tagar? his mind whispered to him. It lurks somewhere, watching you, Mirak, watching all of you. He imagined that he felt lips brush his ear, a hand impress itself against his back. With a scream he flung himself out of the mountain. Sweating, pouring fear, he spun, his wings stiff and heavy, then regained control and strained for more height. He would fly upward forever, he would arrow to the sun and burn rather than touch Ghaka again. Before he overcame his blind panic, the Gate mountain had half-sunk below the dark horizon, and he had returned to the sun-lord's funnel. “He will let me read the Book again,” Mirak gasped out loud as he felt rock graze his stomach, and he put his arms around the crag and closed his eyes. “I will read how it will be, and then I will be comforted.” He launched himself down, falling into faint sunlight and the rustle of Ghakazian as he hovered above his ledge.

The sun-lord seemed to have overcome his uncertain temper. As Mirak stumbled clumsily to find his footing on the ledge he came and stood beside him, smiling. “Well, Mirak?” he enquired, but before he could go on, Mirak clutched at him, his breath still ragged, sweat still glistening on his face.