Stargate (8 page)

He swung back the metal lid of the casket and lifted out what lay within. It was a book, its covers hard and smooth except for where its title had been impressed into the ivory-colored substance, horn or bone, Ixelion surmised, or some matter created by the Worldmaker especially to confine such a precious thing. He looked down at the curling silver letters sunk deep into the cover, written in the common tongue, and only the tips of his fingers tingled. He was calm and cold.
The Book of What Will Be in the All,
he read. That was all, and that was enough. The Book that had been forbidden to them from the beginning, whose whereabouts none knew or cared to know. But now … Was it really found on Tran? Ixel wondered reverently, stroking it. Was it cast up from the bowels of the earth when the volcanoes vomited fire and the rocks split open to swallow Tranin and his sun? Or did the Unmaker give it to the Trader in order to bring chaos upon us all? It did not matter. It was here, under his loving, questing hands, it was indestructible, it was his very own. Now he would know what was to come, and that power would be his forever. He opened the Book. The pages were white and thin as silk, the words tiny and silver, and at once his own name leaped out at him two, three, four times. Eagerly he began to read.

He read through many days and nights of Ixel time, moving only to turn the whispering, feather-light pages, oblivious to the slow passing of his own time or the rush of weeks outside, where Sillix and the people crouched in the sand and no longer buried any fish, for the few had become mounds, walls, towers of stench and disease. He would occasionally draw in his breath and exclaim in amazement or anger, but he did not pause. He began the last page and was all at once aware that Sillix stood before him, hands twined together, eyes big and full of fear.

“What do you want?” Ixelion snapped, not looking up, and Sillix ran to him, falling to his knees and putting his hands on Ixelion's arm.

“Forgive me for coming here,” Sillix said in his high treble. “I would not have done so, but, sun-lord, you must help us! It is all wrong, all terrible. We can no longer rest in the ocean for it is thick and murky and hurts us. There are no fish that we may eat. Help us, Ixelion!”

Rage overcame Ixelion instantly. “Get up, Sillix!” he shouted, pushing him away and rising himself. “Can't you see that I am engaged in important matters? Get away from here. Eat the flowers. Sleep in the rivers. But do not come to me again!”

Sillix recovered his balance and rose, shocked and bewildered. “But I love you, sun-lord,” he faltered, the response of a hurt child, and Ixelion went rigid. Light blazed from him, and Sillix saw that the flames dancing around him were tipped in black.

“I do not want your love, mortal!” Ixelion screamed. “I only want your obedience! I am the master here!” He shook the Book at Sillix. “I will outwit her! She shall not come here and take Ixel from me. It is mine. You are mine! You poor, craven little creatures. Don't you know that your Maker is evil, evil, and he will come with Sholia, and they will try to enslave you? Get out of my sight. I want to be alone.”

Blinded and stunned, Sillix half-stumbled, half-ran out of the room, scorched by the fires that coiled after him. Ixelion slumped and with a last scream flung the Book into a corner, where it lay open, the pages trembling in the breath of the running waters. He began to weep, great sobs that Sillix could hear as he sped horrified through the hall and out into the forest. Ixelion staggered under the arch into his chamber and fell into the pool, still crying. The water hissed as he sank, and a steam boiled up to fill the room.

Sholia, Danarion, Ghakazian, and Janthis sat at the council table, waiting. Three summers of Danar-time had come and gone since Danarion had talked with Storn the corion under the spring-sweet haeli trees, but to the lords who sat quietly staring into the smooth blackness on which their hands rested, the time had been as nothing. Now winter visited Danar. The haeli trees stood blue and leafless, their knees hidden in the golden flurry of the autumn's accolade. The corions had withdrawn from the presence of men, back into their tunnels at the foot of the hills that rose behind forests and city, where they slept curled together and dreamed of sunshine and summer stars. The mortals kindled fires on their small hearths, for this was the season of companionship and sociability. It was not a cold season but a season of rest for the natural world, when the trees' sap ran slow and thin, the grass stopped growing, and the birds flew into the city to rain brilliantly hued feathers on the populace.

Within the council hall the late-afternoon shadows lay long and dim across the starred floor, and none had called the sun to dismiss them. Wind wove in and out of the high windows, found a voice within the stone, and called softly down to the four clustered at the end of the table, but it was not heeded. Ghakazian ruffled his wings.

“Call him again, Janthis,” he said quietly, and Janthis rose, a small silver hammer in his hand, and went to the sun-disc that swept from wall to wall behind him. He walked slowly, knowing in his heart that this call too would go unheeded. He struck the disc with the hammer, and immediately a low swell of sound began, throbbing in their ears, echoing above them in the copper dome, spreading out to seek the Gate, and when it ceased, they knew that far away on Ixel it resounded to Ixelion's hearing. Over the hum of its dying Janthis regained his chair. For a while longer they waited, not looking at one another; then Sholia stirred.

“He does not come,” she said. “Why? The call would reach him anywhere. On Lix, in his pool … Anywhere.”

Danarion watched his fingers interlock with tension. Ixelion was troubled when I saw him last, he thought. Sitting here, his eyes running from us like a hunted animal on a dying world. I should have gone with him to Ixel, talked to him. But about what? His own gaze met Janthis's in resignation, and Janthis passed his hands over his face, a curious gesture of mortal fatigue.

“Danarion, Ghakazian,” he said. “Go to Ixel and find him. I think …”

“What?” Sholia cried out. “You think what? Not Ixelion. It cannot be.”

“It can,” Ghakazian replied harshly, and Sholia went very white.

“He would have been doubly on his guard after walking the ruins of Fallan,” she said stubbornly. “You know how close he and Falia were. Surely he went back to Ixel with the vision of her fall painful in his mind, his resolve to stay free hardened!”

“Perhaps he could not bear the thought of the long years ahead without her,” Ghakazian said more gently. “He was too lonely, and the loneliness bred despair.”

“And perhaps he may simply be in his sun,” Janthis remarked dryly. “We cannot know until you go to him. Sholia and I will wait for you here.”

Danarion rose unwillingly, knowing that he had failed Ixelion, that he must reproach himself.

“Stand behind me,” Ghakazian said to him. “Place your hands on my shoulders.”

Danarion did so as Ghakazian spread his wings, and without another word they lifted from the floor of the chamber, Danarion's hands gripping Ghakazian's wide, naked shoulders, the dark brown hair taking the wind and blowing back into his face. Out of the palace they swept, the wings beating slowly, lazily. Ghakazian swung to the left, glided over the stone arch that leaped to Danar's Gate, and came to rest at the mouth of the passage. Danarion released his grip, and together they passed under the stone sun, between the two carved corions, walking swiftly to the Gate. They stepped off the rim of Danar into the star-pierced blackness, calling to Ixel's sun as they fell. It heard them and answered, sweeping them toward itself, but long before they flashed past it, they felt the wavering of its power, and dread enfolded them as they were jerked toward the Gate. The sun released them, and they tumbled through. Glancing at each other in consternation, they ran, speeding along the causeway beside the muttering canal. There had been no guards at the entrance. They came out suddenly under Ixel's gray sky and stopped as though an invisible hand had been raised against them.

“Can you feel it?” Ghakazian whispered. “The disintegration? What has he done, Danarion?”

“He lied to us,” Danarion answered grimly, his flesh cringing away from the dank, hostile growth under his feet, the dead, stinking fog that seemed to billow hungrily toward him. “He has fallen. Carry me, Ghakazian. I cannot bear to walk this world.”

Obediently Ghakazian turned his back, and together they rose into the heavy air. Ghakazian's wings were soon drenched in the mist which clung to their hair and dribbled down their spines, and the feathers spewed back a shower of cold as they made a circuit of the dense forest. Then Ghakazian turned and sped toward Ixelion's ice-pinnacled palace. As they drew near it they saw that the protective seals quivered at the doors and the windows showed no light. A bitter, angry feeling of defeat stole over Danarion, so familiar, so very familiar. Ghakazian folded back his wings and alighted on the topmost, water-drowned step, and Danarion put down his feet unwillingly. The stair bit back at him with the cold teeth of suspicion.

“You go in, Ghakazian,” he said quickly. “I want to find Sillix while there is still time. Hurry!” He ran back down the stair, fighting the suffocation of twisted mortal time he knew was all around him, already an enemy of mortal and immortal, already laden with death. He did not ask himself how. He knew how, and he also knew that he had left Ixelion to carry some insupportable load on his own.

He reached the forest and plunged in under the dripping trees, and immediately was surrounded by a hostile watchfulness. His hands went to his sun-disc. I cannot be touched unless I choose to be, he said to himself, and I do not choose. Leave me be! Light beamed from him, and the vast eye of the forest drooped shut. He ran on, all at once aware that he was not alone. Shadows flitted from tree to tree, keeping pace with him. “Sillix!” he called. “Come out! It is I, sun-lord of Danar! Come out!” But no voice answered him, and the shades went on breasting him under the black protection of the forest.

At length he broke from the trees' grip and found himself on the beach, a thin, sullen line of grayness that bent away from him in a vast are. The cold steams from the still ocean wafted an engulfing rot to his nostrils. Up and down the shore he ran, the only light the streamers that flowed from his body, but the little green crystal domes were empty. He swung away upriver, urgency brimming in him and ready to spill out in panic, and then Sillix was there, his people running after him. He threw himself into Danarion's arms and clung to him, panting.

“Danarion, help us, save us! Ixelion is not with us anymore, there is a new, strange Ixelion beneath the waters of the magic pool. The ocean is dead, and the river disturbs our sleep with a new voice of dread. Help us!”

Danarion held the slim, wet body for a moment and then stood away, taking Sillix's hand and drawing him toward the beach, away from the silent, watching crowd. “Listen to me well,” he said. “What I must say to you is pain on pain, for me as well as for you. A great horror has come upon the All, Sillix. Your lord has fought it for many eons, but now it has taken him as it has taken many of his kin. Your Gate must be closed, so that Ixel's fate may not become Danar's, or Ghaka's, or Shol's. I do not know yet whether Ixelion will stay here with you or go with the Messengers, but whatever he may do, you and your people must leave this part of Ixel. Go to the other side.”

Sillix's round, pale eyes met Danarion's golden ones, mystified, afraid, struggling to understand. “The Gate will be closed? Our Gate? No more crystal from Lix?”

Danarion sighed inwardly, not in exasperation but in sorrow. “No more crystal. Take the people and go, Sillix. Learn to sleep on the land, to gather food in the forests. The rivers will not die, but no longer will they flow clean and fresh forever. You must fight to keep them running.”

“What of the Worldmaker?” Sillix retorted, a gleam of hope brightening his face. “Go to him, Danarion, and he will come and make Ixel beautiful again.”

Danarion shook his head. “No, he will not. And if you hope, Sillix, then hope that he may never again set foot inside your Gate.”

“So it is true, the terrible thing Ixelion told me,” Sillix said softly. Danarion looked at him sharply, a question in his eyes. “He said that the Worldmaker had become evil and he would come here with Sholia and make us all slaves. What is a slave, Danarion?”

Danarion stepped to Sillix, and pressed the cold, webbed fingers to his cheek. “Just do as I beg,” he said, his voice breaking. “Farewell, waterman.”

Sillix spoke no more. His eyes glazed over, so deep was his pondering, and he bent, kissed Danarion's sun-disc, and was lost to view under the dimness of the trees beside the gurgling river.

Danarion began the long walk back to the palace, scarcely able to move for the sudden flood of malevolence that poured over him. “You cannot touch me!” he shouted aloud. “You may grind Ixel under your black feet, but I am still inviolate. Leave me alone!” The weight of malice lifted a little, and he pushed through the forest, heart pounding. Ahead lay the palace. Close to panic, he ran up Ixelion's water-slick ramp and through the hallway.

Ghakazian bent and, speaking a sharp word of command, struck the crystal floor beneath the entrance three times with his outstretched palm. The seal wavered and parted, and he walked through it, pausing a moment in the hall, senses alert. The dreary sound of water filled his ears. The sight of it filled him with disquiet. Although it ran or splashed or trickled everywhere, gushing from the heights above, cleaving around his ankles to seek the stair behind him, it was no longer clear as glass but green-tinged, carrying with it some minute growth that he had never seen before on his infrequent visits to Ixel. He loved Ixelion as a brother, but a world where mortals lived submerged and moved contented through endless rain had always awed and mystified him a little. Now the water was more of an enigma than ever. Now it was imbued with an alien flavor whose aftertaste was fear, and Ghakazian rose and hovered, shaking it from his feet before circling the hall.