Stargate (10 page)

Almost imperceptibly it changed. The tingling glow faded, took on substance and movement, became a waterfall, pounding from the keystone of the arch to join the river in the tunnel with a sound like a continuous thunder. For a moment it flowed, ponderous and powerful, and then a greenish hue began to steal through it, and where the color threaded, the water became solid with a great crackling. Those watching found that they were looking at a wall of green Lix crystal, massive and impenetrable, coldly, sharply beautiful. In silence they waited. Finally, on the one smooth portion in all that many-faceted glitter, two hands appeared, silver-etched in the green, palms outward. Between them Ixel's sun took shape, and Ixel itself, Ixel of the fair waters, and tiny Lix with its cold and its glory.

“He was not given the choice,” Ghakazian protested loudly. “It was taken from him because he could not be raised. That is a merciless thing.” He half-turned to the Messenger, mild defiance in his stance, but the Messenger ignored him. “I suppose it is not my affair,” he muttered. “It must be between Ixelion and the Lawmaker.”

“I tried,” Sholia said. “No spell or calling would bring him as he brought Falia. I do not think that he is wandering in the times that have been.”

Suddenly the Messenger spoke, and as it did so its colors quivered violently and merged into a uniform, soft violet. “You are right, child,” it said. “No spell of yours could move him, as it moved the waterman from the thinking pool. That was well and kindly done.”

So you took him, Sholia thought, the reflection of the Messenger glazing her eyes with foreign color. You bore him away. And will you come for me one day, strange one?

With an explosion of brightness the Messenger sprang away from Ixel, and they watched it flash and burn on its journey among the stars, bound on some new errand. The four of them together turned their backs on the Gate for the last time, stepping out into the corridor and vanishing, leaving Ixel to its loneliness and its fate.

Ghakazian swept through his Gate, singing, scattering the daily traffic of his people who came from and went to his other planets, making them laugh. He launched himself from the dizzying height of the ledge, somersaulted three times, then challenged the wind as he sped down the green valley that snaked between the peaks. The mountains rose like granite needles, each tip carved into the huge likeness of a winged one, stern, sightless eyes draped in cloud. Ghaka seems almost inhabited by giants, Ghakazian reflected, grinning to himself at the sight of hundreds of massive faces turned to him, wingtips rising above waving hair and set mouths. Filka, with the slight droop to his eyelid that Ghakazian remembered so well. Nenka, his forehead broad-furrowed. Hiranka, the only Elder carved with wings fully extended, because he had raced Ghakazian himself up the wide valleys for fifty days and had almost won. His descendants still won the winged ones' races, but there would never again be a Hiranka to challenge the sun-lord himself.

Still singing, his wings making tumbling eddies in the warm air, Ghakazian wheeled and flashed like brown lightning over the white-timbered villages, where his wingless ones came running out to wave at him. He swooped low, raining soft down-feathers and music upon them, his naked body almost as brown as his tangled hair but glowing with a shine like new honey. He called them by name, the dark-skinned men and women, the giggling children, and then he was gone, bolting into the sky, hovering outside a cave that angled back into one of the fanged mountains. Just above him Hiranka stared proudly above the clouds, the ever-present wind soughing past his outflung stone wings.

“Mirak!” he shouted. “Come out! It is I, Ghakazian.”

A young man emerged from the cave and stood at its mouth, grinning and blinking in the sunlight, one hand on his small hip. His body was brown also, his hair long and black and snared hap-hazardly on the black wings that reared over his shoulders. His eyes were clear amber, flecked with green when the full sun caught them.

“Sun-lord, I am tired.” He smiled. “I have been chasing Hira all over the sky. I think he is going to be another Hiranka, and already he spends much time looking into the past, watching his ancestor glide among the mountains.”

“With dreams of challenging his lord one day, I suppose.” Ghakazian laughed. “I am glad, Mirak. I would like nothing better than a race around the world. Has the sun shone while I have been away?”

“Unremittingly,” Mirak answered gravely. “But if it pleases you, let it withdraw for a time. The grass pleads for rain, and so do I. A little rain will keep my son at home for a while and allow me a few hours of thought in peace.” Mirak spoke lightly, but at his words a shadow passed over his lord's face. The eyes darkened, the wings missed a beat, and Ghakazian fumbled to hover again just beyond the lip of rock.

“Rain,” Ghakazian muttered. “Rain. Ah, Ixelion!” Then the moment was gone. “So be it.” He smiled. “Let us have an afternoon of rain.” He raised an arm and shouted a friendly command. The sun flared for a second and dimmed, and Mirak saw large clouds hurrying to cover it.

“Thank you, Ghakazian,” he said, and he called over his shoulder, “Hira, Maram! It is going to rain.”

Ghakazian had time to see Mirak's wife and son come running before he left the cliff, beating his way leisurely downwind. By the time he reached his own domain, the land beneath him had opened under a swift pattering of gray water that was swelling to a steady squall, and before he could rise above the level of the clouds, his feathers and his hair streamed with moisture. Lightning forked suddenly and thunder reverberated. The rain shushed down faster. He broke through the gloom and came out into full sunlight. He amused himself by walking on the clouds until he was dry, his wings trembling like those of a hummingbird; then he turned to his hall and, parting the seal, went inside.

The entrance was a tall, thin arch that began near the middle of the mountain peak and rose to a point of almost painful clarity and sharpness just under the summit. No stone effigy of a winged ancestor frowned over it, as over every other peak on Ghaka, and as Ghakazian dove to it, it seemed to him that the sill of the arch gave the cloud that foamed right up to it an illusory solidarity, made it a false earth. Only the first hall was floored or roofed, and it was here that he received his wingless ones, who sometimes climbed the steep stair cut in the mountain and stood dwarfed within, craning their heads backward to try to glimpse the unadorned roof. Ghakazian would fill the lofty hall with light, so that they would feel less lost, and would stand on his wide gray dais and joke with them, his wings discreetly folded behind him. It was not that they were envious of their winged brothers, or conscious of any inferiority to them. But the hall of the sun-lord awed winged and wingless alike, and the wingless preferred soil under their feet and the sky above, not all around them.

Behind the dais was another, smaller arch, hewn from rough rock, and walking under it, Ghakazian paused, his entrance chamber behind him, an abyss before. Below him a funnel fell sheer to the roots of the mountains, an infinity of dark, silent space; above, it ended in open sky. The crag was hollow. Ghakazian could enter it between the teeth of the summit or through his hall.

Above and below the arch wide rims of stone ran around the circular rock wall. It was here that Ghakazian lived, received Mirak and his other winged mortals, and floated with them on the flavorless airs that blew from the depths in a never-ending draught. If he wanted to stand and think without disturbance, he flew to the high rock rim and perched there. Now he stepped into the nothingness and drifted upward, coming to rest on the ledge, where his sun never failed to drench him in its benison. With a sigh of satisfaction he lifted the sun-disc which sparkled on his breast and, clasping it in both hands, began to recite his responsibilities. I am not a Maker, I am the made. The words were engraved in his mind like flaming suns, and he saw them clearly as he called them to pass before his inner eye. I am not a lawmaker, I am an interpreter. I am not a healer—here he hesitated before going on firmly, a vision of Ixel's Gate flicking between the eternal words of power—I am a maintainer. I am not a king, I am a guide. Slowly and deliberately he spoke, strength growing in him, and then he let the disc fall and shook out his wings.

As he did so he felt his feathers catch in something at his waist, and with a shock he remembered the book he had picked up so casually from Ixelion's floor and tucked under his belt. It was still there, and he drew it forth, warm from its contact with his skin, gleaming in the rays of the sun. I read something in it. He frowned to himself. Now why can I not remember what it was? Why did I bring the thing with me anyway?
As
he fingered it the book jerked in his grasp. The covers fell open, the pages riffled past his startled gaze, and there it was, the passage he had been trying to bring to mind. Magic beat up from it—he could almost see the force of the spell—but he knew that it probed him in vain. He could not discern whether it was a spell of protection or warning and shrugged impatiently. Begone, he spoke in his mind to the shimmering charm, and he dropped his eyes to the tiny silver writing picked out by the sun.
Ghakazian stood before his Gate,
he read as before,
with his armies ranked behind him. “Sholia and the Unmaker rule the universe now!” he cried, and winged and wingless groaned in answer. “There is none left to guard the light but us! We must go to Shol, beautiful, rich Shol, and make war, and take it for ourselves, and the light.”

What madness is this? Ghakazian thought, irritated. It does not read the same as it did on Ixel, I am sure of that, but what it said then I cannot recall. Sholia and the Unmaker? Ixelion, what poisoned nonsense wreathed about your mind as you penned these words? Truly, you fell. I suppose I must take the book to Danar, but it cannot be incorporated into the Book of What Was in the All. It is the rambling of a mind being frozen slowly by black fire. Later I will read more, to see if the knowledge Janthis seeks is somehow wrapped among the madness. He will not rest until he knows how Ixelion fell. Ghakazian tossed the book carelessly onto the ledge and, spreading his wings, flew out into the sunshine.

Tagar was sitting in front of his house, his hands clasped about a wooden cup, as Ghakazian glided down out of the new-washed blue sky and came to rest before him, scattering raindrops. The rain had stopped, and beyond the low stone building the valley meandered back and up toward the mountains, gleaming clean and drenched. Far away, misted in the humid air, a winged one wheeled high above the arms of the valley where they narrowed to a point and vanished into rock and shadow, but here in the shelter of gentle hills and Tagar's gray stone wall the sun warmed them, and there was no wind. Tagar smiled, and his red-clad arm came out to touch Ghakazian.

“Sun-lord,” he said. “Welcome home.”

Ghakazian smiled a greeting and sat on the wall, sun beating into his face, his wings draped behind him to droop over the grass. “Is all well with you, Tagar, and with my wingless ones?” he enquired politely. The man inclined his head slowly with a natural dignity. The hands that laid the cup aside were large, big-knuckled, and thickly lined. The face was lined also, creased around eyes that had spent uncounted years squinting into bright sunlight and far distances, taking the measure of time and seasons, meditating upon the intrinsic mysteries of night and day, rain and shine, cold and heat. He was a large man, slow with the slowness of the clouds that drifted shadow over the valley, with the pace of quiet contentment of his flocks as they ambled over the fields. Before long his time on Ghaka would be over and a Messenger would come for him, but until then he cared for himself and those who acknowledged him as their elder with a quiet pride. The sky was not his concern. It was the earth that had formed him, and it called him still with its deep, sane voice. Now he answered with calm deliberation.

“All is well. Nothing has changed, and nothing ever will. Why should it, Ghakazian? I walk the hills with my sheep and wait to feel within me the signs that will bring me to the Gate for the last time, but I do not think that my time is coming for a little while yet.” He smiled at the tumble of wind-strewn brown hair and fluttering feathers. “Have you been far afield in the All?”

“Yes, I have been far,” Ghakazian replied shortly. “I have been to Danar and then to Ixel.”

Tagar drank reflectively and then set his cup on the stone path that ran from the gate in his wall to the open door of his house, just beside him. “Is the lord of Ixel content?” He folded his arms and leaned his red-clad shoulders against the warm stone of his house. “I saw him once when he came to visit you.”

You are a strange mortal, Ghakazian thought, his eyes leaving Tagar's weathered face and fixing themselves on the dot that still circled lazily far above, black against the deep blue sky. I feel that if I told you what has happened to Ixelion and all the others, you would simply nod and understand perfectly. But though I would wish sometimes to share it with you here, in the freshness and quiet of your valley, it is forbidden. Wise you may be, but innocent also, and innocent you must remain, your simplicity the only thing in your life that does not change but
grows
deeper and sweeter.

“I do not know whether he is content or not,” Ghakazian answered frankly, for contentment meant many things. Then he suddenly left the wall and stood over Tagar. “Tell me,” he said abruptly. “Has any mortal gone through the Gate to other worlds, not just to Linla or Roita, but out through the deeps of space, at any time since the ancestors were made?”

Tagar looked up at him, surprised. “Surely you ask me something you must know yourself, seeing that you were here when the mountains themselves burst through the soil. Not in my memory, nor in the memories of any of my line before me, has such a thing been possible. The Worldmaker forbade the realms of deep space to all mortals. Why do you ask?”