Stargate (5 page)

“Well!” said the Worldmaker, and his voice quivered in their veins like wild music.

“Is it good, all that I have made? You, my first ones, are you satisfied?”

“It is good!” they called back to him.

“And are you content to know that you belong to me?”

Suddenly Danarion sensed something, a change in the gentle tones, subtle and minute. His heart bounded in his chest, but in those days he had had no words to describe the emotion now inching through him. He tore his gaze away from the Worldmaker and glanced at Janthis. The smile had left his face, and in his hands the sun-ball shrank to a red glow. Danarion looked back at the Worldmaker, who still smiled, but something had grown in his eyes, a coolness, a hint of mockery. Of course we belong to him, Danarion thought, puzzled. What does he mean? Then a desolation swept over him. He wanted to reach out his arms and wail, but he did not know why. The Worldmaker raised his arms, and it seemed to Danarion that the light that blazed from his fingers flickered with black tongues for a moment.

“You belong to me. You and your worlds are mine!” the Worldmaker said again, and Danarion realized that he was no longer speaking to them at all. Janthis had not moved. His eyes were on his sun-ball, where the light struggled to burst out. I do not understand, Danarion thought, love and bewilderment churning in him. I do not understand …

A door opened, and Janthis came to them, sun-ball in hand, gliding quickly over the floor. Danarion returned to his present with a jerk. I still do not understand, he thought. I wish that I had not allowed that memory. Sometimes I fancy that I am becoming resigned to the loss of him, but it is not true. I ache for him.

Janthis reached the foot of the Worldmaker's chair and sat down, placing the dead sun-ball on the table before him, smiling at the three of them.

“Where is Ghakazian?” he asked.

“Up here!” Ghakazian's voice floated to them, and they looked up. He was perched on the sill of one of the windows high under the dome, and as they watched, he jumped lightly, spread his wings, and came to rest behind his chair. “I have been watching you all,” he remarked. “Not a word said, and the silence and stillness so deep. If we must council, then let us do so quickly. Danar in the spring is a wonder none should miss.”

“We are so few now,” Sholia said quietly. “Only five of us left. We have not been watchful enough.”

“He hates us more than he did the others,” Janthis said abruptly. “We are the products of his first delight in making. Our devotion to him was absolute, and we knew him well. He has glutted himself quickly on the rest of the universe despite our efforts to impede him but has saved us until the last to be savored at leisure. Firor was less of a prize to him than Falia.” He held out a hand, and Danarion lifted the necklet and gave it to him. For a moment he fondled it, sighing, then rose and, walking to Falia's empty seat, reached over and placed the necklet gently on the table. A long silence followed. Ghakazian moved his weight from one foot to the other impatiently.

“Falia should have chosen to go with the Messenger,” he said. “Surely it is better to face a final judgment, take a last chance, than to be immured forever behind a closed Gate.”

“Perhaps,” Janthis answered. “Others have chosen that way. But great courage is needed to face the emissaries of the Lawmaker.”

“The Lawmaker!” Ghakazian scoffed. “I am beginning to wonder if he exists at all. None of us has ever seen him. We have only the Worldmaker's word that the Law has sentience and unlimited powers, and I for one am not prepared to take the Worldmaker's word on anything anymore.”

“He told us so before his fall,” Janthis reminded him, “and the first chapters of all the Annals were written in the dawning, when mortal life was still only in his mind. He made me first. I am the firstborn of all the sun-people, and I believe him when he spoke of the Law as personality.”

“Then why does the Lawmaker not help us?” Ghakazian pressed. “Why doesn't he reverse his laws?”

“He cannot reverse a law without changing his own nature,” Janthis answered patiently. “You know that, Ghakazian.”

“What really happened between Lawmaker and Worldmaker, Janthis?” Sholia asked. “What was it that caused the Worldmaker to turn against us? How can a Maker cease to love what he has made?”

“He still loves us”—Janthis was smiling wryly—“but with the blind, selfish love that demands an eating up, a complete possession of the made. He knows that he was told to make, and that though he could love what he made, he could never own it, and it was this that festered in him. To make without ownership, to weave, blend, intricately create only for the Lawmaker drove him in the end to stand apart, to claim all the worlds of making as his property. He wishes to deform it all because no matter what he says or does, no matter what power he displays, it will never belong to him. He disfigures so that the inheritance of the Lawmaker may be worthless.”

“And also because of the pain his love has brought to him,” Danarion added quietly.

For a moment they all sat in silence; then Janthis straightened. He resumed his seat, and as always his hands went out to enfold his lifeless sun-ball.

“Once again we have had a loss,” he went on. “What are we to do? It seems that each Gate-closing comes too late, but I am loath to order you and the other sun-people to close all your Gates. Such a brutal ending is not, I think, permitted, unless we are so hard pressed as to be faced with the final dissolution of the All as we knew it.”

“He knows all our weaknesses,” Danarion said. “Falia was kindly, and knew only good. How did she fall? What was it that crept through her Gate unchallenged? I do not see …”

With one accord they turned to look at Ixelion. He still sat with chin cupped in his hands, eyes fixed on the table, unseeing.

“Ixelion,” Janthis prodded him gently. “What did Falia say to you? Did you bring the records?”

Ixelion blinked, then sat back heavily and brought up from his lap the haeli wood box. His hands shook as he laid it before Janthis, and Danarion gave him a sharp glance. Something was worrying Ixelion.

“They are here,” Ixelion said. “I have read them. It seems that a Trader brought something precious to Falia to give to the council, but instead of bringing it to Danar, she kept it for herself. So she fell.”

“What precious thing?” Sholia asked loudly. “Did she tell you what it was?”

Ixelion shook his head. “No. I do not know what it was.” And that is the truth, he thought. I lifted it out of the wooden box, and it was a plain iron casket, small and without adornment. I did not open it. I put it into my chest, and there it lies.

Sholia appealed to Janthis. “What could it be? What treasure is there that can bring destruction to a world such as Fallan?”

She fears, Ghakazian thought, leaving his place and walking up to where Janthis sat. Always she fears and watches. As he passed behind her his hand rested on her head and then stroked her hair gently.

“The seeds of corruption may enter a world and yet lie barren forever,” Janthis said. “Nothing is evil of itself. But these seeds can take root and grow in soil too simple and ignorant to recognize them for what they are. The Gates were not made to keep out evil, for in that time evil had not come into the All. It was the unthinkable, the totally unknowable.” He opened the box and took out the Annals of Fallan. “I will study what Falia has written, but if you, Ixelion, have read the records and yet have no answer, then I doubt if I will divine anything either.”

“Where is this treasure now?” Danarion asked. “Did it remain in Fallan, Ixelion? What did Falia do with it?”

They swung intent, earnest eyes upon Ixelion, for this was a new threat, a subtle thing not encountered by any of them, a new ploy of the Unmaker's. Ixelion looked from one to the other, his hands rising to clench his sun-disc. Help me, he begged silently, help me, but he felt as though a strange wall had risen between him and his kin. Now was the time to tell all, to put words against that wall and be whole and at one with them again, but his pale face became even whiter and his eyes clouded. I have done nothing yet, part of him insisted. I will tell them, and Janthis will come with me to Ixel and take the thing away, and I will be saved. But he also felt the greed, coiling inside him like mist off his ocean, the need to know, to feel, to see. Danarion watched him carefully, unable to decide whether Ixelion mourned for Falia or was distressed by something else. The hands with the sheen of pearls trembled on the thin breast. Then Ixelion swallowed and answered.

“I do not know where this treasure is,” he whispered. “I believe it to be still on Fallan.”

Immediately he changed. He felt it deep inside him, the first true change that had ever occurred to him, and he looked at his fellows and saw them in a way he had never seen them before. The first lie, he thought to himself, sick with self-loathing. Take it back! Take it away! I do not want this change! What have I done?

Peace, Ixelion, another voice inside him soothed. The treasure is safe on Ixel. You need never look at it, just leave it in your chest. Have you not saved the council from evil? What if Janthis had taken it from your hands this day, and opened it? Then only darkness would lie ahead, forever. You are strong, stronger perhaps than Janthis, who does not have the responsibility of a world laid on his shoulders. Be at peace.

Yes, he agreed fervently with himself. Yes. Such a little lie, and so necessary. He released his sun-disc and sat straighter.

“She did not tell you?” Ghakazian exclaimed incredulously. “You, Ixelion?”

“That is not good,” Janthis said heavily. “I wish that you had pressed her for its whereabouts, Ixelion, for now we must go forward not knowing whether it has been rendered harmless on Fallan or is already at work somewhere else.” His black eyes slid across Ixelion's face, a musing glance, but he did not see the torment. His thoughts raced over the news Ixelion had brought. Finally he sighed, his fingers stroking his sun-ball. “Perhaps Falia, in her greed for this thing, would have hidden it from you in any case,” he concluded. “It is beyond our power now to find it, so we must hope that it rests on Fallan.”

Ixelion was moving, distressed, swaying back and forth on his seat, his hands combing his long green hair. Danarion still watched him, anxiety dim within him.

“Is there something left to say, Ixelion?” he asked gently, and Ixelion abruptly stopped his movements, willing his body to be still. Everything inside him quivered, poised for violent action, demanding that he rise, run from the hall, go anywhere, but escape from Danarion's quizzical eyes and the presence of the others which had become suddenly an overwhelming unease containing him when he wanted to leap free. He put his hands one over the other, on top of the table, and lowered his gaze to them.

“No,” he replied sharply. “I did not dare to question Falia about the precious thing. At the mention of it a dread fell on me and I doubted my strength.” Only part of a lie this time, he thought to himself, and so much easier to push up my throat and over my tongue. You will live to thank me, all of you, for keeping the thing from your eyes and minds. Danarion looked at the lowered head for a moment longer, then sat back mystified.

Suddenly Sholia spoke. “Could the treasure be … be him? The Unmaker himself? Could this be a way for him to enter the worlds?”

Her question stunned them. They looked from one to the other, and all at once fear sat at the table with them, a black fog that curled silently from the shadows of the room and flowed between them, waiting for them to take it into their nostrils, their mouths. Even here we are no longer completely safe, Janthis thought. A word, a gesture can invite an attempt, no matter how subtle, on our invulnerability. Here in this hallowed place we know that we are safe, yet no longer feel so. He looked steadily into Sholia's face. “No,” he said. “No matter how vast his deviousness, he can no longer himself pass through the Gate of any world in any form unless we knowingly or unwillingly invite him. He cannot face an unfallen world directly, for it would cause him too much pain. He cannot twist and murder us unless we will it, unless we allow his power to influence us. You spend too much time brooding on the meaning of fear,” he ended kindly. “Fill yourself with the ecstasy of the dawning of time, not the setting.” She accepted the discipline without smiling, her face white, knowing that if she had not voiced the doubt, it would be borne by all of them.

“Why can we not do battle against him?” Ghakazian demanded, his brown eyes fired, and Danarion slapped a hand on the table.

“What weapons will you use?” he snapped loudly. “The power of your sun? It would take every ounce of your sun's strength simply to drive the Unmaker from your Gate, Ghakazian, and your worlds would be left in darkness. You and your sun would die. Or would you somehow arm your people with spells and words of casting away? Your innocent people, who have never heard a lie, who do not know the meaning of the word murder? Can you not see their bewilderment? ‘Why must we try to harm our Maker?' they will ask you, and will you explain it all to them? If you do, you will have already opened your Gate to him. Such knowledge given to the mortals of your systems”—here he swiftly scanned them all—“would mean an immediate and irrevocable fall. Their strength is in their ignorance. You do not help by entertaining thoughts of battle. We are the Worldmaker's creatures, the products of a mind of unimaginable wisdom and ingenuity, and even the frail defenses we could use against him were made by him.”

“We are not his playthings!” Ghakazian roared back, his wings suddenly unfurling like a dark cloud above and around him. “The Lawmaker ordered him to make with wholeness, make with beauty! The Lawmaker commanded him! We are flawless. We will fight him with truth, with wholeness and goodness!”