Stargate (51 page)

Danarion hesitated. “It is forbidden.”

I made it. I tell you to open and read.

This thing destroyed Fallan, Danarion thought, and Ixel and Ghaka. With a beating heart and clumsy fingers he lifted back the cover. The pages were transparently thin and fluttered with his breath. He glanced at the pages hesitantly, riffling through them. He went back and turned them again. Then he closed the cover and stared down at it.

“The pages are blank,” he said wonderingly. “There is no writing.”

The voice laughed, and the light in the room shook and shivered.
Yes, they are blank, Danarion. That is my gift to all that is made. There is a key beside the Book. Take it and the Book and go down to your house. Lock the sun-people's palace and do not look back. You do not belong in it anymore. Remember Chilka and his gift to you. The future is yours and his and every mortal's until I speak the final word. Go now.
The light vanished. Danarion ran forward, but the wall was gray and solid. Pale sunlight lay across the window ledge and spattered on the floor, and he could hear a wind stirring in the hall beyond. With a dazed, uncomprehending wonder he picked up the massive golden key that lay waiting for him. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

He walked through the hall for the last time, the Book and the key in his hands. One by one he named them, the sun-lords, his kin, but hope was in his heart as he did so. He passed under the great copper dome studded with gems, paced the corridors, and so stepped out at last onto the terrace where the high doors had stood open since the beginning. Laying down the Book, he reached in and pulled them closed. They moved soundlessly and fitted together without a chink. He turned the key in the huge carven lock and then removed it and retrieved the Book. On impulse he leaned forward and pressed his cheek to the warmth of the golden-veined haeli wood, thinking of the shadowed labyrinth of silent rooms beyond that would stand empty and indestructible forever, and then he ran down the steps and into the brooding silence of the Time-forest. He did not look back.