Beyond the Gate

Chapter 3

That afternoon in a forest glen high above Clere, Gallen O’Day practiced fighting alone with his knives. He wore some attire he’d earned while fighting off-world to save the Lady Everynne: a robe woven of thread that held small nanotech machines that could change colors to fit with any background, and others that could mask his scent; tall black boots and gloves that had a selenium matrix worked into various parts of the toe, heel, palm, and fingers so that his blows carried more punch. And most importantly, he wore his mantle, a personal intelligence made of small black metallic rings, strung with silver knowledge disks.

As Gallen practiced, the mantle fed him images that he could distinguish from reality only because the mantle fed him no audio: five swordsmen with sabers and small shields swirled around him in a fevered dance. They wore white robes that swished silently as they leapt over the forest floor, kicking up humus, grimacing and sweating with every slash and thrust.

Gallen leapt and ducked, weaving between them, seeking to block or avoid their blows as much as possible, slice them with his own daggers. When he scored a hit, his blade would mark them with blood, so that after hours of practice, the swordsmen now appeared as gory apparitions.

Yet they were extraordinary swordsmen, each man fighting in a different style, using his own tactics. One was a whirling madman whose sword blurred in continuous motion; another stood back and studied Gallen, seeking to strike only at the most opportune moment, then jab with deadly precision. Another used the cutting edge of his shield as much as he did his sword, while the other two seemed to change fighting styles to suit their needs.

Gallen was struggling for air, sweat pouring from his body. Yet his enemies showed no sign of slowing due to fatigue. Gallen had wanted to stop for nearly an hour, but he was trying to build his endurance, so he kept up the gory battle. Time and again, his foes stabbed him, and each time, the mantle sent him a searing phantom pain at the point of impact.

When Gallen’s arms were impossibly heavy from fatigue, his mantle suddenly dispersed the image of the fighters, and Gallen stood panting. “Why did you stop?” he whispered.

“You have an incoming message from the Lady Everynne,” the mantle whispered. “Are you ready to receive it?”

Finally she sends word, Gallen thought, after two weeks. “Yes,” he answered, and Gallen sat down in the shade on a rock encrusted with yellow lichens. He closed his eyes, stilled his breathing, waited for Everynne’s image to appear.

Instead, the sky darkened, as if it were covered with a curtain, and he heard the rumbling of thunder in the distance. His heart pounded in terror, and he found himself in a strange city on a cobbled street, leaning against a stone wall in an alley.

What’s this? he wondered, willing his head to turn and look about. But the view did not change. Instead, he only saw the view as if he were staring ahead, and Gallen realized that this vision of another world must be a part of Everynne’s message.

He looked about, watching the narrow streets to his right, the smooth stone buildings with enormous doors and huge windows set high off the ground. He was in a business district of a large city, and all the shops were closed for the night. The black cobblestones gleamed wetly. Through the thick storm clouds, he could make out the muted light of three separate moons, and dim lights shone from a few windows down the street. But the alley behind him was dark and sheltering. He looked farther down the street to his left, hoping for more darkness, but there was a tavern there with a lantern burning from a hook outside its doors. He couldn’t run that way. The light would show him up.

Not again, not again! he thought, and his lips emitted a high whimper. Yet Gallen knew it was not his own thoughts or words, but the words of someone else. The fingers that clutched the edge of the stone wall were slender, on pale feminine hands, and Gallen felt the unfamiliar weight of a woman’s breasts on his body, and wondered at it.

“I am feeding you the memories of a dead woman. This is Everynne’s message to you,” his mantle whispered.

Off in the near hills, light flashed in the clouds, then thunder snarled and echoed, washing away all sound. He waited breathlessly, listening for sounds beneath that booming echo. Down the stone street, around a corner, he heard booted feet thudding against stone, saw three men rush into the square. Their sabers were drawn, and they silently moved into the shadows, scanning ahead.

Gallen-or the woman whose memories Gallen was reliving-moved farther back into the alley, suddenly looking about for safety. There were no windows, and the lip of the roof was ten feet above her head. Her only hope lay behind a heavy oak door.

She went to it, tested it. The door was securely locked from the inside. Its brass handle was too heavy for her to break. Lightning flashed overhead, and thunder boomed. She rattled the door as loudly as she could under the cover of that noise, not knowing even what type of business this was, hoping desperately that the shopkeeper slept at the back of the shop, that he would hear her and come to her rescue.

She thought she heard the heavy thump of a foot on wood floors behind the door. “Is someone in there…?” she whispered fiercely.

No answer.

She couldn’t wait again. “Help me!” she whimpered, hoping that the person behind the door was human, that he would taste the pheromones of her Tharrin body and be forced to respond to her plea. “Please, open the door,” she begged. “The Inhuman is coming!”

She rattled the door again, this time without the covering echo of thunder. Perspiration beaded on her forehead, and she wiped it away just as a thin drizzle began falling. From behind the door, a woman’s voice whispered. “Go away! I have children in here to care for. Don’t bring trouble down on this house!”

And with those words, the Tharrin whimpered, knew that she had just heard her death sentence. By her very nature she was forbidden to harm anyone. She could not endanger this family. She lurched back from the door as if it burned her, and a new steadiness came over her. She whispered to the woman inside, “Stay in with your children, then. There is only enslavement out here.”

She wondered if there was a place to hide, but as she glanced back at the mouth of the alley, she saw a swordsman standing in the open, looking at her. The wind was growing wild as it will before a storm, and his shadowy cape twisted and fluttered behind him. He whistled softly, and with his free hand motioned to his companions. Presently, they joined him, and the three proceeded toward her abreast. A heavy, steady rain began sweeping toward her in a curtain. The alley filled with the hiss of rain slapping against stone.

The Tharrin sniffed the air, smelling rotting food and dust from a trash bin behind her, then let out a bloodcurdling cry, something that might have come from the throat of a child, Gallen decided, for it did not sound like the voice of a woman, and suddenly he understood that this was no woman’s body he was in, but the voice of a girl barely into her teens.

The three men rushed toward her, one of them pulling a heavy bag out from behind his back. “Shush, child,” he hissed. “We do not want to harm you! We only want you to join us!”

The young woman went rigid. She had a knife sheathed at her hip for just such an emergency, a knife tipped with deadly poison. But she was a Tharrin. She could not harm another sentient being, and the men before her were not evil, only the victims of evil, hosts to the Inhuman.

She pulled out her knife, waved it before her, hoping that the threat would hinder them. “Stay back!” she warned. Then she shouted once again, “Help me! Help!”, hoping that perhaps someone at the tavern down the way might hear her.

One of the men laughed. “You won’t use that,” he said with certainty, and the young woman strained her ears, hoping desperately to hear the sound of running footsteps, of rescuers. But she only heard the steady rain, and realized that it must have covered the sound of her cries.

The servants of the Inhuman marched toward her warily. They were almost upon her. Lightning flashed above them, gleaming off their swords.

They think I can’t use the knife, she considered, and she stood up straight and tall, knowing what she must do. She reached up quickly and slashed her own throat from ear to ear.

The searing pain was exquisite, shocking, and she felt the hairs on her head stand on end in reaction. Her heart thumped wildly, kicking in her chest, and hot blood spattered down between her breasts, a seeming river pouring out of her. She staggered back against the wall, felt the poison doing its work, numbing her jaw and neck. She tried to remain standing for a moment, but the knife slipped from her hands, and she slid down the wall.

Suddenly the three servants of the Inhuman were upon her, and one of them, a man with a dark red moustache and crazed eyes, grabbed her by the head and shouted in her face. His voice was a roaring watery echo in her ears, the voice of a waterfall or a storm rushing through trees. “You think you can escape us so easily? You think you can hide in a temporary death? When you next take a body, we will hunt you again! We will not give up so easily!”

And then he let her hair go, and she was falling, falling into pain and darkness, and the cold rain sizzling on the stones was the only sound as she silently gulped, crying as she died.

A woman’s voice, Everynne’s voice, rang in Gallen’s ears, but he did not see her image, only a gray light in the distance. “Gallen, these are the memories taken from Ceravanne, a Tharrin who somehow managed to stay alive on Tremonthin for the past sixty years. When last I saw you, I told you that I would call upon you again for service. Her clone has been infused with all her memories but the last. I charge you to go to Tremonthin and protect her. I charge you with becoming Lord Protector of the planet for now, and as part of that charge, you must seek out and destroy the Inhuman.”

* * *