Beyond the Gate

Chapter 5

Just after dusk, Maggie served in the common room at Mahoney’s Inn. The place had filled up with fishermen who knew how to draw their own rum from the tap and could be trusted to leave the proper coins on the table.

They were a nervous lot, wondering aloud how soon Thomas might come in from the woods, speculating as to whether it would be wights-a very common threat in this neck of the woods-or demons who got him.

And of course there were many there who wished him well, for they’d come to hear him sing.

Thus it was that Maggie’s uncle came bustling in a fluster, smelling of the road, with an odd expression-something between exultation and manic joy. Thomas just stood in the doorway for a moment, grinning.

“I found them-” he said softly to the crowd. “A dead demon and an angel with it, and they’ll both be on display in the stable in an hour!”

For one moment, no one spoke, then suddenly everyone was talking.

Thomas hurried Maggie into the kitchens, and began pulling sacks of flour and sugar out onto the mixing table. He said urgently, “Old John Mahoney must have had someone who helped out during his busy season. You’ll need to round up those folks-anyone who’s handy at cooking and serving. Then you had better go to the butcher and buy a pig and a goose and get them roasting. We’ll need dinner for a hundred tonight.”

“A hundred?” Maggie said in astonishment.

“Aye,” Thomas said with a wink. “At the very least. I know you resent me, but I promise you, Maggie, I’ll make you a fortune at this inn. Between my singing, and heavenly hosts on display-this place will be a madhouse within a fortnight!”

And Maggie said in frustration, “The larder is empty and I don’t have coin to buy so much food. The shops are closed or closing for the night-” Thomas reached to his belt and pulled out his purse, heavy with coins. “Hurry, then, and buy what you can for tonight and tomorrow.”

Then he rushed into the night, out the back door. Maggie grabbed her shawl and ran to the butcher’s and the miller’s. She saw Thomas and four men go rumbling off into the dark in a wagon moments later, and half wished that the wights would take them all.

In an hour the town was bustling and the inn was deluged. Whole families who had never set foot in the inn were too flustered to fix dinner for themselves, and they pounded on the tables. Maggie muscled a hundred-pound pig onto the spit, planning to carve off the meat as fast as it roasted. Ann Dilley came in of her own accord and began cooking potatoes and loaves of bread, while Ann’s daughters waited tables.

Gallen came in just after dark, and he took Maggie’s hand, went into the kitchen with her, and stood beside the woodbox. “What is this I hear? You’ve got an uncle who has called off our marriage-and brought the bodies of a Vanquisher and one of Everynne’s guards into town, all in the same afternoon?”

“Aye,” Maggie said angrily. “The jolly old bugger. He’s paid Father Brian to call off the marriage!”

Ann Dilley rushed into the room at that moment, hurried past them. “You might as well bring the ale and wine out front and save us some trips,” she said, grabbing a small keg of whiskey, then she hurried out.

“I’ll have a word with your uncle,” Gallen said.

“Don’t stab him!” Maggie said, suddenly fearful at the note of anger in his voice.

Gallen looked at her askance. “Stab him? What do you take me for?”

Maggie realized it had been an unwarranted thought, but tried to explain. “You never know.” She shook her head. “He’s the damnedest man I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting. I’ve thought of stabbing him today-more than once!”

“Well, don’t!” Gallen laughed. Ann Dilley plodded back into the room, frowned at Maggie as she got a flagon of wine and pulled some rolls from the oven. “Look, I can tell you’re busy,” Gallen said. “Let’s talk tonight, after you close up. It’s important.”

Gallen left.

Maggie was grateful when the wagon rolled into town moments later, and for a while nearly everyone cleared out while Thomas displayed the corpses in the stable. That gave time for the meat to cook. And yet, it was only the beginning of the night. Soon the tables began to fill with villagers from An Cochan, three miles away. They were coming as fast as they heard the news, walking over the mountain road by lantern light, the wights be damned, bringing whole families by wagon.

Thomas raised the price on his rooms and food and liquor and stabling, and by eleven he was selling sleeping space on the floor of the common room, and he’d rented out the lawn to campers.

The amount of work to be done piled up like snow before an avalanche, ready to topple at any moment. There was more work than twenty people could do. Maggie was forced to just grit her teeth and bear it. She cooked and served dinner, took money, cleaned the cooking pots, churned the butter, and prepared the ingredients for breakfast. By twelve-thirty the common room was more crowded than she’d ever seen it, and Gallen came to help her wash dishes, while every other person who’d ever lent a hand during the traveling season helped prepare food for the morrow.

Maggie could sense that Gallen wanted to speak to her as he worked, but with a dozen people bustling in and out of the room, he didn’t dare. There was a certain tenseness in his movements, and twice she put her wet arms around him to hug him, give him comfort, wondering what was on his mind.

By two in the morning, the place was a madhouse-folks had come from twelve miles away, and Maggie wondered at how they were all making the trip so fast, on such a dark night.

They closed the common room then, with four dozen folks asleep on the floor, and every bed in the house taken. Thomas came to the kitchens. “Leave the rest of those dishes until morning, darlin’,” Thomas said. “I’d like you to lock up the stable. I don’t want folks mucking about there in the middle of the night.”

“And what will you be doing, your lordship?” Maggie asked. Thomas hefted a bag of coins-more money than Maggie had ever seen in one spot. “I’ll be tallying receipts.”

“Uncle Thomas,” Maggie said angrily, “what will you be doing with all that money? It’s a shame before God for a man to make so much in one day! Why, it would serve you right if someone knocked you in the head and danced off with your purse!”

Thomas laughed. “As the good Lord said, ‘The poor you have with you always’-and might I add, they’re always red-faced indignant when someone else falls into a bit of money. So don’t go getting all self-righteous on me, Maggie Flynn. After all: you own this inn. I’m just helping you run it, until you’re eighteen. I’ll take a cut for showing the demon, but the vast majority of this fortune is yours!”

“And you can have it all, for all that I care!” Maggie said. “And the inn with it!” For I’m going away, and plan never to return, she wanted to say. Thomas grinned. “Oh, you’re speaking out of your anger and weariness. Get some sleep, and your head will be clearer in the morning.” Thomas looked at Gallen as if he’d just seen him. “This purse would make a fine start for a dowry, don’t you think, Mr. O’Day?”

“Aye,” Gallen nodded. “A start.”

“I meant to have a talk with you, Mr. O’Day, about your intentions toward my niece-”

“Let’s talk, then.” Gallen pulled a worn chair away from the cutting table. The cooking fire was nearly out, and the oil lamp above the sinks was burning low so that Gallen was just a shadow moving in the dark.

“I know you’re in a hurry, young man. In a hurry to talk, in a hurry to marry my niece. But it would be impolitic to hurry the marriage, and as for the talk-I’m afraid I’m all stove in for the night,” Thomas said. “Besides, it wouldn’t be proper to discuss the matter in front of her … you know.” He nodded toward Maggie.

“I’m not some heifer that you’ll be bartering over,” Maggie said. “I should have a say in any deals you go making. It’s my money you’ll be spending for the dowry!”

“I didn’t say you were some heifer,” Thomas growled. “But you’re young. You’re just too damned young, and your mind isn’t as fully developed as”-he waved vaguely toward her breasts-“the rest of your body. So I’d like to have a delicate talk with Gallen, man-to-man, and I don’t need your meddling!”

Maggie stared hard at him, and she could feel her face burning. She wanted to scream or shove him into the big baking oven in the corner till his skin turned black, but she only glared at him.

Thomas said to Gallen, “It’s time for you to go, young sir. I suspect you’re an honorable man, but it wouldn’t be proper for you to be skulking around here so late of the night without an escort.”

Thomas turned and disappeared into the common room through the swinging doors, giving them one last moment alone. Maggie was so mad she wanted to follow Thomas out and shout to his back as he walked up the stairs to count the money, but there were too many folks camped out on the floor of the common room, and she didn’t want to make a scene. So she just stood with her fists clenched until she realized that she still held a wet washrag and she had squeezed water from it onto her foot.

She spun and tossed the rag into the sink. “Well, how do you like him?”

Gallen chuckled at Thomas’s back. “I see what you meant about wanting to stab him. ‘Skulking around’ he calls it. The nerve of him! Well, he’s a nuisance, all right. But don’t judge him too harshly. He thinks he’s making you rich, and you can’t fault him for that. And if your mother or father were alive, they wouldn’t be talking to you much different. They’d be against you marrying so young, too.”

“Oh, don’t take his side. He’s just a big tick trying to suck the blood from me, and he wants me to feel fine about it.”

“Any sixteen-year-old woman,” Gallen whispered, “who can steal a key to the Gate of the World, make her way across half a dozen planets, pilot a hovercar under a nuclear mushroom cloud, and face up to the Dronon Lords of the Swarm is surely a match for one dried-up old crooked uncle,” Gallen whispered. “I’m sure you can handle him.”

Maggie smiled, still angry, but subdued by weariness. “Sure, I’d gut him in a second if he wasn’t my only kin,” she teased. She buried her head in his chest, just resting her eyes, swaying gently. “Gallen, we’ve got to get out of here. I won’t stay here and be his slave, working in this place for another year!”

“Of course not,” Gallen said. He wrapped his strong arms around her and just held her. She could feel his heart beating strong and steady in his chest, smelled the clean scent of his cotton tunic. He didn’t speak for a long time. The cooking fire crackled as a log shifted.

“Let’s go lock up the stables,” he whispered. “We can talk in there.”

Maggie went to the cabinet where John Mahoney had kept his locks, took out the big iron lock that he used for the stables when he bothered to lock them at all. Gallen went to a peg by the back door, took down Maggie’s shawl and put it over her shoulders, and they hurried out under the boughs of the house-pine.

A blustery wind was blowing, and all under the tree that formed the inn there were tents pitched, and up on the hill north of town, Maggie could hear whinnying. She looked up, and spaced along the mountain road were lanterns as people wended their way down the road.

“This is madness,” Gallen whispered, watching the lanterns. “I’ve never seen the likes.”

They picked their way carefully around the side of the inn, went to the stable. A lamp burned inside, and a couple of young boys were staring into the wagon at the corpses. Gallen shooed them out.

In the stable, the horses were backed into their stalls, staring out with tired eyes. Gallen pulled the door tight, locked it with a cross-beam.

As soon as they were alone Maggie tumbled into Gallen’s arms and kissed him, a sweet, slow kiss. She’d been craving his touch all day, and now they just held each other, satisfying that urge. She shook as she held him, and Maggie found her eyes tearing, and Gallen whispered, “Oh, my sweet Maggie, what’s wrong?”

“Thomas,” she said. “He’s mucked it all up for us.”

“He can’t muck it all up, so long as we still love each other,” Gallen whispered. He pulled back, held her hand, and looked steadily into her eyes. “Maggie, we don’t really have to get married here. You and I could go to any world your heart fancies, and the marriage would be just as valid.”

Maggie’s heart skipped. “I know,” she said. Yet she felt cheated. Clere was her home. By tradition, a proper woman wouldn’t marry outside her own hometown, even if the groom came from another country. It was a matter of propriety. Only a girl who had come down with a child would marry in a far county, and if Maggie were to run off now, everyone would suspect her. And even though through her travels Maggie had learned that she no longer wanted to live on this world, she was saddened by what her friends and neighbors would think.

“Yes, I’ve always wanted to get married here,” she said. “I wanted to marry in my own hometown, dressed in white, with a priest.”

“I’ll talk to your uncle, tomorrow,” Gallen said, “press him for an early marriage. Maybe he’ll listen.” She looked up into his blue eyes, and with her fingers combed a wisp of his long hair back from his face.

Gallen pulled away from her, walked over to the wagon, looked down at the corpses of a green-skinned Vanquisher and one of Everynne’s personal guard, a beautiful female soldier. The night air was chill, and Gallen’s breath steamed from his mouth.

Maggie could tell that he had some distressing news to tell.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Maggie, I got a message from Everynne. She wants me to go to a planet called Tremonthin to protect someone, a Tharrin named Ceravanne. It’s important that I go soon.”

“Protect her from what?” Maggie asked. “The dronon?” She shivered involuntarily as she imagined the huge insect-like alien that the townsfolk had mistaken two weeks ago for Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies.

Gallen had defeated the dronon Lords in single combat, winning the title of Lords of the Swarm for himself and Maggie, and as the new queen of the dronon Swarm, Maggie had banished the dronon from the human-occupied worlds before she returned home to Tihrglas for her wedding.

Still, she imagined that some dronon would cause trouble. They didn’t think like humans at all. Certainly, when the next dronon hive queen matured, she would bring her Lord Escort to battle Gallen and Maggie, hoping to win back the title of Lords of the Swarm, believing that the title gave them the right to control ten thousand human-occupied worlds.

So Maggie’s return to Tihrglas served a purpose beyond allowing her wedding, for it kept her hidden from enemy dronon.

“No, it’s not the dronon,” Gallen said. “There is something called ‘the Inhuman’ on Tremonthin. I’m not sure what it is-a secret society, perhaps. A group of people seeking control.” Gallen’s jaw was set, rigid. Maggie knew that look. He was ready for a fight, and God forgive anyone who stood up to him.

“The Lady Semarritte warned me of Tremonthin before she died,” Maggie said. “She wanted us to go there, and she said that your skills as a warrior would be sorely tested.”

In the past two weeks, Gallen had been preparing for battle in ways that Maggie had never seen before. With this mantle of a Lord Protector that he wore during practice, this artificial intelligence that stored more information than a thousand libraries could hold, Gallen was learning secrets of combat that he’d never imagined. He said that he wanted to be more prepared when next he met the dronon, and Maggie suspected that he would be up for the test on Tremonthin. But the Lady Semarritte hadn’t seemed so sure.

Gallen seemed preoccupied as he looked at the corpses. Thomas had put the weapons from the dead Vanquisher and Everynne’s warrior atop the bodies. Gallen picked up the Vanquisher’s incendiary rifle. “We shouldn’t leave these weapons functional,” he said. “Some kid might pull the trigger and put the town to fire.” He cracked the rifle at the stock, pulled out its power pack and projectiles, then laid it back down.

Maggie stood beside him, picked up the vibro-blade from the dead woman’s hand, pulled out its power pack. The dead woman had a bag at her side, and Maggie pulled it open. Inside were rations, a couple of Black Fog grenades, a microwave bomb, a light globe that flashed blindingly when she squeezed it.

Gallen stuffed the items into his pockets, then pulled some weapons from the green Vanquisher’s munitions belt. Once he’d secreted anything that might prove dangerous, Gallen stood for a moment, then took Maggie’s hand, let out an uneasy breath. “I have to go to Tremonthin soon. A week or two at the longest. I’ll try to finish the job quickly. But Maggie, darling, I think you should stay here.”

“I won’t have you leave me behind,” Maggie said. “You could get hurt or killed or lose your key to the Gate of the World, and I’d never see you again.” She didn’t speak her greatest fear: that the dronon were hunting them, and without Gallen, Maggie would have no protection from the creatures.

“But if you come away with me, you’ll be exposing yourself to more danger,” Gallen said. “I’d rather have you safe, here, planning our wedding.”

Maggie folded her arms, looked down at the ground, thinking. Gallen wanted her to stay. It might well be that he had her best interests at heart, but she couldn’t bear the thought of remaining here in Clere. What if he lost his key to the Gate of the World and never came back? She could never be happy on a backward planet like Tihrglas, not when there were worlds with starships and immortals out there. And she couldn’t be happy without Gallen near.

And suddenly she knew why Gallen was so distant. “You’re not ready to leave Clere yet, are you?”

“Sure, I’m not happy to be going. I came home imagining how I’d snatch some rest, thinking about going fishing one last time. But we’ve been home two weeks, and I’ve thought of nothing but the dronon-how I’ll handle them when next we meet.

“One day of rest-that’s all I want,” Gallen said. “I’ll go fishing tomorrow, and we can pretend that nothing horrible ever happened to us. Come with me, okay? We can make a picnic.”

Maggie squinted, wondering what Thomas would say about her leaving a hundred guests unfed at the inn. But it was her inn, and she could walk away from it if she wanted to.

“I’m coming with you, Gallen,” Maggie said, taking both of his hands in hers, looking into his face. “I won’t feel safer without you, and I certainly couldn’t be happy without you. I’ll go anywhere you want to go-fishing tomorrow, if you want-Tremonthin the day after. I’ll be your wife. You know that I’d jump into pits of hell with you on a moment’s notice.”

“Oh, that’s what I’m worried about,” Gallen said solemnly. Now that that was settled, he looked around, talking as he thought. “I’ll need to hire someone to watch my mother while I’m gone. I’ll tell her I’ve got work on a merchant ship sailing to Greenland. With the wild rumors flying around about me, she’ll think I’m just leaving till the furor dies. And we’ll have to send word to Orick, discover if he wants to come with us.”

Maggie found herself trembling with anticipation at the thought of getting back on the road. “He’ll come.” There were a million things to take care of, Maggie knew. They’d have to leave town-escape Thomas-without drawing undue attention. Gallen kissed her one last time for the night. Then he took her hand and they slipped out of the stable.

* * *