Stargate (9 page)

Ixelion was in his high chamber. Ghakazian, his instincts honed by wind and speed, knew. Cautiously he left the hall and flew slowly along a passage that ended in stairs, and another, smaller hall, and more stairs, all quivering under the flow of water. He stayed close to the misty ceiling, ducking under the cornices, and then there was a dry floor, and Ixelion's chair. Ghakazian came to rest, his eyes on the room that opened through the small archway. “Ixelion,” he called softly, “are you there?” But only the endless pattering of water on water answered him with foreign, unintelligible words. A faint glow of light sluiced through the doorway. Ghakazian walked in.

At first he believed that his instincts had played him false and he was astonished, for the room was empty. Shreds of fog fluttered through the wide, unprotected window, bringing with them a darkness that shivered against the soft yellow light. But apart from the water that poured down the wall and entered the pool, there was no movement. The pool. Ghakazian stepped to the edge and looked down. Ixelion lay deep, deep down, his eyes open, his hair floating out around his head, his hands crossed on his breast. Above him the water rocked, making him seem to sway gently, and in the light that emanated from him Ghakazian could see those strange flecks of disease all around him. But here, in his pool, the flecks were black. Ixelion! Ghakazian commanded in his mind. Awake! Ghakazian is here. He wishes to speak with you.

The hands seemed to stir on the thin, pearled breast, but the eyes did not flicker. Ghakazian stepped back. There was nothing to do but wait for Danarion, and together they would raise Ixelion.

His glance wandered over the room, and he spotted a book flung down in the far corner by the window, its pale leaves fluttering. Idly Ghakazian walked to it and picked it up, riffling the pages. It must be Ixel's Annals, he thought. Has Ixelion written in it lately, and will it tell us how he fell? Then he felt the book jump in his hands, and the pages suddenly folded back, gossamer thin, as white as ice on Lix.
Ghakazian stood before his Gate,
he read,
with his armies ranked behind him. “Sholia has betrayed us!” he cried, and winged and wingless alike answered him with a shout. “We will go to Shol and make war on Sholia and the Unmaker, and take Shol for our own!”
What nonsense is this? Ghakazian frowned to himself. Winged and wingless form an army? Go to Shol? No mortal can travel the corridors from world to world except within its own system. He lowered his eyes to the text once more, intrigued, but then heard footsteps coming rapidly across the inside chamber. On an impulse he wedged the book under his belt, beneath the shadow of his wing.

Danarion came into the light, and Ghakazian went to him, pointing to the pool. “He is down there,” he said, “deeply tranced. I do not know where he walks, and I did not try to follow him. We must call him back, Danarion.”

Danarion strode to the edge and looked down, nodding. “Ixel is becoming a waste,” he said. “I spoke with Sillix. He told me that Ixelion related to him some tale about the Unmaker's coming here with Sholia and subjugating everyone. How did the first fuel for the black fire get in here? Take my hand and join your will to mine. If he has not gone into his sun, we should be able to raise him.”

Ghakazian reached out, and the light fingers he touched to Danarion's own were cold. Danarion glanced at him, but his mind was full of Ixelion, and he did not wonder. Quietly the two of them strained after Ixelion, following him back down Ixel's long years, and at last they found him sitting beneath a tree and watching the ocean, flowers in his lap, his chin resting in his palm. Thus he had sat long ago, on some morning in the dawning of his world, the only sentient being on Ixel, whole and at peace. They called to him, but that time had not been their time, and they could not stay. The vision thinned, lost color and definition, and they loosed hands and gazed down at him. He had not stirred.

“His Gate must be closed at once,” Ghakazian said, “before he wakes and decides to leave Ixel forever. He must not be allowed a place with us.”

Already I am lonely for him, Danarion thought, and that loneliness I will add to the loss of all the others, my friends, my companions in power. Instantly he saw himself as the last sun-lord, pacing the empty passages on Danar alone while the years fell and lay around his feet, not touching him because he would live on and on, hearing nothing but the sound of his own feet, seeing nothing but the vast hall, its floor now dead of stars save where Danar's sun twinkled alone in all that black eternity, the table glittering with necklets that would lie thus until the universe ended. The cold from Ghakazian's fingers seemed to spread up his arm and into his heart, and desolation wrapped him round. Without answering he placed his hands on Ghakazian's shoulders, smooth and hot, glowing golden as the sun's blood pulsed beneath the surface of the skin, and the feeling of inevitable defeat was gone. Ghakazian lifted him gently, and they turned their backs on the pool with its shadowy burden, flying with a rustle of brown feathers and a rush of warm air out of the chamber, out of the hall, out of doomed Ixel.

Ixelion lay in the pool looking up, aware of the two forms that bent over the water, their outlines distorted and blurred, but he did not rise. It was not Sholia and the Unmaker, and that was all that mattered. He watched them, knowing them, carefully closing his mind to them, and when they had gone, he left his body again and went to Lix. He stood on a jagged peak, the glittering deep cold of ice and crystal beneath and behind him, the immeasurable lost fields of black space all around him. He saw Fallan's purple, tired sun, ringed in tongues of black fire. He saw dark flames leaping from Kallar's sun, and Mallan's. For as far as his eye pierced, the suns hung captive, wounded, dying, consumed. Turning without emotion he saw Ghaka's sun, fair and full, and the twins of Shol beaming out like white gems, and far, so far, the shining mist that was Danar's sun and the center of all power.

No, he thought coldly. Not all power. Not even a portion of power. Again he deliberately faced the harsh, triumphant song of black fire. Sholia will come here with the Unmaker, the Book said so and the Book is true. But the Trader lied. I cannot fight them. It is impossible. Better for me had I given the Book to him and gone down in ignorance. The Gates are a joke, frail as paper, useless as a puff of air, and Janthis is wrong. They do not keep corruption out and never have. Each lord must do that for himself, and I did not do that, and I am now on the verge of surrender. The fuel lies dormant on Ixel, waiting for the spark that I or Sillix or any one of the mortals must inevitably put to it.

Lix spread out under his feet, mile upon mile of sharp tumbled rocks, only their tips catching sunlight. The rest of the little planet was sunk in night. Ixelion left it and drifted toward home. By now Danarion and Ghakazian would have gone back to Danar to recommend the closing of his Gate. Well, it meant nothing. He had the Book, and it would stay with him, safe, and would torment no one else.

He slipped easily into his body, flexing his limbs in the water's lightness, and was suddenly aware that another form leaned over the pool, long and white, with hair that brushed the surface of the pool. Fear for the safety of his treasure brought him roaring from the depths. Sillix ran back but did not cower away from Ixelion, stopping just inside the door and standing straight and proud. Ixelion ignored him. He flew to the corner, but the Book was no longer there. He ran around the room, swept the windowsill with frantic hands, leaned out into the dimness, but it was gone. Raging, he turned on Sillix.

“Where is it?” he shouted, tall and menacing. “What have you done with it, thief?”

Sillix trembled but stood his ground. Light streamed from his lord, hot and powerful, but when Sillix raised a hand to shield his eyes, he saw that the light was fringed in blackness. Tiny snakes of black flame darted from Ixelion's mouth and played about his stiff, accusing fingers.

“I have nothing, sun-lord,” Sillix managed to say, covering his eyes completely with both hands. “I came to say farewell. Danarion told me to take the people to the other side, but I could not go without a word of blessing from you.”

“Blessing?” Ixelion went rigid. “You should have asked it from Danarion, your new lord. Or have you crept to me ashamed because you forgot your allegiance to me?”

“I do not think that the allegiance of this world belongs to you anymore, Ixelion,” Sillix replied steadily. “I do not understand it all, but it seems that
you
have betrayed us. Ixel's soul has put on fetters, and that is why the ocean is sick. Farewell, sun-lord. We will survive.”

But Ixelion had ceased to listen. The little water snake has the Book, he hissed to himself. He has been sneaking about while I lay tranced in the pool, and he found it and looked into it, and that is why his eyes no longer speak to me of innocence and trust but pierce me through with accusation and new knowledge. He knows now that I can do nothing for Ixel anymore. Guilt came upon him, creeping like a ghost out of Fallan. He met it, embraced it; he did not run, and it turned into a need to destroy that flared within him. Sillix had turned away and was walking through the inner room, and with a snarl Ixelion sprang.

“The Book!” he yelled. “The Book!” Forbidden words streamed from his mouth, words of destruction, words of command, and Sillix halted. The light left Ixelion and streaked across the floor like a black-tipped, golden spear. It bent, coiled about Sillix's legs, rose to his waist, his shoulders, wrapped itself about his neck, white-hot, sending out a hum of barely harnessed power, and Sillix screamed once. The spear became a cloud of dazzling brilliance. Ixelion spoke again, and Sillix lay at his feet, a clumsy muddle of limbs, a bundle of bones on which the skin hung loose.

For a long time Ixelion looked down at it, and then he bent. Roughly his webbed hands moved, tossed aside, pulled apart, but the Book was not there. Anger fled as loss overtook him. Grasping the body by one arm, he dragged it back into the other room and heaved it into the pool with one savage movement. Sillix did not sink. He lay light and empty, on the surface, his green hair spread wide, rocking as though he were asleep, but he was not asleep. He was ugly, misshapen, he was dead.

A cold wind rose from the darkness of the forest, blowing wetly into Ixelion's face. The trees began to snicker, a low whisper of derision that wafted through the window and swelled to a crescendo of scorn. Hahahaha, they tittered, and the mist joined in, sighing its mirth. The water laughed, deep and constant, a mocking, low-pitched gurgle of sound. One of them has it, Ixel thought with a chuckle. One of them stole it, stole it, hahahaha. Ixelion put his hands over his ears and ran to where his chair waited. Let them keep it. Let them come to the brink, even as he had done, let them topple over, and let the Unmaker laugh, let him come. I have lost it. It is gone. He sat in the chair, head sunk on his breast, his sun-disc black now, gleaming dully. At least I shall not run into the past as Falia did, he thought. But he had the unpleasant feeling that even if he had tried to leave his body, it would now be impossible, that he had lost more than the Book. He was trapped in an endless present, he echoed in it like a man in a lofty, locked room, unchanging, a prisoner with his disfigurement. He could no longer even weep.

They came to close the Gate, and this time it was Sholia who trod the paths of suspicion and enmity that led to the palace, her hair glimmering bright and clean, her aura cleaving a passage of light through the envious forest. She stepped through the shimmering seal, endured the alien touch of the myriad waters, and so came at last to the room where Ixelion sat. She called him, she touched his hands, she used a word of entreaty that was also a word of compulsion, but he did not respond. Then she saw Sillix, his face twisted toward her, the sockets of his eyes gaping dark and terrible, but she did not scream. Slowly she went to the pool.

“No power on Ixel can harm me,” she said clearly, “nor can it hold me. It cannot hold you either, whoever you once were. Go to the Messengers. Go!” She raised her arms. Far away her sun heard as she bound it to her aid, and it responded. The surface of the pool heaved, then subsided and gave back to her nothing but her own fractured image. Walking back to Ixelion, she lifted the necklet from around his neck, gasping at the coldness of its touch, kissed him, and left him, head sunken on his breast, flowers growing in his hair, and the green watermold clinging to his body like a dripping winding-sheet, making her way back to the Gate with the same courageous deliberation.

“He cannot come,” she told them simply. “Perhaps in times to come he will wake, but not yet.”

“Then I must close the Gate and leave him,” Janthis said unwillingly. He turned to the Messenger which quivered silently nearby, a perfumed smoke rising above the column of shifting colors. “Do I wait?” he asked it, but it did not reply, and after a moment he sighed and turned back, facing the archway and the faintly glimpsed water running down the canal beyond. He raised both arms, palms out and forward. “By the power vested in me as the firstborn of all the worlds,” he said quietly, “I command the sun of Ixel and Lix to obey me.”

He did not need to raise his voice. A rumble of deep sound came to him out of the passage, and light flickered around him, docile and eager.

“I am sorry,” he whispered to it. “Give me your strength now, so that the end may be staved off yet again. Patience I ask of you, and a lonely watch until he that sleeps will wake again, and perhaps stand with his people once more.”

The light rioted around him and then suddenly steadied, forming a blaze that filled the Gate. Janthis flung back his head and breathed full and deep, gathering together his power. “I close the Gate of Ixel!” he called, and it seemed as though his voice went rolling and echoing backward into the listening cavities of space. “Henceforth neither mortal nor immortal, Maker nor Messenger nor any created thing may enter here. The stars are forbidden to the people of Ixel, and Ixel is forbidden to the people of the stars. Close, now, close! I, Janthis, command you! Your service is at an end!” The light began to shrink until it had fitted itself into the arch, filling the Gate with blinding whiteness.