The Bock fell back, gasping, and looked up.
And in that second, the Harvester dropped her knife to the floor. Ceravanne stood there stunned, holding the Bock, as the Harvester cried out from the core of her soul, and the cry seemed to echo from some recess in Ceravanne’s mind. It was a scream that was unlike anything she had ever heard-almost bestial.
The Bock looked up, and his brown eyes did not focus. He stared blindly at the ceiling. “Wha … gulls crying?” Ceravanne knelt, her heart pounding, blinded by tears. The Bock looked up and said, “Ah, the cry of a child as it dies into an adult.”
Then his voice rattled, and he went still.
The ground twisted beneath her, and Ceravanne fell forward, still weeping.
Ceravanne had come hoping to find common ground with the Harvester. She’d known that somewhere, despite the Inhuman’s manipulations, its distortions and outright lies, there had to be some core, some essential, unchanging element, that would remain the same in them.
And as the Bock died, the one man both Ceravanne and the Harvester had loved most in this life, the Harvester was touched deep in her soul, in a place where the Inhuman could not enter.
The Harvester crawled on her knees toward the Bock. Then Ceravanne grabbed the mantle of the Inhuman, pulled off the gold clip that her technicians had told her would be its key, and laid the Inhuman over the Bock’s face like a burial shroud.
Suddenly freed from the Inhuman’s influence, Gallen leapt up, came to Ceravanne’s side and held her a moment. Ceravanne was trying to snap the key onto a corner of her own mantle, but her hands were shaking too badly. So Gallen took the key from her hands.
From one of the side doors, Ceravanne could hear shouting as several of the Tekkar tried to clear rubble, gain entrance to the great hall. “Quickly, put the key on my mantle,” Ceravanne whispered, “if you love truth, if you seek rest.”
Gallen took Ceravanne’s mantle from her, placed its golden net over his own head. Then he sat down, arms wrapped around his knees, snapped the key onto the mantle’s golden rings, and lived another hundred lifetimes.
For nearly two hours, Ceravanne sat with Orick. The Bock’s body cooled, and Ceravanne cleaned it up, weeping softly. She could not keep from touching him, and for a long hour after the body was cleaned, Orick nuzzled her, pressing his nose under her arm.
Orick could not believe how badly the day had gone. Gallen had not been able to fight the Inhuman, and Maggie was dead. Both Ceravanne and the Harvester had lost the man they loved, and the city of Moree was in ruins. Orick had hoped for much better, and it left a great gaping hole in his heart, to see all the pain that others would have to endure.
He kept looking over at Gallen, who sat with his arms wrapped about his knees, his forehead bowed to one knee, with the great golden mantle draped over his head and shoulders, wearing a look as if he were some philosopher, exhausted from profound thought. And in a way, Orick feared that. The teaching machines on Fale had changed him some. The Inhuman had sought to rip away his free will. And now, he would waken and be something new.
Everyone Orick loved most was being taken from him.
He had begun to fear that terrible light that was growing in Gallen’s pale eyes. Now he felt it keenest. A few short weeks ago, Gallen had been little more than a boy who had to cope with his incredible talent for battle and his desire to set the world right. Now, he was growing into something new, something unpredictable.
So Orick sat and thought, trying to comfort Ceravanne. Orick remembered that when the Lady Everynne had connected with the omni-mind, she’d wakened after the initial shock, and she’d become something powerful-a goddess, with nearly unlimited knowledge. In his own smaller way, Orick knew, Gallen was doing the same, step by step. The light was steadily growing in his eyes, and Orick could see what he was becoming, could see how he was leaving ordinary men behind, leaving Orick behind.
When Ceravanne’s tears had eased some, Orick asked gently, “When Gallen wakes, how will he be changed? What will he become?”
“The demons inside him should never bother him again,” Ceravanne whispered. “We didn’t alter the memories much, just restored the true versions, so that Gallen may see upon reflection our judges were not harsh. When Gallen wakes, everyone will know that I’ve returned to make peace among the peoples. Some may resent me for it. Some may still hold allegiance to the Inhuman, but we’ve removed the hidden thought structures that the Inhuman inserted into its hosts. People will be free to make up their own minds.”
Ceravanne sat, her arms wrapped around her Bock. “And what of those who do resent you?” Orick asked. “What if some of the Tekkar try to kill you?”
“I suspect that they will,” Ceravanne said. “I’ve been killed before, but always I’ve been reborn. Still, such actions anger the faithful. The Rodim were destroyed as a people for such acts. The Tekkar know what will happen to them if they are too harsh.”
Orick licked Ceravanne’s hand, and together they waited for the awakening.
* * *
Chapter 32
In the recesses of his mind, Gallen lived through the days of Druin after the fall of Indallian. He rode his huge war-horse through the forests in his youth, and suffered the pangs of lost loves, he fought many battles and learned to crave blood as much as he craved the wider world. He united many people, before he was crippled by a spear in the back.
As an old man, he became frustrated in his designs. Many admired him as a man of learning, for he could do little more than lie in his bed and study. He became devoted to the welfare of his people, yet he dreamed of walking again, of visiting the stars.
He learned to hate the walls of his bedchamber, and so he sent messengers to the City of Life and hired travelers from other worlds to come and be his tutors. He began acquiring metals to build his starships, and studied the designs.
When word reached him that the Immortals planned to stop him, he built cannons to guard his city, and great were the battles waged against him, until in ruin he was forced to put aside his weapons.
In old age, his men took him to the City of Life, and there sought the rebirth. And the judges found him unworthy. Still, they took pity on him, and gave him back his legs, sending him away. He took his gift, but turned and cursed his judges.
Thus Druin wandered far, and never visited his realm again. So it went, life after life, Gallen saw the portion of meanness in character that the Dronon had chosen to hide.
And then Ceravanne’s mantle showed Gallen other lives, the lives lived by some of those who had won the rebirth-Tottenan the Wise, from the race of the Atonkin, who felt no desire to dominate other peoples. He spent his days buying old swords and melting the steel to be used in building nails.
And Gallen recalled the life of Zemette, a shipbuilder of weak mind but great heart, a man who somehow understood by nature how to be happy, who used all of his money to buy slaves from the southlands, so that he could set them free.
And Gallen lived the life of Thrennen Ka, a Derrit who sought to teach farming to her own people.
Over and over, the lives came to him, and he was shown an equal portion of the divine and the damned. And while the dronon whispered to him that all men were equal, and therefore should serve their new dronon overlords, Gallen saw that all men were given time to make of themselves what they would, and that while some became vile, and others merely consumed, always there were a few who earnestly strove to make the world better for all, and such people were rewarded in the City of Life. And thus Ceravanne’s mantle sought to make Gallen a wiser man, full of hope and experience, and then it left him.
When Gallen finally woke, raising his head so that Ceravanne’s mantle jingled, Orick came to his side. There was a noise reverberating through the darkened hive, and the shadows jangled to the querulous notes of people waking to a new world in wonder.