Gallen hurried down the stairway, almost running. When he reached the bottom he found the fire still going. Tallea was hunched over it, putting in some more dry dung. Everyone else had gone to sleep, but Gallen stayed awake for the rest of the night while the others rested. He stared off into the rain, letting the full powers of his mantle keep watch while he remained on guard duty.
And through the night, ghosts came, the memories of people long dead, and they took him on journeys he could not sleep through and could not hope to escape. He felt like a child on a sandy beach, with water rushing in upon him with tremendous force, and with each crashing wave, the sand beneath him would shift, so that he felt as if something essential were being dragged away.
It did not matter where he stood in that little room. It did not matter that his mantle tried to block the signals. The Inhuman was overpowering him moment by moment, so that sometimes while the others slept, Gallen sobbed or cried out softly.
Long before morning, Gallen woke the others, and they headed south.
* * *
Chapter 22
By dawn the companions were on the road again, and Tallea felt … decent for the first time in three days. She was able to sit with little pain, and in fact could feel herself mending, and to her it seemed miraculous. As a Caldurian, she tended to heal fast anyway, but the Immortal’s blood had worked wonders on her wounds.
More importantly, the support that these people had given her was working wonders on her spirit. A year earlier, when Ceravanne’s other self had come to Babel, Tallea had hired on with her band, had led them into the wilderness of Moree, and there she lost them to the Tekkar. At the time Ceravanne had not announced herself as the Swallow. Indeed, Tallea had only thought her to be a beautiful woman, traveling as a companion to the valiant swordsmen who sought to destroy the Inhuman.
But one night, when they had neared Moree, the Tekkar ambushed their small band. Many good men died before their swords cleared their scabbards. Tallea herself had been sorely wounded and left among the dead. And Ceravanne, beautiful Ceravanne had been carried away into Moree where the Tekkar would do unspeakable things to her.
For a year Tallea had been serving on ships, waiting for a new band to make its way into Moree. And this time, she vowed, they would slay the Inhuman. For a year she had suffered alone on the ships, refusing to bind herself to anyone. It was an untenable situation for a Caldurian, and only her training, her devotion to the ways of the Roamers, had helped her survive.
Yet now, as they rode in the oversized wagon through a gray dawn, she could not help but feel concerned. It seemed that some cosmic balance was being maintained. Minute by minute, her pains decreased, and she blossomed to greater health.
Minute by minute, Gallen was crumbling, falling in on himself like an old house toppling under its own weight.
He hadn’t slept all night, and during the morning he just sat, huddled in the driver’s seat of the wagon, his mouth slack as he stared into nothingness. The travelbeast was guiding the wagon more than Gallen was.
Orick whispered to Maggie about it. “There is a horror on Gallen’s face that I’ve never seen before. Gallen has always been a feisty lad-nothing like this.”
And so the travelbeast ran on, its head rising and falling as it drew the wagon along the bank of a winding muddy river. Ceravanne took control of the wagon for a while, and Maggie took Gallen and cradled his head against her breast tenderly, and he stared out the back of the wagon, at the trees falling behind.
Gallen muttered, “Eighteen … eighteen. My defenses are crumbling.”
Maggie said that her own mantle whispered insistently that it was doing all it could to block the Inhuman’s transmissions. And when Maggie asked Gallen to tell her about this latest life he had lived, he said nothing for many minutes.
“God, I wish I were home,” Maggie whispered in his ear. “I wish we both were home, that we’d never come. This trip is changing us, destroying you.”
“So the journey changes us,” Gallen said wearily, surprising Tallea by responding at all. “You can’t walk from your house without your hairs growing whiter. You can’t walk down to the gate without taking a risk. And from the death of the old, the new is born.”
“This isn’t a walk to the gate,” Maggie said. “Ever since you went to the teaching machines on Fale, you’ve lost some of yourself, some of your accent. Now, you hardly sound as if you’re from Tihrglas at all.”
Gallen said no more for a long time, and Ceravanne, who was sitting up front, exchanged worried glances with Maggie.
One of the rear wheels began squeaking a bit, and Tallea climbed up, ignoring the stabbing pains in her side, got the swabbing rod out of the grease, and daubed each wheel.
No one spoke for a long time. They passed through several small villages in the space of a few hours, and Fenorah stopped at the largest to grain the travelbeast and to purchase salt, food, leather for shoes, and a number of small items that they had not had a chance to carry.
All during that stop, Gallen went and stood leaning against a hitching post, and the townsfolk took great pains to avoid him. Even a pair of yellow dogs that were running together crossed to the far side of the street.
As Fenorah began loading the wagon in preparation to leave, he glanced at Gallen and mumbled, “Only twenty demons in him, and he’s ready to crumble. If an apple spoiled in our food barrel, would we not throw it out?”
“What you saying?” Tallea asked.
Fenorah nodded toward Gallen. “I’m worried. He’s a danger to us now-perhaps more dangerous than he knows. If we left him, I do not think he’d notice.”
And Tallea realized that Fenorah truly was entertaining thoughts of leaving Gallen behind. Sometimes, it seemed that people who were not of the Caldur were so unaware of how the tenuous threads of friendship could bind people together, lend them support. To her, those feelings were almost a visible thing, they were so strongly felt.
“Now he needs us most,” she said, struggling into a more comfortable position. “Servants of Inhuman want you reject him, so he turn to them for companionship.”
Orick pricked his ears forward and stood still for a moment. “You’re right!” Orick shouted in a voice that echoed from the buildings, and he got up from the bed of the wagon and stood clumsily with his two front feet on the backboard. “This is no time to turn our backs on him.”
He jumped from the wagon, ran to Gallen’s side, and stood, wrapping his paws around Gallen’s shoulders. By applying his weight, he pushed Gallen to the ground. “I’ve had enough from you!” Orick said, putting one great paw on Gallen’s chest. “You spirits, I adjure you to come out of this man, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen!”
Gallen grunted, gave half a laugh, and his eyes suddenly cleared, as if he’d wakened. “Orick, I wish it were that simple!”
“Och, well, it was worth a try,” Orick growled, looking from side to side as if for another answer. “Look, Gallen, my friend, you remember your Bible: and if Satan can appear as an angel, then it’s no great feat for the dronon to disguise themselves as our friends. But I tell you, Gallen, even if you had a head made of straw and a belly full of whiskey, I’d expect you to know better! ‘When the dronon came to Clere, they didn’t pass out bags of gold and welcome us to paradise. They chewed off John Mahoney’s head, and shot Father Heany, turning our priest into a puddle. And on Fale, they didn’t come ask Maggie if she’d like to be their slave. They put a Guide on her and dragged her off-me fighting them tooth and claw. You know better than to trust a word they say!”
“Get off me,” Gallen choked, “I can’t breathe!”
“I’ll not get off you until you start making sense!” Orick growled, and he put both front paws on Gallen and bounced his weight on him experimentally, as if to prove the point. “I don’t care whose memories are rolling around in your head, Gallen. Your own memories are in there, too. You’ve got to take control of yourself!”