And as they rushed through the rooms, Orick smelled blood ahead. The rooms were like nothing he had imagined: they had a peculiar fluid form to them, and the walls were covered with some white plaster. Orick could almost sense the sleek lines of some living creature, and he realized that the walls reminded him of nothing more than bones, as if they were in some vast hollowed-out bones.
There were torches lying about here and there, bodies crushed under falling rocks, tapestries sitting in heaps on the floor, wide silver washing or drinking vessels. And along the walls were thousands of small clay pots with long stems. Many had fallen over, and lay broken, with bits of ash and bone spilling out.
“What’s this?” Orick called as they ran.
Ceravanne said, “The dead. It is said that the kings of Moree were protected by the spirits of their dead.” And Orick saw that it was still true, more so than ever, for the Inhuman also relied upon those who had died for protection.
The group passed a Tekkar servant woman whose head was horribly crushed, part of her cheek ripped away, and she cried out from a swollen mouth, grasped the fur on Orick’s leg, begging aid. Orick looked into her deep purple eyes as he passed, saw how they were not focused, and knew that she would die whether he helped her or not. They reached some smoothly undulating stairs with golden handholds fastened to the wall, each shaped like the head of a dog. They rushed up several flights, climbing over debris, and Orick saw Gallen’s tracks in the dirt.
A moment later, they reached a landing and found the body of a Tekkar guard, his chest blown apart. And from up ahead there came shouting, followed by the burp of gunfire and the explosion of shells.
“This way,” Ceravanne cried, leaping over the corpse, and she redoubled her speed as she chased the sound of battle.
And Orick suddenly realized that Gallen was doing it all without him, that Gallen had rushed ahead and was avenging Maggie by killing the Harvester and the Inhuman. Always in the past, he had been left behind. He’d let Gallen fight the great battles and get the glory, and never had he minded.
But over the past days, he’d lost three friends. Grits had been left behind, and Tallea was now food for the Derrits, and Maggie had just been blown apart, and Orick decided that he’d rather be damned in hell than let Gallen take all the vengeance this time.
They reached a huge set of double doors, twenty feet tall and ten feet wide, made of thick wooden planks with great brass rings to pull on. The doors were already opened just wide enough for a thin man to squeeze through.
Lying at the foot of the doors were eleven or twelve Tekkar, sprawled in a bloody heap. Orick leapt up and grabbed a brass ring in his teeth, then pulled back the door, swung it wider.
Ceravanne held up the glow globe, and peered inside. There was a great chamber, sixty feet long, with ceilings forty feet high. The dim red lights scavenged from a dronon hive city glowed at the far end, and beneath the lights on a broad-backed throne of gold sat a small woman, her shoulders hunched, a golden mantle cascading over her shoulders.
Gallen himself was kneeling before the throne, his mantle spread before him on the floor, his dronon pulp pistol discarded at his side. Orick’s heart skipped a beat. Gallen had come all this way to protect them, to fight for them, and now Orick saw him kneeling, helpless before the Harvester. The heavy scent of the Harvester’s pheromones filled the room, sweet and cloying.
For her part, the Harvester seemed to be staring into Gallen’s face, and she looked up as Ceravanne and Orick entered, her sad green eyes gazing at them, so much like Ceravanne’s eyes.
All along the walls were doorways, and at each doorway stood a Tekkar guard, draped in black robes that were longer than the norm, holding a sword pointed down toward the floor. Four guards lay sprawled upon the carpet just inside the door, where Gallen had killed them.
The Harvester reached out toward them, made a pulling gesture, as the Inhuman’s agents often did when greeting one another, and said softly, “I’ve been waiting for you.”
The room’s lights shone over her platinum hair, sparkled in her pale green eyes. Ceravanne looked at herself, the Harvester.
The Harvester glanced about at Gallen and the others in confusion. “It took only four of you to cause so much destruction?”
Ceravanne nodded, and her heart pounded in her chest. She looked to both sides. The air in here was still heavy with the scent of the explosive charges from the dronon pulp gun, but there was a mustier smell of things long dead. As Ceravanne scanned the room, she recognized the source. What she had first thought to be Tekkar guards lining the walls were in fact the dead, mummified remains of Tekkar, their bodies dried, their faces painted over with some preservative lacquer. Gallen had already killed the living guards, yet he knelt before the Harvester’s throne, unmoving, and Ceravanne’s heart pounded within her.
“What are you doing?” Orick growled at Gallen. But Gallen did not move, did not answer.
“You have damaged him,” the Harvester said, and she reached down and removed Gallen’s mantle. “Someone tried to remove his Word, but enough of it is still intact. He is Inhuman still, and here in Moree, he cannot harm me.”
Ceravanne looked at Gallen in horror, saw that he was breathing heavily. He grunted, a faint cry, and Ceravanne realized that he was only holding still with a great struggle. The Inhuman held him.
“Who is he?” the Harvester asked, looking at Gallen’s face.
“Don’t you know?” Ceravanne asked. “He is Belorian.”
“No,” the Harvester said angrily. “Belorian is dead. His memories are lost.”
“Yet his genome lives,” Ceravanne said. “You know that much. And this one was reborn on a world like ours. He is Belorian in all but name.”
The Harvester looked at him thoughtfully. “I shall keep him, then, as my own.”
There was an electricity between the two women, almost sizzling. For long years, Ceravanne had wondered if even she could be subverted by the Inhuman, and now she saw the proof of it. If this woman remembered Belorian, then she could not be some empty-headed clone created by the dronon. This had to be Ceravanne’s older self, the woman who’d been lost a year ago. Ceravanne, with all her memories intact. Here was a Tharrin who proposed to rule a world of slaves, who claimed that she would keep Gallen as her personal pet, and yet Ceravanne wondered. Ceravanne and the Harvester were of the same flesh. How could they take such divergent paths? Though Ceravanne often felt the tug, the desire to manipulate others to her own ends, she had rejected that path a million times. It seemed to Ceravanne that at the very core of their being, there must be some commonality, some shred of decency that they still shared.
“We share much,” Ceravanne said, “but we do not share a belief that we can own others. I have come to reclaim you, my sister-self. I suspected that you could not be lost among the Tekkar. Even taken as a slave, you would soon make yourself queen.”
“There is nothing here to reclaim,” the Harvester whispered vehemently. “I am Inhuman now.”
“A lover of war?” Ceravanne whispered. “Then why have not the Tekkar already been unleashed on Northland? Instead you send spies, carrying copies of the Word. It is a frail weapon indeed, for one who professes not to value life. No, you lead a peaceful war, a beneficent war, and you tame the dogs that serve you.
“Even now, I suspect that you have guards ready to do your bidding. Have them cut us down, if you can. But I know that you can’t. No matter what the Inhuman has taught you, no matter how it has sought to turn you, we still share something.” Ceravanne pointed to her heart.