Stargate by Pauline Gedge Read Free Book Online Page B

him! We are flawless. We will fight him with truth, with wholeness and goodness!”
    Danarion had risen, his hands flat on the sun-disc flaming on his breast, his golden eyes large with the intensity of his words. “Truth has no arms!” he shouted. “Think, Ghakazian! Beauty cannot fight! The things that we are, that our mortals are, can only be a wall, a defense against what he is. To take up his weapons is to put on his evil!”
    â€œStop!” Sholia cried out, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands pressed over her ears. “Oh, stop! I cannot fight. I do not want to fight! I only want to see all as it was. I want him seated with us in his chair, I want Falia back, and Firor. I want the past to be the present once again!”
    Danarion heavily resumed his seat. Ixelion had buried his face in his hands. Ghakazian folded his wings and his arms, muttering to himself. “The Lawmaker has forbidden the closing of any Gate unless those within it have become a danger to the rest,” Janthis said emphatically, rising. “He has chosen not to unmake the Worldmaker, and if you think about it, you will see that had he done so, he would have become like the Unmaker, but infinitely more terrible. He has not forgotten us, but his time is not our time, just as our time is not the mortal’s time. This council is over. Go home, all of you. I will summon you when I need you.” Quickly he turned, climbed the three steps leading up to the dais, and disappeared behind his door. Ixelion stood up immediately, his limbs clumsy, his head averted, and fled the chamber. Sholia reached up a hand to Ghakazian.
    â€œCome with me to Shol for a little while,” she begged him softly. “We will walk on the docks and watch the ships unload their cargoes.”
    He nodded briefly, and arm in arm they traversed the black, smooth floor, their feet covering stars, their shadows drowning the worlds sunk deep beneath the surface. Only five systems lit their way, glowing in a soft, muted pattern of steady light. The rest of the floor was in darkness.
    Danarion remained for a while, leaning back in his chair, watching the beams of Danar’s sun turn from white to pale pink as the sun crept along the table toward its setting. Birds flew in and out the clerestory windows high above. The enormous sun hanging on the wall to his right, beyond the Worldmaker’s chair and the dais, gradually gathered the gloom to itself, fading from bright gold to a sullen, dark copper. Impatiently, almost angrily, he turned to it and spoke a word, and the surface burst into life, flooding the upper end of the hall with brilliant rays of light. Ixelion, he thought. Ixelion. I do not really know. I do not have the Unmaker’s cynical ease of divination, I cannot feel for the seeds of something I have only seen at its blind conclusion. He wanted to talk to Janthis, but the door was tightly closed, and no sound came from within the small room. He did not dare to knock. What if a Messenger were there? He got up and left the hall, brow furrowed, and when he found himself outside the palace, on the wide terrace where his sun had laid its myriad scarlet fingers, he paused. “May I sit here on the step, beside you?” he enquired politely of one of the long row of corions fronting each pillar, and when the beast inclined its head, not looking at him, he sank down beside it, his gaze traveling the tops of the haeli trees beyond, the gold of their leaves now slashed with red. Deliberately and consciously he repeated to himself the bounds of his responsibilities, savoring the comfort and gladness of each word, and when they had all been laid out in his mind, coherent and sane, and the image of Ixelion’s face had faded, he closed his eyes and withdrew into the welcoming heart of his sun, resting without anxiety, wrapped in its warmth and its uncomplaining obedience.

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    Ixelion ran out of the hall along the lofty passages that wound