Stargate Read Free Page B

“I don’t know. Perhaps two hundred years of mortal time have passed since the Trader came through the Gate and sought audience with me. He said he dealt in woods and fruits and had brought tree seeds for us, but also that he had run from Tran with a great and dangerous treasure to place in my keeping.”
    â€œTran!” Ixelion exclaimed. “But the Gate on Tran was closed a millennium ago!”
    She nodded. “I know. I was there, we all were, when Tranin went down into black fire. I should have been suspicious of the Trader. I should have ordered him to carry the treasure to the council. But I was proud, and secure in the knowledge of my safety. Let the others fall, I told myself. I, Falia, am incorruptible! I took it from his hands and was seized with the desire to keep it for my own. That overwhelming greed should have warned me that the Unmaker was breathing through my Gate, but I was oblivious to all save the feel of the thing under my fingers. The Trader laughed at me and went away, leaving me with it. I took one look and knew what it was. I was afraid for the first time in my life, and my sun felt my fear and quivered in the sky.” She rose suddenly and cast the box to the floor. “Cursed be the Unmaker and his selfishness and his hatred! Cursed be the Trader, whose heart was as black as his scarf!” She wrestled with herself, both hands now tight about her necklet. “I should have carried the thing to Danar and given it to Janthis as soon as I recognized it, but instead I came up here and looked at it. The more I looked, the more afraid I became. I fled often into the times when the suns and we were new, and though each time I came back, I was tainted, and Fallan began to slide away from me. The people from my other planets began to complain of the riders, saying that I favored them and gave them everything and that they would not share because I did not order it. There was thieving and murder, but because I have no authority, I could not judge. They demanded new laws, but what right do we have to make laws? I did not fight. I did not seek help from the council, because I knew that Janthis would order the closing of my Gate. I sealed my hall and came up here and went away. That is all!”
    Ixelion wanted to ask her what the treasure was, and suddenly his mind was inflamed with a desire to see it for himself, but he recognized the desire as a foreign emotion, imposed on him by the dark power that now flooded Fallan and wished to drown him also. He had no difficulty in extinguishing it. I am whole, he said to himself. Ixel is whole. We will stay that way forever. He walked around to face her and offered her his hand, but she looked up at him, pleading.
    â€œOnce more, Ixelion, I beg you. Come back with me to the days when you and I would sit together before my hall while the riders wheeled below us and the wind smelled of new growth.” He would have liked to visit her again in those times, unchanged and beautiful, but he shook his head, reaching down and pulling her to her feet.
    â€œNo, Falia,” he said roughly. “Time on Fallan is in the hands of the Unmaker now. It has become a trap, an invitation to illusion, as you well know. The members of the council are waiting for you by the Gate, and you have a decision to make. We must go now.”
    She did not protest again but picked up the box, rose without another word, and led the way out of the icy chamber. Down the stairs, through a hall which opened out into another wide chamber, she glided before him, cleaving the darkness with her silver hair, still faintly burnished by her sun’s waning light. He caught up with her as she crossed the last cavernous hall, where her riders used to prance, where in the nights she used to borrow light and heat from her sun and fill the airy space with joy, and together they came at last to the pair of arches, and the gray stairs, and the long plain beyond. She went out