Free Stargate by Pauline Gedge Page B

regained his chair. For a while longer they waited, not looking at one another; then Sholia stirred.
    â€œHe does not come,” she said. “Why? The call would reach him anywhere. On Lix, in his pool … Anywhere.”
    Danarion watched his fingers interlock with tension. Ixelion was troubled when I saw him last, he thought. Sitting here, his eyes running from us like a hunted animal on a dying world. I should have gone with him to Ixel, talked to him. But about what? His own gaze met Janthis’s in resignation, and Janthis passed his hands over his face, a curious gesture of mortal fatigue.
    â€œDanarion, Ghakazian,” he said. “Go to Ixel and find him. I think …”
    â€œWhat?” Sholia cried out. “You think what? Not Ixelion. It cannot be.”
    â€œIt can,” Ghakazian replied harshly, and Sholia went very white.
    â€œHe would have been doubly on his guard after walking the ruins of Fallan,” she said stubbornly. “You know how close he and Falia were. Surely he went back to Ixel with the vision of her fall painful in his mind, his resolve to stay free hardened!”
    â€œPerhaps he could not bear the thought of the long years ahead without her,” Ghakazian said more gently. “He was too lonely, and the loneliness bred despair.”
    â€œAnd perhaps he may simply be in his sun,” Janthis remarked dryly. “We cannot know until you go to him. Sholia and I will wait for you here.”
    Danarion rose unwillingly, knowing that he had failed Ixelion, that he must reproach himself.
    â€œStand behind me,” Ghakazian said to him. “Place your hands on my shoulders.”
    Danarion did so as Ghakazian spread his wings, and without another word they lifted from the floor of the chamber, Danarion’s hands gripping Ghakazian’s wide, naked shoulders, the dark brown hair taking the wind and blowing back into his face. Out of the palace they swept, the wings beating slowly, lazily. Ghakazian swung to the left, glided over the stone arch that leaped to Danar’s Gate, and came to rest at the mouth of the passage. Danarion released his grip, and together they passed under the stone sun, between the two carved corions, walking swiftly to the Gate. They stepped off the rim of Danar into the star-pierced blackness, calling to Ixel’s sun as they fell. It heard them and answered, sweeping them toward itself, but long before they flashed past it, they felt the wavering of its power, and dread enfolded them as they were jerked toward the Gate. The sun released them, and they tumbled through. Glancing at each other in consternation, they ran, speeding along the causeway beside the muttering canal. There had been no guards at the entrance. They came out suddenly under Ixel’s gray sky and stopped as though an invisible hand had been raised against them.
    â€œCan you feel it?” Ghakazian whispered. “The disintegration? What has he done, Danarion?”
    â€œHe lied to us,” Danarion answered grimly, his flesh cringing away from the dank, hostile growth under his feet, the dead, stinking fog that seemed to billow hungrily toward him. “He has fallen. Carry me, Ghakazian. I cannot bear to walk this world.”
    Obediently Ghakazian turned his back, and together they rose into the heavy air. Ghakazian’s wings were soon drenched in the mist which clung to their hair and dribbled down their spines, and the feathers spewed back a shower of cold as they made a circuit of the dense forest. Then Ghakazian turned and sped toward Ixelion’s ice-pinnacled palace. As they drew near it they saw that the protective seals quivered at the doors and the windows showed no light. A bitter, angry feeling of defeat stole over Danarion, so familiar, so very familiar. Ghakazian folded back his wings and alighted on the topmost, water-drowned step, and Danarion put down his feet unwillingly. The stair bit back at him with the cold