The Belar (A Tale from the Gateway Worlds) Read online

were grabbed and she was dragged back inside. She dug her fingers into the rock, but was powerless to prevent it.

  Then she calmed herself, played a short trill, deliberately sending small waves of power from the graymany into herself.

  The hands at her ankles disengaged, more surprised than hurt by the energy bolt she had unleashed.

  Maya pulled her legs through, fell upon the floor.

  Scrambling sounds behind told her she had little time.

  She stood, ran towards the Great Falls and threw herself through the powerful downpour. She emerged on its far side gasping for air, some three hundred feet above the rocky plunge pool below.

  Such elevations were not uncommon for her. Often she would ascend to heights much greater in search of lost or escaped runeyan. Calmly she swung the graymany overhead, played it gently and slowed her descent so she hovered safely.

  Where are you? She thought.

  Suddenly, she was where Adam was, looking down upon herself from a rocky ledge.

  She ascended swiftly towards him.

  Is he part of this elaborate game to acquire my graymany? Maya wondered.

  If I wanted your spear, shepherd, I would have taken it from you yester eve.

  Yet the coincidence of our meeting. Your gift of the seed. It seems too...

  Fortunate?

  Yes.

  Fortune played a small part, but as I said, I’ve been watching you for a long time. As have others.

  Maya smiled in response to her understanding and advanced upon his precarious position.

  Her heart sank when she saw his true predicament.

  Adam clutched a root below a collapsed path. Two men from the indigenous tribes were alternately stabbing him with outstretched spears. Spears of wood and flint. Nothing more.

  But enough, for each blow punctured the old prospector afresh.

  Maya charged them, slashing one with her graymany as she landed and knocking him off the path. He screamed as he fell and fell, down towards the plunge pool far below. The other fled.

  Maya hovered beside Adam, grabbed him, descended with him rapidly to the ground.

  “You are badly hurt,” she observed, removing his upper clothes and swinging her spear around, playing a chord and using the end to cauterise the bloody puncture wounds. But there were so many. Too many.

  “Thank you, my friendly shepherd,” said Adam amid numerous coughs that spoke of bleeding within.

  “I must get you back to the colony.”

  “No!” he snapped. “No,” more calmly. “I cannot... cannot, return there.”

  Maya seemed not to hear that. “I have stopped the worst of the bleeding,” she said urgently, “but you will surely die if you remain here.”

  Adam did not answer.

  Maya, assuming his silence to be consent, lifted him, played lightly upon the graymany and soared above the trees toward the plains.

  Mile after mile swept by.

  The sun crawled into the sky ahead, ominously red.

  Eventually Maya grew weary and was forced to land.

  “How... how much farther?”

  Maya thought of the colony’s collective of brightly shining domes.

  I see, Adam replied in her mind. Indeed a wondrous place, but no longer safe. You must leave this world. Find a new home.

  Why?

  Images flashed in Maya’s mind. A gentle trickle of offworlders growing into a steady stream, bringing with them terra-forming technologies that ultimately led to death and destruction. Within decades the water would be without sulphur, the air full of nitrogen and oxygen, the plains cleared to make way for huge agricultural plants or left to rot in the putrid air. Within centuries, all indigenous life would expire, the runeyans, the biterflies, the firewasps, even, eventually the indigenous peoples who refused to bow to their new and unwanted masters. All, from the greatest trees to the humblest blades of grass. Everything obliterated. Broken.

  How do you know this?

  Maya was shown a marble of blue and green and gold floating in a field of strange stars; the old prospectors home world. She suddenly realised that he was amongst those first droplets of invasion. That all the prospectors were. Each wore devices at the throat to help them breath, eat and drink, and all wore similar implants beside the eyes, presumably to help them see.

  She stood, let him fall back upon the soft grass. “Why help me if you want us dead?”

  “I grow tired,” he replied, coughing. “No. That’s untrue. I love this world. Certainly, I need all these implants to live. I must take regular medication, pump your water through machines before it is safe for me to drink, risk my life whenever I eat, but there is a beauty here. A beauty I have seen only once before. In pictures. My home world looks similar, as I have shown you, except for the chemical differences, of course, but we... we want more. We seek more. We were shown a way. A series of Gateways that allowed us to travel vast distances. Find new worlds. We have spent many generations seeking the equal of our home world. This world. This moon. Davox. Floating above the planet we call Utainium is the closest I have ever seen. The closest I am ever likely to see. The closest my people will ever find. They will come. They will come.”

  “You plan to invade?”

  “Me?” The old prospector laughed, coughed up blood. “No. My people? Yes. They call it colonisation.”

  “Then return to them, tell them you found nothing. No beauty!”

  “Everything I see and do is recorded, transmitted to an orbiting satellite, and from there relayed to my colony, many light years away. But so close. Too close. Just a doorway away. When they see what I have seen here, what I have done here, what I have found here. They will come. Some have already arrived. Your captor. Stripping what they can, stealing, assimilating new and wondrous technologies. Like your spear. Taking what they want; taking what they believe is already theirs.” Adam coughed again, further bloodying his chin. “More will come. It is only a matter of time.”

  “And what of my sisters? My colony? We are a nomadic people, shepherds that follow the solar winds. But we found solace here. The dangers are minor compared to some worlds we have bedded. The creatures docile and kind. Many of us consider this our home. Our kajkal – our place to die.”

  Adam gasped for air.

  Blood ran from his nose.

  “We must return swiftly to my colony. Your wounds...” Maya insisted.

  “No,” he replied. “No further. This is my place to die.”

  Maya placed a lock of her hair on Adam’s brow, folded his arms across his chest and straightened his legs, according to her customs. She muttered a few words concerning greener pastures, endless sunlight and gentle winds before raising the graymany above her head, playing a tune, and lifting slowly into the air.

  As she flew onward towards her colony so far, far away across the plains, tears filled her eyes as she realised this would be the last time she would see this beautiful world. She cried for her sisters too, already feeling their loss.

  Soon we shall move on, she thought, momentarily catching sight, or was it thought, of an endless pasture agleam in the sun. Soon we shall move on to another planet. Another world.

  Another home.

  Such is the way of the Belar.

  # # #

  The Belar was first published in its original form in Issue 42 of the British Science Fiction & Fantasy Association (BSFA) magazine.

  The Gateway Worlds, where magic keys transport Watchers vast distances, even to new worlds as easily as stepping through a door. Where strange races and wonderful creatures dwell, where the lands are both verdant and barren and too often unimaginably dangerous. Where evil lurks at every turn, where power is all and every Watcher wants it.

  The Belar takes place in the Third Age of the Omni at a time when The Omni were exploring and populating all of the Gateway Worlds. At a time when The Omni were becoming Watchers.

  A full length novel entitled The Watchman’s Daughter, book one in a brand new trilogy called The
Watchman’s Progeny, will be available in 2012, in which strange and wonderful new characters and creatures explore and reveal the true depth and diversity of many of the Gateway Worlds.

  * * *

  Thank you for reading!

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