Someone picked Gallen up on his shoulders, and for one moment Orick saw his golden hair limned in the morning light. Orick suddenly envied the man-a hero on ten thousand worlds-while Orick didn’t even know if he’d won the title of Primal Bear of Obhiann and Morgan counties. Only two days before, Orick had been reading the parable of the talents in the Bible, and he wondered if he himself was progressing as God would have him. So often, Orick was content to be-well, just Orick. And somehow that didn’t seem enough. He silently vowed to do better.
But just as suddenly, Orick too was lifted by strong hands, and he and Gallen and Maggie and Thomas were carried upon human shoulders into the city.
Orick bawled out for the people to let him go, for it was rather precarious for a fat bear to be carried by humans, but to his delight, they ignored his pleas.
Orick looked forward, and Gallen smiled, pleased but embarrassed by this show of affection, and Orick felt glad for him. Gallen had been cast off from his own world, but it appeared now that he’d won back more than he’d lost.
Maggie, for her part, looked resplendent, a huge grin on her face that you couldn’t clean off with lye soap. And Thomas shouted to Orick in glee, “Some welcome, eh, Orick?”
They entered the city of Toohkansay with great fanfare and were treated to feasts. And that night, painters decorated the sky with incandescent clouds of plasma in Gallen’s and Maggie’s honor. A band of twelve people from various worlds played beautiful instruments that could sing as sweetly as birds or cut a man to the heart, and Thomas took up his lute and played and sang with them, astonishing the people of Toohkansay with his prowess. Upon hearing a ballad that Thomas had composed, a Master Musician honored Thomas by giving him his own mantle, as “just recompense” for the performance. As soon as Thomas had placed the silver mantle upon his head, his eyes began to water as he learned the music of the universe.
Shortly afterward, Thomas was forced to ask Gallen to take him to his rooms for the night, for he needed seclusion.
“I think it’s time for all of us to make a night of it,” Gallen said. The mayor of Toohkansay himself offered to escort them to an inn that had the finest rooms in the city, and when they reached the door, he asked Gallen if there was anything he needed for the night.
Gallen said, “I need access to an ansible. I must talk with Lady Everynne.”
“Even with an ansible, it takes several hours to send messages so far,” the mayor said. He was a tall, bald man whose skin shone as if it were oiled. “Is there a question you have, so that we can ask a response?”
“She set me a task. Tell her that I would like more direction. I’ll want to review her response in private.”
“As you wish,” the mayor said, then he departed.
Gallen and Maggie took one room as man and wife, and they went in.
Orick and Thomas were each given separate rooms across a wide hallway, and they stood for a moment. Thomas closed his eyes and whispered, “Ah, Orick, have you heard the fine music here?” And Orick knew that Thomas was listening through his mantle.
“I’ve heard some,” Orick said.
Thomas shook his head, as if words could not convey what he wanted to say. “I can hear the music of ten thousand worlds, composed over the past thirty-eight thousand years … All of my life has been so … cramped, so stilted.” Hot tears were flowing from his eyes, and Thomas was weeping bitterly. “How could I have been so blind? There is so much to explore!”
“How do you mean?”
“We’re babes, Orick! On Tihrglas, I thought I was at the end of my life. But I’ll need an eternity to perfect my skills as a musician, and another to compose my songs!”
Orick looked up at Thomas, at the gray streaks in his hair, and he could see that the aging man was at the beginning of his own incredible adventure. At this very moment, Thomas had his foot stuck in the door of heaven, and he was set to put his shoulder to that door and force it open.
“Well, then,” Orick said, for lack of anything better to say, “it’s good night to you.” Orick went into his own room, and he sat and thought. Thomas, right now, Orick was sure, was in his room getting his head crammed full of knowledge, probably weeping his eyes out for joy. Gallen was hailed as the hero of ten thousand worlds and was most likely frolicking with the woman he loved most in life.
And Orick, well, Orick tried to sleep on a soft bed, but found it to be too odd. It was large enough, but it hadn’t been made to hold a bear, and he sank so low into it that he kept having a spooky feeling that he might drown. So instead he lay on the floor beneath an open window, watching the galaxies pinwheeling overhead, and skyships streaking through the night like meteors. He wondered if he would ever find happiness.
When Orick had been a cub, his mother once told him a tale. She’d said that the hummingbird was the sweetest-tasting of all fowl, for it alone of all birds fed upon the nectar of flowers. She’d said that the sweetest honey tasted bland in comparison.
And so Orick had taken to hiding in a thicket of summer lilies, leaping up after hummingbirds whenever he heard the trill of their wings. But no matter how well he hid, or how quickly he leapt, the hummingbirds would always lift themselves just out of his reach.
Orick drifted asleep, dreaming of jumping, jumping, leaping impossibly high to catch honey-scented hummingbirds, which he held gingerly in his teeth, savoring them.
He heard a chiming noise as Gallen’s door opened across the hall, and Orick got up groggily, stepped out into the dark arching corridors of the inn, where gems in the ceiling lit the dim way.
Gallen was standing in the corridor, fully dressed in the black of a Lord Protector.
“What are you about?” Orick asked.
“Shhh …” Gallen signaled for Orick to follow him, and they crept down the familiar streets. It was soon obvious to Orick where Gallen was heading: to the quarters where Lord Karthenor dwelt with his aberlains.
But when they reached those offices where Lord Karthenor had enslaved Maggie and dozens of other workers, the buildings were stripped bare. The Dronon guards were gone, the machinery removed.
Gallen walked through a dozen dark rooms, until he reached the last, then stood, staring into nothingness.
“Couldn’t sleep, thinking about him?” Orick asked.
“I wondered if he was still here. He would have heard that Maggie and I were back.”
“From the scent, I’d say he’s been gone a while,” Orick said. “The aberlains probably left the day the dronon pulled out.”
“Maggie says that the women on this world will conceive children built in the image of the dronon hive,” Gallen said distantly. “Some women will have swollen bellies, and they will be breeders, giving birth to six or eight children at a time, as if they were hound bitches.
“Other women will be born to labor, never able to give themselves to a man in love, barren except for an irresistible craving to work from dawn to dusk.
“Some men will be thinkers and planners.
“And some men will be born to war, bred to fight and hate and bully others into worshiping the dronon Golden Queen. And all of this happened because people like Lord Karthenor were willing to sell mankind’s secrets to the dronon.
“In all probability, we will suffer for a thousand generations for what Karthenor and his aberlains have done.”
Orick didn’t understand much about how Karthenor and his aberlains manipulated unborn children into becoming something so strange, but he knew that Karthenor had done unmentionable evil. He’d known it from the moment when Karthenor had placed his Guide upon Maggie’s head, enslaving her so that she could be his worker. “Aye, no beating would be great enough to suffice for that man,” Orick grumbled.
Behind them, someone cleared his throat, and Orick turned. A man stood in the shadows in a comer, a man wearing the robes and mantle of a Lord Protector. His robes had so blended into the night, that Orick had not seen him. And Orick could still not smell his scent. “Perhaps he is already paying a penalty,” he said.