Stargate Read Online Free PDF Page B

house is open to you always.”
    The corion watched him go for a moment, but once more the warmth of the sun and the thick fragrance of the haeli buds insinuated themselves behind its eyes, and it closed them, slipping into the long grass and its dreams simultaneously. The next traveler along the path had to detour in under the trees, for Storn would move for no one else that day.
    Danarion climbed the steep streets of the city, answering all greetings with a word and a smile, but he did not stop to finger cloth or run his eye over the jewelers’ wares as he usually did. He moved briskly between the lofty wooden buildings, their carved walls glowing soft blue in the sun, the veins and knots sparking gold. He glanced neither to right nor left at the doorways that invited passersby into courtyards full of fruit trees and children running in the shade or murmurous with the splash and tinkle of fountains. He stopped once to let a cart laden with fat purple vegetables go by. It was drawn by four youths clad in the short blue tunics of summer who saluted him, laughing, as they went. A young corion rode atop the load, its tail resting against its paws, the intermingling gold fur and green feathers gleaming, and it inclined its head to him gravely. He walked on, crossed a square drowned in sleepy sunlight and empty of people, stepped quietly by a group of two men and a woman sitting on the ground, their eyes tightly closed, their fingertips meeting together, and came at last to the belt of trees that separated the mortal people from the domain of the sun-lords.
    He entered the Time-forest’s golden shade where nothing lived but the trees themselves, feeling time swirl for a moment around him like a gust of wind, the swift passage of mortal time tugging at his heels and the majestic, slow movement of his own powerful time surging to meet him. The wood was not forbidden to mortals, nor the mighty crenellated towers of the city within a city that rose beyond it, but few mortals chose to take this route to the Gate. It was too silent, too fraught with an unfamiliar mystery that spoke to them of things they were not created to understand.
    Now he could see the foot of the stair between the bluish trunks and fluttering leaves, and his eye traveled upward. Tower piled on tower, walls enfolding walls, wings flung out to more towers and more walls, the palace on Danar was a city carved out of gray stone, designed in the beginning to be the hub of the universe. Shol sat in the center, but Danar had been the council’s meeting place since the Worldmaker had spoken Danarion and his sun into life.
    Danarion began to climb the stairs leading up to Danar’s Gate, five hundred here, five hundred on the other side of the palace, one step for each sun-lord in the universe, a name carved deep into each step. Once these stairs had never been free of the weight of immortal feet, and when night fell, the sun-people passing up and down them had lit the darkness with a vision of stars that had fallen to earth. Now those brilliant beings were only names stamped into rock. Only five remained. The rest served black fire behind closed Gates, or had fought until their suns exploded, or had vanished in the place of the Messengers. Those names glided under Danarion’s feet, each conjuring a face, a world, something unique that would never be replaced, time that had passed and could not be wound back. Mallan, Kallar, Firor, Nagerix, Sigrandor, Falia …
    Danarion came to the first break in the stair. Here two corions sat on watch, one at either side of the silver-patterned stone, their eyes sternly facing out over the treetops, their mouths firmly shut, their crests rising, their wings unfurled. If it had not been for the gentle rise and fall of their chests, they might have been taken for stone themselves. Danarion did not disturb their vigilance. He went on climbing and at last reached the terrace, also guarded by a row of corions. He