Shadow Gate (7 page)

Her interest was genuine. She was envious, in an amused way. She didn't trust Marit, not in these days with any kind of traveler out on the roads and every sort of awful rumor blown on the winds. The region of Sohayil remained a haven of relative calm probably only because of the ancient magic bound into the bones of the surrounding hills as a fence against trouble. But on the other hand, a lone traveler wasn't likely to cause much trouble unless she was a spy scouting for—

She glanced away, as if troubled, and the contact broke.

“For what?” asked Marit.

“Eh!” The envoy laughed awkwardly as she looked back at Marit. “For what? If I could find silk that good in quality, I'd get a length of blue and make a wedding wrap for my granddaughter. But not white, like that. White is—White's not a color for weddings.” White is death's color, but any decent person is too well mannered to mention that to someone who clearly has nothing else to wear against the rain.

“My thanks, Your Holiness. My thanks for your hospitality.”

“Blessed is Ilu, who walks with travelers.” Her smile remained friendly, but it was pitying as well:
Especially poor kinless women like this one, alone in the world. No one should have to be so alone.

Shaken, Marit retreated from the temple gate and from its neighboring village of Rifaran. She walked back to the glade where she had concealed Warning. She slurped down the porridge, the spices a prickle in her nostrils, but the comforting nai did not settle her. She worked through a set of exercises with the training staff,
but the martial forms did not focus her today. Even the delicate shift of the wind in trees flowering with the rains did not soothe her.

She'd never been a loner. She liked people. But perhaps she liked them better when she didn't have an inkling of what was really going on in their heads.

She sank down on her haunches, grass brushing her thighs. Red-petaled heart-bush and flowering yellow goldcaps bobbed as the breeze worked through the meadow. White bells and purple muzz swayed. Everywhere color dazzled, and the scent of blooming made the world sweet.

“Great Lady,” she whispered, “don't abandon me, who has always been your faithful apprentice. Let me be strong enough for the road ahead. Let me be strong enough to stop thinking of Joss, to let what was in the past stay in the past. Let me be wise enough to know that what we shared then, we can no longer share. My eyes are open, and there are some places and some hearts I do not want to see.”

Tears slid from her eyes. She wiped them away. “Hear me, Lady. I'll stay away from him. In exchange, please watch over him even though he belongs to Ilu. Surely we are all your children. I'll follow this road, wherever it takes me. I will always act as your loyal apprentice, as I always have. I will serve the law, as I always have. Hear me, Lady. Give me a sign.”

Warning stamped. A red deer parted a thick stand of heart-bush and paced into the meadow. Twin fawns, tiny creatures so new that they tottered on slender legs, stumbled into view behind her. The deer stared at Marit for a long, cool hesitation, and then sprang away into the forest with the fawns at her heels.

Marit smiled, her heart's grief easing a little. The Lady of Beasts had heard her oath, and had answered her.

S
HE NO LONGER
needed much sleep, and anyway she didn't fancy the flavor of her dreams, which seemed to
cycle between Lord Radas whipping hounds and archers in pursuit as she fled into a dark mazy forest, or her lover Joss aged into a cursed attractive middle-aged man except for his habit of drinking himself into and out of headaches and flirting up women at every opportunity. She'd never thought of him as a person with so little self-control.

She napped in the middle of the day, hiding herself and the mare in brush or trees. In early morning and late afternoon she worked through her forms diligently. She rode at night. Under Warning's hooves, the road took on a faint gleam that lit their way. It was funny how quickly you got accustomed to a piece of magic like that, when it aided you. She minded the night rains less when she was awake. They washed through and away, blown by the winds, and afterward her clothes would dry off as she rode.

One night, Warning shied and halted, refusing to go farther. Marit led her into cover just before she heard the tramp of marching men. They were a motley group; she could see them pretty well despite overcast skies that admitted no light of moon. They had torches, and all manner of weapons, and they were moving fast and purposefully, heading southwest. Their captain with his horsetail ornaments had a ragged scar crudely healed across his clean-shaven chin, and he had the look of a real northerner, hair and complexion lightened to a pale brown by outlander blood. They all wore a crude tin medallion on a string at their necks, a star with eight points. In a cold moment, set against the misty-warm night, she recognized the men who had tried to capture her in the mountains.

She moved on once Warning was willing to go, but she could not shake the sight of those men. Most likely Hari had confessed that he'd seen her, and identified the Guardian altar where she had been standing. It seemed likely they were marching to the Soha Hills, hoping to trap her.

They'll never give up. They want me that badly.

She plotted a path in her head that would, she hoped, lead her to Toskala. She and the mare pushed north through Sund for days, begging at temples and farmsteads at dawn or twilight. She was always looking over her shoulder.

Warning, deprived of her favored sustenance at the Guardian altars, began to graze with the same enthusiasm a dog might display eating turnips. She deigned to water in streams and ponds as if the process disgusted her.

When they reached the region of Sardia, where the tributary road they were traveling on met the Lesser Walk, they turned east toward Toskala. Late in the afternoon they set out through woodland on a track running more or less parallel to the paved road. Just before dusk they began moving through managed woodlands, skirting an orchard and diked fields marked with poles carved at the peak with the doubled axe sacred to the Merciless One.

She found a copse of murmuring pine and left Warning in its shelter. Walking along the embankment between fields, she headed toward a compound lying in the center of cultivated land. From here she could not see the main road, but she knew it was close. She circled around the high compound walls, ringed at their height with wire hung with bells to keep out intruders. Drizzle spat over the ground as she stepped up onto the entry path and walked to the gate.

The doors were shut with the dusk, lamps hanging high on the wall. She ventured into the light and raised both hands to show she was holding no weapon.

“Greetings of the dusk,” she called. “I'm a traveler, begging for the goddess's mercy by way of a bit to eat and drink. Maybe some grain for the road. Withered apples? Anything you have to spare.” She held out her bowl.

“Go away,” said a woman's voice from atop the walls. “Our gates are closed.”

Among other things, Marit had been at pains to discover
what day and month it was, now that she knew she had slept through nineteen years and by doing so walked from the Year of the Black Eagle, with perhaps a slight detour through the Year of the Blue Ox, directly into the Year of the Silver Fox.

“I'm surprised to hear you say so, holy one. I thought Ushara's temples kept their gates open all day and all night of the day of Wakened Snake. So it always was in my own village.”

“The gates are closed, day and night,” said the woman. “Shadows walk abroad. No one can be trusted, so we no longer let anyone in. Go away, or we'll kill you.” Marit sensed the presence of five others along the wall.

“How can this be, holy one? The Devourer turns no person away. Her gates are always open.”

She received no answer, and no beggar's tithe, and when they shot a warning arrow to stab the dirt at her feet, she walked away.

S
HE HAD BETTER
luck in the villages and towns set up as posting stations along the Lesser Walk. The folk there might be wary and reluctant to share with a mere beggar, but the laws of the gods were clear on the duty owed by householders and temples toward indigent wanderers.

“Greetings of the day to you, verea,” said the shopgirl, a pretty young thing in a shabby taloos that was frayed at the ends. She tried a smile, but it was as frayed as the fabric, barely holding together. She looked ready to duck away from the hard slap her father would give her if she didn't close more sales this month than last month, even if it wasn't her fault that so few travelers were out on Sardia's main road, the principal route through this region to Toskala.

“Greetings of the day to you,” said Marit. The girl's cringing attitude disturbed her, so anger gave bite to her tone.

“I'm sorry. How can I help you? I'm sure there's
something here you must need. What are you looking for?” Desperation made the girl's voice breathy. She was trying too hard.

Marit forced a kinder tone. “I need a brush. For grooming a horse. And something to pick stones out of its hooves. It's a nice shop. You must get a lot of customers here, you're in a good stopping point along the road.”

“Custom used to be better,” admitted the girl, relaxing a little. She had a round face and a honey-colored complexion, smooth and unblemished. “Folk don't travel anymore.”

“Why is that?”

The girl glanced at the entryway. Wide strips of hanging cloth, stamped with the gold sigil of the merchants' guild, were tied back to either side, so with the doors slid open, she could see straight down the road along which the posting town sprawled. The girl sucked in a sharp breath. Fear rose off her like steam. Marit turned.

She should have noticed the cessation of street noise, followed by the ominous slap of feet. A pack of armed men strode down the street, breaking off in groups of two and three to climb onto the porches of shops and dive through the entrances without even the courtesy of taking off their sandals.

The girl reached over the counter to tug on Marit's sleeve. “We have to hide!” she whispered, but her thoughts screamed:
They'll take me like they took Brother. Father won't protect me this time.
“Quick, duck down over behind the chest there, they won't look. Papa!” She opened the door to the back and vanished as she slid the door hard shut behind her.

Shelves lined the shop front, but pickings were scarce: a pair of used brushes polished to look new; a single piece of stiff new harness, and several neatly looped lead lines recently oiled. A few other refurbished items also catered to travelers whose gear might have broken along the road. The chest had the bulky look of a piece left behind
by a prosperous merchant fallen on hard times; not many people could afford the weight of such an oversized container.

The door to the back snapped open.

“Cursed beggar!” A sweat-stained man slammed the door shut behind him. Marit realized she had let her cloak open, which revealed her ragged clothing still damp from the dawn's shower. “Get out of the shop, or duck down behind that chest. I don't want trouble from you! Beyond what I've already got!”

She dropped down into the narrow gap between the chest and a set of lower shelves. The space was so small she had to turn her head to breathe, facing into the open shelving. A pile of brushes and combs had been shoved back here, pieces missing teeth or with wood cracking.

A heavy stride hammered along the porch. A man's voice raised in the shop next door.

“You promised me eight new halters, but here are only four. I'll need coin to make up for the ones I'll have to purchase elsewhere.”

A murmured reply answered him. Marit could not hear the exact words, but terror drifted like a miasma. Beside her face, dust smeared the lowest shelf and its discarded goods, and dust stirred in an unsettled swirl of air as the man stomped into the shop where she hid.

“Heya! What about it!” he shouted, although there was something insincere about the way he bellowed. “Where are those lead lines you promised us?” In a lower, more natural voice, he added, “What news, you cursed worm?”

The shopkeeper replied in a rapid whisper. “There's little to tell, Captain. The leatherworker is hiding the rest of his stock in the grain house in his courtyard. The woman who makes banners is hiding stock down by the mulberry orchard, in the old tomb of the Mothers, plenty of good cloth for tents and other such things. This is the third week the farmers have refused to come to market.”

“We've taken care of the farmers.” His voice had a snarl in it. Marit's skin prickled; it was like being close to a lightning strike, wondering where the next bolt would burst free.

The shopkeeper groveled. “The blacksmith left town. Thought he'd walk to Toskala. Hoped to be safe there.”

“He didn't get far.”

“Eh, hah, sure it is you'd not let such a valuable man walk out on you in your year of need.”

“He's working where he can't argue so much, it's true. You've told me nothing I don't already know, excepting for the bit about the leatherworker hiding goods from us. I know you have a daughter as well as the lad. I need more than this in payment, ver.” His tone was sly and nasty, drunk as much with the power he held as with the wine he'd been drinking.

Marit wanted to grab the slimy weasel and slam him against the counter until he begged for mercy and returned all that had been stolen, but of course this village had clearly lost far more than could ever be restored now. Anyway she had no weapon except the old knife, whose wooden handle was coming loose, and her walking staff, hard to use effectively in a crowded shop. She hated herself for what she could not do.

“A reeve came through,” said the man reluctantly.

“Sheh! You know it's forbidden for you folk to talk or tithe to reeves.”

“I know it, I know it,” he gabbled. “But the reeve wore the Star of Life, like you folk do. He said he was flying down to Argent Hall, where a marshal was to be elected or murdered or some such. That's what he said. How can we stop a reeve from flying in, when all's said and done? Eh? Eh?” He was whining. “There's nothing we can do when folk do walk into town on their own feet. We can't stop them.”