The Shadow at the Gate (41 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

KEEP THE BOY ALIVE

Liss and Ronan left right after the lights flared on in the great hall. The sudden luminance revealed a crowd of white, frightened faces. Wailing was heard from somewhere further back in the hall. The court physician hurried past with two attendants in tow, each one clutching bags of potions and ointments and bandages.

“Come,” said Liss.

Her hand settled on Ronan’s arm. They drifted through the throng of people. Guards stood at every door, their eyes examining every face that drew near. Ronan tensed. He missed the weight of his sword on his back. Liss’s fingers tightened on his arm.

“Peace,” she said. “They don’t know what they’re looking for, but they do not look for you. At least not this night. But as for me, I’ve seen what I came looking for, and I must go away with many things to be thought over.”

“What was that?” said Ronan.

The back of his shirt was damp with sweat. It was the first time he had spoken since the darkness had come stalking out of the crowd. His inclination had been to pull Liss behind him, but she had proved more immovable than rock. He had had to content himself by her side. Never had he felt so much fear.

“Not here,” said Liss. A frown crossed her face. “This place is not yet safe. Something is still here. Something hidden and watching.”

She paused. The grand stairway before them leading out and down from the hall was choked with people. A mass of nobility surged down its steps. The air trembled with hysteria, voices on the verge of shouting, weeping, and the stridency of strong men unwilling to show that they were afraid.

“Is there another way out? A quicker way?”

“Through those windows on the far side, I think,” said Ronan.

Her fingers pressed on his arm, toward the windows.

“There’s someone here on the stairs I fear to meet.”

“You?” he said in disbelief.

“Me.”

Liss looked over her shoulder, but Ronan could not tell who she was looking at. The stairway was so crowded that it could have been one of any number of people. The nobility, he thought critically to himself. The best of Tormay with their airs and their lands and their titles—all as terrified as drowning rats.

Rain streaked down against the windows. They opened out onto a stone veranda. Steps descended from the veranda down into the dark and damp of the castle gardens. Others had had the same thought as Ronan, and they passed frightened groups of shadows in the rain. Light from windows fell across shocked faces.

“Scandalous,” someone said close by. “And not even hide or hair of Botrell when it happened. Why. . .” The voice faded into the darkness and the slashing rain.

“Your cloak,” said Ronan. “We’ve left it behind and this rain’ll have you soaked through in no time.”

Liss smiled, shaking her head, and he felt unutterably foolish. And foolish he was, for though he was soon sodden with rain, not a drop touched her. The puddles on the stone veranda shrank back in deference to her slippered foot. Down the long stone steps they went, while the castle rose up alongside them, lights shining from its windows. Then, they were in the dripping gloom of the garden. Oaks huddled over them and the darkness was so complete that Ronan could not trust his eyes.

“There,” Liss said, pointing. “There’s a gate in the wall.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Neither do I, but this night is filled with water. Water’s mine and it tells me many things.”

Sure enough, half-hidden by moss and drooping branches was a little gate of iron bars. It refused to budge when Ronan tried to force it. Liss touched the lock once and the gate swung open.

“Water?”

“Yes,” she said.

They found themselves standing in a dark street skirting the wall of the castle grounds. They were alone and nothing could be heard except for the spatter of the rain and the gurgle of a gutter threatening to encroach on the street.

“Will you tell me?” said Ronan. “Or must I plague myself with questions I can’t answer?”

“Tell you what that was you saw inside the castle?”

“No. Hang what was inside the castle. Why did you choose me?”

Liss stared calmly at him, her face tilted back. He noticed, then, that the rain did touch her. The drops falling on her skin and in her hair vanished as if she was absorbing them. He took a step back.

“You never needed me, did you? You could’ve walked right into the regent’s castle with all the soldiers in Hearne lined up on either side and none of them would’ve dared glance at your shadow.”

“Perhaps,” said Liss. “Power is a chancy thing, even such as mine. When used, it’s like a beacon blazing in the night. It draws unwanted attention. This, I must avoid, for I don’t know what is waiting and watching. But my need of you isn’t confined to what happened this night. Rather, it’s just begun.”

From somewhere close by, a dog barked. Ronan thought it a dog at the first bark, but with the second bark he thought it more a wolf. Though what would a wolf be doing in the middle of Hearne? The third bark, however, slid into a long howl that wavered up into the rainy sky and then was whipped away by the wind. Not a wolf at all. He had never heard such a noise before.

Liss whirled at the sound. She held out her hand so that raindrops pooled in it. She rubbed her thumb across her wet palm.

“Shadowhounds,” she said slowly.

“What?”

“Shadowhounds. Beasts woven of darkness and hunger and dead flesh. They’re hunting this night. We are not the quarry. Rather, I think it my sister and the boy she took with her.”

“Your sister?”

Liss turned to walk away, hurrying down the street. Ronan strode after her to catch up.

“Aye. She who watches over the earth and all the furry kin who live there. All those who bustle about on four legs, and some on two. The lady you saw this night stand before the darkness. It did my heart good to see her, for it has been many years since I’ve come to these shores and I’d forgotten her face, even in my dreams. But the boy was a surprise. I had hoped it was not true, but it is true and real and there lies your task.”

“What task? You speak in riddles.”

It was raining even harder than before now. They were walking through the lower streets of Highneck Rise now. Walls and trees lined the way on either side. Lamps burned at gated entrances, but all such places were barred against the night. The way seemed familiar to Ronan and he realized they had turned onto the Street of Willows. Down at the end of the street was the Galnes house.

“You will find the boy,” she said.

Ronan opened his mouth and then shut it. For a moment he did not see the rain and the night, but only saw the darkness of a chimney and Jute’s face looking up out of it.

“You will keep him safe. Alive. Even if it costs you everything you are. Even if you lose your life.”

“Lady,” said Ronan wretchedly. “I killed that boy once. I killed him and then took him a second time to be killed, and now you ask me to guard his life.”

“Yes.”

“What if I say I can’t do such a thing?”

“Water is mine, and you are mine as well, for my blood runs in your veins now. I’ll not compel you to do this. If compulsion is not married with choice there is a hatefulness in it that can’t help but lead to destruction in the end. I ask you to do it of your own choice, for such a choice will be strong and there’s more to you, Ronan of Aum, than a sword.”

He did not speak, but bowed his head in assent. They came to the stone wall outside the house of Cypmann Galnes. The willow trees swayed in the windy darkness. The gate creaked and a figure appeared. It was the cook, Sanna, with a leather bag over her shoulder. Liss did not stop walking; without a word, the old woman fell in beside her.

“All I want is to leave this city and go north,” Ronan said. “I wanted to build a house in the Flessoray Islands and fish. I didn’t want any of this. I should never have come to this city.”

“If you live a life as long as mine, then you’ll find a great many things aren’t wanted but must be done.” Liss’s voice was sharp, but then it softened. “I will say this, though, there’s a good chance you’ll build your house someday, but not soon.”

Ronan could not help but speak, hating himself for his weakness. “And you—what of you? Will I ever see you again?”

“It isn’t my will to see every stream, every brook, every pond and freshet, each drop of water, though they all are mine. Yet each one knows full well it is mine.”

Ronan flinched at her words, as if he had been struck. They continued along the Street of Willows in silence. The street ended past the Galnes house where a manor crouched behind a high hedge. A path cut through the hedge and out onto a grassy swale. Liss touched his arm and he stopped. He could taste salt in the rain. Moonlight shone through the clouds. Far below, down through the darkness, phosphorescence gleamed green and white on the wave tops. Surf crashed against the rocks. They were standing on the cliffs where the end of Highneck Rise stood high above the sea.

The old cook handed Ronan the leather bag.

“Had some time on my hands,” she said. “Not all folks nitter their nights away dancing with the gentry. Baked some bread and walnut cakes, but such don’t keep down under.”

She stepped to the cliff edge and it seemed that Ronan saw a seal instead of an old woman, a seal with sleek brown fur and shiny black eyes that winked at him. Then the seal was gone and a dark shape hurtled down into the sea.

“Keep the boy alive,” said Liss. There was a heaviness to her words, as if hers was the voice of the tide that always returns for what it wants, forever relentless. Ronan hunched his shoulders under the weight of it.

“For how long?” he said wretchedly.

“You’ll know.”

Liss pulled down her sheaf of hair. The wind caught at it and the dark tresses fluttered loose. Ronan saw seaweed shining purple in her hair. Her skin was as white as polished shell and gleamed with water. She plucked a strand of hair from her head.

“A boy such as him might be hard to find,” said Liss. “Just as it’s hard to find the wind, though it blows all around us. Hard to find and easy to lose. This will lead you to him, for all things, in drips and drops, find their way down to the sea.”

Ronan said nothing. It seemed as if Liss no longer had any resemblance to a woman, had never had any resemblance to a woman. She was only shell and sand and water and glistening seaweed and her eyes held all the cold darkness of the watery deep.

“And for you, a gift.” Liss opened her hand, and there, perfect and blue, was a pearl. “The sea wears away all things with a gentler hand than that of time, and this too will wear away one day. When it’s gone, Ronan of Aum, then you’ll find what you seek.”

She stepped to the edge of the cliff.

“Wait,” he said. “What is your name?”

Liss stopped. A slight smile crossed the face of shell and sand and shifting water.

“My name?”

The wind hushed and the boom of the surf below ceased its restless return. Her eyes brimmed with moonlight. She opened her mouth and there came a whisper of sound like music, a strange music breathed through water and light and having nothing to do with human ears or human voices. Pain struck at Ronan. He staggered, desperate for the touch of earth or air, for all he could feel was water pressing around him, heavier than stone. It felt as if his body was dissolving into water. But he gripped the pearl in his hand with all his might and he could feel the strand of her hair wound about his fingers. Those two remained and did not change. The pain vanished.

Liss smiled at him again, somewhat sadly this time. The wind sprang up and her form collapsed into foam that blew off the cliff and drifted away, down into the darkness and the sea waiting below.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

HER NAME IS FEN

“‘Ware the gate!”

The moonlight shone on faces looking down from the top of the wall. A torch flared into life.

“Who goes there?”

“Lord Gawinn! Open the gate!”

An excited murmur filled the air. Voices called out behind the gates and the portcullis creaked and groaned as it was raised. The gates swung open and spearheads gleamed in the torchlight. A young lieutenant hurried forward, his face beaming. Horse hooves rang on the cobblestones. Owain Gawinn and his men had returned to Hearne.

“My lord,” said the lieutenant. “Welcome home.”

“Thank you,” said Owain. “Have the horses seen to, and hot ale for the men.”

“Very well, my lord.”

The city was dark as Owain rode through the streets. A great weariness took hold of him. He had not realized how tired he had become over the last days. He’d be glad to have a hot bath and a decent meal. Sibb. The children would all be asleep by now, but she would be awake.

Shadows, but he missed her.

The puddles in the streets gleamed with moonlight. The wind sighed by and brought with it a flurry of rain. The air was cold and sharp and he wondered if winter would come early that year.