The Shadow at the Gate (44 page)

“Here now!” bawled the ward. “Here nownownow! Heyou! Aouaouaou-arr!”

Unfortunate.

Jute thought he heard the hawk snort inside his mind. Back down the street, the ward continued to yell.

“Heyouyouyou! Yarrr. . .! Thief! Theee-ief!”

Quick. Turn here. A mob of these creatures is hastening up the street toward you, and there are others behind you as well. They do not tire, for the evil dreams of men are never short of hope.

Jute was exhausted and his knee ached. He felt blood tricking down his shin. It was beginning to rain. The cobblestones were slippery underfoot. Either the street curved or it narrowed, for he found himself running an arm’s length from the buildings on his right. Lamplight shone from windows, blurred by the fog and the water beading on glass. He caught glimpses of ordinary life: a woman asleep at her spinning wheel, a child nodding over his porridge, an older girl asleep in the act of braiding the tresses of her little sister, fingers caught and unmoving in the skeins of hair.

Shadows take it all, Jute thought to himself. Why me? I wish I was inside somewhere. Inside and asleep over my porridge. I was content being a thief. A beating from the Juggler once in a while wasn’t that bad. No hawk. No dreams. No sky. Nothing. I’d rather have nothing. Be nobody.

Beware your mind. Of all dangers, there are two that wield the deadliest swords.

Jute glanced over his shoulder. No one was in sight. There, he thought. I’ve outrun the wretched things. Hang it all. I know this city like my hand.

Something small hurtled toward him from the fog. A little gray cat. One claw swiped at his ankle. Jute yelped in pain and surprise, turning toward the animal to kick it, just in time to see a dark figure detach itself from the wall and reach for him. Teeth gleamed in a face with no eyes. The cat yowled and shot away down the street, fur standing up on end. Jute darted after the cat, his heart hammering in his throat.

Jute risked a look back and wished he hadn’t. The whole street crawled with shadows. They welled up from the puddles, out from the cracks in the cobblestones. They clambered down gutter pipes, sidled out of doors, and winked in and out of view in the falling rain, as if so insubstantial they might hide behind a raindrop. But they were not insubstantial. They were real. Jute could hear their hissing and snarling as they called to each other. He remembered the dark blood on the hawk’s beak. Some of the creatures looked like men. Some had extra arms or extra legs. Some had no heads. One had no arms at all but long legs like a spider, with a squat head in the middle covered with an impossible number of eyes.

Hawk!

As I was saying, concerning danger
,
there are two which wield the deadliest swords. Two which can never be underestimated. One, of course, is the Dark itself.

Where do I go? What should I do?

Follow the cat.

Follow the what?

The cat rounded the next corner, ears laid back flat, and going at a tremendous pace. It was all Jute could do to keep it in sight. Perhaps if he ran a bit faster he’d be able to give it a kick.

Tush,
said the hawk
. The second danger is an everyday sort. Commonness renders it invisible, unacknowledged, and unchecked.

This is no time for lectures, hawk!

The noises behind Jute were getting closer. There was a horrible galloping, pattering, slapping sound to it all, as if dozens of hooves and bare feet and boots were running in concert together. The jumble of sound echoed off the high walls of the houses crowding around and became even more jumbled.

The cat looked back. One blue eye flashed in the gloom, and then the cat bounded away, legs flying and fur matted with water. The rain fell harder. Jute pelted through a small square. A fountain splashed in the center and its pool was overflowing, unable to keep up with the rain. Water sheeted across the cobblestones. Several dark figures jumped up out of the pool at his approach. Jute skidded on the water. The cat yowled and dashed around one outstretched arm.

We are cut off from the gates. You are being herded.

The fog lifted then, up into a dark sky slashing down rain. Jute knew where he was now. The street widened. Shops and stalls and barrow carts were chained to railings. Canvas awnings sagged from the buildings, sodden with rain. Mioja Square. The tangled sea of the fair, of tents and carts and bannered poles, lay before him, huddled in the rain. The cobblestones underfoot were slick with mud. On either side of him, off around the edges of the square, he heard the sound of running feet.

Quick.

Jute plunged into the tents. His skin crawled. Where were the people? Where were the merchants and peddlers and people? He would have given much to see one normal face at that moment. But all he saw was the cat scampering off between the tents, its gray tail flying in the rain.

Courage, Jute.

Beyond the tent tops he saw the ruined walls of the university. His heart rose. There would be refuge behind those walls. Severan would be there. He would know what to do. Jute ran past the stone fountain in the center of the square. Water streamed over its sides. A dead pigeon floated in the pool, bobbing against the stone border. The cat vanished somewhere near the fountain. He didn’t blame it, for the hissing and snarling sounds behind him were growing louder and closer by the second. Regardless of the cat leading him through the fog, he would’ve enjoyed giving the animal a swift kick. His ankle still burned from the clawing it had given him.

The cat saved your life
, said the hawk.
The second danger, if you had not yet guessed, is your own self. For every man, regardless of how noble or miserable his life may be, the second danger is his own self. First the Dark, then your self. And in some men, they are the same.

Jute staggered up the steps of the university. He turned and his heart faltered, for out of the maze of tents came his pursuers. They came forward, slinking and crawling and lurching. They leered up at him through the rain with faces that had no eyes, and eyes that had no faces, shadows with teeth and quick, twitching hands. There was nowhere left to go. The great doors were wound with chains. The stone wall was worn smooth by the centuries. There was nowhere to climb to. The little door Severan had opened buzzed with wards. There was no way through.

“Hawk!” Jute said.

A man stepped out from behind one of the pillars. In his hands gleamed a sword. Jute shied away in terror, but the man moved past him.

“Stay behind me, boy,” Ronan said.

The creatures rushed up the steps in a wave, advancing in a crescendo of snarling darkness. Jute cowered back, certain the wave would crash over him. He thought he heard a voice hiss his name from the crowd. But Ronan’s sword sang into life, whistling through the air, weaving a wall of steel in front of his eyes. The wave broke on that wall and the sword ran with black blood.

The creatures fell back down the steps and then surged forward. But again they were beaten back. The stones underfoot were slick with their blood. Their bodies fell on the steps to be trampled by their fellows. The dead flesh subsided into mist that drifted down the steps, as if it were heavier than air and sought some low place to rest. The breath grated between Ronan’s teeth, and his arm trembled. There seemed no end to the creatures, no matter how many he killed. Perhaps he might have fallen under one more wave had not the hawk stooped down out of the rain. The bird was nearly invisible with his black feathers against the gloom and the dark mass of the attackers. The creatures lifted up their faces to his claws, hissing in fear. Ronan spared the hawk one startled glance and then redoubled his efforts. The wave broke once again.

Where have you been?

Saving your neck, boy
, said the hawk. He beat back up into the rain and was momentarily lost to sight.
I went in search of the old man. The sky above the university is warded. I singed my feathers. There is trouble in the ruins, but I would judge us safer within than without. Look to the door.

And at that word, Jute heard the wards woven into the wall behind him subside into silence. The little door sprang open with a crash.

“Hurry!”

It was Severan. Jute dove for the door. He felt the hawk’s wing brush past him. Ronan sprang back, his sword swinging. The door slammed shut and the wards whispered back into life. The door shook under a tremendous blow. The wards buzzed in agitation. Jute could feel them inside his mind. There was almost a coherence to the sound, as if they muttered words from some strange language of rock and dust and earth. His head ached with it.

“Will the door hold?” said Ronan.

Severan touched the door. He frowned.

“I think so,” he said. “These wards were woven by one of the wisest professors to ever teach within these walls. Bevan was the master of such magic, and one word from him held more strength than a thousand bolts and locks. It’s a strange enemy we have outside, though.”

“They bleed well enough,” said Ronan in distaste. He turned to look at Jute. “All right, boy?”

“No thanks to you,” said Jute angrily. He backed away from him. He would have said more, but the hawk settled onto his shoulder. The claws gripped him hard, and he subsided into silence.

Severan shook his head. “From what I saw, I think him worthy of thanks. And as I bear this boy some affection, despite his pigheadedness, my thanks to you," he said, turning to Ronan. "But come, we shouldn’t stay here.”

The old man hurried away down the hall. A lamp burned on one wall, but other than that, the place was shrouded in shadow. Behind them, the door shook again under its assault. A hollow booming echoed through the hall.

“Walk where I walk,” said Severan. “Touch nothing, and keep silent. Something happened last night, either here in the ruins or close by in the city—we aren’t sure—but not all the wards are stable anymore.”

There was a trembling in the air, and the light filtering down from the windows high overhead had an oddly tentative quality to it, as if it were nervous of being caught within the stone walls. Pools of water lay here and there, catching the raindrops falling down through holes in the roof.

The wards are awake, Jute thought.

He can hear them too.

Jute scowled at Ronan. The man walked a few paces in front of him. His head was turning from side to side and, every once in a while, his hand strayed to the hilt of his sword.

The hawk’s claws flexed on Jute’s shoulder.

This man does not deal in magic, but he listens. Perhaps better than you. For now. There is a familiarity to him, a scent I have known from long ago. But surely my memory is from hundreds and hundreds years past, and this man cannot have lived more than three decades. How strange.

An evil scent, I suppose, grumbled Jute inside his mind.

No, not evil.

He tried to kill me! He left me for dead in that house!

Whatever he did before is done. And though he tried to kill you, he did not. You are the better for it
.

And then he kidnapped me and handed me over to the Silentman!

Which would not have happened had you kept safely within these walls. But even disobedience can be turned to good, for there are always greater dreams at work that we cannot see. Within these dreams sleep the smaller reaches of our own dreams.

Jute did not understand this and spent some time thinking about the hawk’s words. But no matter how he turned them back and forth, they made no sense to him.

Severan stopped at the end of a corridor that opened into a courtyard. The ground was covered with blue and black tiles in a pattern that confused the eye. The old man squatted down and touched one of the tiles with his finger.

“This is a trap,” said Jute. He stared at the tiles with distaste.

“Aye,” said Severan, smiling. “You’ve been in rooms like this before, haven’t you? But we’ve turned the ward here to our own uses. It guards for us now. No one can go where we go without crossing this courtyard, and once entered, it’s no small feat to escape these tiles.”

“Wards.” Ronan spat to one side and hitched up his sword. “I don’t care for spells and trickery. Give me an honest blade and as long as there’s breath left in my body, I’ll meet any foe, wizard or not.”

“I’d expect no less from you, for I think I know your name.”

“Names don’t mean much these days.”

“A matter of perspective. Ronan of Aum, isn’t it?”

“Aye.”

“And Aum a ruin, haunted by jackals and hoot owls. It’s been three hundred years since the men of Harth marched north to burn its gates and break down its walls. A lonely place to come from. A place of death. I think, sir, you have another name as well.”

There is no telling what Ronan might have said at that point. He opened his mouth to speak, but someone else spoke first.

“Time for talk later, old man.” The voice rustled, creaking and quiet, as if little used. “Time enough later.”

Jute had never heard the hawk speak out loud before. His voice was similar to how the bird spoke within his mind, but it was odd to hear him with his ears. The sound felt like sunlight and a hot sky and the wind lazing through it all. Of the three, however, Severan was the only one who showed no surprise.