Shadow Gate

29

The envoy of Ilu did his best to track the girl on her journeys around the Barrens without hounding her. Sometimes she hunted, or practiced her archery at a target she set up at the base of the hill, where the winds weren't so strong. Sometimes she returned to the hidden valley, with its unseasonable harvest of fruits and nuts and the strange, glittering threads drifting in the air. Sometimes she scouted the outlanders' building activity, and the nearby hills. He kept his eye on her from a distance, because he knew absolutely that to try to force her to accept what she had become would be the ruin of his hopes.

One day she returned in the late afternoon in the teeth of an unexpected cloudburst. This time of year, an unusual pressure of storms boomed out of the Spires, strong weather pushed over the mountains from foreign climes. Under the overhang, he coaxed the

coals into a brisk fire, and after she had cared for the horses she sat down on a rock opposite him.

'The fire will dry out your clothes,' he said. 'Not that you can precisely catch your death and die of a fever,' he added as she turned her mirror to catch the flames in its reflection.

Moisture rose like mist from her clothes. 'Could you see what the mirror forced me to remember?'

'No. Guardians are veiled each to the other.'

She looked up sharply. 'Tell me the truth, Uncle. Am I still a slave?'

He studied the half-finished carving he held in his right hand, a sinuous otter with laughter carved into its curves. 'Now, there is an interesting question. What is a Guardian, if we were formed by the gods to serve the land?'

'Why should I be forced to serve your land?'

'Why were you chosen? There is a question I cannot guess at, unless you tell me your tale.'

She said, to the fire, 'There are men not so very far from here, building a compound. Did you see them?'

'I saw them. They don't know we are here. In any case it's unlikely they can climb to an altar even if they would be bold enough to break the boundaries of what is forbidden.'

'There are eagles, too. Huge eagles.'

'Yes. I've seen them. The eagles will ignore us, but their reeves might spot us. It would be prudent to move on.'

'Some of the men there are Qin. I recognize them.'

'The Qin are outlanders, pasture-dwellers like the lendings here in the Hundred, only unlike the lendings the Qin look perfectly human to me. What do you know of the Qin?'

'They are my enemies. They call my people demons. But that's not what I mean. I mean, I know those particular Qin. Because I traveled with them.'

'You've surprised me!' He set down the half-carved otter and picked up his staff, resting it on his thighs. The wood was as smooth as silk under his hands from untold years of handling. 'When did you travel with them?'

Addressing the restless flames, she began to talk. 'One never knows the gifts a stranger brings. My cousin Mariya and I were out hunting. She showed me the gift a lad from another tribe – a lover -

had given her, even though he ought not have done so. It was bold of him, not proper. Little nets woven with lapis lazuli, very pretty, to bind the ends of your braids…'

A storm passed, and night fell with sheets of rain as she talked. Later, the clouds parted, and the Embers Moon rose late, a stroke against the sky.

'… Master Girish was dead. They knew I killed him. When a slave kills a master, then the slave must die.'

'So you drank the rest of the poison.'

'I drank the poison.' It was remarkable how calm she sounded, but her hands were wrapped tightly over the mirror, hiding her reflection.

'Is that when you died?'

She blinked. 'I died when I walked into demon land.'

'When did the cloak return to you?'

She lifted the fabric to the wind and watched the air flow silver within the night. 'How do you know it is the same cloak?'

'I knew the Guardian who wore it before you. She walked out of the Hundred because she wanted to die in a place far away from our enemies where they would never find her. Or, if her cloak passed to another Guardian, then she hoped I would have a chance of reaching the newly awakened one first. To that end, she left three things with me. The first was the mirror.'

'What are the other two?'

'An offering bowl, the gift of Hasibal, the Formless One. Also I have for you the gift of Sapanasu, the Lantern. Look.' Beyond the fire's light the darkness crowded them, creeping closer when the flames subsided and slinking back when he placed more sticks on the fire. He raised his right hand, clenched it, opened it. Light shone from his palm, illuminating the rocky curve of the overhang above and the dusty ground with its neat piles of gear below.

'Aui.' It stung. He closed his hand, and the darkness leaped back in.

'I like that! How can I do that?'

He caught a smile before it betrayed him. 'I know a bit about these particular Qin. I heard the tale of how they saved Olossi.'

She opened and closed a hand, then looked at him through narrowed eyes. 'Is the light demon's sorcery?'

Rats were known as good merchants because they weren't afraid to bargain. 'How do the Qin enter your story?'

She remained silent for so long he thought she had decided not to answer. This late in the night, sliding toward dawn, the wind's moan took on a eerier tone, or perhaps the angle of shifting winds just made it rub up against the slope of the rock differently.

'After Girish died, the women of the house took pity on me. The men did not.' Abruptly she was panting, as if running from a beast that meant to rip her apart, and she shut her eyes and fought down memories until she breathed normally. 'The women took pity on me, anyway. They hated Girish because they had no power to stop him. It was their idea to send me away with Master Shai.'

He had questions, but he dared not interrupt.

'When the sandstorm came, the Qin captain saw his chance to be rid of me. He hated demons. He pulled the beads off my hair and threw them to the ground like they were poison. He told me he would not let me destroy his troop, because everyone knows demons bring ill luck. He made me walk naked into the storm.'

'Eiya!'

Her gaze was a thousand mey away. 'I was happy to do it. I could hear their voices.'

'Whose voices?'

'My mother and my father and my older sister, my cousins, Uncle Olig and Feder the Cripple, all the dead ones from my tribe. They called me. They asked me to come home. So I was happy to go to them.'

'Perhaps they were demons,' he said kindly.

She rocked side to side. 'Are there demons? Or is it just a story we tell?'

'Eiya! Certainly there are demons in this world. Some are human, and some are not.'

She jumped to her feet. 'I am a demon! Everyone said so!'

'You are not a demon, lass. You never were. You are a Guardian.'

'What is a Guardian?'

'Heh.' His Rat's mind was pleased at this small victory. 'A difficult question, one that in the end must be answered by what you do,

not by what I tell you. The Guardians were placed in the Hundred by the gods to bring justice to the land. To preside at the assizes, the local courts, so that those who commit crimes are punished properly and those who are innocent are not wrongly charged.'

'I want justice.'

'Of course. We become Guardians because we sought justice -indeed, gave our life in seeking justice on behalf of others. As you did for your brother and the other children.'

She looked away.

'What is your name?' he asked gently.

She turned back. 'I want the offering bowl, and the lantern.'

Her bold demand pleased him. Something of the self-sufficient girl he had glimpsed in her tale sparked in her expression as she regarded him with hand outstretched.

So be it.

'Here, the bowl.' He handed it over. 'There's a loop to fasten it on your belt. I will place a stone in your palm. I can't predict how it will affect you. I fainted for days, but Mist – who came before you -told me she merely felt a sting.'

'I'm not afraid,' she said, by which he suspected she meant: I'm not afraid of that kind of pain, having endured something much worse.

He fished in his sleeve and drew out the black stone, as smooth as a river pebble and smaller than a warbler's egg. 'Which is your strong hand?'

'My right.'

'Hold out your left, then. Palm up.' She watched him. Those demon-blue eyes were unnerving, if you stopped to think about their watery pallor. But that did not matter. She was part of the Hundred now, and if he did not teach her properly the others would find her and corrupt her, and he would be the last one left.

He placed the stone in her palm.

Light flared, so bright he shut his eyes.

When he opened them, she was still sitting there, hand clenched in a fist. The fire crackled as if nothing had happened.

'Ouch.' With beads of sweat on her upper lip, she cautiously opened her hand. Light pierced the darkness, and she giggled unexpectedly, sounding like a girl.

Of course, she was just a girl.

'Do you know in what year you are born?' he asked her, not sure if demons counted the years as humans did.

'I'm a Hawk!' She grinned, fisting her hand and opening it to see no light, and then fisting and opening to bring light.

'There is no Year of the Hawk.'

'Of course there is! The hawk flies after the deer and before the ox.'

'Ah! A Crane, then.' With the turn of the year, she had made nineteen years.

'What is a crane?'

'The crane is a bird. She is orderly, cautious, honest, and kind-hearted. Yet once Cranes have developed an opinion of somebody, it is difficult for them to change it. What is your name, lass, so I may call you something?'

'Kirya,' she said, still playing with the opening and closing of her hand, the word tossed carelessly.

'Kirya, eh?' It was a workable name; so many foreign names were simply impossible. 'Dedicated to the Fire Mother at birth.'

'Not fire!' Fragile lines of confidence deepened as she frowned disapproval. 'Fire is sacred to the gods. It is not for us to claim we are part of the gods.'

'How can we be separated from the land, and the land from the gods?' He had lost her. 'Maybe so, yet in our country the name Kirya will be understood as partaking of fire.'

'Why?'

'Because it's a Fire-born name. If you don't like it – eh, had you a pet name your family called you?'

'Kiri.'

'That's a man's name. Water-born. Yet what of this? Water-born, you would be Kirit. How do you like that?'

'Kirit.' She rolled it on her tongue as she might test the flavor of spiced barsh.

'A Water-born Crane, orderly in its nature but made adaptable by its heart of Water. Born in the Year of the Red Crane, which adds energy and intensity to your nature, and also – well, let's leave that for another time. The Red Crane is known to be passionate in its opinions, and ruthless in its quest for justice if an injustice had been done.'

The wind soughed and the fire slumbered, popping once, ash settling. The clouds were shredding to bits on the peaks, and in the east the stars began to fade into a gloom presaging day.

Blinking, she said, 'Why do you talk so much?'

He laughed. 'Because I am a Water-born Blue Rat, dedicated to Ilu, the Herald. Also, there is so much to say. Here-, now, let me tell you the Tale of the Guardians again. That is the best place to start.'

But she rose as the twilight before dawn, mist-silver cloak flowing around her. She paced along the rim of the height, below which the slope was so slick with rubble that a single step would send you plunging. With her head turned eastward, she scanned lands broken by furrows and gullies and the occasional tabletop plateau, that sloped to the mantle of darkness marking the distant sea. Returning, she saddled Seeing. When he realized she was loading all her gear into the saddlebags and leaving his particular things behind, he scrambled to pack.

'Kirit. Where are you going?'

The girl who had ridden into demon land to redeem her brother was not about to let one useless man's blithering objections rein her in.

'I want justice.'

Of course he was such a cursed fool just as the others had always teased him, a city boy born to luxury who hadn't the wits or skills to make do outside of the salons where expensive jaryas gathered to declaim their poetry and scions of rich families gossiped and intrigued and made behind-the-curtain deals. Not that he had done any dealing, famous as he had been, in those days long ago and in his limited circle, for being too proud to gamble; that had been their way of saying they thought him too naive to understand what was actually going on.

He had missed some important gesture or shading of her mood. Oblivious as the moon in love, thinking he had awakened her and finally done something right all the way through, he had let it tromp right past him. He thought he had actually fulfilled the pact he had made with Ashaya, who had worn the cloak of Mist and walked into the shadows because of the persuasion of the others but who had the strength in the end to turn her back on corruption, when in

truth he was the least of them, really, too stubborn to fall into the shadows but not strong enough to fight. Mostly he was able to walk through the world cheerfully enough; it's just that sometimes the facade was stripped away by an unexpected setback.

Where would Kirit go?

Was it the view she had seen when she'd walked along the height that had jolted her into action? Was it the sea, or the dawn, or the sky? Or night's shadowed sky calling to her?

Far in the distance, if you had quite good vision, could be seen the flare of human-made fires.

I want justice.

Too late, he knew where she had gone.

In a short span, an exceptional degree of construction had flowered on a pair of neighboring hills situated to overlook a bay where the Qin were building a settlement. When the wind shifted to blow in from the sea, the stink of bubbling oil tainted the air, but it rarely lasted long. Eagles glided above. Young men drilled in military order at dawn and dusk, their shouts carrying in the dry air. Between drill, these hirelings and debt slaves shaped bricks and dug ditches and heaped dirt into what would, when completed, be an impressive stretch of berm encircling both hills and the narrow valley down which a shallow five-seasons river ran. Also, laborers cut a well. At night, the workers slept in tents.

A cadre of men and seven women trained as reeves; not that he knew the drills and technique, but it was obvious who had an eagle at hand and who did not. Shallow-drafted cargo boats beached on the shore within the shelter of the bay. Laborers hauled logs from the boats to build crude lofts for the eagles: at least forty raptors were gathered in the greater span of this territory, a phenomenal number to be seen outside the reeve halls. Some were willing to share close quarters while others kept their distance in the Spires.

As for the fifty or so Qin, they ranged wide as they scouted the lay of the land until, he supposed, they knew it as well as a farmer knows his fields. They kept watch over lads who shepherded flocks of sheep and goats, and several of their number stayed with the herd of horses grazing the slopes. They supervised a contingent of debt slaves who were digging an underground irrigation channel farther

inland. They hunted antelope and black deer through the tableland, not unlike the eagles. They explored the long-abandoned hilltop ruin in pairs, harvesting from sinks of naya near the ruins.

Every day they drilled the hirelings in weapons and formation. Those who could ride they brought hunting with them, although none could ride as well as the Qin. g*

Rats are known to be impatient, quick to become restless, eager for a change. But he had to think like a patient Crane. She was but one small pale young person. And yet she was born and raised on the grass, as the Qin were: she was a hunter. As animals return time and again to a watering hole, so did the Qin keep going back to the ruins.

He approached the ruins on foot just before dawn. Long-abandoned buildings leave a footprint: buried and broken walls; sunken lanes where folk once walked; scatters of potsherds and broken masonry. He almost stumbled into a well, half filled in with debris. At intervals, he heard hissing, and although he watched for snakes he saw only birds, rodents, and the ubiquitous thumb-sized flying roaches. He passed between the collapsed remnants of an old gate and climbed a ramp of stone now buckling and mostly covered by earth. Who had built all this?

A bewildering maze of ruins greeted him at the crown, whether residences, temples, storehouses, or courts of justice he could not tell. He heard snatches of a gulping sound, like a man's exaggerated swallows. The hiss had returned, and the sulfurous smell grew stronger as he pressed toward a craggy bluff. He kicked through heaps of shattered pottery and broken figurines, fragments of stone carved with staring eyes that had no face, mouth with no eyes, a long-fingered hand, a bare foot – a woman's foot, surely, for its delicacy. The remains of an octagonal building and its pillared courtyard lay before him.

As he came to the crag's edge, the rising sun spread a glow across the waters, several mey away but nevertheless striking as they shone with coppery-pink light. She had crouched beneath an intact archway cut low to the ground. She watched a pair of Qin soldiers who were riding toward the ruins.

Cursing, he ducked through another opening, crawling over rubble to get inside. He saw her form limned by the light. She did

not acknowledge him. Within, steps carved out of the stone led down into the rock. A stink, rising from the depths, was strong. Cautiously, he edged down, stepping over fallen bricks, until he came into a wide underground chamber lit by shafts. He sneezed at the dust raised by his feet. In the center of the chamber rose a round platform with a cleft struck through its center, and in this cleft a disembodied flame burned. Its hiss echoed like a thousand whispers, a story told in a language he did not know.

For all the years he had walked on earth, he had never known of this place nor heard tale of it. With a shudder, he retreated back up the steps.

With her back to him, she said, 'If you go back outside, they may see you and come up here to investigate.'

'Think you so?' he said, pleased by her words.

'Just to the west lie bitter springs. Mostly the Qin ride there to collect pitch. I hear them talk. They will bring a company of slaves to harvest the pitch and store it. The pit frightens them because the flame burns without fuel.'

'How long have you been hiding here?'

'Three days.'

'Why are you here?'

'I am waiting.'

It was like teasing splinters out of skin! 'What are you waiting for?'

'What is a Guardian?'

With a sigh, he sank down a few steps from her and leaned against the wall. The smell made his eyes water, but he didn't notice it as much. He brushed dust off his palms.

'I don't know,' he admitted, 'what the Guardians truly are, or what they were meant to be. The gods awakened the first Guardians during a time of war, when every clan fought for itself and every clan did as it pleased. Without law, there is no order. The Guardians serve the law.'

'They are slaves, then. If they must serve.'

'If you serve only yourself, lass, then to whom are you really a slave? Even in the place you come from, you serve the customs of your tribe and do your work and marry and bear children and die in your time, all without considering yourself a slave.'

She was silent, her back a wall.

'The Guardians serve the law, and by serving the law they serve the land and the gods. Whereas in the days of chaos any person with power might dispense justice according to her whim, now the assizes courts were established in every city and town and the chief villages. The Guardians journeyed from one assizes to the next to the next. They stood over the court and heard witnesses and made judgments. They hold in their hearts Ushara's gift: the second heart and the third eye, with which to see into the hearts of all. It is not so easy as you might think to seek truth within the hearts of women and men. At first, I thought I knew everything, but then I discovered that my own nature caused me to make assumptions and misread what I learned. I have become more cautious in passing judgment.'

'Who was the woman whose body I found on the grass?'

He nodded, although she did not turn to see him do so. There was so much to tell her. It was like running, and tripping over your own feet. 'Yes, yes. You see, it is this way. Naturally, there is a risk. The powers the Guardians hold are also a temptation. Within the council of the Guardians, five – a majority – may judge one of their own who they feel has passed under the gate of shadow into corruption. They can strip the cloak from that Guardian and allow it to pass to another person, as it – the cloak – chooses. So you may possibly see the problem that confronts us. What if a Guardian succumbs to the shadows, and yet has the outward countenance of light? What if such a Guardian bides her time, out of fear, out of greed, out of anger, and in her turn corrupts one by one her fellow Guardians until four others walk at her behest? Five in all. Five, who can control the council and rid themselves of those Guardians who will not do as they demand. What is the handful who remain loyal to the gods meant to do?'

The tale came hard to his lips. He had not rehearsed it. To think of the long years in which, slowly and in secret, the corruption had eaten away at the council was too bitter to endure. It was 'a knife in the heart', as the tale said, a well-worn phrase but true enough when you felt the stab of pain. How blind might a trusting soul be! How foolish and naive!

' Ashnya was corrupted by promises and sweet words and reasonable explanations. She was corrupted by fear, since fear, beyond all

things, brings with it the shadow. But in the end, she fled corruption. She knew if she passed on the burden of her cloak while still in the Hundred, that the others would find and control the newly awakened one. Instead, she walked out of the Hundred. And I waited for you – obviously, I did not know it would be you, Kirit – to return.'

'Because the cloak would bring me back.'

'By one means or another.'

'A cruel master,' she observed.

'Neh, neh. Not a master. It is our charge. Our responsibility. Our obligation.'

It was hard to meet those pale eyes because they did not look human, but her face was so young and vulnerable that he recognized the humanity in her, that which is capable of both compassion and malevolence.

'Where are the assizes courts?' She stumbled over the unfamiliar words.

'Typically you find them in the cities, towns, and chief villages. But an assizes can be held wherever a Guardian chooses to stand.'

She rose. 'Then it is time to make a judgment.'

The Qin soldiers were using fronds to scoop scum from one of a series of bubbling pools sited just beyond the tracery of the outer wall. Their horses took no notice of Kirit as she walked toward the two men, holding her strung bow and an arrow in her right hand but her mirror in her left. As he feared.

The soldiers leaped up and, in turning, brought their bows to the ready with arrows already nocked.

'Demon!' spat one man.

The other's face was a mask of fear. His arrow slipped out of his hand to the dust.

The envoy sensed their fear and consternation as much from their posture and expressions as from his second heart and third eye. And since neither looked at him, only at her, he could not see into their hearts.

'I remember your names. Eitai. Sayan.' She gestured to the man who had spat. 'You did not harm me, Sayan. Go, if you wish. Or if you want to be judged for any other crimes you may have committed, I will hold up the mirror, for the mirror reveals the heart.'

'We are Qin,' said the first soldier scornfully. He marked her companion and dismissed the envoy, unarmed as he seemed to be, as no threat. 'We do not dishonor ourselves by abandoning our comrades. How has Eitai harmed you?'

'He raped me.'

Eitai lunged for the fallen arrow and, rising, nocked it. 'I paid! It was perfectly legal! Your master made the offer, and I accepted in good faith. How was I to know your demon's ghost would return to haunt me!' He loosed. The arrow shot true, punching her so hard in the left shoulder she staggered back two steps. But she did not fall.

She said, 'In the tribes, such a crime is punishable by death.'

Sayan loosed an arrow and hit her in the belly. She grunted, but despite her evident agony, she did not go down.

'Stop this!' the envoy cried.

They ignored him.

'A man cannot do only as he pleases,' she said in gasps as blood soaked through her tunic. 'Otherwise there is no law. Did you commit the act?'

Eitai's answer was soundless, a sideways look through narrowed eyes, the tilt of his head as he leveled his bow.

'You cannot kill me,' she said hoarsely. 'I will return again and again, and the next time I will kill you. See your fate in this mirror, that shows the heart of those who are guilty and those who are innocent.'

She turned the mirror's face toward the men. Light caught and flashed. Sayan screamed with fear. Eitai collapsed in silence, his spirit taken.

Eiya!

The living soldier dropped to his knees and pressed a hand to the dead man's neck, but such efforts would be in vain.

She stumbled forward. The living man shrieked. His gaze skimmed the envoy's face, the blast of his terror like a cold wind out of the mountains. He bolted for the horses, and galloped away as Kirit dropped to her knees beside the dead man, grunting as the impact jarred the arrows stuck in her body. The fall had loosened the soldier's topknot. Strands of black hair spread a delta of fine channels on the dirt.

She held her mirror a hand's breadth above his parted lips.

Breathing raggedly, she watched the mirror's surface. 'Is that his spirit? Caught in my mirror? How did he die?'

He had to speak, although he feared the consequences. 'The Guardian's staff-'

'It can kill. I killed him!'

'Vengeance is not justice.'

Her face was sheened white under sweat. She grinned, showing teeth. 'The wolf pack picks off those in the herd who are diseased. It's for the best.'

'We are not wolves. We are human beings, and we serve the law, not our own impulses. We do not bring down death with a casual flick of our hands. Death is the most severe sentence. It was long ago agreed that in death sentences, the council must be unanimous, all the Guardians must investigate such a serious case and agree, not just take matters into their own hands at their whim. The hells! Let me get those arrows out of your body'

'Go away! I am not your slave!'

She grasped the arrow that protruded from her belly and, with a shrill yaaah!, yanked it out. With less difficulty, because it had already punched mostly through the meat of her shoulder, she pushed the second arrow out through the sinews of her back and, reaching under her arm, pulled it free. Weeping, coughing, mewling, she rested on her hands as blood dripped onto the dusty earth. The sinks of pitch burped like foul cauldrons.

He had no idea what to do now.

'I am not your slave,' she said, as if to the land itself. She rubbed a hand over the sticky patch of blood, smearing it into the dirt. Already her body would be healing itself, knitting what was severed, although the pain, naturally, was staggering. He tried not to think about the last time, when he'd been pierced by arrows and trampled by horses. That was the hells of it: the price you paid for your unnatural life was to learn to live again and again with the agony of dying.

She raised her head. Her demon eyes leaked water, which some might call tears.

'They cannot kill me, but I can kill them.'

'That's not what the gods intended.'

She hissed, an attempt at a whistle. Sucking in more breath, she

managed a sharp trill. Unlike him, who preferred to do his stalking afoot, she had hunted with her mount nearby. Obedient to her call, Seeing trotted into view, skittish at the smell of blood. The girl heaved herself over the mare's back, groaned and, with another grating yell, dragged a leg over to sag into the saddle, clinging to the horn.

'It's not what the gods intended,' he repeated helplessly.

As Seeing spread her wings, Kirit looked back, face white, lips as bloodless as a ghost's, tunic blotched with red.

'They are not my gods.'