Shadow Gate

42

'Why should you get to keep that girl for yourself, not sharing her?' The soldier confronting the sergeant squinted, holding an axe in one hand. 'Who set you over us as if you was lord?'

Shai watched sidelong as he scoured out the pot that had been used to cook rice. The conflict had been taking shape over several days of marching, and now, having stopped for the night in yet another isolated, abandoned, burned village, the malcontents within the cadre of thirty-six had decided to confront their leader.

'I was named captain when the cloak left us,' snarled the sergeant. 'You going to argue with the lord?'

The man with the axe sneered. 'You think that pervert cares

about us? You ever think maybe we were led into a trap? I've been thinking the lords sent us west to test Olossi's strength, not caring what became of us. Like scarpers sent into a hole to see if an adder will bite. What do we owe them? Why go back at all, eh? Plenty of fields here. We've got slaves to do the work.'

Shai sat on a charred beam out in front of a shed where most of the younger children, chores complete, already rested on such pallets as they could scrape together from grass or straw. They were always scratching, bodies speckled with bites and discolored with sores and bruises and welts. His foot itched. He leaned down and felt along the arch until he identified the bump where he'd been bitten. Aiye! He hurt everywhere, but he must never let it show.

Twenty-six men had congregated around the sergeant, so there were nine men not present. He identified four in visible watch positions where two paths entered the wide clearing. Two more would be in the woods on a ranging watch. Where were the other three? Yet he could not possibly lead twenty-four frail children and adolescents into the woods; even with a head start, they would be caught.

'Farming is hard work,' said the sergeant as his allies muttered agreement. 'I didn't sign up to farm.'

'You say that because you get a good lie-down every night, when there aren't enough to go around who are old enough, eh? Or are you like the cloak, eh? The younger, the better?'

'You gods-rotted, pus-filled shit!' The sergeant flicked up a hand, and Twist and another pair of soldiers threw the challenger to the ground. Their bodies blocked Shai's view of the beating, but two girls who were carrying buckets on a pole down the lane faltered and dropped the pole, so frightened were they at the sight. Solid thumps changed tone to a meatier, more liquid sound; they were bashing in the man's head.

There is a way men have of breathing hard when their blood is up that Shai had come to recognize in these soldiers, a spillover that the Qin soldiers had, evidently, learned to rein in. Twist lurched out of the gathering, glaring around, hands clenched. Men moved back from him as he spotted the cowering girls. Shai leaped up and trot-led forward.

'Here, now!' he called out. 'I'm thirsty! Where's my water?' He

affected the lopsided gait that made the men laugh at him, but no one was laughing.

'Take the body away,' snarled the sergeant. 'If any of you have further complaints, let me know.'

Twist grabbed Shai. 'You're not what you pretend to be, that's what I think, cursed outlander.' He spat in Shai's face.

The spittle landed beneath an eye, and he flinched, sparking with hatred as he forced a stupid grin. 'Heya! My dear mom said spitting wasn't nice.'

'I'd wick your dear mom until she wept for mercy!' Twist slugged him up under the ribs.

The impact doubled him over, but the spectacle had drawn the attention of the others, those slinking away to lick their wounds and those needing a bit of fun to work out the bloody aftermath of the killing of one of their own.

'Heya, Twist! I'm betting his mother was a ewe. I hear that's more to your liking.'

'You ass-wiping turd.'

Gagging and hacking, Shai stumbled out of the way. A fight broke, fists flying, and more men waded in, laughing with a high-pitched giggling, but as Shai staggered toward the girls the roil settled out and the knot dispersed, men grumbling as they headed to fires or shelters.

'Pick up the buckets.' It was hard to choke out the words with his chest throbbing. 'Get back to the well and get more water. Keep moving like nothing happened.'

Faces gray with fear, the girls grabbed pole and empty buckets and hurried off. They were so scrawny their shoulders came to a point instead of a nice rounded curve. What remained of their tunics hung in flaps.

Shai rested on hands and knees as he waited for the worst of the pain to fade. Merciful One protect them! Tohon would be making a plan, while he did nothing more than react as each new blow fell. Maybe he was dull-witted in truth. He'd done his best, organizing the children into banners so they could look out for each other, carrying the weakest when they lagged. But it wasn't enough.

And yet the girls did come back with the water without being hit. The men mumbled, and ate their supper, and called for their

favorites or waited their turn. The beaten man had been dragged away by the other soldiers and thrown into the trees, but despite the pulpy mess of his head, some glimmer of life still animated him because no ghost rose.

Shai crept back to the shelter as twilight mellowed the scene. It was easy to believe they sheltered in a peaceful backwoods hamlet, trees soughing in the breeze, candlewick flowers giving off dusk's perfume. An owl hooted, and a nightjar clicked.

After night fell, Jasya and Wori and the others old enough to be taken hobbled back to the shelter, ducking past him on the threshold and finding their places in their banner groups as he had assigned them. He waited until all were back except Yudit, who was forced to remain with the sergeant all night. He had to wait, because three nights ago they had lost Jolas, done to death in a rough way that Shai sheared away from recalling, having seen the aftermath. He hadn't thought to go looking for the lad until morning, and by then of course it was far too late.

Yet what could he have done anyway?

How was it possible he could not keep them all safe?

Too restless to sleep, he braced himself across the opening so no one could grab one without him knowing. He considered paths of escape. Could they sneak out at night? By the two sentry fires, shadowed forms paced on watch. The pair of men set to watch the prisoners' shelter kept up a steady murmur, an idiotic conversation about a game called hooks-and-ropes.

Rain passed over, out of the southeast. He dozed, woke when a child whimpered, but it was only a dreaming cry, not repeated. The watch fires glowed red. At the forest's edge, mist untangled from the vegetation to drift into what had been some poor soul's tended garden.

He rubbed his eyes. The mist took on a flowing shape, a ghost winged with a gleaming trail as if its spirit were blown back in an unseen wind from the land beyond the Spirit Gate.

The soldier was dead, then, his ghost wandering in confusion. That left thirty-five, still too many for a single woodchopper to take on.

Yet for an instant, as the ghost crossed the compound toward the byre where the sergeant slept, he saw in the misty shape the form of a woman who looked exactly like Cornflower.

Merciful One! Would her haunt never let him rest? He shut his eyes, wishing desperately for sleep, anything to shut down the fevered workings of his exhausted mind. If he breathed slowly, if he cupped hands before his heart in the attitude of prayer and murmured the beseeching phrases, perhaps he could find peace.

'I go to the Merciful One for refuge. Accept my prayers out of compassion. Peace.'

Footsteps pattered on the ground like a fall of rain. He opened his eyes as Yudit crouched beside him.

'The sergeant's dead,' she whispered. 'They'll think I did it, and they'll kill me. But I was just lying there. A ghost came in and stole his spirit.' Shivering, she clutched his arm.

'Who's dead?'

'The sergeant.' She pressed two objects into his hands: the wolf ring and the belt buckle.

'Get inside.'

Shaking, she crawled past him. Whispered questions greeted her. He eased out from the threshold and crawled to the corner of the shed, from which he could see down the central village path. No ghost emerged from the building where the sergeant slept. Maybe the sergeant's ghost had already passed through Spirit Gate. Or maybe Yudit, in her fear, had been mistaken.

A bird chirped, the herald of dawn's coming. Men slumbered. The watch paced. One man by the north path, just becoming visible, swayed as though dozing on his feet. An aura of gray touched the treetops as more birds assayed their predawn song. There was something he ought to have understood and acted on, but had missed.

'Heya!'

He ran back to the threshold. The south path guard was waving his hands, running toward the camp; he tripped and fell hard, cursing. Within the shelter, the children were already awake and alert.

A woman wearing a lord's cloak rode into the clearing, white cloth unfurling like wings as she raised a staff to command their attention.

'You ass-kissing turds. Rise as I command!' The voice carried without being a shout. Its resonance hung in the air as men scrambled up.

An armed woman rode beside her. He blinked twice, before he recognized her: Zubaidit! Had she betrayed them?

As the two females rode forward, his mind sorted out what he thought he was seeing from what was right in front of his face. The cloak was Eridit, but her bearing so changed and her aspect so frightening that it was hard to see in this cloaked woman the recklessly self-absorbed young actress who had dandled the other three men and afterward thrown Shai down beneath the overhand and, well, wicked him.

'Lord Radas sent me! Why are you loitering here when you are needed in Haldia? We are angry at your disobedience! Get your gear! Move out quickly!'

Her gaze passed over Shai as if she did not recognize him. Zubaidit, measuring the movements of the men as they grabbed gear or slouched out of lean-tos and ruined houses, marked him. Both women were dressed more conservatively than he was used to seeing them, far less flesh exposed; Bai was accustomed to having a lot of freedom of movement, while Eridit had just liked flaunting it. But now Bai wore a shift under her laced leather vest, and leather trousers for riding, while Eridit wore richer garb, a silk tabard and flowing trousers whose bright blue color shone in the rising dawn light. Her glossy black hair was twisted up on her head and held in place by lacquered sticks.

Twist and his cronies formed a tight knot, blocking the path into the village. They looked skittish, but they held their ground. 'I see no winged horse,' Twist said, although his voice quavered.

Eridit raised a hand, as if giving an order.

A hiss sounded. An arrow buried itself in Twist's throat. He crumpled, as the men around him shouted in fear and bumped into each other in their haste to get away from the stricken man. His body spasmed, legs pumping as he gurgled.

'We do not tolerate disobedience,' cried Eridit, and even Shai shuddered at her imperious fury.

A man came running from the byre. 'Heya! Heya!' Sweating and gray, he stumbled to a halt as he stared at the two mounted women with suspicion and fear. 'Sergeant's dead. Not a cut, or welts, or bruises on his throat. He's just dead.'

Zubaidit's gaze flickered, and Eridit glanced at her sidelong, the

moment passing quickly as the soldiers gabbled in alarm and confusion.

'Thus are those who disobey us, punished!' cried Eridit. 'Gather your gear. Move east. Quickly, now. Quickly.'

Cowed, they hastened to their shelters and pallets.

One brave man shuffled forward with head bent to touch fisted hands. 'What of the prisoners, lord?'

Neither looked toward Shai.

'Leave the prisoners!'

'Er, eh, as you command, lord. But what of the two favored ones the lord cloak, Lord Bevard, commanded us to bring safely to camp? And what of the lackwit? The lord cloak promised he would tear our hearts out if we did not do as he ordered.'

'Show me the prisoners,' said Eridit in that same full-throated voice, deeper than her speaking tone.

'You there, woodchopper! Get them out.'

Shai ducked inside the shelter. Every child was standing, ready for anything, as he'd trained them to be. 'File out in your banners. Stand close beside the door. Be ready to duck back inside if I tap my shoulder. Run like crazy for the woods on the north if I tap my head.'

They filed out. Bai looked them over, her grim expression unchanged.

Eridit's anger scorched. 'These are no longer your responsibility. I know which are chosen by Lord Bevard. I am responsible now. You have your orders.'

Incredibly, the soldiers formed up in a ragged line and jogged out of the clearing and away down the southeastern path, their hulking forms vanishing into the trees one by one by one until – Merciful God! – they were all gone.

The children stared numbly after them. The rising sun brought the trees into color. In the long silence, birds twittered. They stood there for what seemed forever, unable to move. Shai's skin was atwitch like a thousand bugs crawling.

The brush beyond the path rustled. Vali began to sob. Shai clamped a hand over his mouth.

'Hush, Vali, hold it together!'

Tohon trotted out of the trees, carrying his bow. He jogged up to

the two women, nodding at Shai as he halted. 'They're moving off at speed.' He looked at Eridit. 'That was done well, lass.'

Her high color sank to a dull sheen. She dismounted hastily and took only three steps before she doubled over and retched, heaving until she had nothing left to bring up.

'Where did you get the horses?' Shai could think of nothing else to say.

'That horse has no wings,' said Dena. 'The lord has a winged horse.'

Tohon surveyed the children, then caught Bai's attention. 'I'm going to track the soldiers. These young ones are a complication. Best if they return to their homes.'

'Don't you think they would have done so long ago if they could have?' cried Shai. 'They can't possibly walk so far now, even if they could find their way, which I doubt. Most would starve along the way or be captured again. The lord went back toward Olo'osson looking to round up more of the soldiers routed at Olossi. Do you want to send them walking back into his hands?'

'Work it out,' said Tohon. He loped back into the forest on the trail of the soldiers.

'Why ever did they leave you alive, Shai?' asked Zubaidit.

'The cloak took me for a lackwit.'

Eridit rose. 'Can you blame them?' She spat, grimacing at the taste. 'Aui! You've talked more just now than I heard you talk the first month we were out.'

Shai tapped his shoulder, and the children hustled back into the shelter, even Vali, who was forcefully sucking down sobs, trying not to break out weeping.

'Why did you come back?' he said. 'I assumed you would just go on with the mission.'

Bai shrugged. 'The less you know, the less can be tortured out of you. We figured if you reached the camp, you'd be questioned. We couldn't take the chance they'd learn of our situation from you.'

He considered the cold nasty feeling he'd had in the presence of the cloak. 'It's true. He was sending me to be questioned by the commander of the army.'

'Lord Radas?'

'A female. He never named her. I can't leave the children behind, they depend on me.'

'What can you possibly do with them?' asked Eridit. All imperious command had vanished. She looked exhausted.

'I don't know. Get them to a safe haven.'

'Nothing like that around here,' said Bai. 'This entire district is pretty sparsely settled, but even so, every village we've come across as we've tracked you has been burned out or abandoned. Even the temples are empty. You can't lead them all the way back to Olo'osson, Shai. Or hope to find their families, if their families even survived.'

'If I leave them now, I don't know who will die because I wasn't here to help them.'

Mounted, Bai reminded him of the Qin soldiers: deadly, but rational, unlike the soldiers who had taken them prisoner. 'They went inside quickly enough, at a signal from you.'

'They're formed into banners. They'll take my orders.'

'Is there a well around here?' asked Eridit. 'Eihi! I want to rinse out my mouth.'

'That way.' He pointed.

She moved.

Bai said, 'Don't go, Eridit. We've got to clear out now.'

Eridit halted.

'All it takes is three of those cursed soldiers to ask a pair of questions and call each other cowards, and they'll come running back here to kill us. Eiya!' Bai bit her lip. Raised her gaze to the heavens. Drew down her brows.

'We can't take them all,' said Eridit.

'I'm not leaving the children,' said Shai. 'You go on. I'll manage. Come out, banners! Grab anything there is.' They filed out briskly, looking frightened. 'Yudit, take your warblers and the heron banner and run to the byre. See if the soldiers forgot the supplies stored there.'

Yudit and Dena ran off with their groups, but to watch them go made obvious the ridiculousness of any plan to save them: too thin, loo weak, too young. Still, he must try.

'Owls, scour the houses. Don't dawdle. You hawks, go to the storehouse beside the well and see if there are any ladles, buckets, or pouches left, and fill them with-'

A scream arced from the forest cover.

'The hells!' Bai drew her sword.

'Shit!' Eridit fumbled the mount as two men sprinted out of the woods, packs flapping on their backs. If they had held swords or spears, they had lost them.

A pale-haired, demon-eyed ghost rode out of the forest, with a light burning in her left hand and a mirror held in her left. Mist coiled around her, only it was not mist. It was a cloak that concealed her legs and, in its winding, blended into the furled wings of the mare she rode. One of the men looked back over his shoulder at the demon.

The mirror, catching light, flashed. The man collapsed to the ground.

The other stumbled gibbering to the ground and raised hands in supplication, but when the mirror flashed again, he slumped forward, then toppled sideways.

Bai sheathed her sword and yanked a strung bow from her quiver, fitting an arrow as the ghost rode forward. The hawk banner huddled around Shai, fixed in the silence they'd learned to keep. Other children, farther away, cried out and ran, some toward the byre where Yudit had gone, but others back to Shai.

All the tales said that demons were beautiful, that they aroused men and women to lust; this one was no different.

She pulled up her mount and faced him.

'You're a demon,' he said, his voice strong enough that it surprised him to hear it issue so forcefully from his mouth. He wasn't accustomed to speaking up. 'You've taken on the appearance of someone who is dead.'

'I am a demon,' she agreed, in the smoky voice he'd dreamt of so many nights, wishing to hear her speak even though in all the time she had served the Mei clan she had seemed mute. Meeting his gaze, her brow furrowed. 'Yet your heart is veiled to my sight.'

She looked at the others. Eridit choked down a cry; the children wept; Bai doubled over, a hand clapped to her heart, bow and arrow falling out of her hand to the ground to leave her helpless. The ghost looked back at him, the only one who could meet that cold blue demon gaze. Yet what is a demon, after all, but your fears and hopes stalking you?

'Those who hurt others must be punished,' she said.

Vali clung to him, and Eska and Dena had thrown their arms around his body. Gently, he pushed them behind him. 'Maybe I harmed you once, but these others did not. Spare them, I beg you.'

A ghost retains emotion, but demons have been bled dry. Her round, pale face did not alter expression as she raised the mirror.

And lowered it.

'You act as I did once. What does that make you?' She shook her pale head, as at an unanswerable question, then rode off across fields green with untended weeds. The horse unfurled its wings and leaped, rising above the treetops. All stared as the demon and her horse vanished from sight.

First to recover, Eridit raised both hands and sang. ' "Heaven-born, elegant in line, it rises above the mountains to where the stars burn."'

'I feel sick,' said Bai, straightening as slowly if she were an old woman afflicted with joint fever. 'The hells! That cursed demon looked straight into my heart!'

Hooves thumped on earth. At a gallop, Ladon and Veras burst into the clearing from the path.

'They're all dead!' cried Ladon.

Another rider appeared, reining to a halt beside the two militiamen. Tohon's expression was pulled with shock, eyes white and almost rolling, but when he saw Shai and identified the others, he pressed the back of a hand against his chest and with several controlled breaths calmed himself.

'They're dead,' the Qin scout said. 'I counted thirty-four soldiers, these two the last. A demon killed them.'

'That was a Guardian,' said Eridit. 'As it says in the chant. A Guardian saved us!'

it was a demon, like the other cloak,' said Vali hoarsely. 'I'm glad the soldiers are dead. I'm glad! I wish I could have cut their throats myself! And then cut the lord cloak's throat, too, and made him bleed!'

'Hush, Vali.'

Zubaidit looked at Shai. 'You recognized her.'

'The demon took on the appearance of a woman who was once

a slave in the Mei clan. We called her Cornflower, for her eyes. But she died in the desert last year.'

'What did she mean, that your heart is veiled?'

'I don't know.'

Tohon said, 'These children are a burden to our mission. Also, in this large a group, they will attract attention. They should be scattered.'

' "Your heart is veiled",' muttered Bai. She swung down from her horse to pick up her fallen weapon. With the arrow, she tapped Tohon on the arm. 'I have a better idea. These children are our gate into Lord Radas's army, don't you see? If we walk into the army with prisoners in tow, we'll look like we belong.'

'How can you even say-so?' cried Shai.

'Not into slavery,' she said briskly. 'Not to be abused. Shai, do you believe I would chain any person to what these have already suffered? But you know what we're facing. The children can help us, if they can be brave.'

Hand closed around the shaft of the arrow, she raised it as a talisman. She stamped three times, marking the entry, and sang in a voice not as silky and prettified as Eridit's but more powerful. This was no guise or mask, meant to entertain, but a call to arms.

' "Oliara-the-Bold raised the silk banners, all their color made bright in the sun. She cried out, 'Forward! Forward!' and so they marched."'

A few mouthed the words or, like Eridit, sketched the gestures with their hands.

'Can you be brave?' Bai asked them, echoing the tale. 'Do you want to defeat those who harmed you and killed your comrades and kinfolk?'

'I want to go home,' said Eska in a small voice.

'And you will, every one of you, I swear it by the knives of the Merciless One.' She met each pair of eyes, because all watched her. 'Any who wish can head home now.'

But of course it was impossible that these children could walk hundreds of mey across unknown countryside without food or guidance. Bai knew that and, knowing it, manipulated them. Shai hated her even as he felt the pull of her words and of her strength.

'We're the ones who will destroy that which lies beyond the

Shadow Gate. We are the ones who will walk into their camp and spy them out. Be bold. Strike the blow that will cripple them. We must go forward.'

' "Forward, forward",' they whispered, the familiar echo from the tale.

She swept them up in the flood of her righteous anger, so you drowned never knowing you had succumbed.

Eridit glowed, staring at Bai as at a lover. The militiamen likewise nodded eagerly. Even Tohon – who surely knew better! – tugged on an ear as he considered her words, her stance, her reckless proposal.

'You're crazy,' said Shai.

'Maybe a bit of madness is what is needed. Not the Thunderer's strict ordinances or the Lantern's tidy accountings. Now enters the mistress of love, death, and desire, the Ail-Consuming Devourer. Swallowed up, we become the vessels that carry out her will, for it is not her will that we transgress against others. She will walk with us, as long as we walk in her.'

' "Praise to the glorious one",' sang Eridit. ' "She who is lightning. She who devours us.'"

Passionate words engulf the unwary; strength lures the vulnerable. After all they had suffered, after all they had done and pretended to do, the young ones wanted, perhaps, to feel their degradation meant something. They weren't shamed; they were soldiers.

'Don't worry, Shai,' said Zubaidit as she surveyed her frail, ragged troops. 'I have no intention of seeing the innocent suffer. I have a plan.'