Shadow Gate

3

After a certain point death is a peaceful condition, but a bit uncomfortable if your one leg is twisted beneath you, and if your shoulder, pressed into rock, is beginning to feel the pinch, and if your hip aches. She shifted, because it irritated her that minor twinges must plague her when she had earned the right to rest. Once shifted, she realized she was awake and her mind was full with questions.

Why were those men hunting her? Why did Lord Radas want her? Was it not enough to murder Flirt? Must he torture and abuse her as well, as he had that poor Devouring girl? Yet he had not questioned her when she had claimed her name as Ramit. Did he seek Mark, the reeve, or Ramit, the unknown woman walking an altar? What had the shepherd boy meant when he had called her 'one of them'?

So many questions, and not a single answer in sight.

She groaned and rose to her knees. A sticky dry substance flaked from her hands as she pushed up to stand. Blood stained her tunic and leggings; her hands were grimy with dried blood and slime, but the smell had faded. She raised her hands to rub her eyes, then recalled how disgusting her hands were, and looked around bleary-eyed as her skin went clammy with fear.

The mare had brought her back to a Guardian altar.

The cursed horse sucked noisily from a pool, tail swishing. The stupid beast paused to snap at a fly.

The hells!

Marit tugged at the stolen tunic, but the worn linen weave ripped right away. Below, her dark belly rounded in a curve dimpled by the Mother's Scar, her navel. A paler line, smooth along the skin but ragged in its journey, marked a scar just below and to the right of her navel. Had she earned that scar in her days as a reeve? Had she

only dreamed the arrow that had punctured her abdomen? She probed along the scar, but felt no tenderness and no pain.

'What am I?' she said in the direction of the mare, who lifted her head at the sound of Mark's voice. 'What has happened to me?'

The cursed animal gazed at her. What did she know about horses, really? Stubborn, unpredictable, skittish, narrow-minded, fixated on the familiar because the unfamiliar is a threat to them, they were prey, born to run from that which pursued them.

As she was running. She was no longer a reeve, bound to her eagle, free to hunt. She was the hunted. Like the deer, she fled the arrow meant to kill her, and when the next flight struck, she probably would not even have seen it coming.

'You'll give me warning, won't you?' she called to the mare.

The cursed beast flicked its ears.

'I'll call you "Warning", just to call you something. I'll hope you grow into your name.' She dusted flecks of grime from her ragged clothing. 'Why in the hells do you keep bringing me to Guardian altars?'

The wind hummed across the pinnacle of rock on which they stood. She was panting with anger, furious and scared together, but even so the rose-purple light of a setting sun caught her attention. She spun slowly all the way around, because when beauty awes you, you must halt and try to catch your breath and your staggered heart.

The wind was light this evening, a constant blowing presence but easy enough to stand upright in despite that she stood on the very top of a vast pillar of rock. Broken contours suggested that a low wall had once rimmed the edge. No craggy peak loomed above. No overhang offered shelter within. She stood a few steps from a sheer drop-off; she might easily stumble over tumbled stones and fall to her death because the ground was a long, long way down. There was no way down except to fly.

To the west, a range of hills was painted by the colors of the falling sun. Below the pillar, a ridgeline snaked out from the hills. The ridgeline terminated in a bulge where a ruined beacon tower stood, a complex of abandoned buildings arranged at the base of the spire on which she and the horse perched. To the east, the ground dropped away so precipitously that even a reeve with her

experience of heights felt her breath taken away by the grandeur of the scene: a wide basin of land darkened as the eastern sky faded into purpling twilight. Clouds drifted like high islands above the land. Out there beneath the sea of night, a few lights glimmered, village watch fires lit against the gloom.

As twilight overtook them and the light changed, the twisting coil of the labyrinth came to life, marking the path to the center where the mare waited beside the pool. Water burbled up from the rock beneath. Marit licked her lips, smelling the moisture and craving its coolness.

She did not want to be caught out at the edge of the pillar once night fell, for fear of falling over the edge. That cursed mare had a knack for dumping her at the entrance to the labyrinth. She set a foot on the glittering path, then the other. Nothing happened.

With measured steps, she warily paced out the path. A pulse hummed up through her feet as the magic of the labyrinth came to life around her: a flat ocean pricked by the emerging milky-bright light of stars; a fallen stone tower rising above rocks barely visible above surging waves; the last rumbling footsteps of a thunderstorm over a tangled oak forest keeping time with flashes of blue light high in the sky; the sun drawing a golden road across a calm sea of water; mist shrouding a high peak; in a homely village of six cottages, farmers laughing together as they trundled their carts home.

For an instant she saw onto the place she actually stood: the pinnacle of rock beneath her feet, the vast bowl of land to the east, and the rose-painted hills to the west. She took another step and saw a dusty hilltop rimmed by boulders, the setting sun visible as a red smear. She faltered, chest tight as she sucked in air for courage.

When she had looked onto this place before, Lord Radas had spoken to her. Hastily, she moved on. She smelled the rotting damp of marshland but could see only the suggestion of a flat landscape against the swallowing night. As she moved through the path, she must smell and hear what lay beyond each turn because the sun had set and she was walking in layers of night, some too dark to penetrate and others still limned with the last measure of day as though she were leaping from east to west, north to south, and back again, randomly.

Not randomly. The pattern repeated. And if it repeated, she could learn it.

She took another step. Air iced her lungs. Her face and hands smarted in a bone-freezing chill. A tincture of juniper touched her nostrils. She halted, startled by the brush of that perfume, remembering Joss and how he had washed with cakes of juniper-scented soap sent twice yearly by his mother. Joss, her lover. The man she loved, even if she had never quite told him so.

Twilight is a bridge between day and night. On its span, the wind blows both into the whispering past and the silent future, and you partake of them both because you are in transition from one state to the next, a condition that recurs with every passage between night and day and night. Indeed, this condition occurs many times in the entirety of a life, which is lived out as a series of such transitions, bridges between what has gone before and what will come next.

Twilight is a presence, hard to know in its impermanence.

Twilight speaks to her in a soft foreign lisp, with a good-natured voice half amused and half cynical.

'Hu! There you are. They've been looking for you for a good long while now, since long before I came to them. They're getting irritated. If I were you, I would submit now. That's better than what will happen if you can't keep hiding from them. On the other hand, I don't mind seeing them wring their hands and stamp their feet a bit longer.'

'Who are you?'

'I'm a ghost.'

'A ghost! You don't sound like a ghost.'

'What do ghosts sound like?'

'Aui! I suppose they sound like we do, I mean, that they talk no differently as ghosts than they do when living.'

'So are you saying I can't be a ghost? Or I can be a ghost?'

'You're a flirt,' she said with a laugh, because she liked his lazy, good-natured, and sexy baritone even if she could not trust him.

'It's been said of me before.' Like twilight, he seemed not to partake completely of any one thing: he might be a good man coarsened by a bad situation, or a bad man mellowed by a good situation, or just someone caught in the middle with no way out but through.

'Don't trust me,' he added, his voice darkening. 'I'd give you over in an instant if I thought it would get me what I want. Who are you?'

'I'm not telling. What do you want?'

The lazy tone worked up to an edge. 'Escape from this hell of endless suffering.'

'Why are you trapped?'

His laugh scraped. 'We're all trapped. Don't you know that yet? Wait where you are and submit when they reach you, or keep running and hiding.'

The bitterly cold air hoarsened her voice. 'Those can't be the only choices.'

'How have you evaded them for so long? Neh, don't tell me. I don't want to know. But they're long in looking for you. They don't like that. They hauled me free at once. They made me what I am now.'

'What are you now, besides a ghost, if you are a ghost?'

'A coward who fears oblivion and yearns for it. I have more power than I could ever have dreamed of. I wish I could die. I want to go home, but I never will leave this land.'

'Who are you?'

For a long time he remained silent. Her fingers grew taut with cold until it hurt to bend them. Her ears were burning, and her eyes had begun to sting as though blistering from the cold.

He spoke in a whisper. 'How I fear them, for they are sweet with the corruption that comes of believing they must do what is wrong in order to make things right. I was called Hari once, Harishil, the name my father gave me. Will you tell me your name?'

Mark had served as a reeve for over ten years. She'd learned to trust her instincts, and she knew in her gut that even if she might want to trust him, she must not. Anyway, what kind of person got a name from his father, not his mother? 'I can't tell you. I'm sorry.'

Had she been able to see him, she would have guessed he smiled. 'You need not apologize for what is true. I'll have to tell them I saw you, but I'll say I didn't know where you were. There's one thing you need to know. We can see into people's hearts with our third eye and our second heart, but we are blind to each other. Remember that. It's your only weapon against them.'

'Who are "they"?'

'Nine Guardians the gods created, according to the tale you tell in this land. I think at one time they walked in accord, but now they are at war. Two rule, and three of us submit; five are enough to hunt and destroy the four who have not yet submitted to the rule of night and sun. They will find you in the end, and if you will not submit, they will destroy you and pass your cloak to another, one more easily subdued.'

'The Guardians are dead. They've vanished from the Hundred. Everyone knows that.'

'Guardians can't die. Surely you know that, now you are one. Hsst! That cursed worm Yordenas is walking. Go quickly if you don't want your whereabouts known to him! Go now!'

His urgency impelled her. She took a step, and a breath of fetid air washed her. She took another step into a spitting salt spray with the crash of surf far below, and another step to warm rain in her face amid the racket of crickets and the smell of damp grass. Her hands smarted as blood rushed back into the skin. The pulse beneath her feet throbbed with a third tone, hot and intense, the presence of blood washing down the path like an incoming tide.

She could not run within the confines of the labyrinths, but because she was compact she could negotiate the path's twists and turns economically, keeping ahead of the other presence. The muzzy confusion of earlier days had lifted and she felt both the widening focus and the pinpoint awareness of her surroundings from her days as a reeve when her instincts – right up until the last day – had served her so well.

She was back in the game, one step ahead of fear. Flirting with danger, the rush that her eagle had taught her to love. Wasn't all of life like that: never more than one step ahead until the day death caught you?

The path spilled her into the center of the labyrinth, where the horse waited, looking aggrieved, if horses could look aggrieved, as if to say: 'Why did you take so long?'

Gods, she was thirsty. Hands shaking, she filled the bowl and drank her fill, the water blazing into every part of her body. She sank down cross-legged, panting, and rubbed her forehead. Night

had fallen. Knowing a cliff plunged away on all sides, she dared not move, not unless the horse was willing to fly at night, something an eagle could not do because they depended so heavily on their vision. She'd heard tales of eagles who could be fooled or forced into flying at the full moon, but she'd never had such luck with Flirt.

But as she sat with a sweet breeze steady against her face, she realized the mare actually had a kind of sheen to it that might be described as a glow. Its coat was not so much pale gray as luminescent silver. Indeed, the horse had an unnatural look, a ghost in truth, if ghosts flicked their tails and tossed their pretty heads.

Why did the cursed mare keep bringing her to Guardian altars? Her chest was tight the way a person gets when they don't want to breathe for fear of inhaling where they know there will be a noxious smell.

A Guardian altar. A winged horse. A cloak. A simple begging bowl. Light from her palm, if she needed it, and a patterned labyrinth through which she seemed able to speak across distances to others like her.

She knew the tale. She could chant the words or tell it through gesture, as every child could.

Long ago, in the time of chaos, a bitter series of wars, feuds, and reprisals denuded the countryside and impoverished the lords and guildsmen and farmers and artisans of the Hundred. In the worst of days, an orphaned girl knelt at the shore of the lake sacred to the gods and prayed that peace might return to her land.

A blinding light split the air, and out of the holy island rising in the center of the lake appeared the seven gods in their own presence. The waters boiled, and the sky wept fire, as the gods crossed over the water to the shore where the girl had fallen.

And they spoke to her.

Our children have been given mind, hand, and heart to guide their actions, but they have turned their power against themselves. Why should we help you?

For the sake of justice, she said.

And they heard her.

Let Guardians walk the lands, in order to establish justice if they can.

Who can be trusted with this burden? she asked them. Those with power grasp tightly.

Only the dead can be trusted, they said. Let the ones who have died fighting for justice be given a second chance to restore peace. We will give them, gifts to aid them with this burden.

Taru the Witherer wove nine cloaks out of the fabric of the land and the water and the sky, and out of all living things, which granted the wearer protection against the second death although not against weariness of soul;

Liu the Opener of Ways built the altars, so that they might speak across the vast distances each to the other;

Atiratu the Lady of Beasts formed the winged horses out of the elements so that they could travel swiftly and across the rivers and mountains without obstacle;

Sapanasu the Lantern gave them light to banish the shadows;

Kotaru the Thunderer gave them the staff of judgment as their symbol of authority;

Ushara the Merciless One gave them a third eye and a second heart with which to see into and understand the hearts of all;

Hasibal gave an offering bowl.

All she lacked was a staff of judgment, whatever that was. Really, a reeve who tallied up the evidence might suggest, against all likelihood, that these added up to an obvious conclusion: Here sits a Guardian.

Was she merely spinning and drifting on sweet-smoke, unmoored from the world around her? All she knew for sure was that she was being hunted by forces she did not comprehend, ones her gut – and Hari the outlander, if that was really his name – warned her never to trust.

She didn't know what precisely she was now, but she had been a reeve once. She could investigate. And it would help to figure out

where the hells she was, where her enemies were, and what they wanted.

'You might want to turn back,' said the old woman as she scooped nai porridge into Marit's bowl. They stood under the triple-gated entrance to a temple of Ilu, where Mark had come to beg for food. 'Once you ford the river and cross through West Riding, you'll have left Sohayil.'

'Merchants will trade, and beggars will beg, and laborers will seek work wherever they can find it.' The nai's richly spiced aroma made Marit's mouth water; it was all she could do not to bolt down the food right there.

'In the old days that was certainly true, but not anymore. We can't be so easy about things in these days.' Morning mist rose off the river and curled in backwater reeds. A last gust of night rain spattered on the waters, and stilled. On the grounds of the temple, an apprentice trundled a wheelbarrow full of night soil to the temple gardens, while a pair of children carried an empty basket to the henhouse. A trio of elders even older than the gatekeeper paced through the chant of healing from the Tale of Patience, their morning exercise. From the round sanctuary rose the sonorous chanting of male voices. 'I don't mind telling you, for your own good, really, that we've recalled all our envoys who've been walking the roads from here to Haldia and Toskala. Sund and Farsar and Sardia aren't truly safe, although some still make the journey.'

'You must have envoys carrying messages to the Ostiary in Nessumara, to the other temples of Ilu. Not to mention your work as envoys.'

The old envoy was spry, comfortably plump, and nobody's fool. 'Think you so? Why are you headed that way? If you don't mind my saying so, your clothes and walking staff mark you as a beggar or a laborer down on her luck – and the gods know we've seen enough of them in these days – but your manner doesn't fit. The cloak's nice. Is that silk? Good quality.'

Her interest was genuine. She was envious, in an amused way. She didn't trust Mark, 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 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.

She 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, Mark 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.' Mark 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.

She 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 Mark. 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.

Mark 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. Mark 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 Mark'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. Mark 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.'

'Maybe so.' The news had distracted the captain. Mark heard him scratching in the stubble at his chin. 'Argent Hall, eh? Wish they'd made their move at Gold Hall, to get those cursed reeves up there off our backs, but there it is. The lord knows his business, just like you know yours, eh? The reeve halls will topple soon enough. What else? You've got that look about you, ver, like you're hiding somewhat from me.'

'Neh, neh, nothing at all. Just a word I overheard the other day, a passing comment, you can't trust chance-heard conversation, can you? Anyone can talk and say anything they please, can't they? How can a poor soul know what's true and what is just sky-spinning?'

The captain's silence made the shop seem abruptly warmer, stuffy and hard to breathe. From the street came calls and cries, so remote they might as well have been meaningless: a woman sobbing, a man's triumphant giggling as with a fit of cruelty, a spasm of coughing and spewing. Mark heard, from the back of the shop, a murmuring like mice rustling below the floorboards, words exchanged between two people in hiding:

'He'd not betray her, would he?'

'Hush, girl. He'll do what he must to save us. Hush.'

The words, sounding so clearly in her own ears, evidently did not reach the captain, who rapped a metal blade on the counter. 'I

haven't all day to wait! We gave you this chance to work with us rather than be cleaned out like the rest. I can burn down this shop if I've a wish to do so. Or take your daughter, like I did your son.'

'Peace! Peace! Just a cricket in my throat got me choked.' He made a business of clearing his throat. 'There, it's gone now.' Once started, the shopkeeper flowed like a stream at spring tide. 'A merchant come through, a stout fellow headed southwest on the Lesser Walk and meaning to head onwards down the Rice Walk to Olo'osson. This was a few weeks after the new year's festival. He was still wearing his fox ribbons, all silver, very fine quality and embroidered to show how rich he was.'

'I'm surprised a rich man chooses to strut his wealth these days. The roads aren't safe.'

'Heh. Heh. You'd say so, ver, wouldn't you? Eh, he wasn't afraid. He was a cocky fellow, even if he did have that cursed sloppy borderlands way of speaking. He would sneer at our humble town, though he'd no reason to do so. He ordered me about when he could just have asked politely for the items he needed.'

'What does this have to do with anything?'

'Oh, eh, it's just I notice such things, being a shopkeeper. We have to size up our customers. So when I went into the back to fetch out another lead line, I heard him saying to his companion that he had powerful allies in the north. That they were going to march on Olossi later this year. He did like to hear himself talk. He was indignant, said it wasn't his fault he'd had to make outside alliances. It was just that there were troublemakers in Olossi trying to elbow their way into power and push out those who had been good stewards for these many years, and he had to protect his clan.'

It was a common saying among the reeve halls that some came into service possessed of good instincts while some learned good instincts during service, and that those who neither possessed nor learned did not survive. Mark had good instincts, and had learned better ones in her ten years as a reeve, although not enough to save herself from a knife to the heart.

But ever since she'd woken, she heard and tasted and smelled with cleaner senses, as if the Four Mothers – the earth, water, fire, and wind that shapes the land – had lent her a measure of their own essence.

The captain said, 'Who else did you tell?'

He's going to kill him. The air told her because of the way his sour scent sharpened. The earth told her because of the way his feet shifted on the floorboards, bracing for the thrust.

The shopkeeper scratched his head, nails scraping scalp. She could smell his fear, but he wasn't afraid enough. He didn't see it coming.

'None but my wife, as a curiosity'

Because he thinks he can sell the information later. Because if no one else knows, then he can hoard harness and the used traveling gear he accumulates in the hope of making a greater profit off it later by selling to a mass of men on the move – an army – who need goods immediately and can't wait. The fate of the folk of Olossi concerns him not at all.

'If the troubles down south settle out,' he added, 'then maybe more folk will be on the roads, we'll see more trade. Trade's been scarce these past few seasons. Folk don't want to be out on the roads because they fear-'

She stood in the moment the captain drew his sword.

In the lineaments of a face shine the spirit; in the posture of the body speaks the soul. The tight set of a jaw reveals anger. A hand clenched around the hilt of a sword shows resolve.

Fear settles where a man leans back.

Shoulders hunching, a hand raised helplessly, the shopkeeper glanced toward Marit.

J am dead now, but at least I kept the secret. At least my sister will have escaped them. The shopkeeper's thoughts might as well have been words spoken aloud, they were cast like seeds in a broad spray, everything about him caught between his small, fatal victory and his simple fear that the blade, striking him, would hurt terribly as it cut and smashed his flesh.

We all live in terror of pain.

'You not least,' she said to the captain. 'You are one of those who will die in pain. You have sown with cruel seeds, and the bloody harvest will devour you.'

His sword point dropped. She studied his face so she would remember it no matter how much time passed before they met again: a broken nose; a scar under his left eye.

His lips parted as he trembled. 'You are death. Where did you come from?'

'Answer your own question. Go from this town. Don't come back. I know you now. I'll hunt you down if harm comes to any here.'

His thoughts spilled as water over the lip of a fountain. I'll be rewarded for this message, for telling them I've spotted one of the cloaks walking abroad in daylight. Or what if she is already acting in concert with them? What if this is a test? To see if I act rightly, follow orders? What if they punish me? Aui! Aui!

'Get out,' she said, wondering if she'd have to try and grab the sword out of his hand and kill him.

But he fled.

The shopkeeper began gasping, spurts of sobs punctuated by racking coughs. The door slid back. The pretty daughter stuck her head in, eyes seeming white with fear.

He spun, hearing the door tap against the stop, and before she could cringe back he slapped her. 'Get back in the closet, you witless girl! Can't you stay where you're told?' The purse of his mouth betrayed his shame. He looked back at Mark.

An onslaught of thoughts and images tumbled: She'll run away, find a temple, any place to take her in, but what if the soldiers capture her as they did Sediya-? A young woman – his own sister – staggers into their humble house, sneaking in out of the alley and huddling in the chicken house until dawn. She's much younger than her brother, the last child of their parents. Like her niece, she's pretty enough, but haggard with misery. Her thighs are sticky with blood and she stinks of piss; she limps as her sister-in-law supports her into the house. She is crying, 'They'll come for me. I ran away. Please hide me.'

The shopkeeper jerked his gaze away from Marit.

'They'll kill us when they learn we've gone against them, that we're hiding one of the captives they took,' he said hoarsely to his daughter, but she was too stunned to speak or move with her cheek flushed red from the blow. Her silence infuriated her father. He raised his hand just as the captain had raised his sword.

'Don't take your anger out on her,' said Marit, 'or she'll run and you'll have bartered away your honesty and your honor and your good name for nothing.'

'Just get out, I beg you,' he said, his movement as stiff as that of an aged elder as he kept his gaze averted. 'Take whatever you want.'

Reeves could accept tithes, receiving from those they aided the necessities that allowed them to live. She grabbed what she wanted: a feed bag, a pair of brushes one stiff and one softer, a hoof pick, a lead line, rope, and a bundle of tough rags.

She paused with the goods stuffed into the feed bag. What if a reeve became greedy? It happened; they took more than they needed, or they taught themselves to take what they wanted and told themselves they deserved it all. 'He passed under the gate into the shadow.' In every one of the Ten Tales of Founding, more than one man and woman crossed the Shadow Gate to the other side, where corruption takes hold in the heart. With each step, the path got smoother as you told yourself why it was acceptable to walk farther down this road. The tales of the Hundred told the story of humankind and the other children born to the Four Mothers. It was natural that some succumbed to the shadows.

Maybe it was unnatural that any did not.

'Where are the reeves who should be aiding you? Isn't Gold Hall patrolling? Isn't there a temple of Uu nearby that can send an envoy to Clan Hall in Toskala to ask for help?'

He laughed recklessly. 'The reeves can't help us. You can walk out of our town and never come back, but we have to live here. No matter what you said to him, they will come back. It's us will have to face them. Not you.'

'That merchant,' she said. 'You said he was from Olossi. Did he give you a name?'

'Quartered flowers were his house mark. Is that enough? Will you go?'

Marit followed the sniveling girl into the narrow living quarters, tromping through in her outdoor sandals like the rudest kind of intruder. There was a single table and two cupboards, everything put away neatly except for a single ceramic cup filled with cooling tea set on the table. The floor was swept clean, and this homely indication of a woman doing her best to stem the shadows by keeping her home tidy made Marit hurt as if she'd been punched under the ribs.

She shoved open the back screen and clattered onto the porch

and down three steps to the courtyard. The damp of night rains still darkened the ground. The gate that led to the alley was tied shut. She fumbled with the knot, her hands clumsy.

Where were they hiding the fugitive sister?

She paused to scan the yard: the squat house with scant room above the eaves; the small grain storage up on stilts; a pit house with the sticky scent of incense drifting; the henhouse, an empty byre, and the surrounding wall too high to see over. She clambered up the ladder to the grain storage and tugged out the smallest sack of rice, something easy to carry over a shoulder.

Stillness was settling over the village as folk assessed the damage and checked their injuries after the abrupt departure of the soldiers. There, after all, she heard the shallow breathing of a woman trying to make no sound: the sister was hidden in the henhouse, scrunched under the nesting shelf and by now smeared with fresh droppings and the filthy wood shavings strewn on the floor to absorb the waste.

Mark took a step toward the henhouse, mouth open to speak. But she said nothing.

She hadn't the means to support a traveling companion. It was difficult enough dealing with the cursed horse. A hundred other reasons aside told her she had to move on alone. This wasn't the time to try to save a woman here and a man there, like trying to hold your hands over one beautiful flower in a driving hailstorm while the rest disintegrate under the onslaught.

'The hells,' she muttered. She said, in a low voice meant to carry no farther than the courtyard walls, 'I'm a traveler, and I'm headed out of town. The soldiers have gone for now, but they'll be back. If you want, you can travel with me. I offer you such protection as I can, and insofar as I am capable, I will get you to a place of safety. If there is such a place any longer. I can't make you come, and I can't promise you much. There it is. Take it or leave it.'

Her offer was met with a resounding silence. Thank the gods.

She turned back to the gate and fumbled with the knot, sure she had tugged on it the wrong way and caused what ought to have been an easy slipknot to jam into itself. She'd never been good with rope, not like Joss, grown up on the sea's shore where every child learned a hundred cunning knots…

'I'll go.' The voice was soft and female, and not a bit tentative.

Marit turned. A woman crouched in the low entrance to the henhouse. Her hair had matted into clumps now streaked with white droppings; her face was patched with muck and dotted where wood shavings had stuck to the damp. The color of her cheap hemp taloos was concealed beneath a coat of red clay and paler mud, sprinkled with more droppings.

The woman looked right at her.

An assault of images: a weeping girl with hands bound; the ruins of a village smolder as the line of captives staggers past, but they're too exhausted to do more than cover their noses to ease the smell as the soldiers drive them on; an unexpected moment of laughter when eight of the captives, wary comrades now, splash in a pond; stumbling in mud while somewhere out of sight a baby cries and cries. She had lied about her name, because then all the things that happened to her were really happening to someone else, someone she was not.

Marit said, 'Your name is Sediya.'

Wearily, the woman said, 'You're one of them, one of the cloaks who pin us. The soldiers are their slaves, and we're slaves to the soldiers. Now I guess I'm your slave.'

'I'm not one of them,' said Marit fiercely.

'You're not going to kill me? Punish me? Take me back to Walshow?'

'The hells! Did you walk all the way here from Walshow?'

'Not really. I was swapped out to a scouting patrol, to service them while they were ranging, cook their rice, pound their nai. We walked for weeks and weeks, and I was too scared to run away. Then I got to seeing places I recognized, and that's when I ran. They'll kill me when they catch me. That's the promise they make you.'

Marit swiped a hand through her grubby hair, and cursed, the biting words taking the edge off her anger.

The woman had the numb gaze of a person who has learned to gauge how close she is to the next time she'll be hurt.

'Stupidest cursed thing I've ever done,' muttered Marit as she turned back to the gate, but she thought of the Devouring girl in the temple up on the Liya Pass and she couldn't take back what she'd offered.

'Here, let me.' Sediya had a funny way of walking, favoring both legs, trying to hide that each step pained her. But she had clever hands; the knot fell away.

The door to the house scraped open. The shopkeeper stuck his head out, saw his sister, and blanched. 'Sedi! If they see you, if they know I sheltered you – you've already brought trouble down on us. Can't you think of anyone but yourself?'

Sediya wrenched open the gate. 'I'm leaving.' She bent her head just as Mark caught a flash of dull fear. 'May the gods allow that you fare well, Brother.'

Marit took a step out into the alley and glanced up and down the narrow lane. 'No one's moving. Let's go.'