Shadow Gate

46

The Istri Walk was the great thoroughfare of the Hundred, wide enough to accommodate two wagons rolling abreast on the raised central pavement with well-trodden dirt paths flanking the walk on either side. Marit found it eerie to pace its measures in such solitude. Every village was closed down tight, not one person out on road or path except for gangs of farmers working the fields without the usual songs to pass the time. Everything was too quiet, Marit thought, not with the lull before the storm but with the shock of destruction after.

The trailing edge of the army appeared roadside, the detritus of their passage: a naked toddler with a distended stomach sucked its dirty thumb; a lad herded a paltry herd of skinny goats along the verge; a man with a crutch limped away when he saw them, keeping his head down. People had been scavenging for wood and kindling, for there was not a scrap of forest litter on the ground besides rotting vegetation.

Wagons blocked the road, but the riders broke into a canter and flew over them. The guards bobbed their heads in obeisance, afraid to look her in the eye.

'Who built this road?' Hari asked. 'I've never seen anything like it. Not even in the Sirniakan Empire.'

'No one knows,' said Marit. 'Even the tales don't say'

'I see such a path one time,' said the girl, who called herself Kirit.

'Where?' asked Marit when it became obvious she wasn't about to say more.

'In the grasslands. Just one place. A big tower. No one lives there, only demons. A road like this one, I see there.'

'Who built it?'

Kirit shrugged. 'Demons.'

They passed a second barrier, set at the outskirts of a village overrun with soldiers sitting at their ease on porches, but chatter died as the three cloaks passed. In the fields beyond the village, the army had set up its main bivouac, rank upon rank of traveling tents amid hundreds of campfires. As the long quiet spilled down to dusk, they rode into the camp, their cloaks billowing as the wind caught the edge of coming night. Twilight, mist, and death, they approached the heart of the enemy, identified by a trio of huge tents. Evidently Lord Radas liked his comforts.

Aui! Her chest felt tight, and her throat constricted. Hari was breathing raggedly, maybe not aware he was doing so. As for the girl, she likely was a demon, because as small and helpless as she looked, she acted no differently than if she'd been riding into her home village, not that Marit could begin to imagine a village filled with people with such ghastly pale faces and hair.

And for that matter, she thought, mind skittering at random as she shied away from the confrontation looming before her, did demons live in villages? Did they have kinfolk and lovers, or only prey?

The walls of the tents rippled as the wind sighed, like a beast breathing as it waited to consume them. Soldiers gathered at a distance. Marit and Hari dismounted, but Kirit remained on her mare, strung bow resting over her legs and three arrows caught in her left hand.

The entrance to the tent was swept back. Marit inhaled sharply, but the people who scurried out wore the badges common to prosperous merchants and householders, the kind of folk you met in the council hall. They kept eyes averted, and yet a stench of fear and greed rose off them as they hurried away under escort, soon vanishing into the crowded camp beyond. A second group strode out in their wake, captains outfitted in soldiers' gear and with the posture and authority of men accustomed to getting their way through physical prowess. She knew their type: Kotaru's ordinands, local militia commanders, any man who has built a fence around a territory and considers it his own and the gods help you if you think to challenge him. Yet they, too, kept their gazes lowered like children showing submission to a bullying parent.

Hari went inside, the pale cloth swallowing him. One gulp, and he was gone.

In the rightmost tent, cloth twitched. If someone had been peeking out, she had missed them. She looked at Kirit as the young woman surveyed the assembly with her cold blue gaze. Gawking soldiers hurried away, leaving the guards and the captains. Their fear pricked her.

Inside the tent, a man shouted, voice breaking into a ragged sobbing keen stabbed by grunts of pain.

'The hells!' Her lips were dry, and her hands cold. She gripped her staff and used its tip to flip the heavy entrance flap aside, then followed it into the interior.

Lamps burned in open space. A man writhed on a fine wool carpet, blood leaking over the green and gold pattern.

'Hari!'

Two men stood beside Hari, one holding a sword laced with blood and the other holding an arrow loosely woven between the fingers of his right hand. The swordsman looked up, revealing the face of a young man, grin twisted with cruel pleasure.

'Clean it, and sheath it,' said the other man, and the soldier obeyed mutely.

Lord Radas faced her, looking no older than the day he had ordered her killed. He blinked, not startled but considering. His was a pleasant face, but something dwelt deep there that she could not call human. 'The cloak of death. I glimpsed it many years ago, and thought it lost, but now you are come. I welcome you.'

Hari twitched, hands clutching his stomach. From the stench, the soldier had done a serviceable job of gutting him, because his guts were leaking out. His gaze fixed on her, his soft 'uh uh uh' enough to make your skin crawl, but he did not beg her for aid. Aui! She cursed herself for not having drawn her sword beforehand. Could she take them?

By his grip on the sword, the soldier was ready to strike again.

'Why did you do it?' she asked.

Radas's voice was as soft as his shadowed eyes. 'He has to learn not to displease me. In this way, he comes to understand that for his carelessness there are consequences. He brought it on himself.'

'What carelessness?'

'It's shameful, how carelessly he commanded the army we sent to support our allies in Olossi. Our task is made more difficult by his failure. It brings more harm and trouble to those who desire order. All the many people who suffer from these disturbed times want order, and they shall have it. Only now it will take longer and be more messy.'

Perhaps he was insane. Perhaps he was simply the land's most selfish liar. Hard to say, since he was veiled to her sight, and she was cursed sure he could see nothing in her likewise. He did not even seem to recognize her as the reeve he had ordered killed twenty years ago. Maybe because of that, he did not frighten her.

'What is your name?' he asked, his tone an imitation of kindly concern.

'I'm called Ramit.'

'That's right. Yet you fled from me. That was over a year ago.'

'I was unaccountably detained. Otherwise I would have come sooner.'

Perhaps he believed this bland pap. She found herself oddly irritated that she could not know, when all other people lay open to her third eye. Great Lady! Was she becoming accustomed to holding that axe over their heads?

'I'm satisfied. You are here now.'

She gestured toward Hari, whose grunts faded as blood leaked out between his fingers. 'May I assist him?'

'No. I would prefer you did not. He'll recover.'

'So you can punish him again in like manner?'

Wise uncles might smile so, sadly shaking their head at youth's foibles. 'He must suffer the agonies he has earned. Those who do harm must be punished.'

'Who are you to judge and execute him?'

'I am lord here, master of this army, which serves at my will.' He indicated the silent soldier.

'You're neither lord nor master to me! If he displeases you, why not release him? Why make him suffer?'

'We can't know how long it will take for the cloak to find a new master.'

'Does the cloak find a master, or make a slave?'

His smile twisted, flattening to a thinner line. 'That depends on you, doesn't it?'

The words struck deep, as they were intended to do. Disgusted with her cowardice, she threw herself to her knees beside the dying man. 'Had,' she murmured, 'I'm here. I'll bind your wounds-'

'Leave me be,' he whispered hoarsely. '… knew it was coming… just leave me, it will heal…'

The inner walls stirred, and a young man wearing a cloak as red as Hari's blood hurried into the tent from a side chamber. He wore his hair in the same fashion as Lord Radas, the rich man's three loops, but his were lopsided. Seeing Marit, he stopped.

'What is it, Yordenas?' asked Lord Radas, voice clipped with impatience.

'That's death's cloak! The one you were looking for last year.'

'So we had determined long since.'

'I sniffed her out, that one time. Remember I told you? I told you this cursed outlander was hiding something from you, but you wouldn't listen to me.' His tone grated.

Marit despised him at once, the feeling so strong it left a taste.

Lord Radas sighed. 'What is it, Yordenas?'

'Cursed if there isn't another one out there, lord.'

'Another what?'

'The cloak of mist you spoke of, lord. The lost one.'

Lord Radas's expression changed, a tic by his eye jerking twice before it stilled.

Hari moaned, eyes rolling back in his head as his body sagged and his hands opened in a gesture of acquiescence; he had stopped breathing. His cloak fluttered, rippling as in wind, and slithered over his body like a lilu embracing her chosen one.

From deeper within the tent a calm voice spoke. 'Death is come, as expected. Mist returned, a puzzle to tease us.'

The brawny soldier dropped to both knees, cowering.

There is a kind of fear that begins formless, deep in the pit of the belly, and wells up with such speed that it catches you and blinds you before you know you've been taken. Marit pushed to her feet, not even sure what monster clawed at her heart, only that she was ready to run.

She had heard that voice before.

A woman pushed aside cloth to enter. She had a round, dark face, ordinary in its lineaments, no one who would stand out in a crowd. She wore a cloak, black as night. Under that she wore humble laborer's clothing, a linen tunic and wide trousers. Lord Radas and Yordenas wore best-quality silk tabards, embroidered with goldthread trim, under-tunics dyed in subtle colors rarely seen outside wealthy homes and temple precincts. They looked like peacocks, like the scions of Nessumara's richest houses who strutted about the streets and canals in their finest to make sure folk did know they had the coin to be extravagant. Even their cloaks dazzled, while hers had no color at all.

'Radas,' she said in a pleasant, ordinary voice, 'go forth. Ask the young woman to enter. Treat her gently. Smile.'

She looked Mark up and down, while Mark reined in her breath and her composure. This was the woman who had murdered two reeves in the forest beside West Spur without touching them.

'Death ever challenges, but in the end even death can be defeated. You are not so different than the one who came before you, although he was grandson to an outlander.'

'Who is the one who came before me?' Images spun in Mark's memory of a handsome man with long black hair, a brown face, and demon-blue eyes.

The woman turned to Radas. 'Yet a warning, Radas, before you go out to greet the new one. She is small and young, and quite ugly, as pale as a worm. Easy to discount. But she carries her staff.'

He lifted his chin, as a man might who has just been slapped. 'She carries her staff? Aui!'

'It is leashed to her belt.' She did not bother to glance at Yordenas, who had not, evidently, noticed this crucial item. Nor for that matter had Hari mentioned it to Marit.

'An annoying development,' murmured Lord Radas.

Marit thought of the envoy of Ilu, the one Kirit had left, the one who had refused Marit shelter and friendship. He had asked Marit if she carried her staff, but she had not known what he meant.

'Not at all,' said the woman. 'We must welcome her all the more kindly, and teach her to be wise.'

He frowned. 'If you say so.' He went outside.

'Yordenas, move Hari. Drag out the entire carpet.' She clucked at the mess, then beckoned. 'If you will, Ramit, retire with me.'

Marit followed cautiously past the inner wall and into another chamber, this one with dirt for floor except for a single humble carpet spread in the middle of the dim chamber. A low writing desk and a traveling chest sat on the carpet, squared off to match the corners. Pillows rested on the other end, one in each corner.

'Sit.' She stepped over a spear lying behind the desk and sat. She touched the objects lying on the desk, shifting those that had moved out of line with the table's edge. 'Come closer, Ramit. You are disturbed by what you have seen.'

Marit pulled a pillow closer, settled down cross-legged with her short sword laid across her thighs, and said nothing.

'Radas has a cruel streak. Hari is reckless and does not understand the responsibilities that have fallen to him. I remain surprised that the cloak fell to an outlander, but the gods make these decisions, not us.'

Her indignation got the better of her. 'Surely Lord Radas could be commanded not to punish a man by torturing him.'

'Yes, I came too late to stop that piece of petty brutality, for which I am sorry. Matters have long since gotten out of hand. The criminals should have been culled from our ranks, not formed into their own army and sent to Olossi. So be it. I had other things on my mind and let it pass. Now I do what I can to mitigate the worst.'

'What do you mean?'

She raised a hand, palm up, in the gesture of receiving and questioning. 'What respect do we owe the gods? When respect is no longer shown, is it not true that people wander into the shadows? That they ignore those laws which displease them personally? That they scorn the helpless and needy? That offerings are scanted, and tithes not properly paid? That a few who believe they know what is right for others begin to call for change? Yet change is all too often only a word to signify chaos.'

The words seemed reasonable enough. 'Yes.'

'The weak should not suffer injustice simply because they are weak.'

'No.'

'Nor should the powerful twist justice to serve their own ends.'

'Of course not.'

'If those in power will not shift, what then is to be done? Have you a question, Ramit?'

Marit rubbed her jaw with the back of a hand. This unstable ground might collapse beneath her feet. Best to change the subject entirely. 'What am I?'

'Ah.' A keen look took her in from top to toe, with her thread-worn, mismatched clothing, and her short sword, which naturally the woman could not know Marit had stolen from a sergeant in High Haldia. 'You hold your sword close.'

'I trust it, that's true.'

'You are a soldier? One of the Thunderer's ordinands?'

'That's right,' Marit lied. 'I've had training. But I meant, what am I now?'

'You are a Guardian.' She touched, again, the odd assemblage of objects on the desk: a serviceable dagger; a sharpened green stick cut from hollow pipe brush; a narrow wooden box that likely contained writing brushes.

Remembering how this woman had written on paper, and two reeves had fallen dead, Marit found her resolve strengthened. 'Then why am I not presiding over assizes? Why are Guardians traveling with an army that invaded Haldia and now means to attack Toskala?'

'Have you asked yourself, when and why did the assizes fall into disuse? Indeed, the abandonment of the assizes by the Guardians is a sad tale, one not recorded in the annals of the Lantern. The hiero-phants of Sapanasu and the reeves certainly deserve an equal share of blame.'

'The reeves have always served justice! I mean, so I always heard.'

'Even the halls can become corrupted when those in power come to love power more than justice.'

'Maybe. But it seems to me that first the Guardians vanished, and after that the assizes fell into disorder. What am I to think now, when I find you and the others – if you count me, seven all told.' Too late she caught herself, having slipped in her accounting. She had meant to name six, rather than betray the envoy.

The woman nodded. 'Seven, now that you and the outlander girl have come to us.'

'I never saw so many,' said Mark cautiously. 'Where is the seventh?'

'On patrol.'

Perhaps not the envoy, then. Perhaps she meant the one Kirit had mentioned, 'twisted like Uncle Girish', whatever that meant. And if so, that meant eight Guardians were accounted for.

The woman went on. 'All could be restored to what the gods intended, if only we discover where the last two are. What a blessing that would be for the Hundred, neh?'

If Marit had not seen this woman kill two apparently innocent reeves, she might have found the argument more convincing. As it was, she smiled, not needing to fake her uncertainty. 'What happened to the council of Guardians?'

'Who among us has not succumbed to small greeds and unintended mistakes? Yet when those who clutch power turn all decisions to their own benefit, choosing to be ruled by selfishness, striking down those who have done nothing more than what they have done themselves, then the shadows have triumphed. Is it not so?'

'Truly, I think it is.'

She inclined her head in agreement. 'I was forced to act as I did. Let me ask you, Ramit. I would like to offer you my companionship for a few days. I would like to take you to the altars that lie in this region, to show them to you, to instruct you in their secrets.'

'Their secrets?'

'How to locate the altar which is closest to you, if you are lost. How to memorize the angles of the labyrinth. How to properly groom and care for the mare you ride.'

'A generous offer.'

'You have entered into a heavy obligation. It matters that you comprehend your duty.'

'What about Hari?'

She smiled ruefully. 'There you must trust me. He'll not recover for many days, perhaps weeks. But I promise you he will recover. Will you come? I'd like the company, I admit it.'

To enjoy the companionship of a seemingly reasonable human being, one who could teach her about what she had become! The temptation gnawed. She smiled tentatively. 'I'd welcome such a lesson.'

'Tomorrow, we will leave. Here they are.'

Lord Radas walked in looking stormy and irritated with Kirit following, bow gripped in white hands.

'I smell blood,' said the girl. 'Who are you? Are you all of them? Are there more?'

'I wonder where you are from,' said the woman softly, 'and how you came to possess the cloak of mist, and its bowl and staff and Sapanasu's light.'

The girl looked her up and down in a way Marit would never have dared do, knowing it more prudent to play the part of a supplicant. Then Kirit looked at Lord Radas. 'Here are four. Where is Hari?'

'He has other business to attend to and will not be available for some days.' If the woman was pleased, or angry, or worried, Marit simply could not tell. Even her age remained a mystery. She might be middling young, or middling old, but her demeanor suggested she had the experience to take hiccoughs in stride.

The girl, on the other hand, had youth's lightning ways. 'That is a good arrow,' she said to Radas. 'What wood makes it? I would see it.' She extended an arm.

'Don't touch!' He stepped back, rigid with anger.

'You have a bow, and arrows,' said the woman in her pleasant voice. 'And what a fine mirror that is hanging from your belt. May I see it?'

Those demon eyes really had a creepy shine, although Marit had to admire the girl's lack of fear. 'No. It is mine. He – gave-' She faltered, and for an instant looked as young as she likely was, an inexperienced child confronting the old and treacherous.

'He?' The woman leaned forward. 'Who is he?'

The girl hesitated.

'Hari gave her trouble about it,' said Marit. 'Sheh! I never saw a person spit fire like she did! Him just asking to use it one morning. Hari is a bit vain, wanting to look into the mirror, eh?' She finished more loudly than needed. The girl's look of confusion faded.

'A mirror is a woman's strength. I do not give away my strength.' Kirit glanced first at Marit and then at the other woman. 'You two do not display your woman's mirrors.'

Something mattered here, something that eluded Marit.

The woman brushed a hand over the writing box. 'Not all need mirrors.'

'In the mirror, I see truth. Why do so many bad people walk in the land? You march with an army. Cannot you stop the bad people from what they do to hurt people?'

'It is our goal to restore order.' The woman's voice sharpened. 'It is our intent to be sure that none need ever fear for the safety of her own existence.'

'We are already dead,' said the girl.

'No, we are not dead!' The woman rose, paced to a canvas wall, and back to the desk, crouching to pick up the writing box. 'We are Guardians, bringing justice to the land.'

'I kill them,' said the girl. 'The ones who are bad. You also? You kill the bad ones?'

A gaze flashed between Lord Radas and the woman. He pulled the arrow to his chest. She stood with the writing box tucked under a sleeve, and then, as an afterthought but very smoothly, she picked up the dagger and the stick and after that she took one step backward so she was standing in her soft leather slippers across the haft of the spear that lay on the carpet.

'Perhaps you would like to rest, young one. What is your name?'

'I am Kirk,' she said proudly. 'A Water-born Red Crane. I am orderly in nature. I am ruthless in the quest for justice because I cannot rest where injustice is done.'

'What is your companion's name?' asked the woman, indicating Marit with an elbow.

The girl looked at Marit, pale eyes cold.

The hells, thought Marit. I've been careless. She'd told the envoy her real name, within the hearing of this demon child. She shifted the sword on her thighs. Maybe she couldn't kill them, but she could hurt them badly enough that she could run.

'Maybe she doesn't have a name,' Kirit said to the woman. 'Do you have a name?'

The woman said nothing, and Kirit went on. 'For a long time, I had no name. But this white-cloaked one has a cloak, a bowl, a light, and a horse. Only she has no staff. Why not?'

Why the hells not?

It got so quiet that Marit noticed distant sounds: the neighing of

a horse, the rumble of cart wheels, the rhythmic clash of sticks as men trained. A faint gasp as lungs caught air, and feebly sucked it in. Was that Hari, breath returning to his body?

'Most of the staffs were lost,' said the woman.

Mark knew she was lying because as a reeve Mark had learned to suss out liars, the way their jaw twitched up in defiance or their eyes did not blink as the weight of the lie held them open.

'Where is my staff?' Mark asked.

Lord Radas exhaled.

The woman shook her head. 'Lost, with the others. We would dearly wish to find it.'

'I don't even know what it is, or why it matters,' added Mark, hoping to sound disingenuous. '"The staff of judgment". So the tales say.'

'The symbol of our authority,' said the woman. 'So it is doubly a cause for celebration that you, Kirk, possess yours.'

The girl's stare was so flat that Mark did wonder if a demon had crept into that cloak. 'We pass judgment, then? We kill the many bad people?'

'Yes, Kirk. We will kill the many bad people.'