Shadow Gate

53

Joss paced to the edge of darkness beyond which Scar drowsed on a rocky perch, but he heard

and sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Yet he could not shake off a tingle along his skin, like ants crawling up and down his neck. He returned to the fire. Water boiled in a pot set on a tripod over the flames. He placed a bowl on a rock and poured water over leaves, then covered it to steep. Darkness had trapped them in the steep-sided, hidden valley, and he was himself confined to the circle of firelight with a blanket on the ground, if he even dared attempt sleep. Hearing the scuff of footsteps, he rose.

Miyara set down their lamp beside the bowl. She wiped sweat from her forehead with a cloth and sank into a crouch, rubbing her neck.

'How are things?' he asked, not sure how much he was permitted to know but desperate for any scrap.

'I'll take the tea. Thanks for brewing it. Priya and I could use a sharp pinch to keep alert.'

'How are you managing without the lamp, if you don't mind my asking? Or did you find another in the shelter?'

'I did not.' She grinned. 'Us reeves taking a break from training at Naya Hall to spend a night in the cave aren't doing so because we need light, eh?' She laughed.

Joss ran a hand over his head. 'What do you mean?'

'Surely you of all people would-' Then she laughed again. 'As nervous as you are, Marshal, you'd think you were the father, eh?'

'Or responsible for Captain Anji's wife. This is scarcely the time for jokes.'

'Aui! No more jokes, then!' Miyara shook her head, lifted up the bowl's cover, and inhaled. 'Eihi! That's ready, eh? It's out of your hands, Marshal. The gods will favor her, or curse her, but if you ask me, she's a tough one. Never a word of complaint. She's managing as well as any can who must suffer through her first birth. Here, now, let's take this back. I've something I'd like you to see.'

'Is that allowed-? I wouldn't want to-'

'Not all the way into the cave. If you will, Marshal, come and see. It's a puzzle. I thought you might have an answer.'

She carried the lamp and he the bowl, warm against his hands. The path led through a tangle of growth unexpected after the dry tableland of the Barrens: candleflowers, plum, falls of sweet-scented heaven-kiss, moist ripe sunfruit, lush stands of uncultivated jabi. This burgeoning orchard of wild fruit was tended solely by the gods' blessing. He bumped his head on a ripe sunfruit dangling over the path.

Miyara balanced in the lamp in one hand and plucked it with the other. 'This way.'

No insects chattered, nor did night-waking animals rustle within the growth. The lack of animal noises was unnerving, but at least a stream babbled in the distance and wind caught among the surrounding crags. They reached the pool, deep and round, rimmed by the remains of an ancient building. A waterfall thundered into the pool from the height. They walked alongside walls no more than knee height, worn down by time and wind and rain. Who had built here? Lived here in such isolation? How had they found their way in, when truly it must be impossible to reach the valley by climbing?

Halfway around, as they neared the curtain of water, Miyara halted. The pool rippled with a constant churning. The waterfall glinted with filaments of light, and at first he thought the lamplight was reflecting within the falls and then he realized she had snuffed the wick. A glow emanated from tendrils of writhing light spilling out of the falling water and drifting, as if pushed by the action of wind and water, into a cave carved out of the rock that extended behind the falls.

In that protected cave, the reeves from Naya Hall had kitted out a shelter with a chest, flown in, in which they stored a lamp, oil, bedding, bowls and utensils, and a pot for cooking.

In that cave, Mai labored, and he was cursed sure that if anything bad happened to her, he'd be called – quite rightly – to account for their coming here instead of crossing the Olo'o Sea to deposit her into the capable hands of the Ri Amarah women.

'Were those – things – there before?' he asked nervously, as the glittering strands swirled in an eddy of wind and mist.

'I'm not sure. They'd be easy to miss in daylight. They're like finest quality silk thread, neh?'

'Miya! Are you there?' Priya called from behind the curtain of water, and because of the noise he could not tell if she was frantic or just searching with her voice.

The reeve set down the lamp and took the bowl of tea out of Joss's hands. 'Keep the water hot.'

'There's nothing else I can do?'

She shrugged. 'This isn't men's business, eh?'

Walking on a narrow rim that hugged the rock wall, she vanished behind the spray.

A splash disturbed the pool. A dark shape shouldered out of the roil and so quickly slipped beneath that it might have been only a trick of the light, or a reminder from the gods that he was intruding. He started back around the pool, but before he reached the path he heard his name called and turned back.

Miyara waved wildly at him, both hands aloft.

He ran back. Wisps slithered in the air around him, and when one brushed his cheek he got such a jolt, like a stinging burn, that he yelped.

She called, 'Marshal, we don't know what to do. You have to come.'

He followed her along the narrow path, steadying himself with a hand along the rock wall on his right while water poured past to his left. The mist pelted him, an oddly iron taste on his tongue. They passed out of the spray and into the cave. She halted. A step behind, he stared into the cave, which extended deep into the rock, a haven lit so brightly that he blinked before he saw Mai.

'What do we do?' cried Miyara.

With a plank wedged across and between rocks, they had set up a birthing stool halfway back in the cave, over a hollow smoothed into the cave's dirt floor. Mai leaned into a cushion made by her

folded clothing, but she was herself limned by filaments clustering around and over her as if to smother her. And yet she breathed; she grunted, and Priya said,

'I told your breath as I say the prayer of opening. Now.' She spoke words in a steady voice, while Mai gripped the edge of the plank and strained.

Priya was her own self, unencumbered, but the filaments traced Mai's form as if a translucent second skin wrapped her, so that she blazed.

'Here it comes, plum blossom. Look down. Do you see it? This is the head of your child.'

Panting, seemingly oblivious of the threads of light, Mai bent her head to stare down between her legs. Her sweaty face changed expression. 'I can't look!' she cried. And then, 'I have to push again!'

'Take in a breath. Hold it.' Priya spilled words Joss did not understand, as Mai pressed her mouth shut and bore down.

Miyara grabbed his elbow. 'Quickly! We must weave a blessing. She has no clan to surround her. The child will be cursed if no blessing greets it!'

The hells!

She stamped to begin, and though he had no particular skill, he was like anyone who had heard the chants and songs all his life. He could stumble along in her company.

May the Earth Mother greet you, little flower. May the Air Mother greet you, little breeze. May the Fire Mother greet you, little flame. May the Water Mother greet you, little wave.

From this angle, he could not see beyond Mai's gleaming body, but as Priya extended her hands to catch the baby as it was born, the threads poured off Mai to fill the hollow until it seemed to burn, drowning the newborn child.

Mai sagged back, reclining against the cloth-draped rock with a gasped sigh.

'Marshal!' cried Priya. 'What are these things? Are they living creatures? Or something else? What do we do?'

The baby wailed, and the tendrils spun as though on the strength of that tiny voice and whirled into the air and blinked out. The child ceased crying.

Miyara faltered, voice breaking, but within the darkness she stamped and kept singing.

Be woven into the land with this song.

Be strong. We cherish you.

Joss stumbled out along the path and groped along the ruined wall until he found the lamp. It took him three tries to light the wick with his flint, and by the time he got back into the cave the infant had been placed on Mai's chest, still attached by a cord pulsing with faint flashes of blue as though the last tendrils had actually slipped into its umbilical. Above, a weave of light bridged the cave's high ceiling, glimmering faintly.

'One more!' exclaimed Mai, and she sucked in a breath and pushed again.

Priya caught a red mass in a bowl.

Miyara hurried forward to offer tea to the new mother. 'You have to name the child before you cut the cord,' she said to Mai.

Mai's eyes were closed, and at length she opened them to stare at the baby, who opened its tiny eyes as if in answer. 'The father names a child,' she said, in a remarkably ordinary voice. 'I must wait for Anji.'

Miyara glanced at Joss as if for support. 'That's not our way,' she said. 'It's-'

'Never mind it,' said Joss hastily. 'She'll name the child, or he will, as they please.'

'I guess we're uncle and aunt now,' said Miyara. Then, as an afterthought, she added, 'That's how we do things here, Mai.'

Mai smiled wearily, too exhausted to move as Priya washed her and bound a pad of linen torn from Miyara's shirt to absorb her bleeding. 'And I am glad of it, for I thank you, both of you. What is it, Priya? A girl, or a boy?'

'A boy, mistress.'

'Just as Grandmother said. Aiyi! I thought it would never come out!' Her skin gleamed from sweat, and all at once Joss saw how naked she was.

'Marshal,' said Priya, 'please fetch water so I can wash child and

mother. It must be cooled enough so as not to burn, but still generously warm.'

He flinched as though he had been slapped, although she had spoken in an entirely pleasant tone. He hurried out, carrying the lamp. Thunder rumbled among the crags, and the air felt charged, ready to snap and spark. High in the air, almost out of range of his vision, a fireling winked into existence and vanished, and then a second, and ten more, and after that more than he could count, like kinfolk come to weave a new child into the heart of their clan, chanting the greeting.

He stopped to stare, but they were already gone.

Eiya! Never for him a child called from beyond the Spirit Gate to join father and mother; he must be content as an uncle, and unaccountably he wept as he trudged the long dirt path to the fire pit, where flames blazed and the wind caught sparks and sent them tumbling. Away up in the mountains, lightning flared, and thunder boomed, and as he hooked the pot off the tripod, rain washed over the valley, cleansing everything in its path.

'Why do you follow me?' asked Kirit.

'I'm the hells unlikely to follow them.' Downstream along the bank of the River Istri, Mark indicated distant lights sweeping northward through the sky out of the Toskala.

'They are looking for us,' said Kirit. 'It is safer if we do not travel together.'

'You don't trust me.'

The girl shrugged.

'I thank you anyway,' continued Marit, 'for not joining them. I'm not your enemy, Kirit. But I have a cursed good idea that they're headed back to their camp, to see if Hari has woken. To give him his staff. Then they'll be after both of us.'

'He will betray us?'

I like him. But that doesn't mean we can trust him.'

'Or that I can trust you,' said the girl. 'Do not follow me. Maybe you are their spy.'

'I'm not,' said Marit more with weariness than heat. 'But I'm not going to debate that now. At the turn of the next month -

when Lion falls into Ibex – I will walk the shore of the Salt Sea where the spine of the Earth Mother cradles the birthing waters.' The girl stared at her, devoid of emotion. 'If you don't know of it, you being an outlander, the Salt Sea lies northwest beyond Heaven's Ridge, where the gods cleft the Hundred from the lands beyond. When a new reeve finishes her first year of training, her circuit of the land, that's the last place she visits: to lay an offering of flowers at the Earth Mother's womb. You'll know the place when you see it.'

'You go back to them, now?'

'I am not one of them, Kirit. Surely you saw they meant to destroy me. If you won't trust me enough to ally with me, then what if they find you in the end? Five, to judge one. They're after you now, just like they're after me. And most likely they're after the envoy, wherever he's hiding. As for me, I'm going to find my staff.'

Reeves patrolling over the Liya Pass had once commonly met at Candle Rock to exchange news and to replenish wood for the signal fire kept ready in case of emergency. But the fire-pits were half filled with dust and debris, the white stones that had once ringed the hollows tumbled out of line. Under the craggy overhang, spiders and rock mice had made comfortable homes in the depleted woodpile.

What a bright day that had been, Joss waiting for her, him so young and her so eager. Where had that young woman gone? What we have lost we can never get back again.

Marit stood where she and Joss had so long ago shared the embrace of the Devourer. With the setting sun behind her, she looked east toward the ridge of hill held by the hierarchs to be sacred to the Lady of Beasts, to whom she had served her year's apprenticeship as a girl of fifteen. Ammadit's Tit could be mistaken for no other landmark.

Out of habit, out of respect, she cleared the stones, raked out the fire pit, and shifted such wood as was still usable into a new stack, splitting kindling. You had to leave things as you would hope to find them.

Herelia had been closed to reeves for so many years that she doubted any reeves chanced the Liya Pass in these more dangerous days, for fear of being ambushed, as she had been twenty years ago.

Nor, in the circuitous route she had taken over many days and nights flying up here, had she seen much traffic on any of the tracks or roads in these parts. The land appeared quiet and orderly. Subdued. Probably it was. But looks could be deceiving.

In the gray light before true dawn, she flew Warning along the high ridgeline to the black knob of the Tit. The Guardian's altar tucked on a shelf of rock below the summit glittered with the first sparks of sunlight. She'd had a hard time maneuvering Flirt onto the ledge, but Warning simply galloped as on a ramp down to earth. Mark dismounted, and the mare trotted across the labyrinth, seeking the spring.

Now, the gamble, the sticks tossed, the game set in motion.

She set her right foot on the entrance, and her left. She named each turn as the woman wearing the cloak of night had taught her: Needle Spire bright with the morning sun; Everfall Beacon; Stone Tor; Salt Tower beside the Salt Sea; Mount Aua; Highwater stream; the Pinnacle; the Walshow overlook; Swamp Bastion; Horn Vista; the Dragon's Tower; Thunder Spire; the Five Brothers; the Seven Secret Sisters; the Face on the Kandaran Pass, where night still shadowed the Spires. A hundred and one altars sacred to the Guardians wove through the land and, together with the Ten Tales of Founding, held the garment together.

The Rocky Saddle. The Eagle's Talon. Haldia Overlook.

She tasted blood, a faint lingering taint. One of the others had stood at Haldia Overlook recently, was maybe even walking the labyrinth ahead or behind her. She pushed on. Unlike the last time she had walked this labyrinth, no voices whispered at her ears; no man's figure greeted her as she stepped into the hollow. But instead of being blinded by a flare of light, spun halfway around and thrown by the altar's sorcery to the peak of the knob, she simply halted beside Warning, who watered unconcernedly at the pool.

Marit knelt, dipped her bowl, and drank deeply. Rising, she ran a hand over the soft stubble of her hair, still and always the same length as the days when she'd kept it cut short because that was the fashion reeves wore.

You think that you are dead, but you are living. It is others who tell you you are dead, and you believe them, and by believing them you corrupt the strength the gods pour into their chosen vessels.

Yet why then did her hair not grow?

Sometimes you had to go with the evidence.

She walked back to the rim of the ledge. Remarkably, the rope she'd left here twenty years ago swayed in the morning breeze, still fastened above. She gripped the rope in a hand and tugged as hard as she could, and cursed if it didn't hold. Amazing how indestructible good hempen rope proved to be.

She curled up the trailing end of the rope and knotted it in a cradle around her hips. Climbing up on the ledge, she leaned backward into the air and, hand over hand, worked her way up the knob, pausing at intervals to rest with the rope looped up tight around her body. Arms and legs aching, she scrambled the last rugged slope up to the summit where a metal post had been hammered deep into the rock. The frayed remains of banners streamed around her: blood-red, black of night, heaven-blue, mist-silver, fiery-gold-sun, earth-brown, seedling-green, twilight-sky, and death-white. The cloaks of the Guardians.

And she laughed, because there it was. The metal post was hollow, like pipewood, and cursed if someone – maybe the handsome man with demon-blue outlander eyes set in a brown face -hadn't simply slipped a sword in at the top, the hilt peeping up above the blustery rumble of sun-bleached banners.

Never in her life before had Mai enjoyed isolation, but after the birth she was content simply to rest on a pallet in the cave, seeing no one, food and drink and cleaning arranged by Priya and, later, Sheyshi. The baby was very small, but he seemed healthy, nursing and sleeping and eliminating. He rarely cried, and sometimes she sat outside on a pillow by the pool and cradled him in her arms as spray off the falls cooled her back. Probably she should not expose him to the moist air, but she felt an inexplicable kinship with the falls, as if it had soothed and comforted her during the final stages of labor when those eerie strands of light had filled the cave. The valley, too, was very beautiful, and its high walls cradled her, the crags and mountain peaks looming like stalwart guards. In this place, she was safe.

'Mistress, do you want to go lie down?' asked Sheyshi.

'No, I'm content here in the sun.'

'You should lie down for one month,' said Sheyshi. 'Otherwise the evil spirits might eat you.'

'I'm fine, Sheyshi. Maybe you could brew me some more of that nice tea with spices.' Anything to stop her hovering!

Given a task, the slave hurried off to the small encampment newly set up down the path to accommodate the daily coming and goings of reeves out of Naya Hall bringing provisions and news. The baby slept, his tiny round face entirely peaceful, although he slept so much she had scarcely seen his eyes open except for that first startling moment after his birth when he had stared at her as if recognizing her. He weighed nothing, really, light to hold but so vast that her heart had opened to encompass heavens and earth, fire and water, all of creation.

'Mai.'

She smiled down at the sleeping baby, and then she rose with careful dignity and turned to greet her husband. 'Anji, greetings of the day.'

He looked a bit ragged, as if he hadn't slept, but his clothes were neat and clean and his hair was tied tightly up in the Qin topknot, not a strand out of place. He held a basket in his hands. Awkwardly, he offered it to her, looking very serious.

'These gifts I bring, mare's milk, goat's butter, sheep's yoghurt, to strengthen your blood.' He set the basket on the low wall and opened a pouch slung at his hip. From this he drew length after length of gold chain and jewel-set necklaces, a fortune beyond price. 'Among my mother's people, a woman of honor wears her clan's wealth, for she alone possesses the vitality to resist its corrupting influence. This is yours now, which once belonged to my mother's mother.'

He draped them over her neck, a heavy weight indeed, and only then did he bend his gaze to the child.

She gently unwrapped the sleeping baby, who stirred and stretched as his limbs were exposed. 'He is whole, and although small he is so far healthy. He sleeps a lot, though.'

He examined the child's head and torso and genitals and limbs and fingers and toes, and only then did he smile, the sudden brilliance quite staggering.

'He needs a name!' she said indignantly.

He nodded. 'That's why I waited seven days. He'll be Atani, after my father, who loved his younger brother too much to see him murdered, although it cost him much on his own behalf. I've also been told that by Hundred custom it is a Water-born name, proper to a child born under the shelter of a waterfall, during a storm.'

'Atani,' she murmured, tracing the infant's perfect tiny lips and his flat baby chin. He burbled, mouth rooting as he woke up. His eyes opened, black pools absorbing the mystery of the world, and shut again.

'You have done well, Mai. Not that I am surprised.'

'Will you hold him?'

'After the moon's cycle is complete. Otherwise my touch may alert demons to his presence. It's enough that I can look at him, and at you, until that day.' He did look, but at her more than at the child, eyes narrowed with the very slight look of satisfaction that meant he was well pleased, perhaps even gloating, if Anji ever gloated.

'Captain!'

He turned. 'You are an uncle, Tuvi-lo.'

The chief walked up as Mai displayed the naked baby. 'So I am! What a fine lad.'

'Whole with no blemishes,' said Anji.

'Atani-hosh, I pledge my loyal service,' said the chief. Then with a big grin he nodded at Mai. 'To the mother, strength and honor.'

'I'm hungry. I think I'm always hungry!'

As if she had heard, Priya walked out from the cave. 'Captain Anji! You must not touch Mai or your son until the turn of the moon.'

'I have not. But I have brought Mai foods that will strengthen her blood.'

Priya took the infant to wrap it, and Mai sat on the wall an arm's length from Anji and ate the food he had brought, rich butter, voluptuous yoghurt, stingingly strong fermented mare's milk, while he related the tale of the skirmish and the fate of the Red Hounds.

'We killed all of the riders, except for two we took as prisoners. However, they did not talk. As for the agents in place within the settlement, three for sure we killed.'

'Who were they?' She shuddered. 'I hate to think of walking past such men every day and never knowing.'

'Posing as laborers. I am sure there are others. We remain vigilant. My brother the emperor will attempt to strike again. He sees me as a threat to his position, more so even than my cousins.'

'Although they are the ones who have challenged him over the throne.'

'At the moment, my brother is the one who stands in the way of their ambition. Although it's hard to imagine that they can defeat the rightful heir, the one the priests have sealed as legitimate. Now, of course, this boy likewise, a new grandson of the former emperor. So I'm not sure what to do with you and the baby, Mai.'

'Build me a cottage in this valley. Then it would be hard for the Red Hounds to reach me, neh?'

He surveyed the whitecapped mountains and the spilling water, inhaling the scent of sweet flowers, of extravagant leaves, of moist air. The deep cleft might harbor an entire village, and no one ever know.

'But I don't really want to live here forever,' she added hurriedly, brushing a hand over the links of gold that weighed on her chest. 'You know how I love the market. And I miss Miravia, if I'm ever to be allowed to see her again.'

He sat, saying nothing as he regarded the ripples in the pool with an expression so even that she began to grow nervous, thinking maybe he was very angry.

'Anji?'

'Marshal Joss told me a disturbing tale. Is it true?'

'That spirits attended the birth? I think so. I don't know what to call them, truly, for they were like strands of silk more than spirits, but I felt such calm and protection at their presence. Now they're gone. Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed it.' But when she turned to regard the waterfall, white skirts of mist rising where the water met the pool, she knew she had not.

'That he entered the chamber of birth,' said Anji.

Chief Tuvi whistled under his breath.

'The marshal brought me here safely. If we hadn't turned back, I'd have lost the baby over the sea, for it came that quickly. Miyara – the other reeve – told me it is traditional for an aunt and

uncle to witness the birth.' She watched him closely, not sure how to interpret his steady expression, but he glanced at the chief and shrugged as if to dislodge a weight, his shoulders relaxing.

'Uncle, eh? Then we must accept how things are done here in the Hundred. He's a good man. It can't hurt the child to be related by such bonds to the man who now stands as commander over all the reeves of the Hundred.'

Of course his words rolled out like so much nonsense. At first breath, she wondered what any of this had to do with the quiet woodland surrounding them, with the sun's glamour setting the peaks in bright relief against a rich blue sky, with the brown earth under her slippered feet, and the whisper of a breeze in her ear bringing with it the faintest chiming lure of a distant melody sung by unseen voices.

She licked dry lips. 'What do you mean, Anji? What has happened?'

'Hu!' He laughed for the first time, and she laughed, seeing his happiness in the quickness of his smile and the way he looked sidelong at her, almost flirting. 'Grim news, truly, and a difficult path ahead. But it's true it's hard to feel the shadows in this place, as if the gods hold their hearts here.'

Sheyshi brought bowls of spiced tea, and the men settled more comfortably on the stone wall while Mai adjusted the pillow under her to cushion the places down there where she was still rather sore.

'I can't sing,' he added with another smile, 'although I know how you love your songs. So for you, plum blossom, and only for you, flower of my heart and mother of my son, I will tell you the story of the events of the last many days as a tale.'

At the high salt sea, on the edge of the Hundred, a vast escarpment splits the land and the mountains plunge downward to a flat plain. If you stand on the sharp ridge that separates the waters from the cliff, you can gaze over the drylands, a desert that extends for an unknown distance, inimical to life.

But Kirit can smell the grass of home, even if maybe it is only memory.

She said, 'Uncle, I killed the ones who hurt me.'

'I know,' he said sadly.

'I killed a lot of bad people. Their hearts were rotten.'

'Some hearts do rot. Although that does not give us leave to behave as they would.'

The day was very hot, and the air so dry her lips were already cracking. 'I thought revenge would heal me. I found Shai. I looked into his heart, only his heart was veiled. But I do not need the third eye and second heart to know him, since I lived for two years in the same household. He was tempted, but he did not succumb. And if he could resist the worst in himself, then so must I. I won't become a demon.'

The wind tore at their cloaks. Far away above the southern range, raptors circled so high that they were nothing more than specks in the fierce blaze of the heavens.

'What happened to her?' she asked. 'Ashaya, who wore the cloak before me.'

He followed the distant eagles with his gaze, but finally looked at her. 'When she walked out of the Hundred, she hoped the gods would abandon her, that she would be able to die and be free, without loosing the cloak into the hands of the others.'

'But I found the cloak.'

'Yes. You did. So maybe you freed her, or maybe she was already gone. It's something to consider. What living person has ever attempted to uncloak a Guardian, eh? Who could manage it? I've been thinking about what happened to you, Kirit. It can't have been the poison that killed you.'

'The poison that killed Girish?'

'Maybe the brew wasn't strong enough to kill. Maybe he just choked to death on his vomit.'

She grinned. 'As he deserved.'

'Eiya! There's a conversation I'm not wise enough to assay. You told me the Qin captain forced you to walk into the sandstorm.'

'I wanted to rejoin my tribe. Their voices called to me from the storm.'

'Demons, most likely. Did he seek you out?'

'The captain? Neh. I went to find Mountain to tell him that the slave bearers needed water. A storm can last days. What use is shelter if you die of thirst beneath it?'

'A humble request, but a just one.'

'The captain saw me. He thought I would bring ill luck down on them because that's what demons do. He gave me a fair choice. I could walk into the storm of my own will, or he would make sure I died some other way before the journey was over. That was the first time since I walked into demon land that I got to choose.' She hid her face behind a hand, and then, finding that the voices of her lost tribesfolk did not call to her as they had in the storm, she lowered the hand and looked at him.

He smiled gently.

'I can't go home, Uncle. I am a different person, not that one who lived before.'

He sighed and said nothing, by which he meant he agreed.

Yet Rats can't stay quiet for long.

'Do you know the tale of how the wide lake came to rest here, caught between the mountains and the cliff? It happened in the Tale of Change, when the delvings captured a merling and decided that in order to keep it from escaping back into the sea they must dig a prison far from the ocean and joined to no stream or rivulet down which it could slip and slide. So they cut a path deep through the earth and under the watershed-'

'I missed you,' she said.

For a breath, two breaths, and then five, he could not speak.

A rippling movement flashed above the drowsy waters.

'Look there!' she cried.

A rocky islet lay surrounded by the lifeless waters. The islet, too, revealed no sign of life except for the desiccated remains of flowers draped over a series of crude stone pillars. A horse flew gracefully over the sea and circled the islet, and then the rider noticed them standing exposed on the ridge.

They waited.

At length her mare clattered to earth on the ridge, and Mark dismounted. She halted a prudent distance away and drew from a leather sheath a serviceable short sword, nothing fancy to look at: plain, good steel. 'The sword, called death, cuts the strand of life.'

'Where did you find it?' he asked.

'The place no one else thought to look,' she said with a grin. 'I'm Marit, as I said before. Kirit I already know. Will you tell me who you are, ver?'

'No one who ever did a cursed thing in his life to deserve good or ill, verea. But my mother, who has long since crossed the Spirit Gate, gave me the name Jothinin.'

'"Foolish Jothinin, light-minded Jothinin". An old-fashioned name. Just like in the tale.'

He smiled but said nothing.

'What is a Guardian?' she asked, but answered herself. 'It's not a thing already made. It's what we become of our own shaping.'

He rested his staff against a shoulder and opened his hands in the gesture of welcoming. 'Will you join us, little sister?' Kirit looked sharply at him but did not object. 'We have scant hope of victory, but we must make the effort.'

She laughed, and the air wicked away her tears. 'Allies, then?'

'Indeed we are,' he agreed with a sweet, sober smile. 'The last of our kind.'