Spirit Gate

13

All that next morning as they pushed eastward across the dusty flats, Mai thought obsessively of the feel of Anji's arm around her as the storm had raged. She had turned to him without thinking. He had the experience and foresight to shelter all of his people, and somehow that made their intimacy more precious by contrast. Her heart outraced her head. He was so strong. He was clever and imperturbable. He wasn't like anyone in the Mei clan, not at all. He had chosen her, out of all people.

Surely the heroine in the old songs had thought as many ridiculous things about the bandit prince she fell in love with!

She laughed and he, hearing her, turned with eyebrows raised as their horses plodded along. She blushed. How much more intense this feeling was even than the sun's punishing light! The old songs were silly and sentimental, but that didn't mean there wasn't a grain of diamond truth hidden in the sand.

By midday it was too hot to ride. Ahead of them the way was cut by rugged ground, and Chief Tuvi led them into a ravine formed by a dry riverbed. There was no surface water but there was shade to be had right up against the cliff face. The slaves set to work digging, but by the time they had got down a man's height, two of the slaves had fainted and there was still no water and not even muddy sludge. A third slave lay in the shade, clutching his stomach and moaning.

"May I go see what I can do, Mistress?" Priya asked. "They will leave them behind if they're too weak to talk. It would be a terrible way to die. At least in a storm you die quickly."

"Do you think so?" asked Mai. "Do you think Cornflower is dead?"

"I hope so."

Mai shuddered. Swallowed by sand, flesh scoured from bone by the screaming wind. Yet how much more terrible to be snatched and tormented by demons. "She was so unhappy. Do you think she wanted to die?"

Priya's mouth twitched. Compassion, perhaps, might cause the lips to form that particular angle. "You are the only one of your family who would ask that question, Mistress."

The words made her uncomfortable; she was no champion of Cornflower. She'd turned her gaze away, just as the rest had. "Go help those men." The words came out more sharply than she'd intended, but Priya bowed and hurried away to the sick man.

Mai sat on a pillow in the shade of the cliff, sweating and tired but not exhausted. She hadn't had to walk, or dig. Down the ravine, soldiers offered their mounts water from cupped palms. Nearby, Anji and Tuvi consulted a pair of scouts.

"How bad is the road?" Anji was asking. "Can we negotiate it in darkness?"

"We'll have a bit of moonlight. There's hills and dunes for the next two days or so before we get back to flatter country near to Mariha. That's if we don't lose the trail, and if that storm didn't wipe away the caravan markers."

"How much of a risk?"

"Better to ride it during the day. But if we delay too long here and can't get more water, we'll lose horses first and then men."

"Let me think on it."

Anji walked over to stand beside her in the shade. For a while he thought, and she waited. In the marketplace, one learned patience. She felt comfortable with him and, indeed, relieved to be alive. The storm had shaken her. Truly, demons haunted the wilderness; that was why folk kept to their towns and didn't wander. Anji offered her a swig from a finely tooled leather bottle. The slap of rice wine, gone a little vinegary, burned her mouth and soared straight to her head.

"Hu!" She giggled. "That makes me even more thirsty."

"Thirst is a powerful goad," he agreed, smiling. He had a particular way of looking sideways at her that made her shiver with anticipatory pleasure, but when she shivered like that she always, the next instant, thought of Cornflower's blank expression. Hump hump hump.

Enough of that! Cornflower was gone. Yet the image wouldn't flee and refused to be chased away.

"What are you thinking?" he asked abruptly. He'd never asked such a question before. Husbands didn't care what their wives thought. They didn't need to, so her mother and the aunts often told her.

She was taken aback, caught off guard. Lie, or be truthful?

She shook her head, impatient with herself. She had often held her tongue, but she'd never outright lied to anyone. "I'm thinking of Cornflower. I-" After all, she could not go on. It was too intimate; it was too humiliating. He might misunderstand, or he might understand, which could be worse. Her cheeks were hot. She gritted her teeth, trying to untangle her thoughts and her tongue.

Sand pattered on the ground as the wind eddied, then died. It was a clear day, without haze, and the sky was as blue as Cornflower's eyes and as empty of joy.

"Her death, or her life?" he asked. "Aren't they the same? She must have run out into the storm seeking her freedom. That would be her death. Her life…"

"You think she did not live well in your father's household?"

"How could anyone do so?" she asked bitterly. "Used like that?"

"Was she beaten?"

"Not after Uncle, the one whose name we don't say, not since he died. The aunts wouldn't touch her. That was the strange thing. They wanted to be rid of her but they didn't hate her even though she had bewitched all the men." None of the women had hated Cornflower. It was peculiar, when you thought of it. You expected women to be jealous in such a situation, but instead they had all pitied her while just as strongly wanting her gone. Their silence was their shame. "They didn't hate her even though the men couldn't leave her alone. But she didn't bewitch you." She wasn't sure how he would respond. It was a risky comment.

Anji wasn't a man who frowned much. He did so now, causing lines to crease his brow. "No. She didn't bewitch me. I've seen demons face-to-face before. I know what they're capable of. Mai…"

He looked away from her, studying the red-brown horizon to the south, as if seeking storms. He wasn't shy, just considering his next words. He rubbed at his lower lip with a dirty thumb. Like all of them, he was astoundingly filthy, hands and face coated with grime, officer's tunic gone to a color that could not be described. She rubbed at her own hands as she waited, but the stuff was caked on. She could feel sand in every most intimate crevice, and every time she blinked, her eyes stung from the residue.

"No," he said firmly, to himself. And to her: "It was nothing."

"It was something." She stared at her hands and then, with as much courage as she could muster, she looked at him, and stumbled on heedlessly. "I saw her face when that man was on her. She just lay there. She looked like she was dead, all limp. There was nothing in her eyes or her expression. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!" She burst into tears.

His mouth had become an "o" of surprise. He rocked back on his heels as if struck. For ten gulped sobs-her sobs-he stared at her. It took him that long to collect himself, and maybe it was his surprise that soothed her crying, because she could suddenly swallow the rest of her tears and dry her eyes. Her cheeks were slimy with dirt and moisture.

"I need a bath," she finished, and hiccoughed once.

He handed her the leather bottle, and she drained its contents in one slug and braced herself for the jolt as the alcohol hit.

"Mai." The captain took one of her hands and looked at her closely. "I am not those men. I never wanted Cornflower more than I wanted you. Never never never." He had Ti's diction down perfectly.

She laughed, and hiccoughed again, and he released her hand and strode away toward Chief Tuvi. She wondered if it was better that he misunderstood her after all. She wondered what it was like to take a bath with a naked man, and if a man and woman might wash each other in all their secret places and be pleased to do so, for of course she and Ti had peeked at a certain book kept in one of the drawers of Father Mei's desk that had contained all kinds of drawings depicting what a man and a woman might do with each other. The uncles had looked at that book a lot, and then afterward padded down the hall to the slave barracks.

She wondered why Cornflower had vanished during that terrible storm. Could demons die? And if so, what awaited them beyond Spirit Gate?

"Mistress?" Priya returned, O'eki limping beside her.

"I hope you are not hurt?" Panic flared.

"Just sore, Mistress." The big man slipped a hand inside one sleeve and drew out three small items, which he offered to her.

She took them without thinking and studied them with confusion: three tiny beaded nets, the kind of gaudy cheap ornament women used to tie off the ends of braids. "What are these? They're very colorful."

"Cornflower wore them," said Priya. "She always wore her hair in a trident braid. These were hers, the only thing she possessed."

Mai shivered, wondering if ghosts could reach out through the material goods they had left behind to throttle those they had hated during their lifetime. Yet if that were so, all of Uncle Girish's little treasures would long since have poisoned the Mei clan, which still prospered. She looked up at O'eki. He had a broad face and dark eyes, no different from anyone else; it was only his unusual stature that set him apart. He'd come from the southwest, from an area conquered by the Mariha princes when he was a boy. He'd spent most of his life as a slave to the Mei clan, bought by Grandfather because of his size and placidity. But he wasn't stupid.

"How do you have these?"

"I found them. At dawn, just before we left that cursed place."

"Where?" She glanced toward Captain Anji, but he was exploring the ravine, involved in an intense conversation with Chief Tuvi and the scouts. Tuvi was gesturing with expansive circles; Anji had his arms crossed, a skeptical frown on his face.

"Right up by the big rock where we were camping when the storm hit, Mistress. Just lying there, like she'd torn them off. Or they'd been torn off her."

She closed her hand around them. The mystery of Cornflower's disappearance troubled her, and the evidence she held in her hand suggested that the story might be more complicated than it had at first seemed.

"What will you do with them, Mistress?" asked O'eki. "I can sell them, if you please, at the next market."

"No. I'll return them to Shai. What she had belongs to him." She slid them into the pocket sewn into her sleeves. The expensive blue silk gown she had worn so proudly at leave-taking was soiled beyond repair. She had left her other silks closed in the chest in the hope they would survive the journey without being ruined. Unlike linen and wool, silk fought sand better. It might become dirty, wet, and stained, but sand could be shaken out because it couldn't get as much purchase in the smooth, tight weave.

The men had walked close enough that she could overhear them.

"It's too risky to ride this path at night!" Tuvi exclaimed, voice rising as his hands dropped to his side.

"If you're afraid, don't do it," said Anji. "But if you do it, don't be afraid. I'm more concerned about water and the heat than the road. We have lamps, and moonlight for part of the night. We'll depart a hand's span before sunset. I won't sit and wait for events to overtake me. There might be another storm. Best to move on. It always is."

"So you would say!" said Tuvi with a laugh, but he made no more protests.

In late afternoon they made ready to leave. About a hand's span before sunset, they headed up the twisting path, riding swiftly until the light faded. Then, with the moon already in the sky, they dismounted and walked along the trail, such as it was, with Chief Tuvi and the scouts in the lead bearing lanterns.

"You can ride," Anji said to Mai. "I'll lead your horse."

"No. I'll walk with the others."

"Very well." It was difficult to see his expression, whether he was pleased or irritated, and she didn't know him well enough to interpret his tone. "But if you feel yourself tiring, you must ride."

"Yes."

They walked on, east-always east. It was slow going. The way was dim and the world shadowed, and she had no idea where they were or where they were going. Yet as long as she kept her gaze fixed on Captain Anji's straight back, as long as she glanced frequently at the track, gleaming slightly in the moonlight, she managed. They reached the crest of a barren hill and paused to survey the vast wilderness and the impossibly depthless sky. The stars burned each one as brightly as the chief's lamp. The heavens were a field of dense flames, each one the shard of a soul released from its earthly suffering, so the Merciful One taught. So many, without counting. The land on all sides was a ghost land, intangible under moonlight, like gauze and darkness. Only in the north was there any solidity, and that because the far horizon was black where mountains rose.

It was as if she had wandered into the landscape known in song, a place present on no map, reached by no true road, where the daily round of life had no meaning. She shivered.

"Are you cold?" Anji asked softly.

"No," she whispered, afraid to speak in a normal voice. "It's beautiful."

"Ah." Nothing more than his sigh.

Her cheeks blazed with heat. She reached and found his hand, surprising him as she twined her fingers between his. He did not speak, but his breathing shifted and quickened, as did hers.

Chief Tuvi whistled the advance.

"Oh!" she murmured, annoyed.

Anji chuckled, brought her hand up to his lips, turned it over, and kissed the inside of her wrist, then let go and set off again. She followed him, but with that brief kiss the night had come alive. The curl of wind teased her. The movement of his shoulders as he walked drew her on. Once he looked back over his shoulder and grinned, and she burned burned burned. They walked across the land in silence broken only by the jingle of harness, the fall of hooves and feet, and the occasional mutter of one of the soldiers to a comrade; broken by the many soft noises made by the desert, which seemed dead but was alive in a hundred hidden ways. The path was rugged, and twice they had to backtrack when the trail Tuvi picked led them into a dead end up a gulch, but they never faltered nor did any horse take a fall or man stumble.

As the moon set and it became too dark to keep moving, the chief picked out a sheltered overhang for a temporary camp.

"We'll rest here until just before dawn," he told the soldiers. "We'll move on again before dawn, and rest again during the heat of the day, and leave again before dusk. Any man who violates rations will be killed."

They watered the horses and each drank his measured allotment before lying down to rest, careful not to disturb tufts of vegetation and scatters of rock that might shelter poisonous slumbering creatures. Shai sat with head on knees, arms wrapped around bent legs. She was still angry with him for the way he had treated Cornflower. Maybe if he had been nicer, the girl wouldn't have run into the storm. And yet, why cling to anger? There was no way to change what had happened. Poor Shai looked so miserable.

Mai went over. "How are you holding up, Shai?"

He looked up. All she could see of his face was pallor. His voice scraped, dry and anguished. "Will we ever come free of this place? Or will we be carried off by the demons as well?"

She touched him gently on the shoulder. "Captain Anji knows what he's doing."

"Does he?"

"Of course he does! How can you doubt him?"

"We've not been told where we're going. They tell us nothing at all. You're not scared? Not at all?"

"No," she said. Then thought about it, hard, closely. No poisonous worm ate away at her insides. Her hands didn't tremble. She shook her head. "No, I'm not afraid. We can trust Anji."

The simple words, like a torch, led her footsteps to the long-awaited destination. She left Shai and found Priya settling down to sleep on stony ground. She knelt beside her. "Priya! Hsst! Where's my chest?"

The slave sighed sleepily. "The chest, Mistress? O'eki took it off the packhorse, over there, you see where the luggage is stacked. Mistress?"

"Go back to sleep."

She found it more by feel than by sight, opened the mechanism that locked the clasp shut, and had just tipped up the lid a hand's span and reached inside when she heard him walk up behind her.

"Mai? You should be resting."

Her breath caught in her chest. Her heart hammered. The silk slipped smoothly under her hands, cool and lovely. She caught hold of one edge and eased the banner out of the chest. It unfolded as it emerged, draping over her knees. Even in darkness, with only the stars to light them, the silver threads picking out the eye and mane of the black wolf shone, perfectly visible although there was no reason they ought to be.

There is never any reason for happiness. Yet it exists. It shines .

For an eternity he did not move: not to touch her, not to speak, not to glance around the camp and the soldiers and slaves and horses who surrounded them. At last, she let the lid close and the clasp catch. Its snick jolted him. He caught her hand and drew her upright with the banner caught under her left arm. Quickly, he led her through camp, pausing only to fish a rolled-up length of heavy cloth from his saddlebags.

"Captain?"

"Keep the camp quiet, Chief."

"Hu!" said Tuvi, but he didn't laugh. Sengel and Toughid faded back toward camp, and Tuvi's form receded into the night, vanishing in the shadows that were everywhere, except in her heart.

They climbed out of sight of the camp to a bare swell of ground mounded among the many hidden clefts and river washes. The brilliant heavens were their roof, and the unrolled tent their bed. They were both filthy, and their kisses tasted of grit, but desire and the night wind cleansed them. The immensity of the empty lands sheltered them, who were alone in the whole wide world, no one else, not even ghosts or scorpions, daring to disturb them, they two, who were now one.

Such a small thing, really, to mean so much.