Spirit Gate

36

The dream unveiled itself in the gray unwinding of mist, but this time the mist did not end, nor did it part. There was offered both drink and food on a tray lowered down through a hatch in the ceiling. In a haze he gobbled down what was there, but it all came right back up again. Much later, he drank, coughed up some but kept down a little, and after dozed fitfully. He could not remember where he was, only that he was so terribly thirsty.

There it was again, the bowl, and he drank, but the liquid churned in his stomach and he retched it all up. The effort exhausted him. His head was shattered with pain. Through these choppy waves he sank into the depths.

Later, he discovered he had emerged out of deep waters into a kind of waking delirium.

Woozy-headed, he tried to make sense of his surroundings. There was an awful stink, and when he managed to hold up a hand he was after all holding up two hands; both blurred even while he felt he had another arm braced under him. Had he grown a third hand? The effort of thinking and moving made his guts lurch and bowels go loose, and he coughed and heaved and felt the fog overwhelm him once again.

He dreamed, but in fragments: the pain in his head; Scar; a woman inviting him to her bed with a sly smile; a field of rice stubble; sipping from a bowl of water whose pure fragrance drowned him; the deserted temple up in the high hills of the Liya Pass that stank of fear and shame. Here he is wandering. Where has Marit gone? He tries to call after her, but his voice makes no sound. He will never find her.

A click and a scrape woke him.

"For shame!"

He stirred, hearing a voice young and feminine and pleasing.

"Is it right you allow this man to lie in his filth? He looks ill. Is he even conscious?"

"He's a murderer." That was a man's voice, low and rumbling like sifting through gravel.

"Has he been seen at the assizes yet?"

"No, verea. He has not."

"Who is he?"

"Not our business to know, verea."

"If he hasn't been seen at the assizes, then he's only accused. The magistrate hasn't read the sentence. You'd think it best if he came to the court smelling like a decent person. If you won't clean him up, I will."

"Not allowed, verea. He's not allowed up, nor anyone allowed down."

He cracked one eye, then the other, but it wasn't easy; some dried substance had crusted them over. The walls-for there were walls all around him-were stone built, and not so very far away. He was curled up in one corner on stone that was both slicked in patches with a drying stink and elsewhere rimed with a dried coating that crackled under him as he tried to shift up, to sit, to see where those voices were coming from. The walls were plain, with no openings.

"He's waking," said the young woman's voice. "Do something, I pray you!"

He gagged and his stomach heaved again, but he had nothing in him. His throat was raw; each swallow was a stab of pain. His head throbbed. His clothes were stiff and nasty, and it became clear to him immediately that he had soiled himself while ill. But at least now he could sit up, blinking in the flickering lantern light. Where was that light coming from?

Ah! It was above.

He squinted up. The movement hurt his neck. Far above, floating in a sea of darkness, was a ceiling constructed of night or, possibly, planks of wood. There was an opening cut within them, and floating in this hatchway the veil of mist.

Yet as he stared, the gray mist hovering over the opening vanished abruptly to be replaced by a man's disinterested face. The light was withdrawn, a lantern hauled up on a rope, and he sat in blackness trying to recall who he was and why he was here. Footsteps cracked away down an unseen corridor above him, quickly swallowed in the echoless stone.

"I like that," said the gravel voice.

He was answered by a wheedling tenor. "That the Silver girl who always comes?"

"That one? How should I know? Always got their faces covered, don't they?"

"Heh! But you'd recognize the voice."

"Yeah, I would do. Same one. Seems nice enough, but you know how it is."

"Neh, I don't, for I've never stood so close to a Silver before, not even one of the men. Never seen one of their women. I thought they weren't allowed into the light."

"You're come recently from the country, aren't you!"

"No shame in that!"

"Neh, neh, never meant there was. Those Silvers, the women are so ass-ugly that they daren't show their faces in the light of day where others can see. That's what I hear."

"You ever seen one of their faces?"

"Not me! It's a curse if you do, for they've certain tricksy magics, you know. Curses and rots and suchlike. Make your cock fall off if you so much as look at them crosswise. They paint their hands with all manner of spells, did you notice that?"

"I thought she had a skin disease on her fingers."

"Oh, no, those are spells. Not even tattoos. Spells, painted on their hands. It's the only part of them you ever see. Nay, don't mess with them, I tell you."

"Aui! I won't!"

"She's all right, though, that one. She comes through and brings food for the prisoners whose families have no way to feed them. Else they'd starve, you know."

"What would make a person go and do that?" asked Tenor. "If family can't help you, then why would you go and trust a stranger? Probably better to die."

"Don't know why she does it. They're outlanders, you know. Comes of their peculiar customs, I'd wager."

"I did hear one thing," added Tenor cunningly. "That they pay off those who would make trouble for them. That's why they never come to trouble before the law."

"Neh, maybe so, but they do trade fairly, you must give them that. My old uncle needed a medicinal for his son who was sick with the flux, and it happened it was the end of the season and there was none to be found except in the end one of the Silver shops had a last vial. I'll tell you, that merchant could have charged him ten or twenty times over, for Uncle was that desperate, and there are some merchants in this town who would have done so, but that Silver charged him market price, same as anyone. It was fairly done. So I don't mind the girl or her escort."

"Always an escort, those men with her?"

"Always. The Silvers treat their womenfolk like slaves, didn't you know that? Always under guard. Can't walk out on their own, or show their face. Bodies completely covered in those loose robes, which is peculiar, if you think about it."

"The men do look funny," agreed Tenor, "with those pulled eyes and their hair all tied up in cloth like women sometimes do. I hear they have unnatural congress with beasts."

"And horns, under the cloth! That's why they must cover their heads. They're demon-born, back in their old country. It's why they were run out and come here to the Hundred."

The Hundred!

Joss found his memory and his voice.

"Enough!" he croaked. Speaking that word made his head ache worse. "What have the Silvers ever done to you that you should speak of them so cruelly?"

"Eiya!" yelped Tenor. "It speaks!"

Light wavered before the opening, dropped through, but it was as blinding as the darkness, slamming right into his eyes.

"He does stink," said Gravel. "I'll ask Captain if we can wash him up. Whew!"

"He looked harmless enough. Who's been feeding him?"

"That girl brings a ration of rice every day, enough to share out among the destitute. We shove his portion in through the hatch. First day he did take it, but he cast it all back out again a time or two."

"I can smell that! Eh!"

"Then he was sleeping or sick. I'm no healer! I thought him like to die. But Captain Waras came by and said to let him be, and we must obey the captain."

"What day is it?" Joss said in his strange, roughened voice.

"Wakened Crane," said Gravel kindly.

"Council day, isn't it? I have the right to appear before the council."

Gravel snorted. "Even if we could let you out, council bell already rang, so by the time you crawled up to Fortune Square it'd be all over for the week!"

They laughed as if this were the best joke they'd heard that day.

"You're too late for this week!" cried Tenor over Gravel's honking laugh.

The lantern was drawn up, and the hatch shuttered with a slam of wood. Their laughter and footfalls faded away, leaving him in unrelieved night. He groped at his chest, but the bone whistle was gone. Of course. There was a slight movement of air in the dungeon through slits set in the walls or ceiling, but no view of the sky. He grimaced, realizing truly how horribly grimy and disgusting he had become, matted in his own dried vomit and feces and urine. His head pounded, but at least he could think.

Gingerly, he lay flat on his back and stretched out with arms over his head. In this position, he easily touched opposite walls. He was no better than a rat trapped in a hole. His foot nudged the rim of an object: It was the food tray with a lump of cold rice and the bowl half full of warmish water that smelled as if it had not been fouled. There weren't too many bugs. He didn't mind the bugs.

He drank, and he ate, and this time he kept it all down.