Spirit Gate

54

After the seventh bell had rung its closing, the temple of the Merciless One lay quiet. The night's rain had not yet come, and the wind had settled. Only the streaming waters of the river could be heard, all manner of voices melding together in that watery chorus, some deep, some high, some constant and some heard at intervals like complaints. The ginnies slept. A few nocturnal night-reed birds patrolled for flies and midges, and their throaty ooloo calmed those who woke with disturbed dreams. There were many such dreamers in these days, who had before slept soundly.

All at once, erupting out of the drowsy night, a dog began its clamor, joined by a second and a third until the whole rude pack of them were howling and yammering the alert. Lanterns and candles flared to life. Folk stumbled sleepily from their beds, rubbing their eyes, cursing under their breath, whispering questions to the other hierodules and kalos as they emerged in ones and twos onto the verandas.

The dogs hushed as abruptly as if they'd all been throttled. The folk standing in their bare feet in the cool air hushed as well, if not quite as quickly. It seemed that half of them saw him immediately, and the other half felt an inchoate fear, enough to slow their chatter until they spotted him for themselves.

A man stood beside the courtyard's fountain. A spray of raindrops and grit swirled around him and settled, as though a wind had eddied through the vegetation, caught up this chaff, and now died.

"How did you get in?" called Walla, boldest of those already awake and present. "You can't have come through the gate. It's locked for the night. And my good, dear, aged uncle, I just don't see how you could have climbed over the wall!"

Nervous laughter followed this sally, because everyone knew there were bells tied along the wall to discourage amorous young folk from climbing over to seek satisfaction at an inappropriate time of night. The Merciless One offered her favors freely, but on her own terms.

Their visitor remained silent. After Walla's outburst, none of the temple folk spoke. They waited, glancing at intervals toward the sky as if expecting the wind to wash him away. The moon rode high, but it was the many lamps and lanterns brought into the courtyard that illuminated him most clearly. He was a man beyond his prime but not yet elderly. He held a stout staff in his right hand, but he did not need it to lean on because he was so obviously a vigorous, healthy individual. Dressed in the manner of an envoy of Ilu, he wore exceptionally gaudy colors: a voluminous cloak of peacock blue, wine-red pantaloons, and a tunic dyed the intense yellow gotten only from cloth dyed with saffron.

At length, the Hieros appeared on the veranda. She was pinning back her white hair and looking truly irritated, although it could be said that she usually looked that way. When her hair was fixed back with two polished sticks, she strode into the courtyard and halted a prudent distance from the intruder.

"It is late, uncle. Here on the eve of the Ghost Festival that separates the years, we do not accept worshipers, as I'm sure you know."

He smiled amiably. His voice was clear and courteous and so pleasant that everyone there smiled to hear his apology.

"I am sorry to disturb you. I am not here to worship the Merciless One."

The old woman, as always, was immune to any person's charm. "Then what do you want?" she snapped.

He had a friendly grin, yet there was a quality in his face that made a few of the hierodules shudder and others gasp and feel suddenly like succumbing to tears. Even the ginnies, hiding in the shadows, made their lizard bows as to authority. Even the Hieros, most merciless of all except for the goddess Herself, took a step back, although he made no threatening move and spoke in the mildest voice imaginable.

"You have something I've been looking for, for a very long time. I've come to get it."

The wind sighed through the garden foliage.

She turned to her deputies. "Go and get her," she said in a low voice.

They hurried away with scarcely any noise, for they were trained to move about soundlessly.

"The treasure is mine," she said to the man. "I paid for it, a fair exchange."

"You cannot buy what this is," he said kindly, "and I am sorry if it came into your hands in any manner which led you to believe you could own it."

"Who are you?" she asked.

He raised both hands in the opening gesture of the talking line. "My nose is itching," he said. "Many whispers have tickled my ears these last few nights. Listen!"

Acknowledging his right to speak, they listened.

"This is my tale. It is one you all know."

"Go on," said the Hieros, but now she seemed afraid, and all those who lived under her care and her rule found that her fear rang like a bell whose resonance made their own fears tremble and wake.

He told the story, punctuated by the most basic of gestures, enough to suggest the tale's outlines.

"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. They said, '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. These granted the wearer protection against the second death although not against weariness of soul.

"Ilu the Herald, 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.

"Now it so happened that the girl had walked as a mendicant in the service of the Lady of Beasts, and when the other gods departed, the Lady of Beasts remained behind.

" 'They are content,' the Lady said, 'but I see with the sight of eagles and I listen with the heart of an ox, and so I know that in the times to come the most beloved among the guardians will betray her companions.'

" 'Is there no hope, then, for the land and its people?'

" 'One who is an outlander may save them, but I prefer to put my trust in what I know. Therefore, I give to you, my daughter, a second gift, so that ordinary folk who live and die in the natural way can also oversee the law of the land.'

"And she brought out the eagles, so great in size that they might carry a person.

"The girl asked, 'If even the holy guardians can be corrupted, what of ordinary folk?'

"But the Lady of Beasts had already departed.

"Yet Hasibal the Formless One waited half in darkness and half in light, unseen until now.

" 'That is the nature of the offering bowl, child, that it can be full, or empty, or partially full, and yet change in an instant from any of these states to another. Thus do corruption and virtue wax and wane within the heart. Yet it is the dutiful strength and steady hand of those who live and die while about the ordinary tasks of the world that creates most of that which we call good and harmonious.'

"After this, she was alone.

"So the Guardians came to walk in the Hundred. In this manner also came the reeves and their eagles who, with the blessing of the Guardians, established order in the Hundred one village and one clan at a time."

The man's voice ceased.

He lowered his hands to his side.

The Hieros said, more humbly, "Who are you?"

When he did not answer, she said, "The Guardians are lost. Gone."

"No," he said, his voice as calming as the cry of the night-reed. "They are not gone."

He stopped abruptly and lifted his chin, tipped forward onto his toes, seeing a thing as it appeared out of the darkness. Those gathered did not need to look to know what it was, but they looked anyway, because they could not help themselves. They had to look at the young woman who had the pallor of a ghost but the heat and solidity of a living person. The moonlight made her pale hair and creamy skin seem even more uncanny and desirable. She wore a sleeveless tunic, cut short for sleeping. Even at night she wore the cloak, her only possession. The moon's light caught in the folds and ridges of the silverine cloth as she was led into the courtyard, more like a sleepwalker than a waking woman. Her escort pushed her into position and turned her to face the man.

After a moment of silence she looked up and saw him. She saw, who never took note of anyone or anything. She stared at him, and an expression-like hope, like life-transformed her face. Half the assembled gasped, and the other half sighed, and the man shut his eyes and then opened them.

Her lips parted. No one here had ever heard her voice, but she spoke now in a faint, high voice as hoarse as if she had rusted it by choking down too many tears.

"Who are you?"

He offered both hands, palms up and open. "You belong with us," he said. "If you choose to come with me."

At a nod from the Hieros, the deputies stepped back. For the first time, the ghost moved of her own accord. She took one step, and a second, and a third, like a woman waking out of a nightmare who is not yet sure it is really over. She halted at arm's length from him and reached out. But she did not touch him.

She said, "I will come with you."

She lowered her hand, and waited.

"What of my payment?" demanded the Hieros, but everyone there noted that she did not try to stop the slave girl from leaving or the man from claiming her.

He spoke over the pale head of the slave. "No Hundred-born person had the right to sell this woman into your keeping, for no one owns what she has become. Seek redress from the one who dealt unfaithfully with you."

"You can be sure that I will!"

He chuckled, a man at peace with himself, and his good-natured amusement inflamed the Hieros yet more.

"You have not answered my questions! Who are you? How have you come here? Why did you tell us the Tale of the Guardians when all know that the Guardians are long ago lost, and never to be found?"

He smiled sweetly at the girl, but he replied to the Hieros, for all who live in the Hundred must answer the questions set them by the women who speak for the Merciless One. "The Guardians are not lost. But they were broken long since, sundered each from the other, and distrust and hatred and greed and envy were sown between them. The shadows have spilled out from this broken vessel, and as shadows will, they reach out to swallow the land."

"This we know!" she said fiercely. "Just now an army out of the north rode against Olossi. It was a close thing that we escaped blade and fire. For, as the tale says, an outlander saved us. There has been peace until now, but it seems to me that we will have to go to war to defend the heart of the Hundred and the laws which sustain the land."

"You are right, and you are wrong," he said.

"Often right, but rarely wrong!" she retorted.

He lifted his staff, and all cried out when a light flashed from its end, no more than a candle's spark, quickly extinguished. A wind rose, and out of the sky roiled two great shadows. The hierodules and kalos shrieked and fell back under the cover of the veranda. Only the Hieros held her ground.

Two horses seemed to leap out of the sky and come to earth in the courtyard. They had vast wings, and delicate legs, and handsomely formed heads. When the girl saw them, her mouth dropped open. She looked at the man, and he nodded. Cautiously, she ventured forward to introduce herself to the beasts with the manners of a person who feels comfortable with horses.

The Hieros touched her fingers to her forehead, in prayer.

At length, she lowered her fingers, then raised her head and looked at him. Her expression was somber. Her tone had changed. "I will be your ally, if you will trust me."

The man touched the heel of his hand to his breast in a gesture of respect as he gave a slight bow to the Hieros. "You are an honest servant, holy one, if a bit hard-hearted. Listen!"

They heard the hiss of the approaching rains over the water, but it was his voice they listened for.

"The Guardians are not lost. For here, now, stand two of us. I, who am old and weary of running and hiding. And this one, who is newly cloaked and awakened, as ignorant of what she is now as I am ignorant of who she was before she came into the Hundred."

The Hieros staggered, but caught herself on the arm of one of her deputies. The soft night rains swept over the garden, pattering among the leaves, showering a mist over them. Among the hierodules and kalos, many began to weep softly. Hearing their distress, she recovered herself, and nodded, to show he should continue.

"You are right," he said, "that we must defend the heart of the Hundred and the laws which sustain the land. But you are wrong in thinking there has been peace until now, that there has been peace in the Hundred these last many years."

"Go on." She was no longer afraid.

In his gentle smile rested the weight of long years of struggle. "The war for the soul of the Guardians has already begun."