Traitors Gate

29

Northwest they flew, spiraling up on the wild thermals that raged along a huge escarpment running hundreds of mey from middle Haldia all the way into the northern wilderness of Heaven's

Ridge. This steep drop-off was known to the locals, unimaginatively enough, as the Cliffs, although the towering cliffs wore fancier names in the tales. Gold Hall's marshal had loaned them two reeves to guide them to Walshow. They flew first across the spectacular 'steps' where the River Istri plunged in a series of stair-step falls from the Teriayne plateau down to the northernmost reach of the Haldian plain. After, they sailed north for half the morning along a spur of the great escarpment split with ravines and isolated valleys.

'Joss,' shouted Anji, pointing in that cursed outlander way toward a teardrop-shaped valley with a lake near the center and woodland and meadows all glossy and green surrounding it, a lovely little haven. 'Do you see? There's a cloak and a winged horse by the shore of the lake.'

Scar had seen nothing, and at first Joss saw nothing, only sunlight winking on the exceptional cerulean waters like a captured piece of sky. Was that flash of white an outstretched wing, or a death-white cloak? He jessed the eagle around, flagging for the other reeves to stay back, and dropped for a closer look.

'The cloak's seen us,' said Anji, gaze following movement. 'The demon is running. Move off to the left. We'll follow it.'

'What color — is — the cloak?' demanded Joss, finding it hard to breathe as he thought of Mark.

'Can't tell. It's flying north. It can't outpace us, can it? We're faster.'

With Anji guiding, they tracked the cloak, Joss catching glimpses of a fluttering expanse of glimmering white. They banked away from the escarpment and over rugged foothills toward a substantial peak and three lesser ones known, the Gold Hall marshal had told him, as the Orator and Her Three Daughters. Looking ahead, Joss spotted a lake shining under the sun and spread all around it the dusty bones of overworked land leached to brown by the dry season. The town was a smear by the lake; impossible to say how many people lived there.

'This is Walshow!' cried Joss.

Anji, too, saw these things, but he twisted in the harness as they sailed past the daughter peaks. A voice sang among the spires, raised by the wind.

Anji said, urgently, 'There! It's trying to escape us. It's dropping onto an altar. Do you see it? It's atop the smaller peak.'

A gleam pulsed under the midday sun, the pattern circled by

a ring of boulders atop the lowest of the four clustered peaks.

'Set down, Joss,' said Anji in a cold, clear voice. 'Set down now.'

Joss's hands worked the jesses and Scar was turning before he quite realized he had done so. Before Joss could protest at being ordered about in such a way, Anji went on in a measured tone of exceptional intensity.

'We have to do it.'

Because of Scar's swiftness and the angle of the currents, they came around so quickly that Scar pulled up over the boulders before Joss quite realized they had reached the altar. Was that a flash of wings at the center of the labyrinth? Did a ghostly figure walk the path, no more substantial than fog rising off the ground at dawn? He had seen a Guardian walk an altar once before, at Hammering Ford. Was this the same one, one of the army's commanders?

Before Scar actually touched ground, Anji unhooked and dropped, rolling sideways out of the way. The eagle thumped down so hard that Joss swung in the harness, fumbling at the hooks as the captain jogged away toward the glittering entrance of the labyrinth. The hells! Joss dropped and stepped out from under Scar's shadow. The other reeves circled by the Orator, as if looking for him; as if the altar's magic concealed even the big eagle.

'Anji!' Joss shouted. 'Don't walk the path!'

Anji did not walk the path. He strode straight across the open space as if the labyrinth did not bind his feet. It might not have been there at all. Yet when Joss ran after, with some crazy idea of supporting him or protecting Marit, he could not cross; what force held him back he could not name, only that it was like a wall, or a storm, or a woman's unyielding refusal.

Anji vanished into a swirl of mist pouring up out of the maze, and Joss stood there with one foot on the entrance and one off, shouting, but his words scattered into nothing. Was that a whisper that teased his ears from down the long, twisting path? He shut his mouth and listened.

'Who are you?' said a woman's voice. 'How have you followed me?'

'Just come to offer my help, verea. Were you looking for something?'

'Eiya! You are another outlander demon! Veiled to my sight.'

'I am no demon. I am a man, just like any other man.'

'Obviously you are not a man, if you can walk here with no repercussions. What is your name? Why have you followed me?'

The pause before Anji's reply was measured by a sound like the exhalation of a sword being drawn. 'Forgive me, verea. I mean no disrespect.'

Scar took off abruptly, launching himself into the sky and abandoning Joss. The hells! His cursed flags were hooked into the harness, dangling beneath the raptor right where Joss could not possibly reach them now. The other eagles had flown out of sight behind the Orator. Neh, there was one, high overhead-

A light pulsed out of the labyrinth, followed by a blast like a sound so strong Joss felt it as a blow within his flesh that lifted him off his feet and flung him backward. He hit his head.

And then he awakened.

'Joss.'

An iron stake had impaled his head. He did not want to open his eyes, and yet he must.

'Joss!'

Not a stake, only a gods-cursed headache ripping open his eyes. He staggered up, shielding his vision from the hammer of the sun. Anji stood before him. The captain was not wearing his black tabard; he wore a quilted coat of silk whose color was as rich a blue as that cerulean lake they'd seen, soothing on the eyes. Joss cracked his lids a little more. Anji's right cheek was reddened, and he was favoring his left hand, its glove shredding to ash as though the fine leather had been singed. His black tabard was rolled up, his outer belt wrapped tightly around it end over end, looped and mazy, and fastened to loops in the quilted coat so the bundled tabard rode against Anji's hips. Blessed Ilu! The cursed fabric shifted and fluttered as if the wind had gotten inside it. Or his vision was blurring and distorting as the headache spiked.

Joss blinked away tears.

'Anji,' he whispered hoarsely, surprised his voice worked.

'Call your eagle,' said Anji, words bitten back with pain. 'Let's get out of here.'

'But-'

'Now.'

Joss groped for his bone whistle, blew on it once, getting nothing because there was no air in his chest. He panted softly, then

blew again. Scar banked sharply and descended. When the eagle thumped down, Joss ducked under and hooked in. With the familiarity of practice, Anji hooked into the secondary harness in front of him.

They rose on a thermal. Three eagles came into view, reeves frantically flagging. He fumbled at his all-clear flag and waved it. His headache had exploded into a knife of agony that made the air shimmer with bolts of light as he had a horrible feeling he was going to vomit right down Anji's back and over that expensive first-quality quilted silk coat.

Shutting his eyes calmed the queasiness.

'Anji,' he said roughly, 'you have to steer. Take the jesses. Neh, first, take the flag, the — ah, the hells — my head! — red and white gives up command of the flight to Vekess.'

Anji did not hesitate. Joss hung there with his eyes squeezed shut, just surviving the buffeting winds and the interminable press and sway that made him wish for the first time since he'd been jessed that he had two feet on solid earth rather than hanging here far above the land at the mercy of the currents. Lights pulsed in his shuttered vision, patterns like the Guardians' labyrinth burned into the lids of his eyes. He flushed hot, and shivered cold, and it was possible he passed out and afterward came to.

He had broken the boundaries. Now he would be punished.

Yet both he and Anji lived.

He endured the pain of being alive, and in the end they fell, and he unhooked himself and collapsed. Scar brooded protectively over him as Joss faded in and out and his head throbbed and he threw up and, eventually, slept.

And woke.

A blanket had been thrown over him; it was night. A campfire burned to one side, a single figure sitting watchfully beside it, topknot silhouetted against the hazy aura of flame. Joss groaned, and the man came over to crouch beside him.

'Will you take some water?' Tohon asked. 'Or cold nai porridge, if you can stomach it?'

'Where's Anji?' he asked, feeling the burn of his raw throat. 'I'll take a sip of water.'

The water was cool and went down easily. His face was sticky, his hands no better; his vest and shirt stank. Hadn't Zubaidit found him in such filthy conditions in a cell under Olossi's Assizes Tower, awaiting punishment? Where did these memories come

from? He began to chuckle, then to laugh, and pressed a hand to his head and squinched shut his eyes.

'Commander?' asked Tohon in the gentlest voice imaginable. 'Are you going to pass out again?'

'Just give me a moment. Where are we?'

Tohon explained in precise, measured words that they had perched for the night on a ridge-top haven used by reeves, with firewood and stores laid by. The Gold Hall reeves had returned home, so their party now consisted of-Joss, Anji, Toughid, and Tohon, as well as Warri and Kanness from Clan Hall, who were carrying Toughid and Tohon, and Vekess, flying as an extra scout and second-in-command. At daybreak they would head south, hoping to make Horn Hall by the end of the day. By the time Tohon finished Joss had taken another few sips of water and felt he might live to see another dawn.

'Where is the captain?' he asked softly.

'If you would, — Commander, let him sleep.'

Joss rose unsteadily and cautiously walked around the fire, Tohon at his side. He had an uncomfortable feeling that the scout would run him through without hesitation were he to disturb the sleeping captain, but he had to look. Anji was lying on his side on a blanket. His topknot was disheveled, his quilted coat laid open beneath him to give a little padding. Beneath it he wore a light silk shift, rumpled around his torso. His face was at peace, his elbows bent and his hands tucked up below his chin. Both hands were wrapped in linen bandages; his cheek was bare but slick, rubbed with tonic to ease the blisters raised along his jaw. Resting by his knees was that odd bundle made of his black wolf's tabard, bound by belts and braid and even chains Joss recognized as the heavy gold necklaces normally worn by Toughid. The tabard was smothered in these bindings, and the weird way the fire's light flickered made it seem, as before, that the bundle contained a living creature struggling to get out.

Toughid slept — it was the first time Joss had ever seen the man asleep! — a sword's length from Anji, but his eyelids moved, snapped open, and he sat up with a knife drawn so fast that Joss stepped back and slammed into Tohon. Anji did not wake; he was truly exhausted. Toughid glanced at them, shrugged, and lay back down. The other two reeves slept elsewhere, and Joss paced out to the edge of the ridge where Vekess kept watch under a sliver of moon.

'Commander!' Vekess grasped Joss's arm. An edge of gray had lightened the night; dawn was coming. 'Are you well? Eihi! You stink!'

'My thanks,' said Joss with a laugh, feeling unaccountably better. 'All the better to attract women, don't you think?'

'It might give the rest of us some hope, eh? If you don't mind my asking, Commander, what in the hells happened? We lost sight of you. Next thing, there was Scar flying aloft with neither you or the captain hooked in. Then he stooped and I swear to you there was a blinding flash of light, like the way sun reflects off water if the angle is just right. I caught sight of you on the smallest of the daughter peaks, and then you come aloft again, you sick as a dog and the captain with blistered hands and face like he'd fallen into a fire.'

The gulf of air that opened before them seemed to billow and flow. Joss stepped away from the edge as queasiness roiled in his gut and a wave of dizziness swept his head.

'Best you sit down.' Abruptly, Tohon appeared beside him.

Vekess and Tohon supported him to the campfire's lonely flare. Rosy light lined the east. Yellow-feathered elegants chirped; a morning red-cap sang.

He sat down hard, the earth's solidity remarkably settling. Anji woke and sat up, looking around to satisfy himself as to the nature of his surroundings. Toughid rose likewise and walked off to one side to take a piss. The sleeping reeves roused, went over to keep Toughid company, pissing off the edge of the ridge and laughing as they bantered.

Anji opened and closed his hands. Slowly, he got to his feet and walked over to Joss. 'In what condition does dawn find you?' Anji asked.

'Reeking,' said Joss.

'True enough,' said Anji with a laugh. 'You passed out yesterday. I wondered if you had taken a blow to the head.'

'I'm not sure what happened.'

Anji raised an eyebrow, and Tohon drew Vekess off.

'Did I dream it all?' demanded Joss.

Anji's face chased through one expression whose lineaments Joss could not fathom and settled on a different one, more confiding and the hells more serious, like when they come to tell you they've found your lover's eagle slaughtered and mutilated and would you please come to look yourself just to get a clear identification. Just to make sure it's the one they all are sure it must be.

'I killed one of the demons.'

The words fell, but they had no impact. They were just words.

'I bundled the cloak in my tabard and bound it with every chain we have. I have imprisoned it, lest it escape to corrupt another.'

Joss staggered to the rim, where the rock sliced down in rugged leaps and falls, hedged here and there with tough shrubby vegetation caught in cracks and tufts of sedge or thornberry laboring to survive in any scant crevice. From the ridge he surveyed the wide land called Haldia; the River Istri — not yet as tremendously wide as it would become farther downstream — churned along through a rugged gap where it spilled white through foaming rapids.

Anji's bandaged hands and blistered face spoke the words Joss could not say out loud. The outlander had taken a sword to the gift the gods had granted the Hundred.

'Male or female?' Joss cried suddenly. 'What cloak? I must see it!'

'The cloth was more brown than orange, something of the color of clay soil. The demon appeared in the guise of a very old woman.'

It was not Marit!

Yet that wasn't what should matter. They had broken the boundaries. Now they would be punished. Yet a dawn wind rose on the curve of the sun as it did every morning. Light spilled in the usual way over the rolling river, catching in the streaming waves, dazzling Joss's eyes until he realized those were tears. The world had not ended. The gods had not howled down and obliterated them.

'So it is done,' he murmured. 'We can never go back.'

'We can never go back,' echoed Anji.

'You must release the cloak to make a new Guardian. That is the gods' will.'

Anji bore the daybreak without flinching. 'I will, once our enemies are vanquished. As long as our enemies walk, they may corrupt any cloak newly come into power.'

'How can we confine a Guardian's holy cloak?'

'In a chest wrapped with chains. Hidden away where it cannot be easily found.' He turned away, speaking as he went. 'Best we move quickly, Commander. We'll lose the element of surprise soon enough.'

Joss spun, grabbing for Anji's arm. As Joss's hand darted out,

Anji threw up an arm and slapped his hand away hard, then caught himself, took a step back, and deliberately relaxed. Toughid came running, pulled up to a walk, halted at a distance, a hand on his sword's hilt.

'My apologies,' said Anji. 'The hour is early. You startled me.'

Joss shook off the ache in his hand and stepped in close. Anji did not react as Joss grasped the captain's forearm. He was taller than Anji, although the captain was sturdier. They'd both seen a lot of death, Joss supposed; they'd both trained in a hard school. Yet for the first time Joss wondered what would happen if they were forced to a fight.

A fight over what? Anji's beautiful wife? The hells!

'There is just one thing,' Joss said, easing off the grip and stepping back to show he wasn't meaning to threaten. 'Lord Radas, the cloak of Night, Blood, Leaf — and this other one you-' The word stuck in his throat, and after all he could not say killed. He swallowed. 'Those alone are targets. The woman who wears the cloak of Death is not our enemy.'

'Those who warned us cannot be our enemies, can they?' Anji's steady gaze never left Joss's face.

'No.'

'Not unless they become corrupted by the sorcery that offers them so much power,' added Anji.

Marit's own words — I don't desire oblivion. Therefore I am already corrupt — haunted Joss, not Anji's reddened face. Anji had done what must be done: Lord Radas and his allies must be stopped; there was no other way than the way the other Guardians had freely offered them, however impious it was. But what if the corruption, like a cholera spreading through a town, had already worked its shadow into those who did not yet know they were sick? What if corruption was inevitable?

When they arrived late that day to Horn Hall, weary, foul-smelling, and coaxing exhausted eagles to perches for a rest and a haunch of meat, a reeve out of Argent Hall was waiting with a message from Olossi. He did not even wait for them to come inside but bounded forward to offer the message to Anji.

Anji unrolled the scrap of paper to reveal a script Joss did not recognize. His eyes scanned the words swiftly. The flare of emotion was as edged as that of a sharp-set eagle so angry it cannot reason.

His expression smoothed to implacability as he studied the words again. His lips tightened. He glanced toward Toughid, who watched him with a gaze that took in every least reaction, measured and prepared to act at Anji's command. Secondarily, he glanced at Tohon, who was standing with Kesta at the ledge's grand wall, pointing toward the Lend at something Joss couldn't see. Anji glanced again over the message. He lifted a hand, signaling to Toughid, who ambled over while scooping his flint out of the pouch. He snapped sparks, coaxed-^ flare with a bit of dried moss, then applied the flame to the message. The paper caught, and Anji released it, fire consuming as it spun down. The white scraps Anji ground into the stone with the heel of his boot.

He turned to Joss, the bundle hanging at his back swaying with his movement. 'I must return to Olossi at once. Ready your reeves. Keep the lines of communication open with our allies. Prepare a storeroom here with padding for oil of naya. We'll send the first vessels up via flights from Naya and Argent Halls. The army will march out of Olossi as soon as I reach there to give the command.'