Spirit Gate

by Kate Elliott

  This was no jarya school, not up here.

  They came to earth at a safe distance, right at the edge of the woods. The waterfall splashed in the distance, but the pool had a glassy sheen beyond the spray, still and silent as if depthless. Three buildings rose out of the meadow of grass and flowering lady’s heart: a chicken coop; a long, narrow root cellar with a turf roof; and the temple itself, with its outer enclosure, entrance gate, and “lotus petal” wings surrounding an inner courtyard.

  She waited in her harness, listening. Crickets chirred. Wind tinkled strings of bells hanging from posts set in the earth all around the outer enclosure. It rustled the silk banners draped over and tied to the entrance gate. She heard no voices and no music. Nothing. Flirt showed no nervousness. The vale seemed deserted.

  She slipped out of her harness and ventured to the chicken coop. It was empty except for a half-dozen broken eggs, sucked dry, and a single bale of straw. She moved on to the root cellar, a building half buried in the earth. She pushed on the door, which stuck. Shoving, she opened it. Cautiously, she ducked under the lintel and stepped down into the shadowy interior. The stores had been cleaned out. That was suspicious, although at this time of year it was possible that was only because they had used up last winter’s surplus and not yet received their tithes to carry them through the coming cold season. With the door open behind her, she knelt in the damp confines. The dirt floor had been raked clean. There were no distinguishing footprints; there was no evidence of passage at all except for the brick resting-cradles for two dozen missing storage barrels. Four barrels remained, rounded shadows at the far end of the cellar, barely discernible in the dimness.

  Maybe thieves had stolen everything and covered their tracks. Maybe the Merciless One had abandoned the temple and all her people had left, tidying up behind themselves.

  It was impossible to know.

  A shadow covered the open door. Too late she realized the crickets had ceased their noise. She jumped farther into the darkness, drawing her short sword as she spun to face the door.

  But they had already defeated her. They’d been waiting, as if they’d known she was coming and laid an ambush. A staff hit her from behind alongside her right ear. A second blow caught her in the breastbone, knocking the air out of her. Her legs went from under her. The earth slapped up, and she blinked and gasped and breathed in dirt, flat on her stomach, head scorched with pain. Dazed. Choking on dust.

  Damn damn damn. If the Merciless One had abandoned the temple, then her hierodules and kalos would have removed the bells and banners before departing.

  “Hurry!”

  “Kill her now!”

  “No, Milas wants her alive.”

  “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Bet I know what for!”

  A man snickered.

  Her sword was trapped under her hips. She began to roll, but knees jabbed into her back and the weight of a second man, maybe a third, held her down as they stripped her of her bow and quiver, her sword, her dagger; her staff had already fallen uselessly. They didn’t find the slender knife hidden between the lining and the outer leather of her right boot. They trussed her arms up behind her from wrists to elbows, hoisted her up using the rope until her shoulders screamed and one popped. The world spun dizzily as she came up, kicking.

  The third blow exploded against the back of her head.

  She plunged into darkness.

  CAME TO, MUZZY, as she was jostled from side to side in a wheelbarrow, banging first one wooden slat, then the other side. She was blind, a cloth tied tightly over her face, over both mouth and nose so that she choked with the fear she was smothering in white silk. Death silk.

  No. Just a plain bleached-white linen cloth, maybe a bandanna of the kind worn by laborers to keep sweat from pouring into their eyes. The cloth sucked in and out with her breath. She heard the squeak of wheels on pine needles. She heard the soft tread of feet and the wind sighing through trees. No one spoke. She felt no sun, so couldn’t guess at time of day or how long she had been unconscious.

  She took stock of her condition: throbbing head, chest and ribs aching, and one heel stinging as though she’d been bitten. Her shoulders were bruised, but somehow the one that had popped was no longer dislocated. It just hurt like the hells. What hurt worst was her fury at her own stupidity and carelessness. Why hadn’t Flirt warned her? Her assailants must have been close by, and those who closed in from outside would surely have been spotted by Flirt, who was trained to give the alert.

  Shadows.

  Some magic had veiled sight and instinct. She had to be ready. Most likely, she would have only one chance to escape and she had to prepare herself for the worst: rape, any kind of brutality, mutilation. She had to lock down her emotions. Thus were reeves trained to respond in emergencies.

  “Your fears and passions must be set aside, placed in a treasure chest, and locked up tight. If you are ruled by fear or desire, then you will lose. Be an arrow, unencumbered by any but the force that impels it to its target. Do not let the wind blow you off course.”

  She stayed quiet as the barrow lurched and rolled along the forest path. She sorted out footfalls and decided there were at least ten men accompanying her. Because they stayed silent, they betrayed no knowledge of Flirt or her fate. She banished Flirt’s fate from her mind. Until she was free, there was nothing she could do about the eagle.

  At last she smelled wood smoke and the smoky richness of roasting venison. At a distance she heard the sound of many voices, the clatter of life, the ringing of an axe, the false hoot of an owl raised as a signal. She felt a change in the texture of the air as they came out of trees into a clearing. Silence fell. No one spoke, but she felt the mass of men staring. Her skin prickled. Certainly this must be the woodsmen’s camp.

  “Do not fear pain. Fear will kill you.” So Marshal Alard taught.

  A man coughed. Someone giggled with the barest edge of hysteria. Hand slapped skin, and the giggling ceased.

  “Put her there,” said a baritone.

  The silence was ugly, made more so by the sudden glare of sun on her face so bright she blinked under the cloth. Just as her eyes teared, shadow eased the blinding light. Leaves whispered above her. A dozen thin fingers tickled her chest and face. The wheelbarrow jolted to a stop, and its legs were set down hard. A man cursed right behind her, and she heard him blowing through lips, maybe on blistered hands. He did not speak. The wheelbarrow raised up abruptly and she slid forward, awkwardly, and slithered down to land in a heap.

  On a carpet.

  Metal rattled softly, then scraped. Footsteps receded. A man hawked and spat, and she flinched, but a delicate finger touched her chin and carefully eased the corner of the cloth up over her mouth and nose. She sucked in air gratefully.

  “Hush,” whispered a female voice. “He’ll hear. He’s coming.”

  “Who are you?”

  “No one. Not anymore.” It was a young voice, its spirit strangely deadened.

  “Let me see your face. Let me see this place.”

  “It was a trap.”

  “That’s how they captured me?”

  “It was a trap. Half of the hierodules had turned their back on the Devourer and given their allegiance to him. They gave the rest of us over, but he killed the others. All but me. All but me.” The finger tickled her nose, pushed under the band of cloth, and eased it upward until Marit could—bless the Great Lady—see a bit of her surroundings and the girl beside her.

  She was very young; she didn’t even wear the earring that marked her Youth’s Crown, although she had breasts and curves enough that she was no doubt meant to dance into the Crowning Feast at midwinter with the rest of the youths ready to don their Lover’s Wreaths and enter halfway into the adult world. No more than fourteen years, then. The remains of a sleeveless silk shift that once had been gold in color draped her body. Over it she wore an embroidered silk cloak, the kind of elegant accessory jaryas displayed while riding across town to an assignation or performance. It was
a spectacular orange, now ripped and grimy; she’d used it to wipe up blood, likely her own. But as shocking as the sight of her was, with her curling black hair unbound and falling in matted tails and strings to her waist, and her arms and legs stained with dirt and blood and worse things, Marit had seen worse; reeves always saw worse.

  Yet she’d never seen a girl dressed in the acolyte robes of the Devourer manacled by the ankle. The chain snaked back to the base of a huge tree, where it was fastened around a stake driven into the ground. The trunk was that of a massive death willow, immeasurably ancient. The trunk had grown up around the head of a tumbled statue. Wood encased the stone so that the grainy face peeked out and the crown of the head and the sculpted ripples of its hair were swallowed within the tree. The stone face stared at nothing. Lichen blinded both eyes. Streaks of white—she couldn’t tell what they were—mottled the chin. The lips were darkened with the residue of blood or berry juice. An awful stench boiled out of the ground at the base of the trunk, something stinking and rotten.

  The willow’s green-yellow canopy concealed the sky and shaded both reeve and girl from the sun. Marit lay on a carpet, and when she turned her head she saw the curtain made by the willow’s drooping branches, many of which swept the ground. Beyond, out where it was light, figures moved, but although she opened and closed her eyes three times she could get no good look at anything out there, as though magic hazed her sight. Beneath the death willow, they were alone.

  “Do you want to be free?” whispered Marit, sensing her chance.

  “Please let me go,” the girl whimpered. “Please. Please.” The words sounded well rehearsed; she’d said them frequently. Her dark eyes, like those of the stone head, had a kind of blindness to them, although she tracked Marit’s face and movements well enough.

  “Is there another way out of here? What lies beyond the willow, that way?” She indicated direction with a jerk of her chin.

  “No one goes that way,” murmured the girl. “That’s where he goes when he comes visiting.”

  “Does it lead into the forest?”

  The girl stiffened, head thrown back, lips thinning, and she sniffed audibly, taking in the air like a starving man scenting food. “He’s coming.” She scrambled to the base of the trunk and tugged hopelessly at the stake, but it didn’t budge. Finally she curled up like a turtle seeking its shell, trembling, arms wrapped around her chest.

  Voices reached her from beyond the drooping branches.

  “My lord! I did not expect you so soon.”

  “Have you accomplished what I asked of you, Milas?”

  Marit knew that voice.

  The baritone hemmed and hawed in reply. “Not as we expected, my lord.”

  “Leave off your excuses!” The curtain of branches was swept aside, and a man ducked in under the canopy. He looked, first, directly at the stone head and the girl cowering there, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, staring at him in terror. Marit got a good look at his face: that of a man in his early twenties, with broad cheekbones, a mustache and beard, and astonishingly long lashes above deep-set eyes. To her shock, she recognized him.

  Radas, lord of Iliyat. He held one of the local authorities under whose auspices order was kept in the Hundred, and he was unusual only in that lordships—local chiefs whose right to office passed through a direct bloodline—were rare, an artifact, so the tales sang, of ancient days and even then known almost exclusively in the north.

  His gaze flicked down to her. When he saw that the blindfold had been tweaked aside, annoyance narrowed his eyes.

  “Have you touched her?” he said to the girl. Although he did not raise his voice, the change in his tone made Marit shiver and the girl quiver and moan.

  With a snort of disgust he let the branches fall and vanished back into the light.

  “She’ll have to be killed,” he said. “She’s seen me.”

  “Right away, my lord,” said the baritone.

  “Nay, no haste. It would serve my purposes best to let the men do what they will. It’s necessary that they understand that reeves aren’t to be feared or respected. After that, if she’s still breathing—slit her throat.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Where’s the eagle?”

  “This way, my lord.”

  They moved away. In the camp, the noises of men at their tasks trickled back into life. Evidently the woodsmen feared the lord of Iliyat as much as the girl did—and yet, Marit could not fit the two pieces together. She’d seen Lord Radas at court day in Iliyat, a mild-spoken young man passing judgment and entertaining merchants. Less than a year ago, she’d brought in a criminal to Iliyat’s assizes, a thief and his accomplices who had raided two warehouses. The ringleader had been sold to a man brokering for Sirniakan merchants; he’d be taken out of the Hundred into the distant south, into a life of slavery far from home with no hope of return. No worse fate existed. The accomplices were young and foolish; they’d been given eight-year contracts to serve as indentured servants, slaves of the debt they had created through their crime. It was a merciful sentence.

  She could not reconcile that man and this one, yet they were clearly the same.

  “Hsst. Girl.”

  The girl looked up. Her eyes were dry but her expression was that of a child who has given up crying because she knows comfort will never ever come. Her eyes were bruised with shadows; her cheeks were hollow, and her complexion more gray than brown.

  “Come closer.”

  She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have touched you. Now he’ll punish me. He likes to punish me.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I don’t have a name anymore.”

  A stubborn one. “I’m called Marit. Reeve Marit. If I can free you, will you help me?”

  “We are all slaves to the will of the Merciless One. There is only one road to freedom.”

  There wasn’t time to be subtle.

  “There’s a knife hidden in my right boot. I can’t reach it, but you can. Then you can free me.” Marit wiggled her shoulders and hips and rolled onto her left side to display her bound arms. Her shoulders were aching badly, but that was the least of her worries. She knew better than to think about the problem posed by that chain and that stake. When she won free, she had to alert the reeve halls to this blasphemy and Lord Radas’s treason. She wouldn’t have time to struggle with the stake. It was a cruel decision, but necessary.

  “A knife!” The girl crawled forward. Her expression changed, but the disquiet raised in Marit’s throat by Lord Radas’s frown tightened, and she had to cough out a breath as the girl tugged off Marit’s right boot and swiftly, with strangely practiced hands, probed the lining. Faster than should have been possible her nimble fingers extracted the knife. It was a slender blade, meant for emergencies.

  “The Merciless One has smiled on us.” The girl kissed the blade. “She’ll grant us freedom!”

  “Quick! They could come at any moment.”

  Indeed, she heard a buzz of noise out beyond the willow’s canopy as though a mob gathered, with stamping and hollering and wild laughter brought on by waste wine and khaif: men working up their nerve to indulge themselves in their worst nature; men being worked up by a chieftain or overlord as music is coaxed out of an instrument by a skilled musician.

  As the captain’s wife said in the Tale of Fortune: Make them ashamed of themselves and they will not betray you, because they will know they have stepped outside the boundaries and made themselves outcast by their deeds.

  The girl mouthed a prayer of thanksgiving, then sidled closer, right up against Marit’s torso. She spun the blade with the skill of an expert trained to handle knives and touched the point against the cloth of Marit’s tunic. It rested just below the reeve’s breastbone, nudging up the thick leather strap of her walking harness.

  “We’ll be free. They won’t be able to touch us.”

  The prick of the blade bit Marit’s skin. The reeve fell onto her back, startled an
d frantically reassessing as she stared up at the girl.

  I’ve miscalculated.

  That face was so young and so innocent, ravished by her brutal treatment, that Marit had overlooked what stared her right in the face. The girl’s gaze had the fixed fanaticism of the Merciless One’s most devoted followers, who did not separate war, death, and desire.

  She’s insane!

  She pushed with her legs, scooting away on her back. “Wait! Cut the rope—!”

  The thrust punctured skin and gristle with a smooth, strong, angled stroke.

  She’s done this before.

  Right into the heart. There was no pain.

  The last thing Marit saw, as the blood drained from her heart, as the white cloak of death descended out of the sky to smother her in its wings, was the implacable face of the girl who was in that instant the Merciless One Herself. Beyond, a lifetime away, men shouted and came running. The girl spun the blade, plunged it up underneath her own ribs and, with a gloating smile, died.

  PART TWO: SURVIVORS

  In the Year of the Silver Fox

  (nineteen years later)

  In the Hundred

  3

  JOSS WAS DRINKING hard and had sitting on his lap a comely girl who served wine, cordial, and, if you were generous enough and to her liking, certain of her favors. A tremendous shout had risen up from the nearby playing ground, and the boy had just run in from the back to announce the current score on the game—dammit if his team wasn’t losing again—when the door of the Pig’s Bladder banged open. Light assaulted him. He shut his eyes, but opened them when the girl leaped to her feet. She grabbed her tray as a pair of swarthy men in reeve’s leathers charged up to confront him.