Spirit Gate

by Kate Elliott

  That was the truth of what he was. Tohon felt sorry for him, Mai ignored him, and no one else wanted him. Even Hari had told him to go away. But he wasn’t afraid of the shadows. Hari was all he had. So he would find Hari, no matter what.

  Thus he found the strength not to falter. He did not want to be compared to the local men. He walked, and the stars rode the wheel high into the heavens and rode the wheel down into the west, as they always did, every night in every land. They were the same stars. It was only people who gave them different names. People might name him anything they wished, but he was what he was, and he would with the aid of the Merciful One accomplish what he had come here for: Find Hari, or Hari’s bones, and return them to Kartu.

  Very late, with the waxing sickle moon rising, they halted in a wide field where the captain met with the reeve. The land here was very flat but it sloped westward to the Olo’o Sea whose waters stretched like a field of darkness except where the moon’s glow traced a glimmering path. At the edge of the sea rose an edifice. Watch fires burned atop towers built at each corner. The wind had been blowing out of the southeast, bringing the promise of rain, but now the wind faltered and died. The late night air grew stifling and close.

  Chief Tuvi called the tailmen together. “This is your part. The walls are of stone. A careful man can climb them. This you will do, kill any you find within, and open the gates. Do it quickly. The reeve will land inside, while you are about your business, and provide distraction. Move too slowly, and he’ll die. I need a volunteer to fly in with the reeve. It’s the most dangerous job. You’ll have only a moment to kill any guards at large before they kill you.”

  “I’ll do it!” said Shai, stepping forward.

  The others laughed. Chief Tuvi smiled in that good-natured way he had, but he chose Pil, who had not even volunteered.

  Shai looked away as Pil sauntered off, proud of his chance at glory. Burning with shame, Shai checked his weapons and marched out with the rest of the tailmen, leaving the locals and the elite guard behind. They must walk the last few fields lest their horses be spotted. Across sheep pasture he trudged, and as the others split into pairs and trios, he found himself alone and, it seemed to him, awash in moonlight. Of the rest, he saw no sign or motion; they had vanished as if they had never come.

  He cut into a rice field and crept through the stubble, but the rustling of dry stalks shattered the silence, so at length he found a dry irrigation ditch and used its depth to cover his approach. He meant to do something this night, although he wasn’t sure whether he was likely to end up living, or dead.

  The watch fires burned steadily. Of guards he saw none, but that did not mean they weren’t there. The last field he crawled across, grateful for the dry weather. Beyond the field the ground rose into a low ridge. Just below the top he paused, then rolled over and plunged down the slope into the murky, stinking moat. Algae slimed his face and hands as he pushed through the water. It never came up higher than his chest, but the weight of water soaking his clothes made it difficult for him to clamber up the steep wall beyond. The stone wall offered fingerholds, nothing more. Yet years of carpentry had given him strong hands. Hand’s-breadth by hand’s-breadth he climbed the wall, never looking down. No guard called out. No arrow pierced his back. Nor was the wall so very high, after all; not nearly as tall as the wall of the citadel in Kartu where the town’s rulers, whether Mariha princes or Qin commanders, held court. The reeves of Argent Hall did not fear assault so very much, it seemed. Maybe everyone had grown fat and lazy and complacent, thinking nothing would ever change.

  His right forefinger began to bleed, but he was almost at the top. The moon scattered its pale beams over the endless flat plain. When he rested, pressing one side of his face against the stone and gazing outward with his uncovered eye, he saw no movement there beyond.

  Abruptly, a shadow passed overhead, coming down fast. A man’s sharp cry rang out from inside the walls.

  “Who goes there?”

  “Reeve’s shelter!” cried a voice Shai recognized as that of Reeve Joss. “I claim reeve’s shelter. I have terrible news!”

  Shai grabbed the topmost battlement and heaved himself up onto his stomach, kicked, scrambled, and swung first one leg and then the other over. Leaped down onto the wall walk. Dropped into a crouch. He was in.

  No one had marked him. He spotted a guard off to the left, but the man was looking down into a wide courtyard mostly hidden from Shai’s position. Staying low, Shai moved along the walkway in the other direction and found a ladder. Down he went, got lost in several turnings, and found himself in a garden after all, where he hid behind a fountain. No water ran. That lack of noise made him feel vulnerable, because sound was like shadow; it concealed what wished to stay hidden. It was very quiet, but even slight sounds carried in the night: the scrape of a foot on gravel, a distant laugh, the trickle of water from a second, working fountain. An insect whirred.

  In the garden stood a cottage. The pair of windows he could see from this side were open; a lamp burned inside, but from this angle he saw no one. He crept along a lattice screened by a fall of vine. He reached the porch, and eased up onto it. Around the corner, a door slid open. Beyond the garden, a man shouted in alarm, and was answered by an eagle’s fierce shriek.

  A foot fell; a shadow breached the corner of the porch; a man’s shape slipped into view.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  Shai drew, and thrust. The point of his short sword cut into flesh, pushed deep, kept sliding until the hilt slammed up against the body it had impaled. Panting, Shai wrenched it loose, but the blade caught on ribs. He fought with it and shoved the man back and actually got his foot up on the man’s thigh and shoved with the foot while tugging on the sword.

  All fell free. The man collapsed onto the porch without making a single sound, just a thump. The cloak he wore wrapped around his shoulders shifted, rising as if wind breathed into the fabric. Shai took a step back, then a second, waiting for the man to struggle up and attack him. Waiting for his ghost to rise out of his body, cursing and moaning.

  The body did not stir. No misty form shimmered into the air.

  Behind him, a man chuckled.

  “Well done,” said Tohon, appearing out of the gloom. “But move fast, now. We go on.”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “Looks dead enough. If not, we finish him later. Follow me.”

  A clamor rose from beyond the garden. Cries and calls were punctuated by the clatter of weapons. Tohon set out at a jog, and Shai ran after him, wiping his mouth, which was suddenly moist with saliva. They crunched along a gravel path. The scout seemed uninterested in how much noise they were making. Two corpses sprawled in the garden; their ghosts were caught in an eddy around their bodies, trying, Shai supposed, to figure out what had happened to them.

  He and Tohon crossed under a gate and ran down an alley, made a twist and a turn, and sprinted into a wide and dusty court. Reeve Joss’s giant eagle walked with wings spread while a pair of hapless men cowered away from his talons. Several bodies had fallen in the court, but in the dim light it was impossible to know what had struck them down. A ghost was weeping beside one corpse, but the other ghosts, strangely, were already tearing away from the flesh, seeking Spirit Gate, through which they would cross into the other world.

  Near the fortress’s massive gatehouse, a fire burned in a outdoor brick hearth. Here guardsmen might warm a cup of khaif to keep them awake through a night’s watch, but tonight the flames illuminated a quartet of tailmen as they set their shoulders to the wheel. With a groan, and a rumble of gears, the gate creaked. Black-clad riders streamed into the fortress.

  Anji rode up to Tohon.

  “Done,” said the scout. “But it was the lad who killed the marshal.”

  Anji nodded at Shai. “Well done.”

  He signaled. Together with the Olossi militia, the Qin soldiers spread throughout the barracks, stables, chambers, and lofts of Argent Hall. Reeves and servan
ts were caught, bound, gagged, and confined under guard, while the dead were carried into the same high loft where the prisoners were kept and lined up in tidy rows for the living to contemplate.

  Living among the reeves were guildsmen called fawkners, men and women whose work was to care for the eagles. They proved most cooperative. As soon as they saw that the hooded eagles under their care were not to be harmed, they seemed, in truth, relieved at the incursion, even though many of the eagles were badly distressed, restless in the darkness.

  As soon as every room was accounted for, the troop set to work. Anji and his officers inventoried the contents of the storerooms. The militiamen dressed in the garb of the hall’s hired men. The Qin soldiers rolled wagons into position and took their stations. Joss hooded Scar in an empty loft, to rest him. Men napped, hoarding their strength. Shai was too restless to sleep. He walked back through the compound and found the garden and its cottage, where he had stabbed that man. No body lay on the porch, of course, but strangely, no blood stained the boards either. For the longest time, as light rose and the night softened with dawn, he stared at the spot. There was no evidence that anything at all had happened. Inside the cottage, the lamp still burned, but it was guttering on the last of the oil. He moved toward the entry door, thinking to go inside, to blow it out. To look for something he had surely misplaced, only he wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Hey! Shai!” Jagi waved at him from the shadowed alley. “Come on! We’re supposed to take up position. You’re with me.”

  He shook himself. To his surprise, his hand was already on the door, which was closed, but he wasn’t sure whether he was about to open a closed door, or had just closed an open one. Uneasy, he backed up, then jumped down the stairs and hurried over to Jagi.

  As Shai came up to him, Jagi punched him, hard, on the arm. “Tohon says you struck down the marshal. You didn’t let us tailmen down.”

  Shai could only grit his teeth so as not to wince in front of his companion. He did not look back at the deserted cottage as they trotted away down the alley. The night’s activity seemed like a dream to him, something best left behind. They took up their station on the wall walk where scaffolding gave them protection; they still had a good view over the courtyard. It was very quiet, very still. Jagi readied his bow.

  To kill a man, you must be willing to see the ghost he becomes. Such was the curse set upon him. He was not sure he was willing to be a soldier, if he must face, every time, the ghost he had created. Yet releasing ghosts did not seem to bother Anji, and anyway, Shai knew he would never have the courage to ask the captain if it did.

  A militiaman rang the first bell as soon as the sun’s rim broached the eastern horizon.

  “Captain has a new idea,” said Jagi. “Something to do with the oil he found in the storerooms. He’s talking it over with that eagle rider, right now. I wonder, though.”

  “You wonder what?” asked Shai. He wondered, too, at the empty courtyard, the abandoned rooms: Argent Hall’s ghosts had fled quickly, almost as if they were happy to find release.

  “Let’s say we survive this. I wonder what kind of wife I can find here. She won’t be able to cook the things I like to eat. I tried a bit of their yoghurt and milk. Gah! It had no bite to it! I suppose I’ll have to learn to eat what she cooks. That’s what my mother would tell me to do.”

  He settled down with chin on crossed wrists and bow tucked beside him, dozed off . . .

  A bell woke him. Just as he opened his eyes and remembered where he was and who he was with, a whistle called the alert. Jagi tipped from slumping against the wall to a low crouch so fast that one instant he seemed asleep and the next ready to loose an arrow.

  Shai peered over the wall. If you looked hard you could see specks in the sky.

  Argent Hall’s eagles were coming home.

  51

  At dawn, a wind rose off the Lending as if earth itself exhaled. Grass bent under the blow. The sun rose. One by one, the reeves of Argent Hall took off for home. Although Horas exhorted them to stick in their flights, so that they could ward off Clan Hall should the other reeves attack again, no one listened and many were, of course, too far away to hear him. With his own eagle injured and refusing care, Horas knew he’d lost any respect these arse-faced bastards might ever have had for him, which wasn’t much.

  He waited until the last were no more than a speck of dust in the sky, and waited yet longer as Tumna kept her gaze turned to follow their flights, for Tumna could see much farther than he could. At length, the eagle swiveled her head and gave Horas a glare that would have peeled the skin off a lesser man. The eagle walked to the crest of the ridge, where there was a bit of a cliff to help her lift. Once there, she looked again at Horas, curled her talons into fists, and settled. All was forgiven.

  Horas approached cautiously, and paused when the eagle stood. Tumna suffered him to hook into the harness. Wings spread, the eagle thrust, and they leaped into the air. The ground sped up beneath Horas’s feet, and he sucked in his breath for death’s scream, but just before they hit, Tumna beat hard, caught an updraft, and they were up and rising.

  Even so, it was a long, slow, difficult flight, managed only because Tumna rode the winds until they were so high that Horas had to shut his eyes lest he weep, and then the raptor angled a slow glide that ate up the mey as they crossed the Olo Plain. The least movement on that injured wing, the better, it seemed.

  The road was a faint ribbon seen far below, and on its track Lord Radas’s army oozed along like so much sludge, dark and nasty. The army would reach Olossi by midafternoon, Horas judged. But he was so weary he could not care one way or the other. Tumna was wounded, and angry at him. No reeve could live without his eagle. Aui! So the tales went: the glory and the honor and the fine adventure and thrill to ride aloft, to fly into any town or hamlet with such a formidable creature at your back that all folk must acknowledge you. But the tales lied. Everyone lied. He hated them all, and they deserved his hate, for the world was nothing but a smear, a bit of smut, a spat word and a kick in the ribs.

  He would have wept again, but he was too ashamed. Fear was a worm in his belly. He knew himself for a coward and hated himself most of all. He had seen the truth in that clerk’s gaze. He was ash, muck, nothing but leavings.

  All at once, Tumna chirped as though to tell him something. Good news! Good news!

  Aui! It was obvious, now he thought on it. The clerk’s gaze had lied, too. No sense in believing her, when he had no reason to trust her. He might yet make something of himself, but he guessed, now, that he’d find no comfort at Argent Hall.

  “We’ll fetch our things and get out,” he said to Tumna, and the eagle chirped, as if in answer to his tone.

  No hall would have him. But they needed no hall. He felt no duty to the reeves, not any longer. They’d fly to the Barrens, find a place to live, and hunker down until the shadows passed.

  Tumna chirped a third time. The sea glittered ahead, flat and gray. Horas saw eagles circling as they waited to land at Argent Hall, still too far away for him to quite distinguish. But Tumna was excited. Tumna saw what he could not.

  They glided down, and down, and the confusion of eagles circling began to take on a frightening significance. Those pale streaks flashing up from the ground were arrows and javelins. Of the eagles circling, some were trying to land while others were trying to get a lift to move away. Already a quartet of reeves was beating north, fleeing the skirmish.

  Above the walls of Argent Hall, an eagle tumbled so suddenly that he thought it was a clot of dirt flung out of the sky, until the poor creature tried to spread its wings and could not. It fell, out of his sight behind the walls, into the sea. With his gaze drawn that way, he saw along the shore coming up from the south more flights of eagles, too many and in too regular a formation to belong to Argent Hall.

  He began to tug on the jesses, trying to get Tumna to angle away, to fly north, but the eagle ignored him. Still at a good height, Tumna found a thermal al
ong the shoreline and rode it, and they soared as both reeve and eagle examined the swirl of raptors below. A group of about twenty reeves lost heart and wheeled away in the face of the flights approaching along the shore. But more carried the fight to the invaders, although it seemed strange that they should do so when those on the ground had the better position.

  Reeves dangled like dead men in their harness as their eagles kept passing over and over as if seeking a landing. Although a few of the Argent Hall reeves were loosing arrows down into the hall, the arrows streaking up from below had, it seemed, manifold advantages: their archers were good shots, they had stable footing, and all had taken cover behind posts, wagons, and scaffolding. Strangely, certain of the eagles were trying to land within the hall despite the resistance. A dozen or more had taken perches, as many as could come to ground at one time, and either their reeves were already wounded, or the eagles were injured and could not fly; but in any case, those reeves were at the mercy of the people who had taken over Argent Hall. A dozen or more eagles had come to earth outside the walls, and as Horas tugged and tugged at the jesses, trying to get Tumna to move off, he saw a band of horsemen race out of the walls and, keeping their distance, shoot arrow after arrow into reeves trapped because their eagles would not fly.

  Horas could bear it no longer. He was helpless. Argent Hall had fallen to what villains he did not know, although he could guess that the Clan Hall reeves had turned against every oath sworn by hall and eagle and with unknown allies betrayed their fellow reeves.

  Tumna closed her wings and plummeted. Horas shrieked. With his staff he jabbed the eagle’s breast. With an angry call, Tumna pulled up, swooped over the hall, and dropped toward the earth beyond. Horas slapped at the eagle again, aiming for the injured wing, and with his other hand tugged at the jess.