The Shadow at the Gate

by Christopher Bunn

  They hurried to the stairs and looked down. From far below, they heard the sound of hurrying footsteps and voices. No one was visible on the stairs, but it seemed like the gloom deepened and was ascending toward them.

  “He’s coming,” said the hawk, “and he isn’t alone. What has happened to this place? The Dark has some secret foothold here, I fear. A pox on all wizards!”

  “Boy,” said Ronan, turning to Lano. “Is there a way out of this place other than down the stairs?”

  “Well, there’s the back stairs. They aren’t used much except by the servants and us boys. You have to go all the way up to the attic to reach them from here—as far as I know—and then they only go halfway down to the sixth floor.”

  “And then how do you go from there?”

  “Well, the main stairs, of course.”

  They dashed up the stairs. The stairs narrowed and narrowed until they came to a small, cramped landing. They found themselves before a shabby door that looked as if it had not been opened in a long time.

  The attic was not like any other attic Jute had ever seen, and Jute had seen quite a few attics during his days as a thief. Not that such occasions had been a part of belonging to the Juggler’s band, as their official duties had always been restricted to pickpocketing, thieving from the market barrow carts, and other such things. However, he and Lena and several other children had sometimes spent their free time breaking into houses. He had spent many a happy hour investigating the contents of unfamiliar attics.

  The attic of the Stone Tower, however, was a different affair. A gloomy light illumined the place, though it was difficult to say where the light came from. It seemed imbued in the wood planking and the beams that ran through the ceiling like the ribs of some gigantic animal. The attic was enormous. It stretched away in all directions. Jute could not see any walls in any direction.

  “It’s best not to talk to the ghosts here,” said Lano.

  “Why’s that?” said Ronan.

  “Even a single word. It gives them the right to follow you. My friend Gewose once made the mistake of asking a ghost up here if it knew the time. It followed him after he left the attic. Wouldn’t leave him for days. Stayed up all night by his bed telling him stories about dust and moonlight and how much space there is between the end of one minute and the beginning of another. The conversation about the minute went on for two days, but it was mostly one-sided.”

  “Right,” said Ronan. “No talking to ghosts.”

  Dust rose in the air with their footsteps. The space was filled with odd stacks and shapes: old boxes piled high until they towered and teetered overhead, gaunt outlines of furniture stripped away by time until they resembled more the skeletons of strange beasts rather than couches and wardrobes and armoires and bookcases.

  The ghosts began to appear. At first, they looked like a trick of the gloom and shadows, but then they resolved into shapes as if heartened by the presence of the living. They seemed to be mostly old men, though Jute did glimpse two boys crouching over what looked like a game of marbles.

  “Splendid day, isn’t it?” said one ghost, drifting closer to Jute.

  “They’ll never answer,” said a second ghost. “It’s most uncouth.”

  “Where’s that staircase?” said the hawk.

  “I’m not sure,” said Lano. “I know it’s up here somewhere.”

  “Everything is up here somewhere,” said a ghost. “Everything. Depending on your point of view.”

  “That’s just perfect.” The hawk scowled at the little boy. “You might’ve mentioned that before. We could spend the next hour searching this place and never be wiser.”

  “What’s one hour when they’re free for the taking?” said a ghost.

  “The answer’s simple,” said Ronan. “I’m surprised, master hawk, you haven’t thought of it yourself.”

  “Oh?” said the hawk. “How’s that?”

  “Yes,” agreed another ghost. “Do tell.”

  “We’ll ask a ghost.”

  “That’s what we shouldn’t do,” said Lano hastily.

  “Capital plan,” said a ghost. “Don’t listen to the little squit. He’s obviously inbred. Looks suspiciously like a goat, too.”

  “Excellent,” said another.

  “Brilliant bird,” said a third. “Sound thinking. I almost like him.”

  “But who’s going to ask?” said Jute. “I don’t want a ghost following me around for the next week. Things are strange enough as they are.”

  “Things can always get worse,” said a ghost. “Why, I could tell you a story that would curdle your blood like rancid milk on a hot summer day. By the way, what is milk? I’ve forgotten.”

  “I think our little friend should ask,” said the hawk. “After all, we’re guests under his roof.”

  “You think so?” said a ghost. “Not that I’ve anything against this snot-nosed twit, but he doesn’t strike me as a decent conversationalist, if you know what I mean. Probably all screaming and wailing and rushing about with his eyes bugging out whenever you come popping up from under the bed. That’s how he’ll behave, I daresay. It’s enough to put anyone off. Now yourself, or this tall fellow with the sword, you both look like you’ve some staying power.”

  “Excellent idea,” said Ronan, ignoring the ghost. “Let’s have the boy ask.”

  “I won’t!” said Lano, crossing his arms and trying to look stern.

  “You will,” said the hawk. “Look, boy, death is coming up the stairs. If we waste more time here, several of us’ll be dead before the hour’s out, including you.”

  “And I suppose one of us could die a bit sooner,” added Ronan. He tapped thoughtfully on the hilt of his sword.

  “It isn’t fair,” said Lano in despair. “Oh, very well.” He gulped and then addressed a scrawny old ghost hovering nearby. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Yes, what’s that?” said the ghost, startled on being singled out.

  “Um, do you know where the stairs are that lead down into the servants’ quarters? My friends—” Here, Lano shot a dirty look over his shoulder at the rest of them. “My friends and I need to find them in a hurry.”

  “Of course,” said the ghost in delight. “My dear boy, nothing could be simpler. I’ll take you there myself. The back stairs, you say? Come to think of it, I haven’t been down those stairs in a hundred years. I might have a jaunt and come along with you.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” groaned the little boy.

  “Stairs, you know, exciting stuff,” said the ghost. “Rise and run. Rise and run. Rise and run. Or is it run and rise? All depends on where you start first, I suppose. For the life of me—between you and me, I’m not all that alive—I can’t remember who invented stairs. It’s one of those puzzlers that keeps you up at night, just thinking about it. Did one fellow invent the rise and then some other fellow, unconnected to the first fellow, invent the run?”

  “We have yet to move from this spot,” said the hawk. “Advise your ghost that time is of the utmost importance.”

  “He’s not my ghost,” said Lano, but he then sternly addressed the ghost. “Sir, we need to get to those stairs. Time’s running out.”

  “It is?” said the ghost. “I had no idea. Upon my soul. This bears some consideration. Do you know how much time is left?”

  “Don’t be a blithering nitwit,” said another ghost. “It’s not an issue of how much is left. Time itself is running out, don’t you see? It’s running out the door, but whether it’s a dog or a man or something else entirely, I don’t know. Interesting problem, though. What do you think?”

  This last question was addressed to Jute who, feeling dizzy from all this talk, unthinkingly opened his mouth to reply.

  “I don’t know,” said Jute.

  “That’s torn it,” said Ronan. “Now we have two of ‘em.”

  “I’m sorry!” wailed Jute. “I wasn’t thinking!”

  “Precisely,” said the hawk.

  “Oh, I
don’t know about that,” said the second ghost, greatly pleased at this turn of events. “Admitting that one doesn’t know a thing is the mark of a careful thinker. In my career as a professor in the Stone Tower—at least, I think I was a professor. Perhaps I was the cook?—I found that my worst students were those who thought they knew the answers. The best students were those who admitted their ignorance and then allowed me to correct the handicap. Not that such handicaps are always correctable, mind you, for youthful ignorance is a condition that isn’t easily reversible.”

  “I think,” said Ronan, “that I will soon prefer death to this babbling. Where are those blasted stairs?”

  “My dear sir,” protested a fat ghost, “you malign death with such a remark. It isn’t such a bad state of affairs. You should try it sometime. The company, of course, leaves a bit to be desired.”

  “Shut yer trap, fatty,” said another ghost.

  “Where are the back stairs!” shouted Lano.

  “You needn’t bellow so,” said the scrawny ghost. “I heard you the first time. You don’t think just because I’m ghost that I have a bad memory, do you? With some ghosts, you’d be correct. But that’s due to the fact that as you are in life, so you are in death.”

  “Tell him to show us the stairs before I wring your neck,” said Ronan.

  “The stairs!” said Lano.

  “Right this way,” said the scrawny ghost. “You won’t mind if I accompany you, will you? Of course not. Despite your youth, I think you'll prove a splendid conversationalist.”

  The scrawny ghost led them through the gloomy darkness of the attic. Neither the that ghost nor Jute’s ghost ever stopped talking. Behind them trailed a whole crowd of decidedly grumpy ghosts—grumpy, of course, because it had not been any of them who had had the good fortune to coax a response out of one of the living. Their guide stopped beside a pile of moldy fur skins.

  “What a stench,” said Jute.

  “Otter pelts,” said his ghost, and he launched into a discourse on the differences between the ocean otter and its smaller cousin, the freshwater otter.

  “Here it is,” said the scrawny ghost. And there it was. A trapdoor set into the planks. It was so covered with dust that they certainly would not have found it on their own. Ronan wrenched the door up to reveal stairs vanishing down into the darkness.

  “Jute and I’ll go first,” said the hawk. “Hurry. We’ve wasted too much time.”

  “All right then. Liven it up.”

  But even as Ronan spoke, something changed in the air in the attic. There was a chill to it that had not been there before. The meager light dimmed until it was nearly gone. The shadows deepened. Even the crowd of watching ghosts seemed somehow changed. Their forms thickened and there was menace in their stares.

  “Not all of us thought so poorly of the Dark,” said someone in the crowd.

  “Aye,” said another. “The Dark wouldn’t have chained us to this place. It would’ve let us go free. It would’ve wanted us to be free.”

  The chill deepened. The trapdoor felt impossibly heavy in Ronan’s grip. Somewhere far off in the attic, there came the sound of footsteps and creaking planks.

  “Jute!” said the hawk.

  Jute dove down the stairs with the hawk clinging to his shoulder. Behind him, he could hear Lano stumbling along. Even their two ghosts had fallen silent, though he could see them by the strange pale light that they shed. Part of his mind realized, in a pleased fashion, that this was why the attic was lit. It was the ghosts. The rest of Jute’s mind, however, gibbered in frantic panic. The wihht! The trapdoor closed softly overhead and Ronan hurried after them on silent feet.

  “It doesn’t matter how quiet you are,” said the hawk. “The wihht doesn’t need to hear to follow our path.”

  “Then run!” said Ronan.

  And run, they did. Clattering and jumping down the stairs. Strands of cobwebs broke across their faces. The stairs were dusty and dark and so cramped that they had to proceed in single file.

  “What’s following us?” gasped Lano.

  “A wihht,” said Jute.

  “What’s that?”

  “What sort of question is that?” said the scrawny ghost. “Why, if you were my student, you’d be writing out twenty pages—best handwriting—on wihhts. I’m shocked. Shocked at such ignorance!”

  “If you’re so clever,” said Lano, “then why don’t you tell me what a wihht is.”

  “Very well,” said the ghost. “There’ll be a test on this later. Pay attention and don’t shirk your note-taking.”

  “Tell your ghost to be quiet!” said the hawk.

  They clattered down stairs that, judging from the dust and the sheets of cobwebs that hung spun from wall to wall, had not been used for years. Jute caught a glimpse of something scuttling away into the shadows. It looked uncomfortably fat and furry with many horrid legs scrabbling about (many more legs than a spider). What did such things trap and eat, so far up here in the dark? Surely there were no flies buzzing about there.

  The scrawny ghost paid no attention to the hawk and launched into a lecture on wihhts. “There’s a lot written about ‘em that’s pure rubbish,” it said. “Especially the more modern writers. Rubbish. Not worth the paper they’re written on. Some claim you can create wihhts out of neutral material, but there are two problems with that. First off, there’s no such thing as neutral material. Everything has a bent this way or that, see? Second, the sort of savage twisting and reshaping required to create a wihht automatically precludes anything good coming of the thing. It naturally will adhere to the Dark.”

  They had descended at least four flights, if not more. The stairs turned and wound around themselves at sharp angles. There was not any particular method to the turns. Sometimes, they came after only five steps, or twelve, or even as many as twenty-one. Jute’s lungs burned and he had a painful stitch in his side.

  “How many stories in all,” said Ronan, “including the attic, are in this place?”

  “Oh, thirteen,” said Lano. “I think.”

  “Fifteen,” said Jute’s ghost. “One of the strictures of teaching is that boys know nothing. As expected, this boy knows nothing. In my days as a professor here, it wasn’t uncommon to have boys in class that knew even less than nothing.”

  “Seventeen,” said the other ghost.

  “Quiet,” said the hawk. “Be quiet all of you, for one moment!”

  They stopped and turned to look up the stairs. Jute could not hear anything and he could tell from the frown on Ronan’s face that he heard nothing as well.

  “He’s on the stairs,” said the hawk. “And he isn’t alone. I don’t think this Stone Tower will be a safe place from now on, for I fear he’s freed some of the ghosts, just as they wished. Those who would be naturally inclined to the Dark. We must hurry now.”

  “As I was saying,” said Lano’s ghost, “before I was rudely interrupted, wihhts are always created with a binding of the Dark. That is, the Dark in some form (whether it be a strand of shadow or death or nightmare, or something of that kind) is woven together with some sort of natural material. Earth, wood, stone, flesh (dead flesh works best if it’s fresh), various plants, water. Water, however, is a chancy material for wihhts. It has to be dark water. That is, water that’s spent a great deal of time below ground.”

  “Oh, be quiet,” said the other ghost.

  Lano’s ghost, startled at this betrayal, subsided into a mumbling grumble as he trailed behind them down the stairs. They came then to the bottom of the stairs. It was a wide landing stacked with wooden chests and old furniture. They had to clear their way to a door at the far end.

  “Servants’ quarters through there,” said Lano. “I think.” He darted an apprehensive glance at his ghost, but it was sulking and not paying attention.

  It was the servants’ quarters. There was a smell of laundry and fresh bread in the air. They passed startled looking faces in a drawing room of sorts—some resting over their tea, some gos
siping quietly in their corners. The hallway was narrow and shabby, but it was swept clean and well lit.

  “Not done in my day,” said Jute’s ghost primly. “We didn’t mix with the servants.”

  “This will help us,” said the hawk.

  “What do you mean?” said Ronan.

  “More lives.” The hawk glanced at an old lady who curtseyed as they passed her. “More lives around us will obscure the trail for the wihht. Rather like footprints from many people walking down the same path. It’ll have to stop and determine which belong to us. Which footprints belong to Jute.”

  They rounded a corner into a wider hallway. Windows opened out to the west and they saw sunlight and the shining water down in the bay. There were many boys here.

  “Hey, Lano’s with the wind lord!” someone yelled.

  “It’s the wind lord!”

  Other boys took up the shout, and soon the hallway was filled with boys smiling and cheering and trying to catch Jute’s eye. It was embarrassing, and Jute was not sure what to make of it.

  “One side!” bellowed Ronan. “Let us through!”

  The boys surged along with them. Lano smiled and nodded grandly at acquaintances.

  “To the stairs!” called Lano.

  “What’s the occasion?” yelled a boy, sticking his head out of a door, a book in one hand and a quill in the other.

  “The wind lord’s going to call up the wind and we’re going to see some real spells. None of this boring old reading.”

  “What about the professors? We’ll catch it—”

  “Boo on the professors!

  “And boo on schoolwork!”

  “To the stairs!”

  The boys cheered, for they were glad of any excuse to abandon their studies. There were several dozen of them. They were on the stairs now and there were furious shouts from two old men stationed there. Jute caught a glimpse of angry eyes with something dark and deadly sliding behind them. Something that knew him. But then the face was gone, pushed away by the crowd of boys hurrying down the steps around him.

  “The wihht has help within these walls,” said the hawk in Jute’s ear. “It is well, I think, that these lads are bent on an impromptu holiday. Once we’re under the sky, we’ll be safer. And there’re several hours between now and sundown.”