Shadow Gate

by Kate Elliott

  “Indeed we are,” he agreed with a sweet, sober smile. “The last of our kind.”

  54

  At dawn, as the clangor of the temple bells called men to prayer, Keshad confronted the guards at the gate, holding his blessing bowl in cupped hands.

  “I need to pray.”

  They looked at each other. One went into the guardhouse and emerged with the sergeant while the other stared straight ahead, pretending not to see Kesh.

  “No foreigners allowed in Sarida today,” said the sergeant. He was a big man with hair shaved short and powerful hands that looked ready to crush the windpipe of any clamoring fool who annoyed him.

  “I need to pray.” Again he displayed the bowl. “I am a believing man. Not like the others.”

  He did not look into the courtyard where sour-faced men gathered yawning and stretching to mutter among themselves at the locked gate. The foreign merchants had heard trumpets in the night, and now it seemed they were to be imprisoned all day, not even let free to buy and sell in the market. Mutters turned to cheerful greetings as Eliar emerged from the cubicle he shared with Keshad, and at once the conversation flowered with laughter and spirited banter. Everyone liked Eliar! Kesh could not understand how the others could stomach the Silver’s convivial ways and inanely amiable chatter.

  “All peace be upon Beltak, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Shining One Who Rules Alone,” said the sergeant at last, having taken his time to think things through. “The priests bid us to open the exalted gates to all men. To turn away a man who wishes to enter would be like killing him. Therefore, go. But return here after. This guard will accompany you. He speaks nothing of the trade talk, so no point in trying to converse.”

  “My thanks,” said Kesh. “I’m just surprised. We heard trumpets last night, and now we’re told we can’t go into the market. It’s impossible to do business.”

  “Those are my orders.”

  And that, Kesh judged, was far enough to push this one. He waited while the inner gate was unlocked, a laborious process involving chains, locks, and keys, and cursed if Eliar didn’t trot up behind.

  “Heya, Keshad. Where are you going? How did you get permission to leave? Are they opening the gates for the day, finally?”

  “Move back,” said the sergeant in a curt way that made Eliar startle and Kesh smile. “No one allowed out.”

  “He’s being allowed out!”

  “Go on,” said the sergeant to Kesh before turning his back on Eliar and lounging against the wall of the guardhouse with every evident intention of flaunting his power.

  Keshad hurried out, hearing voices raised behind him as other merchants saw the threshold gape and, then, slam shut in their faces.

  He knew the route well and was careful to follow it exactly with the silent young guardsman at his back, a lad with an unpleasant face and look of pinching scorn to make it yet uglier. The truth was, the Sirniakans were not a handsome people, not the men Keshad had seen anyway, and of course except in the most distant and isolated villages on the route to the border with Mariha, he’d not seen women at all. Nothing but men, which was a tedious way to live, and as he walked he noted how this morning every gate was shut, the compounds whose walls lined the streets closed up as if night’s curfew hadn’t yet been lifted. Elderly men draped in robes approached the white gates at the edge of the caravan market where all foreigners must bide when in Sarida to trade. A few younger men walked in pairs and fours, murmuring quietly, some glancing curiously at him as he passed. No one spoke to him. It was very quiet, none of the waking market bustle that was normally fiercest at this early hour before the midday heat clobbered everyone.

  Of course any city has only one temple, supervised by holy priests. Any believing man must, by the Exalted One’s decree, be permitted entry. But that didn’t mean that all men entered through the same holy gate or worshiped in the same holy court. Here at the wall of the caravan market, a gate opened into an alley confined by high whitewashed walls. It twisted and turned through the city in a circuitous route, bridged at intervals for the convenience of imperial citizens so they need never set foot where lesser men trod. Believers of a class not permitted free access within the city might approach the holy court, but they would certainly remain separate. Along this narrow way Keshad trudged, and though he listened, he heard no gossip, no news, nothing beyond a few halting discussions of rice crops, a horse race, and fishing.

  The city was large, and the alley a long path often sloping uphill or angled with steps, so he was sweating when he reached the humble gate through which they entered single-file. Kesh crossed the threshold and crouched to touch the naked feet of a white-clad priest. The holy man frowned as if suspicious of his looks, but gave him the sign to pass into the earth-floored court packed with worshipers: foreigners, slaves, indentured servants, impoverished laborers, the deformed and disfigured, the beggars and the lame. He paid a coin to have a priest fill his bowl with holy water and then he knelt, palms turned upward to face the heavens, as a priest led the sonorous prayer.

  “Rid us of all that is evil. Rid us of demons. Rid us of hate. . . .” He dipped a thumb in the water and traced the sign of Straight Order across his forehead. “Increase all that is good. . . .” How easy it was to produce the words, but it was like sowing seed in barren ground. Words are only words, because the gods do not listen, no matter what Zubaidit, or the priests of Beltak, or the Ri Amarah said. They, who believed, were blind, because they preferred blindness. It was easier than seeing the dispassionate cruelty of the world where those in power closed their hands around the throats of the ones they wished to control. They shut their victims behind locked gates and then prayed to their gods to persuade themselves they were doing right.

  “Teach me to hate darkness and battle evil. Teach me the Truth.” Bai would scold him for pretending to pray, but by doing so he had escaped the locked gates of the merchants’ compound, hadn’t he? “Peace. Peace. Peace.”

  Fine words and noble sentiments. How bright and clean they washed the world. He brushed tears from his cheeks, thinking of Miravia.

  Some of the worshipers stood in line for the priest’s cleansing, but Kesh sat down on a bench and rubbed his feet. In courts built farther in toward the center of the temple complex, voices still rose in the extended prayer granted to men of higher rank, and trees offered shade to men who preferred to pray out of the blazing sun. It was already hot, the sun’s light so strong on the whitewashed walls that he had to shade his eyes as he scanned the lingering assembly, wondering if he would see any merchants he recognized from the market, men he might conceivably chat with as they walked back down the alley out of the city. Men who might say too much, or be prone to gossip. Folk did like to gossip. It gave them a sense of power to know what others did not.

  “You are a Hundred man.”

  Startled, he looked up. Dropped off the bench to his knees. “Holy one. You honor me.”

  The priest from the gate stood before him. He had a beard, and his hair was shorn short and shaved bald at the crown. “They are stubborn, the Hundred men, praying to demons who mask as gods. But you pray to the Exalted One.”

  “Yes, holy one.”

  The priest’s look was as good as a question.

  “I have walked into the empire many times. Thus am I come to the Exalted One, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Shining One Who Rules Alone.”

  “A merchant may speak words he does not believe in order to avoid the tax fixed on barbarians.”

  “Yes,” agreed Kesh without flinching, his gaze steady. “So he may.”

  “You will be cleansed today?”

  “I will. In truth, holy one, I was waiting for the line to shorten. My feet hurt.”

  The priest nodded, and turned to leave.

  “Holy one,” said Kesh, “if I may be permitted a question.”

  The man turned back as smoothly as if he had expected the words. “What do you wish, believer?”

  “I am a Hundred man,
a foreign merchant. Our compound has been locked down, and we are not permitted into the market to trade. All will be as the Exalted One ordains, and I am a patient man, but I admit that I am concerned about my business. Might I be permitted to know if trade will resume today, or another day soon, or if we will be permitted to leave Sarida and return to our homes if the market has been closed indefinitely?”

  No wind stirred the air, but men’s voices filtered everywhere. Tense murmurs. Choppy gestures. Glances sent close and far as if in fear that some other man, listening, might call them to account for reckless words. And indeed, the prayers still winding from the inner courts had also a tight coil to them, every man clinging to the familiar cycle as a man in a storm huddles under the shelter he knows, the only place he feels safe.

  “It is hard to know what will happen next,” said the priest thoughtfully, looking intently at Kesh, as if measuring the sincerity of his heart.

  But he didn’t scare Kesh. What man could, now that he had been emboldened by Miravia’s face and enigmatic smile?

  “We wait for word from Dalilasah as to how to proceed. Meanwhile, the regulations and restrictions will be observed fourfold, as is proper.”

  “What do you mean, holy one? I am ignorant, truly.”

  Men filtered out the gate to vanish down the alley, and in the inner courts, the singing faded and died. A bell rang thrice, and a trumpet blew twice, and then came silence, a vastly populated and crowded city caught in a hush like the world waiting to discover from which way the storm would thunder in upon them.

  The priest smiled awkwardly, which was perhaps an attempt to show sympathy and perhaps the curling bite of lofty scorn and perhaps only the man’s own anxiety peeping through his stern façade.

  “You have not heard, of course. Emperor Farazadihosh is dead, killed in battle by his cousin.”

  Turn the page for a preview of

  TRAITORS’

  GATE

  KATE ELLIOTT

  Available August 2009

  A TOR HARDCOVER

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1057-6 ISBN-10: 0-7653-1057-0

  Copyright © 2009 by Katrina Elliot

  PART ONE: FOREIGNERS

  1

  LATE AT NIGHT a fight broke out beyond the compound’s high walls.

  Keshad sat up in the darkness. At first he thought himself in the Hundred, in the city of Olossi, still bound as a debt slave to Master Feden. Then he smelled the faintly rancid aroma of the harsh local oil used for cooking. He heard cries and shouts jabbering words he could not understand.

  And he remembered.

  He wasn’t in the Hundred. He was in the Sirniakan Empire.

  He groped for the short sword he had stashed under the cot, shoving aside pouches of his most valuable trade goods and getting his hand tangled in a length of leather cord before he finally gripped the hilt.

  “Eh? Keshad?” A bleary voice murmured on the other side of the curtain separating his cot from that of his companion.

  “Quiet. There’s trouble.”

  The cloth rippled as, on the other side, Eliar got up and wrestled with clothing, or his turban, or whatever the hells the Silvers were so cursed prudish about. Bracelets jangled. There came a curse, a rattle, and a thump as the cot tipped over.

  “Eiya! Where’s the light?” whispered Eliar so loudly that he would have woken any other sleeper could there have been one in such a narrow space.

  “Hush.” Kesh wrapped his kilt around his waist, approached the door, and, leaning against it, pressed an ear to the crack. All quiet.

  “Nothing to do with us,” he said in a low voice. “Yet.”

  “How can you say so?” The cot scraped, being righted. “The Sirniakan officials have locked us in the compound, won’t let us trade, and hand over a scant portion of rice and millet once a day so we don’t starve. One of their priests told you that the emperor is dead, killed in battle by his cousin. They’ve locked down Sardia and are restricting all movement. These troubles have everything to do with us. We have to get out of here, return to Olossi, and report these developments to Captain Anji.”

  “Hush!”

  Kesh jiggered the latch and cracked the door. It was strange, even unseemly, to deal with doors on hinges instead of proper doors that slid, but in the empire things were done one way or not at all, and if you didn’t like it, the priests would condemn you to the fire.

  A single lamp hung from a bracket set high on the wall. Its glow illuminated the courtyard and the storehouse gates to either side, but the far walls of the courtyard with their set-back doors into other storerooms and sleeping cells remained hidden in darkness. He wedged himself into the opening, one foot in and one foot out. The trumpets, the shouting, and the clash of weapons swelled in the distance, well away from the restricted market district where foreign merchants were required to reside and carry out all their trade. A whiff of burning stung his nose, and a light wavered into life behind him.

  “Heya!” he whispered, shutting his eyes at once. “Pinch that out, you fool! We don’t want anyone to know we’re awake.”

  With a hiss, the light vanished. Eliar bumbled up against him and, with a stifled oath, took a step back so they weren’t touching.

  “Sheh!” Kesh opened his eyes. Nothing stirred in the courtyard. If anyone had seen that flare of light within the room, they weren’t acting on it. “The whole point is to stay hidden, so no one knows we’re awake. That’s the best way to protect ourselves. So we can get back to the Hundred alive.”

  “And fulfill our mission!”

  “Say it a bit louder, perhaps. That will help us, neh? If everyone figures out we’re spies?”

  He stuck his head out a bit farther. A pair of figures slipped through the shadows, moving toward the gate. He ducked back inside.

  “Listen, Eliar, you stay here with your cursed sword or whatever it is you think you can fight with, and make sure no one gets into the back room and goes after our trade goods. I’m going to the gate to see if there’s any news from the guards.”

  “Why can’t I go?”

  “You, who lit a lamp in such circumstances?”

  “No need to constantly criticize me—”

  Keshad bit at his own lip to keep his mouth shut on another carping comment. Aui! No matter how much he disliked Eliar, he had to make this expedition work or he’d never get what he wanted. And to get what he wanted, he had to stay on Eliar’s good side.

  “No, you’re right. I beg your pardon. It’s hateful to be stuck in this cursed compound day and night.”

  Eliar grunted in acknowledgment of an apology Kesh knew was gracelessly delivered. “The guards won’t tell us anything anyway. They never tell us a cursed thing.”

  “They may talk to me because I worship at the Beltak temple.”

  Thankfully, that shut Eliar up.

  Keshad sheathed his sword and slung the sword belt over his back. He eased into the courtyard and padded cautiously to the doubled wall that funneled traffic to the double gates, locked and barred for the night. Indeed, they had been locked and barred for eight days, since the night when trumpets and horns had disturbed the peace and all the markets had been closed. He counted eight figures huddled by the gates, muttering to each other as one of their number lit a lamp and raised it.

  By its light, the other merchants recognized him.

  “Is that you, Master Keshad? Maybe you can get these cursed guards to talk to you, since they favor you so much.”

  The other Hundred merchants didn’t like him any better than he liked them. They thought him a traitor for abandoning the gods of his birth for the empire’s god, but what did it matter to them what god he chose to worship or what benefit that worship brought him? There were a pair of outlanders as well, a man out of the Mariha princedoms and one from the western desert who had slaves languishing in the slave pens he hadn’t seen for days. For that matter, the drivers and guardsmen he and Eliar had hired in Olossi were confined in a different housing establishment alt
ogether, and he’d had no contact with them since the citywide curfew was imposed.

  He rang the bell at the guardhouse. A guard in one of the watch platforms above turned to look down into the forecourt at them, then twisted back to his survey of the streets and the turbulent city. Within moments, bars scraped and locks rattled. The door scraped open and the sergeant pushed into the forecourt, a pair of armed guards at his back and another guard holding high a lamp.

  “Get inside your cells!”

  “What is happening? We heard the commotion—”

  “Get inside!”

  His angry words drove them back into the main courtyard, all but Keshad, who held his ground. “Honored one, may I ask if we are in any danger here? How can we protect ourselves against these alarms?”

  “Get inside,” said the sergeant, but less gruffly now that he only faced one man. “I know nothing. Men have broken curfew. That is bad. Best you get inside until the storm passes.”

  The storm roared closer. A burst of running feet in a nearby street was followed by a chorus of shouts so loud the sergeant flinched. Kesh took a step back from the gate, wondering if the tumult was about to blow the gates off their hinges. The distinctive clamor of swords and spears in melee hammered the night, the skirmish racing as though one group was chasing another. The guards drew their swords; a fifth man popped out of the guardhouse.

  “All ranks at the ready,” snarled the sergeant, and the man vanished back into the tower. “They may try to break in.”

  The skirmish flowed down the street, passing by the gates outside as Kesh gripped his sword so tightly he was shaking. Then the melee moved on; the noise reached a pitch close by and abruptly subsided.

  The sergeant exhaled. He spoke to his guards in the local language; Kesh was too rattled to catch more than a word here and there. Foreigners. Market. Fire. Traitors to the emperor.