Looking up, she saw Julen very carefully not smile. She felt decidedly testy and in no mood to listen to the young voice which quavered, “Stop.”
Sara shook out her skirts. Seeing Lance struggling to squeeze forward the final few steps, she moved out of the way. “I still say your precious Kandrith needs a better Gate—” she started.
“Stop!” Lance yelled. “Sara, don’t cross the line or you’ll be killed!”
Chapter Eight
Sara stopped dead. In front of her lay a row of embedded white stones running from one side of the cul de sac to the other. She looked around nervously for archers stationed at the top of the yellow stone walls, but saw none. Apart from Lance and Julen, the only person in sight was a small boy. As Sara watched, he sniffled, wiped his nose with his hand and then wiped his hand on his blue-trimmed vest.
“Is this how you welcome everyone to your country?” Sara demanded.
“No one may pass through the Gate without the Watcher’s permission.” Lance stayed one step within the gorge and called out anxiously, “Watcher, is it blue?”
The tow-headed boy shook his head. A white film covered his eyes. Loma’s Mercy, he was stone blind. Was the name some kind of cruel joke?
“Then what is the matter?” Lance asked.
Tears leaked from those eerie white eyes. “There are two of them. One’s red and one’s purple.”
Sara’s impatience returned. She was bleeding, her dress was dirty and torn, her head was pounding, and Lance was talking about colors? “I need a Temple of Jut and a bath. Now.” She lifted her foot.
“Don’t move!” Lance barked.
Off-balance, Sara stumbled slightly. Her toe came down on the wrong side of the line of stones.
Instantly, shadow fell over Sara like a blight. But when she looked up, the sky was pure blue and cloudless. The boy and Julen were still bathed in hot sunlight. Her skin prickled. Something was happening…
“The Guardian is here.” Lance’s voice held strain. “Watcher, you must decide.”
The boy’s white eyes turned toward Sara. He looked doubtful. “I never saw a purple one before.”
A purple what? Sara’s gown was peach-colored—and the boy was blind anyhow.
Sara started to ask what he meant, but couldn’t draw enough breath to speak. She felt as if a smothering blanket were being held over her face, allowing her only sips of air. Panic hit her fast and hard. She groped at the space in front of her mouth, but encountered nothing.
Pressure built around her as if the air suddenly weighed as much as iron. She couldn’t breathe. Her body felt squeezed tight, her lungs cramped. She wheeled in a circle, staggering, but couldn’t see any threat. Nothing touched her.
There was only the shadow hanging over her, a shadow with no source.
The Guardian of Kandrith.
I’ll go away, Sara promised silently. I’ll go back through the Gate. There’s no need to kill me. I don’t even want to be here.
But the pressure only grew. Sara thought her skin would split, her bones crack and shatter…
Was she going to die here like this? Her gaze connected with Lance’s, pleading.
“Lady Sarathena?” Julen tilted his head quizzically. “Prince Lance, I think something might be wrong.”
Lance ignored him. “May she pass?” he asked the Watcher. His voice sounded tight, as if he wanted to shout.
Sara’s vision dimmed from the lack of air. She only hoped she passed out before she died—
“I don’t know. One’s red and one’s purple. I’m only supposed to stop the blue ones.” The boy sounded confused and sulky. “I suppose she can pass.”
The Guardian released Sara so abruptly she collapsed in a heap. She gasped in air. Sunlight fell on her face like a blessing.
Julen hurried over to her. Lance squeezed through the Gate, but did not cross the line of white stones until the Watcher said, “You may enter.” Then he dropped to his knees in the dust and took her hand. Concern shone in his warm brown eyes. “Are you injured?”
Was she? Sara took a moment to consider, then shook her head. “Just bruised.” She felt stupid lying there on the ground. “Help me up.”
Lance set her back on her feet with one strong pull.
“You fainted,” Julen said. “I’ll fetch a carriage—”
“I did not faint!” Sara snapped. “I almost died, you clodpate.”
Julen looked skeptical. Apparently, he hadn’t noticed the strange shadow.
The Watcher had already wandered off so Sara turned on Lance. “Tell him! And then tell me why your country broke its promise of safekeeping.”
Lance’s face closed. “You would have been fine if you’d stopped when the Watcher told you to.”
She was too scared and angry to circle her way around to the subject. “What attacked me and why?”
For a moment, she thought Lance wouldn’t answer, then he gave a small nod. “The Gate and its Guardian were created by the lifegift of Revan Kandrith thirty-one years ago to keep out invaders.”
Lifegift? Did he mean magic?
“The Guardian crushes anyone who does not have the Watcher’s permission to enter Kandrith.”
“What Guardian? I saw nothing,” Julen scoffed.
Sara stepped on his toes, hard. She kept her gaze on Lance. “Why didn’t the Watcher want me to enter your country? If I’d been killed, my father would have every right to invade.” It took effort to keep her voice reasonable. Her limbs were still trembling with reaction. She wanted to scream at somebody.
“The Watcher doesn’t care who you are, only what you are.” Lance spoke carefully, obviously choosing what he would and would not tell her. “He is able to see the color of one’s soul.”
Magic again. Sara filed the information away. “I’m a hostage. What danger could I possibly pose?”
But Lance merely shook his head. He looked deeply troubled—and she didn’t think it was by her near brush with death.
Sara drew in a hissing breath. “You’re worried that there is something wrong. Do you think me an assassin? Do you want to search me for weapons?” Incensed, she turned out her pockets and found two hairpins and the refetti. “Here.” She held it out to Lance. “This must be my deadly attack refetti.”
Lance didn’t take the squirming animal. “Has that been in your pocket all this time? Was it there when you went through the Gate?” he asked sharply.
“I put him in my pocket in the gorge,” Sara answered cautiously.
Lance looked greatly relieved. “That explains why the Watcher saw two colors! Animals must have purple souls, and the boy didn’t realize. He’s new to the Gate since the last time I passed through.”
It seemed she’d been cleared of suspicion. Sara put the refetti on her shoulder where he could look around. Tiny claws dug into her dress, but didn’t prick her skin.
“Let’s find a place to stay. I don’t know about you, but I’m thirsty.” And Lance strode off, leaving Sara glaring after him.
“Shall we?” Julen politely offered her his arm.
Sara shoved her bags at him instead. “Here.” She was determined not to carry the cursed things another step.
“What’s in the bags?” Julen shouldered them after a quick look around failed to turn up any footmen.
“Clothes.”
Julen halted, his expression chagrined. “Nobody’s going to be bringing our trunks around, are they?”
“No.” Sara couldn’t find it inside herself to gloat. She was too afraid of what new surprises Kandrith still had in store.
Now that she’d actually seen slave magic in action Sara realized she’d underestimated it. For the first time, she truly believed that slave magic was strong enough to have killed the two hundred people on Lord Favonius’s estate.
All too easily she could envision Nir attempting a night assault on the Gate and failing. First, he would kill the gatekeeper, then send his men through the narrow gorge. They would cross the line of stones
and die—and he would never know why. In fact, if just such an attack hadn’t already been tried in the past Sara would eat her sandals.
But Sara knew now. Goosebumps chilled her flesh at the realization that with the information she possessed, the Republic could successfully invade Kandrith.
The Watcher had passed Julen, so he obviously couldn’t tell Republicans from Kandrithans. All Nir would have to do was send through a few legionnaires posing as escaped slaves to hold a sword at the Watcher’s throat to ensure he passed the following army.
Sara felt dizzy and a little sick. She knew Nir well enough to be certain that if he knew how to pass through the Gate he would attack. The Republic would be safe from further massacres—and Kandrith’s population would be enslaved again.
Sara argued with herself as they walked. Her duty to her father and her country was plain, but the image of Lance in chains made her stomach twist into knots. She wanted to prevent a war, not start one.
But hadn’t the war already started when Kandrith massacred two hundred people on Lord Favonius’s estate? They’d attacked first—and would no doubt attack again.
If it had been them, and not the Qiph acting alone.
Sara glanced at Julen to see if he was following the same channels of thought that she was. He looked alert, all his attention on their surroundings. He hadn’t understood about the Guardian. If she convinced him, he would want to turn around immediately and return to Temborium.
Sara felt like a noose was tightening around her neck. She didn’t want to have to choose between Lance’s freedom and Sylvanus’s life.
But that wasn’t right, was it? She knew how to defeat the Guardian, but not how to stop massacres. Lance had said the Guardian was a Lifegift, but she didn’t know what that meant or how slave magic worked. Yes, her information could get an army into Kandrith, but what was to stop the Kandrithans from then massacring all those troops?
Nothing.
Julen was her only way of sending messages to her father. Should she wait and hope they could discover the full secret? Partial information was still better than no information. Sara chewed her lip, remembering the timetable her father had given her. A month before they were ensnared in a war with the Qiph, of which a week was already gone.
Ten more days, Sara decided. She could afford to wait that long, but no longer.
* * *
Lance deliberately walked several steps ahead of Sara and Julen as he led them through the backstreets of Gatetown. He still felt a little shaky from Sara’s near-demise at the hands of the Guardian—and he shouldn’t be.
As the Child of Peace, Sara’s death would have been a political nightmare. That’s what he should be concerned about, not Sara herself.
But somehow, possibly because of the circumstances under which they’d met, his protective instincts had become engaged. It had been all he could do not to take her in his arms afterward. Which, given their mutual level of attraction, would have been a mistake.
He needed to stay away from Sara, but they were going to be traveling together for at least another week until they reached the Hall.
“Why is everyone dressed so plainly?” Sara asked, suddenly appearing at his elbow.
Lance looked at her in surprise and irritation. “Nobody here has money to waste on silk when sheep’s wool is plentiful.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Sara said. “I mean, look at him.” She indicated a dark-haired, stocky man wearing a beige tunic and mended trousers. “He’s obviously from Elysinia originally. He’s wearing a sash like they do, but it ought to be red or blue or green depending on his tribe, instead of the same color as his tunic. And he has no vest.”
Lance tensed. Would she ask about the vest he, a Gotian by birth, was wearing?
But Sara pointed to another woman. “And she’s a Grasslander. Her clothes are right, but her hair’s plaited instead of gathered in a horsetail, and where are her bone earrings, honoring Mek?”
“I didn’t know Grasslanders worshipped the God of Death,” Lance said, avoiding the question. He studied the tall woman as she passed. She did have the high cheekbones and slanted eyes of a Grasslander.
Sara frowned. “I expected Kandrith to look like the market in Temborium, everyone in different exotic costumes, but here everyone looks both the same and different.”
“The same and different?” Lance raised an eyebrow.
Sara kept watching the people walking by. “All the women have split skirts, like Grasslanders, but most of them are made from wool instead of deerskin, and the pattern of cloth varies.”
Lance could remember his mother wrapping a long cloth of plaid into a dress back in Gotia. Their plaids had been taken away from them when they’d become enslaved. When they arrived in Kandrith, his mother had proudly woven new ones—but she’d sewn the material into a blouse and split skirt instead of one long cloth. He’d never asked why.
Sara continued. “The women mostly have their hair braided back. That’s a Gotian style, isn’t it? And the men are dressed Elysinian style, except for the sash and vest. It’s as if you’ve taken one thing from each culture. Except the Qiph. I haven’t seen even one Qiph.” She glanced at him sidelong.
Lance frowned slightly. “Are you worried about assassins? We have very few Qiph here in Kandrith.” The only one he knew was a woman. Most Qiph slaves were male and had sold themselves under a strict contract. Lance didn’t pretend to understand it, but they seldom even tried to escape, instead they served their two-year term with a humility at direct odds with most arrogant Qiph warriors.
“Don’t you trade with Qi?” Sara asked.
“Not much. Their desert is many miles from Kandrith.”
His answer didn’t seem to please her.
Just then they passed a trio of gray-haired women—two olive-skinned Elysinians, and one pale Gotian—wearing leather vests dyed a bright red. Like Hiram, they were declaring their willingness to sacrifice.
To head off any questions, Lance quickly said, “There’s our inn.” Most of the buildings in Gatetown were humble cottages built from the two most readily available materials, timber and thatch, but the inn was constructed from blocks of yellow stone and rose two stories to a tiled roof. In size, it equalled some of the places they’d stayed in the Republic.
Instead of being impressed, Sara looked blank. “What’s an inn?”
When he explained that one paid money to rent a room for the night, her eyes rounded in horror. “But how can such a thing honor Jut?”
“Who’s Jut?” Lance asked, more to get another reaction than from true ignorance.
“Jut is the God of Travellers,” Sara told him sternly. “We stayed at several of his temples in the Republic.”
“You’re in Kandrith now.” Lance walked between two Grandfather olive trees and opened the inn’s side door.
Sara inhaled sharply. “I don’t remember passing a single temple. Don’t you honor the gods?”
“No. Why should we?” Lance asked roughly, angered by how aghast she looked. “When we were slaves, most of the gods turned deaf ears to our pleas.” All but the Goddess. “They abandoned us first.”
* * *
“We need to stay in Gatetown,” Julen said, pacing back and forth in Sara’s room at the inn. “The farther we are from the Gate, the harder it will be to send a message to your father. I want you to pretend to fall ill.”
“Why me?” Sara asked. The prospect of staying cooped up in her tiny room—the inn either didn’t have a ‘best’ room for noble guests, or it had been given to Lance—did not appeal. Especially since she wouldn’t even have Felicia for company.
“So I can remain free to spy out the secret, of course,” Julen said condescendingly. “Besides, if I fell ill, Lance would leave me behind. He won’t leave you.” Julen regarded her through slitted eyes, almost purring. “You told me Prince Lance cared nothing for you.”
“He doesn’t,” Sara said.
“Untrue,” Julen said. “He w
as very concerned for you at the Gate, and he watches you all the time.”
Sara shrugged. “Lust isn’t caring.”
Julen only looked impatient. “I never said it was. But lust can be a tool. You work on him while I nose around the town.”
Sara stiffened. She wanted to tell him he couldn’t give her orders, but hadn’t she already admitted he was the better spy? “I’ll try,” she said.
He nodded and moved toward the door. “Shall I tell Lance you’re feeling poorly then? A female complaint?”
“No. I’m not getting shut up in here until after I see Felicia. Find her for me.”
Julen nodded and left just as the bathwater arrived.
* * *
Sara took one step outside the inn’s front door and stood stock still.
For a second, she wondered if she’d somehow found her way back into Temborium. The fountain filling most of the square resembled the tiered fountains in the Temple District. Sunlight sparkled on the water.
“Well, well,” Julen said softly, at her shoulder. “It seems they’re not so barbaric, after all.”
Sara took a step closer. Several white marble figures stood in a tableau inside the fountain. On the lowest level were a man and child, their backs bent in labor, pulling a large block of stone to which they were chained. The child’s face was pinched with hunger and full of fear. The father’s expression held despair. Off to the side stood a cruel-looking Republican with a whip.
On the next tier up stood a statue of Loma. It took Sara a moment to recognize the Goddess for She was of average height instead of the ten-foot-tall representations found in the Republic. But the expression of compassion and love on Her face could only come from the Goddess of Mercy. So some gods were still honored.
Instead of pouring from Her mouth or a ewer, water ran from the corners of Her eyes like overflowing tears. She weeps for the slaves. As Sara watched, the water level in the top tier overflowed. By some means she couldn’t see the chains holding the man and child fell away, and the stone statues swiveled slightly.
Despite the hot sun, Sara shivered. Somehow from this new angle, their expressions changed. Now the man looked triumphant, the child full of hope. Loma’s tears stopped.
Gate to Kandrith (The Kandrith Series) Page 14
