The Gates of Memory

by Ryan Kirk

  “No.”

  Alena nodded. “Is there nothing else?”

  The other woman thought for a moment. “Trust yourself, Alena. And thank you.”

  Zolene’s words had a feeling of finality about them. Alena didn’t like it, but she accepted Zolene’s wishes.

  Alena called to mind her father’s knife. It had carried her through more difficult situations than she could count. It formed slowly in her hand. With another effort, she visualized the connection between Zolene and herself. It appeared as a glowing thread.

  Alena watched Zolene for any reaction. She’d never taken any academy classes that prepared her for this. She was guessing. But Zolene looked serene. Happy, even.

  Alena cut the cord and Zolene faded again to an apparition. As Alena turned her attention to the gate, the apparition faded away into nothingness.

  Finding Zolene’s handiwork required a sustained focus. It was more difficult than before. Alena wondered if she was finding the limits of her own ability here.

  Moving carefully, Alena began working at the threads. In this space, her knife was always sharp and it only required the smallest motions to slice through the threads. One at a time, Alena worked her way around the edges of the weaving.

  It was slow, painstaking work. As she neared the end, her concentration frequently lapsed. She cut the gate more than once, and hoped Zolene’s comments about the gate’s ability to heal were true. She had to pause more frequently the longer she worked.

  And then it was done. Alena only hesitated for a moment on the last thread. Then she sliced through it.

  The pressure around her changed, as though a soft breeze had just blown through.

  Though she couldn’t say why, a sense of peace overwhelmed her for a moment.

  She was exhausted, but satisfied with her work.

  She’d sent the Etari legend to the gates of death.

  Now it was time for her own journey to a very different gate.

  27

  Regar and his growing entourage continued deeper into Falar. Brandt was no stranger to mountains, but Falar held scenic surprises with every league. They passed waterfalls and hiked along majestic vistas, then plunged into woods so thick the sunlight never truly broke through.

  Though their pace never slowed, Brandt did find himself less exhausted at the end of every day. In many ways, the Falari reminded Brandt of the Etari. While one people controlled the plains and the other the mountains, both were conditioned to long days on foot. He’d heard rumors that some Etari warriors could run down a horse if given enough time.

  In the mountains of Falar, a war horse was a liability. The trails they took were barely wide enough for humans, at times barely the width of a foot. Brandt suspected that a fear of high places was quickly eliminated from a child’s worldview here. Though he didn’t mind heights, at least once a day his heart pounded in his chest as they walked a sharp ridge or were journeyed near the edge of a cliff.

  He, Ana, Leana, and Ren formed something resembling a small group of friends. They ate together in the evening and often walked close by during the day. Ana, of course, dueled Leana after their second day together. Most nights around a Falari cookfire featured at least one good-natured sparring session.

  Ren informed Brandt that as Prince Regar’s Senki he did not have to accept most challenges, and Brandt took advantage of his unofficial role. Which was for the best, because every young warrior among the Falari wanted to test Regar’s Senki. He wanted to duel all challengers, but he couldn’t risk injury, not with the task that awaited them. Protecting Regar took precedence over his own desire to test his skills.

  As they continued south, other war parties joined their own. Brandt wasn’t sure by what means the Falari communicated so quickly, but it seemed that everyone knew of Regar and his audience with the elders. In time, Brandt began to believe the Falari saw in the imperial prince some turning point in history. Whether he was correct about their attitude or not, Regar attracted far more attention than Brandt was comfortable with. They couldn’t go three days without meeting another warleader.

  Sometimes there was a test, although that was uncommon. Merek’s indecisiveness was an exception rather than a rule. Most warleaders who joined their journey were predisposed to Regar’s cause.

  Brandt found it fascinating that the empire had kept the gates such a closely guarded secret from its people. From conversations with Alena, Brandt knew all adult Etari knew of their broken gate, and the gate here was viewed by the Falari with some mixture of fear and respect Brandt hadn’t yet deciphered. Only in the empire did most people know nothing.

  Similar observations had fascinated him when he was younger and leaving home for the first time. Thanks to his service with the military, he traveled frequently throughout the empire. For a young man who had never once left the town of his birth, the endless marches leading to obscure corners of the land had been a treat. He saw the world and got paid for doing it.

  At first it had been the unusual that seized his attention. From the food, to the architecture, to the people, his first impressions were all differences. He’d thought about those differences and what they meant on the long marches between new places. In class, his instructors had explained how the empire was one land. Like a child, Brandt thought that meant all places would be like the home he grew up in.

  So at first he was bothered by the lack of uniformity throughout the empire. Different places both sparked his curiosity and offended his sensibility. The empire was enormous, and Anders I had conquered a wide variety of people to create his dream. The intervening two hundred years and more had knitted the land more tightly together, but differences still abounded.

  In time, though, Brandt’s understanding expanded. It wasn’t the food one ate or the style of house one lived in that made one an imperial. It was a shared dream, an obedience to laws that were greater than them all. Anders I had a vision of an orderly, peaceful society, the society that Brandt grew up in. Once he understood what bound them together, he could much better appreciate the differences.

  All of which made traveling in Falar a trying experience. In his mind, the Falari had been his enemies for most of his adult life. And now he traveled among them, respecting their ways a great deal. What did it say about him as an imperial that he got along so well with them?

  Despite their similarities, there was no law here, no fundamental truth they agreed on. Falar was ruled by custom and agreements between war parties. One of the reasons they’d never win an invasion against the empire was because they resisted the coordination that defined the empire’s forces.

  He also thought constantly about where the Falari stood. Regar never spoke about this, but the prince’s visit possibly meant more to the Falari than it did to the emperor. Ren and Leana both confirmed that the Falari were split on their ultimate direction as a people. Generally, it seemed that those who still wandered the mountains wished for war and for the maintenance of their most cherished traditions. Those like Weylen, who ruled over small towns, saw the path of peace as being the way forward.

  Regar, it seemed, would be the weight that tipped the scale to one side or the other.

  Ana, of course, derived no small amount of pleasure from Brandt’s discomfort and endless speculation. It wasn’t that she didn’t observe the same differences, but those observations barely bothered her.

  His thoughts tended to wander far and wide, especially with the ample travel time in which to indulge the practice. Small events and details often served as metaphors for something much larger. The turning of the autumn leaves was for him a reminder of the circle of life, death, and rebirth. For Ana, they were gorgeous colors that came once a year.

  Likewise, the differences in food, language, and culture were little more than useful details to her. They added zest to her world, but she saw no greater meaning in their existence. Brandt wondered endlessly about the Falari emphasis on combat, whether with a bow, sword, or on the boards they so treasured. Ana sett
led for finally having an answer to their historic enemy’s skill.

  But even her attitude shifted when they came in sight of the Falari capital.

  Faldun didn’t reveal itself until they were nearly upon it. It was nestled deep in a valley, but in a manner that Brandt had never seen.

  In his experience, towns and villages that grew in valleys were typically located in the land between the peaks. Houses and shops might be built from the stone of the nearby mountains, but they stood on the fertile and level land between heights.

  Faldun turned that concept on its head. Here the city was carved into the walls of the mountain. The buildings and the mountain blended as one vertical structure of impossible proportions. Brandt had thought Weylen’s village the most vertical he had ever seen, but this dwarfed Weylen’s village in every way. Buildings rose to absurd heights. Brandt couldn’t imagine living with such a view. Even from a distance, Brandt observed the narrow stairs that climbed in all directions.

  Not a city, then, for those who struggled to move.

  But again, Falar itself wasn’t very welcoming to such.

  Still, as impressive and awe-inspiring as the city looked, Faldun was still smaller than Brandt expected. It raised a question Ren had refused to answer. Just how many Falari were there? From what they had seen, the numbers seemed lower than Brandt had expected.

  Ren stood beside Brandt and gestured at the sight. “It is impressive, is it not?”

  Brandt agreed. There was nothing like it in the empire. The effort needed to construct such a city boggled his mind.

  It was, he was certain, impossible.

  Yet the city rose before him, the lively ghost of an age long past.

  They entered Faldun properly later that afternoon. Messengers had spent several days traveling between the approaching war parties and the capital, so their arrival was anything but a secret.

  Regar received a royal welcome. They entered through the main gate and followed a narrow path to a large square overlooking the valley. As they walked, Brandt felt sorry for any who considered entering the city by force. Its construction made it one of the most deadly approaches Brandt had ever seen.

  Several elders came to greet Regar in the square. Regar met with them, and Brandt’s attention wandered while formalities were exchanged. This was, after all, the first official royal visit in a generation.

  Part of Brandt’s distraction was the lack of threats against Regar’s life. He’d worried on the road for a time, but now Regar travelled with hundreds of Falari warriors who pinned their hopes on him. It didn’t make Regar invincible, but attacking him had become much harder in the past few weeks.

  The larger part of Brandt’s distraction was Faldun itself. Brandt’s initial suspicions, upon closer inspection, were true.

  The masonry and the construction were simply too perfect. Rocks were fitted perfectly with barely any mortar, and the stone was smooth, far smoother than any imperial chisel work Brandt had ever seen. Even more noticeable to Brandt’s eye, the perfection in construction was ubiquitous. Every house and building exhibited the same craftsmanship. Even the stones in the square exhibited an exacting level of care and attention. This town had been wrought with affinities. A strength of affinity that no longer existed in the world save for a select few.

  Though he couldn’t be sure, he had a suspicion. There were no coincidences in life. The Falari capital had been built by the same people who built the caves outside Landow, a people that had disappeared a long, long time ago.

  The gate was here, and this whole city had been built to protect it.

  28

  Say one thing about the Etari: once they reached a decision, it was as good as done. She’d seen some examples when she lived among them, but never experienced that truth as directly as in the days leading up to their departure. At times, it seemed every Etari in sight was aiding them.

  They were outfitted with new clothes, lightweight and durable. Alena received lighter clothes for the plains of Etar and heavier ones for the mountains.

  Other supplies soon followed. They received food for the road and horses of incredible quality, prized among the clans, given by the elders themselves. Unfortunately, the horses wouldn’t actually travel into Falar. The steep and narrow mountain paths allowed travel only on foot. But until then, the horses would speed the journey to the border.

  All of this happened within a day, and on the next they were sent on their way. Alena offered Sooni a proper farewell, and a promise to return when she could. They rode to the Alna river, where a trade boat awaited them and their horses. Before Alena had even had time to properly reflect on her past few days, she was beyond any land she had traveled before.

  Her party was small, a decision the Etari elders had reached quickly. This expedition required stealth, not force. The terms of the treaty that bound the three nations of the continent together in relative peace contained strict stipulations on what size groups were allowed over the borders.

  Alena would have felt safer with her whole Etari clan beside her, but a party of such size would have amounted to a declaration of war.

  In the end, only three traveled toward the border.

  She was accompanied by Jace and Toren. By now, Alena knew Jace wouldn’t be turned aside, no matter how poorly she understood his reasoning. Toren had surprised her, though. He was a promising soulwalker with the opportunity to develop his skills near a gate. Even the elders had implied he should remain. But he wanted to join them, and no other Etari was eager to do so. Being as the elders insisted on having a full-blooded Etari on the expedition, they’d been trapped into accepting Toren’s offer. Even after all she’d done for them, Alena still felt the sting of the elders’ distrust.

  Alena led the group, though she felt nothing like a leader. A leader possessed a vision and a map to get from where they stood to the desired future. Alena had neither of those things. Doubts constantly worried at her but she kept them hidden.

  A leader was also supposed to be confident.

  The first days of travel passed by in a blur. They traveled, they talked, and at times they trained. Alena admired Toren’s determination to learn soulwalking, but she wasn’t sure her lessons were very helpful. So much of what she knew had developed as an intuition. She didn’t have a certain set of steps she followed, nor did she have the equivalent of a martial arts form that she could give him to improve his skills. Her method was trial and error and reflection. She fell down, got up, then repeated the process until the technique felt right. It worked for her, but it made her feel like a poor teacher.

  Toren never complained, but she sensed the frustration lurking in his attempts.

  Of the three of them, Jace seemed the most content. He possessed an ability to flow with changes in life in a way that boggled Alena’s mind. He spent his days learning about rivers and currents from the crew of the boat, and he regularly sparred with all takers.

  Nothing quenched his energy, and Alena grew to depend on her brother as a source of stability.

  They followed the river for as long as it made sense, then disembarked to cross the empire on horseback. A small group of Etari rode with them. Here they made good time, and long days of travel ended with them exhausted as the sun went down. As Alena had guessed, the horses possessed the strength and stamina to carry them faster and farther than even lesser horses.

  Then one day they found themselves at the Falari border. Though many days had passed, the first part of their journey passed far quicker than Alena expected. When they reached the border, marked by a small stream, she dropped into a soulwalk, curious if the Falari had put in place any defenses similar to those of the Etari. She sensed nothing. The border was nothing more than an imaginary line dividing the two lands. Alena and her group left the horses in the care of the Etari who had accompanied them this far. From here on, they traveled alone.

  They shouldered their packs and crossed the border.

  The experience was something of a disappointment. A
lena had hoped for some difference she could point to, something that separated Falar from the empire where they had crossed. But there was nothing. Less than a league away from the stream rose foothills that would very soon become the mountains that grew larger with every step.

  After two days on foot Alena finally broke and asked the question that had tormented her endlessly the past weeks. She approached her brother and walked by his side. Toren took the hint well enough and left them alone, falling back to allow them their privacy.

  Alena didn’t know how to broach the subject politely, so she jumped in instead. “Why are you here, Jace?”

  A flicker of annoyance passed over his face. She had asked this question before. “Because of you.”

  She persisted. His rote answer didn’t satisfy her curiosity. “But really, why? I can understand escorting me to the Etari border, and maybe even all the way to Cardon, but I don’t understand why you persist even into Falar. You’re leaving so much behind. Don’t you worry that nothing will be there for you when you return? That your reputation will have diminished and you won’t have the opportunities that you worked so hard for?”

  He smiled. “Do you worry about these things?”

  “Of course I do! I love you, and I’m grateful for your escort, but you have so much to lose. I don’t want you to lose even more on my account.”

  Jace shrugged again, and for a moment Alena felt her own annoyance. How could her younger brother be so flippant about these things? He may act a fool, but he had to realize what was at stake. He was an intelligent young man, despite all the evidence he created to contradict that fact.

  That thought led to another. Her brother was indifferent, but her mistake was in thinking that his indifference was born from a lack of consideration.

  She should know him better than that. Her brother was intelligent, and he did think through his decisions. If there was a lack of understanding, it was on her part.