The Shattered Gates (7 page)

But that didn’t explain this. Kahlil crouched down and continued to stare at the stone in front of him. The circle of moons he could understand. They were the symbols of his order. The words written around them were archaic but familiar. Like words to a nursery rhyme, he recalled them as reflex, without trying: “Behold the doors of the God’s Kingdom. Behold the Gates of Divinity and Desolation. The Kingdom of the Night. The Palace of the Day.” The prayer went on and on, just as he would have expected.

But this keyhole made no sense. It wasn’t even the right shape. It wasn’t in the right place. It simply shouldn’t have been there.

The dog sat down next to him. She lifted her head, following the flight of a bird. She looked intent, and for a moment, it was hard to imagine that she wasn’t a just a dog. Then she glanced back down to the stone.

“The Rifter had his-self a key an’ he made his-self a keyhole,” she said. “Opened it right up an’ gone through.”

“This is bad.” Kahlil scowled at the keyhole.

“For them on the other side.” The dog yawned. She seemed oddly content with the situation.

“The Rifter has crossed through to Basawar,” Kahlil said, just to make sure that she did understand. “He’ll destroy it.”

“Tears it in two, that’s what the Rifter do.” She nodded her cream-colored head.

“We can’t stop him or warn anyone because they’ve crushed the gateway,” Kahlil added. “And even if I could cross, I couldn’t kill him because I don’t have the deathlock key. He does.”

“So them thats locked you away, gots themselves hell to pay.” She stood up and took a deep breath of the rich air. “I wants to chase me a fluff-n’-flicker, little tree-beastie.”

“It’s called a squirrel.” Kahlil looked down at her. “Doesn’t this bother you?”

She shook her head and then leaned her soft muzzle against Kahlil’s leg.

“When theys cut the meat from me,” she whispered, “when theys pierced me with knives an’ tied me in they red ribbons— then I screamed. I cried likes the whole world died. Not now. Now I tastes wind full of sweet bird meat. I runs where I likes, an’ I pisses on a tree. An’ thems that would can’t do a thing to me. They brought they bad end. They got they Rifter revived.” Closing her eyes, she let out a deep animal sigh. Kahlil could feel her entire body relax against him. “Not a thing you can do abouts it now. We both free now.”

He shut his eyes and sat still, a patch of sun slowly warming his back. He could hear animals, birds he supposed, making noises in the trees. The air, as always, tasted as strong and rich and exotic as a dream.

He did not belong to this world, a world that was too good for him. He was not like the bones. He had not already given everything up for his own home. He had no right to lay claim to the richness and luxury of this world while what was left of Basawar was torn to pieces.

Kahlil had been entrusted to watch over the Rifter: to find him in this world and protect him until it was decided if the Rifter would be needed or not. If he had been needed, then Kahlil would have brought the Rifter back and released him like an apocalypse over Sabir’s red army of Fai’daum. If the Rifter was not needed, then it fell to Kahlil to destroy him.

It had been simple, only the matter of the single word “Don’t” and the tiny key that opened the Rifter’s death. And he had missed it.

He stroked the dog’s head. When the order had come, he had been in the orchard, carrying her on his back. He had saved her, but at the cost of his whole world.

She deserved this life, the warm sunlight, the pungent scents and lush tastes. He didn’t.

Kahlil opened his eyes.

“I have to go,” he said. “I have to try to stop him.”

“Don’t,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry, little sister.” He stroked her head, ran his fingers over her soft, warm ears. She gazed at him and then slowly pulled herself up.

“Doors all closed,” she said. “No words yous can say to opens them again.”

“There’s still one way.” Kahlil drew his longest knife.

A small, involuntary whimper escaped the dog. The same kind of knife had been used to lay her open once. She took a step back from him.

“It’s not for you,” Kahlil assured her.

She sat back down but didn’t come closer to him.

He didn’t have his sword or the key, but the blood of a witch flowed in his veins and, offered in sacrifice, it might awaken the shattered gates one last time.

If he used his blood and the bond that linked him to John, then he might be able to follow him. But there was no certainty. He might bleed to death here on this hill or, worse, be torn apart and scattered across two worlds and countless ages. If he died, then it would be what he deserved for his failure. But he had to attempt his redemption.

Kahlil set the knife down on the stone and pulled off his coat. Stripping the bandage from his shoulder, he pulled the wound open again to start the blood running. His hand trembled as he picked up his knife again, but he forced himself to keep it steady. He sliced it quickly down his right arm, opening a wide furrow. A sharp pain rushed up in the blade’s wake. Hot rivulets of blood ran along his arm. He could hear the dog whimpering, but he didn’t look at her.

Closing his eyes, he concentrated on finding John— feeling that gentle pull as constant and strong as his own heartbeat—and following him back to Basawar.

At first the images were faint. Black branches faded in and out, as if coming to him through fields of static. Steadily, as his pounding heart pumped more and more blood from his wounds, the image became clearer. He could feel a searing cold wash over him. White masses of snow flurried against a pale sky. He pushed the air out of his lungs and threw himself into the shattered gate.

Everything went silent. Agony sheared through his body. His mouth opened, releasing a mute scream. His vision seared to an intense white as if he were staring straight into the sun. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t stop it. He burned and writhed,  as though he were being dragged apart in a hundred different directions.

•••

He hardly sensed his impact against solid ground. His mouth was full of snow and blood. It tasted like rusting iron. He lay on his back in a snowbank between rows of brick buildings.

He got to his feet and walked to the mouth of the narrow alley, his body moving almost of its own accord. Pain tore through him, but he didn’t make a sound. He clenched his jaws tight and drew in deep, cold breaths through his nose. His head pounded, and the ground seemed to lurch beneath his feet. He realized that he wasn’t sure what it was that he was looking for and, more worryingly, he couldn’t quite recall who he was.

He stared down the row of brick buildings. A hazy gold glow radiated from above as a gas streetlamp ignited. Another lit up, and then another, all the way down the long, winding street.

Jarring noises from carriages, and street hawkers ringing bells and shouting, came at him. He smelled roasting nuts for a moment. Then the strong scent of blood that clung to his body engulfed it.

 His right arm hurt, he realized. It hurt badly. The skin was slashed open and scarlet ribbons of cold, congealing blood dripped down from his shoulder to his fingers.

What a mess.

He was sure that seeing his own damaged arm should have horrified him. But oddly, he felt as if he had almost expected it. That struck him as strange until he noticed the knife in his other hand.

There was something decidedly sinister about all of this.

For an instant, he thought that he knew how he had come to be in such a beaten state. Then the thought simply dissolved, leaving him with the knowledge that at one time he had known how this had happened. He had done something.

Or—no! There was something he had to do. Something important.

He had a pack, he realized. Of course he did. He’d known that.

Gingerly he slipped it off. The leather of the pack was tattered and faded. It smelled like dog. Inside he discovered a heavy coat and a pistol in a shoulder holster. There were also bullets—an absurd profusion of bullets.

What had he been doing?

Something wrong. He was suddenly sure. He had done something wrong, and it had made him sick with himself. He’d missed a letter, and someone else had read it. He’d killed thousands of people. He’d killed a dog.

No, he’d saved a dog.

Yes…. He could picture himself patting a yellow dog. She liked him. He had not killed her; he’d saved her life. She’d been in a fire or something. He felt slightly relieved. He didn’t want to be the kind of man who murdered animals. That told him something, didn’t it? That must make him a decent sort of person, right?

He contemplated the pistol and the bullets again.

Maybe he hadn’t killed a dog, but he was sure that he had committed murder. It wasn’t just the knife and the gun that told him so. He felt the certainty of it suffuse him.

Little slivers of memory flicked through him. The wet heat of another man’s blood running down his hand. The feel of resistance as his black knife pierced flesh and scraped bone. It all came back too easily. If he had been a decent man, he would have been repulsed by these things. But he wasn’t. The only emotion he could summon was resignation: he was obliged to perform a duty that no one could know about. Everything he did and everything about him had to be kept secret.

He had lied about his name, his occupation, where he had been, what he had done, how he came in, how he went out. He had lied in two languages and to every person he met. What he liked, what he hated, what he believed, what he desired, every detail had been a fabrication. He had lied enough to create an entire other man. And that man told lies as well.

 Of course there had to be two of him, one for each world: Nayeshi and Basawar.

So, where was he now?

He squinted up at the scratchy, chalky sky and then gazed out at the wooden carriages and dull green tahldi pulling them. These were not the images he would have expected to see in Nayeshi alongside the interstates and strip malls.

Then this had to be Basawar. Probably the city of Nurjima.

A repulsed, nauseated feeling welled up in him. He had come home.

Kahlil remembered Nurjima. Or he thought he remembered it. But once he began walking through the streets, he discovered that the city in his memory and the one surrounding him were not the same. They resembled each other, like twin sisters, seemingly identical but subtly different.

Older, narrow streets still spoked out from ancient plazas, marking the obsolete boundaries of the first tiny villages that had since grown into a huge city. Old roads collided like wrecks of wagon wheels, while newer thoroughfares dissected their arcs into modern grids.

The rolling ground and the course of the frozen river that cut the city in half were exactly as he remembered. Even the lines of the bare, black trees seemed the same until he noticed the pale green buds of leaves. They should have been white.

He thought the mistake could have been his own or a matter of his injured eyes. Maybe he misremembered. Or perhaps the trees had been replaced since he had last been here. It had been ten years. The trees had been young.

He let it go and continued walking. He didn’t have the strength to waste, wondering over trees or tiny, altered details like shop signs and street names. He noted them and ignored them. He didn’t stop. He didn’t dare to. And he didn’t look back. He didn’t want to see the trail his own blood studded across the white snow. He needed to find a temple. The priests there would know how to tend his wounds.

 He staggered past people. Most of them seemed to be going home for the evening. An older woman with a child pulled away from him as though he were contagious. Men in dull blue hats and long coats simply checked their pocket watches or straightened their cuffs as he passed by.

 No one offered him any assistance, not even answering his requests for the time or for directions to the Black Tower of the Payshmura.

Finally he found Blackbird’s Bridge, one landmark he could remember. But when he looked out from the height of the bridge, he found the hazy, brown skyline disorienting. There appeared to be two yellow-tiled domes of the Gaunsho’im Council. One stood, as Kahlil remembered, in the north of the city, near the Seven Palaces. The other shone far south of the first, where the old Execution Grounds had been.

The Gaunsho’im must have built a second Council Hall. He couldn’t imagine why, but he didn’t understand half of what the Gaunsho’im did. They were the rulers of noble families, and they answered for their wastefulness to only themselves. If they wanted a second Council building, that was their concern. Construction of new buildings could be expected, even in times as bad as these. So long as the Gaunsho’im met their yearly tithes to the church, they could build as many tributes to their own importance as they pleased.

Kahlil stared down over the Seven Palaces and then past them. He saw long, gleaming roofs with tiles that shone like faceted crystal where none had stood before. To the west, clusters of dull, redbrick buildings piled up against each other. When he had last been here, only a scattered shantytown stood close to the riverbank. The additions didn’t bother him so much. It was the one absence that frightened him.

The massive Black Tower should have shot up from the north point of the city like a black blade piercing the heavens. But it was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t a structure that could be missed. It had dominated the skyline, with huge cords of metal twisting up to a single, gleaming point. Its shadow alone should have sliced across the city in a straight, sharp stroke.

Kahlil stared and squinted and turned in a circle, but still couldn’t find the tower. How could it be gone? He sank down to his knees, suddenly gripped with a sick fear.

He knew.

He couldn’t remember, but he knew. Somehow he had allowed this to happen. He had failed foolishly and terribly. He supposed it was only fair that now he had nowhere to go, no one to care for him.

His eyes stung and burned, and he closed them. It would do him no good looking for a tower that no longer stood. He struggled to remember what he had done wrong. Without knowing, how could he make it right?