Shadow Gate

 

 

“What is happening to me?” Marit cried.

She rested her head against the bole of a tree, trying to get her breathing under control. The rain cleared off, and as night fell, a cold and bitter wind blew.

The season changes. Only late in the year do you feel the chill in your bones.

The reasonable explanation was that she had slept through a day and a night recovering from the shock of what she had seen and from the eagle's attack.

When she thought it through, she had to believe that the eagle had killed her in its fury. The weather bore out the unlikely supposition that months had passed.

Guardians can't die. They can kill, but they can't be killed.

Now
there
was a recipe for corruption.

She rose to shake out her clothing. Why, in the tales, are the Guardians always honorable and upright, the upholders of a justice that is never disturbed by their own petty jealousies or grand descents into lust and greed? How honest were the tales, really?

Who would believe her, if she walked in off the street into Clan Hall and claimed to be a woman murdered nineteen years ago? Who would even remember her?

One man might.

 

P
RAISE FOR
C
ROSSROADS

Shadow Gate

“Highly recommended to both fans of the author and any readers who appreciate fantasy in the vein of Robin Hobb, Jacqueline Carey, and J. V. Jones.”

—
Fantasy Book Critic

“Elliott's strengths as a writer are on display in this second Crossroads book. She brings her characters fully alive with stringent detail and attentive world-building. Fans of Elliott and new readers alike will find this novel satisfying.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“As I said upon finishing Kate Elliott's wonderful
Spirit Gate
, book one of the Crossroads series, ‘I can't wait for the sequel to see what happens.' At last book two is finally here. What a splendid continuation of the story is
Shadow Gate
! It was well worth the wait. But now I am done, and so, ‘Please, Ms. Elliott, may I have some more?' ”

—Dennis L. McKiernan, author of
Once Upon a Spring Morn

“A fabulous thriller that grips readers from the onset . . . exhilarating.”

—
SFRevu

Spirit Gate

“Elliott is a talented writer whose work will appeal to that portion of fantasy readers who enjoy the historical and world-building aspects of the genre. She packs her books with the right proportion of action and detail, characters and societies, the warp and woof of real life artfully rearranged so as to be more entertaining and less distressing.”

—“The Agony Column,”
trashotron.com

“Elliott's skill at building worlds and peopling them with colorful characters and vibrant societies makes this novel an excellent choice for most fantasy collections.”

—
Library Journal

“
Spirit Gate
has kept me up late at night for too many nights in a row; it made me burn dinner once, and it nearly caused a fender bender when I was thinking about the characters while driving. It's a big, complex, absorbing book that interfered with my living my daily life while I was reading it, and I blame the author quite bitterly for that.”

—Laura Resnick, award-winning author of
In Legend Born

“It's a brilliant beginning to an exciting new series. The world is vivid and intriguing, and the characterization as strong as always in a Kate Elliott novel.”

—Katharine Kerr, author of
The Spirit Stone

 

 

 

Books by Kate Elliott

CROSSROADS SERIES

*Book I:
Spirit Gate

*Book II:
Shadow Gate

*Book III:
Traitors' Gate
(forthcoming)

THE NOVELS OF THE JARAN

Jaran

An Earthly Crown

His Conquering Sword

The Law of Becoming

CROWN OF STARS SERIES

King's Dragon

Prince of Dogs

The Burning Stone

Child of Flame

The Gathering Storm

In the Ruins

Crown of Stars

The Golden Key

(with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson)

Writing as Alis A. Rasmussen

The Labyrinth Gate

THE HIGHROAD TRILOGY

Book I:
A Passage of Stars

Book II:
Revolution's Shore

Book III:
The Price of Ransom

* A Tor Book

BOOK TWO OF CROSSROADS

K
ATE
E
LLIOTT

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK

 

 

 

 

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

SHADOW GATE: BOOK TWO OF CROSSROADS

Copyright © 2008 by Katrina Elliott

All rights reserved.

Edited by James Frenkel

Map by Elizabeth Danforth

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-4931-6
ISBN-10: 0-7653-4931-0

First Edition: April 2008

First Mass Market Edition: April 2009

Printed in the United States of America

0  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

For Constance and Kit,
who aren't afraid to wrangle with the difficult issues
troubling the universe, and who keep me honest
and always show support

I
N THE
H
UNDRED
, any and every set and sequence of patterns is seen as having cosmological significance. Every number has multiple associations. For instance, the number 3 is associated with the Three Noble Towers present in every major town or city (Watch Tower, Assizes Tower, and Sorrowing [or Silence] Tower); with the Three States of Mind (Resting, Wakened, and Transcendent); with the Three Languages; and with the Three-Part Anatomy of every person's soul (Mind, Hands, and Heart). The number 7 is associated with the Seven Gods, the Seven Gems, the Seven Directions, and the Seven Treasures.

Folk in the Hundred measure the passing of time not via year dates set from a year zero, but rather through the cyclical passage of time. The standard repeating twelve-year cycle is named after animals, in the following order: Eagle, Deer, Crane, Ox, Snake, Lion, Ibex, Fox, Goat, Horse, Wolf, Rat. However, this year cycle is meshed with the properties of the Nine Colors to create a larger cycle of one hundred and eight years. A clerk of Sapanasu, or anyone else who can do this kind of accounting, could thereby identify how long ago an event happened, or how old a person is, depending on what color of animal year in which he or she was born.

Each animal and color, having its own particular and peculiar associations, lends to all events in that year and to people birthed therein specific characteristics. Therefore, Keshad, born in the Year of the Gold Goat, combines Goat characteristics of cleverness, vanity, strong will, jealousy, pride, a deep sense of purpose contrasted with instability of shallow purpose, and a talent for seeking wealth, with Gold qualities like energy, intellect, intensity, dishonesty, envy, and aloofness.

SHADOW GATE

M
ARIT WAS PRETTY
sure she had been murdered. She recalled vividly the assassin's dagger that had punctured her skin, thrust up under her ribs, and pierced her heart. Any reeve—and Marit was a reeve—could tell you that was a killing blow, a certain path to a swift death. In the moment when life must pass over into death and the spirit depart the body, the misty outlines of the Spirit Gate unfold. The passage between this world and the other world had opened within her dying vision. But her spirit had not made the journey.

She woke alone, sprawled naked on a Guardian altar with only a cloak for a covering. Her eagle was dead. She knew it in the same way you know an arm is missing without looking to see: Your balance is different. Her eagle was dead, so she must be dead, because no reeve survived the death of her eagle.

Yet that being so, how could she stand up, much less stagger to the edge of a drop-off so sheer she hadn't noticed it because she was disoriented? She stepped into thin air before she knew she'd mistaken her ground, and she was falling, falling, the wind whistling in her ears. The earth plunged up to meet her.

Then she woke, sprawled naked on a Guardian altar with only a cloak for covering, and realized she had been dreaming.

Sitting, she rubbed her eyes. The place in her dream had been a narrow ledge without even a wall to warn of the drop-off. This place was high and exposed, an expanse of glittering stone untouched by vegetation. She rose cautiously and ventured to the highest point on the bluff. She stood at the prow of a ridgeline. The vista was astonishing: In front lay a lowland sink dropping away to a wide cultivated plain that extended toward a distant suggestion of water; to her right spread a pulsing green riot of forest so broad she could not see the end of it; behind, ragged hills covered with trees formed a barrier formidable not because of their height but because they were wild. The wind streamed over the ridge, rumbling in her ears.

She knew right where she was: on the southernmost spur of the Liya Hills, an excellent spot for thermals that an eagle and her reeve could spiral on for hours with a view of the Haya Gap. The vast tangled forest known as the Wild lay to the south, and the lowland plain that bordered the arm of the ocean known as the Bay of Istria ran east.