Shadow Gate (23 page)

“No.”

No decision she made now could possibly be a good decision, only the least bad decision. Although the reeve glanced now and again at the sky, and at his eagle, he otherwise showed no sign he was impatient to go. “How do we know we can trust you?”

He winced, just a little, and laughed, just a little. “Once, you would have trusted me simply because I was a reeve. But we no longer live in those days, do we? You must
know that Tohon and his company could have done what they wished to you. I have an eagle at my back and companions aloft, watching for trouble. So either we are telling the truth, or we are more deceitful than you have yet imagined, devising a sport in which we lure you into trusting us only to abuse you later.”

He twisted to take a long look at his eagle, a watchful bird with a noticeable scar. Then he walked down the path and made a quick circuit of the corpses, pausing to study the sprawl of limbs, the trajectory of blood as it had spattered, the cuts and gouges, the manner in which each man had met his death. Circling back, he halted in front of Nallo. With his gaze narrowed, he looked much less friendly. She stood her ground.

“How do you know an eagle killed these men?”

“Aui!” That was an easy question. “We saw it.”

“You saw it?”

“Yes. The outlaws were coming right up behind us. They would have caught us and killed us, but an eagle attacked them.”

“An eagle? With a reeve?”

“No, just an eagle. One of its wings seemed injured.”

The scarred eagle chirped.

“The hells!” He looked into the sky.

It was as if her words were a summoning. Her eagle—she thought of it as hers, in a funny way—glided down, hitched up as it overshot his eagle, and thumped hard on the path below them. It raised its big head, and chirped.

The reeve stared at the eagle, looked at Nallo, looked back at the eagle, and then again at Nallo. “The hells. Do you know what this means?”

Whatever she had seen in him before—geniality, charm, a gaze that made you feel he was looking at you alone with no thought for anyone or anything else—vanished as he thought through some deep conundrum, as he frowned and made a move as though to grasp her arm, then withdrew his hand and fixed it awkwardly in the straps of the harness he wore around his torso.

“You
have
to come with us now.”

“The hells I do! Why?”

“No need to snap at me.” He flared. He wasn't one bit cowed by her temper. “Didn't you wonder why that eagle dropped down right here, right then, only to aid you?”

“The gods fashioned the eagles to seek justice.”

“So they did, but a lone eagle without a reeve flies to the mountains and lives in solitude, in their ancient hunting territories. Only with a reeve does an eagle seek justice. And you'll note that particular eagle carries no reeve.”

She didn't like the probing way he examined her. She wiped her dirty chin with the back of a hand. “I'm not blind!”

“I know that eagle,” he continued, ignoring her outburst. “Her name is Tumna. Her reeve is dead. I thought she'd flown to the mountains, to mark the passing as eagles usually do, but I see she's already chosen a new reeve.”

Nallo looked at Tumna, at her ragged unkempt feathers, her injured wing, her angry, impatient gaze. Here was an eagle who was irritated that her reeve was dead and she had so much to do and no partner with whom to accomplish all those tasks. How annoying people are! Why can't things fall out without so much trouble and incompetence muddying the waters?

“Who?”

He took hold of her hand, gently, as would a relative when offering condolences.

“You, Nallo. This eagle has chosen you to be its reeve.”

Keshad stood beside a stone pillar, staring nervously over the darkening vista. After days of hard traveling, they'd pushed through the rugged Soha Hills. Tonight they sheltered in ridgetop ruins that overlooked Sohayil, a wide basin with hills rising on all sides. The valley floor blended into the darkness as daylight faded. “Bai, if outriders from the army stumble onto us, they'll kill us.”

“Kesh, on all those caravan runs you made into the Sirniakan Empire when you were Master Feden's slave, were you as likely as this to jump at your own shadow? The approach to these ruins is narrow, along the ridge. No one is going to try to navigate that track at night without a light. If they come with a light, we'll see them. As for whatever folk live down in Sohayil, even if someone down there happened to see our light all this way up here, they'd most likely think the ruins are haunted. So we can rest easy for one night. Why don't you trust my judgment?”

He shuddered as he turned away from the view, clutching his bowl of gruel in his hands. Someone
could
crawl up that long steep slope, even at night, testing each handhold, moving slowly, using feel and the texture of the air to make his way. Someone who knew the hills well.

A single lamp illuminated the stone walls and dusty ground. The old beacon tower had collapsed untold years ago. Most likely, the folk in Sohayil had experienced relative peace for so long that no one had thought they needed to repair it. Just like in Candra Crossing, no one had thought an army would march through, devastating every village in its path. Maybe in the valley of Sohayil they still didn't know. An army marching down West Track could have entirely bypassed Sohayil.

A spire of rock, its sheer face impossible to climb, thrust up behind the ruined beacon tower. It had a flattened top, and if you looked at it from the right angle you might imagine those contours were the remains of an old wall, all the way up there where only someone with wings could reach. Probably it was an old Guardian altar, long since abandoned.

Was that a light—a lamp's flame—winking up there? No. It was only a trick of the light, catching in the angles of rock as the sun set behind them.

From the the tower's ruins, beside the campfire, she watched him. “You've never told me.”

“Told you what?”

“Obviously since my debt was bought by Ushara's temple, I was apprenticed to the Merciless One. All those years we were slaves, I never saw you more than once a year. You never told me where you served your apprentice year. Which of the gods you served.”

His stomach was aching, and his head hurt. He gulped down the last of the gruel, walked back to the fire, and took hold of the pot's handle. “I'll scrub this clean.”

She grabbed his wrist and held it. “I'm just curious.”

“Let me go.”

Her hold tugged on him, like a river's current dragging you in the direction you don't want to go. “Are you telling me that Master Feden broke all custom and holy law, and did not let you go for your one year when you were fourteen or sixteen? He could be fined for that! Even children sold into debt slavery must be allowed to serve their apprentice year to one of the gods. Why didn't you complain?”

“Do you think any of the temples in Olossi would have listened to me? Master Feden rules the council. A word from him, and the tithes to the temples would have dried up like a dry-season channel in the delta. A word from him, and any merchant who tried to mention his
lapse to one of the temples would have lost her license to trade and been ostracized in the bargain. You are so naive, Bai.”

She released him. “Maybe so, but when I was in Olossi twenty days ago, Master Feden was in deep trouble. He's the one who made a dirty alliance with the northerners, the same people who burned villages and murdered innocent village folk just for whatever sick pleasure they took in the doing.”

“Don't forget I had to march with that army for an entire day.”

“The council in Olossi now knows what Master Feden did. We needn't fear Master Feden any longer.”

Having to remember the twelve long years he had served out his debt slavery to the man made him want to kick and punch and destroy some helpless object, breaking it down until it hung in splinters. Wasn't that the way his and Bai's life had been destroyed, when they'd been orphaned and their aunts and uncle had sold them on the block rather than raise them? The life they might have hoped to have had been smashed to pieces, and here they were, remade into people he no longer recognized.

She went on, a wolf gnawing at cracked bones. “Once we reach a place we can stop, you have to apprentice to one of the gods. It's not unheard of to come so late to your year of service. It's better than carrying around that prison bowl, where the southern god sucks in the souls of his worshippers.”

“You don't know anything about Beltak!”

“A Hundred man should not be praying to a god from the empire.”

“I only took up the bowl because it gave me an advantage in trade. That way I didn't have to pay the fines the empire men levy in the market on merchants who aren't believers.”

“I thought their priests burned anyone who didn't sacrifice to their god.”

“They do, but they have to accept merchants from other countries, at least in the market, or they'd have no trade, would they? But they can charge them extra, and forbid them to build temples of their own or to say prayers to other gods.”

Her lips, pressed together, made a tight line.

“I did what I had to! I got us free, didn't I?”

“You did,” she said as the line of her mouth softened. “It's not too late. The gods will not abandon you. You only need stand before them. It's just . . . I can't look at you and easily see to which god your service is best suited. Kotaru the Thunderer? You're not obedient enough nor do you get into fights just for the fun of it. Ushara the Merciless One? You can't give up your very self to the heart of the goddess. Atiratu the Lady of Beasts? No, for hers is a caring and selfless heart, and you have trouble looking beyond your own troubles. Taru the Witherer? He who waxes and wanes? I think not, for you have remained constant all these years, and that's a fine thing, since we're both free now because of your efforts. Ilu the Envoy? You've traveled, but you're just not talkative enough. You're observant, but only when you're totting up things to your own advantage or disadvantage. Sapanasu, the Keeper of Days? It's true you're an excellent accountant, and you've made good use of those skills in acquiring the coin to free us. But I just can't see you being willing to shave your head on the day you enter through that gate. You're too vain of your lovely hair.”

He glared at her, thinking she was teasing him, but it was obvious she was perfectly serious. The hells! She was right, of course: Although she'd been glad to leave the temple, she was nevertheless sworn to the goddess in her heart in a way he could not fathom. No doubt she considered herself a hierodule still, even if she no longer served at the temple of Ushara, the Devourer, the Merciless One.

“That leaves Hasibal, the Formless One. Eh!”

He jumped, spinning around to see if anything was sneaking up behind him, but there was nothing except shadows.

“You might have been walking Hasibal's path all along,” she continued, because the exclamation had been merely a grunt of consideration. “Still, you know what they say.”

“Must you drone on with this annoying prattle? When you were little, you were so quiet. The temple ruined you.”

“Our souls are bound to the land through our service to the gods. At birth we enter one of the twelve years, which determines much of the character of our heart. With our naming, we are linked to one of the Four Mothers, which determines the texture of our mind. Without service to the gods, we are as a boat without an anchor: adrift in stormy seas.”

“I survived twelve years adrift. But I might expire if I have to hear any more of this. Can't we go to sleep now?”

“A difficult path to follow, but the deepest.”

“Sleeping?”

“Hasibal's path.”

“Won't you stop?”

“No!” Rising to face him, she seemed larger, brighter, fiercer, a wolf about to lunge. “Don't mock the gods, Kesh. Don't turn your back on them. We are what the gods make us.”

“We are what we make ourselves!”

“How can you separate the two? You only think you can.”

“You don't know anything!”

Her weight shifted forward. Her shoulders stiffened. He thought she was ready to rip out his throat. She could kill him. He knew it. She knew it.

Then she smiled, and relaxed. Raising both hands, palms out, she nodded briefly. “You must walk your own path, Kesh. That's truth. But there's another truth you don't want to hear and must hear: You must walk a path,
or you'll always be lost and wandering, as in the wilderness.”

“Aui! Can't we—”

“Go to sleep? Yes. Scrub out that pot. I'll check on the horses.”

He scoured the pot with a handful of gravel, then rinsed out the grit with water from the cistern. Bai took the pot and hauled more water for the horses. He wrapped himself in a blanket, in a walled corner where he'd get shelter when it rained during the night, and closed his eyes.

But he was restless. Their argument had robbed him of the ability to sleep. The words of the evening prayer to Beltak, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, the Shining One Who Rules Alone, whispered in his head.

Rid us of all that is evil. Rid us of demons. Rid us of hate. Rid us of envy. Rid us of heretics and liars. Rid us of wolves and of armies stained with the blood of the pure.
He touched the sacred bowl tucked against a hip. “Teach me to hate darkness and battle evil. Teach me the Truth.”

Yet what is truth?
Master Feden had prayed to the gods of the Hundred, and paid his tithes to the temples at the proper times and in the proper amounts. But he had cheated his own slaves by padding out their debts so they remained in perpetual servitude to him, never able to buy themselves free. He had made common cause with a mysterious commander out of the north, whose army included the worst kind of criminals and sick, twisted men. Feden had done all that to consolidate the power his faction already held in the council of Olossi.