Shadow Gate (71 page)

But which would be worse? Suffocating under a mass of dirt as it forced its way down your throat and nostrils? Or having your head ripped off by a bad-tempered eagle?

She wiped yet more dust from her brow. Or maybe she was just smearing it together with sweat to give herself a mottled complexion. Through a gap in the canvas, she watched the sun settle westward toward hazy peaks. Stamps and shouts from the practice ground marked the pace of the training. Men who showed promise would be allowed to join the Qin militia, an elite group being trained to the strictest and most arduous standard imaginable, and despite or perhaps because of this, young men did put in second shifts for the chance to be as tough as the sauntering Qin soldiers.

Nearby, women worked with cheerful banter in the kitchens. A pair of mules came in with fresh laundry from the washing house a couple of mey inland, closer to a good water source, where other female debt slaves
worked. The shaded ground beneath the canvas grew stuffy. She dozed off.

As she often did these days after working underground, she dreamed of flying. The land below her dangling feet is seen as hollows and rises, a patchwork of color and texture like a rumpled blanket but breathtaking in each distinct detail. A tiny deer springs across a clearing, followed by a fawn. A man in a red cap crouches alone by a campfire. A wagon drawn by droving beasts glides down a road, accompanied by a trio of walking men more like ants than human beings. Black thunderclouds pile up over mountains, building strength, and after lightning flashes, a blue burst of light bolts into existence, winks coquettishly, and vanishes.

Thunder boomed, waking her. Shouts woke the alarm bell, rung thrice. Running footsteps scraped on the ground outside. She scrambled to the entrance of the women's compound, where debt slaves gathered.

“What happened?”

“A shaft fell in,” said one of the women. Her hands were coated with grease. They watched as the men training on the practice ground ran for the supervisor's pavilion, grabbing spades and mattocks and rushing upland. A pair of Qin soldiers rode their horses inland, with a second man astride each carrying digging implements.

“Think it's worth it?” asked the woman with greasy hands. “Men dying for water?”

“They'll get irrigation all along here,” said her companion. “Lookya—”

Hillward, the ground sloped in rugged stair-steps cut with gullies and ridges, a light dry soil. Seaward, they looked over level ground whose soil was built up by the accumulation of rainwater coursing down from higher ground during the wet season, which came here only during the Flood Rains, and fanning out to form stretches of richer soil suitable for planting, if only there was a
steady supply of water. The mountains hoarded water, if it could be exploited. The Qin meant to do so.

Eagles circled above the distant shoreline. Off to the right snaked the low berm that ringed the quickly growing settlement and fort owned by the Qin outlanders. A pair of rowed cogs were coming in, headed for the shallow bay where they would beach and unload.

“Neh, there. Lookya!”

Thunderclouds boiled over a high mountain ridge to the northwest. A speck swooped out of the storm and, faster than seemed possible, glided close and, then, right over them.

The hells!

She began shaking harder than in the aftermath of the collapse. Best run and hide, and yet her feet took her out pace after pace until she found herself in the deserted parade ground as an eagle plummeted as on its death plunge and, pulling up at the last, thumped hard onto the dirt.

“Tumna.” Her heart raced as her voice choked.

The eagle glared at her from beneath ridged brows, as if to say, “Why did you abandon me?”

“They tried to force me, like when Uncle dragged me to Old Cross to sell my labor. What did you expect me to do?”

“Heya!” Mas signaled from the edge of the parade ground. “Get back, Nallo. That thing could rip your head off!”

She was so fixed on Tumna's accusing stare that she did not notice the other eagles coming in until one landed with a delicate braking flutter of wings a safe distance away. Its harness held a reeve and a second person, hitched in front in a tangle of lines quickly unhooked. The woman walked out from under the hooked beak of the other raptor. Tumna swiveled her head to stare at the intruder, but the woman sketched a broad gesture, a signal that kept the bird in her place.

“You're Nallo.” She carried a mass of lines and hooks draped over her right arm. “I'm Arda, training master of Naya Hall. That's what they call the training hall here. I hear Joss ran you off with some nonsense about reeves being slaves and how you best be grateful for shelter over your head and so on. He's astoundingly sanctimonious.”

“He was a self-satisfied ass, it's true,” said Nallo, warming to her but remaining cautious.

Arda looked her up and down in a way that made Nallo alert, and surprised, because she was more used to men looking her over that way—and then dismissing her. But Arda smiled, as if she liked what she saw. “He's a good reeve, but he's vain, if you ask me. Always thinking women will come round to his way of thinking just because he's got a handsome smile and a handsome face. Cursed tiresome, if you ask me.”

Nallo's amusement at this plain speaking quickly sputtered. “How did you track me down?”

“I didn't. Tumna did.” Arda nodded toward the raptor, now preening her wing feathers and seeming to ignore them. “She turned up a week ago at Naya Hall and began sweeps of the area, which told me that she'd tracked you. But there are hundreds of laborers brought here with Qin coin to build and dig. So I tracked her, tracking you. I have a proposition for you.”

“So did Marshal Joss. Only his was more like an ultimatum.”

“It does make you wonder how he manages to sweet-talk women into his bed, doesn't it? I'm just glad I'm not fashioned that way, to be susceptible to his charm.” She smiled, and Nallo blushed as Arda went on. “I don't care whether you become a reeve or not, Nallo. That's your business, not mine. But I need my eagles jessed. An unjessed eagle not retired to the wild lands is an unpredictable eagle. Anyway, I need all the reeves I can get. In case you didn't know, we're living in troubled times.”

“My husband was murdered by that army.”

“I'm sorry to hear of it. Plenty more will suffer if we can't act. Here's my proposition. I don't care what you choose. Just fly first, and then tell me what you've decided.”

Nallo felt every grain of dirt stuck to her sweaty skin. She remembered the spill of dirt on her shoulders as the ceiling gave way. She thought of crouching at the base of a narrow shaft, hoping to be hauled up before the air choked her as it sometimes choked out lamp flames.

She thought of her dreams.

“I have a debt contract,” she said.

“If you choose the reeve hall, the Qin will release you. If you don't, you can come right back to whatever exciting work you're doing here.” She studied Nallo closely. “And I must say, we have a better water allowance at the hall. You can get a decent bath. For that matter, on your day off you can fly to Olossi and get a real bath in a real bathhouse. Cold scrub, hot soak, and all.”

Nallo shut her eyes, woozy at the memory of a cold scrub and hot hot water in which to soak away all the angry voices that gnawed.

“Just one flight,” she said, knowing it was a trap. Yet Tumna did sit there waiting for her, the only creature in the world who had actually gone to the trouble to seek her out on purpose.

Despite Tumna's fearsome reputation, Arda showed no fear of the eagle as she beckoned Nallo closer. “Help me get the harness slung.”

“I'm flying
her
?”

“Of course. I'll show you how to rig this.”

“Didn't she rip off her last reeve's head?”

“Yes, and disemboweled him, too. He had turned against his reeve's oath and, besides that, didn't treat her properly when she was injured. I don't blame her one bit. Did us a favor, I should think.”

“That's a coldhearted way of looking at it.”

“I train reeves. Nothing burns me more than a reeve
who doesn't care properly for her eagle. I'd sooner feast a reeve who had betrayed all her companions but placed her eagle's welfare above her own, than one who neglected her raptor. Treat Tumna as she deserves, and she'll repay your loyalty with her own. She's a short-tempered, irritable bird, it's true, but we all have our quirks. I suppose my lack of sentimentality is mine. So. Are you going to help me, or should I leave? If I go now, I'm not coming back.”

Maybe Arda was just playing on her contrary nature, or maybe it was that Tumna looked healthy and strong, no trace of injury like the other times Nallo had encountered her. Maybe it was the dreams, or the raptor's undeniable beauty and edge of danger.

“All right.”

Arda walked over and showed her how to get into the harness. “It won't be the best fit. Reeves are measured for their harness to make sure there's no chafing. But it'll do. You can tighten it—that's right. Your feet go there—that's the training bar—so you can adjust your weight in flight. You're ready. I'll show you how to hook in.”

She walked in under the cruel beak, right up to where the talons could puncture her. If Arda showed no fear, Nallo certainly was not going to. She followed her in under Tumna's shadow. The raptor huffed, straightening. Her feathers were gorgeous, golden-brown, splashed with white highlights. She wore a jess on each ankle and her own harness fastened over the shoulders and across the breast so it did not impede the wings. Working slowly and with the greatest patience, Arda showed Nallo how to hook the various tethers that allowed the bird to fly and the reeve to tuck in beneath.

“You get the best view. Free hands for signaling or to hold a weapon. As you saw, you can hook another person in front of you without oversetting the balance, although not every raptor is strong enough to manage two. With training, you'll learn how to hook in and out quickly.”

“I didn't promise to become a reeve!”

“No need to rip my head off!” Then she grinned, leaned in, and kissed Nallo on the cheek. Nallo flushed like she hadn't since—well—since ever. With a laugh, Arda backed away. “Just one flight. That's all I ask.”

“Oh, gods,” murmured Nallo, as she realized she was well and truly hooked in. The rush went to her head, and then the raptor pushed so hard that Nallo thought her feet and her head were in two different places. Her feet slipped off the training bar, and she flailed, sure she was about to plunge to her death. Gripping the straps with knuckles gone white, she couldn't breathe. The powerful beat of Tumna's wings drowned out everything in the world except the plunge of the earth away from under her and, when she could see again, the many upturned faces staring as she rose. Air thrummed against her body. Tumna stopped beating her wings, simply held them out in that vast wingspan, and Nallo choked out a gulped cry, only they did not fall. They were rising as though in the hand of the gods, the earth dropping away to reveal the patterns of human handiwork below: the alluvial fan where the conduit had its exit; the holes marking the shafts; the gullies and hills. A pale berm, like rope, ran all around a hill where a brick palisade was also going up, plus many canvas tents and awnings to shelter the hundreds of folk now living and working here. The reeve hall was little more than canvas barracks for the reeves and fawkners, with massive perches set like skeletal trees rising off into the wilderness over a distance too broad for her to measure.

An eagle plunged past, the reeve in its harness whipping a flag signal at her that she did not understand. Tumna kept going, heading for the mountains. Off to her right the sea spread flat with the sun's light gilding the waters. Eihi! So beautiful!

The winds rumbled at crosscurrents as they rose over the foothills, heading straight into the black clouds. Thunder muttered above the mighty peaks. Lighting spiked.

“I don't—! I don't—!”

She had no cursed idea what to do; she was at the raptor's mercy, likely to get her head ripped off or—

She screamed as Tumna folded her wings and plunged down, down, down, wind shrieking in her ears. The wings unfurled, and they jerked up hard and Nallo began to laugh and sob together as the raptor found another rising stream of air and they sailed up along the face of the massive peaks of the thunderheads until the hair on her neck rose.

A dazzling form of blue light—not lightning—sizzled into being an arrow's shot away. It winked, and vanished.

Winked back, and vanished.

Winked back, and vanished.

All in the space of her taking in a shocked and heaving breath and letting it out.

The hells! It had eyes, of a kind, and it was
looking at her.

It winked into being, and it
boomed
—like a laugh!—and vanished.

Tumna cut right, and they beat away from the face of the storm and glided down on the winds running before it. They dipped toward a valley cut deep into the foothills. Threads of light spun where a waterfall spilled over a cliff to cut a pool. A stream gushed through luxuriant vegetation. That same prickling feeling crawled on her skin, as though they were about to plunge back into the storm, but instead Tumna swept a wide turn and headed back toward the east. The sea glimmered in the distance. Nallo could not spot the settlement, but a strange web of light sparked to their left where two rocky hills joined in a saddle. Tumna swooped, and thumped down on the bare ground of the saddleback ridge.

Nallo was still laughing and crying as she wiped her eyes and looked around. Wind roared over the span of earth. A pattern carved into the rock glittered, tracing a labyrinth. Aui! Her skin went cold and she thought she would faint.

The eagle had brought her to a Guardian's altar.

“We can't stay here, Tumna! It's forbidden!”