Shadow Gate (78 page)

“Work it out,” said Tohon. He loped back into the forest on the trail of the soldiers.

“Why ever did they leave you alive, Shai?” asked Zubaidit.

“The cloak took me for a lackwit.”

Eridit rose. “Can you blame them?” She spat, grimacing at the taste. “Aui! You've talked more just now than I heard you talk the first month we were out.”

Shai tapped his shoulder, and the children hustled back into the shelter, even Vali, who was forcefully sucking down sobs, trying not to break out weeping.

“Why did you come back?” he said. “I assumed you would just go on with the mission.”

Bai shrugged. “The less you know, the less can be tortured out of you. We figured if you reached the camp, you'd be questioned. We couldn't take the chance they'd learn of our situation from you.”

He considered the cold nasty feeling he'd had in the presence of the cloak. “It's true. He was sending me to be questioned by the commander of the army.”

“Lord Radas?”

“A female. He never named her. I can't leave the children behind, they depend on me.”

“What can you possibly do with them?” asked Eridit. All imperious command had vanished. She looked exhausted.

“I don't know. Get them to a safe haven.”

“Nothing like that around here,” said Bai. “This entire district is pretty sparsely settled, but even so, every village we've come across as we've tracked you has been burned out or abandoned. Even the temples are empty. You can't lead them all the way back to Olo'osson, Shai. Or hope to find their families, if their families even survived.”

“If I leave them now, I don't know who will die because I wasn't here to help them.”

Mounted, Bai reminded him of the Qin soldiers: deadly, but rational, unlike the soldiers who had taken them prisoner. “They went inside quickly enough, at a signal from you.”

“They're formed into banners. They'll take my orders.”

“Is there a well around here?” asked Eridit. “Eihi! I want to rinse out my mouth.”

“That way.” He pointed.

She moved.

Bai said, “Don't go, Eridit. We've got to clear out now.”

Eridit halted.

“All it takes is three of those cursed soldiers to ask a pair of questions and call each other cowards, and they'll be come running back here to kill us. Eiya!” Bai bit her lip. Raised her gaze to the heavens. Drew down her brows.

“We can't take them all,” said Eridit.

“I'm not leaving the children,” said Shai. “You go on. I'll manage. Come out, banners! Grab anything there is.” They filed out briskly, looking frightened. “Yudit, take your warblers and the heron banner and run to the byre. See if the soldiers forgot the supplies stored there.”

Yudit and Dena ran off with their groups, but to watch them go made obvious the ridiculousness of any plan to save them: too thin, too weak, too young. Still, he must try.

“Owls, scour the houses. Don't dawdle. You hawks, go to the storehouse beside the well and see if there are any ladles, buckets, or pouches left, and fill them with—”

A scream arced from the forest cover.

“The hells!” Bai drew her sword.

“Shit!” Eridit fumbled the mount as two men sprinted out of the woods, packs flapping on their backs. If they had held swords or spears, they had lost them.

A pale-haired, demon-eyed ghost rode out of the forest, with a light burning in her left hand and a mirror held in her left. Mist coiled around her, only it was not mist. It was a cloak that concealed her legs and, in its winding, blended into the furled wings of the mare she rode. One of the men looked back over his shoulder at the demon.

The mirror, catching light, flashed. The man collapsed to the ground.

The other stumbled gibbering to the ground and raised hands in supplication, but when the mirror flashed again, he slumped forward, then toppled sideways.

Bai sheathed her sword and yanked a strung bow from her quiver, fitting an arrow as the ghost rode forward. The hawk banner huddled around Shai, fixed in the silence they'd learned to keep. Other children, farther away, cried out and ran, some toward the byre where Yudit had gone, but others back to Shai.

All the tales said that demons were beautiful, that they aroused men and women to lust; this one was no different.

She pulled up her mount and faced him.

“You're a demon,” he said, his voice strong enough that it surprised him to hear it issue so forcefully from his mouth. He wasn't accustomed to speaking up. “You've taken on the appearance of someone who is dead.”

“I am a demon,” she agreed, in the smoky voice he'd dreamt of so many nights, wishing to hear her speak even though in all the time she had served the Mei clan she had seemed mute. Meeting his gaze, her brow furrowed. “Yet your heart is veiled to my sight.”

She looked at the others. Eridit choked down a cry; the children wept; Bai doubled over, a hand clapped to her heart, bow and arrow falling out of her hand to the ground to leave her helpless. The ghost looked back at him, the only one who could meet that cold blue demon gaze. Yet what is a demon, after all, but your fears and hopes stalking you?

“Those who hurt others must be punished,” she said.

Vali clung to him, and Eska and Dena had thrown their arms around his body. Gently, he pushed them behind him. “Maybe I harmed you once, but these others did not. Spare them, I beg you.”

A ghost retains emotion, but demons have been bled dry. Her round, pale face did not alter expression as she raised the mirror.

And lowered it.

“You act as I did once. What does that make you?” She shook her pale head, as at an unanswerable question, then rode off across fields green with untended weeds. The horse unfurled its wings and leaped, rising above the treetops. All stared as the demon and her horse vanished from sight.

First to recover, Eridit raised both hands and sang. “ ‘Heaven-born, elegant in line, it rises above the mountains to where the stars burn.' ”

“I feel sick,” said Bai, straightening as slowly if she were an old woman afflicted with joint fever. “The hells! That cursed demon looked straight into my heart!”

Hooves thumped on earth. At a gallop, Ladon and Veras burst into the clearing from the path.

“They're all dead!” cried Ladon.

Another rider appeared, reining to a halt beside the two militiamen. Tohon's expression was pulled with shock,
eyes white and almost rolling, but when he saw Shai and identified the others, he pressed the back of a hand against his chest and with several controlled breaths calmed himself.

“They're dead,” the Qin scout said. “I counted thirty-four soldiers, these two the last. A demon killed them.”

“That was a Guardian,” said Eridit. “As it says in the chant. A Guardian saved us!”

“It was a demon, like the other cloak,” said Vali hoarsely. “I'm glad the soldiers are dead. I'm glad! I wish I could have cut their throats myself! And then cut the lord cloak's throat, too, and made him bleed!”

“Hush, Vali.”

Zubaidit looked at Shai. “You recognized her.”

“The demon took on the appearance of a woman who was once a slave in the Mei clan. We called her Cornflower, for her eyes. But she died in the desert last year.”

“What did she mean, that your heart is veiled?”

“I don't know.”

Tohon said, “These children are a burden to our mission. Also, in this large a group, they will attract attention. They should be scattered.”

“ ‘Your heart is veiled,' ” muttered Bai. She swung down from her horse to pick up her fallen weapon. With the arrow, she tapped Tohon on the arm. “I have a better idea. These children are our gate into Lord Radas's army, don't you see? If we walk into the army with prisoners in tow, we'll look like we belong.”

“How can you even say so?” cried Shai.

“Not into slavery,” she said briskly. “Not to be abused. Shai, do you believe I would chain any person to what these have already suffered? But you know what we're facing. The children can help us, if they can be brave.”

Hand closed around the shaft of the arrow, she raised it as a talisman. She stamped three times, marking the entry, and sang in a voice not as silky and prettified as Eridit's but more powerful. This was no guise or mask, meant to entertain, but a call to arms.

“ ‘Oliara-the-Bold raised the silk banners, all their color made bright in the sun. She cried out, “Forward! Forward!” and so they marched.' ”

A few mouthed the words or, like Eridit, sketched the gestures with their hands.

“Can you be brave?” Bai asked them, echoing the tale. “Do you want to defeat those who harmed you and killed your comrades and kinfolk?”

“I want to go home,” said Eska in a small voice.

“And you will, every one of you, I swear it by the knives of the Merciless One.” She met each pair of eyes, because all watched her. “Any who wish can head home now.”

But of course it was impossible that these children could walk hundreds of mey across unknown countryside without food or guidance. Bai knew that and, knowing it, manipulated them. Shai hated her even as he felt the pull of her words and of her strength.

“We're the ones who will destroy that which lies beyond the Shadow Gate. We are the ones who will walk into their camp and spy them out. Be bold. Strike the blow that will cripple them. We must go forward.”

“ ‘Forward, forward,' ” they whispered, the familiar echo from the tale.

She swept them up in the flood of her righteous anger, so you drowned never knowing you had succumbed.

Eridit glowed, staring at Bai as at a lover. The militiamen likewise nodded eagerly. Even Tohon—who surely knew better!—tugged on an ear as he considered her words, her stance, her reckless proposal.

“You're crazy,” said Shai.

“Maybe a bit of madness is what is needed. Not the Thunderer's strict ordinances or the Lantern's tidy accountings. Now enters the mistress of love, death, and desire, the All-Consuming Devourer. Swallowed up, we become the vessels that carry out her will, for it is not her will that we transgress against others. She will walk with us, as long as we walk in her.”

“ ‘Praise to the glorious one,' ” sang Eridit. “ ‘She who is lightning. She who devours us.' ”

Passionate words engulf the unwary; strength lures the vulnerable. After all they had suffered, after all they had done and pretended to do, the young ones wanted, perhaps, to feel their degradation meant something. They weren't shamed; they were soldiers.

“Don't worry, Shai,” said Zubaidit as she surveyed her frail, ragged troops. “I have no intention of seeing the innocent suffer. I have a plan.”

“Do you hear that voice?” whispered Eliar.

“No.”

“It's mumbling on and on. ‘Mist flees,' and ‘a night spanned with stars cloaks all.' I can't sleep.”

Keshad rolled over in his blankets. Even that effort made him pant in the thin air of the Kandaran Pass. “The only cursed voice mumbling on and on is yours. Any chance you're likely to leave me alone so I can sleep?”

In the crumbling sod shack they were, of necessity, pressed close together under what remained of the turf roof. The rest of the party had refused to sleep in a place rumored to be haunted and instead huddled beneath canvas in the freezing night outdoors among rocks and snow. Now Kesh wished he had joined them, even though he had observed that the whole cursed place looked likely to slide away. But night had caught them on the road, and the rocks and shack seemed stable enough.

Eliar coughed hoarsely, as they all did up on the heights. “Did you know you are one of the most unpleasant men I have ever been forced to associate with?”

“I wasn't aware anyone forced you to come on this expedition. Are you done?”

“People like me, you know. Everyone likes me.”

“Of course they do. You're young and rich and handsome, even if you are a hells-cursed Silver. Now can I sleep?”

“I wish you would stop using that word. I am Ri Amarah.”

“Aui!” The exclamation caught in his weary lungs, and he coughed, once started unable to suck in enough air to stop.

Eliar plucked at his sleeve. “Hsst! Do you hear that?”

This time he did hear something. He covered his mouth and listened. It sounded like the jangling of harness. As with one thought, he and Eliar crawled to the remains of the door. Dawn would come soon, and as he peered into the gloom he was able to distinguish the road as a stripe below. Mercifully, the rest of their party were well hidden at the edge of the rocks.

The sound echoed off the high mountain escarpments, amplified by the predawn quiet and the eerie lack of wind. Men trotted into view, carrying lamps extended on poles. After them marched a force of soldiers, the men walking on the steep upgrade but each one leading a string of four horses, one saddled, one packing, and the other two as remounts. They wore swords slung at their hips and javelins or bow quivers across their backs; spears and bundles of javelins and arrows laded the pack horses. At speed, they passed quickly, moving north and vanishing from sight before the first birds woke to sing awake the dawn.

“Is that a trading company?” Eliar whispered. “Trying to get across before the snows close the pass?”

“Are you as stupid as you sound? Those are soldiers. Several hundred, I'd estimate.”

“Eiya! Whose soldiers?”

“Sirniakan, by the look of them.”

“But what if—?”

“I'm not listening. It's none of my business. I don't care. Let's roust the men and make an early start. I want
to get down off the heights before more snow falls. Aui! I hate the cold!”

Eliar shut his mouth, but as they raised the grumbling company and set off in marching order while dawn lightened the cloudy sky, he loosed dark, brooding glances toward Keshad that were, Kesh supposed, meant to disturb Kesh into troubling himself over the matter.