The Shadow at the Gate (21 page)

Nio woke. He was still sitting in the chair in the library. The night peered in through the windows. His head ached, but on his lips trembled a strange word he had never heard or known before.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

SWALLOWFOOT

Levoreth sat up with a gasp.

The room was silent, which made the beating of her heart hammer that much louder. The vase on the nightstand was filled with flower buds. She reached out. The furled petals were cool to the touch. Her heart slowed. She shrugged a shawl around her shoulders and went to the window. The moon was high. Below, in the city, down past the dark roofs of Highneck Rise, she could see lights in the streets—slow rivers of luminance flowing at a human pace. It was not late.

She lit a candle and then splashed water on her face from a bowl on the dresser. The water trickled through her fingers. It glistened in the candlelight and dripped down like tears.

“Is it the same for you, oh my sister and brother?” she said wearily. “Does the Dark haunt your dreams? There’s no rest for me anymore. Perhaps it’s a just reward, for I’ve slept long enough and woke to Tormay in such a sad state. There’s blood on our hands now, not just poor brother wind, but all this land, I fear. There’s no time left for sleep, for the Dark is in my dreams.”

The candle flame did not flicker. The light reflected off the surface of the water in the bowl. All around, though, was darkness.

“Maybe we’ll have our rest, someday, but not now. Are you awake, like me? I saw the face of our brother wind in my dream, and he was soaring through the heights. It seemed as if he turned his face and smiled as if he were a child, as he was when the world was still young. But then the darkness took him, like a wave mounting up across the sky. It blotted out the sky and I do not know where he has gone.”

Her voice faltered into silence and there was no response.

“I don’t know where any of you are gone,” Levoreth said. “But he is gone and I do not think he will return.”

The darkness chuckled from somewhere behind her. She stiffened for an instant and then turned. The bedroom was filled with shadows and, outside through the window, clouds had hidden the moon.

“You have no part here,” she said. “This is an old house. An ancient house that has faithfully served Tormay all these long years. I set my hand upon the cornerstone when it was laid. You have no part here.”

Thy hand upon the cornerstone. What do I care for such things? Even thy accursed blood cannot keep me out if the minds of men bid me welcome of their own accord.
The darkness chuckled again.
And they have bid me welcome.

“Then I shall hunt them down,” she said, her voice hardening. “I shall hunt them down and spill their blood onto my earth until, blood for blood, the evil is gone and you are banished back to your sleep in Daghoron.”

Fret not, little Mistress. Thou hast discourse with my dreams, for I sleep still. It is only my servants that trouble thee and thine. I have set them marching, one puppet stumbling along from one side, another from another. If all do well, then I am glad. But if only one does well, then still am I glad. If they destroy and devour each other, then what do I care? My dreams are warmed and I shall find others. Mayhap one such shall make thy acquaintance.

“I pray the day be soon,” she said viciously.

For thy tender sake, I think not
, said the voice.

The wood under her feet creaked and lent her the memory of forests and deep woods, strong roots reaching down into the depths to find their strength. The stone walls on all sides groaned and gave her the memory of the mountains towering up into the sky, a ponderous weight redolent with centuries of wisdom and patience. The buds in the vase by her bed broke into bloom and filled the room with their sweet scent.

“I do not fear the servants of the Dark.”

 
Ah
, said the voice,
thy brother wind did not fear either, but he did not fare well at the edge of a knife.

Perhaps the voice would have said more, but Levoreth flung out her arms and, hands shaking, traced the ancient names of stone and wood and earth in the air. They hung there shining and then faded into the walls and floor and ceiling. The room was silent. She sank onto the bed. Her hands stopped shaking after a moment.

“Well, that’s that,” she said dully. “No use crying now. A hundred years too late, probably. No choice now but to see it out, even if everything falls to ruin.”

She wiped her eyes and washed her face one more time. She hurriedly dressed and then left her room. The hallway was quiet and dark. She paused outside her uncle and aunt’s room and listened. From within, there came the faint sound of slow, even breathing. She sketched a sign on the door and watched the letters disappear into the wood.

Her awareness drifted five floors down into the depths of the castle, beneath cobwebs and shadows and dusty memories. She sensed the old cornerstone embedded in the bedrock of the cliff. Her name was inscribed upon it, and she could feel the love marked in every character, drawn by her fingertip and still stained dark with her blood.

But there’s always another way to open a door, isn’t there?

The moon sailed high in the sky. A glitter of stars was thrown across the darkness like splintered light scattered by some ancient hand. She could smell the sea. Glass and copper lamps set on iron poles spilled radiance in pools across the cobbled ground. Three young Vomarone nobles staggered up the steps past her, ale fumes eddying in their wake. Someone said, “Good evening, milady,” but she did not stop to smile or see.

How I wish for my wolves.

The castle gates loomed before her. A troop of mounted soldiers clattered past, and as the minds of the horses hurried by, they caught at hers in a swell of wonder and questions and delight. She heard one neigh and the voice of its rider murmuring to the horse, and then the whole troop vanished into the night and down the avenue stretching into the darkness and winding through the trees and stately stone houses of Highneck Rise.

Horses.

She paused and considered. A soldier at the gate came to attention. Moonlight spilled across his helm, across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. Shadow welled up in his eyes. It seemed as if he only had a skull instead of a face. Not enough flesh these days.

“Milady,” said the skull respectfully.

Levoreth frowned at him, distracted and not even hearing him. The Guardsman reddened and tried to look somewhere else.

Horses.

Horses and wolves.

She turned and strode away.

The stables were on the north side of the castle, past a rambling garden filled with grape arbors and edged with grass. Several mice peeped at her from under the leaves of a bush. Their black eyes shone with starlight and awe.

Mistress of Mistresses.

“Beware the Dark, little ones,” she said.

They blinked at her, too scared to say anything further.

“Tell your cousins, the vole and the shrew, the rat and the rabbit, the mole and squirrel, that the Dark has come to this city. Beware.”

The mice chittered their assent and scampered into the bushes.

She inhaled the warm scent of horse, of oats and hay and contentment. Light shone from the stable windows. The stable was fashioned of oak and stone and was finer than most of the houses in Hearne. The regent loved horses. Levoreth smiled. Botrell was a fool on the best of days, but he loved horses. Inside, a lantern hanging from a hook illuminated straw and wood and the rows of polished leather tack gleaming on the wall. Up and down the corridor, horses poked their heads out of their stalls and stared at her in wonder.

Mistress of Mistresses.

In the stall nearest her, an old man was currying a mare down with brushes strapped to his hands.

“Don’t let me disturb you,” she said.

The old man did not respond or look at her. The mare swung her heavy head around and blew her breath across the old man’s shoulders. He glanced up and saw Levoreth.

“Don’t let me disturb you,” she repeated.

He touched his ear with one brush, smiled apologetically and went back to his currying.

Mistress of Mistresses.

The mare’s liquid brown eyes gazed at her.

The old one has not the use of his ears, silly little hairless things that they are.

And she nibbled affectionately at the old man’s shirt. Her own ears flicked forward, attentive to Levoreth’s step. Wood creaked as horses leaned against the gates of their stalls. Hooves stamped on straw. She walked between the stalls and touched each silken nose. Thoughts came jumbled and fast at her. Memories poured into her mind, eagerly shared by the horses. Sunlight flooded across open fields. Speed and wind and the arc of the ever-present sky. Joy—fierce, irrepressible, and pounding through their veins like a heartbeat, like the staccato of hooves galloping upon the green earth. They wanted to show her, to run for her out under the sun. The older ones stood stock-still, but the younger ones kicked at the slats of their stalls.

“Peace, children,” she said.

What was he like?
A foal pushed his head against her hand. Disapproving snorts came from his elders nearby.

“Who?”

Min the Morn! Your steed. The eldest of our kind.

She smiled and stroked the foal’s long brown ears.

“He was like the wind.”

The wind, the wind!
The foal nickered.
Would that I ran like the wind.

An old bay snorted.
The wind calls to us these days, but we are of the earth. We are thine.

“Children, I would have one of you do something for me.”

Every ear in the stable flicked forward. Every liquid eye gleamed on her. The only sound to be heard was the whisper of the old man’s brushes on the hide of the mare. Levoreth plucked up a strand of straw and wound it around her finger.

“Who is the fastest here? Who is the fleetest of hoof and strongest of heart? For I need one who can run without ceasing, through day and night and back into day.”

The stable erupted into a clamoring torrent. Thoughts galloped through her mind, flickering in and out of colors and shapes and across an endless expanse of plain. Names jarred into her head like the beat of hooves pounding the ground, stuttered and shouted, each one louder than the last and each one trembling with excitement. Joy.

She could not help smiling.

Peace!
The old bay stamped his heavy hoof.
Peace!

“Thank you,” she said.

All here are fast, Mistress.
The bay swiveled a wise eye at her. His mane was as smooth as silk under her hands.
All here are fast, for our master has a rough understanding of the way of our folk. He is not a Farrow, but he spends his gold well in the pursuit of our kind. All here are fast, but there is one who is faster than all.

The bay snorted a sort of laugh.
Aye, faster than all, though our master knows it not. He thinks that yon Seadale is the best of our lot, and we do nothing to dissuade him. But there, Mistress, in the furthest stall, stands one faster and, though I know not what you want, he will do it for you or his heart will fail in the trying, for there is good blood in him.

A chorus of apologetic assent pattered through her mind. The stable spoke softly now, and even though each head was fixed on her, turning as she walked to the last stall, there was no envy in their voices—pride and eagerness, yes, but it was for the horse who stood before her. He would run for her and he would run for the stable.

“How should I call you?”

S-S-Swallowfoot, Mistress. I am called Swallowfoot.

Swallowfoot ducked his head, abashed. He looked young to her, perhaps two years old at most. His body was a collection of sharp angles and overly long bones, all covered over with a tightly stretched hide of muddy brown.

“Can you run?”

Aye, Mistress.
His head came up.
My dam was Evana, she that was the steed of Declan Farrow—

“The steed of Declan Farrow?” she said.

She was the fleetest of our kin to run the plains.
He did a little hop in place, all four hooves bunched together.
Near fast as the wind, she was. She ran for her master and she always told me when I was a colt—“Listen well, Swallowfoot, for you are a child of the Farrows, though you know them not”—that I should wait until I found my own and then I would run and run and run!

“How did you come to this stable? You are far from the plains and the Farrows.” But, even as Levoreth spoke, she knew the answer.

The master of my dam was cruelly used in the south, in Vomaro.
Swallowfoot spun around in his stall in excitement and anger.
Cruelly used by evil men, for all men in Vomaro are evil! So said my dam. He was taken from her and she never saw him again. And there, in that green land which will be ever cursed by my blood, I was born to her after many lonely years.