The Shadow at the Gate (32 page)

“Not dead, is he?” said the first man. “It’ll be your neck if he is.”

“Oh no, my lord,” said the jailer. “He ain’t dead. Eats his food quick enough, he does, an’ today he up and tries to grab me—right through the bars as I was makin’ my rounds. You want me to roust the beggar out, my lord?”

The keys gleamed in his hand and jingled against the lock.

“Nay, leave be, jailer. I don't have time.”

The first man turned back toward the cell.

“Listen, boy, for I know you can hear me through your shamming. Savor this cell and your stone pillow well, for it’s the only pleasant thing you’ve left to feel. You’ll not live out the night.”

Still, there was no response from the cell. The man spun away from it with an impatient snarl.

“And you, jailer—the hour after midnight, you be at the stairway door with your keys. You will be so good to hand them over then. Be sure to scrub them well, for I want none of your stench on them.”

“Yes, m’lord.”

The two men strode away down the passageway. After a moment, the jailer shambled off, and soon there were only the shadows and the stone walls. Jute darted across to the cell.

“Lena,” he said.

The shabby heap in the corner of the cell quivered into life. Her eyes blinked, staring and huge, and then she flew at him. Her hands reached through the bars and he caught them in his own. They shook in his grasp.

“Jute!”

“Shh! You’ll be out of here soon enough. I’ll steal the keys and we’ll be out.”

“You heard him.” Her teeth chattered. “An hour past midnight.”

“We’ll be out long before then—shh.”

“I almost turned when he spoke. I almost screamed an’ turned. . .”

He soothed Lena until her teeth no longer chattered and her hands no longer shook. She curled back up in the corner obediently, but the last glimpse he had of her was of two eyes. Then she turned her face to the wall and there was only a heap of ragged clothing lying there.

It shouldn’t be difficult, Jute told himself. Just find the jailer. Just find the jailer and you’ll have the keys and that’ll be it. He’s practically deaf and dumb. I could steal the shirt off his back. Not difficult at all.

But the jailer was not to be found.

The passage meandered in both directions for a considerable way. It twisted and turned and digressed into side tunnels and alcoves. It took Jute quite a while to be certain he had covered every foot of the place. The walls were lined with barred cells, but there were no other prisoners. In most of parts of the tunnel there were none of the oil lamps that lit the area where Lena was locked up. Jute took one down from the wall and crept about with the hot metal scorching his hand. Cobwebs shrouded the stones. A spider scuttled across the floor and climbed the wall. It was much bigger than any spider he had ever seen. The lamplight caught in its mass of eyes, glittering and shining like a wealth of tiny jewels. He tiptoed past the thing. He shivered and imagined those dozens of eyes watching him, all swiveling at the same time, intent on him.

He did not find any other doors beside the one the jailer had disappeared through, except for one door at the opposite end of the maze of tunnels. It was at the end of a passage well lit with lamps and swept clean of spiderwebs. The door handle turned smoothly and silently under his hand and he stopped, wary of what came easily. He listened to everything around him, but he could hear only the silence of the stone walls. But then he remembered the ward that governed the terrible staircase in the university, and the silence of those steps that had almost sent him falling to his death. He listened again, his eyes shut, and then he heard. Rather, it was what he could not hear. It was not just silence. It was an absence. He could not hear anything through the door. He pressed his ear against the cold iron to be sure, but there was nothing there. The absence of silence was not silence, but it was dangerously close.

Jute settled back on his heels and pondered. It had to be a ward of some sort. If so, it was the only ward he had found in the entire sprawl of tunnels. Therefore, whatever lay behind it must be important. And, if one had a dungeon where people were kept locked up in cells, then surely the most important door would be the exit.

He examined the thought and found it reasonable. But even if it was reasonable, the conclusion didn’t help him. The door was still warded. However, ward or no ward, he would have to see what lay behind the door. He took a deep breath and filled his mind with the memory of sky, for the memory of sky is composed first of silence, and then of a distance that recedes beyond the reaches of sight. Even there, the wind blows in silence. The sky flooded into his mind, replete with stillness and plucking at his thoughts with the cold, familiar fingers of the wind.

The handle turned under his hand and he pulled the door open.

Just as quickly, he shut the door. Stumbled backwards and crouched there in the middle of the floor, trembling. Sweat sprang from his forehead. He stared at the handle, willing it not to turn.

The door did not open.

Jute sighed thankfully and turned away.

When the door had opened, several inches ajar, he had seen a flight of stone steps mounting up. But, in that brief instant, he had seen a horrifying thing. Several steps up, the stone had shifted—in less than the blink of an eye—hard, flat surfaces becoming fluid, bending and shaping and rising up into the semblance of a gigantic head without eyes or nose or ears but split near in two by a gaping mouth crowded with teeth like shattered rock. The head strained toward him, mouth stretching wider and wider, and then he had slammed the door shut.

Some wards could not be evaded by silence. This was one. Opening the door activated the thing. It was as simple as that. It would take a spell to keep the steps stone and the head in slumber. Perhaps just a single word.

He settled in a dark corner near Lena’s cell and listened to her even breathing. She was asleep. Minutes drifted by—each one more valuable than the last. A yawn forced its way from his mouth and he rubbed at his eyes. His head hurt. He hadn’t noticed it until he had sat down.

And then he realized something. Right when the door had opened, he had felt a dizzying impression of whispers. It had only been for an instant. The sight of the head welling up from the steps had blotted the impression from his mind.

Jute’s headache pulsed with each heartbeat. He knew it was the result of the whispers. The whispers of hundreds of wards all concentrated in one place. Strange. The pain felt familiar, as if he had been in the vicinity of those particular wards before. Where had it been? He couldn’t remember.

How much more time until the hour after midnight?

Surely the jailer will come again on his rounds before then.

I’ll steal the key, and then—and then. . .

Jute’s eyes closed and his head fell forward on his chest. The jailer passed by three times more, but neither of the two saw the other, for the boy was sound asleep and the jailer noticed little even when awake.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE REGENT’S BALL

 
The wind blew through the eucalyptus trees lining the lane that climbed up into the neighborhood of Highneck Rise. It moaned in the branches, wandering back and forth as if it were looking for something it could not find. Ronan hunched his shoulders as he walked along. The new coat he was wearing felt stiff around his neck. It chafed his skin. His hands felt cold and his mouth was dry, but that had nothing to do with his new clothing. A cat ran across the lane in front of him. It paused for a moment and stared at him before disappearing into the bushes along a wall.

“Good hunting,” said Ronan.

He rattled the two rings in his pocket and wondered how the prince of Harth had explained their loss to the regent or the court chamberlain or whoever it was that saw about such things. At any rate, it was not his concern. Lords and ladies and all that lot could go jump into the sea and be done with, for all he cared, though the prince was a superb swordsman. And a decent fellow, he had to admit that. The rest of them could go drown in the sea.

The sea.

Even if he never saw her again after tonight, the sea would always be there. All the more reason to go north to the Flessoray Islands. Life there was defined by the sea, outlined and delineated just as each island was hemmed about and held by the tide.

He turned down the Street of Willows and pushed through the gate outside the Galnes manor. Light shone in the kitchen window. A door opened and he could see the slim form of the girl.

Her.

The ancient sea.

“You’re hungry,” Liss said.

He said nothing.

“And it’s early yet. Come inside.”

The old cook was at the sink again, just like the first time he had been there. She turned and smiled. Her wrinkled skin seemed to waver in the light and he blinked, for he thought he saw a seal, one of the brown seals that were forever sunning on the rocks off the shore.

“I’ve made a nice casserole of leeks and eggs,” said the cook. “You’ll have to eat a great deal of it, as I don’t eat such things and my lady eats as delicately as a sandpiper fidgeting about the sand.”

“And what do you eat?” he asked.

“I haven’t fidgeted in five hundred years,” said Liss, but she smiled at the old cook.

“Fish, mostly,” said the cook, clattering dishes onto the table. “Now, eat.”

He ate, and it was good, as he knew it would be. Liss sat across from him and took three bites before laying her fork down.

“What, not tasty enough for you?” said the cook. “I’ll have you know I grew those leeks myself in the garden here.”

“Hush, Sanna,” said Liss. “Two bites would have satisfied me, but I took a third out of appreciation for you.”

He glanced up and found her gazing at him. Until that moment, he had not really looked at her. It was the melancholy of the day, perhaps, or the ache in his throat that had kept his eyes from her. Put off the moment, he thought dismally, and then it’ll never come. Then it’ll never be ended. Then it’ll never be past. I should’ve walked slower.

Liss wore a simple blue gown of a strange material that looked as if it had been woven of foam and water and slow, thick light. It floated around her wrists as though it moved on an invisible tide, and it lapped up around her white neck where it halted at a string of pearls. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a sheaf of heavy, glossy black. She was entirely beautiful and he could not be glad for such a thing, for it only made him more conscious of himself and the dull, tired pain that was him. He put down his fork.

“How shall you bring me into the castle, Ronan of Aum?” she said.

“That isn’t my name,” he said bitterly. “Just as Liss is not yours.”

“I know.”

“Then why do you call me Ronan?”

“You must take back who you are in your own time. There’s little of your past that I do not know. Remember, a drop of my blood flows in your veins.” She smiled slightly. “The sea is patient. It always returns to the land to see what might be found. Each grain of sand is known and counted, but the future is still of your choosing, even though for the rest of your life you shall feel the tide pulling you its way.” Her smile deepened.

He bowed his head.

“Two ward rings.”

The two rings spilled from his hand and clinked on the tabletop. Liss picked one up and gazed at it curiously. The ring was too big for her fingers but it settled snugly around her thumb.

“Wearing it will satisfy the wards guarding the castle that you’re not an intruder. The regent gives all such rings to his guests and to his servants. It’s similar to that—”

“Ah yes,” said Liss. “The other ring.”

“Which, in your possession, would’ve easily allowed you entrance to the castle without my assistance. Without this charade.” He was conscious of anger pricking at his thoughts. Resentment.

“Yes, I could have. Perhaps.” She smiled again and said nothing beyond that.

Liss wrapped herself in a dark cloak that extinguished the glimmer of her gown. Torchlight shone in the street beyond the wall. A horse whickered and the gate swung open under the hand of a bowing driver. The gilded shape of a carriage loomed past him. Ronan took Liss’s hand and helped her up the steps to her seat.

“A carriage.” She smiled at him. “It’s been a very long time.”

The driver called to his team, and then they were away as the horses broke into a trot. Moonlight shone in through the windows on either side. The silence and darkness of Highneck Rise slid by, all stone walls and gates and occasional lit windows seen from across the gardens and groves. The road wound higher and higher up through the night and, as they went, the manors grew larger and the walls grew higher. They did not speak as the carriage rolled along. The silence between them filled with the rolling clatter of the carriage wheels and the tattoo of the horses’ hooves. Beyond it, Ronan thought he could hear the low boom of the surf surging against the shore. He looked at Liss, but her eyes were closed.

After several minutes, the carriage eased to a halt as the lane turned into a wide drive that curved about a fountain. The door swung open and the driver bowed them out. Liss slipped one hand into Ronan’s arm. Water shot up from the mouth of an immense stone fish and splashed down into a pool. The falling water rippled with torchlight, and everywhere there was the liquid gleam of silks and satins as carriages rolled to a halt. The castle gates stood beyond the fountain. Lords and ladies drifted through the gates and past the ranks of Guardsmen standing at attention. The soldiers gazed with unblinking eyes through the nobility as if they were shadows—pleasant wraiths to be dismissed as daydreams. They looked past to the night itself, which seemed to have tiptoed as closely as possible to the windows of the castle as if it might peer inside to learn of balls and dancing and other such wonderments. At the end of the lane, the night plunged down to the city below. Lights glittered there like a thousand stars gleaming through a thousand holes pricked in a tapestry of darkness. The sky above was just the same.