The Shadow at the Gate (9 page)

There.

The sensation was coming from the southwest.

She turned a corner. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air.

The sensation was getting stronger. It wasn’t like a worm anymore. It was more like the finger of a dead man trailing against her skin. Gentle, but hard, with bone under the cold flesh. It stank of death.

She shoved back against it with her mind.

And the finger recoiled.

It vanished.

Instantly, she flung her thoughts wide, hunting through the silence and the darkness that exists on the edge of the mind. She was dimly aware of countless lives flickering in the darkness. Tiny stars gleaming in the night. Thoughts floated by, blind to her, but they were only the lives of Hearne’s people, heedless of the danger that lurked within their city.

How long had the spell been in existence?

Her thoughts raced through the darkness. Nothing. Another thousand lives flashed by. Candle flames. But their lives would be counted as nothing if such a spell were allowed to continue. How many generations had already spent their lives in sleep under the spell?

Sleep possesses three doors. The first door opens from the day. We walk through into sleep. The second door opens on the other side of sleep into the morning. We walk through into the morning.

And the third door?

The third door opens into darkness. And if a sleeper stayed lost in sleep for too long, then the door would open and the Dark would come in.

Then, just when Levoreth was about to give up, she stiffened. A scent lingered in the darkness, far out on the edge of her thoughts. Almost due south now. The scent was faint but unmistakable. The stench of the Dark.

Her eyes flared green.

She ran. Her skirts whipped around her legs, sodden with water. She splashed across a street and darted down an alley. The cobblestones were slick, but she ran sure-footedly, vaulting over garbage piles and dodging around corners. The twilight had deepened into night. The clouds were thickening and the sky was gone. A wind arose, slashing the rain down sideways.

The touch of the spell wriggled frantically in her thoughts, desperate to escape her, but it could not. She held to the scent as surely as a bloodhound, as surely as a wolf tracking its kill across the snow. She furled the umbrella without slowing and tucked it under one arm. Her hair whipped free from its pins, heavy with water.

A couple of men—fishermen, by the smell of them—hurried up the street toward her, their heads bent down under the rain. She ran by, and they did not see her. It seemed she ran in a world of silence, a world of darkness and blurred stone and light hiding secure behind shutters. The rain lashed against her face and she smelt woodsmoke cooling in the air. Somewhere in front of her, somewhere in the city and not far away now, was the spell.

Abruptly, she stopped running.

Before her, a street made its crooked way into the evening. Several doors down was an inn. Light streamed from its windows. She could hear laughter and the sound of voices coming from the inn. The street seemed all the colder and darker because of the cheeriness of the sound and the light. Past the inn, however, and on the other side of the street, was a house.

The house was wedged between what looked like a warehouse on one side and a second house on the other. It was shabby and tall, three stories in total, with a sharply pitched roof underneath the chimneys teetering up into the sky. Every window was shuttered and dark. It looked like an empty house, a house that had not been lived in for many years. A dead house.

But the house was not dead. It was alive.

A ward buzzed on the edges of her mind. It was woven about the house. Her thoughts feathered around it, touching and tasting and smelling. The ward was old. Hundreds of years old. It listened to her, coiled as tight as a snake ready to strike. Behind the ward crouched the house. Within the house was the spell. It stank of malice and ancient intent and death.

How long have you been here, you abomination? She whispered the words in her mind.

Long enough, Mistress. Long enough.

The voice of the spell was dry and dusty, creaking as if it were made up of the sounds of footsteps on stairs, of echoes in empty hallways and the drip of water in a dark basement.

Your time here is at an end. This is my land. These are my people.

You did your people well, you foolish old woman. I have lulled your people to sleep for these hundreds of years. Them and you. It is what I was woven for and I have done my job well. You shall die this night and I shall remain until my master returns once again. My lullaby continues, Mistress, and Tormay sleeps.

Who is your master? Tell me!

But the voice fell silent and would not answer.

The ward triggered when she was about fifty feet away from the house. Instinctively, she flung her mind wide to contain it.

Death darkness death
—and the ward crashed into her. It had been woven hundreds of years ago—she could feel the age in it—but it had lost none of its potency. Whoever had woven it had been a master. The blow would have leveled a stone building, would have shattered minds and bodies, but her own mind was filled with the earth. She staggered with the impact, but the earth was heavy and deep and old, and it could not be moved.

The ward coiled back on itself and then lashed out again, humming and buzzing and hissing with malevolence.

Death death death!

Dimly, as if from far away, she could still hear the sounds of laughter and conversation from the inn nearby. She could not see the inn, however, for it was as if she looked down a tunnel, blurred stone and light and the bent lines of walls and chimneys on either side. At the end of the tunnel stood the house, waiting for her. The door was in perfect clarity. Raindrops gleamed on the door handle.

The earth lay silent within her mind. Damp earth, full of patience and stone. Roots sank down into darkness and weight. The ward slammed against the earth, hungry to destroy, ravenous to kill and shatter and rend, but the earth absorbed it in silence. She could smell loam and moss in her mind and she felt the tickle of grass against her skin.

She found herself standing before the door. The handle broke in her grasp and the door swung open. She stepped within and shut the door. It was dark inside. She whispered a word and three fireflies flew from her hand. They gave off only a tiny glow, but the darkness was so complete that their little light was sufficient.

A hall stretched away before her. Doors on either side stood shut. Halfway down the hall, a staircase climbed up into the darkness. The stink of death filled the air. She blinked, momentarily stunned by the smell. A presence battered against her mind. The fireflies winked out.

“Avert!”

One by one, the fireflies blinked back into life. The presence vanished and the silence of the earth filled in around her mind. She coughed, choking on the smell. On her right was a small room, empty of everything except dust and shadows. She threw open the window and breathed the cold, clean night air that flooded in.

“There,” she said.

The stairs creaked under her. The fireflies crowded in close around her head and she had to wave them away.

“Go on now,” she said. “You’re safe with me.”

Reluctantly, they hovered in front of her.

The stairs were covered with dust, but here and there, in the faint light of the fireflies, Levoreth could see footprints. She knelt to examine the steps in front of her. The fireflies floated down. The dust bore evidence of several different kinds of footprints. She frowned. But there was something strange about the marks.

Here was the paw print of a dog. Here was that of a cat. And here was the shoe print of a small human. A child, no doubt. The prints were faint, but it seemed there were many different dogs, different cats, different children. They had not all climbed the stairs at once, but over the course of many years. Many years.

She touched the print of a cat’s paw with one finger and realized what was strange about the marks. All of them ascended the stairs, but only one kind of print ascended and descended. It was that of an older child. Or a small human.

“Earth and stone.” Her voice trailed away.

She shivered. And understood.

Hoped, desperately hoped she was wrong.

Levoreth hurried up the stairs, not caring that the fireflies could not keep up. The darkness grew, but she did not fear it. Her eyes shone like those of a cat. She muttered under her breath and more fireflies fell from her hands. They trailed behind her like a river of stars. She reached the top of the stairs and another hall lay before her. Doors stood open on either side, filled with dust and silence. She followed the jumble of footprints down the hall to a third set of stairs.

Please, no.

Let it not be so.

Please.

The stairs creaked under her. Fireflies shone in her hair. She reached the top of the stairs and another hall lay before her. A door stood at the far end. She stopped. The house remained silent around her, though she thought she could hear rain pattering on the roof. But something waited in the silence. She could feel it, just past the door at the end of the hall.

“Earth and stone,” Levoreth said. She took a deep breath. “For how many hundreds of years has this been so? It is to this place all my uneasy dreams blindly looked, and past this cursed house, past this place to the Dark. I am afraid to open the door.”

She took a deep breath and then walked down the hall. The door opened at her touch.

She fell into darkness.

No stars.

No light.

No up.

No down.

Nothingness.

Only sleep.

Endless sleep.

A door opened in the darkness. Memory shone through like light. Drowsing in the cemetery behind the church in Andolan. Afternoon sunlight like honey. Bees drifting in the air. Herself napping next to an old headstone.
Dolan Callas
.

Sleep.

It would be a relief.

The darkness pressed closer.

And another headstone next to the other.
Levoreth Callas
. Beloved wife and mother. Roses blooming on the wall. The scarlet petals ready to drift down and die. When it was their time. It was her time. Her eyes opened. It was not her time. When it was her time, she would go willing. She would go rejoicing, for she was weary. But not now. Not this day.

Fireflies flew from her hands. They winked and shone and flashed, spinning around her, and the darkness fled away. She stood in a room without windows. The air was close and foul. It stank of blood, and there was a tremble of misery and pain and fear in it. Her stomach clenched. Before her was a table on which lay a piece of parchment. She forced herself to step closer.

The words of the spell had been written in a bold hand, in dark ink that was not precisely black but something else. Something dried and flaking. She shuddered. Past the table, in the corner, was a heap of what looked like rags of old clothing, but here and there was a shard of bone. The skull of a cat grinned up at her from beneath a torn shirt.

She screamed.

In fury. Rage. For the sorrow of it all.

They all screamed
, said the spell. It chuckled. The whisper of it in her mind was filled with malice.

They all screamed. But no one heard them, Mistress. No one. Not you. Were you not their protector? Were you not their bulwark? Where were you in their last moments? Sweet, all of them, and their blood has kept me strong all these years. I hold their fear and their pain still. So many years.

“Who wrote you?” she shouted. “Who was your master?!”

Better you never know
, sneered the spell.
Better you go down to your grave and never know, for you are weak earth and stone. He will bind you and bring you into the endless night. You will sleep deep. Deeper even than the sleep I gave you these last hundreds and hundreds of years.

“I’ll strip the knowledge from your cursed ink!”

Too late, Mistress.

The parchment collapsed into dust before her hand could touch it.

Her fist slammed down on the table. The dust of the parchment drifted down to the floor. A sigh whispered through the air. She stood for a moment with bowed head over the sad little pile of rags and fur and bones. The fireflies hovered around her.

Levoreth turned and left the room.

The house shivered around her. She could hear the rain still tapping on the roof. The wind blew along the walls and it sounded like someone sighing. A stair creaked under her. She turned, her skin crawling as if someone was watching her. Above her, at the top of the stairs, the shadows seemed crowded with the ghostly shapes of cats and dogs and children. They stared down at her without moving or speaking.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry.”

Still, they did not move.

“Rest well now. Nothing can hold you to this place any longer.”