Spirit Gate

by Kate Elliott

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbled. He stank, poor lad, and there was snot all over his face. He cringed like a dog. “I’m sorry, Pap. I’ll never do it again. It’s just I didn’t want you to marry her, but I know I’m being selfish. It’s not like you didn’t mourn Mam what was fitting. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll never cause you trouble again. Please let me come home.”

  Marit smiled.

  Faron wept as he lifted the boy and embraced him. The girl in red grabbed the precious silk bolts and ran them into the safety of the inn.

  Once the first commotion subsided they tried to press gifts on her. She refused everything but food and drink to carry with her for her evening’s meal. That was the rule. No gifts meant no bribes, and once she made it clear she’d not budge, they respected her wishes.

  “You’ll not spend the night?” asked Faron. “You can have my best bed. A reeve can take lodging.”

  “Lodging and food,” agreed Marit. “That’s allowed. But I can’t stay. I’ve a fellow reeve to meet at sunset, up near the summit.”

  “Beware those Devouring youths,” said an unrepentant Vatta. The old woman had the wicked grin of a soul that hasn’t yet done making mischief. “I should know. I was one of Her hierodules once, before I got married.”

  Marit laughed. The boy sniveled, chastened and repentant, and Faron wrung her hand gratefully. Maybe there were a few happy endings still to be had.

  JOSS WAS WAITING for her at Candle Rock, just as they’d agreed five nights past. The rock was too stony to harbor trees; a few hardy tea willows grew out of deep cracks where water melt pooled, and spiny starflowers straggled along the steep northern slope. Candle Rock provided no cover except the shelter of the craggy overhang where firewood was stowed. No man or woman could reach it without the aid of flying beast, so reeves patrolling over the Liya Pass commonly met here to exchange news and gossip and to haul up wood for the signal fire kept ready in case of emergency.

  She saw Joss standing beside the smaller fire pit, which was ringed with white stones like drippings of wax. The fire burned merrily and he already had meat roasting on a spit. The young reeve had his back to the setting sun and was looking east up at the ridge of hill whose familiar profile they called Ammadit’s Tit, which despite the name was held by the hierarchs to be sacred to the Lady of Beasts.

  Showing off, Flirt made a smooth landing on the height. Joss raised a hand in greeting as Marit slipped out of her harness and walked down to the fire.

  “Mmm,” she said, kissing him. “Eat first, or after?”

  He grinned, ducking his head in that way that was so fetching; he was still a little shy.

  She tousled his black hair. “Shame you have to keep it cut.”

  They kissed a while longer. He was young and tall and slender and a good fit, the best fit she’d ever found in her ten years as a reeve. He wasn’t boastful or cocky. Some reeves, puffed up with the gloat of having been chosen by an eagle and granted the authority to patrol, thought that also meant they could lord it over the populace. He wasn’t a stiff-chinned and tight-rumped bore, either, stuck on trivial niceties of the law. It was true he had a sharp eye and a sharp tongue and a streak of unexpected recklessness, but he was a competent reeve all the same, with a good instinct for people. Like the one he had now, knowing what she wanted.

  Grease sizzled as it fell into the flames. The sun’s rim touched the western hills.

  “Best see to Flirt,” he said, pulling back. “I sent Scar out to hunt and there’s no telling when he’ll get back. You know Flirt’s temper.”

  She laughed softly. “Yes, she’ll not like him moving in where she’s roosting. I’ll make sure she’s settled.”

  Flirt was cleaning herself. With a resignation born of exhaustion, she accepted her demotion to the hollow where Candle Rock dipped to the southwest to make a natural bowl with some protection from the wind. Marit chained her to one of the rings hammered into the rock, hooded and jessed her. Then she skinned her out of her harness, greased the spot it chafed, and, with an old straw broom she found stuck in a crevice, swept droppings out of the bowl.

  “You’ll eat tomorrow, girl,” she said, but Flirt had already settled into her resting stupor, head dipped under one wing. It was getting dark. Wind died as the sun set.

  She hoisted the harness, her pack, her hood, and her rolled-up cloak over her shoulders and trudged up a path cut into the rock, back to the fire. Off to her left the rock face plunged down to where the road cut up toward the summit, seen as a darkening saddle off to the south. Joss was sitting on the white stones, carving up meat onto a wooden platter. She admired the cut of his shoulders and the curve of his neck. The touch of the Devourer teased her, right down to her core. He looked up and grinned again, eyes crinkling tight. She tossed down harness and weapons, pulled the platter out of his hands, set it down, and tumbled him.

  “Cloaks,” he muttered when he could get in a word.

  “Oh. Yes.”

  He’d already spread out his traveling cloak and tossed his blanket down on top of it. It was a warm night without clouds and they really only needed a little padding to protect flesh from stone.

  “Mmm,” she said later, when they lay tangled together. He was stroking her breasts and belly absently as he stared up at the brilliant spray of stars. She dragged the platter of meat close up and fed him bits and pieces.

  “Do you ever think—?” he started.

  “Not when I see you.”

  He chuckled, but he wasn’t as much in thrall to the Devourer as she was. Sated, he had a tendency to spin out dreams and idle thoughts, which she never minded because she liked the feel of him lying beside her. He had a good smell, clean sweat but also the bracing perfume of juniper from the soaps his mother sent once a year to Copper Hall. “Just thinking about what I did today. There was a knife fight at a woodsmen’s camp east of summit ridge, out into wild country. Both men stabbed, one like to die.”

  “Sorry,” she said, wincing. “Murders are the worst.”

  “I wish it were so,” he said, wisely for one so young.

  “What do you mean?” She speared a chunk of meat with his knife, spun it consideringly, then ate. The meat was almost bitter; a coney, maybe, something stringy and rodent-like. “I’ve got bread and cheese for the morning. Better than this. Got you no provisions for your pains today?”

  “Not a swallow. They were happy to be rid of me. I was wondering if you’d come back with me. A few of them had the debt scar—” He touched the ridge of his brow just to the left of his left eye, where folk who sold their labor into debt servitude were tattooed with a curving line.“—and hair grown out raggedly to cover it.”

  “You think some were runaway slaves.”

  “Maybe so. It’s likely. And then what manner of law-abiding persons would take such men in, I wonder? They made me nervous, like they had knives hidden behind their backs.” He shuddered under her hands.

  “I’ll come. No use courting trouble. They’ll not kick with two eagles staring them down.”

  Abruptly he sat up, tilting his head back. “Ah. There he is.”

  A shadow covered them briefly. The big eagle had a deer in his claws. He released it, and the corpse fell hard to the ground at the eastern edge of the rock, landing with a meaty thunk. Scar landed with a soft scrape and after a silence tore into his prey. Bones cracked. From across the height Flirt screamed a challenge, but Scar kept at his meat, ignoring her. Flirt yelped twice more, irritated, but she wouldn’t be particularly hungry yet. She’d settle and sleep. Marit yawned.

  Joss wasn’t done worrying over the problem. “I have to go back in two days to see if the man died, and then what’s to do? I’m to conduct a hearing? They’ve no captain, and the arkhon at the nearest village—Sandy Falls—told me he’ll have nothing to do with the matter. Maybe the lord of Iliyat will agree to sit in judgment.”

  “That’s a long way for Lord Radas’s arm to reach. He’s young in his position, too. His uncl
e died just two years ago, and he’s still testing his wings. I don’t expect this will fall under his authority. We should be able to handle it. Honestly, sweetheart, no matter how ugly a murder is, it won’t be the first time two drunk men settled their argument with a knife.”

  “I know,” he said a little more desperately than the situation seemed to call for, “but reeves aren’t meant to judge. It’s the place of the Guardians to hold assizes to settle such grievances and disputes, those that can’t be resolved by local councils.”

  “True enough,” she agreed. “I had to mediate in a boundary dispute this morning. I’ve shifted a hundred stone markers in the last ten years, and I don’t like it any better now than I did the first time. Half of them don’t like that I’m a woman, but they’ll say nothing with Flirt at my back. Still. No Guardian’s been seen for—oh—since my grandfather was a boy. Maybe longer.”

  “The Guardians don’t exist. They’re just a story.”

  She gave him a light shove, because his words disturbed her. “Great Lady! That’s nineteen years’ bad luck for saying such a thing! Anyway, my grandfather remembered the assizes from back when they were held properly. He saw a Guardian once, who came to preside over the court. Do you think he was lying to me?”

  “He was a boy then, you said so yourself. He listened to, and danced, the tales, as we all do. Stories blend with fragmented memories to make new memories. He came to believe as truth what never really happened. No shame in that.”

  “Joss! Sheh! For shame! The hierophants preserve in the Lantern’s libraries the old scrolls that record the judgments made in those days. Judgments made by Guardians. How do you answer that evidence?”

  “What is a name? I could call myself a ‘Guardian’ and my attendance at an assizes court would show in the records that a ‘Guardian’ oversaw that day’s proceedings.”

  She squeezed him until he grunted, air forced out of his lungs. “Say so if you must! But my grandfather had the best memory of anyone I have ever known. He could remember the time when he was a lad when the first Silver merchant came through the village, with two roan cart horses and a hitch in his stride as if he’d broken a hip and it had healed wrong. He could remember the names of all his clan cousins, even the ones who had died when he was a lad, and the folk they married and which temple their children were apprenticed to. If we see no Guardians now, that doesn’t mean there were never any.”

  He sighed as sharply as if he’d gotten a fist in the belly. Twisting, he looked eastward, although it was by now too dark to see anything but stars and the dark shadow of the towering spire that gave Candle Rock its name. “Ammadit’s Tit is a Guardian’s altar, it’s said. What’s to stop us flying up there and looking around?”

  “Joss!” Startled and shocked, she sat up. She went cold, all goose-bumped, although the wind hadn’t gotten any cooler. “It’s forbidden!”

  “No Guardian’s been seen for seventy winters or more, you said it yourself. What if you’re right, and there were Guardians once? Shouldn’t we try to find out what happened to them? Maybe we could find clues at their altars. Maybe someone needs to find out why they’re gone, and if we can do anything to bring them back. You didn’t see the look of those woodsmen. They scared me, Marit. Even with Scar glaring at them, I knew they’d kill me if I took a step into any corner where they didn’t want my nose poking. They hadn’t even a headman among them, no arkhon, no manner of priest. No Lady’s cauldron. No Lantern. No dagger or key or green-staff or anvil. Not even an offering bowl for the Formless One.”

  The crawling jitters prickled up and down her back, a sure sign of danger. “Maybe this is what Marshal Alard was warning us about. You’d best not go back there. Fly to Copper Hall and give a report. If there’s trouble brewing . . . men like that . . . men who would run away from their legal obligation . . . they could do anything if there’s nothing to check them.”

  “Anything,” he muttered at last. He began to speak again, but choked on the words. He was quiet for a long time, arm around her, head still thrown back as he gazed up at the span of stars and the Herald’s Road whose misty path cut across the heavens. “Is this what Marshal Alard meant by a shadow?” he whispered. “It seemed to me there was a shadow in their hearts. Like an illness.”

  “Hush,” she said, because he was shivering even though it wasn’t cold. “Hush, sweetheart.”

  MARIT WOKE AT dawn as the sun’s pale glow nosed up to paint rose along Ammadit’s Tit. Joss still slept, hips and legs covered by her cloak. A blanket was rolled up under his neck, cradling his head. Sleeping, he looked younger than ever, barely more than a child, although he was twenty. A man might hope to celebrate five feasts in his life; Joss was barely six winters past his Youth’s Crown, while in another year she would have to lay aside her Lover’s Wreath for the sober if invigorating responsibilities represented by the Chatelaine’s Belt. Your thoughts changed as you got older. Your hopes and dreams shifted, transmuted, altered into new shapes.

  He cracked open an eye. The early-morning sunlight crept up to spill light over his smooth chest. She saw him examining her warily.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “If I’m going to have a baby, I have to have it soon. Would you—” She hadn’t known how tightly the wish had knotted up inside her; it unraveled in a rush. “Would you father it, Joss? No need to handfast, if you’ve no mind to. You’re young yet.”

  “Do you mean to give up patrol?” he asked unexpectedly.

  The pang struck hard. “Why do you say so?”

  “It’s unfair,” he mused.

  “Which part of life?” she said with a grin, but a sour taste burned in her throat.

  He stroked her arm thoughtfully. “I could father ten children and no one would speak one word about it, or think it made me unfit to patrol. But I’ve seen how reeves who are women are told in so many ways that they’d best be a reeve only and not think of ever bearing children. It’s true that when a baby is nursing, the mother must stick close if she wants to keep her milk running. But after the child is weaned, he’s cared for by his older cousins anyway. That’s how it was in my village. No one would have dared to tell any of my aunties what they could or could not do with their businesses or their labor, and then pretend it was for their own good.”

  “You say the most unexpected things!”

  He looked at her, silent, for the longest time, and fear curdled in her stomach as his dark eyes narrowed and with a flick he tossed the blanket aside and gathered up his clothes. “I’m going up to the altar.”

  “Joss!”

  His expression was set, almost ugly. He pulled on his trousers while she sat there, still naked, and stared at him. “Who made all those rules? We don’t even know, or why, or when. We just follow them without thinking. We see a fence around our village but we never go out to make sure it’s still in good repair. Maybe that’s why there are shadows. Maybe that’s why the woodsmen live in that camp like beasts. They don’t see the point of mouthing the same words their fathers did, so they’ve cast them aside. And if the fence around your pasture looks sturdy from a distance but is falling down, that’s when wolves come in and kill the lambs. I’ve got to find out.”

  “Joss!”

  The sun illuminated the curve of his handsome chest, the taut abdomen, his muscular shoulders made strong by two years controlling an eagle, the handsome, angular tattoos—covering his right arm and ringing both wrists—that marked him as a child of the Fire Mother. His chin had a rebellious tilt. He threw his tunic over his head. As he wrestled it down, she shook herself and leaped up, groping for her clothes. She always tossed everything all this way and that in her haste to get undressed but at some point during the night, while she’d slept, he’d recovered it and folded it neatly and laid it on her pack, off the ground. She’d not even woken. He might have lain there for many watches brooding over this madness and she never knowing.

  “You’re crazy,” she said. “It’s forbidden.”<
br />
  “You don’t have to come with me. I know the risk.”

  “Do you?”

  “Are you going to report me to Marshal Alard?”

  “He’ll flog you and throw you out of the reeves, no matter what Scar wants.”

  “Go, if you have to. Report if you must. I won’t blame you. But I’m going up there.”

  She paused, shading her eyes as she squinted toward Ammadit’s Tit. The black knob thrusting up at the height of the rounded ridge gave away nothing, although—just there—she thought a flash of light or metal winked as the sun rose just off to the southeast behind it. “The Guardians guard their secrets. Marshal Alard won’t have to punish you. They will.”

  “The Guardians are gone. And if they’re not gone, then maybe it’s time someone kicks them in the butt.” His voice was shaking but his hands were steady as he gathered up his harness. “I didn’t tell you what else, Marit. I couldn’t say it when it was dark out, I just couldn’t. They had a Devouring girl at that woodsmen’s camp. They tried to keep her hidden, but I saw her.” Catching her eye, he held it. His gaze was bleak. “She was chained.”

  2

  That was what decided it, really. The thought of any man chaining one of the Merciless One’s hierodules made her stomach churn, but her heart’s courage stiffened with anger. It was blasphemy to chain one who gave freely.

  She was trembling as she harnessed Flirt, and the eagle caught her mood and pulled this way and that, fussing and difficult, scratching at the rock with her talons and slashing at her once, although not determinedly enough to connect. Marit thrust the staff up to the eagle’s throat and held it there, pulling the hood back over Flirt’s eyes. Her heart pounded as she listened for Scar’s cry, for Joss departing impatiently, but she held the discipline for the correct thirty-seven count before easing the hold. Flirt gave her no more trouble. They walked to the rim of the bowl, she swung into the harness, and the raptor launched out into the air, plunging, then catching a draft to rise.