The Shadow at the Gate

by Christopher Bunn

  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.”

  It seemed like one of the children smiled at her, and then the shadows were only shadows. The house was empty now except for its own memories.

  She closed the front door behind her and walked away. It was raining harder now, and she was glad for it. She turned her face up to the sky, eyes closed, and let the rain wash away her tears.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BOOKS CAN BE DANGEROUS

  For the past three years, Ronan had kept a room on the second story of a house near the city’s south gate. An elderly couple lived in the place and made their living from the husband’s work as a scrivener. They were happy to get the silver piece he gave them every month for rent. It was a stiff price for a single room in such a poor part of Hearne, but the place pleased him, as there was access across the roofs, as well as by a set of rickety stairs that mounted up from a walled courtyard behind the house. The old couple gave no heed to his comings and goings but were careful to tell him of any strangers who appeared on their street.

  Not that he had much to fear from enemies when he was on his own ground. Only one attacker at a time would be able to manage the stairs and the narrow door. And he’d yet to meet his match in a swordsman. When he slept, and when he was away, one of the cleverest wards gold could buy maintained a tireless watch, spelled into the stone and timbers of his room. Money well spent.

  Ronan woke that morning and washed away an uneasy night of dreams with a basin of water. Sunlight angled along the top of the rickety stairs. He perched there a while in thought, letting the light warm his face.

  At first, he had been afraid that the creature from the Silentman’s court would haunt his dreams, but his sleep, though uneasy with old memories and shadows, was thankfully devoid of the thing’s gaunt face. Whenever he thought of that strange meeting in the Silentman’s court, he could still hear the thing’s whispering voice and feel the invisible band tightening around his chest. He had never been so terrified in all his life. Facing an enemy over blades was never a concern, for he had learned how to fight from the best swordsman in all of Tormay.

  He sighed at the thought.

  “Sword skill or not,” he said, “I’m no longer the Knife.”

  For a while, he paced about the room, scowling. Not that he cared what the Silentman thought, but to be cast off after so many years of faithful service? The Silentman was a bloodsucking tick. A swamp leech, a drooling idiot, the dullard offspring of a goat. And he owed him money.

  Ronan slammed his fist on the table.

  He didn’t care about any of it at all. Not the Guild, not Hearne, not any of the thieves that he had come to know over the years. All he wanted was his money. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to leave the city. To leave and lose himself in the north, in the islands and the sea.

  But the Silentman would not let him leave Hearne without finding the boy.

  There were two possibilities, other than whatever fate might choose to deal out. The house that had been robbed or the little girl. If the boy was alive then his trail would lead from the house. The scent might be picked up there. Doubtful at best, after all the days that had passed. But it would be instructive to find out who lived in the house. A rich scholar. That’s what Dreccan Gor had told him when he had been given the job. An idle scholar with too much money and learning. He had said it with no expression on his fat face, the Silentman gazing on them in silence from his dais. A scholar with the habit of collecting ancient oddities that were no use to anyone. But there had to be more to it than that. There always was. Usually, it didn’t matter, but it might now. Not just a scholar.

  Ancient oddities that were no use to anyone. Except the white-faced creature whispering its threats while the three most powerful men in the Guild stood before it in utter terror. The Silentman. Dreccan Gor. And the Knife. Ronan frowned. Except he was no longer the Knife.

  The little girl. Of anyone in the whole city, knowledge and luck would be on her side to catch the first glimpse of the accursed boy. If he was still in the city. Shadow take the thought. A city boy raised and schooled in the streets wouldn’t be likely to leave the walls. No. Hearne was his world.

  How many children were in that fat fool’s clutches—two dozen, three, more? He didn’t know for certain. But they’d be sharing whatever they had with each other, whether it was food or information, everything used as a common bulwark against the Juggler. And if one had seen the boy Jute, then all had seen him. Though maybe not. Not with a hundred gold pieces on Jute’s head. At any rate, the girl was probably his best bet.

  He smiled sourly. That would be a trick. She would turn and run, the first sight she caught of him. He would have to win her over somehow. There would be time enough later to wring her neck.

  He stood up, checked the ward guarding his rooms with one flick of his mind—it was whispering peacefully to itself—and then hurried down the stairs.

  It was still early morning, but the city was bustling. Every tavern, every boarding house and hostelry was bursting at the seams with travelers and traders come for the Autumn Fair. The streets were crowded with barrows, fast-talking hawkers, hucksters cajoling the foolish to their dicing and chance games, vendors buying, selling, and trading. A contingent of the city Guard marched by, stepping smartly and stern in their blue-black cloaks and gleaming armor.

  Ronan bought some fried dough from a cart and munched on the honeyed bread. A child ran past; he eyed the boy, but then turned away after he saw him scooped up by a stout matron. He strolled on and came to Mioja Square. He sat down on the fountain’s edge, washed his sticky hands in the water, and considered. It seemed as if the entire city was out in force, judging from the busy square around him. But the Fair would not properly start for another three days, and then the city would become even more crowded. In three days. That would be the evening of the regent’s ball and when he would have to see to the strange bargain struck with Liss Galnes. He shivered and then glanced around, shamefaced, to see if anyone was watching him.

  Throughout the morning and the afternoon, he walked the city, down streets and back alleys, crisscrossing the expanse of the square so many times he lost count. He saw street urchins everywhere, with the knowing, sly look about them marked in their furtive eyes and quick hands. The Juggler’s children were out in force. He saw them stealing purses and wallets from traders, prosperous farmers, nobles. Most people from the duchies and lands beyond Hearne were not accustomed to the harsher realities of the city. They were easy marks for the industrious children. Once he almost laughed aloud at the sight of several little boys standing on each other’s shoulders to filch a fine saddle blanket from the top of a camel towering over them. The snatch was made with only seconds to spare and then they were pelting off into the crowd with a cursing Harthian merchant in pursuit. The camel looked on in disdain.

  As the merchant from Harth quickly learned, the children were not easy to follow in the crowded streets. Even for one as skilled as Ronan, he found he could not trail any of the children for long. He attempted this several times throughout the day and ruefully discovered that even his abilitie
s were not up to the task. The children could move quicker than he among the press of the crowd. They could dart between legs and under carts, while he had to content himself with elbowing people aside. He gave up the idea as impractical. It wouldn’t do to collar one of the little wretches in passing, for then the word would be out. Not once did he see the girl Lena.

  He skulked around in the neighborhood of the Goose and Gold for a while, hoping to discover where the Juggler kept the children. He was certain the place would be nearby, for the fat man had never stirred far from the tavern before his recent disappearance. But he didn’t see any children, though he loitered there for an hour. The day was passing. He moved on, gloomy and lost in thought.

  Ronan found himself walking along the narrow street behind the scholar’s house—the same street where he and the boy had stood that night. It was a quiet place, a neighborhood for those who had money enough to buy security, far from the bustling quarters of trade or the dirty boroughs of the poor. He could hear the wards woven into the place. They whispered to him as he passed. They were harmless, as long he did not intrude, but decidedly aware of him. He admired them. He could sense the care and cost that had gone into their spelling. And he smiled, for he and the boy had beaten them that night. That was certainly something not many in the Guild would have been able to do.

  At one place in the wall, there was a small passageway cut in the stone, closed by a gate of iron bars that rose up into sharp points like spears. He could see through them into a large, enclosed garden. It looked a lovely place—the little he could make out—filled with flowers, bushes, and fruit trees growing in unkempt profusion.

  Perhaps it was the boredom and frustration of the day that made him do what he did next. Trying to track slippery street urchins was enough to try anyone’s patience, and it had already been a bad enough week as it was. A moment of careful listening, listening with every nerve ending alert, left him certain there was no one in the house, or at least in the half of the house closest to him. Oddly enough, the iron gate only had a rather insignificant ward woven into its pilings and hinges. There was a convenient space between the sharp points and the stone ceiling arching above them.