The Gates of Winter

by Mark Anthony

  “It is cool and sweet,” one of them said, laughing.

  “It is a trick!” the blind woman cried. “You must not drink, lest it cast you under his spell.”

  However, the young men ignored her. They continued to drink, and the man in the white robe joined them. Others appeared now, stealing from the huts, moving tentatively toward the spring, the fear on the sun-darkened faces giving way to wonder.

  The blind woman stamped her feet. “It is a deception, I tell you! If you drink, he will poison us all!”

  The village folk pushed past her and she fell into the mud, her robe tangling around her so that she could not get up. The people held out their hands toward the splashing water.

  Quickly the dervish bound his wound with a rag, stanching the flow of blood lest the bodiless ones come to partake of more. Morndari, the spirits were called. Those Who Hunger. They had no form, no substance, but their thirst for blood was unquenchable. Once, he had come upon a young sorcerer who had thought too highly of his own power, and who had called many of the morndari to him. His body had been no more than a dry husk, a look of horror on his mummified face.

  The flow of the fountain continued. Water pooled at the dervish’s feet. He bent to drink, but he was weak from hunger and thirst, and from loss of blood. The sky reeled above him, and he fell.

  Strong hands caught him: the young swordsmen’s.

  “Take him into my hut,” said a voice he recognized as the village elder’s.

  Were they going to murder him then? He should call the morndari again, only he could not reach his knife, and he was already too weak. The spirits would drain his body dry of blood, just like the ill-fated young sorcerer he had once found.

  The hands bore him to a dim, cool space, protected from the sun by thick mud walls. He was laid upon cushions, and a wooden cup pressed to his lips. Water spilled into his mouth, clean and wholesome. He coughed, then drank deeply, draining the cup. Leaning back, he opened his eyes and saw the bearded man above him.

  “How long will it flow?” the old man asked.

  The dervish licked blistered lips. “For many lives of men, the spirits say. I do not doubt them.”

  The old man nodded. “All the tales I know tell that a dervish brings only evil and suffering. Yet you have saved us all.”

  The dervish laughed, a chilling sound. “Would that were so. But I fear your seeress was right. Evil does come, on dark wings. To Hadassa, and to all of Moringarth.”

  The other made a warding sign with his hand. “Gods help us. What must we do?”

  “You must send word that I am here. You must send a message to the Mournish. Do you know where they can be found?”

  The old man stroked his beard. “I know some who know. Word can be sent to the Wandering Folk. But surely you cannot mean what you say. Your kind is abomination to them. If they find you, your life is forfeit. The working of blood sorcery is forbidden.”

  “No, it isn’t,” the dervish said. He looked down at his hands, marked by lines tattooed in red and fine white scars. “Not anymore.”

  It was the quiet that woke Sareth.

  Over the last three years he had grown used to the sound of her heartbeat and the gentle rhythm of her breathing. Together they made a music that lulled him to sleep each night and bestowed blissful dreams. Then, six months ago, another heart—tiny and swift—had added its own note. But now the wagon was silent.

  Sareth sat up. Gray light crept through a moon-shaped window into the cramped interior of the wagon. She had not been able to make it any larger, but by her touch it had become cozier. Bunches of dried herbs hung in the corners, filling the wagon with a sweet, dusty scent. Beaded curtains dangled before the windows. Cushions embroidered with leaves and flowers covered the benches on either side of the wagon. The tops of the benches could be lifted to reveal bins beneath, or lowered along with a table to turn the wagon into a place where eight could sit and dine or play An’hot with a deck of T’hot cards. Now the table was folded up against the wall, making room for the pallet they unrolled each night.

  The pallet was empty, save for himself. He pulled on a pair of loose-fitting trousers, then opened the door of the wagon. Moist air, fragrant with the scent of night-blooming flowers, rushed in, cool against his bare chest. He breathed, clearing the fog of sleep from his mind, then climbed down the wagon’s wooden steps. The grass was damp with dew beneath his bare feet—his two bare feet.

  Though it had been three years, every day he marveled at the magic that had restored the leg he had lost to the demon beneath Tarras. He would never really understand how Lady Aryn’s spell had healed him, but it didn’t matter. Since he met Lirith, he had grown accustomed to wonders.

  He found her beneath a slender ithaya tree on the edge of the grove where the Mournish had made camp. A tincture of coral colored the horizon; dawn was coming, but not yet. She turned when she heard him approach, her smile glowing in the dimness.

  “Beshala,” he said softly. “What are you doing out here so early?”

  “Taneth was fussing. I didn’t want him to wake you.” She cradled the baby in her arms. He was sound asleep, wrapped snugly in a blanket sewn with moons and stars.

  Sareth laid a hand on the baby’s head. His hair was thick and dark, and his eyes, when they were open, were the same dark copper as Sareth’s. But everything else about him—his fine features, his rich ebony skin—was Lirith’s.

  The baby sighed in his sleep, and Sareth smiled. Here was another wonder before him. Lirith had believed herself incapable of bearing a child. When she was a girl, she was sold into servitude in the Free City of Corantha, in the house of Gulthas. There she had been forced to dance for men who paid their gold—and do more than simply dance. Countless times a spark of life had kindled in her womb, only to go dark when she consumed the potions Gulthas forced on all the women in his house. Then, in time, no more sparks had kindled.

  Lirith had wept the night she told him this, thinking that once he knew he would turn away from her. She was wrong. Knowing this only made him love her more fiercely. That she could endure such torture and yet remain so good, so gentle showed that there was no one in the world more deserving of love.

  Even so, he had wept as well. For even if she could have conceived a child, he could not have given her one. Or at least so he believed. When the demon below Tarras took his leg, it had taken something else—something intangible but no less a part of him. Since that day, no woman, not even Lirith, could cause him to rise as a man should. He could love her with all his heart, but he could not make love to her.

  Until Lady Aryn’s spell.

  And now, here was the greatest wonder of all: little Taneth, dark and sweet and perfect.

  Lirith sighed, turning her gaze toward the east.

  Sareth touched her shoulder. “Are you sure it was because of Taneth you came out here, beshala? Is there not another reason?”

  She gazed at him, her eyes bright with tears. “I don’t want you to go.”

  So that’s what this was about. He had thought as much. Last night a young man from another Mournish band had ridden hard into the circle of their wagons, bearing ill news.

  “I do not wish to leave,” Sareth said. “But you heard the message Alvestri brought just as I did. A dervish has come out of the desert, or at least one who claims he is a dervish. He must be seen.”

  “Yes, someone must go see him. But why must it be you?”

  “You know why the task falls to me. I am descended of the royal line of Morindu.”

  Lirith’s dark eyes flashed. “So is your sister Vani. She is the one who was trained at Golgoru. She is the T’gol. It is she who should be doing this thing, not you.”

  Sareth pressed his lips together. He could not argue that point, for Lirith was right. Two thousand years ago, the sorcerers of Morindu the Dark had destroyed their own city lest its secrets fall into the hands of their foe, the city of Scirath. The people of Morindu, the Morindai, became wanderers and vagabonds,
known in the north as the Mournish.

  After their exile, the Morindai forbade the practice of blood sorcery, until such time as Morindu should be raised again from the sands that swallowed it. However, there were those who defied that law. Dervishes, they were called. They were renegades, anathema. The silent fortress of Golgoru had been founded in part to train assassins who could hunt down the dervishes and destroy them with means other than magic.

  Sareth stepped away to the edge of the grove. “It’s true. This task should be Vani’s. But my sister is gone, and the cards do not reveal where, though al-Mama has gazed at them time after time. I know of no way to find her, unless you think Queen Grace may have heard some news.”

  They had last seen Vani in Malachor, in Gravenfist Keep. Then, just before the Mournish arrived there three years ago, she vanished.

  Lirith shook her head. “You know I have not Aryn’s strength in the Touch. I cannot reach her over the Weirding, let alone Grace. They are too far away.” She frowned. “Indeed, it seems my ability to reach out over the leagues grows less these days, not more. The Weirding feels . . . I’m not certain how to put it. It feels tired to me somehow.”

  “Perhaps it’s you that’s a little tired, beshala,” Sareth said, touching Taneth’s tiny hand.

  She smiled. “Perhaps so. Still, it is strange. I will have to ask Aryn about it the next time she contacts me.”

  While Sareth did not doubt Lirith was happy living among the Mournish, he knew she missed her friends. The Mournish had journeyed to Calavere—where Aryn and Teravian ruled over both Calavan and Toloria—only once in the last three years, and they had not returned at all to Gravenfist Keep, where Queen Grace dwelled. Still, the three witches could speak from time to time using magic, and that was a comfort. However, the last time Lirith had spoken to them so, neither had heard any news of Vani.

  An idea occurred to Sareth. “Why don’t you go to Calavere, beshala?”

  She stared at him.

  He laughed at her surprise. “Go on. Take Taneth. Be with Aryn. It will not take you long to journey there, and the roads are safe these days. Aryn is to have her own child soon, is she not? I am certain she will enjoy seeing our little one. And when I am finished with my work in the south, I will come to you both there.”

  “I believe you are trying to distract me,” Lirith said, giving him a stern look. However, she could not keep it up, and she laughed as she hugged Taneth to her. “I confess, I long to see Aryn with my eyes, not just hear her voice over the Weirding. And if I stayed here, I imagine I would do nothing but fret and worry about you.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Sareth said. “You will go to Calavere at once. I will ask Damari to accompany you.” He scratched his chin. “Or maybe I’d better make that Jahiel. He’s much less handsome.”

  “Damari will do just fine,” Lirith said pertly. Then her mirth ceased, and she leaned her head against his bare chest, Taneth between them. He circled his arms around them both.

  “Promise me you won’t worry, beshala.”

  “I will be waiting” was all she said, and they stayed that way, the three of them together, as dawn turned the sky to gold.

  He left that day, taking only one other—a broad-shouldered young man named Fahir—with him. Word had been sent to the fastness of Golgoru, in the Mountains of the Shroud, but there were few T’gol these days, nor was it likely one of them would reach Al-Amún sooner than Sareth. From this place, it was only a half-day’s ride to the port city of Kalos, on the southernmost tip of Falengarth, at the point where the Summer Sea was at its narrowest. Sareth hoped to reach the city by nightfall and book passage on a ship the next day.

  Before he left, his al-Mama called him into her dragon-shaped wagon and made him draw a card from her T’hot deck. His fingertips tingled as they brushed one of the well-worn cards, and he drew it out. As he turned it over, a hiss escaped her.

  “The Void,” she said in a soft rasp.

  There was no picture on the card. It was painted solid black.

  “What does it mean? Do I have no fate, then?”

  “Only a dead man has no fate.”

  He swallowed the lump in his throat. “What of the A’narai, the Fateless Ones who tended the god-king Orú long ago?”

  She snatched the card from his hand. “As I said, only a dead man has no fate.”

  His al-Mama said no more, but as Sareth left the wagon he glanced over his shoulder. The old woman huddled beneath her blankets, muttering as she turned the card over and over. Whatever it portended, it troubled her. However, he put it out of his mind. Perhaps the dead had no fate, but he was very much alive, and his destiny was to return to Lirith and Taneth as soon as possible.

  They reached Kalos that evening as planned and set sail the next morning on the swiftest ship they could find—a small spice trader. Fahir, who had never been at sea before, was violently ill during the entire two-day passage, and even Sareth found himself getting queasy, for the Summer Sea was rough, and the little ship ran up and down the waves rather than through them, as a larger vessel might. The ship’s captain remarked that he had never seen such ill winds so early in the year before.

  Fortunately, the voyage was soon over, and they disembarked in the port city of Qaradas, on the north coast of the continent of Moringarth, in the land of city-states known collectively as Al-Amún. Sareth had traveled to Al-Amún several times in his youth; it was a custom among the Mournish of the north that young men and women should visit the southern continent, where most of the Morindai yet dwelled. Qaradas was just as he remembered it: a city of white domed buildings and crowded, dusty streets shaded by palm trees.

  “I thought the cities of the south were made of gold,” Fahir said, a look of disappointment on his face.

  Sareth grinned. “In the light of sunset, the white buildings do look gold. But it is only illusion—as is much in Al-Amún. So beware. And if a beautiful woman in red scarves claims she wishes to marry you, don’t follow her! You’ll lose your gold as well as your innocence.”

  “Of the first I have little enough,” Fahir said with a laugh. “And the second I would be happy to dispense with. This is my first trip to the south, after all.”

  They headed to the traders’ quarter, and Sareth examined the front door of every inn and hostel until he found what he was looking for.

  “We will be welcome here,” he said with a grin. In answer to Fahir’s puzzled look, Sareth pointed to a small symbol scratched in the upper corner of the door: a crescent moon inscribed in a triangle. This place was run by Morindai like them.

  Inside, Sareth and Fahir were welcomed as family. After they had shared drink and food, the hostel’s proprietor suggested a place where camels and supplies for a journey could be bought at a good price, and Sareth went to investigate, leaving Fahir with orders to rest and not even think about approaching the innkeeper’s lovely black-haired daughter.

  “By her looks I think she favors me,” Fahir said proudly. “Why shouldn’t I approach her?”

  “Because by her al-Mama’s looks, if you do, the old woman will put a va’ksha on you that will give you the private parts of a mouse.”

  The young man’s face blanched. “I’ll get some rest. Come back soon.”

  They set out before dawn the next day, riding on the swaying backs of two heavily laden camels as the domes of Qaradas faded like a mirage behind them. At first the air was cool, but once the sun rose into the sky heat radiated from the ground in dusty waves, parching their throats with every breath. Despite this, they drank sparingly. By all accounts it was a journey of six days to the village of Hadassa, where the rumors of the dervish had originated.

  During the middle part of each day, when the sun grew too fierce to keep riding, they crouched in whatever shade they could find beneath a rock or cliff. They were always vigilant, and one would keep watch while the other dozed. Thieves were common on the roads between the city-states of Al-Amún.

  Nor was it only thieves they k
ept watch for. Ever were the sorcerers of Scirath attracted to news of a dervish. While the Scirathi had suffered a great blow in the destruction of the Etherion more than three years before, where a great number of them were consumed by the demon, recently the Mournish had heard whispers that their old enemy had been gathering again, regaining its former strength. Even after two thousand years, the Scirathi still sought the secrets lost when Morindu the Dark was buried beneath the sands of the Morgolthi. Because the dervishes sought those same secrets, where one was found, the other could not be far off.

  The days wore on, and water became a hardship. The first two springs they came to had offered some to drink, though less than Sareth had been led to believe. However, after that, every spring they reached was dry and they found no water, only white bones and withered trees. Doing their best to swallow the sand in their throats, they continued on.

  Fahir and he never spoke of it, but by the fifth day of their journey Sareth knew they were in grave danger. There were but two swallows for each of them left in their flasks. It was said that Hadassa was built around a great oasis. However, if that was not so, if its spring had gone dry like the others, they would not make it back to Qaradas alive.

  You could cast a spell, Sareth thought that night as he huddled beneath a blanket next to Fahir. Once the sun went down the desert air grew chill, and both men shuddered as with a fever. You could call the spirits and bid them to lead you to water.

  Could he really? The working of blood sorcery was forbidden among the Morindai; only the dervishes broke that law. True, the elders of the clan had allowed Sareth to use the gate artifact to communicate with Vani when she journeyed across the Void to Earth. However, that had been a time of great need, and it was not a true act of blood sorcery. Sareth had spilled his blood to power the artifact, but he had not called the bodiless spirits, the morndari, to him as a true sorcerer would.

  Besides, Sareth asked himself, what makes you believe you could control the spirits if they did answer your call? They would likely consume all your blood and unleash havoc.