Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

Yet Atiratu, the Lady of Beasts, had foreseen that one among the Guardians would betray the others. Marit had always thought it part of the tale only because any tale must include trouble and strife, setbacks and struggles, to make a good story. She had never really thought about it as if the goddess had actually seen as with the sight of eagles into what lay far ahead, and done her best to give warning.

Patrolling out of Copper Hall, she had learned the gullies and ridgetops of Haya and the Haya Gap, the skirts of the Wild, the bays and promontories of the North Shore and the deep reaches of Istria Bay as well as the warrens and canals of Nessumara and the broad delta region with its ancient ruins and fisherman's reed houses. She had flown patrols over Iliyat and into Herelia. But she did not know Haldia well.

'Look,' said Hari as they pulled up where the land dropped away. From this vista at least a dozen villages surrounded by fields and woodland could be seen, three on the western shore of the river in Farhal and the others in Haldia to the east. What transpired in those villages she could not tell; they were too far away. A dark stain oozed along the road.

'Eiya!' Her heart contracted and her will ebbed.

The army swarmed south, boiling along the road. So huge a force would surely prove impossible to defeat.

'There's an altar near here.' Rudely, he pointed with a finger across the river. 'On a promontory that overlooks this view. Best we take a drink, for strength.'

Warning chafed at the bit, smelling the presence of an altar.

'All right, then. I'll follow you.'

They approached a rocky hill whose lower reaches were blanketed with flowering thorn and evergreen ghost pine. An abutment of boulders rimmed the crown, and as they dipped to the flat ground, Hari shouted a warning. The horses clattered down to greet another mare, who nipped, forcing them to back off.

'The hells!' Hari swung out of the saddle and ducked away as his horse nipped back.

Warning trotted away from the altercation, and Marit reined her up hard. She dismounted and ran to Hari.

A person was walking the labyrinth. A ghost flickered into view on the straight stretches, vanished where the path took its twists, and shimmered again into existence. A demon's body might seem substantial walking in the world, but within the labyrinth its true nature was revealed.

Hari grabbed her wrist to stop her. 'I don't recognize her.'

Marit tugged away and stepped into the entrance. She strode, pushing as through water, each angle compressing as the landscapes flashed past: the quiet sea, the ruined tower, the pillar, the dunes, the marsh, and more places she'd had no time to mark and learn. Winded, she staggered into the center.

As she'd thought, she did recognize her.

A girl drank from cupped hands at the spring. Rising, she turned with liquid dripping off her chin. A polished bronze mirror hung from her belt, and she first grasped the mirror but then released it and with practiced skill slid a strung bow from its quiver, nocked an arrow, and drew the string just as Hari bumped into Marit.

'You can't kill us,' said Hari, with a lopsided smile, 'although I admit you can inflict a lot of pain. And I must say, I am cursed sick of the pain.'

She seemed comfortable looking down the arrow at Marit, gaze fixed on target. 'He said you were a traitor. He was right about that, at least.'

'No,' said Marit. 'You do not know what you are seeing. How can you? My heart is veiled to your sight, as yours is veiled to mine.'

'I want to meet others like me.' She dipped the point so it menaced the ground instead of Marit. 'You two are like me. Did you lie to him, about what you mean to do?'

'I did not lie. He rejected my offer of alliance, so I am forced to work on my own. Did he reject you?'

Her body had a woman's shape, yet there remained something girlish in her speech and aspect, as if the body had grown apace while the mind was trapped and now hurried behind trying to catch up. 'No. T left him. I seek to punish those who harm others, but he

is afraid to pass judgment. How can he be? I encounter people so twisted in their hearts. They are locusts, eating everything in their path. And I saw a man cloaked as we are, only he was twisted, too, like Uncle Girish. There must be others, like me, who are not afraid to pass judgment on the ones whose hearts are diseased. We are the wolves. It is our obligation to cull the sick ones, so the tribe remains strong.'

Hari laughed bitterly. 'The ones you seek are the ones who released the locusts.'

'Best you go home, lass,' said Marit, trying to sound kind, although the girl's words disturbed her. 'Find your companion and return to him. He is wiser than you know.'

But after they watered their horses and drank their fill, the girl followed them.

To fly lifted Nallo's spirits. To skim through low-lying clouds and get soaked to the skin with unshed moisture made her laugh. To glide on the wind — currents and thermals, which Volias told her she would learn to identify and anticipate — while the earth rolled away on all sides gave her joy. No chanter or tale-spinner, she could think of no better way to describe the earth from her harness than that it was like a textured carpet of greens and browns and yellows, ribboned and splotched with the variegated blues of water. Glorious!

Volias took them in easy stages so she would not get too badly chafed by the harness. Even so, the mey fell away with breathtaking speed. They could cover a day's journey in half a morning, and Volias said that they were going slow.

They flew upriver along the River Olo with the Lend rising to the south, its mysterious grasslands wavering like a dream in the distance. Then westward upriver along the River Hayi, with the Soha I [ills rumpling the land to the north, air currents tangled. Surely they flew over the village where she had lived with her husband, but she could not pick out earth-bound landmarks from the air. Mount Ana reared his gleaming pate, and they were buffeted through the

Aua Gap with the city of Horn seen below to resemble an onion chopped in half, its nested circles climbing the slope of a ridge that marked the terminus of a prominent range of hills whose name she did not know.

There was so much she did not know!

She'd never thought about it before.

Pil flew a ways off to her left and Volias to the right and out in front. Tumna kekked as they glided down the long descent to the Istrian Plain, known to Nallo only in the tales. She twisted in the harness, trying to see what Tumna had spotted. She kept her feet fixed on the training bar, while Volias hung with feet dangling, perfectly at his ease, and after a moment she realized something was moving where her feet blocked her view. Now it was behind them.

It was hard to know what Tumna might spy out: a deer, a bandit, an honest traveler. She tucked her knees up to her chest and scanned the earth. There sparkled a pond lined with mulberry trees, and a neighboring settlement, not more than six houses, storehouses and sheds flanked by an orchard and rice fields. This time of year the fields should have shone with green shoots working up through muddy water, but the fields lay brown and untended. No one had planted. From the air, the place looked abandoned.

Tumna dropped, and she shrieked and planted her feet on the training bar even though the harness held her. Aui! So far to fall!

Color flashed where the trees thinned by a stream. She knew in the crudest sense how to rein the eagle; she tugged the right jess, and Tumna responded with a tight circle that attracted Volias's attention. Fumbling in the pouch strapped to the harness, she got a hand around the red flag. As she yanked it free, her grip slipped, and it fell, brought up short by a leash.