Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

To the hells with the laws! What did it matter, when his dreams in the form of Mark whispered that Guardians walked again in the world to seek justice, and meanwhile those who met Guardians in the living world called them demons?

The path shone faintly. He set one foot down, followed with the second, and walked into the maze on the trail of a thing he could not explain. At each turn he looked onto a new vista, a distant landscape: smooth ocean waves; a ruined tower sited above a tumble of rocks which, before it flashed out of view, he recognized as Everfall Beacon; a tangled forest that was surely the Wild; the flat gleam of the Olo'o Sea just turning out of the shadows into the dawn's light.

The visions made him dizzy. Voices whispered urgently.

'… I escaped from Indiyabu… she has corrupted them, thus are we lost… surely not, for if we keep our strength and our heart within us, we can still fight back… it is not possible for me to struggle any longer, take the mirror and give it to the one who returns in my place.'

Don't turn your back, Marshal Alard had been used to say, but Joss could not bring himself to see if ghosts crowded behind him, murmuring in his ear.

He stumbled into a depression in the center of the labyrinth. A woman waited, plump, dark, attractive, smiling but with sorrow awake in her eyes, her hands talking in the secret language of the Guardians. He walked through her before he realized she wasn't there. The rock sloped sharply into a bowl-like hollow. Light

flashed, blinding him. An unknown force spun him halfway around.

Aui! He clawed at rock as the ground gave way beneath his feet.

He clung to one side of the ridge, a finger's clutch away from falling to his death into the trees below. He'd been tossed out. He'd broken the boundaries once again.

But cursed if he'd let it go this time. Grunting and straining, he climbed to the top. By the time he flopped down on level ground, his hands were bleeding and the knees of his leathers were badly scraped. He lay there for a while, the wind blowing over him, and panted until his head stopped whirling and his muscles ceased quivering.

At last, he regained the strength to raise his head. Not a stone's throw away, Scar slumbered. As for the rest, the altar lay exactly as he had left it, glittering but empty. Forbidden ground, it had cast him away.

The Guardian had vanished.

'Recite again the hundred and one altars.'

Marit laughed. 'My head hurts from everything you've taught me.'

Her companion, the nameless woman wearing the cloak of night, smiled. 'A rest then, before we walk. This is a particularly lovely view.'

They sat at their ease at the edge of a rock altar ringed by a thorny tangle of flowering purple and white heart's ease. The rocky ledge overlooked the vale of Iliyat, Lord Radas's ancestral home. Under clearing skies, neatly tended fields surrounded tidy villages, everything in order and no one moving on the roads.

'It's very quiet,' said Marit.

'No trouble disturbs those who labor and build. Isn't that as it should be?'

'Yes.'

'Why do you frown, Ramit?'

She could not speak her thoughts aloud: a pleasant woman with an agreeable philosophy and a concerned demeanor ought not to be marching with an army that burned villages and 'cleansed' folk by stringing them up from poles to strangle under the weight of sagging arms.

'It's hard to explain,' she said, testing a dozen phrases and discarding them all. 'I see that the vale of Iliyat lies at peace, which Haldia surely does not. Yet how do I know those who live below have peace in their hearts and justice in their villages? How do I know that the folk in High Haldia deserved to be overrun? How can an army bring justice? Isn't that the question the orphaned girl asks in the Tale of the Guardians? Didn't the gods agree with her?'

'So they did.' The woman nodded. Her hair was pulled back and braided without ornament, suggesting a woman of simple tastes but a complex mind. 'We must never forget that the gods came because of her cry for justice. But there are many forms of coercion. Brute force is only one of them. It's not always easy to know which form of coercion causes the deepest harm, today, or next year, or when a child who is a toddling child now is stooped with age. Is it better to live quietly in servitude or die seeking freedom?'

'Why should those be our only choices?'

She nodded. 'We ask questions because we want to understand. Yet knowledge can be painful. Still, despite pain, we desire knowledge because, like a sown seed, it will flourish and bear fruit if properly tended.'

It was hard to argue with such platitudes, so Marit said nothing. In truth, the woman had instructed with seemingly infinite patience and a soothing demeanor: how the horse must be groomed and the wing feathers properly cared for; that the altars were holy spaces where Guardians replenished their spirit. They could survive for long periods without entering an altar, but they would grow weak and even appear to age without water from the holy spring to strengthen them.

'Are you ready to try again?' her companion asked.

'Aui! Yes.'

They rose and set foot at the entrance to the labyrinth, Marit in front and her companion behind her with fingers brushing Marit's

left shoulder blade. Marit imagined a knife thrust up under her ribs, and shook the image away.

'What is it, Ramit?'

'Just shaking the cobwebs loose. I was never good at memorization. That's why the Lantern's hierophant wouldn't take me for my apprentice year!'

She laughed, the slight pressure of her hand shifting Marit forward. 'I, also. Impossible to line up one after the next. But here you need only look, and remember. Soon you will have visited all these places, and you will know them in your heart as well as with your eyes.'

Marit paced the labyrinth, speaking each turn out loud. 'Needle Spire. Everfall Beacon. Stone Tor. Salt Tower. Mount Aua.' The first were easy, but soon she faltered, recalling some from her own travels and others too unfamiliar to place.

Her companion reminded her in the voice of a patient teacher. 'Thunder Spire… Far Tumble…'

They twisted, now seeing onto an overcast ridge with a faint booming like an echo.

'Aui!' cried Marit, for a presence waited there, green and flowering, as ordinary as a burgeoning rice field and yet with a hidden layer of rot deep in its roots.

'Who are you?' Raising an arm, he swung like a man grabbing for and missing a thrown rope. 'Eihi! Mistress! I was hoping you would walk!'

'What is it, Bevard?' asked the woman. 'You are making progress gathering the troops?'

'Eiya! I got some, but now I'm pursued, my companies trampled and killed. We were ambushed at the river! They dropped fire out of the skies!'

'Come back,' she said. 'The army has reached Toskala. Negotiations should now be complete. You did as you were told.'

He caught in a sob like a child reassured. Marit sheared away from his presence, not knowing why he creeped her so; she hurried on, forgetting to name the angles. Finding the spring and the mares at the center, she knelt, trembling, and gulped down the cold liquid until her throat burned.

'Sheh!' Her companion arrived, filled her bowl, and drank with polite sips.

'I'm sorry. I was just startled by coming across him like that, so suddenly.'

'I didn't mean you. You'll learn in time to feel the presence of another before you meet. I meant rather his difficult circumstances. Bevard is not a true leader; he's working beyond his capabilities, not a problem you will have, I feel sure. Just be patient.'

just be patient, Marit thought. Be patient, and learn everything you can. She looked up, and the woman smiled so reassuringly that Marit opened her mouth to confess her real name. Warning stamped. Marit shut her mouth, leashing her bowl to her belt.