Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

The faint sounds of animals at their nightly rounds had ceased. Nothing moved. At first, Marit saw only the blink of late-season fireflies twinkling in the trees opposite her, but it was actually a woman stepping out of the shadows and blinking as her eyes adjusted to the firelight.

'I saw your fire,' she said. 'You're reeves out of Argent Hall.'

'We are-' began the man.

The other reeve cut in. 'How do you know?' She did not lower the point of her sword. 'You don't mind my wondering why you're wandering out here in the wilderness alone, I am sure.'

'Teren, son of Filava. Dovit, daughter of Zasso.' She had a mild voice and a mild face, round like the moon and pleasingly dark.

Teren choked out a word and stepped back, stumbling over the root he'd been sitting on.

Dovit said, in a quavering voice, 'Who are you?'

The woman wore an undyed linen tunic with leggings beneath, humble clothing that was also practical for a traveler. The cloak she wore was so black it seemed it might dissolve to become the shadows. Oddly, she carried a writing brush and a scrap of rice paper.

Without answering, she bent her gaze to the paper and scratched a few efficient lines.

Like rag dolls let go by a careless child, they dropped: first Teren, and a breath later Dovit, her sword clanging on a rock as it fell from slack fingers. The pen ceased scratching. From the clearing, two angry squalls erupted. Wings beating, an eagle chuffed in distress. Afterward, everything settled back into an uncanny stillness.

The reeves lay with limbs asplay, Dovit's face pressed into the ground and Teren's hidden by the hump of root over which he had collapsed. Branches snapped on the fire. Flames hissed.

'Who is out there?' asked the woman in a sharper voice. It wasn't fear that edged her tone but a complex pressure of emotion rather like a cook who surveys her well-ordered kitchens with the sudden suspicion that a mouse is hiding behind one of the pots and means to nibble at the feast she has so perfectly prepared and laid out for her guests.

Mark sure as the hells did not reply, or move, or even breathe more than a shallow breath held, leaked out, and held again. She thought of how bright her cloak was, white as death, and she willed it to be as still and silent as the death that creeps unawares, never seen before it enfolds its unsuspecting victim.

How long that woman stood there Mark could not guess, but it might have been half the night. Cursed if Mark was going to reveal herself no matter how badly her legs ached from standing in one place. She could be more stubborn than anyone, and in the end she was.

Finally, the woman moved away into the trees, and Mark allowed herself to lean against a tree trunk, not a single step, until the world grayed toward dawn. She heard a crackling beyond the trees, and an eagle passed low over the forest. With a grimace, she popped the worst kinks out of her stiff limbs, then ventured cautiously to the dead fire.

The two reeves had no pulse and no breath, their spirits utterly vanished. They had flown beyond the Spirit Gate. She searched their bodies but could find no dart or needle that might have pricked poison in them. They had packs set on the ground and now crawling with bugs; inside she found a blanket, reeve's gear for tending harness, a set of clean and mended laborer's clothing for off-duty

wear, and travel food: rice balls wrapped in se leaves, nai paste, a pair of sprouting yams, and a pouch full of nuts.

'May your spirits go gently under the gate,' she whispered. 'My thanks for this gift. I'll seek justice for you, comrades.'

She hoisted the packs and backtracked cautiously until she saw Warning trotting toward her along the road. Well enough. She took the mare's lack of concern as a good omen. She scrambled up to the road and caught the reins. 'Dead,' she said to the mare. 'I hope you don't mind the extra weight.'

She could not get out of her mind the way they had both simply fallen, as though that woman was a demon in truth, a lilu who had sucked their spirits right out of their bodies even though she hadn't been touching them. Gods, that was a frightening thing!

Aui! And what of their eagles?

The hooded eagle lingered in the clearing, unable to fly because it was blind, but the other eagle had vanished. No doubt it was the raptor who had flown at first light. Eagles were not sentimental beasts. Reeves often joked that eagles jessed their reeves, not the other way around, since everyone knew that an eagle chose its reeve. Once a reeve had died, her eagle did not maunder or grieve. They departed for Heaven's Ridge, and in time — weeks or months or years — they might return to jess a new reeve.

The hooded eagle could not fly. It was in distress, calling out, wings extended, hackling, and feathers flushed. Marit had lost her own eagle. She was not aboutjio let this raptor starve or be slaughtered.

She balanced her staff in a firm grip in her left hand and fixed her knife in her right.

'Here, now, sweetheart,' she said in her most soothing voice, but an unjessed eagle is a wild eagle. The raptor struck at the sound of her voice or perhaps a tremor felt in the earth. Marit danced aside. She lunged for and grabbed the slip. No time to strike the hood properly. She slashed with the knife, and cursed if the eagle didn't hook the plume with a talon and cast the loosened hood straight to the dirt.

They stared at each other, Marit standing stock-still and the eagle glaring with utter fury from under her ridged brows.

The raptor struck so fast Marit didn't even have time to scream.

Rain poured into her mouth, pounding the earth on all sides, hammering her flesh. She cursed and rolled over, spitting out a throatful of water. A big body appeared out of the storm, and suddenly the rain lessened because she lay in a rain shadow under the shelter of pale wings.

She sat up, opening and closing her hands. She sat in a puddle of slop. Her butt was cold, and her feet were bare. Several horrific rents had been opened in her clothing, and her skin beneath the ripped fabric was scarred. But she was whole. She was breathing. She was alive.

If she could call herself alive.

The eagle had flown.

The rain slackened, quieted, ceased. Wincing, she got to her feet. The eagle's hood lay on the ground about five strides away, covered with mud and scraps of vegetation but a good cleaning and oiling and a new slip would fix it. Her sandals were gone. She wiped water out of her eyes. Warning folded her wings and flicked her ears as though to say, 'Can we go yet?' The two reeve packs remained fixed to the saddle where Mark had tied them to the feed bag. In the clearing, all the flowers were gone.

'Lady's Tits,' she swore under her breath. She walked back into the forest, marking a forked tollyrake here and a tall pine there as landmarks to make her way back to the campfire.

'The hells!'

Animals and rain and wind had reached them first, but not even animals and the Four Mothers worked this quickly. Two greasy skeletons lay tumbled in the undergrowth, bits of soft tissue and fibrous muscle still attached but most of the flesh gone. One was headless, but she located the skull about five strides away. It was missing teeth, and she backtracked and found them beneath the neck of the remains. Their leather vests and trousers were in remarkably good shape, smeared with dirt and layered with foliage but otherwise intact. The woman's sturdy reeve boots still had foot bones — and scraps of desiccated flesh — inside them. Cursing, she emptied them and measured the boots against her own bare feet, and when she saw they would be a fair fit, she stumbled off to one side and vomited. The good ale in her drinking gourd had soured. The rice balls in the nai leaves had turned to mold.

'What is happening to me?' she cried, slapping a hand repeatedly against the ground, but her tantrum accomplished nothing except to make her hand hurt.