Kate Elliott - Spirit Gate

He spoke over the pale head of the slave. "No Hundred-born person had the right to sell this woman into your keeping, for no one owns what she has become. Seek redress from the one who dealt unfaithfully with you."

"You can be sure that I will!"

He chuckled, a man at peace with himself, and his good-natured amusement inflamed the Hieros yet more.

"You have not answered my questions! Who are you? How have you come here? Why did you tell us the Tale of the Guardians when all know that the Guardians are long ago lost, and never to be found?"

He smiled sweetly at the girl, but he replied to the Hieros, for all who live in the Hundred must answer the questions set them by the women who speak for the Merciless One. "The Guardians are not lost. But they were broken long since, sundered each from the other, and distrust and hatred and greed and envy were sown between them. The shadows have spilled out from this broken vessel, and as shadows will, they reach out to swallow the land."

"This we know!" she said fiercely. "Just now an army out of the north rode against Olossi. It was a close thing that we escaped blade and fire. For, as the tale says, an outlander saved us. There has been peace until now, but it seems to me that we will have to go to war to defend the heart of the Hundred and the laws which sustain the land."

"You are right, and you are wrong," he said.

"Often right, but rarely wrong!" she retorted.

He lifted his staff, and all cried out when a light flashed from its end, no more than a candle's spark, quickly extinguished. A wind rose, and out of the sky roiled two great shadows. The hierodules and kalos shrieked and fell back under the cover of the veranda. Only the Hieros held her ground.

Two horses seemed to leap out of the sky and come to earth in the courtyard. They had vast wings, and delicate legs, and handsomely formed heads. When the girl saw them, her mouth dropped open. She looked at the man, and he nodded. Cautiously, she ventured forward to introduce herself to the beasts with the manners of a person who feels comfortable with horses.

The Hieros touched her fingers to her forehead, in prayer.

At length, she lowered her fingers, then raised her head and looked at him. Her expression was somber. Her tone had changed. "I will be your ally, if you will trust me."

The man touched the heel of his hand to his breast in a gesture of respect as he gave a slight bow to the Hieros. "You are an honest servant, holy one, if a bit hard-hearted. Listen!"

They heard the hiss of the approaching rains over the water, but it was his voice they listened for.

"The Guardians are not lost. For here, now, stand two of us. I, who am old and weary of running and hiding. And this one, who is newly cloaked and awakened, as ignorant of what she is now as I am ignorant of who she was before she came into the Hundred."

The Hieros staggered, but caught herself on the arm of one of her deputies. The soft night rains swept over the garden, pattering among the leaves, showering a mist over them. Among the hierodules and kalos, many began to weep softly. Hearing their distress, she recovered herself, and nodded, to show he should continue.

"You are right," he said, "that we must defend the heart of the Hundred and the laws which sustain the land. But you are wrong in thinking there has been peace until now, that there has been peace in the Hundred these last many years."

"Go on." She was no longer afraid.

In his gentle smile rested the weight of long years of struggle. "The war for the soul of the Guardians has already begun."