Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (5 page)

She grimaced as she finally tugged on her gloves, wincing at the pain, at the fear. Joss ran back over to her, kissed her hard, then returned to Scar without a word and swung into his harness. She smiled softly, ran a gloved hand through the soft stubble of her hair, and crossed to Flirt, who blinked as if surprised to see her.

“Let’s go, girl.”

No use dwelling on what she couldn’t change. Best to concentrate on what she could do. That’s what she was best at. That’s why she was a good reeve.

JOSS HEADED DUE
west and was lost fairly quickly among the hills, but Marit flew Flirt south up the cut of the road to its summit in the Liya Pass, a saddle between two ridgelines. Just east of the road lay a wide pool worn out of the hills by the tireless spill of a waterfall off the height. On the banks of this isolated vale the acolytes of the Merciless One had erected a small temple to house no more than a score of adepts in training. Obviously, with their holy quarters set in such a remote location, these were not hierodules who served the goddess by trafficking with passersby. Most who dedicated their service to the Devourer served as hierodules for less than a year before returning to life beyond the bounds of the temple; the Merciless One was a cruel and exacting taskmaster. Many of those who remained trained as jaryas, pearls beyond price, the finest musicians and entertainers in the Hundred. As for the few, they served Her darker aspect, and it was rumored they trained as assassins.

This was no jarya school, not up here.

They came to earth at a safe distance, right at the edge of the woods. The waterfall splashed in the distance, but the pool had a glassy sheen beyond the spray, still and silent as if depthless. Three buildings rose out of the meadow of grass and flowering lady’s heart: a chicken coop; a long, narrow root cellar with a turf roof; and the temple itself, with its outer enclosure, entrance gate, and “lotus petal” wings surrounding an inner courtyard.

She waited in her harness, listening. Crickets chirred. Wind tinkled strings of bells hanging from posts set in the earth all around the outer enclosure. It rustled the silk banners draped over and tied to the entrance gate. She heard no voices and no music. Nothing. Flirt showed no nervousness. The vale seemed deserted.

She slipped out of her harness and ventured to the chicken coop. It was empty
except for a half-dozen broken eggs, sucked dry, and a single bale of straw. She moved on to the root cellar, a building half buried in the earth. She pushed on the door, which stuck. Shoving, she opened it. Cautiously, she ducked under the lintel and stepped down into the shadowy interior. The stores had been cleaned out. That was suspicious, although at this time of year it was possible that was only because they had used up last winter’s surplus and not yet received their tithes to carry them through the coming cold season. With the door open behind her, she knelt in the damp confines. The dirt floor had been raked clean. There were no distinguishing footprints; there was no evidence of passage at all except for the brick resting-cradles for two dozen missing storage barrels. Four barrels remained, rounded shadows at the far end of the cellar, barely discernible in the dimness.

Maybe thieves had stolen everything and covered their tracks. Maybe the Merciless One had abandoned the temple and all her people had left, tidying up behind themselves.

It was impossible to know.

A shadow covered the open door. Too late she realized the crickets had ceased their noise. She jumped farther into the darkness, drawing her short sword as she spun to face the door.

But they had already defeated her. They’d been waiting, as if they’d known she was coming and laid an ambush. A staff hit her from behind alongside her right ear. A second blow caught her in the breastbone, knocking the air out of her. Her legs went from under her. The earth slapped up, and she blinked and gasped and breathed in dirt, flat on her stomach, head scorched with pain. Dazed. Choking on dust.

Damn damn damn. If the Merciless One had abandoned the temple, then her hierodules and kalos would have removed the bells and banners before departing.

“Hurry!”

“Kill her now!”

“No, Milas wants her alive.”

“Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Bet I know what for!”

A man snickered.

Her sword was trapped under her hips. She began to roll, but knees jabbed into her back and the weight of a second man, maybe a third, held her down as they stripped her of her bow and quiver, her sword, her dagger; her staff had already fallen uselessly. They didn’t find the slender knife hidden between the lining and the outer leather of her right boot. They trussed her arms up behind her from wrists to elbows, hoisted her up using the rope until her shoulders screamed and one
popped.
The world spun dizzily as she came up, kicking.

The third blow exploded against the back of her head.

She plunged into darkness.

CAME TO, MUZZY
, as she was jostled from side to side in a wheelbarrow, banging first one wooden slat, then the other side. She was blind, a cloth tied tightly over her face, over both mouth and nose so that she choked with the fear she was smothering in white silk. Death silk.

No. Just a plain bleached-white linen cloth, maybe a bandanna of the kind worn by laborers to keep sweat from pouring into their eyes. The cloth sucked in and out with her breath. She heard the squeak of wheels on pine needles. She heard the soft tread of feet and the wind sighing through trees. No one spoke. She felt no sun, so couldn’t guess at time of day or how long she had been unconscious.

She took stock of her condition: throbbing head, chest and ribs aching, and one heel stinging as though she’d been bitten. Her shoulders were bruised, but somehow the one that had popped was no longer dislocated. It just hurt like the hells. What hurt worst was her fury at her own stupidity and carelessness. Why hadn’t Flirt warned her? Her assailants must have been close by, and those who closed in from outside would surely have been spotted by Flirt, who was trained to give the alert.

Shadows.

Some magic had veiled sight and instinct. She had to be ready. Most likely, she would have only one chance to escape and she had to prepare herself for the worst: rape, any kind of brutality, mutilation. She had to lock down her emotions. Thus were reeves trained to respond in emergencies.

“Your fears and passions must be set aside, placed in a treasure chest, and locked up tight. If you are ruled by fear or desire, then you will lose. Be an arrow, unencumbered by any but the force that impels it to its target. Do not let the wind blow you off course.”

She stayed quiet as the barrow lurched and rolled along the forest path. She sorted out footfalls and decided there were at least ten men accompanying her. Because they stayed silent, they betrayed no knowledge of Flirt or her fate. She banished Flirt’s fate from her mind. Until she was free, there was nothing she could do about the eagle.

At last she smelled wood smoke and the smoky richness of roasting venison. At a distance she heard the sound of many voices, the clatter of life, the ringing of an axe, the false hoot of an owl raised as a signal. She felt a change in the texture of the air as they came out of trees into a clearing. Silence fell. No one spoke, but she felt the mass of men staring. Her skin prickled. Certainly this must be the woodsmen’s camp.

“Do not fear pain. Fear will kill you.”
So Marshal Alard taught.

A man coughed. Someone giggled with the barest edge of hysteria. Hand slapped skin, and the giggling ceased.

“Put her there,” said a baritone.

The silence was ugly, made more so by the sudden glare of sun on her face so bright she blinked under the cloth. Just as her eyes teared, shadow eased the blinding light. Leaves whispered above her. A dozen thin fingers tickled her chest and face. The wheelbarrow jolted to a stop, and its legs were set down hard. A man cursed right behind her, and she heard him blowing through lips, maybe on blistered hands. He did not speak. The wheelbarrow raised up abruptly and she slid forward, awkwardly, and slithered down to land in a heap.

On a carpet.

Metal rattled softly, then scraped. Footsteps receded. A man hawked and spat, and she flinched, but a delicate finger touched her chin and carefully eased the corner of the cloth up over her mouth and nose. She sucked in air gratefully.

“Hush,” whispered a female voice. “He’ll hear. He’s coming.”

“Who are you?”

“No one. Not anymore.” It was a young voice, its spirit strangely deadened.

“Let me see your face. Let me see this place.”

“It was a trap.”

“That’s how they captured me?”

“It was a trap. Half of the hierodules had turned their back on the Devourer and given their allegiance to
him.
They gave the rest of us over, but he killed the others. All but me. All but me.” The finger tickled her nose, pushed under the band of cloth, and eased it upward until Marit could—bless the Great Lady—see a bit of her surroundings and the girl beside her.

She was very young; she didn’t even wear the earring that marked her Youth’s Crown, although she had breasts and curves enough that she was no doubt meant to dance into the Crowning Feast at midwinter with the rest of the youths ready to don their Lover’s Wreaths and enter halfway into the adult world. No more than fourteen years, then. The remains of a sleeveless silk shift that once had been gold in color draped her body. Over it she wore an embroidered silk cloak, the kind of elegant accessory jaryas displayed while riding across town to an assignation or performance. It was a spectacular orange, now ripped and grimy; she’d used it to wipe up blood, likely her own. But as shocking as the sight of her was, with her curling black hair unbound and falling in matted tails and strings to her waist, and her arms and legs stained with dirt and blood and worse things, Marit had seen worse; reeves always saw worse.

Yet she’d never seen a girl dressed in the acolyte robes of the Devourer manacled by the ankle. The chain snaked back to the base of a huge tree, where it was fastened around a stake driven into the ground. The trunk was that of a massive death willow, immeasurably ancient. The trunk had grown up around the head of a tumbled statue. Wood encased the stone so that the grainy face peeked out and the crown of the head and the sculpted ripples of its hair were swallowed within the tree. The stone face stared at nothing. Lichen blinded both eyes. Streaks of white—she couldn’t tell what they were—mottled the chin. The lips were darkened with the residue of blood or berry juice. An awful stench boiled out of the ground at the base of the trunk, something stinking and rotten.

The willow’s green-yellow canopy concealed the sky and shaded both reeve and girl from the sun. Marit lay on a carpet, and when she turned her head she saw the curtain made by the willow’s drooping branches, many of which swept the ground. Beyond, out where it was light, figures moved, but although she opened and closed her eyes three times she could get no good look at anything out there, as though magic hazed her sight. Beneath the death willow, they were alone.

“Do you want to be free?” whispered Marit, sensing her chance.

“Please let me go,” the girl whimpered. “Please. Please.” The words sounded well rehearsed; she’d said them frequently. Her dark eyes, like those of the stone head, had a kind of blindness to them, although she tracked Marit’s face and movements well enough.

“Is there another way out of here? What lies beyond the willow, that way?” She indicated direction with a jerk of her chin.

“No one goes that way,” murmured the girl. “That’s where he goes when he comes visiting.”

“Does it lead into the forest?”

The girl stiffened, head thrown back, lips thinning, and she sniffed audibly, taking in the air like a starving man scenting food. “He’s coming.” She scrambled to the base of the trunk and tugged hopelessly at the stake, but it didn’t budge. Finally she curled up like a turtle seeking its shell, trembling, arms wrapped around her chest.

Voices reached her from beyond the drooping branches.

“My lord! I did not expect you so soon.”

“Have you accomplished what I asked of you, Milas?”

Marit knew that voice.

The baritone hemmed and hawed in reply. “Not as we expected, my lord.”

“Leave off your excuses!” The curtain of branches was swept aside, and a man ducked in under the canopy. He looked, first, directly at the stone head and the girl cowering there, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, staring at him in terror. Marit got a good look at his face: that of a man in his early twenties, with broad cheekbones, a mustache and beard, and astonishingly long lashes above deep-set eyes. To her shock, she recognized him.

Radas, lord of Iliyat. He held one of the local authorities under whose auspices order was kept in the Hundred, and he was unusual only in that lordships—local chiefs whose right to office passed through a direct bloodline—were rare, an artifact, so the tales sang, of ancient days and even then known almost exclusively in the north.

His gaze flicked down to her. When he saw that the blindfold had been tweaked aside, annoyance narrowed his eyes.

“Have you touched her?” he said to the girl. Although he did not raise his voice, the change in his tone made Marit shiver and the girl quiver and moan.

With a snort of disgust he let the branches fall and vanished back into the light.

“She’ll have to be killed,” he said. “She’s seen me.”

“Right away, my lord,” said the baritone.

“Nay, no haste. It would serve my purposes best to let the men do what they will. It’s necessary that they understand that reeves aren’t to be feared or respected. After that, if she’s still breathing—slit her throat.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Where’s the eagle?”

“This way, my lord.”

They moved away. In the camp, the noises of men at their tasks trickled back into life. Evidently the woodsmen feared the lord of Iliyat as much as the girl did—and yet, Marit could not fit the two pieces together. She’d seen Lord Radas at court day in Iliyat, a mild-spoken young man passing judgment and entertaining merchants. Less than a year ago, she’d brought in a criminal to Iliyat’s assizes, a thief and his accomplices who had raided two warehouses. The ringleader had been sold to a man
brokering for Sirniakan merchants; he’d be taken out of the Hundred into the distant south, into a life of slavery far from home with no hope of return. No worse fate existed. The accomplices were young and foolish; they’d been given eight-year contracts to serve as indentured servants, slaves of the debt they had created through their crime. It was a merciful sentence.