The Gate of Fire (62 page)

"If you go out now," Mikele said in an infuriatingly calm voice, "you will place yourself and your children in greater danger. This is why Thyatis brought you to this place."

"She brought me here to keep me safe!" Shirin's fists clenched hard, the knuckles whitening. "I am mewed up here for my safety? For my children's safety? Everything is for safety's sake!"

Shirin bit her knuckle, her fine white teeth digging into the flesh.

"I traded one prison for another, one with harder beds and worse food..." Her voice was a harsh whisper.

Mikele stood, unfolding gracefully from sitting to standing like a crane dipping toward the water. "You are not here to be safe," she said. Her hands gathered her hair and pulled it behind her head. "There is no safety in this place, or any other. Remember that, Shirin. Thyatis brought you here to be trained, so that you could go about in the world with open eyes."

"That is not what she said," Shirin muttered in a petulant tone. "She said that I would be safe here."

Mikele nodded again, her quick hands braiding her hair and arranging it. "Thyatis loves you and wishes to keep you from harm. She is a sweet girl, but she is still naïve in the ways of the world. Hiding you here will only delay the attentions of these Kings. This is a time for you—and it will prove little enough, even if you stay here the full term of years—to find some focus."

Shirin hung her head. She had not thought about the agents of the Eastern Emperor that were still, doubtless, watching and listening in the eastern ports and cities, waiting for news of her to come to their ears. Her body and blood were the prize for these Emperors, and if she were found, her children would be forfeit.

"While you and your children are apart," Mikele said, seeing Shirin's thought like a cloud in a clear sky, "each of you are anonymous. They could be any four youngsters, you any woman. But if you are found together, there will be greater danger. If you stay here, you will learn how to deal with that danger."

The Khazar woman looked up, meeting the older woman's eyes. Fury burned in them. "I am not a prize," she said in a flat voice. "I refuse to be a bauble passed from hand to hand. I will find my children and take them out of the Empire, beyond the reach of Theodore's agents."

"And Thyatis?" Mikele cocked her head to one side, her calm brown eyes fixed on Shirin. "What of her?"

Shirin shook her head and stood, her full lips compressed into a tight line. "Thyatis can take care of herself. If she wants to come with me, we will be together. Otherwise, I will find someone else—someone who treats me as an equal rather than as a pretty necklace to be put away in a lock-box until festival day."

Mikele turned up the sleeves of the long, roomy shirt that she wore. Her wrists were graceful and slim, though her grip was strong enough to match any man. A lacework of tiny white scars marked the insides of her wrists and arms.

"If you leave without the permission of the Matron," Mikele said softly, "the Sisters will turn their backs on you. You will not have their help or guidance. If you leave now, before you have completed the training, you will not be fully awake or aware. You will continue to move in a world of shadows."

Shirin shook her head. The loneliness in her heart and the longing to see her children again, to feel their arms wrapped around her neck in a hug, to see them laughing, was far stronger than the teacher's warning.

"My children are more important than this training. They are more important than your sisterhood."

Mikele arched an eyebrow at the spite in the words, but she said nothing as Shirin stalked out. When the Khazar woman was gone, Mikele leaned over and snuffed the lamp wick with her thumb and forefinger. She sat in the darkness, her breathing steady and even, eyes closed while she waited for the dawn.

Surf boomed against the cliff, sending foam rocketing into the air. It fell in a sparkling mist on the black rocks, making them shine and glisten. Shirin, her hair bundled up under a straw hat, clung to the cliff face, feeling it tremble with each blow of the waves. Her tunic was soaked with spray, clinging to her like a skin. In the stiff wind it was cold on her flesh. A hundred feet above her, the top of the cliff leaned out over the precipice, held together by a verge of fat-leafed shrubs and a scrawny tree. Below her, the sea thudded against the walls of Thira, surging with enormous power in its blue-green depths. Shirin grimaced, feeling her toehold slowly slipping as seawater flung up from the wave tops pooled around the toe of her boot.

She reached out and snared the lip of a jutting piece of stone. The cliffs were old lava, fused by the terrible heat in the core of the ancient mountain. They were pocked with air bubbles and cavities. Some of them were big enough for a man to stand up in. Shirin got a good grip, though the edge of the lip was sharp and it bit into her palm. Putting her weight on the handhold, she swung forward, letting her foot slip from the toehold. Her boot found another. Slowly, she inched down the face of the cliff.

Waves hammered at the shore, billowing white with foam. Ahead of her, though, there was a slick glassy section of water that lapped at the foot of the black cliffs. Pillars of twisted black flint rose up in the sea before it, breaking the force of the waves. A boat could go out from the shore there and make it to the open sea without being smashed into kindling on the reefs. Shirin was sure of it; she had seen it with her own eyes.

Following her midnight dispute with Mikele, Shirin had begun to pay attention to the other students and teachers. After two weeks of watching, she had determined that there were 437 women living in the confines of the island. The kitchens made fish stew everyday, too, and only rarely lamb or venison. Despite that, there did not seem to be any fishing boats or
dorys
in the harbor caves around the lagoon. There were two more of the light galleys and a sturdy hulled merchantman with a sail and mast that could be taken down, but nothing that passed for a ketch.

Someone had to catch all those fish. Shirin started looking for the fisher-women and their harborage.

Shirin reached a long, narrow slot in the rock. It thinned to nothingness a dozen feet above her head, but below her it widened out. Down at the base, where the cleft plunged into the water, it caught the spume of the waves and shot them upward like a millrace. Shirin snarled in effort and reached around the edge of the crevice, her fingers stretching for the far side. It was just narrow enough. Her fingertips brushed across the smooth black stone. Nodding to herself, she pulled her hand back and got a good grip on the edge of the cleft. Grunting, she hooked her right leg around the edge and felt about for a ledge or crevice. A foot down, she found one. Hoping against hope that it would hold her weight, she swung around the edge and into the crevice itself.

The little ledge held, and she braced her back against the wall of the slot, breathing heavily. Her arms burned from the effort of carrying herself and the bag of tools and rope down the face of the cliff. But now, supported by the leverage of her own weight, she could rest for a moment. She pulled the bag into her lap and let the top fall open. After flexing her fingers to get some sensation back in them, she dug around in the bag and pulled out a mallet and a flat-headed iron spike. There were dozens of spidery cracks in the black rock already; all she had to do was find one that would take the anchor and not come loose when she put her weight on it.

A trail ran along the height of the cliffs that girded the island. It was rocky and ill-defined, but the
ephebes
sometimes ran along it at midday. Mikele was fond of strenuous physical exercise. The trail made a course three miles in length as it wound around the crown of the island, rising and falling, climbing cliffs and plunging down into narrow ravines. When Shirin had taken to running the trail at dawn and at sunset, the teacher had seemed pleased.

Shirin knew little of a fisher-woman's life, but she had heard that they went out at dawn or before, and returned before nightfall. The mindless exertion of the trail and the effort it put on her muscular legs was good, too, for it took her mind off the aching in her heart. Each day she woke possessed of a nagging fear that she would forget what the faces of her children looked like.

Two weeks had passed before she caught sight of a fishing ketch slipping through the waves below the cliff tops. She had skidded to a halt and crawled to the edge of the cliff, peering down. The longboat had a triangular keel and sharply pointed bows. It was painted a sea-green on the sides and blue from above. Against the surface of the
Mare Aegeum
, it was almost invisible. On this day, a sparkle like the sun catching on an Immortal's shield caught her eye. The boat was heavily laden with the catch of the day; some large fish with skin like shining mail. Two of the Sisters drove it through the water with leaf-bladed oars, cutting deftly between towering pillars of black stone that jutted from the sea.

They had disappeared into the cliff below her, and Shirin knew that there must be a sea cave. Pressing her cheek and ear to the ground, she could feel a hollow booming sound echoing in the rocks.

Shirin worked her way down the cleft, her feet against one wall, her back pressed against the other. As she descended, the rope in the bag spooled out. One end was tied under her armpits in a crude harness; the other was looped around a series of iron spikes driven into the rock fifty feet above her head. The roar of the sea hammered at her. Though the water just before the sea cave only showed a slight chop, the cleft magnified the sound reverberating through the rock. She stopped. The crevice had grown large enough that she was about to lose the friction that kept her up. Shirin leaned out, craning her head around the edge of the cleft, looking to see how far she was from the sea cave.

A black mouth yawned up from the waterline only a dozen feet away. The rock face between her and the cave was thick with barnacles and encrusted salt. She reached out and grabbed at the nearest handhold. The white stone crumbled under her fingers. The sea was wearing away at the island, a finger's width at a time. The Khazar woman cursed luridly. The sea heaved underneath her, its shining green surface only feet away. She licked her lips. This was not going well. It seemed to have risen during her slow, agonizing crawl down the cliff. Perhaps the tide was rising?

Oh, curse me for a steppe girl! What do I know of the tide?
Panic trickled in her mind, threatening to overcome her. An image of children intruded, and her face became still and grim.
They need me
, she snarled at herself. Bracing with her legs, she twisted around and leaned around the corner of the cleft, the mallet in her hand. The corroded rock gave under her first blow, the sound of the hammer ringing on the rock lost in the rush and roar of the surf. A foothold formed with gratifying speed.

Minutes later, she clambered out of the cleft and onto the open face. There were still a few iron spikes left to her, and they sank into the crumbling rock with ease. She crabbed sideways to the edge of the sea cave. Heedless of the possibility of a watch, she swung around the corner, feeling the cold bite of the water as it rose up around her ankles. It was dark inside the cavern, and she pressed herself against the wall, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

When they did, she found herself at the mouth of a half circle. A long ramp of worked stone rose out of the water and ran to the back of the cave. A wall of fitted stones blocked off the back of the cavern. There were no boats in evidence, but the ramp had two long grooves cut in it, grooves that were spilling water down them as the waves lapped in and out of the cave. With a gulp, Shirin untied the rope under her arms with one hand. She had reached the end of the tether.

It fell away and the water caught the line, spinning it out of the cave mouth. She moved along the wall, finding it slow going until she reached the edge of the ramp. The stones were slippery under her feet and she felt utterly exhausted. Despite a ferocious desire to lay down on the damp stone, she made herself climb the ramp and look over the wall. The thick smell of fish greeted her.

Two sturdy-looking fishing boats stood on heels of stone, but beside them, gleaming in the wavering light that reflected on the roof of the cavern from the bright sea outside, was a skiff with a folding mast and a sail of sea-green canvas. Shirin's eyes widened, and she scuttled to the side of the little craft.

Spiky Greek letters gave it a name,
Hector,
and carefully painted eyes of red and gold gave it spirit. It was light enough for her to push off of the mooring block, too, after she had thrown the bag with her supplies of food and clothing into it.

The sea waited, surging at the mouth of the cave, as she struggled to climb into the boat. It danced on the water like a skittish horse, slipping and sliding this way and that. Shirin grinned—part of the training of the
ephebes
was to handle small craft in the lagoon of the island. She shipped an oar of polished oak with a leaf-shaped blade and a painted handle.
Hector
darted forward. Shirin's hair lifted behind her in a dark wave.

The sky was bright as a mirror as the little ship cut through the water.

The sharp rap of knuckles on the doorframe of his room woke Dwyrin. His eyes opened slowly, not because he was deeply asleep, but because his whole body seemed weary, even his eyelids. The Hibernian rolled out of his cot and stood, letting his hair—still tangled and mussed by the thin pillow—hang lankly around his shoulders. A man of medium height and thin, with a narrow waist and broad shoulders, was standing in the doorway. Dwyrin blinked and made out a serviceable dark blue tunic, leather cavalryman's leggings, a pair of dark-colored belts at his waist, and the scabbard of a long, straight sword slung over his back on a baldric of black leather.

"You'd be Dwyrin MacDonald, late of the Ars Magica of the Third Cyrenaica?"