The Shadow at the Gate (40 page)

“Never forget, Jute,” she said. “It is much easier to unleash the wind than it is to deny its power.” She touched his face again. “Fly well, little brother.”

Then she turned and ran. She ran fast, much faster than Jute had seen anything ever run before, as fast as a horse in full gallop, even faster. Her hair flew out behind her in a heavy, wet mass, almost like a horse’s mane. The brown of her dress looked like the sheen of a horse’s coat. She vanished into the night, but, even after she was gone, Jute seemed to hear the distant echo of horse’s hooves galloping in his mind.

Aye, you see wisely. Once, many years ago, lived a mighty horse and, together, those two kept watch over this land.

“But what of me?” said Jute, feeling rather sorry for himself.

What of you?
You are a thief, are you not? Get over the nearest wall here and we shall find some nook in a rich man’s house to hide away for the night. The shadowhounds are on the scent of the lady and your skin’ll be safe for now.

Jute clambered over the nearest wall and discovered a garden surrounding a large manor. He found an unlocked window and crept along until he found a linen closet that, judging by the amount of dust in it, had not been used for some time. He curled up inside, sniffling and still feeling sorry for himself. Questions jumbled about in his mind, but he was asleep as soon as his head was pillowed on a pile of sheets. The day had been long and he was tired. Just before he fell asleep, however, he remembered the man with emerald eyes. He had meant to ask Levoreth about him.

The hawk perched on the peak of the roof and stared out into the night. Rain fell down. From the street beyond the wall came a faint noise. Something was prowling about, sniffing and growling to itself. The hawk tensed, but then, from far off in the city below, a howl bugled out across the night. It rose and then broke off into a series of excited bays. The scent had been caught. With a scramble and a snort, whatever it was sniffing about in the street padded away. Soon, everything was silent except for the rain tapping on rooftops. The hawk tucked his beak down against his breast, but he did not sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

LEVORETH RUNS

The rain fell harder and faster than before. The gutters flowed like swollen streams and the cobblestones in some streets were ankle-deep. Levoreth did not mind. She was weary, true, but it was a weariness of mind rather than body. She kilted up her dress above her knees and ran through the night. Buildings blurred by, set with darkened windows and shut doors. Occasionally, though, light shone from a window. Sleep, city, she whispered. Sleep and do not wake. Keep your doors locked. Keep your children safe in their beds. Sleep until I have fled your walls and taken this evil with me.

A bay sounded far behind her, sharp and intent. Another one belled out somewhere on her right. The second was much closer. Levoreth splashed across a street and turned a corner. A shape lunged out of the darkness, mouth gaping with teeth. She swerved. Her hand lashed out, slapping at the air, and the creature skidded over the cobblestones and slammed against a wall. It scrambled to its feet, snarling and shaking its head.

She ran.

The gates of the city loomed before her. A light shone in a window of the Guard tower. Two soldiers leaned on their spears under the gaping archway of the gates. One puffed comfortably on a pipe, and the smoke curled up into the darkness and out into the rain. Immediately, she angled away from the gates. It wouldn’t do to lead the shadowhounds straight to the soldiers. They wouldn’t have time to see what had killed them until their throats were already ripped out.

Levoreth loped along the road below the wall, listening for the noises behind her. The beasts were close, but not too close. They seemed to run silently once they were within sight of prey. Her ears were sharper than a deer’s, however, and she could hear the pad of their paws and their panting. Three shadowhounds. It had been a long time since she had seen such a number. Hundreds of years.

No, whispered her memory to her. Nearly a thousand years ago. Remember? Long before you came to these shores. She stuffed the memory down into the back of her mind and ran on.

The stretch of wall before her looked deserted. The city Guard, apparently, were not dedicated enough to be out in such a night. Levoreth glanced back. Far down the street, spray flew as three dark shapes ran over the wet cobblestones.

She eyed the wall.

Perhaps forty feet high. Easy enough for a mountain cat. She filled her mind with a memory from the previous winter. She had hiked up into the mountains, up through the pine forests on the lower slopes of the Morn range, until she had come out onto the snow fields. They were silent, white expanses angling against the sky, complete and inviolate except for the occasional slab of rock jutting up. A pair of mountain cats appeared then, trotting on wedge-shaped paws across the snow’s crust. They were huge beasts, the male standing higher than her waist, and they had pressed their faces imperiously against her hands, demanding to have their ears scratched while they told her of snow and moonlight and the tasty goats that lived on the crags.

She leapt. And landed on top of the wall. A snarl hissed from her lips. Crouching on the wet stones, Levoreth looked down. A rank odor of decay wafted up to her. The beasts below hurled themselves against the wall. They scored the stone in bright gashes with their claws, but they could not leap high enough to reach the top. She waited and watched. The three shadowhounds paced back and forth. Their eyes stared up at her, red spots glowing like coals in the darkness. Then, it happened. The shadowhounds began to fade. Their forms grew insubstantial. The rain fell through them. One by one, they lumbered to the wall—it was more like they were fog drifting over the ground—and then disappeared into the stone.

Levoreth hurled herself off the other side of the wall and was running when she hit the ground. It was turf there, green and thick and soggy with rain, but her feet made no prints as she crossed it. Behind her, the muzzle of the first shadowhound emerged from the wall, moving slowly as if the stone was deep water that must be struggled through. Once clear of the wall, however, the beast regained solidity. In a moment, the two others had joined it. She did not look back again. She went east, down through the darkness of the Rennet Valley and along the river that flowed there. She could smell the cornfields. The rain splashed down on the surface of the river and the patter of the drops blended with the murmur of the flow so that she seemed to hear its voice as she ran.

Down and down, west and west
, murmured the river.

Aye
, said a passing fish.
We go, we go.
We go to the sea.
It blew a string of bubbles that floated up to the surface to be popped by raindrops.

Down from sky, snow, and ice,
continued the river, not caring about the opinions of fish one way or the other.

Fog on the field, rain and mist.

Water wends its way.

Splutter, glug, splash, and spray.

Through stone and earth and clay.

In sun and moon and day.

Flies
, interrupted a bullfrog.
Flies, flies, flies.

Down and down—west and west.

“Flow to the sea, little river,” called Levoreth, “flow down and bid my sister look to her borders.” She was not certain, though, if the river understood her, for water was not her language and neither was it hers to command.

After a while, it stopped raining. The clouds unraveled and revealed the moon. A touch of gray far over the eastern horizon relieved the darkness and hinted of the morning to come. Her breath misted out behind her. The valley narrowed here, while the slope on the north side of the valley rose up steeply toward the plain beyond. A few lights shone in the distance on the river bend. A village. She could smell smoke in the air. Her mind caught at a stirring of life—a baker in the village setting out the dough to rise for the morning’s bread, a farmer yawning his way to the barn with milk pails in hand, and a young mother up with a colicky infant.

Levoreth turned her face to the north. It would be an evil morning for the villagers if she led the shadowhounds through their midst. She mounted up the valley slope. Heather and gorse grew there among the rocks. A few trees stood high on the valley wall like sentinels looking out across the plain stretching beyond. And then she had reached the plain itself—the Scarpe. The night wind swept across it, rich with the scent of heather and sweet grass and the perfume of the jona flowers. She breathed in, refreshed.

Levoreth turned and saw, just cresting the rise of the plain, the dark forms of the three hounds. They surged forward and the wind carried the noise of their hoarse panting to her ears. She ran on across the plain. The sky paled into morning. A family of rabbits peeked at her from amidst the grass, but she struck fear into their minds so that they scattered, screaming in high-pitched squeals, darting away in frantic zigzags.

Run, little ones. Evil draws near.

When the sun was peering over the mountains in the east, Levoreth slowed her pace and then stopped. She stood and waited amidst the grass. All the animals had fled—all the rabbits, the field mice, the tomtits and sparrows, the grouse, the quail, and the little red foxes with their quick paws and curious eyes—they had all run away for fear of her and what hunted along her path.

The shadowhounds came. They were long, loping slants of darkness in the morning light. They did not slacken their speed, but rushed at her in silence and gaping jaws. Levoreth stood with her hands folded. Her slim form seemed no sturdier than a blade of grass before their massive bulks. But before they could close with her, she stamped her heel on the ground. The earth shook. It split open in front of her, and the two nearest hounds lunging forward tumbled down into the dark depths. The ground closed up around them with a shivering groan of protest as if it could not stomach what it had swallowed. The third hound checked its rush. It circled her rapidly, belly low to the grass and head turning this way and that, bewildered, to see where its brothers had gone.

Levoreth muttered a word and the grass began to grow. It rippled up from the ground, each blade as thin and as fragile as any other blade of grass, but each blade one of a thousand thousands. The grass caught at the pacing shadowhound. It plucked at the beast’s paws until it stumbled and could not stand. Earth flew as it tore at its bonds. The green grass was spattered with dark blood as the creature bit at its own limbs, frantic to break free from the strange chains coiling themselves around and around in ever tightening loops. The grass yanked the beast down onto the ground. More tendrils swayed up into the air and looped themselves about its jaws. Soon, the beast was wrapped up so tight it could not move. Levoreth knelt on the ground by the thing. One red eye stared frantically at her from behind a lacing of green. She placed her hand on its head.

And almost snatched her hand away.

Darkness beat against her mind. Hunger. A ravening emptiness that sought to be filled.

“Who sent you forth?”

The beast would not answer. It could not answer. It was only a clockwork of shadows and bone, hunger, mute instincts and obedience. But in the darkness pooled behind the staring red eye, a separate awareness stirred.

Well met, once again, Mistress of Mistresses.

“You!” she said.

I would have thee as a jewel within my walls.

“Never. Though the sun betray light and plunge the world into darkness, never!”

The voice chuckled.

May that day come. Soon.

“Leave my land—you and your creatures! Tormay is mine and you have no part here!”

Brave words, little Mistress. Brave words, but I am not thine to command. Thou hast been sleeping too long. The years come, the years go, and the Dark comes creeping in. The gate was left unlatched. But peace, child, peace. That is all I wish to give this land.

“If death is peace!” she spat.

Aye
, said the voice with satisfaction. It paused and Levoreth saw that red eye between the fur and the binding grass fade into lifelessness. The body beneath her hand convulsed in one last struggle and then fell slack.

Death.

The body of the shadowhound collapsed into dust. The bindings of grass unwove themselves, whispering as the blades rubbed against each other. Radiance rose above the mountains in the east. The sky sprang into blue as the night rushed away into the west. The sun was up. Levoreth could not see for a moment, other than a blur of color that trembled with light, for tears filled her eyes. She blinked them away. Weariness fell over her.

“Old,” she said to herself. “I’ve become old.”

She began walking, northwest across the plain. Her limbs ached. The dew on the grass shone with sunlight, blinding bright in the slant of the sun. Levoreth did not see any of the glory of the morning, for within her mind was the face of the boy. He stared at her with questioning eyes.

“You’ll find out soon enough, boy.”