The Shadow at the Gate (47 page)

“Old fool,” it said again. “You think such a word can consume me?”

“No,” said Adlig. His hair whisked into flame. He could feel the heat of the stone floor underfoot through his shoes. His lungs burned as he took a breath. “But it can me.”

The wihht snarled in anger and lunged forward, but it was too late.

Adlig spoke the word again and the room dissolved into white fire.

Ronan was perhaps halfway along the rope when it happened. His hands were looped around the rope, his body dangling down. The courtyard below was shrouded in darkness, but every once in a while, moonlight glanced through the clouds and he could see it shining on the stones far beneath.

“Hold on, old man,” he said. “Just a few more seconds. Hold on.”

But then the rope abruptly gave way and he was falling, the rope clenched in his hands. The night whistled past his ears. He flailed desperately at the fluttering rope, twisting his arm around it, once, twice. That was all he had time for. He did not even have time to shout. The wall rushed toward him out of the night. Moonlight shone on stone.

And then the world ended.

Ronan came to consciousness slowly. He was first aware of heat somewhere. Where was it? Oh yes, a tiny spot of warmth burning against his chest. It seemed reassuring, and he thought that there was some significance to the thing, but he could not remember what. And then the warmth spread to his whole body as his thoughts struggled to awake. The warmth was no longer reassuring; it was just pain flaring through his flesh. He could taste blood in his mouth. He tried to spit but could not manage to open his mouth. Something definitely was wrong. His left arm hurt horribly. It felt stretched.

No. Yanked.

His left arm was being yanked. His shoulder felt like it was being wrenched out of its socket. Stone scraped down the length of his body. The pain made him open his eyes. He was dangling against the side of the tower the hawk had tied the rope to. The rope dangled slack against his face, but there was a tremendous tightness around his left forearm. He could not feel his left hand. He looked up and saw that the rope was tightly wound around his forearm. His hand was numb and lifeless. Just then, his whole body rose, the stonewall scraping painfully against him. He bit his tongue so he would not cry out. He was not sure how long it took because he seemed to drift in and out of consciousness. The pearl underneath his shirt pulsed. He tried to concentrate on the feel of the thing so that his mind was taken off the pain. He closed his eyes. He felt hands grasping him, pulling him up, and then there was the feel of slate tile underneath.

Someone hissed out loud.

“It’s a wonder he held on.”

“He didn’t,” said someone else. The voice sounded like Severan’s. “The rope’s tangled around his arm. Gently now. It looks like it burned through his skin.”

There was silence for a while. Something scraped against his arm. He gasped.

“Careful,” said Severan.

“Look. The end of the rope is charred through.”

Someone sighed.

“Better that then be taken by the wihht.”

“Poor Adlig.”

Ronan felt someone touch his face.

“Here,” said Severan. “In the strictures of healing, as compiled by Eald Gelaeran—he wrote that when we were still students, do you remember, Gerade?”

“And then he promptly locked the book away in his library.”

“Yes, but several of the students from the fourth form broke in one night. We all gathered around and read what we could. In the strictures of healing, the first step is the naming of blood, bone, and flesh. Reaffirmation of being.”

“Hurry, master wizard,” said the hawk. “What little safety we’ve found on this roof shall be soon stolen by time.”

“The strictures can’t be hurried,” said Severan somewhat stiffly.

There was a pause, and then Severan spoke again.

“
Blod. Ban. Flaesc.
”

There was a brief silence and then someone cleared their throat.

“It’s not working,” said Severan. “I don’t understand. Perhaps I mispronounced them?”

“Something’s standing in the window,” said Jute.

“Grief and stone,” said Gerade. “The boy’s right. Are those eyes?”

With an effort, Ronan opened his own eyes. He was lying on his back on the roof of the tower opposite the library tower. Severan, Gerade and Jute were kneeling around him. However, they were all looking away, staring with horrified faces across the courtyard. He turned his head to look. The library tower rose up black against the night sky. Moonlight etched the vertical edge of stone and the one window at the top. Within the deeper darkness of the window, two points of pale light gleamed down at them. The points of light winked once, as if blinking, and then abruptly went out.

“Haste now,” said the hawk. “Thankfully the abomination cannot fly, for the Dark does not have the wind yet, but it will be quick eneough. We must be away. Try your spell again, old man.”

“It isn’t a spell,” said Severan. “The naming of blood, bone, and flesh is an affirmation of life, the proper construction of how a body is knit together.” He cleared his throat and hunched over Ronan. “
Blod. Ban. Flaesc!
Now, how do you feel?”

“Never worse,” said Ronan, his voice barely audible.

“You hit the wall hard,” said Gerade. “It’s a wonder you didn’t burst like a ripe melon.”

“I don’t understand,” said Severan unhappily. “There’s something resisting the words. His body won’t accept the naming.”

The hawk’s claws grated on the slate roof. His head bobbed down and Ronan felt the brush of feathers against his neck. The hawk hissed in wonder.

“Little doubt, old man,” he said. “An older word has laid claim to this one. It blocks your efforts.”

“What then?” said Severan in astonishment.

The hawk did not answer him. High overhead, the moon broke through the clouds and the night sky was revealed stretching away to whatever lay on its other side. Stars shone. Ronan felt the hawk’s cold beak touch his ear.

“The sea, the sea,” whispered the hawk. “
Brim ond mere.
”

The tide surged in Ronan’s blood. His heart quickened. He tasted salt in his mouth, though it was not the taste of blood, but of seawater. The west pulled at him. He felt his bones shifting, knitting, healing. There was a deeper tide, further out, past the tide, running past the horizon, down below the fathoms in the silence. It called to him and promised peace.

“Careful,” said the hawk. “Where did you find that necklace?”

“A trinket,” said Ronan. “From long ago. I don’t remember.”

He sat up. They all gaped at him.

“We’d better get off this roof,” said Ronan.

Severan looked as if he were about to ask a question, but he seemed to think better of it. The hawk fell silent and sat on Jute’s shoulder. Once, Ronan caught the bird staring at him with a speculative look in his black eyes. He said nothing. He could taste seawater in his mouth.

It was easy enough to get off the roof. Ten feet below the roof, a balcony jutted out from the wall, banded by an iron railing. Ronan let himself down the rope and tied it off on the railing. One by one, they slid down onto the balcony.

“Master hawk,” said Ronan.

The hawk flew up onto the roof. A moment later, the rope came tumbling down. Ronan coiled it away into his pack.

“Come,” said Severan. He opened the balcony door.

“But where?” said Gerade.

“We’ll try Adlig’s idea. The well under the mosaic. You know just as well as I do what he meant.”

“But. . .”

“Do you have a better idea?”

Gerade shrugged and said nothing.

“What do you mean, the well?” asked Jute.

Severan did not answer him. An archway at the bottom of the tower opened out into the courtyard beyond. The hawk floated up into the night and was gone.

“Wait,” said Gerade. “We’ve surely beaten Nio—that thing—down, for the library stairs take much longer than their height, but maybe he did not come alone.”

They stood in the shadow of the archway and listened to the night, but there were no sounds other than the labored breathing of the two older men.

Hurry. Time will not wait for you.

“The hawk says we’d better hurry it up,” said Jute.

Severan nodded. “Let me go first. Gerade, you take the rear. Put up your sword, master thief. The wards of this place won’t be defeated by iron.”

Severan walked with his head thrust forward and his eyes darting from side to side. They passed across the courtyard with the moonlight shining down. A breeze ushered them along a colonnade of pillars. The roof of black marble seemed to melt away into the night. They hurried down long hallways, through places that Jute did not recognize from his days of exploring the ruins. He followed Severan closely, and behind him came Ronan, frowning and sniffing uneasily at the air, his hands never straying far from the sword hilt at his shoulder.

“It’s everywhere now,” said Gerade quietly. The old man glanced behind them. Light glimmered in his hand and it cast long beams back down the hallway. There was nothing there, only dust on the marble floor and their footprints in the dust.

“The smell of the Dark,” he continued. “That’s what it is. It’s creeping through this place and it brings unease to everything it touches. Even the stones are unsettled by it. This place has a long memory and it’s still afraid. It remembers another time, centuries ago, when evil walked through these halls.”

“Centuries should be enough time to forget,” said Ronan.

“Not for stone.”

The halls they crossed through were vast places, and the hawk soared overhead.

What is to happen to me?

Jute fixed his eyes on the hawk.

That which is set before you, and only that, fledgling.

That’s no help.

Safety first. Safety and silence, for there’s much to be said and much for you to hear.

I am the wind.

It was more of a question than anything else. And when Jute said it, he found that he was more conscious than ever before of his tired body, his aching feet, the weight of dread and fear heavy on his shoulders. He glanced up wistfully at the hawk.

Aye, you are the wind,
said the hawk.

Then I will fly!

The surge of joy inside him was quickly dampened by the hawk’s words.

Truth, you will, but not for a long time. Weeks, perhaps. It is no easy thing to be the anbeorun of the wind. The stillpoint of the wind. It is a burden, no less. I would wish such a path on no one.

But I did not ask for any of this.

We do not ask. We are given, and then it is our task to do well with that which is given. You have been given more than most, and so you must do more than well. Even though it brings you sorrow.

“All I want to be is a thief,” said Jute to himself.

“What?” said Ronan from behind him.

“Nothing.”

“Hush,” said Severan.

He stopped in front of them. They were standing now just within an archway that opened into a hall lined with slender clerestory windows. Moonlight shone through the windows and revealed a tiled expanse of floor that gleamed blue and black and white.

“This room’s heavily warded,” said Ronan.

“Impressive,” said Severan. The old man nodded at him. “I doubt whether one in a thousand would be able to hear the sound of this ward. But it isn’t the ward that worries me. If you know its key, then it poses no danger. What worries me is that he was here.”

“He?”

“Nio Secganon. The wihht. There’s an echo of him here. A recent echo.” The old man smiled sadly. “We were friends once, he and I. Old friends. He’s easy to recognize.”

The hawk settled onto Jute’s shoulder and folded its wings.

“Time falls quickly, old man,” said the bird. “One grain at a time, but still it falls. We must make haste.”

“I’m concerned, master hawk, that he left something here for us in surprise. He was one of the best students the Stone Tower ever saw, and now all that learning is given over to the Dark.”

“Better the question before us than the Dark we know behind,” said the hawk. He launched himself into the hall with outspread wings.

“Come on then.” Ronan stepped forward.

“Careful,” said Gerade, catching him by his arm. “Don’t step on the blue tiles. If you do, run.” And with a mutter and a flick of his wrist, he plucked at the moonlight gilding the clerestory frames and sent it glimmering up over their heads. They could see plainly now and they stepped from white tile to black tile.

“What does the ward do?” asked Ronan, once they had reached the doorway on the far side of the hall.

“Wait a moment and you’ll see,” said Severan. “We’ll wake it and hopefully it’ll slow our unwelcome friend, for I fear he’ll come this way.”

He took from his pocket a round stone and breathed on it. Then, after frowning and mumbling to himself a bit, Severan laid the stone down on a white tile. He snapped his fingers over the stone.