The Limbreth Gate

‘I’m a fool,’ he admitted to her. ‘Or a crazy man. Perhaps I’m just happy with my present luck, and won’t risk changing it. But I’ll thank you for thinking of me.’ With a regretful shake of his head, as if he himself could not actually believe he was refusing her, he stepped past her. A needle of pain ripped into his thigh. Even as it raked up his spine, he lost the power to cry out. He staggered two steps and fell.

‘My brother!’ the woman exclaimed hysterically. ‘He’s having one of his attacks! Please, someone, help us!’

Vandien lay in the dust stupidly, watching the feet mill around him. Dust was in his eyes, and he was breathing in dusty air, but he couldn’t blink or sneeze. He could hear, and the woman was ranting on about her poor brother and begging for aid. Her sweet voice was sharp enough now to scale fish. Vandien was not surprised when someone decided finally to help her. It was easier than listening to her.

His mind should have raced as he was hauled to his feet, and his arms draped across the woman’s shoulders and her benefactor’s. But he found himself oddly complacent, an observer rather than a participant in this peculiar play. The woman lived several streets over and up a flight of stairs. He rather resented the way he was dragged up them with no thought of his shins and ankles as they whacked across each step. It was distasteful to be plopped onto a stained couch and covered with a dirty blanket, and offensive to have to listen to the benefactor noisily taking his reward. He did not watch, for they had laid him with his face to the wall, and he could not move. His eyes ran tears to wash out the dust he could not blink away. Even more annoying was that he could not close his eyes and sleep as he so longed to do. He stared at the cracked masonry wall before him, and finally drifted into an open-eyed sleep, or an unconsciousness very like it.

Ki stared down into her bowl. At most there was a swallow or two of the rosy Cinmeth left. After that she would have to reach a decision. She could take her wagon out of the city and trust that Vandien would figure out she had gone north, back to her regular trade routes. Or she could leave a definite message with the tavernmaster for him. Or she could take her wagon back to the innyard and spend the night at the inn, trusting to luck that her wagon wouldn’t be burned in the night. Or she could walk through the evening streets, calling Vandien’s name at every corner.

She quaffed down the Cinmeth, and held her bowl aloft for more. She would wait just a little longer for him. She would have just one more drink, and if he was not here by then, she would decide what to do. She watched the tavern boy pour the spicy liquor into her bowl. It was her fifth. So let Vandien come and find that she could be as impulsively reckless as he. She could trust her luck just as he always did his. But that was the trouble with his damn luck. It was always good, cushioning his falls, so that he never learned a lesson or two of cautiousness. Nor punctuality.

A rattling sound turned her head in surprise. The serving boys were letting down the windowslats. One boy was making the rounds of the tables with a tray full of little candles on clay plates. He kindled one for Ki and set it carefully before her. Ki stared at him curiously, for he was not the usual tavern boy. They tended to be stout little lads picked for their sturdy bodies and tough little legs that could jog up and down from the cellar all evening. But this lad was slender and delicate, appearing nervous and fearful even of the candles he was kindling. His grey eyes were faintly luminous in the semi-dark of the tavern. His hair was pale as moonlight, as were his brows and lashes, which stood out against his mellow brown skin. Despite his coloring, the bruises of hard fingers were plain on his small wrists and thin arms. The boy caught her staring at him, and his fearful eyes were almost accusing. Ki raised her bowl and drained off half the potent Cinmeth to wash away that look. Where had the child learned so immense a wariness?

But when Ki set down her bowl, the boy was standing right before her, the tiny candle flame dancing reflected in his eyes. He glanced fearfully all about before he spoke. The words came as carefully phrased as an actor’s.

‘Do you wait for a man with a line like this?’ He drew a thin finger down his face, starting between his eyes and running beside his nose to his jawline.

‘Perhaps,’ Ki parried warily. Her hand went to her coin purse, but his eyes did not follow it. Her answer had left him uncertain. He glanced around again, as if to take encouragement from someone, but found no one there. His eyes were panicky when they came back to hers.

‘I’ve a friend marked like that,’ Ki admitted hastily.

The boy sighed out loudly in relief. He licked his lips and picked up his lines. ‘Then I’ve a message for you. He’s had a bit of trouble. He sent a man to the tavern to find you, but the man couldn’t stay. I do not know why, but the Rousters have put him out the Gate. He waits for you there.’

Ki shook her head in disbelief. But it had to be true. That would explain why his horse was no longer tied in front of the tavern. Damn his impulsiveness! She wondered what he had said and to whom. She hoped they hadn’t hurt him.

She gulped down the last of her Cinmeth, and made a small coin ring on the table for the boy. He looked at it, but did not move. With a sigh, she added another. Even the tips in this town were more than she could afford. ‘Take it!’ she told him a bit testily, and he slowly picked up the little coins. She rose quickly, but her head spun. Damn and damn and damn. See what happened when both of them got impulsive on the same day, she chided herself. She dreaded what she would find. Vandien would fight back. She knew he would. But his rapier, which made him the equal of many a taller, huskier man, was on its hook inside her wagon. Ki had seen the Brurjans the city kept as Rousters. They were hulking, quarrelsome beings, their faces dark with fur. They painted the hooves of their horses red. Ki had reached the door before she remembered.

‘Which Gate?’ she called across to the serving boy.

With a stricken look he hurried to her side. He pointed out into the street and gave her the count and directions of the turns. ‘It’s called the Limbreth Gate,’ he ended in a small voice. Then, as if he were speaking a family motto, he added, ‘If you are looking for it where I tell you, you will find it. But you must be looking for it.’

‘I will.’ Ki reached to tousle his hair, but he flinched away so wildly that her heart squeezed within her. He scuttled away from her. She was almost tempted to go after him. But he was likely bound into service, and buying him out of it would be a lengthy affair, requiring the presence of his parents and much haggling with the tavernmaster. She would keep him in mind, she promised herself, and perhaps do something about it after she had found Vandien. She wondered if the Rousters had broken him up much, and hastened her footsteps.

The cool night air soothed her skin and eyes and made her feel steadier, but it could not calm her worries. She forced herself to move slowly and confidently. She had no desire to call the attention of any Rousters to herself. It was full dark in the strange streets. At least the Cinmeth had not made her head pound as wine did. It floated airily above her shoulders.

Ki walked into the side of her own wagon before she saw it. She grumbled at the blackness and made her way by feel up onto the seat. Inside the cuddy she groped through the familiar space until she found her lantern. Senseless to drive the team in this blackness. She would have to walk before them with a light, at least until she reached the Gate.

Friendly Sigmund nuzzled against her in greeting. She gave the huge grey horse an affectionate slap on the shoulder. But surly Sigurd turned his head aside and shifted his feathered feet in the dust. He considered it no treat to be left standing in harness while his owner refreshed herself. When she chirruped to them, they both leaned into their harness readily enough, following at her heels like huge dogs. The wagon came ponderously after them, the sounds of its passage muffled by the dust.

The night city eluded her eyes. Every familiar landmark was just beyond the reach of her lantern circle. She moved down nameless streets in what could have been any town, hearing only the creak and jangle of her wagon. She counted intersections, praying that she would not mix streets with alleys. If she made one wrong turning, all the boy’s directions would be useless. At least the streets were paved well. Squat mud brick houses crouched at either side of them. Most of them were dark. Here and there a dim candle glow seeped from one of the small windows or through worn doorslats, but it was not enough to illuminate the streets. Ki paced on in her own small circle of light.

She took the last turn in her instructions. Now, if the boy had given them correctly, and if she had followed them accurately, the Gate should be straight ahead. Ki walked on slowly, resisting the urge to keep step with her thudding heart. He would be all right. If he had been alive enough to send a messenger with directions, then he could not be badly injured, perhaps not at all. She gave a small shudder as she thought of the Brurjan Rouster she had glimpsed earlier. He had worn a black leather harness, with the hated emblem of a burning wheel upon it. She could have made two Vandiens from his bulk, and still have material left over. She hoped he hadn’t met that one.

The city walls loomed suddenly before her. Ki cursed. There was no Gate. All was blackness below the parapet, and black with stars above it. She had missed the Gate. She’d have to go back. She could follow the wall and hope to find the Gate that way – but follow it in which direction? If she chose the wrong one, it could be hours before she knew it, and then she would have to retrace her steps. Damn the man! He wished she were more impulsive, did he? Well, if she followed her impulses when she found him, his ears would ring for a week.

Ki calmed her temper and steadied her breathing. Just as she was halting the team to decide which way to go, her eyes caught a glimmer of ruddy light. She turned toward it and saw nothing. But this time a light caught her eye from the opposite corner. Puzzled, she turned back more slowly. There was the Gate.

Her heart settled into her belly. Some trick of the wall’s projection, or the Cinmeth, had shielded it from her eyes. Now the rectangle of torchlight grew larger as she led her team toward it. But as she drew closer, she saw that the Limbreth Gate was lit by no torches she could see. Ki’s lantern did not even illuminate it; rather, the light of it bounced back to her as if it could not penetrate the stone that outlined the Gate. There was no portcullis, indeed, no barrier to entry or exit that she could see at all. It was larger than the North Gate she and Vandien had come in by. She wondered how she could have missed it. A vague uneasiness about this Gate roiled in her belly; she closed her eyes tightly for a long moment and then opened them slowly. Damn Cinmeth. No guards leaned against the wall, but a single watcher crouched in the center of the Gate, blocking her path.

Man or woman, Ki could not tell; it wasn’t even a race she was familiar with. The ragged clothing that swathed it could have been white or grey or pale blue. The red glow of the Gate baffled her eyes, making shapes of shadows, and shadows of shapes. The Keeper stared at her, unspeaking. Hidden eyes bored into her despite its veiled features.

‘Is this the Limbreth Gate?’ Ki’s tongue felt thick and even to her the question sounded inane.

‘If you come seeking it, then you know that it is.’ The voice was as deep as a rumbling from the earth itself. The phrasing was as peculiar as the tavern boy’s words. For some reason Ki felt nettled by them.

‘Well, I came seeking it because I intend to go through it. Are you going to move or look at the bottom of my wagon?’

‘Are you Ki, the Romni teamster?’

She stiffened. She did not like the idea of giving names at midnight gates, especially when he classed her as a Romni. Were there Rousters waiting beyond the Gate? But he had called her Ki, so perhaps it was Vandien who had been so free with her name. ‘I am,’ she snapped, feeling suddenly reckless.

‘We have been expecting you. All is ready for you to pass through the Gate. Enter slowly.’

Ki frowned. Every muscle in her body tensed as she saw his tri-fingered hand wave a signal to someone. Rousters or Vandien? Too late to flee if it were Rousters. Heightened awareness battled with drink as she led her team under the reddened lintel. The red light was like peering through a fog. For an instant she caught sight of another figure within the Gate. A tall woman, robed in pale green, her eyes swollen with weeping. Ki thought she shook in fear as she stumbled forward, but it could have been a trick of wavering red light. She saw her for only that instant, but her resemblance to the boy in the tavern was great. The same pale hair flowed upon her shoulders, and she had the same fragile bones and skin. So perhaps someone did care for the boy. Ki hoped so.

A spasm of vertigo passed through Ki, so that she felt she swam forward through thick warm water. Cinmeth, she thought, half closing her eyes and striding doggedly on. Never again. It passed in an instant and she opened her eyes to the night outside the Gate. The air had changed. Even the horses tossed their heads in a flurry of manes and blew out approvingly. The air washed over them all in a warm wave, with the barest tinge of a cool edge to soothe weary eyes. Ki smelled the perfume of night flowers and the warm mossy scents that woods breathe out at midday. How different this from the dusty, stony city!

‘Vandien?’ she called questioningly. She lifted her lantern high. Its light touched slender grey treetrunks. Trees? The North Gate had entered the city from a barren plain of yellow grass. But she had forgotten how old Jojorum was. Had not she heard that it had once been fabled for its gardens? Perhaps these were they, long untended and come back to dominance. At least the road remained good. Moss crept in soft tongues across it, but it was flat and straight, not buckled nor heaved with age. Her wagon rolled silently behind her, the hoofbeats of her team cushioned now by moss. There was moisture in the air, and peace. The very night seemed less dark around her.

So where in hell was Vandien? Even if he were lying senseless by the road, his horse should have whinnied to her team. If they had left him his horse. ‘Whoa!’ The team stood. ‘Vandien!’ Her worried voice sounded shrill in the friendly night, muffled by the peace. She walked around her wagon, back toward the Gate. Perhaps the Keeper could tell her something of Vandien.

The Gate was a fiery rectangle against the darkness, its brightness obscuring all else. Ki felt her eyes water as she stared at it, and she was finally forced to turn her eyes aside. ‘Gatekeeper!’ she cried. ‘The man who told you to watch for me; where is he? She risked a glance at the glowing Gate. The Keeper was a darker huddle in the center.

‘Go down the road.’ His voice was fainter than the distance explained. ‘Just follow the road toward the lights on the horizon.’

Ki swung her eyes away from the Keeper and Gate again. It had not seemed so bright from the city side. She focused her eyes on the black ground, letting them readjust to the darkness. Her own small lantern seemed dim after the Gate. It was as she was looking down to let her eyes clear that she saw the tracks of a single horse, its hoofprints cut in the moss and all but obscured by the heavy marks of her team. Ki moved back to the front of her team and walked slowly down the road. No sign was on the road itself, but here and there were marks that cut right through the moss to the road’s black surface. The horse was heavy with a rider, and the rider had been in a hurry. Well, at least he had shown that much sense. She was glad he had gotten clear of the city before waiting for her. The farther they were from the Gates, the less likely that Rousters would bother them. She felt relief that he was healthy enough to ride, and annoyance that she had been so worried.

She clucked to her team and they came on again behind her. If she had not had Vandien to fret over, it would have been a pleasant stroll down a silent road by night. The soft moss that cushioned the road was kind to her feet. The cool breeze stroked her face. She swung her lantern beside her, flinging light ahead to stretch over the hoofmarks she followed.

Ki paused. After a moment of hesitation, she snuffed her lantern. She had been right. Away from the suffocating walls of the city and its dark old buildings, the night had become a friendlier place. There was enough light to see by, though the sky had become overcast. Enough to drive by? She shrugged and halted the team to clamber up onto the box. She took up the reins and slapped them on the wide grey backs.

The road ran straight and true before them, slicing through the forest as cleanly as a knife. The moss that coated the road seemed tipped with silver, making it a long ribbon that ran away from Ki, dwindling to a thread in the distance. Gone were the familiar jerks and jounces of potholes and gullied roadbeds. The wagon moved on in near silence, smooth as a ship cutting through water.

The forest cupped her in its hands. Friendly night trees leaned over her road in a near arch. Luminous white blossoms decked them, filling the dark with a sweetly elusive scent. At intervals the forest drew back from the road, to give Ki a view of a pasture, with a small cottage at the back of it, or just a patch of wild meadow. Some pastures seemed to be tilled and bearing crops. No lights showed in the cottages.

Twice Ki halted and checked the road, to find the hoofprints still leading her on. Each time some small discomfort nibbled at the back of her mind, but the glow of the Cinmeth warmed it away. If she took a deep breath of the night air, she could taste its spiciness still. For a moment she idly wished she’d had the foresight to bring some along. But then she contented herself with the cool night air. Reassurance grew in her slowly. If Vandien had ridden this far, he was most likely not injured at all. Perhaps they had only shaken him up; or perhaps his glib tongue had slid him past trouble. If that was his case, as seemed more and more likely to her, then he had gone ahead to find a good stopping place for the wagon. She’d come upon him at any moment.

Or, and she frowned in amused tolerance, he had trusted to his message to bring her after him, and had ridden ahead. He did that often enough when the ponderous movement of her slow-rolling wagon became more than his short patience could bear. It was not unusual for him to be gone a day or a week when the need for solitary exploring hit him. Ki did not resent it. She would welcome a rest from his sharp tongue and restless ways.

She let herself slip into a waking dream. The wagon rolled on through the night. Ki floated through a dream on a sweet wind tinged with flower breath and Cinmeth. The wide pastures that spread in sudden clearings in the forest shone dark green. The sky behind a cover of clouds shone like opal through smoke along the horizon.

Ki lost all track of time. Could the glow ahead be dawn? No, it didn’t feel like dawn. There was no hushed expectancy, no last calls of night birds. There was only the peace of the settled night. But there was a definite glow along the far horizon. The glow was gentle and even, speckled here and there with points of blue and green and red. Ki rubbed at her eyes, wondering if the specks were only fatigue. They remained above the hilltops, steady and unmoving. She was distracted from them by the diminishing thunder of some small hooved beasts.

She pulled herself up straight on the wagon seat and shook the reins slightly. But in a moment she was slumping again. The harmony of the night drew her in and comforted her. It was like slipping into a sleep when freshly bathed and between soft warm blankets. She could not resist it. ‘I drank too much,’ she chided herself, but found no regrets now. Her worries over Vandien settled like chickens gone to roost. The peace of the clean open country settled over her aching body and soul. The night soaked into her. Ancient anguished memories within her lay down, and the sweetness of those times came to her instead of the bitterness. Pieces of herself she had thought long dead turned over in their sleep and murmured promises to reawaken someday. Her thoughts touched Vandien gently, and she suddenly felt pain that she spoke to him so seldom of what she so often felt. In a haze of sentimentality, she promised to change all that. ‘From now on,’ she promised him solemnly, ‘I shall match you drink for drink. I see now why you do it.’

Far ahead she made out the twisting silver of a rivulet that crossed the road. There was the dark shape of a bridge, wrought with a skill that surpassed any Ki had ever seen, and the wonder of it did not diminish as she drew near, but increased. It arched extravagantly to cross the small water, far beyond need of its span, and ornate parapets graced it. Ki could imagine that some being had spent its entire life to achieve that bridge, to express in solidity the joy it had felt in the land and the water.

She had already decided to stop by the bridge for the rest of the night, but she crossed it for the sheer pleasure of feeling how well the wagon took it. On the far side of the bridge, she guided her team off the silvery road and onto the dark soft turf. Even in the dark, her fingers seemed to fly over the buckles of the harness, accomplishing with ease what was usually the last trial of the day. Sigmund walked about with dignity, whiffling at the new grass. Sigurd dropped ponderously to his knees and rolled with all the abandon of a colt.

Ki smiled at his foolishness and resisted the temptation to join him. Instead she seated herself next to the wagon on the cushiony turf and leaned back against the wheel. Within her she felt no need for a fire, or the warmth of her sleeping skins. She ran her hands gently over the ground at her side. Short soft-leaved plants were thick on it, and replete with round plump berries. She plucked one and held it up against the undark sky. It was black, but might have been purple or blue in the light of day. She garnered a handful of them from the grass beside her and filled her mouth with the fruit. They were sweet and juicy, and as warm as if the afternoon sun had just left them.

She could not recall a time when she had been so immensely comfortable with so little effort. She rose and crossed to the edge of the stream. Crouching on the mossy bank, she leaned her face down to the water, to draw up long sweet draughts of it. It did not lose its silvery appearance, even when viewed from only inches away. It was cold and heavy; she felt it slide down her throat and spread through her as if it were alive. She lifted her face and watched a few drops fall from her chin to the moving surface of the water.

She sat back on her haunches, and then stretched out on her back, a pleasant little chill running over her. She felt her heart thump more slowly. The waters of the stream rippled through her, spreading through her limbs a delicious chilliness. The liquid flowed through her, heavy, silvery, dense as mercury. Ki had never been so aware of her own body, so alert to the flow of her blood in her veins. She gazed about at the beauty of the night. It filled her with a longing to stay here, by the bridge and the silvery water.

‘Vandien?’ she asked him softly. ‘Why would you pass up such a stopping place? I don’t want to get up and chase you down the road tonight. I want to rest here. And I think I will, my friend. You say I never have impulses. Well, here is my third one today. As you so often bid me, I will act on it.’ Ki settled back on the grassy sward.

‘She went through.’ The Keeper’s voice was dark as midnight.

Yoleth nodded from the shadows. ‘It was the one bait she would never refuse. You have done well. Your master will be as pleased with you as I am. Now the Gate may be closed, for we are done with it. After, that is, you have given me the small token agreed upon.’