Read Online Shadow Gate by Kate Elliott - Free Book Online

motley group; she could see them pretty well despite overcast skies that admitted no light of moon. They had torches, and all manner of weapons, and they were moving fast and purposefully, heading southwest. Their captain with his horsetail ornaments had a ragged scar crudely healed across his clean-shaven chin, and he had the look of a real northerner, hair and complexion lightened to a pale brown by outlander blood. They all wore a crude tin medallion on a string at their necks, a star with eight points. In a cold moment, set against the misty-warm night, she recognized the men who had tried to capture her in the mountains.
    She moved on once Warning was willing to go, but she could not shake the sight of those men. Most likely Hari had confessed that he’d seen her, and identified the Guardian altar where she had been standing. It seemed likely they were marching to the Soha Hills, hoping to trap her.
    They’ll never give up. They want me that badly.
    She plotted a path in her head that would, she hoped, lead her to Toskala. She and the mare pushed north through Sund for days, begging at temples and farmsteads at dawn or twilight. She was always looking over her shoulder.
    Warning, deprived of her favored sustenance at the Guardian altars, began to graze with the same enthusiasm a dog might display eating turnips. She deigned to water in streams and ponds as if the process disgusted her.
    When they reached the region of Sardia, where the tributary road they were traveling on met the Lesser Walk, they turned east toward Toskala. Late in the afternoon they set out through woodland on a track running more or less parallel to the paved road. Just before dusk they began moving through managed woodlands, skirting an orchard and diked fields marked with poles carved at the peak with the doubled axe sacred to the Merciless One.
    She found a copse of murmuring pine and left Warning in its shelter. Walking along the embankment between fields, she headed toward a compound lying in the center of cultivated land. From here she could not see the main road, but she knew it was close. She circled around the high compound walls, ringed at their height with wire hung with bells to keep out intruders. Drizzle spat over the ground as she stepped up onto the entry path and walked to the gate.
    The doors were shut with the dusk, lamps hanging high on the wall. She ventured into the light and raised both hands to show she was holding no weapon.
    â€œGreetings of the dusk,” she called. “I’m a traveler, begging for the goddess’s mercy by way of a bit to eat and drink. Maybe some grain for the road. Withered apples? Anything you have to spare.” She held out her bowl.
    â€œGo away,” said a woman’s voice from atop the walls. “Our gates are closed.”
    Among other things, Marit had been at pains to discoverwhat day and month it was, now that she knew she had slept through nineteen years and by doing so walked from the Year of the Black Eagle, with perhaps a slight detour through the Year of the Blue Ox, directly into the Year of the Silver Fox.
    â€œI’m surprised to hear you say so, holy one. I thought Ushara’s temples kept their gates open all day and all night of the day of Wakened Snake. So it always was in my own village.”
    â€œThe gates are closed, day and night,” said the woman. “Shadows walk abroad. No one can be trusted, so we no longer let anyone in. Go away, or we’ll kill you.” Marit sensed the presence of five others along the wall.
    â€œHow can this be, holy one? The Devourer turns no person away. Her gates are always open.”
    She received no answer, and no beggar’s tithe, and when they shot a warning arrow to stab the dirt at her feet, she walked away.
    S HE HAD BETTER luck in the villages and towns set up as posting stations along the Lesser Walk. The folk there might be wary and reluctant to share with a mere beggar, but the laws of