Labyrinth Gate by Kate Elliott
Sanjay blinked and cast the briefest of startled glances at Julian. At the same moment, he recalled the old man who had approached him just the day before with a proposal very similar to a bribe. “Are you of the opinion that another person is seeking the city and its treasure?” Sanjay asked, thinking simultaneously of Madame Sosostris.
“More than one, I don’t doubt,” said the earl smoothly. He tapped the front of the compartment with his cane. The carriage started forward. “But today I have more immediate matters to consider.” He sat back against the cushions and shut his eyes.
Julian shrugged expressively and mouthed, to Sanjay, “Poor girl.”
Sanjay raised both his hands in a gesture of helplessness, but his thoughts were not really on the “poor girl.” Her fate was out of his hands. Instead, he wondered how he and Chryse were to gain the treasure for Madame Sosostris, when the earl wanted it as well. He sighed and, not for the first time, touched the pocket of his coat where he carried their deck of cards. Since the meeting with Madame Sosostris, either he or Chryse always carried it on their person. As a precaution. Against what, neither were quite sure.
She heard someone say it plainly. “Poor girl.” But she willed her face to show no emotion at all as she climbed into the open carriage provided by her future husband as fitting for his bride’s procession to the church.
Even here, before the modest front of Farr House, folk had gathered to stare and wonder and talk.
“Poor girl,” said a different voice. It, too, faded into the crowd.
She sat still as death, hands clasped motionless in her lap, while the carriage moved off through the crowd. Against the dark wood and dark leather seats of the vehicle, the brilliant green of her dress shone like the hope of burgeoning spring, fresh shoots rising from deep soil. She repressed a shudder.
Professor Farr and Charity had gone ahead to wait for her at the church, as was fitting. The carriage, with the shuddering jerk she had not allowed herself, started forward. She stared straight ahead, willing herself to see nothing, hear nothing. She looked well, she knew that. Even Charity had admitted it, although Charity looked so beautiful in her attendant’s gown that it was no great generosity of spirit for her to compliment Maretha. The gown suited her. Her hair was done in the traditional Bride’s Night, an elaborate style meant for the groom’s hands to unravel.
Her hands tightened on the little handbag she carried, closed on a familiar, hard shape. That alone gave her reassurance. She had had a great deal of time to think, these past weeks, on what few things the earl had said to her, and what he had not. She concentrated on her grip on the bag, as if it alone gave her the resolve to go through with the event.
The ride, the greetings from her father and Charity on the steps of the church, the procession in, the wedding itself: it all passed in a numb blur. She knew she said her own name, as she voiced the vows; what he spoke she did not hear. She could not even have recognized the bishop, though she stood scant paces away from that worthy official.
But one moment stood out with brilliant clarity: the moment they had to touch to exchange the rings of binding, of matrimony. She had never touched him before.
His hands were cold, as if the chill in his eyes permeated his entire body.
Sometime later they were at the wedding feast. She ate nothing.
Later still her father, still glowing with excitement at the prospect of his life’s dream come to fruition, handed her into the closed carriage in which she would go to her new home. Bitterness swelled within her: had a young man of background and circumstances equal to her own, her choice of partner, been now her husband, he would have come to live in her home.
The flash of emotion quickly died as the earl climbed in and settled himself opposite her. She clutched her handbag.
“You look quite lovely, Maretha,” he said as the door closed behind him, shuttering them in dimness. His voice was as expressionless as his black eyes.
She did not reply.
In silence they arrived at the monumental front of his town mansion. In silence the door opened to let them into the huge entry hall. It was empty of servants. He offered his arm; she had to take it. He led her up the wide stairs to the next floor. Lamps lit the broad corridor, illuminating rich paintings and thick, patterned carpets. The house bore a hush so deep that they might have been entirely cut off from the city, or drowned beneath fathoms of water.
“Your chamber.” He halted before a door that opened soundlessly. “I will send someone to help you undress.”
“No,” she said abruptly—the first word, but for the service, that she had spoken all day. She felt with sudden certitude that she and he were the only humans in the house.
“As you wish.” He relinquished her arm, gave her a stiff bow, and motioned her into the room. She went.
The door shut with a slight click behind her. She stood in a sitting room furnished with great richness and sumptuousness—couch and chairs but also a desk and behind it, a bookcase filled with the volumes she used at her father’s house—ones that must have been newly purchased for her to use here. It was a kindness she thought her father incapable of, but perhaps Charity—
In the lamplight she saw a gorgeous triptych, depicting the marriage of Saint Maretha to the service of the Queen of Heaven, hanging above the fireplace. A fire burned, low and steady. Other pictures, cloaked by shadows, adorned the other walls. Across from her, a door opened.
She went, reluctantly, into the bedchamber. Bed, wardrobe, dressing table, all of the finest quality. A large window let in the glow of the moon. She walked across to it, looked down into a secluded garden, walled in. She thought she detected movement, shapes gliding along well-manicured paths, but she could not get a clear view. She sighed and turned away.
A night dress lay on the bed, laid out for her convenience. It was white, frothy with lace. She did not remember seeing it when she had entered the room. Lifting her eyes from it, she stared across at the far door—the door that would lead to the earl’s suite.
She turned abruptly and walked back to the sitting room door. The handle did not move: she was locked in. She stood for what seemed an eternity, unable to act. At last, gripping her handbag, she went back to the bed and the nightdress.
She did, in truth, need help undressing, but she managed it in ungainly stages. By the low light above the dressing-table mirror, she examined herself. The nightdress fell along her body in graceful, attractive lines. The lace at the front revealed the white fairness of the top of her bosom without being immodest. What would it be like, she thought, to be awaiting a man I loved and desired?
The realization came to her with that sudden harshness that characterizes unwanted truths: I do desire him. She clenched the back of the dressing-table chair. Her reflection blurred into tears.
A noise behind her. The turn of a key.
She whirled and ran to the bed, flinging her wedding gown to the floor in her haste to find her handbag. She fumbled in it as the door opened and he entered.
He was brilliant in his beauty, cold as if spring and sun never warmed him. He wore an elaborately embroidered dressing gown. Gold and silver threads glittered in the lamplight.
“Maretha,” he said.
She straightened, lifting her arms to aim the little pistol she had hidden in her handbag.
In the silence, the fire snapped and whispered like a thing alive. He stood perfectly still, said nothing for so long that she began to wonder if he was merely an illusion. She continued to hold the pistol on him with a steadiness that belied her fear.
“If you intend to shoot me,” he said at last, “I suggest you do so.”
“I will—” she began, but stopped, her voice was so hoarse. “I will hold to our agreement as husband and wife.” Her voice was low and full with emotion. “In name. In everything in name. But I know a sorcerer’s word bonds him, and I have never heard you say that you, you, want an heir.”
His gaze did not waver from her face. He had
Because she had to force herself to say the next words, they came out with biting clarity. “Then never believe that I will let you touch me again.”
There was a pause.
In her hands, the handle of the pistol was suddenly scorching, burning. She gasped, flinched, and dropped the gun. It landed with an empty thud on the floor.
They faced each other across the expanse of floor.
“Never believe,” he said, his voice as soft as slow death by freezing, “that you can stop me, if I choose to.”
“I may not be able to stop you,” she breathed, “but I will fight.”
“No need.” His expression did not change. “You have made your choice, now. So be it.”
It was a sentence, but what its terms were she did not know, knew only with piercing lucidity how completely he owned her. He drew from his pocket a key and, inserting it in the lock on her side, he left the room. The door shut behind him with quiet finality.
She ran to it and turned the key, locking him out. Went quickly to the sitting-room door. It remained locked from the outside. Went to the window, reaching for the casement latch.
A hiss, a breath of warmth, startled her. Curled on the casement lay a red-gold creature. Burning eyes regarded her, unblinking. It hissed again. The crest along its elongated neck rose. A tiny, thin tongue, almost glowing, flicked in and out of its snout.
She backed up two steps. It shifted slightly, tail arching up on one side of the window. She had an idea what it was: more lizard than miniature dragon, a creature called from fire by sorcerous means to do his bidding. Her guard. It stared at her with its fiery, unwavering gaze. It did not hiss again.
Maretha felt, like a weight, the sudden onset of weariness. There was nothing more she could do, prisoner in the house. She turned back to the bed, pulled back the covers, slipped in. The sheets were cold.
The lamps extinguished themselves.
She lay huddled in a darkness broken only by the low gleam of the dying fire. Awake, she listened for any sounds of the city beyond, but nothing penetrated these walls. She might as well have been alone in a chartless waste. Her feet were cold.
A rustling like paper stirred at the window. A moment later she felt a light pressure on the bed, and then warmth at her feet. The creature circled twice, nestled finally over and around her feet and ankles. Despite herself, she relaxed by imperceptible stages until finally, lulled by the creature’s warmth and by a strange, tuneless humming that emanated from it, she fell asleep.
Chapter 10:
The Beggar
“MARETHA,” SAID CHRYSE, LOOKING up from the table, “are you sure you don’t want some tea and cakes? You aren’t eating enough.”
Maretha stood at the window, staring out at the stand of trees that hid a clump of factories from the view of the inn. A pall of smoke rose behind the sparse greening of leaves. Smokestacks showed here and there from beyond the woods like huge, petrified trunks shorn of life. Closer, a few cottages huddled around the village common and its shallow pond.
“Can’t be that fascinating a sight,” muttered Kate when Maretha did not answer. She sat next to Chryse, shuffling the deck of Gates into different patterns on the table. “Lady Trent says this used to be beautiful country, the Midlands, before the factories.”
“I worry about her.” Chryse kept her voice low. “She hardly eats, and I don’t think she sleeps well at night, either.”
Kate turned up the Lover, placed in the middle of the wheel of cards, and gave a little snort. “Would you, with that monster in the room?”
“Shh.” Chryse leaned closer to the other woman. Maretha still stared out the window, seemingly oblivious to them. One of her hands lay perfectly still on the curtains; what she watched was not apparent to the two women sitting in the little inn parlor where they had halted this late afternoon. The three of them were alone—the men off on other pursuits, Charity still up in the bedchamber she shared with Kate, presumably attending to her dress for dinner.
“I don’t think,” said Chryse in the barest whisper, “that the marriage has been consummated.”
Kate raised one eyebrow, disbelieving. “I thought he wanted an heir,” she replied in an equally quiet voice.
Chryse shrugged.
“Well.” Kate swept the deck into one pile and turned up three cards one by the next. “I can’t believe he has any scruples about her maidenly modesty. Now this pattern is called the Hinge. It can read the immediate future, or the central hinge of a life or work, or, if you know how to channel magic, work a spell. For instance, I could move you from one side of a room to the other. See, here it shows the Town Square and—” she paused, “well, this is a wasteland, but on the other side, the SACU side, it would be the Garden, hinged by the figure of the Beggar.”
“Move you?” Chryse examined the three cards with immediate interest. “What do you mean?”
“Transportation,” replied Kate. “I’ve seen it done. But short moves, like from one end of a room to the other, nothing like the distance you and Sanjay must have covered to get here from Vesputia. It depends on how much skill you have at channeling the power of the cards, and how much power your deck itself has.” She looked up suddenly, examining Chryse’s face. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
Chryse looked a trifle sheepish. “No.”
“How can you not believe me?” Kate set the main stack of cards aside and pushed the tea things to the far end of the table. “I don’t have much skill, but these Gates are powerful. Now, let me see if I remember this.” She placed her hand, palm down, over the Beggar, and shut her eyes.
“Can you only work magic through the cards?” asked Chryse.
Kate opened her eyes and frowned. “True mages, who have studied, can use their arts in ways I can’t even comprehend. The Gates act as channelers, augmentation, and also help the unskilled tap into the source of power. But,” and she shut her eyes again, “one needs to concentrate.”
“Oh,” Chryse grinned. “I beg your pardon.” She folded her hands on her lap and waited.
Kate sat very still. Nothing happened. By the window, Maretha turned suddenly and walked back across the parlor to stand by Chryse.
“Do you see the runes on the cards?” she said in a low voice. Chryse bent forward to look. “There, in the Town Square, you can see what we would call the consonant ‘F’, hidden in the panelling in that doorway.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I believe,” continued Maretha, “that those runes, our letters now, are direct descendents of the writing of the Pariamne culture, although they would have had different values, different connotations, then. Unless my personal theory that the Gates themselves are also a relic from that time proves true. There is one tale in the Sais legends that explains how she bound power into the cards in an effort to save the city, which corroborates my idea, although one can’t take old myths as an accurate guide. But I’m doing some work to correlate the runes and the symbology embodied in each card as a way of translating the written language fragments that we have recovered.”
“Between the two of you,” said Kate, opening her eyes, “it is impossible to focus my mind at all.”
“Here.” Chryse leaned forward. “Let me try.” She placed her hand over The Town Square. “Now what am I supposed to do?”
Kate removed her hand from the central card. “Concentrate on the essence of the card. That’s why those who study magic are much more successful.”
“Well,” said Chryse, “since I have no expectation of success, I won’t be disappointed.”
Kate rolled her eyes, but said nothing.
Chryse lifted her hand to look at the card once again: a few buildings, a common green, a pond—the medieval version of the village they were in at this moment. Embedded in the fine tracery of the inn door’s panelling she made out a letter-like figure ??
Shutting her eyes, she tried to concentrate on the inn itself, the room they were in now, but her thoughts kept wandering back to that rune. She thought of faces in the windows of the buildings, of flowers growing up on the grass of the common, of the fluidity of the water in the pond.
That image stuck with her, the gentle lap of water on a gradual shore, the heavy lulling swell of deeper water, the smoothness of the water itself—She began to feel as if she could not catch her breath, as if she were running up a steep hillside or swimming many strokes.
A sudden gasp from Maretha startled her out of her concentration, and she opened her eyes.
Kate was gone.
Chryse looked up at Maretha. Maretha ran to the window and, with no warning, began to laugh. Chryse followed her.
There, in the middle of the village pond, sat Kate, immersed up to her shoulders. As they watched, she stood up. The water came over her knees.
By the time Chryse and Maretha arrived on the green, Kate had slogged her way out of the water and stood dripping and bedraggled on the grass that edged the pond. Her sodden clothes clung to her body. Chryse and Maretha, coming up to her, could not stop laughing, although they tried.
“Bloody hell,” swore Kate. Her coat, perfectly tailored, now stuck to her in creases. “I’ve never been so surprised in my life.”
“Oh, dear.” Chryse wiped a tear from her cheek. “I’m terribly sorry. I had no idea it would work. Oh, Kate, you do look funny.”
“Thank you,” replied Kate with a grand bow. Water dripped into puddles around her boots. She laughed. “Now I understand why I was the kind of child who was always getting broken bones and burns and bruises. However did you do it, Chryse?”
Chryse could only shrug, helpless. “I don’t know. I’m still not sure I believe it. Are you sure you didn’t just run out here while my eyes were shut and throw yourself in?”
Kate shook her head. “It isn’t a matter of belief,” she said, serious now. “It just is.”