Vandien shook his head as if clearing his ears of water. He picked up the empty Alys goblet, and then slammed it back to the table. His mind was fuzzed enough. He had listened, and now he had best act.
A sudden gust of cool night air flowed into the tavern. Vandien turned stinging eyes gratefully, seeking the source of the welcome draft. The door was open, and a woman was framed in it as she held the slats to one side. Her eyes glowed pale grey, and her green garment clung to her like fog on a morning hillside.
‘Mother!’ The boy collapsed under the table and scuttled past Vandien’s tall boots. He immersed himself in his mother’s long skirts.
Vandien pushed free of the table, tossing down a few coins for payment. If she were here, then Ki had gone through. His heart began to hammer, and his head to spin when he stood too rapidly. When he regained himself, the woman and boy were gone. He limped to the doorway and stood there, steadying himself on its splintery framework. The streets were dark and empty. His quick ears caught the sound of a light and hurried tread.
‘Wait, woman!’ he called into the night. ‘I must speak to you!’ The patter of feet paused, then resumed more rapidly. Vandien cursed to himself. He stumbled slightly over the doorstep and then went after them.
The darkness closed over him like a cupped hand. The thick dust of the street cloaked the sound of their fleeing footfalls. Vandien hurried after them, swinging one leg stiffly. Once he slipped in fresh slops, windmilling his arms for balance. He trotted on, his own thudding boots obscuring the sounds he tried to follow. A crossroads opened before him and he halted. A fool’s errand. He would get lost in the city and never find this peculiar Limbreth Gate. The thing to do was return to the tavern, get his horse, and make a swift round of the walls. But then he heard the boy’s voice, lifted querulously. Someone sternly shushed him. Vandien turned softly toward the sounds.
This was a poorer section of Jojorum, the mud brick houses built on the crumbled foundations of older, nobler buildings. The smaller dwellings were ready to tumble down; the narrow alleys between them were clogged with debris. Vandien’s fogged brain cleared as his wariness reasserted itself. This would be a fine place for an ambush. There was a whisper of fabric and Vandien spun to it.
‘He’s only the man from the tavern, Mother.’ Mother and son emerged from the shadow they crouched in.
Vandien’s shoulders sank and he let out a short breath as his arms unclenched. ‘That’s right,’ he said softly. ‘It’s only the man from the tavern.’
The woman had a low voice like wind over a meadow. ‘My son tells me you were kind to him, sir. It seems it was the first kindness he was freely given since he so foolishly left my cottage. I did not mean to leave you unthanked. But my time is fleeing. I must return to the Gate before your light comes.’
Vandien took the boy’s hand. ‘Then we have the same errand. I, too, must pass that Gate tonight. As I do not know the way, would you guide me there? And I would ask, rudely perhaps, how a child as young as this comes to be working alone in a tavern such as that.’
The pale gown of the mother was a blur before Vandien as he followed her down the narrow street. ‘Chess is a willful boy. He is not one to stay at home around my feet as I do the chores and work the land. Always he is off by the stream, or up in the trees on the hillside, or loitering by the Limbreth’s road. I did not worry when he was late for our meal. I saved up the scolding I had for him. But the time for second meal came, and he did not come, I went seeking him. A neighbor told me he had seen Chess speaking to a Gate Keeper. The Keepers are deceitful, honorless ones. I knew no good could one wish my Chess. I hastened to the new Gate. But even before I got to the Gate, I saw a stranger coming up the road, attired as one from this world. I knew she could not come in unless one had gone out. ‘Where are you going?’ I asked her. She gave me a cold look and no reply as she rode past on her black beast. Then I knew she came seeking to steal away the Jewels of the Limbreth. I hurried to the Gate. But the time was past, and the Gate led to hot deadly light. Too late to pass now, even if there had been one willing to change places with me. The Keeper vowed he had never seen my child. I knew he lied. He stood safe within his Gate and lied to me.
‘I have haunted the Gate and waited. Once Chess came, but we could not pass. So I had to wait. Until now, when a woman drove animals and a cart through the Gate and the Keeper let me through to balance her. Our chance of returning to our side is slight. But I have regained my Chess. Whatever we face, we face now together.’
‘She went on without me,’ Vandien muttered dully. His abused mind could not absorb the full import of her words. ‘What has she been lured into?’
‘She seemed not at all like others who have come through,’ the woman commiserated. ‘Yet I fear the Jewels will seize her nonetheless. It’s a pity. She seemed to have her heart in this world. Yet she went off down the road that leads to one end without a backward glance, a fool like the rest. Still, I shall not speak ill of one who let me through to my Chess.’
‘I will,’ grumbled Vandien. ‘She chooses her companions recklessly, and takes foolish advice. She makes more haste than sense.’
The darkened streets were deceptive in their turnings. Vandien was not sure if it were darkness or Alys that made the way so tricky for him. The game leg did not help. The mother and son preceded him, her pale garments and hair floating before him in the blackness. They seemed to find the way clear and familiar, stepping past the potholes that Vandien stumbled in, and turning at crossroads down streets that led only to darkness. Vandien followed them like a led beast. Once he found Ki, he’d fumble his way back to the tavern and his horse. For now he had to get through the Gate and catch her before she went too far. The moon grew paler in the sky.
They turned an abrupt corner, Vandien stumbling hastily after them. He stepped on the hem of her garment, for she had halted before him. He pulled himself up and looked past her. The Limbreth Gate glowed before them.
It struck Vandien as no more than a rectangular hole in the city walls. It was difficult for him to make out the country beyond it, and yet the Gate itself was strangely clear to his eyes. It was as if the darkness itself had been pressed back to make a space for this red Gate. No bars or portcullis hampered the way. Only an old gatekeeper in grey robes. Vandien put a gentle hand on the woman’s shoulder to urge her forward. Even intoxicated, he felt sure he could handle the old wretch. But under his hand her muscles were tight as a hunting cat’s.
‘So you have returned, have you?’ the Keeper charged her. ‘What will you do? Haunt me from that side now? By now you know I am beyond your reach. How can two of you ever expect to enter? No two will ever wish to leave, and the Limbreth has told me to let the Gate close. Folly. You should have returned to your farm, woman, and mourned the child as dead.’
Vandien tightened his grip on her clenched shoulder muscles. With a courtliness that was only partially the Alys, he stepped past and in front of them, placing them in the shelter of his body.
‘Why do you seek to bar these two from returning to their home?’ His tone was of reasonable curiosity. His fingers did not even venture to the worn hilt of his belt knife. There was nothing in his stance to suggest a threat, but every muscle in the set of his face promised it. It was a disparity that Vandien cultivated. He smiled hard, letting his scar pull his left eye into a sinister squint.
But the Keeper was not daunted. Instead he seemed to be staring past Vandien, considering the skyline. He smiled blindly and nodded toward it in a superior way. After a moment, Vandien’s eyes unwillingly followed his gaze. There was nothing to be seen. Only that the moon was a little paler in a sky that was venturing toward dawn.
‘What is it?’ the woman behind him whispered in awe.
‘Nothing!’ snorted Vandien. ‘It’s an old trick, supposed to unnerve us by implying he has comrades behind us. Pay no attention.’
He glanced back at the Gate Keeper. The