The parchment is small, he was saying. Just eat it. Just eat it.

Astonished, Vash did. It almost stuck in his throat, but he got it down at last.

22.

d.a.m.nation Gate ". . . And the village of Tessideme, like most of its neighbors, suffered beneath year-round snow, icy wind, and frozen fields. The animals wasted and died, and the crops turned black and perished in the earth . . ."

-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"

THE SUN HAD BURNED THE FOG off the bay and Southmarch Castle's tall towers glinted in the sun from behind the great outer walls as they stretched toward heaven, each a different color, each with its own peculiarities of design. In ordinary circ.u.mstances it would have been an impressive sight, but to Qinnitan, a prisoner being taken to the one man on earth she was most terrified of seeing again, the sight meant nothing except failure and horror and the power of inescapable Fate: the G.o.ds were clearly bent on humbling her for trying to avoid the destiny they had a.s.signed her.

As Qinnitan watched the approaching castle, she suddenly felt something she hadn't experienced for months, the sensation that had swept through her when the high priest Panhyssir had force-fed her his terrible potions: the world was not solid. It was as fragile as a bubble, and things things waited beneath it. She could feel one of those things this moment. It was alive to her presence and unfazed by distance, because even though it lay more than a mile away across the cold waters of Brenn's Bay and buried beneath hundreds of feet of stone, it was also beside her, even waited beneath it. She could feel one of those things this moment. It was alive to her presence and unfazed by distance, because even though it lay more than a mile away across the cold waters of Brenn's Bay and buried beneath hundreds of feet of stone, it was also beside her, even inside inside her. Qinnitan could sense its interest-it felt her just as strongly as she felt it. Couldn't any of the other people on the deck of the troop ship feel its ghastly, intrusive presence as she did? her. Qinnitan could sense its interest-it felt her just as strongly as she felt it. Couldn't any of the other people on the deck of the troop ship feel its ghastly, intrusive presence as she did?

Why did you leave me, Barrick? Why did you stop talking to me? I'm so frightened . . . !

But it was pointless to mourn. Wherever he was, Barrick was only a mortal. In fact, like Qinnitan herself he was little more than a child: he couldn't do anything to save her from Sulepis, let alone from the G.o.ds themselves.

The sun was far too bright. Daikonas Vo knew it must be Hexamene now, almost summer, but the light still seemed too strong, a glare all around him as though he walked over a bank of blazing, white-hot coals.

"First rays, Nushash praise," he said out loud. When he was a child, his mother had always said that when she got out of bed in the morning, although she didn't say it much as he got older. Strange-he hadn't thought about the b.i.t.c.h in what seemed like years. Fitting that excruciating pain should bring his memories of her back. he said out loud. When he was a child, his mother had always said that when she got out of bed in the morning, although she didn't say it much as he got older. Strange-he hadn't thought about the b.i.t.c.h in what seemed like years. Fitting that excruciating pain should bring his memories of her back.

As they rode a light tide into the docks in mainland Southmarch, the little cog stuffed with traders and their goods slipped between half a dozen Xixian warships lying at anchor or being escorted into harbor. The sailors on these other ships, unless they were in the middle of some task, watched Daikonas Vo and the others crowded on the cog's deck. He was still the object of much attention from the crew-a ragged beggar who had somehow commanded a place on a vessel the autarch had commandeered-but Vo did not intend stealth. If the girl from the Seclusion was being taken to Sulepis, perhaps had reached him already, it was far too late for stealth.

The deeper Vo walked into the camp the more eyes followed him. Men began calling to him, shouting at him to stop and tell who he was, did he think beggars could simply walk in among the tents of the famous White Hounds? Vo knew a few of his old comrades were following him. Ordinarily, he would have thought nothing of turning and confronting them. None of the White Hounds were cowards, but Vo had a way of looking at people, even very strong, very fierce people, that seemed to remind them that there were still things they wanted to do in life. But he dared not waste time.

He grunted and had to stop for a moment, bending double with his arms clutching hard across his belly, trying to keep his jaws clenched, to keep in the scream fighting so hard to get out. It was like a hot coal with legs crawling back and forth in his guts.

None of his old troop had recognized him yet; he must look like a beggar indeed. He finally managed to fight down the pain and straightened up before any of the soldiers confronted him. His goal was only a few dozen paces away, so he set off toward it, trying not to stagger, trying not to show any weakness that would make them hurry after him again, that might prompt them to pull him down like jackals on a wounded lion. Or to try, at any rate: Daikonas Vo knew he would kill them all first if he had to-fingers in eyes, kicking even as he heard bones snapping, all his weight pushing his hard forearm down until the other man's throat collapsed....

Vo could taste blood in his mouth. He spun around, arms up, ready to protect himself, but the soldiers who had been watching him had not followed. They were laughing among themselves, watching him stagger and twitch and talk to himself. Vo was full of shame. How bad was he? Had he p.i.s.sed himself, too?

Shuddering, his guts like knotted, burning rags, he turned back and stumbled toward the quartermaster's tent.

Vasil Zeru looked up as he entered but clearly did not recognize his face: he curled his lip at Vo's appearance and turned back to scolding one of his underlings.

"Zeru, it's me, Vo," he said, leaning in the doorway. "Daikonas Vo."

It still took a moment more for the look of recognition to come. "By the fiery boots of the Lord, is that truly you? You look like you caught fire and someone put you out with a Thunderman's saber."

"I am . . ." he clenched his teeth again, waited for the spasm to pa.s.s, "I am in need of your help. And your private counsel."

The quartermaster understood. He sent the underlings away. "We have all wondered about . . . about your mission."

"Yes. I am in the Golden One's service," Vo told him, "on a special mission. I must reach him as quickly as I can. But there are enemies, traitorous, high-ranking enemies who wish to stop me. . . . I have information the autarch must see!" He swayed, and that was entirely genuine, but it seemed to impress the quartermaster as well. Vasil Zeru was a hard man, but unlike most of the other officers his cruelty was impartial and meant as discipline. He had no wife, no son. The White Hounds were the closest he had to family, and he took his responsibilities very seriously. Vo, who had always made the other White Hounds uneasy, was exactly what Zeru liked in his unit-a clean-living, quiet and able professional soldier. So he believed, at least; Daikonas Vo's other pastimes were unknown to him.

"I will help you, of course," Vasil Zeru told him. "G.o.d's blazing blood, of course I will! Is it that old pantaloon, Vash? There is a devil who never lifted a blade or a bow himself, but would be quick to have someone else done in." He shook his head. "The kind that thinks nothing of sending soldiers to do every filthy task. . . ."

"May Nushash bless you!" Vo was able to make it sound convincing because of the relief he was feeling; the pain in his gut had suddenly lessened. "I will tell the autarch of your service to him, of how you helped when others would not."

Old Zeru actually looked a little flushed with sentiment. "It is nothing," he said, but he seemed pleased. "What any good soldier would do for our great Falcon!"

"Do you have some water?" Vo asked suddenly. The retreating agony had left his throat ash-dry and his head as light as smoke. "To drink? " His voice sounded far away.

Then he fainted.

"By my ancestors!" said the young priest as he looked Qinnitan up and down. "What am I supposed to do with her?"

"Take her off our hands, Brother," the soldier on her left said. "Captain said if we even had a bit of fun with her, they'd have our heads. She's to go to the Golden One, or to His Radiance, the high priest."

"Panhyssir himself?" The young, shaven-headed priest straightened as if that almost incomprehensible presence had just entered the room. "And the Golden One? Well, of course. That is, someone should take responsibility for this." He swallowed, half-smiling, looking at Qinnitan but no longer seeing her. After her time in the Seclusion, she knew the look of all-conquering ambition. This creature wouldn't let her out of his sight until he had made certain everyone had seen him deliver her to the highest circle he could reach.

Qinnitan slumped between the two guards; her chains rattled. In truth the irons were too big for her-the Xixian military generally expected most prisoners to be larger than a girl her age-and were sc.r.a.ping her skin raw. She could have slipped out of them easily, but a reflex told her not to give that away yet. Still, the guards themselves had not seemed very worried about her causing trouble.

The young priest was called Brother Gunis. He wasn't just an under-priest of the War Chariot of Nushash, he explained as she slumped on the floor against the wall of the shrine-tent: he had already been chosen to become a true priest, but after he brought her to Panhyssir-or even to the Golden One himself, praises to his name, may the Falcon of Bishakh forever fly praises to his name, may the Falcon of Bishakh forever fly-he would almost certainly become a speaking-priest, a high honor indeed.

"But I have done nothing wrong," she protested. "I am a priestess of Nushash myself-I was part of the Hive. I'm still a virgin. Do you understand that I will be tortured if you do this, Brother Gunis? That I'll be killed?"

He paused for a moment and then his mouth set in a line, as if he was frightened something might get out . . . or in. "If you are a prisoner, then you should repent your crimes," he said. "Everyone knows that the Golden One is generous beyond other men, forgiving beyond even the G.o.ds themselves!" He nodded. "Yes, give me your hand, girl. Let us pray for your forgiveness together."

She did not have the strength to fight him. Qinnitan let Brother Gunis clutch her hand tightly in his own moist, warm grasp. The young priest had a gleam in his eyes that had nothing to do with her, or at least not with her fleshly presence: he was seeing the glory that might be in his future. Qinnitan winced as he began to pray aloud. It was the New Catechism, the one the young autarch himself had written. This Gunis was either very ambitious, or he was a true believer. Either way, he would do nothing to help her.

Gunis took a pair of guards with him, sullen Hakka Slingers who looked as though they'd rather be drinking fermented milk than dealing with a priest and-as they had clearly decided after looking her up and down in an unimpressed manner-a scrawny girl not even worth the effort of rape. They straightened up when they heard that she was bound for the Golden One himself, but clearly did not expect to get far up the chain of command before being relieved of the duty: ordinary soldiers did not get to meet the Master of the Great Tent.

The soldiers led her and Gunis across the camp and out toward the southwestern edge of the harbor, where the city ended in rocky beaches and a few piers used by some of the poorer Southmarch fishermen. Here the hills that ringed the side of the bay came down almost to the water, and wind-carved chunks of standing stone marched down even beyond the edge of the hills, so that some of them stuck up from the bay itself like crooked teeth. The rocky sides of the hills that loomed above the beach as though they had been sliced with a great carving knife were white and soft pigeon-gray with tracings of greenery at the top, but it was the black holes along the beach that caught her eye and held it. She knew she had no choice, but it was still all she could do to make one foot follow the other toward those dark, ominous openings.

Once, when she was a child, Qinnitan's family had gone out to the coast of Xis for her great-grandmother's funeral. Afterward, while the adults had been singing songs and drinking, some of her relatives had taken her and her siblings down to the ocean to look at the tidal flats. It had been a strange place, especially for someone like Qinnitan, used to being surrounded on all sides by buildings and people. One of her cousins had tried to pull her into the mouth of one of the bigger caves, but she had refused to go, even when her younger brothers had agreed. She had remained on the rocks instead, splashing in the shallow waters of the ocean pools, waiting for what seemed like hours. At last the rest of the children had come back and, although she had felt bad for being afraid, Qinnitan had not been sorry to miss the adventure. The dark holes had reminded her of what her father used to tell her about Xergal the Earth-lord, one of the enemies of great Nushash: "He lives in the ground, do you see? So far down that the sun can't reach, and it's cold, so cold. And he hates it there, and he hates Nushash and the rest of the Ugeni tribe for banishing him. And so he wants nothing more than to get his hands on bad little children who don't love Nushash, and keep them for himself." "He lives in the ground, do you see? So far down that the sun can't reach, and it's cold, so cold. And he hates it there, and he hates Nushash and the rest of the Ugeni tribe for banishing him. And so he wants nothing more than to get his hands on bad little children who don't love Nushash, and keep them for himself."

He had been talking about wicked Xergal stealing those children's spirits and keeping them in his harsh, dark underworld for all eternity, but it had been easy for Qinnitan to see that if you went under the ground, especially in a place as fearful-looking as those caves, you were as much as offering yourself to the cold, dark, angry lord of the earth.

Thus it was that when she should already have been as frightened as she could be, Qinnitan discovered that she had reserves of terror untapped until now. By the time they reached the elaborate guard post built at the entrance to the central cavern, she was fighting back tears of exhaustion and fright. Although the opening in the cliff wall stretched far above her head, she stared down at her feet as the guards, after an exchange with the young priest, ushered them past the gate and inside. Both guards took torches from the pile and lit them in the brazier by the gate. Within moments the doorway and the actual light of the sky were behind her and Qinnitan was being led down into immense, flickering darkness.

The autarch's troops had made a road of sorts through the main cavern-carved flat and wide where it had been too narrow for the wheels of small supply wagons, scratched and covered with gravel where the limestone was too slippery, until it almost looked like one of the supply roads leading in and out of the ma.s.sive camp outside. But this was no ordinary road; it led through a strange fairyland of stone pillars, most of them on the floor of the outer cavern, whose shadows stretched and gyrated on the cavern walls as the guards walked past with their torches. Then at the edge of the cavernous anteroom the road tilted down and began its back and forth progress into the depths, lit by the occasional torch wedged into a pile of rocks by the road. From time to time they pa.s.sed another guard station or an empty supply wagon heading back to the surface, but otherwise the only people Qinnitan saw were the three accompanying her, eager Brother Gunis and the two bored guards, who spent much of their time talking quietly to each other.

Some hundred feet below the earth, the torchlight revealed a trickle of water dripping from the slabs that made up the walls, and Qinnitan realized they must now be underneath the bay itself. The water dripped through in several places from above, creating little ponds on the rock floor that overtopped and flowed away down the cracks into darkness.

As they pa.s.sed out of that cavern into a larger one, Qinnitan could suddenly see a long distance downward as the track wound around the outside of a huge open cavern at least a hundred feet deep. The stone track had been replaced by huge wooden structures like bridges that seemed to be hung directly on the side of the cavern and which together made a single continuous road winding all the way to the bottom. The cavern was full of torches; dozens of soldiers, maybe hundreds, were moving in and out of various holes at the base of the wall, presumably a series of tunnels leading off in different directions like the spokes of a wagon's wheel. From this height the soldiers looked like ants, and Qinnitan had the sudden, unpleasant sensation that she was being led deeper and deeper into something that was not actually a human thing at all.

"It is wonderful, what our autarch has done here," Gunis said to the guards. "Have you men dug this all out in such a short time?"

The soldiers shared a look. "The caves run all through here and also underneath the bay and the island," one of them said. "The miners didn't have to do much, to tell the truth."

"Still, it is wonderful." Gunis clasped his hands together on his breast and offered an ostentatious prayer of thanks to Nushash.

Qinnitan hardly noticed him. As they walked down the inclined walkway, their footfalls now booming on wood instead of swishing through gravel, something had reached up from below, something invisible but incredibly strong, and fastened itself around her like a cold hand, making it suddenly hard to draw breath.

It knew she was here. She could feel it turning her over in its thoughts. It knew she was here . . . and it was very hungry.

I've seen this before, Daikonas Vo thought as he faced the cliff and the great uneven black door. Daikonas Vo thought as he faced the cliff and the great uneven black door. It's the d.a.m.nation Gate. It's the d.a.m.nation Gate. It was something else his mother had spoken of-in fact, the night his father had killed her she had spat at him and said that evil spirits were going to drag him down to the d.a.m.nation Gate so that Xergal's servants could flay off his skin. Vo's father had not liked that, and in the course of expressing his displeasure he had broken Vo's mother's neck. It was something else his mother had spoken of-in fact, the night his father had killed her she had spat at him and said that evil spirits were going to drag him down to the d.a.m.nation Gate so that Xergal's servants could flay off his skin. Vo's father had not liked that, and in the course of expressing his displeasure he had broken Vo's mother's neck.

But this, he thought, this was not mere words: this was the thing itself. Yermun the Gatekeeper must be watching from inside, wearing his skin backward as he was said to do. Yermun, the brother of Xergal-"Immon" and "Kernios" to the northerners-was a bit of a hero to the White Hounds, who considered themselves to be lifelong prisoners in a foreign land just as Immon himself, powerful though he might be, was a prisoner in Kernios' dread realm.

Brothers in h.e.l.l, the old White Hounds' song ran, the old White Hounds' song ran, come running to the fight, and Heaven take the slowest! come running to the fight, and Heaven take the slowest!

With his clean new armor and his beard trimmed to something resembling Xixian military standard, Vo walked into the mouth of shadow. The pain in his gut was beginning again, that feeling like dirty claws scratching at the tenderest parts of him; it was all he could do to walk straight instead of stumbling like a daytime drunk. The guards at their post outside the huge hill entrance stopped him for a moment, perhaps troubled by something strange in his eyes, but Zeru had given him the code of the day and so they let him pa.s.s.

The pain became even stronger as Vo walked down into the great tunnel.

I am cursed. I have lost my wager. I took service with the autarch's Hounds because it gave me license to do as I pleased, but I could not let well enough be. Because I wanted something more, I won a place in the autarch's special service, and now that "something more" is killing me. I have lost a wager and the autarch, as he always does, has won. Someone else will get credit for my hard labor and I will die like a gutted animal.

He could not think about it. It did not make the pain in Daikonas Vo's body worse but it made his very mind hurt, spread a red, glaring fog in his mind that confused him, and made him fear he might stumble off the path into some deep place.

Vo saw her at last from the top of the great cavern the Xixian soldiers called "Xergal's Tent." He knew it was the autarch's wh.o.r.e even though she was far below him at the bottom of the chamber, knew her as if she were family, and although he could see scarcely anything from his vantage point except her black hair as she walked captive between two soldiers, he knew her shape and posture as a lover would. Her big, dark eyes would be half-shut, her thin face quietly mournful and her thoughts turned inward into one of those great, long silences that had impressed even Vo. He had never met a woman who could stay such a time in her own thoughts, except a wh.o.r.e he had bought once whose tongue had been cut out by a previous client.

He hurried down the creaking ramp that wound its way around the cavern wall. The girl and her captors were still standing in the middle of the moving crowd, facing a wall with several tunnel mouths of several sizes, when the thing in his middle grabbed at both his gut and his heart at the same time. Vo staggered, gasping, feeling as though some terrible fire had burst through the walls of his belly and would consume him entirely. For a moment the next torch down the path shrank to a spark and he could not get any air into his lungs, but then after a little blackness, Vo discovered that although he had fallen onto his hands and knees, he could breathe-and think-once more. He got up and began to stagger downward again, but could no longer see the girl and her guards below. They had chosen one of the tunnels.

By the time he reached the bottom, the pain had let up enough for him to talk.

"Which? Which way for the high officers' compound?" he demanded of a Naked infantryman.

The man seemed to recognize the White Hound badge, if not Vo himself, so he replied respectfully. "The officers' tents-go to that one, there." He pointed to one side. "That's your fastest way."

Vo let him go and hurried toward the opening, staggering as he went. He knew there was little chance that he would recover the girl even if he caught up with her-how could he kill two guards without anyone knowing? The girl herself would give him away, just to see him tortured and executed. His work, his suffering, had all been for nothing. He had truly walked of his own will through the d.a.m.nation Gate.

He followed the path downward for what seemed most of an hour, in places having to shoulder through men cl.u.s.tered around some half-done task or other. The autarch's engineers and their slaves were still working in the tunnels even after the strange subterranean invasion had begun, widening and strengthening them. Vo could half-imagine that by the time they were finished the caverns would have become a replica of the Orchard Palace, all high ceilings and white stone facing. In fact, if the autarch stayed true to his youthful direction, perhaps the entire world would become a single Orchard Palace, and everyone in it either one of the autarch's soldiers or wh.o.r.es or slaves.

It should have been me. But he is clever. He can see things as clearly as I can, almost, and he was born into power and riches. I never had a chance-but it should have been me. This should have been mine; the world should have been mine, not an Orchard Palace but a Palace of Vo as wide as the world . . . !

He wandered along the narrowing path, his mind filled with the thoughts of his world-palace and what each room would contain, until the complexity of the instruments he would need and the number of victims his schemes would require made his head whirl, and he suddenly stopped. For a moment, he thought the terrible gut-pain was coming back-it was just such a nervous stab that generally alerted him-then he slowly realized what it was that had stopped him.

The road had come to an end.

Daikonas Vo looked down at the blackness, the sudden, violent falling away of the earth. He had almost walked into empty air.

He turned and made his way carefully back up the path, only noticing now that it was very narrow indeed, that he had not been following a proper Xixian military road for some time. Had he turned somewhere? Several tunnels had crossed his track earlier, but they had all been smaller than the empty s.p.a.ce through which he walked and he had pa.s.sed them all by. What had happened?

Vo made his way back up the track, following it along the side of a deep drop that gradually grew shallower until the echoes all but stopped. He was circling a deep cavern on a path around its rim, and must be getting closer to the bottom with each circuit, but nothing he could find seemed anything like the wide road that had brought him here. It was not a small chamber: it took him the better part of an hour to go all the way around, just to make sure.

Still, after another long climb up another featureless stone track between two long, leaning slabs, with only an occasional army torch stuck in crevices on the wall to supplement the light he carried, Vo had to admit that this did not look much like anything he remembered from before. Some of it didn't look like it was Xixian work at all. He wondered if they had foreign engineers and workers down here as well.

Whatever had happened, Vo had clearly lost his chance of catching up with the girl, at least by any conventional pursuit. Ah, G.o.ds, and now the pain was coming back again, he realized, the gnawing in his guts.

For a moment he could only stand, his shadow fluttering out behind him like a king's coronation train. It hurt so badly! He tasted blood. Everything in him told him to escape it, but there was no escape . . . unless he tore it out . . . tore out his entire belly. . . .

A sudden movement made Vo go still as a statue, his killer's instincts strong enough to overcome even the fire in his guts, if only for a moment. Someone was crossing the path a few dozen yards below him, crossing from one hidden pa.s.sage to another on the far side of the path. Vo shrank back into shadow and watched with bated breath.

It was a boy-a northern boy, several years short of man's age and height, with hair that even in this dark place seemed to gleam like palest gold, and he moved through the tunnel as though he felt comfortable there. It was like looking at one of his mother's woodcut pictures of the Orphan. What could a child be doing in such a place by himself? What did it mean?

A sudden thought occurred to him-could it be the work of the G.o.ds? Had they decided at last to show Daikonas Vo their favor, after all his misery? To lead him to the girl so that he would receive the rewards he so richly deserved?

Vo made himself move forward. He had already pa.s.sed through the d.a.m.nation Gate, through which Vo's mother had always told him there was no return save the Orphan's-and now, as if out of his mother's rambling tales, here came the child, in a place no child should be. Could it truly be a sign? Vo decided he would be a fool to think otherwise: he would follow the pale-haired boy.

A perfect vessel of despair, a perfect agent of chaos, Daikonas Vo straightened his back and followed the golden child down into deeper darkness.

"She's a skinny one. Do you think she's really going to the autarch?"

"Maybe he likes them like that."

"But they say his first wife has a rump like a prize mare."

Qinnitan curled her lip and tried to ignore the guards, even though they were walking just behind her and not talking quietly at all.

"Still, look at her-scarcely more than a child."

"She's got that red witch-streak. They say that's a sign of a temper-that they're like cats, you try to have your way with one and they'll scratch you into sandal straps."

"Ho! That makes her sound much more interesting."

Brother Gunis, the young priest, finally intervened. "Here, now," he said, turning on the soldiers. "You are talking about the Golden One's prisoner, which is bad enough, but if I had been listening to your filthy tongues wagging, I would have heard you insult Queen Arimone, too, and that could send you both to the royal strangler."

The guards murmured an apology. Gunis turned around, his head held high.

"Prig," she heard one guard say quietly.

"Never touched a woman, that one," the other muttered. "No stones left."