Spirit Gate

"The Devourer eats secrets," he said at last, with a hopeful glance at Kesh, as if encouraging him to confide a pair or three of mysteries.

"I'm ready to go," said Kesh.

Unlit lanterns hung from the parallel ranks of posts that marked the path up to the outer court. To one side of the posts, the ground sloped down to the water's edge and a thin strand of pebble beach. To the other side, rockier ground had been manicured into a pleasing arrangement of rock, moss, and pruned miniature trees, these islands separated by raked sand. A big gi

A tall lattice fence grown thick with herboria and red and yellow falls of patience marked the begi

The lad beckoned them through the gates. "Heya!" he called to a pair of youths loitering in the shade. "Get down to the pier. You were already supposed to be there."

They walked into the Heart Garden, a square courtyard surrounded by blank walls. Three closed i

At intervals, Talker and Silent glanced at the litter. They knew its weight and balance, but they asked no questions. Kesh rubbed his hands as if washing them. He had never been as anxious in his life as he was at this threshold, not even when he had faced down Master Feden. A hush had fallen. Somewhere unseen, a door scraped open and slid shut. He jumped up when one of the white doors slid open. An elderly woman appeared. She beckoned.

"Bring the litter," he said.

The procession arrived at the white gate. The old woman was tiny, with chains of delicate dancer's bells circling her wrists and ankles. Her long hair was gone to silver and bound back into a braid brightened with moss-green ribbons.

"Set your burden down just inside and then return out here," she said to the bearers in a high, light voice. "We'll call you when you're needed." To Kesh she said nothing.

Past the white gate, a screen blocked their view of the courtyard beyond. Talker and Silent set down the litter, and as soon as they retreated the lad appeared; he closed the doors by going out after them, leaving Kesh alone with the old woman. She wore blue silk, and smelled of sweet ginger.

She moved away around the screen without looking back at him and with a remarkable and agile haste. He followed the chime of her bells into a court grown so lush with vines and hedges and carefully pruned trees that the scent of green watered growing things made the air almost too thick to breathe. Around every corner of the labyrinthine pathway a new and different tiny glade was revealed, soft and shadowed and usually ornamented by some cu

"Crude, but it was placed here long before my tenure. I would never have chosen something so unsophisticated." The voice was low, harsh, and female.

He turned all the way around. He was alone, although the dense foliage offered a hundred hiding places.

"With what desire do you come to worship at the altar of the Merciless One?" the voice asked.

"I do not come to worship. I come to complete a transaction begun ten years ago. Where is Zubaidit?"

"She's not available right now. You can't see her."

"I'm not here to see her. I'm here to buy out her debt."

At a distance, a bell jangled. Nearby, he heard a hissed breath, the scrape of a shod foot on rock, and the whisper of dancing bells. The old woman, too, must be spying on him.

"She won't go! She is a true hierodule of the Devourer. Our best student and most devoted worshiper."

He heard her words with a contempt that made him snarl. "That's not true."

It can't be true!

"I know who you are. It has been two years since you have seen her. Many things can change in that time. She thinks you've given up on her, and she's turned her heart entirely to the goddess. She doesn't want to speak to you again."

Perhaps it was all for nothing. All those weary mey trudged; all the deals, the bargaining, the cold nights and hungry days and the endless hells of Master Feden's house that he had endured for twelve years because each morning upon waking he could take in a breath that was a promise, that he would be free. And that she would be free.

"That's what you say! I'll hear it from her own lips, not yours." He stooped, picked up a handful of pebbles, and cast them wildly toward a concealing thicket. They spattered. She mocked him with a laugh that made him grit his teeth. He fixed his gaze on the pour of the water as it coursed down the deep valleys made by the mingling of limbs, woman to man.

"You know the law," he said at last. "I've come, as the gods of the Hundred give me the right to do. You must accept my payment if the hierodule agrees."

Her voice hissed out of the shadows. "Spare yourself this humiliation. She won't leave the temple."

"Then she can live here freely, after I've spoken with her. She must tell me herself with her own voice. Unless you've cut out her tongue! But your hierodules need their tongues, don't they?"

"Impious scrat! The Devourer will eat your testicles!"

"I'll take my chances."

Branches rattled as if a rat scrambled away through the undergrowth. As he waited, he became convinced someone was staring at him. Sca

Footsteps scraped on earth. He turned. A woman walked into view from underneath a tu