Spirit Gate

Breaths were caught short, or taken in hard. Several people skipped back, and one voice whimpered in fear.

"A ghost!" whispered the Hieros, crossing her forearms away from her chest to ward off the ill omen.

"Touch her. She is no ghost."

He pulled the cloak back, each wing over one of her shoulders, and heard their moans of fear and gasps of surprise-and their sighs-as her body was revealed, as pallid as marble, as smooth as goat's milk and as creamy. Her hair both above and below was as pale as a field of harvest-ripe grain. Her eyes were not natural eyes. They were cornflower-blue. Demon-blue.

"What I offer, you must accept," he finished.

Bai gri

"Bitch! I've been waiting to do that for twelve years!"

No one moved.

Without lashing out in her turn or even losing her temper, the Hieros spoke. "Do what impulse tells you, Zubaidit, but it will make no difference in the end. You are meant for the Devourer. You will see."

Bai spat onto the pebbles. Gri

"I'll meet you at Leave-taking Pier," she said to Kesh. She dashed away into the greenery under an arched lacework of flowering vines. In her wake, the two gi

No one spoke, and no one moved, all in thrall to the vision standing among them, no stu

The Hieros shook out of her stupor. She glided up to them and circled the slave as she would circle a poisonous snake. She hitched the cloak up and looked over the slave's backside, and after a long moment she reached a hand and, after the merest hesitation, brushed her fingers over a forearm. The slave did not even flinch, only stared unseeing toward the green tangle of a witch hedge.

"Where did you get her?" the Hieros asked.

"At the edge of a desert so vast you ca

"I can imagine a lot of things," said the lanky girl, giving a lazy and lustful hum.

"Shut up!" hissed her companion. He was not laughing, but staring at the slave as if a hammer had hit him.

"A desert of stone and red sand. She was wandering, lost, as mute and blank as you see her now."

"Insane!" The Hieros ventured to pinch the lean curve of that hip. If the girl felt the pull of those fingers, she showed no sign.

"But compliant!" he said hastily. That she might be insane had often occurred to him over the course of the journey. It was the only reasonable explanation.

"How do you know she is compliant? Did you go into her yourself?"

As Bai had, he spat on the pebbles, and the Hieros flinched away from him with a look of such anger that he shivered. She will seek revenge.

So he smiled, to taunt her. "You know what they say. It's bad luck to spit in your own trading goods. Men-and women-will come to see if they can bestir her. And even if they can't stir her, if she remains as limp as a puppet in their arms, they'll still come."

"Oh, yes. I can see it." She rubbed her hands, but he couldn't tell if it was the thought of caressing that white flesh that bestirred her, or the thought of so many worshipers waiting at the gates for the chance to gaze on-or touch-this living ghost with her demon-blue eyes. "Better than any aphrodisiac, indeed. I acknowledge that this covers her debts."

"I want Bai's accounts bundle, properly sealed and marked off."

The Hieros stepped back to face Keshad. She was truly a devotee of the Merciless One. He could see it in the set of her face, cold and cruel and passionate, devoured by the goddess until not even her soul was her own.

"You have earned an enemy today," she said as if these were the kindest words she had ever spoken, "and you will come to regret it, but you are correct that this payment ca

"Do what you must." Kesh's limbs were loose, his jaw relaxed, and his heart calm, now that it was over. "As I did."

PART SIX: WOLVES

28

THEY HAD LEFT Kartu Town and the desert far behind. They had escaped the Sirniakan Empire. Now, after many days traveling over the high Kandaran Pass, the caravan halted at a wall and border crossing guarding the road into the Hundred. In the Hundred, they would find good fortune, or disaster. Shai just didn't expect things to happen so quickly.

At the border crossing, a huge eagle carrying a man landed in their midst, frightening the horses and astonishing even the Qin soldiers who could not, Shai thought, be astonished by anything. After consulting with the eagle rider, Captain Anji commanded his troop to take control of the border crossing. The fight that ensued blew over quickly when the border guards realized it was their own captain who was corrupt. They surrendered to the authority of the eagle rider and handed over their captain at spearpoint. After this, in accordance with an agreement reached between Anji and the eagle rider, half the Qin company galloped north along the road to a tiny way-station village where, so they were told, a smaller caravan had come under assault by bandits. Shai rode with them, under Tohon's supervision.

The Qin slaughtered the bandits with the efficiency of a wolf pack cutting out and bringing down the weakest deer. Two men suffered slight wounds, and were roundly ridiculed for their lack of skill.

"They'll ride as tailmen tomorrow!" said Chief Tuvi, laughing.

The soldiers dragged the dead bodies into rows, clearing the commons so the big caravan coming up behind would have space to settle in for the night.

None of this amused the new-made ghosts of the slaughtered bandits. They were angry, all right; no one liked suffering violent death. At dawn they were still angry, milling around the commons shaking their fists and cursing and weeping, and pissing on the living, not that ghosts could actually piss, but the gesture both comforted and infuriated them-an impotent defiance. They clustered in great numbers around the wagon where the prisoner-their co-conspirator who once called himself a captain-was kept under guard, but since ghosts are fixed to the earth, they had no way to reach him, who was concealed within the bed of a covered wagon, raised up on wheels.

As Shai went to get a drink of water at the rain barrel, well away from stacked bodies, he pretended not to see the commotion the ghosts made. Thwarted of their prey, the ghosts churned through the open ground and wandered among the merchants, servants, and slaves they had so recently terrorized, but this unworthy audience was oblivious of the wisps haunting them. Captain Anji prowled the caravan as the two caravan masters argued over who should take precedence and in what order wagons and carts should be shifted into a new line of march. Now and again Anji sidestepped to avoid a misty stream of ghostly rancor. Crude men, these Hundred folk. Civilized ghosts had better ma