Markswoman Read online

  “I want you to watch the Akal-shin door from sunup to sundown every day,” repeated Astinsai, with more patience than she normally displayed.

  “Why in the sands would I do that?” said Rustan. “No one has come through that door in centuries. What am I supposed to do there?” The Akal-shin door was only a mile away, embedded in the base of a massive cliff, but the codes were long since lost.

  “Watch and wait,” said Astinsai, clarifying nothing. She added, with a return to her usual asperity, “Or is that too difficult a task for you, Marksman?”

  Not difficult. Futile. But Rustan held his tongue. At least it was something to do, even if it felt more like a penance than an actual task. And it would keep him away from Shurik’s inquisitive eyes.

  Chapter 12

  Against the Darkness

  The sky had lightened to lavender by the time Kyra cantered out of the horse enclosure on Akhtar, Shirin Mam’s bay stallion. Rinna whinnied in indignation at being left behind by her mistress, but Akhtar was the fastest horse in the stable, and Kyra needed to move quickly. Besides, he had belonged to Shirin Mam. It seemed right to choose him.

  She cast a last look back at the caves of Kali, and urged Akhtar to a gallop across the twilit valley. Her heart felt as though it was tearing in two. She was leaving the only home she had known for the last fourteen years. She was leaving her friends. But it was too late for regrets.

  Poor Nineth. How would she fare with the poisonous Tamsyn as the new head of the Order? Take me with you, she had thought to Kyra as she left the cavern. And gentle Elena, who tried and failed to hide her shock and betrayal at Kyra’s abrupt departure—how would she cope?

  At least they had each other. And Kyra hadn’t planned on running away. That was just the way it happened. Once she picked up Shirin Mam’s katari, she didn’t have much choice.

  Again and again the scene played out. Throwing aside the curtain to the Mahimata’s cell. The sight of the body, lying twisted on the floor. The blood and the stench of death. The vultures circling overhead.

  Vultures? No, her memories were playing tricks on her. Kyra wrenched her mind away and focused on the task at hand. Do what you have to do. Grieve later.

  She didn’t know where to go, except away from the caves. Something impelled her to ride toward Yashmin-Gah, the sacred grove in the hills of Gonur where Shirin Mam had led a meditation one full-moon night a few years ago. Was this the right way? Was the Mahimata’s spirit guiding her?

  Kyra slowed Akhtar to a walk, closed her eyes, and relaxed into a meditative trance. At once she sensed the powerful presence of the alien blade, pulsating against her skin. Her own blade seemed subdued in comparison—not any less than what it had been, but overshadowed by a more ancient weapon.

  She fought against her instinct to repel Shirin Mam’s katari; instead, she opened herself up to it. She sought again the vision of the pool of water, and asked for the knowledge that lay outside her reach: Where was this place? What should she do there?

  The answers danced in her mind like bits of flame. Hidden in Yashmin-Gah was a disused Hub, a surefire escape from Tamsyn. If Kyra could pass through a Transport Hub, the elder would no longer be able to sense her whereabouts.

  Shirin Mam’s blade was full of secrets. Perhaps she had suspected Tamsyn’s treachery and wanted to make sure Kyra could flee the Order with the Mahimata’s ancient weapon. In that case, might not the blade be able to tell Kyra how its owner had died? Or what Kyra was supposed to do after putting as much distance as she could between herself and the Hand of Kali?

  Emptying her mind, Kyra sank into the trance once more. But this time she was disappointed, for she got no further answers.

  Kyra put the blade out of her thoughts and concentrated on her destination. Yashmin-Gah was the right way to go. She remembered walking through the ancient trees of the sacred grove after Shirin Mam’s meditation exercises, and almost stumbling into a little pool of water. The smell of roses and the sighing of rushes in the wind swept over her. Her heart quickened as she thought of the door, hidden where no one could see it. Shirin Mam had left this knowledge in her blade for Kyra to find.

  At last, Kyra understood why the Mahimata had given her that “special assignment” with the codes that could unlock any door in any Hub. Her teacher had been prepared for the betrayal. Why, then, had she done nothing to stop Tamsyn? It was a painful riddle; one day, she would have the truth of it.

  The sun slipped into the sky; she didn’t have much time. The last rite would be complete when the first rays of the sun touched Shirin Mam, no matter how long the body took to burn. Tamsyn would waste no time in coming after her.

  * * *

  A wyr-wolf howled, long and low-pitched. Another joined in, and another. Kyra risked a quick glance back across the valley. Were those wolf shapes in the distance?

  Wolves often hunted at dawn. If she was being followed by a pack, Kyra would stand no chance. Akhtar was swift and strong, a true descendant of the golden stallion Shamsher himself, but this pace would soon exhaust him. The wolves would bring him down with ease. How many of them would she be able to kill with her katari? Two, maybe three. But the fourth would get her, and crush her neck between its massive jaws.

  Another howl, louder than before. Answering howls to its left and right. They were closing in. Kyra fought down a wave of nausea. Had she escaped Tamsyn only to be devoured by wyr-wolves? She urged Akhtar on, but the horse needed no urging from her. He galloped as hard as he could, trembling with exertion and snorting in fear.

  As abruptly as they’d sounded, the howls stopped. For several long minutes, there was silence. When the howls started again, they were much farther behind, to the southwest.

  Kyra let out a long, deep breath. What had driven them off? The presence of the kataris? Perhaps they had sensed weaker prey elsewhere. Whatever the reason, she offered up a fervent prayer of thanks to the Goddess Kali.

  “It’s all right, Akhtar, you can take it easy now,” she said, stroking the horse’s neck. “We’ll soon be there.”

  But Akhtar did not slow down, and Kyra sensed his terror sharpen. Oh no. They were still being followed. Kyra almost fell from her saddle when she saw huge shapes unfold from the darkness behind the stunted trees on her left and right. Two blurry shapes with long snouts and powerful haunches, loping to keep pace with her.

  Horror turned Kyra’s veins ice-cold. The wyr-wolves were here, right beside her.

  The hills of Gonur loomed ahead, the uneven ridges like broken teeth against the blue sky. So close, and yet so far.

  With all her strength, Kyra pushed aside her fear. She had two kataris. By the Goddess, she would go down fighting. She would not let these dogs smell her fear.

  When they were almost at the feet of Gonur, Kyra commanded Akhtar to stop, pulling one rein to turn him around and face the beasts. Akhtar stamped and trembled, but he obeyed her. She withdrew both blades, heart hammering inside her chest.

  The two wyr-wolves were huge, half the size of Akhtar himself. One had a thick gray mane and a white streak on its ridged forehead. The other was pure black, except for its yellow eyes.

  The beasts stopped some distance away from her. The smaller one made a whuffing sound. The larger one yawned, displaying a cageful of deadly fangs. The kataris almost slipped from her sweaty palms at the sight.

  And then, as if at some unspoken signal, the two wyr-wolves turned and trotted away. Kyra watched them go, her mouth dry. Before long, they had vanished beyond the undulating landscape.

  She couldn’t understand it. Maybe they had decided that just two of them would not be a match against an armed Markswoman? Perhaps they had gone to fetch the rest of the pack.

  But they hadn’t appeared that interested in her—more as if they simply wanted to see her, and be seen by her.

  There was no time to puzzle it out, for every minute that passed brought Tamsyn closer to her heels. Kyra turned Akhtar around to try to find a way up to Yashmin-Gah.

>   It wasn’t long before she spied the rock-strewn path to the forest in the upper reaches of the hills. They climbed, Akhtar picking his way among the rocks, Kyra scanning the horizon. No sign of pursuit yet. No sign of the wyr-wolves either, and it was getting to be daylight. Good; Akhtar should be safe then, if she sent him back to the caves.

  They entered the old spruce forest, dense with undergrowth and sweet with the scent of rhododendron. Kyra dismounted and patted the stallion’s head. “Go home, Akhtar. Nineth will take care of you.” The horse whinnied and nipped her shoulder.

  “Go back, Akhtar.” Kyra put as much command as she could muster into her voice.

  Akhtar snorted and trotted away, down the path they had come. Kyra felt bereft. The last link to the Order, and she was sending him away.

  Now was not the time for sentimentality. Anyone seeing Akhtar returning riderless might assume she was dead or injured. It could throw Tamsyn off her trail, at least for a little while.

  She went deeper into the forest. It was cool and dark. Birds chittered at her and she saw a monkkat, its whiskered black face splitting in a snarl before it leaped away. She moved through the undergrowth, pushing aside branches and vines from her face, letting instinct guide her.

  She came upon it suddenly, as she had all those years ago, a little pool of water surrounded by rushes, the boughs of an old elm touching its surface. The water was dark and still, like an unseeing eye.

  She parted the rushes and stood by the edge of the pool, scrutinizing the area. The door was close now, hidden somewhere a few feet from her. Her skin prickled with the certainty of it. She walked around the pool, summoning the vision that had brought her there.

  The third time she circled the pool, she caught a glimpse of the door from the corner of her eye. It was beside the elm, beneath a mound of earth covered by a prickly bush. She stooped in front of the mound and pushed aside the spiky green plant, ignoring the scratches to her hands and arms. She scrabbled away at the earth with her fingers, feeling the hardness beneath her palms. And there it was—no more than two feet high—a dark rectangle embedded in the ground, unused for decades, perhaps centuries.

  Kyra carefully held her katari to the slot on the diminutive door. As with every other Hub, the slot glowed blue and the door swung open, as she had hoped it would, revealing a low, dark tunnel inside. She smiled. Easy, it had been easy. With a sigh of relief, she bent her head and squeezed in, crawling into the tunnel.

  Behind her the little door swung shut, engulfing her in darkness.

  Kyra stopped smiling and her sense of triumph vanished, replaced by dread.

  It wasn’t merely the darkness. It was the dreams, except that the dreams were real now; she was in them and there was no escape. The door had closed behind her and she was five years old, weeping because she was trapped and they were all dead. No, she was dead and they were trapped and what difference did it make whose face she saw; the door would be how everything ended.

  Stop it. Stop it now. You’re okay. This is an old Hub no one’s used in a while, that’s all.

  Kyra counted her breaths, trying to slow them down.

  She went farther in. The tunnel became larger and she was able to stand up in the corridor without hunching. The glowing blue slots of Transport doors stretched away into the darkness. All was as it should be, so why was she having trouble breathing? Why was her heart thudding away fit to burst her rib cage?

  She placed her katari on her palm and spoke a word of power to summon light—a simple word, and the only one that apprentices were taught. “Rishari,” she whispered, and the katari glowed, a beacon in the dark.

  Still her dread did not go away. She had dreamed of this many times. A foretelling? No, it could not be. She couldn’t possibly be meant to die, not yet.

  She took a step toward the first door and placed her palm upon it. Perhaps she would be able to sense what lay beyond.

  The world twisted. Kyra blinked, blinded by the bright light of a midday sun.

  The Transport corridor had disappeared. She stood at the edge of a narrow, crowded street. It was cold; people wore thick furs and woolens, and the sloping roofs dripped icicles. Tiny shops jostled for space with inns, shrines, and food counters. Open vats of soup steamed next to loaves of freshly baked bread. Men carrying palanquins shouted at passersby to make way for them. At one end of the street, an arched blue and white stone gateway glinted in the sunlight. The air was thick with smells: smoke, spices, open drains.

  “Please can you help me?”

  Kyra jerked around, almost falling over her robe. So intent had she been on the street before her that she had not noticed the child, a small figure huddled to her left, dressed in an oversized patchy gray coat that blended with the gray stone of the walls behind him.

  “What—who are you?” she stammered.

  The boy sidled up to her. His dark, intense eyes held her gaze. “I am Arvil. Do you have any food? We haven’t eaten in three days.”

  “Three days!” Kyra was horrified. Now that he was standing next to her, she noticed how thin and hollow-cheeked he was. “Don’t you have parents?”

  “No,” said the boy, keeping his eyes fixed on hers.

  He was an orphan, just like her. Kyra wished she could do something for him. But how? “I—I don’t belong here,” she said. “I don’t have any food. Perhaps those shopkeepers over there . . . ?” The words trailed away. The boy’s face filled with disappointment and she grew hot with shame.

  “Arvil, what are you doing? Come here.”

  A thin, sharp-faced little girl stood in an alley glowering at them, arms akimbo and feet planted apart, as if ready for a fight. She was dressed like the boy, in a long woolen coat with folded sleeves and pinned-up hem.

  The boy trotted over to the girl. She cuffed him on the ears. “How many times have I told you not to talk to anyone? I’ll find us some food. Don’t I always find us food?”

  The pair walked away. Kyra started to go after them, but . . .

  The world spun. The sun blinked out. She was once more in the dark corridor, leaning against the first door. Her forehead was beaded with sweat and she was trembling. What had happened? Had she actually used that door, or had she imagined it? That look of crushed disappointment on the little boy’s face—she wouldn’t forget it, as long as she lived. Impulsively, she inserted the tip of her katari into the glowing slot on the door. She had to get back to those children; they needed her help.

  She waited for the door to open, for the world to shift, but nothing happened.

  She ground her teeth in frustration and tried again.

  The world remained unchanged.

  Defeated, Kyra slumped against the door. Why would it not open for her katari?

  And still this fear, as if something in the corridor watched and waited for her to lower her guard. She straightened, but of course there was nothing to see. She steeled herself and walked to the second door. She hesitated only a moment before placing her palm upon it.

  The world twisted.

  Shirin Mam sat on a rug in what looked like her cell, reading a book. She glanced up and an expression of annoyance flashed across her face.

  “Wasting time as always, child. Go now. This door is not the right one.”

  “But—but you’re dead,” Kyra whispered, her breath catching at the sight of her beloved teacher, seemingly alive and well.

  Shirin Mam threw her an exasperated look and waved her hand in dismissal.

  “No!” Kyra shouted, but the world spun again.

  She leaned against the smooth hardness of the second door, sobbing.

  “Shirin Mam!” she cried. “Please don’t go.” She picked up her katari from where it had fallen on the floor, and with a shaking hand inserted it into the slot.

  But once again, nothing happened. Kyra could not move. She clung to the door, her cheek against its cool metal surface, hoping that it might transport her back to her teacher.

  At last Shirin Mam’s words
echoed through her mind: Wasting time as always.

  She wiped her eyes with a sleeve. She should check the other doors. But it was hard to let go of this one. It had shown her what she wanted most. With an effort, she pushed herself away and stumbled to the third door. She paused, for here she sensed the vast sweep of nothingness beyond. What was behind this one? She reached a hand out to it, and hesitated.

  It was not the fear that stopped her. Fear had been her constant companion since she’d crawled into the Transport corridor. It was the growing conviction that out of all the doors in the Hub, this was the devastating one.

  Kyra wavered. Time to choose. She could step away from this door and move on to the next one.

  But in truth, she didn’t have a choice, only the illusion of one. She couldn’t walk away from this.

  Taking a deep breath, she laid a palm upon the door and the world ended.

  There was nothing. No light, no sound, no sensation. Kyra—an idea of Kyra—floated, a disembodied spirit in the manifold of space-time.

  There was no fear, no pain, and no fatigue. There were no emotions at all, for emotions require a physical body and Kyra had left her body behind—wherever behind was. Was this what it felt like to die?

  Time had no meaning in the vast emptiness of deep space. The dust mote that was Kyra floated, peaceful in the void.

  But wait, what was that distant banging sound? Whose inhuman cries were those? Kyra hung for a moment between the two realities of being and not-being.

  The world came rushing back in a nauseous flood of sensation—pain, terror, the taste of blood in her mouth. She was back in the corridor. Her fingertips were raw; she must have been scrabbling at the door. Her katari had fallen to the floor, and this time its light had gone out.

  Kyra hugged her knees and closed her eyes against the darkness. This was the door that had haunted her sleep since childhood. This was where she would one day go to die.

  After a while—it could have been hours or minutes—she uncurled herself and reached for her blade. For it wasn’t over, was it? There was still something that needed to be done: a door to be chosen, a way to be found. It wasn’t the time for this door yet. She dragged herself up. What would the next one do to her?