Night Gate (16 page)

Instead of Niadne or one of the other attendants, a gray-eyed girl only a few years older than Rage entered.

“We meet again,” she said.

Rage was startled to recognize the voice of the youngest of the three guardians who had been in the cart that brought the little girls to Fork. Last time they met she had been masked in the white paint that made her teeth look yellow, and she had seemed much older.

“You are…Ania?” Rage said.

“You have a good memory, Rage Winnoway. I have come to help you escape the banding house. But we must make haste, for the blackshirts will soon arrive to check the names against their list of all who dwell here.”

“Niadne has written down my name already, and the blackshirts have it, too.”

Ania smiled. “I can do nothing about the blackshirt list, but names in Niadne’s book do not necessarily remain there. As long as we hurry, the blackshirts will never know you were here. Quickly, gather your belongings.”

“You work for the keepers!” Rage accused.

“I may work here, but I assure you that I do not serve the High Keeper or his minions.”

Rage hesitated. The last time she had accepted an offer of help from a stranger, she had ended up in Valley. On the other hand, she would be a fool not to jump at the chance to be free of the banding house. She dragged her coat on over the gray shift and gently bundled up the rest of her clothes. Despite her care, Mr. Walker groaned. “Where are we going?” she asked quickly, to cover the noise.

Ania was not listening. She walked over to the nearest wall and peered at the seam where it joined the floor. Glancing in both directions first, she knelt and pressed her palms flat to the floor. Rage could see no lever or button, yet there must have been one, for a section of the floor slid soundlessly aside, revealing a set of rough-hewn steps leading down into darkness.

“Where do they go?” Rage asked.

“Down,” said Ania. She might have said more, but they heard footsteps coming along the corridor. “Quick!” she hissed urgently, slipping into the opening. Rage followed, and the moment she was clear, the floor above slid shut, leaving her standing in pitch blackness.

Several sets of boots sounded directly overhead, and gradually the voices of their owners became audible.

“…latest arrivals have been fitted with their banding gowns and are now practicing their movements for the ceremony.” It was Niadne. Rage tensed, but her name was not mentioned.

When the boots and voices had faded away, Ania’s hand pressed at her shoulder. “Make no sound as you climb down, for this stairway runs by places where we could be heard.” She sounded breathless and apprehensive, which did much to reassure Rage that she was not working for the keepers.

The steps led to a tunnel, which led to more steps and finally to some kind of cellar. Ania bade her wait. A thick, dank odor rose in her nostrils, as if Ania had opened a trap door in the very earth. Then Rage smelled something sharp and acrid that made her want to sneeze. Ania told her to kneel and pushed her toward a wall. “There is another tunnel in front of you. It is low, so you must crawl. I will follow.”

Rage obeyed awkwardly, trying to be careful of Mr. Walker. Under her hands, stone became mud. Rage wished she weren’t wearing a tunic, for it made crawling difficult. They crawled for miles, or so it seemed, turning now left and then left, then right, in no discernible pattern. At last she felt stone under her palms again, and Ania stood up, panting hard. Rage stood, too, her knees and palms stinging. It was still very dark, but chinks of light penetrated the small room into which they had crawled. Rage could dimly see Ania’s features and dark-pupiled eyes.

“Here we can talk without fear of being overheard,” Ania said, holding up her arms to bare her bands. “These are not metal. They are made by magic to seem so.”

“You are a witch woman?”

“I will deserve that title when I complete my apprenticeship, but I can already draw magic from the land and work it in small ways,” Ania admitted.

“You are here stealing magic for the wild things?”

“Magic cannot be stolen or used up by what I do, Rage Winnoway.”

Rage did not want to go into this argument. “Why you are helping me?”

“I was bidden to do so by my mistress, the Mother of the witch folk. But tell me, where are the five that traveled with you? Are they safe?”

“They are hiding.” Rage decided not to bring Mr. Walker out and complicate matters. “Why does your mistress want to help us?”

“I do not know,” Ania admitted. “But I am not the only one in Fork who was bidden watch for a girl called Rage Winnoway who traveled with five nonhumans that smelled of magic.”

Rage had told the centaur and the sprite that they were trying to find the wizard. She supposed they had reported it to the witch Mother.

Ania continued, “I was told only to say that what you desire, the Mother desires also: the finding of the wizard so that Valley may be saved.”

“I thought Valley would be safe as long as no more magic is used up.”

“Magic is not like a loaf of bread that can be used up, Rage Winnoway. It is a flow like water. Better to say that the flow of magic here is afflicted. First it was afflicted in Wildwood, and now it is the same here in Fork. Each day the River of No Return becomes more ferocious as it begins to rejoin the great water from which it was taken. When magic ceases to flow, the river will consume Valley.”

“The keepers think that the witches—”

“At least some of the keepers know that the magic flow in Fork is fading,” Ania interrupted sternly. “They will not tell the people, for it means admitting they were wrong about the witch folk. Or that they lied. But in time, all will know the truth. Our only hope is that the wizard will return to save Valley.”

“Wait,” Rage said, and she wriggled out of the sodden gray tunic and pulled on her own clothes. She turned to Ania. “Show me where the boats used by the blackshirts are kept.”

Ania looked as shocked as Niadne had been at the mention of boats. She took a deep breath and seemed to brace herself. “I will take you, but it means traveling through the oldest part of Fork, to the other side of the city. Are you willing?”

“What do you mean?” Rage said suspiciously. “The river flows this side of the city.”

“The river goes on both sides of the city because it splits above Fork,” Ania said. “The part you crossed to come here is only a portion of the flow. Farther down, it splits into many smaller threads and feeds the wetlands. The main strength of the river passes to the other side of Fork, and soon after flows out of Valley.”

“All right. Let’s go,” Rage said, barely able to control her excitement. With Ania’s help, she might even be able to steal a boat and hide it before fetching the others.

Again Ania knelt and put her hands flat against the floor. Beside Rage a block of stone swung away, revealing a set of ascending steps. In minutes they were both standing in the open. It was twilight, and the sky was a brilliant swirl of cloud and color, the sun visible between buildings and low in the sky. Rage was horrified to think she had wasted almost the whole day in the banding house. “You know the way?” she asked as Ania set off briskly.

“It is not a matter of knowing the way,” the other girl said over her shoulder. “With Fork, one must know one’s destination. Then you need only walk and the city will bring you there.”

Rage was fascinated. “You mean, if I thought of the boats, I would just be able to walk and end up where they are?”

Ania shuddered. “The boats are artifacts. They are not part of the city. You must know the
place
you are seeking. You see, the city understands itself. If you do not know where you want to go, the city cannot fathom your desire. If you are confused, you will find Fork confusing.”

It gave Rage an odd feeling to think of the city as some sort of living, thinking entity, and yet hadn’t she felt exactly that when she first saw it? She had not only thought of it as a live beast but also a sinister one. “Is the city’s magic good?” she asked.

“One can no more think of magic as good or bad than one can call an ax good or bad. But the purposes to which they can be put may be good or bad. Fork’s magic reflects what occurs within its walls and streets.”

Niadne had said something similar about Fork being made from responsive magic, but she had claimed that the blackness reflected the wizard’s disapproval at what had happened in Valley. Rage did not know which version to believe. She was more concerned with finding a boat to take them out of the city and, she hoped, out of Valley. “Why does everyone act so strangely when I ask about boats?” she asked.

“You will see soon enough.” Ania refused to be drawn out further on the subject.

They were now moving along narrow, cobbled paths that ran between the somber stone towers with their queer markings and levered doors. There were no people around, and Rage asked the witch girl about the emptiness of the streets.

“There are only certain times when people are permitted to leave their homes or places of work or training,” Ania explained. “Of course, that is one of the High Keeper’s rules.”

“Of course,” Rage muttered darkly.

“A lot of the houses and towers are empty,” Ania continued. “The city grows and shrinks and changes shape constantly.”

Rage wondered what would happen if one was standing in a bit of the city that decided not to
be
anymore. But maybe the city always knew where people were, and left them alone. “Those tunnels and stairs we just used…,” she began.

“Oh, the city made them because I asked it with my own magic,” Ania said casually.

“You mean, when you put your hands on the ground, you were drawing magic out of it?” Rage asked excitedly.

Ania smiled. “I know exactly what you are imagining now—all manner of wonders that magic could let you do and be and have. But magic is not so easy to hold nor to shape in your mind. It is like trying to remember a very, very difficult and tricky tune. It takes much training and discipline to learn how to perform even the smallest working. And you have to be in touch with the earth the whole time. The moment you stop, the flow ceases and so does the working.”

“Is that why you made the tunnels so low back there?”

Ania nodded. “I can just manage to reach the flow through floors. It is better if I can touch dirt. Or mud.” She grimaced at her filthy dress and hands.

“But what about the wild things? How do they exist if the witches who created them aren’t constantly touching the ground? Why don’t they vanish?”

“Their creation is the result of a different way of using magic. But what they do does not use magic up.”

“Why did the witch women make the wild things in the first place?” Rage asked.

Ania shrugged. “Why does anyone create anything that is beautiful and difficult? It is the striving that counts, and the making of something wondrous and exquisite. And the witches who used this magic had to bind the spell of creation up with a little of their own souls. One cannot create life without cost. But they don’t make them now.”

“Because of the wild things starving?” Rage guessed.

Ania smiled slyly. “The wild things are hungrier since magic stopped flowing through Wildwood, but we do not let them starve. They are sent here by the witch Mother to petition the High Keeper for mercy, and he allows it because he is cruel and proud and it pleases him to see them fading. Once their pleas have been rejected by the High Keeper, we witch folk who dwell here in secret feed them and they return to Wildwood.”

“The keepers think the wild things are dying out.”

“That is what the Mother wishes them to think. When they come to Fork, the wild things carry enchantments that make them appear sickly. They also avoid humans so as to seem scarce. The real reason witch women no longer create wild things is because Valley is in danger and they do not wish to create beasts only to see them perish.”

“Did the wizard really take Valley from time?”

“So they say.”

“
Why
did he?”

Ania shrugged again. “Who knows why a wizard does anything? Some say he saved Valley from a terrible flood. Others say he wanted a place to use as a sanctuary for the animals he brought here. But if that was so, why bring humans?”

“To keep everything in Order?”

“So the keepers preach, but what need have wild animals of Order?” Ania stopped to survey another of the wider streets, then said as they crossed it, “I have told you I work magic, but you should not think I will be able to use it to protect us if we are caught by blackshirts. The keepers believe a girl must be full grown before she can work magic. In reality, we have the potential for magicking from the moment we can think and imagine. If the keepers understood this, they would band us from birth. If we are caught, I will admit to being a sympathizer, but no more than that. I will deny all that I have told you, no matter what they do to us.”

Rage realized with a sick feeling what Ania was trying to say. “You mean they’d torture us?”

“It is better not to voice such possibilities,” Ania warned. “But if we are caught, remember that you would only be punished for being a sympathizer. There is a much more terrible fate for anyone caught working magic in Fork, and it may be that the keepers would judge your use of magic to come here as a high crime.”

If mere sympathizers were tortured, Rage did not dare to imagine what the punishment might be for a “high crime.” It terrified her to think that someone might deliberately hurt her. She didn’t know how she would have the courage to keep silent about Ania if that happened.
I’d better not get caught,
she told herself.

They walked several more blocks between the stone towers in silence. She thought about the hourglass in her pocket and considered telling Ania about it, but some part of her rejected the idea so forcefully that she felt disoriented. Maybe it was because the hourglass was her sole link to the wizard and her only means of winning his help for Mam.

Thinking of her mother made Rage feel strange. It had been so long since she had seen her. Guiltily, it came to her that she was getting used to making decisions and being on her own. Sometimes many hours went by without her even thinking of Mam. “Tell me about the provinces,” she urged Ania, because if she thought any more about her mother, she would cry.