they feared getting closer and becoming contaminated. Vandien realized now why the man had parted with the cloak. And he had thanked him.
‘I cannot go much farther.’ Chess’s mother panted from under the cloak. Vandien cast about for shelter. But no inn would take in two marked with oozing blisters, even if Vandien had possessed sufficient coin. It was early yet, and few folk were about; but they could not rely on that for long. As soon as they were seen, they would be stoned again. He steered them down an alley.
He half dragged them past the windowless backs of squat mud brick dwellings. He was staggering under his double burden, uncertain of what type of shelter he was seeking.
They scuttled across a street that interrupted the alley, and back into the shelter of the next alley. This one appeared a little more run down. Dry yellow grass grew against the backs of the houses, new green sprouts pushing up in their shade. Another street was crossed, and Vandien found himself in an alley where the weeds and trash choked the footpath. He gave the woman what trodden surface there was, himself hopping over the tufty grasses, bits of broken furnishings and crumbling piles of rain-melted mud bricks. Chess was silent and limp in his arms.
A wooden porch jutted into the alley, clinging haplessly to the crumbling wall of a fallen-in house. But as Vandien cautiously skirted it, he realized it was not a porch. Chicken feathers and dung crushed the floor. A splintered wooden door hung crookedly on sagging leather hinges. There were no windows nor any door into the abandoned house it clung to. The dung cracked dryly under his feet as he dragged his charges into this dubious shelter. As soon as he halted, the woman sank down onto the floor. Mercifully, she became silent. He deposited his motionless bundle beside her and turned back to the door. It looked as if few folk passed this way, but it would be a bad place to be cornered. It couldn’t be helped. He dragged at the door and it scraped toward him, to wedge tight half a handspan from being closed. It could not be tugged farther. His stubborn efforts only wrenched the doorframe and threatened to pull it loose entirely. It would have to do. Vandien sat down wearily on the filthy floor. The dryness of dust, old dung and chicken feathers tortured his mouth and throat. He lowered his throbbing head into his hands, and wondered unhappily how yesterday’s pleasures had gone so wrong. Dust motes danced in the narrow wedge of light that slipped through the door’s crack. The random sounds of an awakening city came distantly to his ears.
He lifted a corner of the cloak that covered Chess. The boy’s breath was light and shallow, his eyes still squeezed shut. His face was not as badly blistered as his arms. But when Vandien lifted the cloth higher for a better look, Chess cried out and scrabbled deeper within its cover. At the sound, his mother stirred and crept closer to him. ‘Hush, Chess. Hush.’ She raised a corner of her cloak to peer out, but dropped it as soon as the dim sunlight reached her. ‘Are we safe here?’
‘For now. What manner of Humans are you, that cannot bear the light of day?’
‘Day.’ There was wonder and dread in the muffled voice. ‘It is more fearsome than any legend warned. I thought it only a myth, a tale to warn adventuresome fools who could not satisfy themselves within our own world. Each Gate, they say, has a terror beyond it. Some murmur that the Limbreth should not open Gates. But who are we to question the Limbreth?’
Vandien’s pounding head ground small sense from her words. She implied the Gate was more than a passage through the wall. Well, he had heard of stranger things, and seen a few of them proved true. He made a futile effort to cough without jarring his head.
‘Will you feel safe here if I go to fetch water? And some food, perhaps, if I can manage it. Your blisters might be calmed by cool water. And I’ve a thirst that this chicken dust only torments.’
‘We will be fine here, man from the tavern. You are very kind not just to leave us. You seem different from the other folk of your world. Do you belong here?’
‘I wonder?’ he mused bitterly. ‘Vandien,’ he offered her then. ‘My name is Vandien. And I am not all that different. The folk who stoned us were terrified; they thought we had brought pestilence into the city. Fear breeds cruelty. And I can’t let you think I am so unselfish. If I am to catch up with my partner, I need to pass through your Gate. Doing that may require your assistance. It is like no Gate I have ever encountered.’
Beneath the cloak he saw the motion of a shaking head. ‘It cannot be passed. Not unless a like number of folk were willing to come out. The Keeper calls it the balance. But I will try to recall all I have ever heard of the Limbreth’s Gates. It will not be much. I was content in my land, tending my own farm, and didn’t listen to foolish tales of the Gates. Not until Chess was lured through one.’
‘I will be back as swiftly as I can. Keep silent while I am gone.’
‘Jace.’
‘What was that?’ Vandien paused with his hand on the crooked door.
‘My name is Jace, Vandien. We shall be silent until you return.’
The splintery door scraped earth and sod as he forced it open and then shoved it closed behind him. He dusted the dirt and feathers from his clothing and stretched. His eyes blinked and watered in the bright sunlight that stabbed his eyes. The day would be hot. Day, he mused to himself, and started back to the inn and his horse.
When he returned, the sun was reaching for noon. The alley was still empty. Vandien led his horse down to the chicken coop and tethered it to a scraggly bush. He slipped off the worn bridle so the horse could graze. The saddle he left in place. It was small burden to his horse. If the tethered animal did attract curious folk, Vandien intended to be ready to retreat with Chess and Jace.
He took the still cold and dripping waterskin from the saddle. The new pouch was empty now. But he had found two small loaves of bread at an early baker’s stall and flat slabs of red salt fish at a fly-buzzing fishmonger’s. These purchases he balanced awkwardly in the crook of one arm. He kicked lightly at the door of the chicken coop. There was no stirring within, no reply of any kind.
Vandien set down the waterskin to jerk the door open. Then there were sounds, gasps of pain and a quickly smothered cry from Chess as they dove under the cloak covers again. Vandien entered hastily, dragging the door shut behind him. But the small shaft of sunlight still squeezed in the door, and neither Jace nor Chess emerged.
‘Just for one moment,’ Vandien promised as he took up the corner of Jace’s cloak. She gasped in fear as he whisked it from her and stuffed it into the gap left by the faulty door. The portly man’s cloak was a fine one, its weave heavy and costly. The bright fibers shut out the sun. Vandien had plunged himself into a hot and dusty darkness. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm.
‘That’s so much better,’ breathed Jace. Vandien heard her sit up in the darkness beside him.
‘I can’t see a thing,’ he complained, but as his eyes adjusted, he found that was not strictly true. The pale green of Jace’s gown almost glowed, and there was a sheen to her hair and eyes that even the darkness could not quench. Chess at last unrolled from the cloak and ventured out. Vandien distinguished his pale eyes and fine hair in the darkness. He proffered the waterskin to Jace and she seized it gratefully.
Chess drank first, taking in long gasping gulps. Vandien moved his tongue inside his mouth. He had drunk his fill of cold water at the public well when he filled the skin, but the fine dust and feathers sucked the moisture from his mouth. Sweat trickled down his back in the closeness and heat, but he said nothing. He watched Jace drink, more quietly than the unabashed boy, but with equal eagerness and relief. She then damped the corner of Vandien’s cloak and soothed the blisters that had begun to break and run on Chess’s face and arms.
‘I never saw a people so affected by the sun,’ Vandien observed.
Jace damped the corner again and began easing the sores on her own face. ‘And I never saw a man so blind, and yet so easy in his movements. When the hot light came, neither you nor the folk of your city cried out or were burned.’
‘Where does that Gate go?’ Vandien asked the question that gnawed him, thinking of Ki who had gone ahead.