Labyrinth Gate Read online

  PRAISE FOR KATE ELLIOTT’S JARAN SERIES

  “Elliott’s sure-handed and seductive blend of exotic locales, complex interstellar politics, intriguing cultures, realistic romance, and wonderfully realized characters is addictive. I want my next fix!” —Jennifer Robertson, author of the Novels of Tiger and Del

  “Sweeps the reader along like a wild wind across the steppes. Tell Kate to write faster—I want to read the whole saga NOW!” —Melanie Rawn, author of the Dragon Prince Trilogy

  “[Kate Elliott] spins a splendid web of a tale to trap the unwary and hold them in thrall until the tale is done. Here is another one . . . take care, for if you open these pages you’ll be up past dawn.” —Dennis McKiernan, author of Voyage of the Fox Rider

  “A new author of considerable talent . . . a rich tapestry of a vibrant society on the brink of epic change.” —Rave Reviews

  “A wonderful, sweeping setting . . . reminds me of C. J. Cherryh.” —Judith Tarr

  “Well-written and gripping. After all, with a solidly drawn alien race, galactic-scale politics, intrigue, warfare, even a crackling love story, all set in a fascinating world that opens out onto a vast view of interstellar history, how could anyone resist?” —Katharine Kerr

  The Labyrinth Gate

  Kate Elliott

  Previously published under the name Alis Rasmussen

  For J.E.S.

  (who claims he wrote half of it anyway)

  Contents

  Prologue: The Midwife

  Chapter 1: The Gatekeeper

  Chapter 2: The Wanderer

  Chapter 3: The Empress of Bounty

  Chapter 4: The Emperor of Order

  Chapter 5: The Hunter

  Chapter 6: The Mage

  Chapter 7: The Crusader

  Chapter 8: The Merchant

  Chapter 9: The Sacrifice

  Chapter 10: The Beggar

  Chapter 11: The Page

  Chapter 12: The Master of Waters

  Chapter 13: The Philosopher

  Chapter 14: The Tutor

  Chapter 15: Dusk

  Chapter 16: The Archer

  Chapter 17: The Gate

  Chapter 18: Dawn

  Chapter 19: The Drowned Man

  Chapter 20: The Lover

  Chapter 21: The Madman

  Chapter 22: The Dreamer

  Chapter 23: The Seeker

  Chapter 24: The Paladin

  Chapter 25: The Healer

  Chapter 26: The Invalid

  Chapter 27: The Prisoner

  Chapter 28: The Angel of War

  Chapter 29: The Heiress

  Epilogue: The Queen of Heaven

  The Gates

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue:

  The Midwife

  SHE TURNED THE FIRST card over with a deliberation that frightened the boy.

  “To the east, the Heiress,” she said in a voice made colorless by great effort. “Who is she?”

  “The Princess Georgiana, your highness,” he said through his fear, because he could not stop himself. He saw only her head and chest and her pale hands moving in the circle of light on the table; the rest was shrouded in darkness and broad skirts like the veil of night.

  “Ah.” It came out halfway between a sigh and a moan. She rocked slightly, her eyes shuttered. “Heiress by decree, not by law or by nature. She is innocent and unsuspecting. She will not remain heiress for long, not when my claim is stronger. Not once I gain the power to remove her.” She turned over the second card. “To the south, the Hunter.”

  The boy whispered now, afraid to speak louder. “The Earl of Elen, your highness.”

  Her eyes opened fully and she stopped rocking. “The Earl! Here’s a dangerous turn. By the cards, companion in some way to the central figure. That he will aid me I cannot believe. I know he seeks power as well. He must be my foe.” She seemed to recall something and began to rock again, a rhythmic pattern, a wisp of a satisfied smile on her face. “In the heavens …” She turned the third card, frowned slightly, puzzled. “The Paladin. Who can this be?”

  The boy’s forehead furrowed with effort. He shivered, for the first time feeling the cold drafts of winter infiltrating the closed, shuttered room to chill his bare skin. “I cannot name him, your highness. He is not of this land, but he is pure.”

  “Another virgin, like yourself? That purity?”

  “No, highness. No—purity of vision.” His voice trailed off. She rocked. “Somehow he will aid the Hunter, he will aid—” His voice, faint already, faded to nothing as he mouthed a word. “He is the bringer of aid to those whose last hope is past. That is all I can see, but his trail leads to the next card—”

  “Best to know your enemies,” she muttered, “though I had not expected them from that direction. Ah.” She shifted her seat beneath the dark skirts and seemed better satisfied. “Heaven leads to the Underworld.” She turned the fourth card, and gasped. “The Labyrinth! Nastagmas!”

  A thin, bent man appeared from out of the shadows. Unlike the boy, he was clothed, in plain, dark clothing that absorbed the little light left in the room. “Your highness.” His voice was thin as his face.

  “These were to be sorted. Nastagmas. Face cards, figures, only. How did this card get in here?”

  “I assure you, highness.” He bobbed. “I assure you. It was done.”

  Suddenly she smiled. “A powerful card then, and perhaps not unexpected. For I see it is here that I must search for the knowledge that will give me the power for my plot to succeed. Where is it, boy?” She resumed rocking with a passion that stirred the skirts around her. She gasped slightly, regained control of her voice. “Where is the labyrinth?”

  Now he would have shrunk away from her, from the terrible intensity of her desire to know, but the old man Nastagmas stood just behind him, and he could not, in any case, move at all. “Only through the labyrinth gate can a path be found to what is sought,” he gasped, the words forced from him by power far greater than his ability to resist.

  “The labyrinth gate! An old legend to write pretty tales about!” Her voice rose with anger.

  Nastagmas took two steps forward. “Yet your spell binds to truth, highness. Consider.”

  “Indeed. Indeed.” She considered. “If there is truth to the old tales—if the labyrinth gate existed, if it could be found and opened to give up its fabled treasure. Such power! Then tell me where it is, boy.”

  “There is one person who knows. I cannot see him.” He shivered again in the cold air. “But the Hunter can lead you to him. The Hunter seeks the labyrinth as well.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Then I have only to follow him.” She appeared content. “So to the north.” She turned the fifth card. “The Seeker—but here in isolation. Who is this?”

  “A foreigner. I see, I hear music. She will aid the center. She is linked to the Paladin. That is all, highness.”

  “So she will aid me.” She sighed. “Perhaps as antagonist to the Paladin. As well, as well. The strength of the patterning grows. Now, to the west. Ending, changing, and death.” She rocked to her words as to an incantation, and turned the sixth card. “The Crusader.”

  The boy whispered. “He is a poor man, highness, of no higher station than myself. A laborer.”

  “A peasant!” Her voice was half scorn, half amusement. “Perhaps it is you boy. How old are you?”

  “Fifteen, highness.”

  “Indeed.” Now her voice took on satisfaction, and in the half-light he saw her examine him with a thoroughness that terrified him as much as if he saw his own death before him. She rocked. “If I can gain such power, I will then have more use for your purity than just its truthfulness—” Her hands closed in fists on the table. Her
eyes shuttered again. He tried desperately to move his arms in order to cover himself, could not. “For the final act of the princess’ transformation, I need only the true source, the strongest source, of power.” Her lower lip jutted out and for an instant her face spasmed into an expression he had not enough knowledge to read.

  Behind him, Nastagmas said urgently, “The center, highness.”

  “Yes,” she groaned. Her hand unclosed and moved with effort as she rocked forward to turn the seventh and last card, the center. “The Dark Queen,” she sighed, obviously satisfied. “The Mistress of the Underworld.”

  The boy stared in awe and terror at the picture of a young woman running blindfolded through a forest of nightmare.

  “Who is she, boy?” she demanded, but there was a note of surety in her voice.

  He could not speak.

  “You must talk, boy. You are bound to it by the spell. You must talk.”

  “I do not know.” His voice came out choked and rasping.

  “Do not know!” Her anger emanated like the force of the spell that held him fixed in one spot. “Is it not me? It must, it shall be.”

  “She is veiled.” A strangled whisper. “Veiled, or not here yet. I do not understand. But all power is hers. She is the wheel, the center.” His recitation sounded clearly now as if another spoke through him. “The treasure of the labyrinth is hers alone, and will come to her as it has always meant to.”

  “No,” she gasped. “The treasure must be mine. The power must come to me.” Her rocking became violent. Her eyes shut, and her hands gripped the table edge as if in a convulsion. Her gasps receded in strength and she ceased at last to move. For a long moment only silence held in the room, until finally her hands relaxed.

  She opened her eyes to look at the cards laid out in the seven directions on the table. “Forewarned, forearmed,” she said in a low voice. “‘She is veiled.’ It could be Madame Sosostris—she has powers enough to know of and to seek this treasure. But if my efforts are the greater, than I shall gain it first, and succeed to the Dark Mistress’ power, and to my rightful place as Queen. Nastagmas!” The old man slipped forward another pace. “Two watchers. The first to track the Earl, for he will reveal the labyrinth. And the second on Madame Sosostris, since she will certainly attempt to recover the treasure for herself.”

  The old man coughed, a slight sound. “Then you believe, highness, that the old writings are indeed true. That ages ago the Mistress of the Underworld left a treasure of great power in her labyrinth, before she went into hiding from her sister.”

  “Church stories,” she replied, scornful. “These churchgoers are fools, calling the Dark Mistress the daughter of the Queen of Heaven when in fact she is Her elder sister, and the greater in power, though the Queen and Her Son eclipse her now. They cannot believe she was once worshipped in her own right as Queen of the Depths. But that was not the legend I was referring to, Nastagmas.”

  “Do you refer, highness, to the legends of the Princess Sais and the fall of Pariam? She, too, was said to have sealed a magnificent treasure in the labyrinth of Pariam before she and the city died together.”

  “Sealed behind the labyrinth gate.” She frowned. Her gaze shifted, and fastened on the boy, seeing him as if for the first time.

  He took a step back from her gaze and, surprised that he could move, reflexively shifted his hands to cover his groin.

  “Give me the deck,” she snapped. Nastagmas hurried to hand her a small pouch. “I will seal him to silence. Then get him out of the city. I will see that he is safely guarded on the journey. He must be lost. Thoroughly. But in a safe place, Nastagmas, where his—all—innocence will stay intact and where he will remain comely. If my plans can indeed be brought to fruition, I will have use for him later. No dungeon.”

  “Yes, highness.” The old man bowed once, again.

  “Well! Have it done.” There was a shifting under her skirts. “Have it done!” Her irritation broke into the room like the draft as Nastagmas went to the door, sheparding the naked boy before him. “Send one of my women, immediately.”

  “It will be done, highness.” He closed the door behind himself.

  “It will be done,” she echoed, standing. The vast skirts raised slightly, but otherwise did not move. She swept the cards together, picked the Heiress up from the pile, and thrust it into the candle flame. The card burned with satisfying brilliance. “Before one year has passed, it will be done.”

  When the flames touched her fingers, she opened her hand and passed it, palm down, through the last flare. “Flames seal innocence to silence,” she said.

  She spread the seven cards back out. The Heiress lay whole and unmarked among them. As the door opened to admit two of her waiting women, she placed the gold circlet of the Regency on her head, and smiled.

  Chapter 1:

  The Gatekeeper

  “SAY YOU DREW A series of scenes from the wedding,” said Chryse to her newly wed husband, “and a stonecarver replicated those drawings in a long relief, a—what are those Parthenon marbles called?—a frieze.”

  They stood under a pale Exit sign, the double doors behind them open to the cold night beyond. In the hall, friends and relatives moved in the slow, half-chaotic movements of the final cleaning up.

  “Metopes,” said Sanjay.

  “And say those reliefs were buried for two thousand years, and then dug up by whatever distinguished archaeologists the future might produce—what do you suppose they would make of them?”

  “I think,” said Sanjay, gazing at an oblong white box being carried out the far door by the best man, “that we should have taken some of the leftover cake with us.”

  “Exactly. They’ll think the cake was an offering to some beneficent goddess and the champagne toast the benediction, in human blood, perhaps, of the sacrifice of a virgin—of course, depending on whether it’s a patriarchal or matriarchal culture, the virgin will be female or male—and the exchange of rings … Well, maybe that part of the stone will be damaged so that they only see the hands and therefore reconstruct the scene entirely differently. Say as part of the celebratory dance.”

  “Is that a gift over there?” asked Sanjay. She followed his gaze. On one of the bare folding tables lay a small velvet bag, its cloth as brown as good soil, tied at the top with gold strings. Sanjay set his top hat down on the picnic hamper and walked over to the table, returning with the little pouch. A strip of parchment attached to the string read, in fine calligraphed letters: To the Newly-Wed Couple. “Anna must have overlooked it when she loaded the presents into her van.”

  Chryse shrugged. “Why don’t we just take it with us?”

  For a moment the hall and the bitter chill of outside faded as they regarded each other in silence. Chryse’s smile surfaced first. With Sanjay it was a slower process: his happiness touched his eyes before his mouth. They both leaned forward, and kissed.

  “Well,” she said at last, mouth still a light brush on his. “I think we should find a more private setting for the rest of this conversation.”

  He smiled and picked up the hamper, and they let the exit door cut the hall off behind them.

  “It’s freezing!” she exclaimed as they walked towards the car. Their footsteps slipped in quiet crispness over the concrete walk. Behind, the low voices of last guests at the front entrance faded away into the stillness of late night.

  “It’s a beautiful dress,” said Sanjay, hamper in one hand, the little velvet pouch in the other. “Especially with you in it.”

  “Madame de Pompadour would have been proud, although I’m not sure she would have chosen such a penetrating shade of green.” She smoothed her hand down over the emerald brocade of her bodice. “But when Marie and I saw this fabric in the store, we couldn’t resist—a real solstice green. White is so insipid, especially with my complexion in December. It’s just too bad we had to mismatch our centuries, but you look so gorgeous in top hat and tails I can’t complain.”

  “I could h
ave worn a djoti.”

  “Or some kind of regimentals. Though the English weren’t in India in the mid-1700s, were they? No, I suppose they were.” She laughed. “Oh, the look on my father’s face when you handed out the ‘World Peace’ buttons for the men’s lapels instead of boutonnieres.”

  He sat the hamper down by the car, turned to grab her by the waist, and swung her around. “I love you,” he said.

  She tightened her hold on him, for once saying nothing, just holding.

  After a bit they separated. He fished the keys from the hamper and unlocked the passenger door. “I take it I’m driving,” he said.

  “I don’t think I fit under the steering wheel.” She eased herself into the front seat. Skirt and petticoats swelled around her. “Sanjay!” she cried as he handed her the velvet pouch. “Let’s open it now. Our first gift.”

  “You mean, you’ll open it, while I drive.”

  “Don’t worry. Ill let you open at least two of the other presents when we get back from our trip.”

  Their eyes met—brown in a dark face and, startlingly, brown against pale skin and blonde hair—and they both grinned.

  There wasn’t much traffic. The car traveled through pools of diffuse light, marking street lamps and the occasional signal. She undid the strings and slipped her hand inside the velvet. It caressed her skin, soft as fur. Inside, something harder, flat-surfaced, with the barest grain of texture. She fit it into her hand and drew it out.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “What is it?” He slowed the car to a halt at a red signal and turned on the dome light.

  “Oh,” she repeated, flipping through them. “They’re beautiful.” She handed him one.

  A card. In the background, a desert landscape, stark and barren. A young man, armed and outfitted, rides a horse on a path only he can see. His eyes are fixed on a single star that pierces the haze of night, as if it guides his quest. On the back of the card, an heraldic animal.*

  “What is that?” Chryse asked, leaning to look.

  “I think,” he said, tentative, “that it’s a newt.”