Shadow Gate Read Online Free PDF

his corruption even here, not knowing how far away he was or, indeed, how they could be talking at all.
    She had flown ten years as a reeve. A lie to buy herself time to edge out of a bad situation was nothing she couldn’t handle easily. “I will wait for you here. How long will it take for you to reach me?”
    She felt him nod, but she understood that he could not physically reach her from where he was now despite the magic that allowed them speech. “I have men in the area, searching for you. If you see them, you’ll be safe with them. But they won’t be able to reach you at the altar. That’s where you must meet me. Stay where you are. It will take me two days to get there. You haven’t told me your name?”
    How persuasive he sounded! If it weren’t for knowing he was responsible for the murder of her eagle, if it weren’t for remembering how crisply he had ordered the men under his command to rape, mutilate, and then kill her, she would never have suspected what manner of man he was just by the pleasant tone of his words.
    â€œI’m Ramit,” she said. “I’m so very confused. Can you tell me what has happened to me?”
    â€œAll in good time. You mustn’t rush these things. Some explanations are best accomplished face-to-face.”
    I’ll just wager they are,
she thought, and found herself shaking as she took another step, as the dusty hilltop vanished and a damp vista of marshland overhung by low clouds came into view. Cursing furiously, she strode to the center of the labyrinth, ignoring the landscapes flashing dizzily past. She stumbled down to the crevice, where water trickled into a basin from which the mare had been drinking. She unhooked the bowl from her belt and held it under the spring. Still trembling, she lifted the bowl to her mouth and drank her fill. The cold water burned her lips and throat. She started to cry, gulping sobs that doubled her over. Dead, slaughtered, and that poor chained Devouring girl dead by her own hand after being abused in ways that Marit was sure were worse than what little the girl had voiced aloud. Dead, lost, wandering.
    Alone.
    Panic swelled like a black cloud, ready to swallow her. She clawed for the steady heart that had taken her through so many years of reeve’s work; she fought past the tears, and found her strength.
    Enough!
    She had no time for this. Two days she had, if he had been telling the truth. Knowing what manner of man he was, she knew he might as well have been lying.
    She wiped her face with the back of a hand as she rose and looked around. What magic sustained the Guardian’s altar she did not know. How the maze wove its sorcery into the angles of its path she could not guess, because there was actually only one route to walk once you started on the path. The many landscapes visible from within remained invisible now that she stood at the center, but by an odd trick of the view she could see from here at the center a complete vista of the ordinary land around her, all the approaches to this pinnacle, even those that ought to be blocked from her view by spurs and heights.
    A pair of hawks floated on a thermal far above. To thewest, on an impossibly narrow path, a mountain goat picked its way along the slope. A thread of smoke rose beyond the nearest hill, but it smelled of sheep and a drowsy shepherd strumming a simple tune on a two-stringed lute. A family of rock mice skittered below thickets of sprawling heath-pink. Stunted pine trees grew low to the ground, and spiny broom poked its first flowers from their hairy sheaths. The wind moaned along the height. Otherwise, the land was empty. She was utterly alone.
    The mare waited beside the burbling crevice, watching her with interest or, perhaps, disdain. Beside the horse, a bridle hung from an iron post hammered into the rock.
    With some difficulty, she slid the harness over the mare’s head and, after a few problems with the