“And you will, every one of you, I swear it by the knives of the Merciless One.” She met each pair of eyes, because all watched her. “Any who wish can head home now.”

But of course it was impossible that these children could walk hundreds of mey across unknown countryside without food or guidance. Bai knew that and, knowing it, manipulated them. Shai hated her even as he felt the pull of her words and of her strength.

“We’re the ones who will destroy that which lies beyond the Shadow Gate. We are the ones who will walk into their camp and spy them out. Be bold. Strike the blow that will cripple them. We must go forward.”

“ ‘Forward, forward,’ ” they whispered, the familiar echo from the tale.

She swept them up in the flood of her righteous anger, so you drowned never knowing you had succumbed.

Eridit glowed, staring at Bai as at a lover. The militiamen likewise nodded eagerly. Even Tohon—who surely knew better!—tugged on an ear as he considered her words, her stance, her reckless proposal.

“You’re crazy,” said Shai.

“Maybe a bit of madness is what is needed. Not the Thunderer’s strict ordinances or the Lantern’s tidy accountings. Now enters the mistress of love, death, and desire, the All-Consuming Devourer. Swallowed up, we become the vessels that carry out her will, for it is not her will that we transgress against others. She will walk with us, as long as we walk in her.”

“ ‘Praise to the glorious one,’ ” sang Eridit. “ ‘She who is lightning. She who devours us.’ ”

Passionate words engulf the unwary; strength lures the vulnerable. After all they had suffered, after all they had done and pretended to do, the young ones wanted, perhaps, to feel their degradation meant something. They weren’t shamed; they were soldiers.

“Don’t worry, Shai,” said Zubaidit as she surveyed her frail, ragged troops. “I have no intention of seeing the innocent suffer. I have a plan.”

43

“Do you hear that voice?” whispered Eliar.

“No.”

“It’s mumbling on and on. ‘Mist flees,’ and ‘a night spanned with stars cloaks all.’ I can’t sleep.”

Keshad rolled over in his blankets. Even that effort made him pant in the thin air of the Kandaran Pass. “The only cursed voice mumbling on and on is yours. Any chance you’re likely to leave me alone so I can sleep?”

In the crumbling sod shack they were, of necessity, pressed close together under what remained of the turf roof. The rest of the party had refused to sleep in a place rumored to be haunted and instead huddled beneath canvas in the freezing night outdoors among rocks and snow. Now Kesh wished he had joined them, even though he had observed that the whole cursed place looked likely to slide away. But night had caught them on the road, and the rocks and shack seemed stable enough.

Eliar coughed hoarsely, as they all did up on the heights. “Did you know you are one of the most unpleasant men I have ever been forced to associate with?”