Free The Shadow at the Gate by Christopher Bunn Page B

sideways.
    The touch of the spell wriggled frantically in her thoughts, desperate to escape her, but it could not. She held to the scent as surely as a bloodhound, as surely as a wolf tracking its kill across the snow. She furled the umbrella without slowing and tucked it under one arm. Her hair whipped free from its pins, heavy with water.
    A couple of men—fishermen, by the smell of them—hurried up the street toward her, their heads bent down under the rain. She ran by, and they did not see her. It seemed she ran in a world of silence, a world of darkness and blurred stone and light hiding secure behind shutters. The rain lashed against her face and she smelt woodsmoke cooling in the air. Somewhere in front of her, somewhere in the city and not far away now, was the spell.
    Abruptly, she stopped running.
    Before her, a street made its crooked way into the evening. Several doors down was an inn. Light streamed from its windows. She could hear laughter and the sound of voices coming from the inn. The street seemed all the colder and darker because of the cheeriness of the sound and the light. Past the inn, however, and on the other side of the street, was a house.
    The house was wedged between what looked like a warehouse on one side and a second house on the other. It was shabby and tall, three stories in total, with a sharply pitched roof underneath the chimneys teetering up into the sky. Every window was shuttered and dark. It looked like an empty house, a house that had not been lived in for many years. A dead house.
    But the house was not dead. It was alive.
    A ward buzzed on the edges of her mind. It was woven about the house. Her thoughts feathered around it, touching and tasting and smelling. The ward was old. Hundreds of years old. It listened to her, coiled as tight as a snake ready to strike. Behind the ward crouched the house. Within the house was the spell. It stank of malice and ancient intent and death.
    How long have you been here, you abomination? She whispered the words in her mind.
    Long enough, Mistress. Long enough.
    The voice of the spell was dry and dusty, creaking as if it were made up of the sounds of footsteps on stairs, of echoes in empty hallways and the drip of water in a dark basement.
    Your time here is at an end. This is my land. These are my people.
    You did your people well, you foolish old woman. I have lulled your people to sleep for these hundreds of years. Them and you. It is what I was woven for and I have done my job well. You shall die this night and I shall remain until my master returns once again. My lullaby continues, Mistress, and Tormay sleeps.
    Who is your master? Tell me!
    But the voice fell silent and would not answer.
    The ward triggered when she was about fifty feet away from the house. Instinctively, she flung her mind wide to contain it.
    Death darkness death —and the ward crashed into her. It had been woven hundreds of years ago—she could feel the age in it—but it had lost none of its potency. Whoever had woven it had been a master. The blow would have leveled a stone building, would have shattered minds and bodies, but her own mind was filled with the earth. She staggered with the impact, but the earth was heavy and deep and old, and it could not be moved.
    The ward coiled back on itself and then lashed out again, humming and buzzing and hissing with malevolence.
    Death death death!
    Dimly, as if from far away, she could still hear the sounds of laughter and conversation from the inn nearby. She could not see the inn, however, for it was as if she looked down a tunnel, blurred stone and light and the bent lines of walls and chimneys on either side. At the end of the tunnel stood the house, waiting for her. The door was in perfect clarity. Raindrops gleamed on the door handle.
    The earth lay silent within her mind. Damp earth, full of patience and stone. Roots sank down into darkness and weight. The ward slammed against the earth, hungry to destroy, ravenous to