The Shadow at the Gate by Christopher Bunn

Author:Christopher Bunn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: Christopher Bunn
Published: 2011-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

LEVORETH RUNS

The rain fell harder and faster than before. The gutters flowed like swollen streams and the cobblestones in some streets were ankle-deep. Levoreth did not mind. She was weary, true, but it was a weariness of mind rather than body. She kilted up her dress above her knees and ran through the night. Buildings blurred by, set with darkened windows and shut doors. Occasionally, though, light shone from a window. Sleep, city, she whispered. Sleep and do not wake. Keep your doors locked. Keep your children safe in their beds. Sleep until I have fled your walls and taken this evil with me.

A bay sounded far behind her, sharp and intent. Another one belled out somewhere on her right. The second was much closer. Levoreth splashed across a street and turned a corner. A shape lunged out of the darkness, mouth gaping with teeth. She swerved. Her hand lashed out, slapping at the air, and the creature skidded over the cobblestones and slammed against a wall. It scrambled to its feet, snarling and shaking its head.

She ran.

The gates of the city loomed before her. A light shone in a window of the Guard tower. Two soldiers leaned on their spears under the gaping archway of the gates. One puffed comfortably on a pipe, and the smoke curled up into the darkness and out into the rain. Immediately, she angled away from the gates. It wouldn’t do to lead the shadowhounds straight to the soldiers. They wouldn’t have time to see what had killed them until their throats were already ripped out.

Levoreth loped along the road below the wall, listening for the noises behind her. The beasts were close, but not too close. They seemed to run silently once they were within sight of prey. Her ears were sharper than a deer’s, however, and she could hear the pad of their paws and their panting. Three shadowhounds. It had been a long time since she had seen such a number. Hundreds of years.

No, whispered her memory to her. Nearly a thousand years ago. Remember? Long before you came to these shores. She stuffed the memory down into the back of her mind and ran on.

The stretch of wall before her looked deserted. The city Guard, apparently, were not dedicated enough to be out in such a night. Levoreth glanced back. Far down the street, spray flew as three dark shapes ran over the wet cobblestones.

She eyed the wall.

Perhaps forty feet high. Easy enough for a mountain cat. She filled her mind with a memory from the previous winter. She had hiked up into the mountains, up through the pine forests on the lower slopes of the Morn range, until she had come out onto the snow fields. They were silent, white expanses angling against the sky, complete and inviolate except for the occasional slab of rock jutting up. A pair of mountain cats appeared then, trotting on wedge-shaped paws across the snow’s crust. They were huge beasts, the male

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