The man's mouth opened wider than Vandien supposed it could. His eyes were distended and suddenly sober. 'Pox!' The word blared from his mouth like a blast from a hunting horn. 'Pox bringers!' he screeched again.

Vandien flung the cloak about Chess as aroused citizens began to stir. A door slammed somewhere. Heads began to pop out of doors in the side street. A young woman stepped from a door near the corner. She halted at the sight of Vandien with the bundled child in his arms and the body huddled under a cloak beside him.

'Pox bringers!' She took up the cry lustily and the man made it a chorus. Stooping to the street, she grabbed a loose stone. Vandien flung up his arm to shield his face, but the fist-sized rock bounced instead off the woman. It brought a sharper cry from under the cloak. The streets were filling with people awakened by the cries of 'Pox bringers!' Head and heart pounding, Vandien stooped beneath his burden of the child to seize the mother by her arm and drag her erect. The cloak fell away from her face as she came up; the stone throwing woman gave a shriek of horror. The blisters were rupturing. A watery flow shone on the woman's face and dripped from her chin. Screaming with pain, she dragged the cloak over her face again.

And then they were running, with stones skipping and bouncing past them. Vandien received a solid thunk from one that hit between his shoulders, but no more flew true after that. Mentally, he cursed the gods for his luck, and in the same breath thanked them that his pursuers were city bred and poor in the skills of aiming and throwing.

Chess jolted in his arms as he tried to keep a hand free to guide the woman along. The cloak blinded her and the pain crippled her. Their run was little more than a hurried hobble; they had no chance of outdistancing their pursuers. His rapier was in the wagon with Ki ; but he had no hand free to draw it in any case. He had only his belt knife against a fear-crazed crowd.

He glanced back to check their numbers. But though they shook fists and hurled stones, they had given up the chase. Perhaps they only wished to harry the pox bringers out of their area; perhaps they feared getting closer and becoming contaminated. Vandien realized now why the man had parted with the cloak. And he had thanked him.

'I cannot go much farther.' Chess's mother panted from under the cloak. Vandien cast about for shelter. But no inn would take in two marked with oozing blisters, even if Vandien had possessed sufficient coin. It was early yet, and few folk were about; but they could not rely on that for long. As soon as they were seen, they would be stoned again. He steered them down an alley. He half dragged them past the windowless backs of squat mud brick dwellings. He was staggering under his double burden, uncertain of what type of shelter he was seeking.

They scuttled across a street that interrupted the alley, and back into the shelter of the next alley. This one appeared a little more run down. Dry yellow grass grew against the backs of the houses, new green sprouts pushing up in their shade. Another street was crossed, and Vandien found himself in an alley where the weeds and trash choked the footpath. He gave the woman what trodden surface there was, himself hopping over the tufty grasses, bits of broken furnishings and crumbling piles of rain-melted mud bricks. Chess was silent and limp in his arms.

A wooden porch jutted into the alley, clinging haplessly to the crumbling wall of a fallen-in house. But as Vandien cautiously skirted it, he realized it was not a porch. Chicken feathers and dung crushed the floor. A splintered wooden door hung crookedly on sagging leather hinges. There were no windows nor any door into the abandoned house it clung to. The dung cracked dryly under his feet as he dragged his charges into this dubious shelter. As soon as he halted, the woman sank down onto the floor. Mercifully, she became silent. He deposited his motionless bundle beside her and turned back to the door. It looked as if few folk passed this way, but it would be a bad place to be cornered. It couldn't be helped. He dragged at the door and it scraped toward him, to wedge tight half a handspan from being closed. It could not be tugged farther. His stubborn efforts only wrenched the doorframe and threatened to pull it loose entirely. It would have to do. Vandien sat down wearily on the filthy floor. The dryness of dust, old dung and chicken feathers tortured his mouth and throat. He lowered his throbbing head into his hands, and wondered unhappily how yesterday's pleasures had gone so wrong. Dust motes danced in the narrow wedge of light that slipped through the door's crack. The random sounds of an awakening city came distantly to his ears.

He lifted a corner of the cloak that covered Chess. The boy's breath was light and shallow, his eyes still squeezed shut. His face was not as badly blistered as his arms. But when Vandien lifted the cloth higher for a better look, Chess cried out and scrabbled deeper within its cover. At the sound, his mother stirred and crept closer to him. 'Hush, Chess. Hush.' She raised a corner of her cloak to peer out, but dropped it as soon as the dim sunlight reached her. 'Are we safe here?'

'For now. What manner of Humans are you, that cannot bear the light of day?'

'Day.' There was wonder and dread in the muffled voice. 'It is more fearsome than any legend warned. I thought it only a myth, a tale to warn adventuresome fools who could not satisfy themselves within our own world. Each Gate, they say, has a terror beyond it. Some murmur that the Limbreth should not open Gates. But who are we to question the Limbreth?'

Vandien's pounding head ground small sense from her words. She implied the Gate was more than a passage through the wall. Well, he had heard of stranger things, and seen a few of them proved true. He made a futile effort to cough without jarring his head.

'Will you feel safe here if I go to fetch water? And some food, perhaps, if I can manage it. Your blisters might be calmed by cool water. And I've a thirst that this chicken dust only torments.'

'We will be fine here, man from the tavern. You are very kind not just to leave us. You seem different from the other folk of your world. Do you belong here?'

'I wonder?' he mused bitterly. 'Vandien,' he offered her then. 'My name is Vandien. And I am not all that different. The folk who stoned us were terrified; they thought we had brought pestilence into the city. Fear breeds cruelty. And I can't let you think I am so unselfish. If I am to catch up with my partner, Ineed to pass through your Gate. Doing that may require your assistance. It is like no Gate I have ever encountered.'

Beneath the cloak he saw the motion of a shaking head. 'It cannot be passed. Not unless a like number of folk were willing to come out. The Keeper calls it the balance. But I will try to recall all I have ever heard of the Limbreth's Gates. It will not be much. I was content in my land, tending my own farm, and didn't listen to foolish tales of the Gates. Not until Chess was lured through one.'

'I will be back as swiftly as I can. Keep silent while I am gone.'

'Jace.'

'What was that?' Vandien paused with his hand on the crooked door.

'My name is Jace, Vandien. We shall be silent until you return.'

The splintery door scraped earth and sod as he forced it open and then shoved it closed behind him. He dusted the dirt and feathers from his clothing and stretched. His eyes blinked and watered in the bright sunlight that stabbed his eyes. The day would be hot. Day, he mused to himself, and started back to the inn and his horse.

When he returned, the sun was reaching for noon. The alley was still empty. Vandien led his horse down to the chicken coop and tethered it to a scraggly bush. He slipped off the worn bridle so the horse could graze. The saddle he left in place. It was small burden to his horse. If the tethered animal did attract curious folk, Vandien intended to be ready to retreat with Chess and Jace.