Labyrinth Gate (49 page)

Element:
Water

Direction:
West

Rank:
Knight

Animal:
Crab

Plant:
Water lily

Picture:
On a shore, a dead man lies half in, half out of the surf.

Meaning:
Dissolution; death; change from one state to another.

22: THE LOVER

Letter:
O

Element:
Fire

Direction:
East

Rank:
Magi

Animal:
Salamander

Plant:
Myrtle

Picture:
In the window of a tower a girl leans out. Her hair is unbound. Far below stands the figure of a young man.

Meaning:
Beginnings of desire, of interest in other people; infatuation; passage from child to adult, with adult’s passions.

23: THE MERCHANT

Letter:
T

Element:
Fire

Direction:
South

Rank:
Magi

Animal:
Fox(es)

Plant:
Marigold

Picture:
In a market stall stands the proprietor, a woman with carefully coiffed hair, displaying her wares.

Meaning:
Desire for wealth and material goods; trading of all sorts, physical wants, economic, artistic, cultural, political; bargaining; cheating; competence, but also incompetence; deviousness.

24: THE MAGE

Letter:
C

Element:
Fire

Direction:
Heaven

Rank:
Magi

Animal:
Lion

Plant:
Vervain

Picture:
A woman levitating.

Meaning:
The serene levitator; nobility of desire, control of desire leads to mastery of the subject at hand; serenity; vanquishing of desires and emotional turmoil; mastery of one’s profession.

25: THE ANGEL OF WAR

Letter:
+

Element:
Fire

Direction:
Center

Rank:
Magi

Animal:
Dragon

Plant:
Cinquefoil

Picture:
An armed woman advancing to battle. Light blazes around her.

Meaning:
Purity of desire, but also lust; violence; the conquest of passion; the power of pure emotion; all-out assault.

26: THE INVALID

Letter:

Element:
Fire

Direction:
Underworld

Rank:
Magi

Animal:
Cat

Plant:
Poppy

Picture:
On a couch in a shuttered room, a woman lies, passive, clearly ill, one hand cast up over her eyes, the other hanging limp, a book lying open on the floor.

Meaning:
Passivity, debilitation; the diseased decay of inward-turned desire; wasting, usually from the inside out; helplessness, or not bestirring oneself to make any effort.

27: THE SEEKER

Letter:
H

Element:
Fire

Direction:
North

Bank:
Magi

Animal:
White wolf

Plant:
Heather

Picture:
A cloaked figure turns away from the gates of a lighted city—it is dusk—about to take the road that leads into the mountains. High in the mountains one can see the suggestion of a dark castle.

Meaning:
Desire for knowledge, so much so that one leaves all else behind; the search for answers; the quest that leads one away from human society; the restless need for understanding, to find the synthesis of what is known and what has yet to be known.

28: THE SACRIFICE

Letter:
U

Element:
Fire

Direction:
West

Rank:
Magi

Animal:
Phoenix

Plant:
Red rose

Picture:
A woman tied to a stake, being burned alive. Her face is contorted, either in agony or in ecstasy—one cannot quite be sure.

Meaning:
Sacrificing oneself for desire, for what one considers to be a greater purpose, goal, desire, or passion; passion—pain, but also ecstasy; complete immolation in one’s passion of goal, usually voluntary; death, but a death that leads to rebirth, either of anew self or of a new purpose.

E. P. Thompson,
The Making of the English Working Class.
New York: Vintage Books, 1966;

Eric Elliott, who illustrated the Gates for me;

and finally, everyone who helped babysit 3R-S—thank you!

Kate Elliott has been writing stories since she was nine years old, which has led her to believe that she is either a little crazy or that writing, like breathing, keeps her alive. Her most recent series is the Spiritwalker Trilogy (
Cold Magic
,
Cold Fire
, and
Cold Steel
), an Afro-Celtic post-Roman alternate-nineteenth-century Regency ice-punk mashup with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendants of troodons, and revolution. Her previous works include the Crossroads trilogy (starting with
Spirit Gate
), the Crown of Stars septology (starting with
King’s Dragon
), the Novels of the Jaran, the Highroad Trilogy, and the novel
The Labyrinth Gate
, originally published under the name Alis A. Rasmussen.

She likes to play sports more than she likes to watch them; right now, her sport of choice is outrigger canoe paddling. Her spouse has a much more interesting job than she does, with the added benefit that they had to move to Hawaii for his work; thus the outrigger canoes. They also have a schnauzer (a.k.a. the Schnazghul).

April Quintanilla

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1988 by Alis A. Rasmussen

Cover design by Angela Goddard

978-1-4804-3526-1

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com