Shadow Gate

“What is happening to me?” Marit cried.

She rested her head against the bole of a tree, trying to get her breathing under control. The rain cleared off, and as night fell, a cold and bitter wind blew.

The season changes. Only late in the year do you feel the chill in your bones.

The reasonable explanation was that she had slept through a day and a night recovering from the shock of what she had seen and from the eagle’s attack.

When she thought it through, she had to believe that the eagle had killed her in its fury. The weather bore out the unlikely supposition that months had passed.

Guardians can’t die. They can kill, but they can’t be killed.

Now there was a recipe for corruption.

She rose to shake out her clothing. Why, in the tales, are the Guardians always honorable and upright, the upholders of a justice that is never disturbed by their own petty jealousies or grand descents into lust and greed? How honest were the tales, really?

Who would believe her, if she walked in off the street into Clan Hall and claimed to be a woman murdered nineteen years ago? Who would even remember her?

One man might.

PRAISE FOR CROSSROADS

Shadow Gate

“Highly recommended to both fans of the author and any readers who appreciate fantasy in the vein of Robin Hobb, Jacqueline Carey, and J. V. Jones.”

—Fantasy Book Critic

“Elliott’s strengths as a writer are on display in this second Crossroads book. She brings her characters fully alive with stringent detail and attentive world-building. Fans of Elliott and new readers alike will find this novel satisfying.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“As I said upon finishing Kate Elliott’s wonderful Spirit Gate, book one of the Crossroads series, ‘I can’t wait for the sequel to see what happens.’ At last book two is finally here. What a splendid continuation of the story is Shadow Gate! It was well worth the wait. But now I am done, and so, ‘Please, Ms. Elliott, may I have some more?’ ”

—Dennis L. McKiernan, author of
Once Upon a Spring Morn

“A fabulous thriller that grips readers from the onset . . . exhilarating.”

—SFRevu

Spirit Gate

“Elliott is a talented writer whose work will appeal to that portion of fantasy readers who enjoy the historical and world-building aspects of the genre. She packs her books with the right proportion of action and detail, characters and societies, the warp and woof of real life artfully rearranged so as to be more entertaining and less distressing.”

—“The Agony Column,”trashotron.com

“Elliott’s skill at building worlds and peopling them with colorful characters and vibrant societies makes this novel an excellent choice for most fantasy collections.”

—Library Journal

“Spirit Gate has kept me up late at night for too many nights in a row; it made me burn dinner once, and it nearly caused a fender bender when I was thinking about the characters while driving. It’s a big, complex, absorbing book that interfered with my living my daily life while I was reading it, and I blame the author quite bitterly for that.”