Exiles Gate

Chapter Eight

The rain came down in wind-borne mist by sundown, under skies flickering and glowing with lightnings, as they rode within the shelter of a rocky retreat which had not, perhaps, been a streambed until the rain fell, but which now had a waterfall spilling off the heights above the cut and boiling white along the rocks to yet another falls.

There was a sheltered camp here, Chei and Bron supported the guides in that assertion, and Vanye was only glad to hope for the overhanging cliff face Bron described or anywhere out of the wind. "There is no way out of the place but one," Bron had admitted, "but with your weapons no one could force it from the front or from above."

Vanye had had second thoughts at that description, and looked at Morgaine: warfare in world and world and world had taught him half a score of ways to attack such a place; Morgaine surely knew as many more. But Morgaine had made no objection except a misgiving glance, wet and miserable as the rest of them in this storm that mixed cold mist with the breaths they took.

Now they rode in the last of the light, into this narrow place where a waterfall thundered above the rain, and where some previous user had left standing a woven brush-work against the rock. He did not like the look of it; but the horses were spent after rough going on the slick trails, they were chilled to the bone, and the whipping of the wind up the heights and the scattering of water off pine boughs in soaking drops, threw water at them so many directions there was no fending it off: it ran down necks and got under cloaks clenched in numb hands; and that brush shelter beckoned with the promise of dry ground and rest and respite.

But: "No," Morgaine said then, ready to refuse it after all, "no more of guesting—"—at which Vanye's heart both sank in weariness and resolved itself she was altogether right. But: "It is a hunter-shelter," Chei said. "I do not expect anyone is there."

"Find out," Morgaine said to Eoghar, and with more zeal than he had done anything in the last hour, Eoghar spurred his horse up the bank to hail the place and then to dismount, draw his sword, and look into it.

Eoghar turned then and waved to them to come ahead, murky flash of his sword-blade in the dark. Vanye gave a sigh of relief and guided Arrhan carefully after Eoghar's cousins, to have an eye on them and keep his sword between them and Morgaine, should they have any notions of treachery in this dark hole.

But when they had come up and dismounted beside the shelter:

"One cannot hear in this place," Morgaine objected, the last of them still ahorse, her voice thinned by the roar of the water pouring down and running over rock. "I do not like this."

Vanye looked up at her from across Arrhan's rain-wet saddle. "Aye," he said hoarsely, knowing a second time she was right, but he felt the weight of the mail on his back and the cold of water down his neck and soaking his boots and breeches. It was her second quibble with this place. He respected her instincts; but there was in him a heart-deep vexation—Heaven save us, liyo, you have three men you can trust, he thought to shout at her.

But there were Arunden's three, and those men large and strong, and if they would not mutiny in the night, they were bound to if she bade them go on now.

And he, God help them, had to enforce her orders, or she had to do murder on them; and he was not sure he had a fight left in him—

"Do we ride on, liyo?" he asked with a deep and weary breath.

She glanced back, a shifting of her eyes toward Chei and Bron, who were already taking gear off their horses in the lightning-flashes and the mist, Chei trying in vain to keep the sodden blanket from flying in the wind, his cloth breeches wet through in places where it had blown as he rode. They were spent, man and youth both thin and worn, both recent from wounds, both vulnerable to chill and staggering with exhaustion.

"No," she said, then, in a voice weary as his own. She slid down from Siptah's back, and led him toward the shelter. "We will have a fire if we can find wood enough. At least the rain will drown the smoke. If anyone disturbs us tonight it will be his own misfortune."

It was dead branches broken off the trees back along the rocks, that they had for their fire; and the black weapon's power to set it burning, for which Vanye was earnestly grateful, for nothing but sweat and all a woodsman's skill could have gotten such a fire alight tonight, even considering the heart of the wood was dry. A quick touch of that red light into a little fibrous tinder pulled from the under-bark of the nether side of the branches, a little encouragement with dead leaves pulled from the inside of the woven shelter, and there was instantly a cheerful if smoky little flame that grew with twigs and grew with kindling and branches and quickly underlit her face and the fearful countenances of their companions.

A man grew to rely on such comforts.

"It has other uses," Morgaine said to the men who watched in horror. One—Patryn, it was, signed himself. None of the three looked reassured.

To the good, Vanye thought. Chei was not troubled; he tucked his wet blanket about him and huddled close to the qhal-made fire, whereat Bron relaxed and even gave a shy grin between his own shivers as he pulled his boots off to dry them.

With Eoghar and his kin it was another matter—but so was their situation, men passed off by their lord into a witch's keeping, despite their priest's objections. They huddled together a little separate, and hugged themselves against the cold. The cousin named Tars sneezed mightily, and buried his head a moment in his arm, and sneezed again.

If they had begun the day with aching heads, Vanye reflected, their misery was surely complete by now. He was even moved to pity for them—not enough that he turned his back on them, but he brought them some of the wood, and brought them burning tinder in a wedge between two sticks, and left them to nurse it along and to go out in the rain if they wanted more firewood in the night: "My charity," he said dourly, "stops at the shelter's edge."

Thereafter Eoghar and Patryn took their turn out in the driving mist, wood-gathering, and he went back to Morgaine and the brothers, loosed his armor buckles and his belts, tucked himself up in his wet cloak next the fire, and rested with Chei and Bron, close by Morgaine as she boiled up tea, his back against the rock and his left shoulder next the dry leaves of the woven branches which made one wall of their shelter.

Outside, the horses complained of the rain, and Siptah snorted his displeasure either at two wet strangers wandering about outside or at the geldings picketed apart from him and the mare.

The wood-gatherers returned with their arms full, before their fire died. Inside, under the shelter of the stone overhang and the woven walls, the warmth increased. By the time there were a few coals and the first pannikin of tea had boiled, there was a closer, less peevish feeling in the air and Chei had unfolded himself somewhat and ceased to shiver.

There was smoked meat, fowl, venison, and the bread they had taken from the camp: they did not use their carefully prepared trail rations while there was that choice, and with food that would not last there was no stinting. There was tea to warm them; and by their own fire at the opposite and shallower end of the shelter, Eoghar and his cousins saw to their own supper with the supplies they had brought.

"Ah," Chei said with a little wince when he had drunk his cup, and he sighed as he leaned back against the rock wall by his brother. Bron pushed at him with an elbow, grinned, and Chei pushed back, then clapped Bron on the shoulder in a brief embrace, a glance, a quick and tender look passed between them such as brothers might exchange, who found each other alive against all expectation.

Then Chei burst into tears, and turned his face into Bron's shoulder, and the two of them held each other fast, at which Vanye found himself the fire to look at, and then Morgaine's face—as she looked distressedly toward him, and then found occupation for her hands with repacking.

There was no cursed place for privacy, except the rain. And Chei fought hard for his dignity, who was, Heaven knew and events had witnessed, not prone to tears.

After, Chei bent and rested his forehead on his knee, his braids covering his face, for a long time in which he met no one's eyes. Only Bron's hand rested on his back, until he wiped fiercely at his eyes.

It was safety did that to a man. That was all. The lifting of some terrible burden. The knowledge of trial passed. As if this place, with the rain beating down and the wind whipping outside, offered what the secure camp had not.

Freedom, perhaps. Or a brother's life.

"I am all right," Chei declared, and wiped his eyes and drew a breath and clasped his hands on the back of his neck, taking his wind.

Bron held him by the shoulder and rocked at him. There was a sheen on Bron's eyes too, as he rubbed Chei's back and wound his fingers in Chei's hair and tugged at it with a familiarity from which Vanye averted his eyes in embarrassment.

But perhaps they felt they had found kin.

"You did not know," Morgaine said, "that your brother was there. Truly."

"No," Chei said, a small, quick breath. And looked up, as if he then understood that question. "I swear I did not."

"But took us to land you knew—to friends' territory."

A frightened shift of Chei's eyes mistrusted the listeners. But there was the waterfall to cover their voices. "Ichandren's. My own lord's."

"Ah," Morgaine said, and did not glance at Eoghar herself; and Vanye dared not, putting it together, how Arunden who held a sick man in debt, had moved right gladly into a dead ally's lands.

"This Arunden seems quick to gain," he muttered.

"From everything," Chei said fiercely. "He is known for it."

"I had wondered," Morgaine said in a low voice, "how we happened to find Bron. Coincidence is the most remote chance in all the world—good coincidence even rarer. I do not trust men who seem to have it all about them. And strokes of luck are worst of all."

It was honesty. When Morgaine became obscure it was an offered confidence. Honesty with her was one thing and the other. It was Chei she meant, and Chei she looked at, and Chei looked confused as a man might. "I—do not think I have had luck, lady, except you brought it."

"Any man might have been there, at the gate. Luckier for your friends if we had been a fortnight earlier. It is finding Bron I mean."

"I had no hope of it," Chei said earnestly. "I only went home. I wanted no more mistakes. I thought—I thought—there was no way to get through without meeting ambush. When you told me—what you told me—I knew there was hope in talking. So I did not try to slip around the long way. I brought you up the short way, and took no pains to be quiet, you were right, lady. But we were dead, the other way. It was all I could do."

"And did not tell me."

There was long silence. Chei looked at her, only at her, and his face was pale in the firelight.

"But you did not know," Morgaine said, "that Bron was there."

"No, lady. On my soul, I did not know."

"He could not have known," Bron said. The fire snapped, wet wood; and scattered sparks.

"Arunden took you up," Morgaine said.

"I fell in the fighting," Bron said. "Arunden's folk came down to collect the gear. To steal anything they could. That is what they are."

"Gault's men leave their enemies' gear?" Vanye asked. "For others to take up?"

"This time they did," Bron said, and drew a long and shaken breath. "I do not know why. Probably they had wind of Arunden's folk close by. They took up prisoners—I saw them. I fainted then. I thought they would gather up weapons and they would find me alive and finish me. When I woke up it was one of Arunden's men had found me, that is all I know. And Gault's men had taken none of my gear."

"You were fortunate," Morgaine said. "Did I not just say how I abhor good fortune?"

Bron looked anxiously at Chei, last at Vanye, a worried look, a pleading look.

"It is truth," Bron said. "That is all I know."

Vanye shifted position, having found his arm cold from the wind gusting through the woven-work. He found his heart beating uncomfortably hard. "Arunden was an ally of your lord's?"

"We were ambushed on our way to join with him. The qhal may have known he was there—" The thought seemed to come to Bron then. His mouth stayed open a moment. His eyes darted and locked.

"And withdrew," Morgaine said.

Bron had nothing to say. He darted a look of his own Eoghar's way and back again. Chei's breath was rapid.

"No one would—" Bron said.

"You say yourself, changelings are not uncommon. A man too close to qhalur lands, a scout, a hunter—"

"We are not that careless!"

Heaven save us, Vanye thought. And aloud: "Is your enemy without guile? Or luck?"

Both the brothers were silent. At their own fire, Eoghar and his cousins talked among themselves, voices that did not carry over the water sound.

"It would be easy, then," Morgaine said, "for messengers of all sorts to come and go. From the camp, for instance."

"We do not know it is so!" Chei said.

"No," Morgaine said. "It might be coincidence. Everything might be coincidence."

Bron exhaled a long slow breath. "A treaty with Gault?"

"Possibly," Morgaine said, "you were only fortunate. There is chance in the world. It is only very rare—where profit is concerned."

Bron ran his fingers back through his hair and rested, his hands clenching his braids. Then he looked at Vanye and at Morgaine. "Are you, after all, from Mante? Is this something you know? Are you having games with us?"

"We are strangers," Morgaine said. "We are not from Gault and not from Skarrin. We do not know this land. But of treachery and of greed we have seen altogether too much. Perhaps it has occurred to you—that there is profit to be had. We do not withhold it. Anything, you can gain from us, take. We will have no need of power in this world. Do you want Gault's place? Or any other—take it."

Bron caught a breath. "Everything," he said in a faint voice, "that Chei has told me about you I believe. I never—in all my life—In all my life, I never—never knew I would—come to—to owe—"

"A qhal?" Morgaine asked.

Bron swallowed the rest of that speech. His face was bone-white, his pain-bruised eyes set on her as if he could not find a way to move. "But," he said after, "it is you I will follow. I do not think we will live long. I do not think we will live to see Mante. But for what you did for my brother I will go with you; for what you did for both of us, I will do everything I can for you. I do not deny I am afraid of you. There is a cost—to serving qhal—and I do not know what you would choose, between us and others. But what you say you will do—if you seal the Gates—is a chance for every man alive; and we never had one till this. It is worth a life. And mine is spun out longer than I expected, since Gyllin-brook. Chei's, too. Where else shall we find a place for us?"

Morgaine looked at him long; and turned then and began to pack away their belongings. "I do not know. But I would you could find one." She looked up at them. "When we reach the road, turn back. Go somewhere far, and safe. Two more humans will be a hazard to me—only that much more likelihood that someone will know me for a stranger."

Chei had opened his mouth to protest. He shut it as she spoke and he caught a breath. "But," he said then, "they would take us for the Changed, that is all. There is no reason not."

"It is that common."

"Half the qhal in Morund—have human shape."

"So," she said softly, and her frown deepened and darkened. She put a last packet into the saddlebags and wrapped the ties tight. "They are using the gates that often."

"I do not know," Bron said, looking as bewildered as his brother. "I do not know how often they come and go."

"No one knows," Chei said. "None of us go south. When they want to come and go—they use Morund-gate. They do not need to ride through our land."

"Frequently?"

"Maybe—several times a year. I do not know. No one—"

"So a message has already gone to Mante."

"I think that it would have," Chei said. "When the woods burned. I think they would send for that. Gault is not friendly with Mante. With his lord. So they say."

"Rumor says," Bron amended. "Men who come and go off Gault's land. Some do, still."

"Too much here is tangled," Morgaine said; and Vanye shifted his mailed and weary shoulders back against the rock and picked up the thongs that depended from his belt, beginning to braid three of them.

"As to changelings," Vanye said, "we do not do that, with friend or enemy. You are safe with us, as safe, at least, as we are. And we intend to reach Mante, and go beyond it. But that—that, has no return. You should understand that. My lady advises you turn back. There is reason. You should listen to her."

There was silence after, except a discordant muttering from Eoghar and his cousins, about their separate fire. A little laughter drifted from them, about their own business. Doubtless Chei and Bron were distressed. He did not look up.

"Lady," Chei said.

"For your sake and ours," Morgaine said firmly.

Again there was silence, long silence, with only the noise from the other fire where, Vanye saw with a shift of his eye, the three clansmen had unstopped what he reckoned was not a waterskin, and began to pass it about. He did not like it. He did not want the quarrel now, either, with unhappiness enough in their camp. "Liyo," he said in a low voice and when he had her attention, shifted his eyes to indicate the matter.

She frowned, but she said nothing. They were not boisterous at the other fire, only men taking their ease of the dark and the rain in a way as old as men on any earth.

And finally: "I do not understand you," Chei said.

Vanye jerked the braiding loose and looked up at him, frowning. "There is Hell between the gates, Chei, and we will ride through it. There is a new earth the other side, but fairer or fouler than this one, neither of us knows. Heaven knows how the worlds are ordered, but the gates bind them together in ways dangerous for all life. When we are gone it will not be the same sun that rises over us. That is all I understand of it. But that is where we will be—as if we were dead, Chei, and the other side of Hell, and you cannot go back or change your minds then, and nothing you knew will be true. That is what will become of you. This land is your home. And fair or foul, it is what you understand. Think on that. And you still will not know the extent of what will happen to you. Nothing you know will be true."

"But you go. And you are a Man. Are you not?"

Vanye shrugged. The question went deep, troubling him. "It will not matter," he said. "I cannot even reckon how old I am. The stars are not the same. I do not know where I am. I do not know how long ago my cousin died. And it was only a handful of days ago I left him. Now only my liege speaks my language. All the rest are gone." He looked up at two bewildered, sobered faces. "That is the plainest I know to tell you. There is nowhere we come from. There is nowhere we are going. We only go. Come with us if you will. Leave us, the other side of the gate. It may be you will find peace there. It may be we will fall straight into Hell, and die there. We have no way to know. If it is to glory you hope to follow us—or wealth—there is none to offer you. And whether we are right or wrong in anything we do, I do not know. I cannot offer you that either. My liege cannot. So you would be wisest to stay here. Truly you would."

"I do not understand you," Chei said.

"I know. But I am telling you the truth. Go with us as far as Tejhos, that is all. Then ride west. Lose yourselves in the hills, hide and wait. There will be wars. In that time—you will find a lord worth following. That is my advice to you."

"Are you a witch?" Chei asked.

"I suppose that I am."

"But not qhal."

"No. Not qhal."

"You are my friend," Chei said, and reached and pressed his arm.

He could not look at Chei. It hurt too much. He gave a sigh, and ripped out his braiding.

From the men beyond there was a burst of laughter, muted; Bron turned himself about to see what they did and looked back again, frowning, as if he were thoroughly remiss not to forbid that.

But he was not, at present, in any mind to fight with men who, whatever their lord was, brigands or no, were cheerful again, after sullenness all day.

"They will sleep the better for it," Vanye said. "And if their heads ache in the morning, that is their misfortune."

They neither one said more than that. How their thoughts ran now he could not say. They sat together, leaned together. Bron touched his brother's hair as no man would touch another, casually, even were they kinsmen, but he reckoned this was only affection, and foreign ways. They understood hospitality; their fire seemed sacred enough, and the passing of food and drink; and there were priests to confess them; and yet a lord could claim a wounded man who came to him for protection, and not let him go again. He had met men far more strange to him, whose customs troubled him less, because they were utterly strange.

Yet he reckoned they might trust two watches tonight to these brothers, and know their throats would stay uncut, and their backs defended, if it came to that. If these two were not arrhendim and did not have Kurshin ways, still they were decent men, and he felt his supper uneasy at his stomach, somewhere between regret for having them along and the fear that they would go, and the sorrow that he had finally found a friend staunch enough to stay by them—

—and it was not a man he could trust.

That Chei could lie and never know he was lying—that was a flaw he did not know how to mend. Chei simply did not know what truth was.

And he himself was Nhi as well as Kurshin, wherefore a man who deceived and twisted and turned with the agility that seemed native to this land, set his teeth on edge, in an anger at once familiar and terrifying—and he remembered suddenly why.

It was only his brothers had evoked that peculiar ambivalence in him.

And he had killed one and all but killed the other: clan Myya was his legitimate half-brothers' clan—hill bandits turned noblemen, who did not know a straight way through any door, that was Nhi's proverb for them; and again: thicker than feuds in Myya.

He opened his eyes again. It was only pale-haired Chei, and Bron, whose faces showed hurt and whose eyes sought some answer of Morgaine, since he had shut them out.

"I will take first watch," Morgaine said, rescuing him from the chance that they would go on with him. "Go to sleep. We will be on our way before light; best you all take what you can."

"Aye." He reached at his side and loosed his armor buckles, and found a place the rock fit his shoulders. He unhooked his sword from his side and laid it across his lap, considering Eoghar's company yonder. "Quiet," he shouted at those three, making a small shocked silence, astonishing himself profoundly that they looked so daunted. "Men are going to sleep here."

The trouble was in himself, he thought in the quiet that continued, who invented worries and conjured up calamities—you think too much, his brother Erij had told him once upon a time, chiding him for cowardice.

It was truth. He fell into old habits. It was fear which did that to him, fear not of enemies, but of friends. His brothers had taught him that lesson—beaten it into him, flesh and bone and nerve.

He clasped his sword to him, nevertheless, in both arms, so that Eoghar and his cousins would go on understanding their situation, if there remained any doubt.

The rain subsided to a light patter on the ground outside, an occasional gust carrying it into the shelter, but there was enough heat from the two fires and the presence of seven bodies to keep the chill away. It would have been a good night under other circumstances, Chei thought glumly, lying curled toward the fire warmth, back to back with Bron, but a different kind of cold had crept in among them, and Chei could not reason why, except somehow the lady, always cold and obscure, turned kind to them; while Vanye suddenly refused to look him in the eyes, for reasons which Chei did not, after thinking and thinking on the matter, understand. . . .

What do you want of me? A prisoner, a slave, someone to be grateful for whatever crusts you will give me?

Why could he not say once that he was glad for me, that Bron is alive?

Could not he manage anything but that scowl for it?

The thoughts turned over and over in him like pebbles in a current, one abrading the next; and one atop and then the other. He ached inside. It angered him that the man he admired turned away from him, and it mattered in a personal way—when he ought to worry only for the consequences of being cast out masterless, as a sane man ought.

He might, he thought, appeal to the lady who sat there in the glow of the coals, beautiful and terrible in her fire-stained pallor, herself embodying every fear he had had from childhood; and every mercy he had found in extremity. She leaned on the sword that she bore, which had a fantastical beast for hilt and quillons. Her eyes gazed toward the glow of the coals, and her face was pensive, even gentle—it tempted a man to think she might listen to him.

He was mad, perhaps: a man who began to hope against the general ebb of human fortunes in the world, and who began to believe in miracles—was he not mad?

But he would not have believed at all, till he looked up from the wolf-pack snarling about him and saw first the swordsman bearing down on him and then the silver-haired woman—demons out of Hell he had thought them first, that the ordinary world had rent in twain and death had come for him. He thought of that in bleak moments of terror which intervened in his other thoughts: but he was not dead, his delirium had left him, and it was a familiar woods he rode, with Bron back from the dead and in company with these two who moved out of pattern with the world and promised him humankind need not, after all, perish.

He had ridden a knife's-edge of hope and terror thus far; and that it all should unravel on the spite of a man he had begun to rely on in ways he had only relied on Bron—he could not accept that. He could not believe that Morgaine would in truth send them off to die. He could not believe, now he thought about it, that Vanye, who had dealt kindly with him when it had not been necessary—could turn so vindictive. He must, he thought, have done something or said something—or it was Arunden's offense against the lady; or things had not gone well between Vanye and the lady when he had walked in upon them—

He built a score of desperate structures in the blink of an eye, each more and more fantastical, until he found his hands clenched and his heart thumping against his ribs, and at last rose up on his elbow.

"My lady," he whispered, very softly, not to disturb the others. His hands were sweating as she gazed at him, a figure of shadows in the light of the coals; his arm shook under him, which might have been the chill and the hour. He had everything prepared to say.

Then there came a sound from outside, the low mutter of a stallion that might be bickering with the other horses, but it was the gray: he knew the timbre of it, and where that horse was, just outside the woven wall.

So Morgaine's eyes shifted, and she became still as stone. So he was, till the horse complained a second time and one of the others, further toward the falls, made a complaint of its own that was echoed farther away.

Of a sudden, with her the only one waking, cipher that she was, he was afraid. "Something is out there," he said; and by now Vanye was rising and putting the blanket aside, and Bron had waked, all the while Morgaine sat very still, with the ornate sword against her, her long fingers curving about the hilt as her eyes shifted from him to Vanye.

Vanye gathered himself to his knees and tightened the buckles of his armor. There was no sound now but the roar of the falls and the rain-swollen waters, no light but the afterglow of the coals. Chei trembled and cursed his own cowardice in the uncertainty of the hour; but he was lost, he did not know what was on them, whether it was Arunden's treachery or some hapless hunter of the clan they would have to deal with as the lady had said, more murder they had to commit, this time on innocent men; and his tongue seemed paralyzed.

"I will go out there," Bron said, and moved. "If it is human they are late on the trail—or if they are Arunden's—"

But Eoghar and the others still slept, none of them stirring.

"I will go with you," Chei said. No one prevented him. Eoghar and his cousins snored on, lost to every sense. He walked out into the drizzling rain and stood there blind to the dark and with himself and then Bron silhouetted against the fire-glow, however faint.

A rock turned, click of stone on stone, and the horses close at hand snorted in alarm.

"Arunden!" a voice called out, hoarse above the roar of water. "Eoghar!"

It was sure then that Eoghar had led them along the route where Eoghar had been told, and Chei dived back inside. "My lady—" He found himself facing the black weapon and froze in mid-motion. "It is Arunden's men," he said then, against the risk of her fire and Vanye's half-drawn sword.

But outside someone was coming, and Bron was left to meet that advance. He risked a move to escape and joined Bron out in the drifting mist, out in the dark in which some rider came down the streamside and toward them in haste.

"Who are you?" Bron called out sharply.

"Sagyn," the voice called back. "Ep Ardris."

"I know him," Bron said to Chei as the rider stopped just short of the ledge that was their shelter and slid down off his horse to lead it. "Stop there," Bron said, but the man did not.

"Riders," the man gasped out, staggering to them over the gravel. "Gault's."

"Where?" Bron asked, and drew his sword about the time Chei reached after his own knife, misliking this approach. "No closer, man, take my warning!"

'Truth," ep Ardris said, a thin and shaken voice, and stood there holding the reins of a rain-drenched and head-drooping horse. "It was Gault came on us—Gault, in the woods—"

Chei felt a sense of things slipping away. He heard the movement behind him, he heard the curses of Eoghar and his men, awakened to news like this and by now standing outside; he knew the lady's anger, and the uncertainties in everything, all their estimations thrown in disorder.

Except the lady had fired the lowland woods and begun a war as surely as Gault had come to answer it.

In Chei's hearing ep Ardris was babbling other things, how their sentries had alerted them too late, and Arunden had attempted to attack from the cover of the woods, but Gault's men had been too many and too well armed. The clan had scattered. Arunden himself was taken. Ep Ardris did not know where the others were or how many had survived.

"What of my father?" Eoghar came from the shelter with his two cousins, and laid hands on the man—and if there was a man of the lot not dissembling, it was Eoghar, whose grip bid fair to break the man's shoulders. "Did you see him? Do you know?"—to which ep Ardris swore in a trembling voice that he did not know, no more than for his own kin.

And at Chei's side, all sound of her coming drowned in the roar of the falls, the lady walked up and doubtless Vanye was behind her. "So Eoghar told his lord the places we might camp."

"He would know," Chei protested, "lady, any man of his would know—"

"So, now, might our enemies," Morgaine said darkly. "We have no way of knowing what they know. Saddle up. Now."

Chei stood frozen a moment, lost in the water-sound and the nightmare. Others moved. A hand dosed hard on his arm.

"Come on," Vanye said harshly, as he had spoken when they had been enemies; and in his muddled sense he heard ep Ardris protesting that Gault's riders might be anywhere—Arunden was innocent, he thought, of the worst things; but if any of Arunden's folk was in Gault's hands, there was very much that they knew.

"They do not know the forest," Chei protested, the least frail hope he could think of, but no one listened, in the haste to break camp. Gault and his men had gotten into the forest, plainly enough.

He could not account for all of Ichandren's men. He had not thought of that for very long, since he had sat waiting for the wolves—that there were worse fates than Gault had meted out to him, and that it was Gault's spite of his own Overlord that chained healthy and fair-haired prisoners to die within reach of Morund-gate—when there might be someone in Mante with use for them. It was defiance Gault made of his master.

But he had no idea who had died on the field, who in the prison, and who might not have been taken to Morund's cellars at all.

Or who—as the lady had said—of their hunters and scouts of whatever clan might not have strayed into Gault's hands. For that reason a man never went alone to the border; for that reason they left no wounded, and carried poison among their simples and their medicines.

Someone had betrayed them, either living or dead. Someone who knew the ways in.

The roan horse picked a narrow path among the rocks, a course that others followed in the dark. They made no night camp, only took such rests as they had to have, and few of those.

There was fear in Gault ep Mesyrun, and therefore he drove them. At times thoughts surfaced in him which Gault himself would have had, and not Qhiverin—to that extent he was disturbed; and he knew that Jestryn-Pyverrn who rode near him was much more than that, to the extent that he feared for Pyverrn's self. A profound shock could affect a mind newly settled in a body, and old memories might surface, like bubbles out of dark water, from no knowing which self of the many bodies a man might have occupied, no knowing whether it might not be the latest and strongest self reorganizing itself, disastrous in a mind distracted by doubts.

Therefore Jestryn-Pyverrn himself had laughed, when first the priest had told them what they had to deal with—had looked into Gault's face with a laugh and a desperation in his eyes that quickly died, more quickly than Arunden's priest, who'd been all too willing to talk, for hate, it seemed, a genuine hatred of a qhalur woman and a man for whose sake he had suffered some slight; and thought that he had something to trade to them for his life. "That might be," Jestryn had said, "except we have no need of a priest—"

At which the priest had called out Arunden's name, pleading with him as a Man—wherefore Gault asked Arunden, the quisling they had set over the borderlands: "Dealings with Mante, now, is it?"

"They are from outside," Arunden protested, as the Man had protested everything, disavowed the fire-setting, wept and sobbed and swore he had never betrayed them, only the woman was a witch and might read everything he did.

Therefore Arunden had been compelled to entertain them, therefore he had dealt with them and had sent men with them—this woman who proposed to attack Mante.

"From outside," Gault had said then, beginning to believe this lunacy, though they had long thought there was no outside, and the very thought that there might be, implied a tottering of the world—challenging the power in Mante, of Skarrin himself, over whose death neither he nor the men of his company would shed tears.

But an incursion from outside—

But a threat, babbled in a human witness's confused terms, against the very gates—and a qhal counseling humans about things which humans did not well guess—

The priest went on babbling, pleading his usefulness and his sacrosanctity. "Silence that," Gault said, and had meant that one of the others should do it.

Quick as the drawing of a sword, Jestryn cut the priest's throat and stepped back, his face all flecked with blood: Gault had seen that moment's horror, and well knew the reason the Pyverrn-self had desired that particular execution.

Exorcism, the humans would say.

They had come in the space of an hour from anger at human attack to suspect a far greater danger. "We cannot get a message south," Jestryn had said, meaning one that should pass the southern gate and speed north with the speed of thought. "There is Tejhos-gate."

"They will know that," Gault had said, and had dispatched one small part of his forces back toward the road to sweep north, under a man he trusted—which would have been Jestryn, had he thought Jestryn reliable at the moment.

Perhaps, he thought now, Jestryn had mustered anger enough to overcome his confusion. Perhaps luck would be with them and Jestryn could guide them on these trails, now they knew where their enemy had gone.

But he did not trust to Jestryn's sanity.

"Take him with us," he had said of Arunden. "Kill the rest." And headed for his horse at a run.

There was a Weapon loose. What the priest and Arunden had described could only be that. It was that which had lent absolute credence to a tale otherwise incredible.

Skarrin himself was challenged. The trouble had passed Morund with only a trifling attack. It was possible that the high lord had stirred up some trouble which bade fair to destroy him and to take the world down to chaos—it answered to things which in qhalur lore were only dimmest legend, that there had been such visitations once, and time itself might shift, and all reality alter.

He did not count himself a virtuous man. He did not know one—Skarrin being Skarrin and only the favored few of his lords profiting from Skarrin's rule; but Gault found himself with no choice and no one but himself to look to.

He rode without heed of the night or the rain that should keep them prudently camped. He trusted himself and his men to the guidance of a traitor and a bloodstained man struggling for sanity, because there was no time for anything else.

The war he had started out to fight was for a woods, a handful of deer and rabbits and revenge on a quisling human he thought had betrayed him.

But in a few words from a human's lips he found himself in a war for survival.