Exiles Gate

Chapter Eighteen

There was no sound in the high-walled courtyard, save their own movements and those of the horses. There was nothing above them but the sky.

And the open gateway, among the standing stones.

Morgaine took Siptah in hand to look him over and Vanye looked over the exhausted bay and gathered up Arrhan's reins, as Chei and his two comrades led their exhausted horses toward them, slow clatter of iron on stone.

"There is the way out," Morgaine said. "Such as our host gives us. Do you have any reckoning where we are?"

"Neneinn," Hesiyyn said quietly. "That is where we would be, I am relatively certain of it. The citadel itself. But no one sees the inside of that, except the Overlord's own guards. And they rarely come and go in the city."

"The Gate itself?"

Hesiyyn looked about him, at the sky, the walls; and pointed off to the right of the open gateway. "There, by my guess. The gate is close—very close to Neneinn, at the crest of the same hill. That weapon of yours—I should hesitate to use anywhere about these premises."

Morgaine was silent a moment, looking at Hesiyyn. The tall qhal-lord wore an unwontedly anxious expression.

"Where is your loyalty?" she asked him.

"Assuredly not in Neneinn," Hesiyyn answered in a faint voice. "I am under banishment. Skarrin dislikes my poetry."

"None of us has any loyalty here," Chei said. "I assure you. Nor prospects."

There was nothing of arrogance in them. Their courage seemed frayed, their strength flagging in the face of their own unnatural vitality—men hollow-cheeked, eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion, their horses dull-coated and ill-fed beneath the dust that coated all of them. They did not ask what had happened, or why, or, indeed, venture any question at all.

"Then tell Skarrin nothing," Morgaine said shortly, and turned and hooked Siptah's left stirrup to the horn. She let out the girth no small bit, at which the warhorse grunted and sighed.

Arrhan needed the same. Vanye saw to it, hung his bow from Arrhan's saddlehorn and let out first Arrhan's girth and then the straps of his own body-armor, that were tight to the point of misery; but the bandages and the padding he could not reach, and he drew a breath and strained at them, trying to stretch against what would bind his draw and his sword arm.

Even in blackest sorcery, he thought, gathering his gear about him, there were cursedly maddening shortcomings.

Morgaine flung the stirrup down and gathered up Siptah's reins, looking back toward Chei and the rest. "I will warn you," she said. "You may be safer here. Death—may be safer than where we go. Choose for yourselves."

Chei looked astonished. It was young Chei's expression. The frown which followed was Gault's. Or Qhiverin's. "You jest, lady."

"No," she said. "I do not." And led Siptah among the tall stones, toward the open gateway.

Vanye led Arrhan after her, the blaze-faced bay following perforce, with lagging, wearied steps.

The others came behind him, then, a clatter of iron-shod hooves on stone.

He had as lief not have them at his back. He recollected the medicine Chei had given him, and what it had done to him when at last he had had to rely on it—

—Chei had warned him, he recollected. To do justice to the man, Chei had warned him clearly.

Chei had given it to him after that warning, of course—in hope, perhaps, of not having him between them and Morgaine—in any sense. And if he had used it before that, Heaven knew what would have been the outcome.

He kept constantly between Morgaine and the qhal, now, on the winding track among the stones, pale gold of standing stones and of pavings and masonry—and of more sunlit paving visible through the gateway.

Another trap, he thought.

But the gateway opened out into yet another such courtyard, this one with a single standing stone in its center … a flat, paved courtyard, the end of which a building closed, jumbled planes of wall and tower, and at the sides—

A sheer drop: and buildings upon buildings, upon buildings and buildings, pale gold stone, red roofs, as far as the eye could see.

He stopped in his tracks and stared—only stared, senses confounded, when he was mountain-born and used to heights and perspectives.

But not to men and the works of men so vast they spread like a blanket about the hill and across the plain—to the verge of the cliffs that dropped away into the circular abyss of Neisyrrn Neith, and along and away till the roofs lost themselves in haze and distance.

Morgaine had stopped. So had the others.

"Mante," Chei said softly. So a man might speak of Heaven and Hell in one.

The others said nothing at all.

And Vanye could not forbear looking at it, though he tangled his fingers in Arrhan's coarse mane and feared irrationally that the sight might drive the horses mad, and bring them too near the edge, however far away they stood.

Morgaine led Siptah further. It was the sound of the gray's steps that woke him from trance, and brought him after her, resolutely, as she walked toward the open doorway at the end of the courtyard.

The others followed, at distance.

This door—had little sunlight about it. This one let into the very heart of the fortress, by a long narrow aisle, shadowed by columns.

They had seen such before, of many kinds. Such buildings were always near the World-gates. They held the machines to command and direct the forces.

It was what they had come to find; and Morgaine would go in. He had no doubt of it. He saw her lay her hand on the sword-hilt.

"Liyo. " He searched after the chain of the stone he wore about his neck, drew it from his collar and over his head as he led Arrhan quickly to overtake her. It was a weak thing—stronger by far than the Warden's mote or many another sending-stone in this land, he suspected, but not Changeling's match. It was useless to him, a means to sudden death, if he matched it against anything of Changeling's power.

Or against the gate Hesiyyn swore must lie close hereabouts.

"He knows you have a gate-weapon," he said. "Take it. It is larger than the ones they use. It may be he will mistake this for it."

She understood him then. And refused it with a shake of her head. "The sword," she said in his language. "I cannot wield both. And no—he will not."

"The sword is too dangerous," he whispered hoarsely, and started at a movement in the corner of his vision, in the deep shadow within the narrow aisle ahead—a qhalur man, alone, nor very old.

Some high servant, he thought, the while his heart skipped a beat and his hand went for his sword-hilt; and then he thought otherwise, seeing the eldritch figure drifted, mirage-like, and was only an image.

It spoke. It spoke words he could not understand, but he knew, whatever they were, that they were not meant for him, or for Chei, or any of them other than Morgaine. He heard Morgaine answer in that tongue, and saw the man's figure grow dimmer as it retreated down that aisle.

She walked forward.

Vanye caught at her arm, the barest touch, before she reached that threshold. She looked at him. That was all; and she turned and hit Siptah a resounding blow on the rump.

The Baien gray sprang through the door, hooves echoing on stone, off high walls, and stopped inside, unscathed.

She went, then, through the doorway, in a single step and a second one which cleared a path for him to follow. He did so, in a motion so quick he did not think of it: he was there, Arrhan was behind him, and he whipped the arrhendur blade from its sheath, for what it was worth against this illusion and the more substantial things it might call down on them.

A question then, from the man of light and shadow. The voice echoed about them, rang off the walls of this long, narrow passage.

"He does not understand you," Morgaine said.

"He is human," the image said then. "I have read everything—in the gate-field. I know what you carry. Yes. How could I fail to remark—a thing like that forming in the patterns? I read his suffering. I intervened, against my habit, to save him. I trusted there was a pattern—if you valued him. And I was not mistaken."

"I thank you for that," Morgaine said.

"I wished to please you,—who come wandering the worlds. Anjhurin's daughter. It is likely that we are kin—remote as that kinship may be. How does Anjhurin fare?"

"He is dead," Morgaine said shortly.

"Ah." The regret seemed genuine. The image murmured something in the other language.

"Perhaps," Morgaine said, "he was weary of living. He said as much."

Again it spoke.

"No," Morgaine said. And to another query: "No." And: "I travel, my lord."

A harder voice then.

"For my companion's sake," she said. "Speak so he can understand." And after another such: "Because he understands it and because I wish it." And again: "That may be. I would be glad of it." She lapsed for a moment into the other tongue. Then, gently: "It has been a long time, my lord, since I have spoken the language. It has been a long time—since I have had the occasion."

"You bring me felons and rebels." The mouth of the image quirked upward slightly at the corners. "As well as this human warrior. You have turned my court upside down, lifted every rotten log and sent the vermin scurrying forth—from Morund-gate to the highest houses in Mante. What shall I do for you in return?"

"Why, give me the three rebels in question," Morgaine said, "and the pleasure of your company, and in due time, the freedom of your gate. I am a wanderer. I seek no domain of my own."

"Nor to share one?"

She laughed. "We do not share a world. My father taught me that much. I will find a place. Or do you give this one up, my lord of shadows, and come wander the worlds with us."

"With a rebel, a killer, a doggerel poet and a human lordling?"

Skarrin laughed in his own turn. "Come ahead into my courtyards, my lady of light. Wash off the dust. Take my hospitality." The drifting face became melancholy, even wistful. "Go with you. That is a thought. That is indeed a thought. You will sit with me, my lady, and tell me where you have traveled and the things you have seen—convince me there is something different than one finds . . . everywhere. …"

The image faded.

The voice drifted into silence, leaving the stillness of the tomb behind it.

Old, Vanye thought with a chill, old —more than a Man can reckon.

And he found himself staring into Morgaine's eyes, lost, beyond understanding what she did or what she meant to do any longer, and with the least and dreadful fear—that she had found something in common with this lord who contemned everything he ruled, who despised the qhal, who themselves used human folk for cattle—

She had had to defend her companying with a human man. He had sensed that. He imagined the questions which had gone by him, and fitted her answers to them, his liege, his lover . . . defiant, in the beginning—toward a man of her own kind, who could speak with her, trade words with her in a language she had never taught him, quickly and unexpectedly draw the sort of laugh and light answer from her such as had taken him—oh, so long to win.

"We will do as he asks," Morgaine said.

"Aye," he said. He was too far into strange territory to say anything more. He did not even agree for loyalty or love or out of common sense. He was only lost, on ground which continually shifted and threatened to shift again. They stood in a foreign lord's elegant forecourt with three confused horses in their charge, and three men awaiting their fate outside who were, surely, no less bewildered.

Then: a clear target, he thought, like a shock of cold water.

How else do we come at him—except she draw him out?

And how can she persuade him?

"Call Chei and the rest," she bade him in the Kurshin tongue. "Quickly."

He left Arrhan to stand and went back to the sunlight. "My lord," he said to Chei at the doorway, and lowered his voice. He was determined to observe courtesy with the man and forestall argument. "We are going ahead. We do not know into what. Be aware: the Overlord brought up the matter of your exile. My lady claimed you for her own and Skarrin gave you to her. So if you have any scruples, I think you are honorably quit of debts to him, but I do not know what favor this wins of him if things go amiss."

Chei looked at him and gnawed at his lip. It was young Chei's expression for the instant. It was doubt; and then amusement. "I was quit of debts to him when he failed to kill me," Chei-Qhiverin said. "That was his mistake."

Chei led his horse forward. Hesiyyn and Rhanin followed, Rhanin with his bow strung and slung over his shoulder. Vanye cleared the doorway, gathered up Arrhan's reins, and led the white mare up alongside Siptah as Morgaine began that course Skarrin chose for them.

Ambush was in his thoughts, constantly. But Morgaine went, with Changeling slung at her hip, and walked the long court in which the horses' pacing made a forlorn and lonely sound.

"Games," she said to the air. "I do not like games, my lord Skarrin."

At the end a door whisked open, in that way which doors could move, in such places of gate-force—on a sunlit court.

Vanye cut the lead next the bay's bridle and sent it ambling past them with one slap and another on its dusty rump. It came to no grief in the doorway. And they came through into afternoon sunlight, into a stable court clean and well-supplied with straw and haystack, rows of stables, with well and stone trough. The bay went straightway to the water, and Siptah and Arrhan flared their nostrils and pricked up their ears and approached the trough with keen interest.

"Hospitality," Vanye muttered, for the first time beginning to wonder was there good will in this beckoning of doors and corridors and ghosts. "Dare we trust it?"

"He needs no ambush," Morgaine said, and bent and washed her hands and her face, and let the water wash black, clean trails over her dusty armor. She drank from the demon-mouth that poured fresh water continually into the trough.

He took the chance for himself, doused face and hands in cool water, wiped his hair back from his eyes, washed and drank as Chei and the others arrived.

There was no one to threaten them. There was not a horse other than theirs in all the stable-court. There was no servant and no groom to serve them. Vanye stood, with the wind chilling the water on his face, scanning the walls around them, looking for some sign of life and seeing nothing but bare stone.

"Ghosts," he said aloud. "And of them this Skarrin seems chief."

"More than ghosts," Morgaine whispered in the Kurshin tongue, and caught his shoulder and leaned close to him. "We may be overheard. I do not know how many languages he may have known or where he may have traveled."

His heart leapt in him and fell again. "Even Kursh?"

"There are tracks among the Gates: thee knows. No knowing which path he has come to arrive here. There are a handful of the old blood, in all the worlds gates reach. They have no congress with one another. They are too proud. Each settles to a world—for a while—using a knowledge of the gates the qhal do not have—They rule. There is no likelihood that they will fail to rule. They direct affairs, they make changes at their pleasure. And inevitably they grow bored—and they move on, through time or space or both. Some are older than the calamity, older than the one before it. My father claimed to be."

"What 'one before it,' what—"

"—And some are born into this age—of one whose life has stretched across ages. Some are born of events which cannot be duplicated, events on which vast changes depend—Some lives, in that way, anchor time itself. So the lords assure themselves of continuance—in more than one way. Such am I—but not what my father planned. I exist. Therefore other things do not. Therefore he does not."

"I do not understand. You have left me." He felt a shiver despite the sun. "What shall we do?"

"I shall court this man," she hissed softly. "By any means, Vanye, any means, and thee must not object, does thee understand that?"

"Let us take the sword, let us go through this place until we find him—" He felt cold to the heart now. "That is the only sense."

"He will not be there. He can retreat within the gate. He can leave us here. Has thee forgotten?"

"You cannot fight him hand to hand, liyo, in the name of Heaven, you cannot think of—"

"I will do what I have to do. I tell thee now: do not attempt anything with this man. I beg thee. I do not want help in this. Or hindrance. Thee says thee is still ilin. Nothing have I asked of thee by that oath—in very long. This I ask. For my sake. For thine."

"Tell me what we shall do!"

"On thy oath. Nothing. I will do it."

"And I tell you—if you hang my soul and my salvation on it—I will throw them away, if it comes to harm—"

"Thee will take the sword if it comes to that. Thee will bear it. Thee will trust Chei and the rest if it comes to that. All these things—I ask thee, as thee loves me,—do. Does thee love me? Does thee understand what I ask?"

It reached him, then, the thing that she was asking of him, and the sense of it. It shook the breath from him for a moment. It was not the sort of thing a man wanted to agree to, who loved a woman. It was harder than dying for her, to agree to leave her to die.

"That much," he said, because anything less was betrayal, "yes, I understand. On my oath, I will." He looked up uncomfortably at their comrades, who did not understand what passed—their comrades, who expected, perhaps, betrayal prepared for themselves, in this exchange in another language.

"We will go on," Morgaine said to them, and drew Siptah away from the water.

"Where do we go?" Chei asked.

"Did I promise I knew?" Morgaine answered, and led the gray horse on through the stable-court, down the empty rows.

"It makes no sense," Hesiyyn said. "There should be servants—there should be attendants. Where are the people?"

"Heaven knows," Chei answered him, and found no incongruity in saying so. There was an angry young man in the center of his being, as lost as he was, in this place which had dominated both their lives and ruined their separate families—and which proved, after all, only hollow and full of echoes. "People come here," he said, half to the lady, who seemed some old acquaintance of Skarrin's. "People serve the Overlord. What has become of them?"

She offered them no answer.

"Perhaps he is holding them elsewhere," Hesiyyn said under his breath, and with an anxious look toward Chei.

Death, the lady had said; and in this court which should, at least, have horses, have some evidence of occupancy and life—Chei found a scattering of memory which was human and adult and frightened—

Gault had been imprisoned here, had been hailed up from the outskirts of this fortress by his kidnappers, to the gate above these walls. Gault remembered. And there had been others in that dark hour, there had been servants, there had been abundant life in this court, torchlit and echoing with confused shouts as Qhiverin's friends dragged him struggling and resisting toward the hell above these walls.

"Even the horses," Chei-Gault-Qhiverin said aloud, finding a shiver down his spine and a terrible feeling of things gone amiss in this daylit, sterile vacancy, "even the horses—No." He quickened his pace, tugging at the weary roan he led, and caught Vanye's arm. "There were people here. Now even the horses are gone. Something is direly wrong here. It is a trap. Make the lady listen."

Vanye had rescued his arm at once. There was on his sullen face, a quick suspicion and a dark threat. The shorn hair blew across his eyes and reminded them both of things past, of miscalculations and mistakes disastrously multiplied. A muscle clenched in his jaw.

But if there was at the moment a voice of caution and reason in their company it was this Man, Chei believed it: the boy's experience told him so and Qhiverin's instincts went to him, puzzling even himself—except it was everywhere consonant with what the boy knew: a man absolute in duty, absolute enough and sane enough to lay aside everything that did not pertain to the immediate problem.

Trust him to listen, was the boy's advice. Nothing further.

And Qhiverin, within himself. Boy, if the one thing, with what lies between us, then anything; and you have been a mortal fool.

"It is for all our sakes," he said. "I swear to you, Nhi Vanye. We are walking into a trap. Every step of this is a trap. He has vacated the place. Even the horses. Even the horses. I do not know where."

"The gate," Vanye said, looking down the little distance Chei's slighter form needed.

"To Tejhos?" Chei asked. "—Or elsewhere?" Vanye cast a look toward Morgaine, whose face was stern and pale and set on the way before them, which led toward yet another gate in this maze.

"Anything is possible," he said.

A man who is winning, he had said to Morgaine again and again, will not flee.

But the man of that face and that voice which had spoken to them—

—Go with you, it had said.

Convince me there is something different than one finds . . . everywhere. . . .

Older than the calamity, Morgaine had said of Skarrin.

And: Not of human measure, not predictable by human intentions, his own experience told him.

Deeper and deeper into this snare Morgaine went, leading the rest of them in what haste they dared—

Lest Skarrin strand them here, lest he go before them and seal the gate and leave them imprisoned here forevermore.

He did not question now. He understood the things that she had attempted to tell him throughout their journey—and he had overwhelmed her arguments, delayed her with his foolishness, his well-meant advice and his hopes and, Heaven forgive, his desire of her, which had stolen her good judgment and thrown his to the winds.

But for me, he kept thinking, the while he walked beside her: but for me she would have ridden straight to him and stayed him from this; but for me she would have gone straightway to Morund and enlisted qhalur aid and learned more at the start than ever young Chei could have taught us.

And perhaps Chei would be alive, himself, and Gault would be Gault, and their ally.

"Tell her," Chei hissed at him.

"She has always understood," he said to Chei and his murderer, "better than I. Better than any of us. She gave you the chance to turn back. It is not too late to take it."

The gate before them was open. He was not in the least surprised at that. And this one let into the building itself, into a shadowed hall which might hold more than ghosts—but he began to doubt that there need be guards or soldiery, nor any hand but Skarrin's own, which held the gate-force. He kept beside Morgaine as far as that doorway, and suddenly sent Arrhan through ahead ofthem, expecting no harm.

The arrhendur mare came to none, only stopped, confused, her feet striking echoes from polished pavement, in a hall supported by columns much lest vast than those of Neisyrrn Neith, but vast for all that, shaped of green stone and black.

A table was set there, set with pitchers and platters bearing fruit and bread and what else his eye did not trouble to see.

Skarrin's ghost hung before them, welcomed them, smiled at them with all beneficence and no little amusement.

"My guests," he said; then, and with less mockery: "My lady Morgaine Anjhuran, my youngest cousin—sit, take your ease. You can trust my table. Surely you know that. And you might indeed leave the horses outside my hall."

"My lord Skarrin," Morgaine said, "forgive me. I have known so many and so bizarre things in my travels—I have found folk do things for remarkable reasons, some only because they can, some only for sport—I do not know you, my lord. So I keep my horse and my arms—and my servants. My father's friends may, for all I know, be no less mad than some others I have met on the way."

The drifting image laughed, a soft sound, like the hissing of wind in grass. "And thus you decline my hospitality?"

"I do not sit at table with shadows, my lord. Our mistrust is mutual—else you would not hesitate to come and meet me face to face—if you can."

"My lady of outlaws and rebels—should I trust myself to your companions, when they think so ill of me?"

Morgaine laughed, let fall Siptah's reins, and walked over to the table, to pull out a chair and sit down. She picked up a pitcher and poured a cup of red wine.

Vanye let Arrhan stand alone too, and went and stood at the side of her chair as she lifted it and sipped it in courtesy to their shadowy host.

Whereupon Skarrin laughed softly, and drifted amid their table, severed at the waist. "You are trusting."

"No, my lord of Mante. Only interested. I knew when I heard your name from young Chei—who is host to my lord of Morund—what you might be. I took your gate-wardens' behavior for yours—to our mutual discomfiture. No one saw fit to apprise me of the truth—in which I do fault you, my lord of Mante. So much could have been saved, of affairs in the south, if I had known. Now I leave you a humankind in war and disorder—an inconvenience, at the least, for which I do apologize."

"There are other lands. The world is wide. I weary of Mante."

"I took this for the greatest of your cities. Are there others? Truly, this one is a wonder to see."

"Ah, there are hundreds. Everywhere—there are cities, as unvarying as the worlds. Everywhere is boredom, my lady of light, until you came—traveling, as you say. With a human servant, no less—what is his name?"

"Nhi Vanye i Chya. Nhi Vanye, if you please."

"My lord," Vanye said. To say something seemed incumbent on him, when the image turned its cold eyes in his direction and the face seemed to gaze straight at him. He was in danger. He knew beyond a doubt that he was in peril of his life, only for being human, and for standing where he stood, and for more than that: it was the look a man gave a man where a woman was in question—and blood was.

The glass-gray stare passed from him and turned slowly to the others, and back again to Morgaine.

"Why have you come?"

"Why should I not?" Morgaine said. "I take my father's lesson, who found one world and a succession of worlds—far too small for him. That was Anjhurin." She leaned back, posing the chair on its rearmost legs, and stared up at the image. "From all you say, you have arrived at the same place as he—you have wielded power over world and world and world—am I right? And you have found this world much the same as the last."

"And the one before," Skarrin said. "And before that. You are young."

"As you see me."

"Very young," Skarrin said softly, this young man with gray, gentle eyes.

"You knew Anjhurin," Morgaine said.

"A very, very long time ago." The image became merely a face, drifting in the shadow, a handsome face, with Morgaine's own look, so like her among qhal it might have been a brother. "Anjhurin dead! Worlds should shake."

"They have," Morgaine said softly. "And things change, my lord of dust and stability. You do not love your life. Come risk it with me. Come join me."

"To what purpose?"

"The changing of worlds, my lord, change that sweeps through space and time."

"Even this, I have seen. I have ties in many ages, many worlds. I will survive even the next calamity. What new can you offer me?"

"Have you risked that hope, elder cousin? It is risk makes immortality bearable—to know that personal calamity is possible, oh, very possible, and tranquility, what time it exists, is precious. Anjhurin is dead. Does that not tell you that fatality is possible? Come with me. There are worlds full of chances."

"Full of cattle. Full of same choices and same tragedies and same small hearts and smaller minds which lead to them. Full of stale poets who think their ideas are a towering novelty in the cosmos. Full of rebels who think they can change worlds for the better and murderers who see no further than the selfish moment. Mostly, full of cattle, content with their mouthful of grass and their little herd and endless procreation of other cattle. And we are finite, calamity endlessly regenerate, disaster in a bubble. One day it will burst of sheer tedium. And the universe will never notice."

"No," Morgaine said, and reached and took Vanye by the arm, drawing him to the table edge. "I have news to give you, my lord. Qhal reached outside. They stole his ancestors in real-space, and his cousins voyage there, not with the gates, not within them so far as they know—"

"It will not save them."

"No. But they are widening the bubble, my lord who sees no change. They are involving all who meet them—and all who meet their allies. Do you see, my lord of shadows? There is chance and change. His kind—humankind—have realized the trap. They have refused it. More, they have set out to prick the bubble themselves."

There was long silence.

"It would doom them," Skarrin said.

"Perhaps. Their threads reach far beyond their own world, but they were not that deeply entangled."

"If they have taken it on themselves to do this, by that very act they are entangled."

"And they know other races who know others still."

Vanye listened through that silence, his heart beating harder and harder. Morgaine's light hand upon his elbow held him fast, by oath and by the surety that somewhere in this exchange he had become all humanity, and that existence was the prize of this struggle—What must I do, what must I say, what is she telling him —of threads and bubbles?

This man can kill us all. He has stripped this house of its servants, its goods, its cattle. He has destroyed them or he has sent them through the gate before him —and means to follow.

—Humankind —has refused the trap.

What is she telling him?

"Change," Morgaine said, "is very possible. That is the work I do."

"Andthis —for heir," Skarrin said. "This for companion. His get—for inheritors."

"Come with me," Morgaine said, "down the thread that leads to infinity. Or bind yourself more and more irrevocably to the one you have followed thus far. Eventually change may become impossible. But you will not find it inside the patterns; you find it linked to these—to qhal, and to humankind. And to me, lord Skarrin, and to those with me."

"So I should serve your purposes."

"Follow your own. Did I ever say I wished to share more than a road and the pleasure of your company? We will bid one another farewell—in time, in time I cannot predict, mylord skarrin, nor can you. thatis chance, my lord Skarrin. Have you grown too attached to this age and to what is? Have you found your own end of time, and are you content with solitude among your subjects—or do I tempt you?"

"You tempt me."

"We have a horse to spare." She held Vanye's arm the tighter, and laughed softly. "What want you, an entourage, a clutter of servants, lord Skarrin? I have my few, who will serve you the same asme. a horse, a bedroll, and the sky overhead—your bones are still young, and your heart is not that cold. come and learn what a younger generation has learned."

The image smiled, slowly and fondly. "Was Anjhurin—fate's way of creating you—who see no wider than that?"

"Perhaps that is all there is worthwhile, my lord kinsman. Freedom."

"Freedom! Oh, young cousin, lady, you mistake the roof for the sky. We are prisoners, all. Inside the bubble we work what we will and we shift and change. The gates end and the gates begin. And all the hope you bring me is that the contagion is spreading and the bubble widens. Is that cause to hope? I think not. In the wide universe we are still without significance."

"You are melancholy, my lord of shadows."

"I am a god. The cattle have made me so." There came laughter, soft and terrible. "Tell me, is that not cause for melancholy?"

"They name me Death. Is it not reasonable that I am the youngest of us, and the most cheerful?" Again she laughed, and stood and leaned against Vanye's shoulder, clasping his arm. "Few of humankind love me. But, lord of shadows, I shall live longest, and so will those who ride with me. It is helpers I seek. Come ride the wave with me, down to the last shore. Or do you want eternity in Mante, with shapes of your own devising, in a world of your own making? Another stone palace and more worshippers? Come, let us see if we can shake the worlds."

The image faded abruptly to dark. The hall was very still, except the random shift of a horse's foot, which rang like doom on the pavings.

"What are you saying?" Chei asked, suddenly breaking that peace. "What are you, what are you talking about—waves and shores? Who are you?"

"I have said," Morgaine said quietly, and her hand never left Vanye's shoulder, a calming touch. If it had not been there he would have reached for a weapon for comfort. It was; and he felt himself numb like a bird in the eye of the serpent—not afraid, not capable, he thought, of fear at all any longer. He knew her lies, even when they were told with the truth. Even when they were entirely the truth. He trusted. That was all there was left to do.

"Perhaps you can flee," Morgaine said to the others. "It seems likely. I do not think he will trouble himself with you."

Rhanin edged away. And stopped, as if he did not know what to do, or as if he had expected the others would, or as if he had had second thoughts. He only stood there.

Then distantly, softly echoing, came footsteps in the corridors.

This time, Vanye thought, it was substance which came to them; it was substance which appeared in the shadows of the corridor which let into this hall.

It was Skarrin himself who walked out into the light which was always available in such places, that power drawn of gate-force, come full in the room.

"My lady of mysteries," Skarrin said, halted there in that entry. "Am I in truth welcome?"

"Oh, indeed," Morgaine said in a still, hushed voice. "Good day to you, shadow-lord." She walked a few paces closer, and stopped, and Vanye stood with a shiver running through his limbs, a twitch that was the impulse to follow her, stay with her instantly; but that was a fool's move, to show hostility to this lord, and useless. He watched Morgaine stop and stand, hands on hips, head tilted cheerfully. "You are smaller than I thought."

For the least instant he frowned, then laughed in offended surprise. "We are well-matched." His gaze swept the room. "And this, the company you ask me to keep. You—Man. Come here."

Vanye's heart turned over. He measured the separation between him and Morgaine and between him and Skarrin with a nervous sweep of his eye, and used that small chance to bring himself even with Morgaine.

"I take my lady's orders," he said as mildly as he could, while his heart beat in panic.

"Defiance from a human?"

"From me," Morgaine said, and walked a little forward, to stop again with hand on hip. "Not that I am discourteous, my lord, but I do not lend my servants; I will reckon you have your own, and I will trust there are loyal folk among them. Or has this kingship of yours gotten too old and the intrigues too many? Or have you ceased to care? My folk will serve you. Bring your own servants—I care not, only so they are strong enough to last the course and honest enough to guard our backs. Let us set the gate and quit this tedious place. Keep to my path a while. I shall at very least value your company—and your advice. I am, after all, youngest. You can teach me—very much. And I can teach you, lord of dusty Mante—that there are new things under new suns, I am sufficient guarantee of that."

"You are arrogant."

"So I am told." She walked two paces forward and stood wide-legged. "I am terminus. And perhaps I am inception. Time will prove that. My origin is very recent as you measure time. I have never existed until now."

"As you dream—you have not existed."

"I am Anjhurin s daughter, Anjhurin who claimed to have seen the calamity. Think of that, my lord. And my mother came down a thread he had never known, that one which leads to stars outside, my lord. By seizing that he hoped to widen his power. But causality doomed him. He used force. She despised him. So, my lord, did I. And I destroyed him."

"You."

"With a will, my lord. All of Anjhurin's causality rests in me. That is my weight in the web of time—the youngest and the oldest of us, in one, and I reach outside. In me, every causality meets."

Skarrin backed a pace.

She lifted her hand so naturally and so quickly the red fire had touched the lord before Vanye could both realize the weapon was in her hand and draw in his breath.

"I cannot die —/" Skarrin cried; as a second time the red light touched him, from Morgaine's hand, amid the forehead: he fell with a horrified expression.

Die . . . die . . . die . . . the walls and the vaulted ceiling gave back. They echoed the heavy fall of Skarrin's body, and the nervous shifting of the horses.

Vanye caught his breath, shaken in every bone, not believing it had been so sudden or so without warning.

And knowing then by the dread in Morgaine's face as she turned that it was not over. It was far from over. It was wizardry they fought, whatever Morgaine named it; wizardry that could knit bone and heal flesh and put blood back in veins—and his liege's face was pale and desperate. "Follow me!" she cried, and ran toward the dark of the corridor.