Exiles Gate

Chapter Three

It was fish, the next supper they shared. There was not a rabbit to be had—the wolves, Vanye reckoned, who sang to them nightly, had seen to what hunting there was about the gate; although why the wolves themselves stayed in such an unwholesome place, he wondered.

It was the mountains to the south, Chei said; and humans; humans to the west and north; qhal to the north and east; and in all, Vanye reckoned, the wolves were as shy of habitations as they were in other worlds.

Excepting only, Chei said, the half-wolves. Gault's pets.

Or once, when war had made chaos of the middle lands—then Chei remembered the wild wolves coming down to human camps and villages to take the sheep. He remembered his folk moving a great deal—where, he did not know, except it had been in the hills.

"Then," Chei said, looking mostly at the fire, as if his thoughts ranged distant, "then we settled in Perot's freehold, in Aglund. We felt safe there. But that only lasted—at most, a year. Then Gault was fighting along with the other lords. I was a boy then. I remember—I remember wars, I remember having to move and move again. I remember the winters, with the snow chest-deep on the horses—and people died, many died. We came to Gault's freehold, in Morund. We were borderers, for him. Those were the good years. I rode with Ichandren. My brother, my father and I. They are dead. All."

He was silent for a time, then.

"Mother?" Morgaine asked.

Chei did not look at her. His throat worked. But the eyes never shifted from their wide gaze on the fire. "I do not know. I saw her last—" A lift of one shoulder. "I was thirteen winters. That was before Morund fell and Gault went north. He came back . . . Changed. After that—after that, he and the qhal from the north killed most of the human men at Morund-keep. Killed most everyone, and brought in men from the east. They would fight for Gault. Some of those from Morund might have wanted to, but if they took them at all, they marched them west, to serve the other qhal-lords. Gault would never trust men who had served him before he was qhal. Aye, nor women either. They put them all on wagons. We lost—twenty men trying to take the women from the guards. My father died then. There were just too many."

There was more of silence. The fire snapped and spat.

"But I doubt very much my mother was alive," Chei said. "Even then. My father believed it. But no one else did. She was not a strong woman. And it was a bad year."

Twenty men lost, Vanye thought, amid a man's grief, and thought by the way he had said it that twenty had been a devastating loss. There were just too many. . . .

He met Morgaine's eyes across the fire and knew that she had added that as quickly and set things somewhat in proportions—she, who had taught a young outlaw something beyond woodcraft and ambush; his lady-liege, who had ridden to war and sat in the affairs of kings a hundred years before he was born.

But she had led him into both war and kings' councils since then.

He rested his arms on his knees and probed the coals with a stick, watching it take fire.

"The trees," Morgaine said. "Do you mark them, Chei, how they twist here? Yet there is no present feeling of unease in this woods. Birds come here. They tolerate the gate-force very little. Why do you suppose this is?"

"I do not know," Chei said faintly.

Morgaine did not answer.

"Why would it be?" Chei asked her then.

Morgaine shifted the dragon sword to her lap, tucking one knee up, and hugged that knee against her. "If I cast leaves in the fire, it would flare. Would it not?"

"Yes, lady."

"And you would move back. Would you not?"

"Yes," Chei said, more faintly still, as if he regretted ever askinginto qhalish lore.

"Quickly?"

"Yes, lady."

"So the birds would fly for their comfort if that gate yonderopened this moment. and you would feel it in your bones."

Chei flinched, visibly.

"So this is a very good place for a camp," Morgaine said, "for us who have no desire for unannounced visitors. How frequently do you suppose this gate is used?"

"I would not know."

"Perhaps not. So of that use we would have warning. If we ride from here we have Gault to concern us. How long—might we ride, slowly, on the road itself, before we came to his notice?"

"If we left after sundown—" Chei's breath came rapidly. "We could make the western road and be deep in the woods before daybreak. Lady, I do not know where his riders may be, no one could say that, but I know where they are likeliest not. We could make a safe camp in that woods near his lands, stay there the day, and pick up the west road. No one would be traveling that at night; and by one more morning we can reach the hills. We rest during the day, we travel at night. That is the best thing to do."

"So," Morgaine said, and glanced Vanye's way, a quick shift of her eyes. "We can reach the woods before the dawn," she said, looking back at Chei. "You are sure of that."

"A-horse, I know that we could."

"Then we will go," she said quietly. "If our guest swears he can bear the saddle, we had best leave this place. We do not know how long our welcome will last."

Vanye nodded, agreeing, with misgivings he knew she shared, and with a quiet as carefully maintained.

The place, true, had a ward as great as any fabled witchery could provide—that they would feel any disturbance in the gate.

But it held danger too: it was remotely possible—that that flaring of power could simply take them, at this range, if there were some unshielded gate-stone to which the force might reach—and if their enemies had found them.

Vanye had one change of clothes, cloth breeches and a fine shirt—the one for those times they could lay aside the armor, which did not look likely here: light and fine, delicately sewn—a waste to wear such a gift on the trail; but the giver had insisted.

Now he laid all this at Chei's side, along with the mended boots, as Morgaine was meticulously packing and weight-measuring with their bags.

"You could not bear the armor on your shoulders," Vanye said. "My liege will carry it; I will carry you on my horse. We are taking your word we can make cover before sunrise."

Chei took up the fine cloth and frowned in surprise. Well he might, Vanye thought; and went to prepare his own gear, and to saddle the horses in the dark. They knew that there was a journey to come, and stamped and shifted in impatience at this meddling about.

He saddled them both, and hung his sword at Arrhan's right side, where he would not carry it on a ride like this, except he had Chei at his back. He tied a folded blanket flat under thongs bound to the rings that ordinarily held it rolled, scratched Arrhan in the soft underside of her throat, and Siptah under his chin, snatching his fingers from the stud's half-hearted nip—trouble, he thought. Siptah had been trouble of one kind before, well-trained as he was; now that he had acquired the mare, Siptah had other thoughts in his head, and Arrhan had like ones.

"Fool," he muttered to himself, that ever he had taken her, that ever he had brought her to a land like this. He was Kurshin, was a horseman from his birth. And he had been, a handful of days ago, under a fair sun, too willing to hope—Heaven save them—for something other than this.

Fool, he thought again. For disaster went about the gates. Where power was, there the worst men gathered—too rarely, the best. He had ridden out among the twisted trees, among ruins, into murder and wars—

And all his subtle plans—for Morgaine was mad, at times, and drove them too hard and wore herself to bone and will—all his plans, ill-thought that they were, involved a means to travel at a saner pace. For that, he had accepted the mare, knowing there was a risk—but hoping for a more peaceful passage, for leisure and time, even to drop a foal of the Baien stud: such thoughts thearrhend had made reasonable, and now they seemed mad.

Now it was his own instincts urged they run.

He hugged the mare about the neck, pressed his head against her cheek, patted her hard, all with a pang of bitter guilt. "So we go," he whispered to her. She ducked her head free and nosed him in the side with a horse's thoughtless strength.

No stopping the stallion or the mare. No stopping any horse from what it truly willed to do, even if it was a fatal thing. It was always their own vitality that killed them, a horseman knew that.

He heard a step behind him, and turned his head. It was Morgaine, bringing the saddlebags. She let them down at his feet, then, standing close, rested her hand on his shoulder, and walked away, so startling him by that gesture he simply stood and stared at her retreating back.

What was that? he wondered.

Apology, of a kind? Sympathy?

She did these things to him, and walked away in her silences, and left him to saddle the horses and wonder, in a kind of biding panic, what had moved her to that.

He did not even know, Heaven witness, why he should be disturbed, or why his heart was beating in panic, except it was the old familiar business of snatched sleep and arming by dark and riding through hostile lands, sleeping by turns in the daylight, tucked close in some concealment.

Except it was Morgaine who, like Heaven, decided where they should go and when; and there had been all too much of comradely understanding in that small gesture—as if she had confessed that she was weary, too, and there were no miracles.

From his liege, he did not want such admissions.

He finished his work. He overtook her at the buried fire, leading the horses; and having the horses between him and Chei, he took his Honor-blade sheathed from his belt and gave it to her without a word—for safety's sake. She knew. She slipped it into her belt next her own ivory-hilted Korish blade, and pulled and hooked the belt ring which slid the dragon sword up to ride between her shoulders, before she took Siptah's reins from his hand and climbed into the saddle. The gray stud snorted his impatience and worked at the bit.

Vanye set his foot in Arrhan's stirrup and settled himself in the saddle, reining her about, where Chei waited, dressed in his borrowed clothing and his own mended boots, and holding his sleeping blanket rolled in his arms.

"You will want that on the ride," Vanye said, taking the blanket roll into his lap, and cleared his left stirrup for the man. Chei set his foot, took his offered hand as Arrhan shifted weight, and came astride and well-balanced so quickly that Vanye gave the mare the loose rein she expected. It made the mare happier about the double load; she pricked her ears up and switched her tail and took a brisk stride behind Siptah.

Through the trees and down along the river which had guided them—by the light of an incredible starry heaven and a slivered moon, so brilliant a night as the sunlight left the sky utterly, that the pale grass shone and the water had sheen on its darkness.

Behind him, Chei wrapped the blanket about himself, for the breeze was chill here in the open; and Vanye drew an easier breath, bringing Arrhan up on Siptah's left—the left, with Morgaine, shield-side and never the perilous right. She had her hair braided for this ride: not the clan-lord's knot to which she was entitled, but the simple warrior's knot of clan Chya of Koris, like his own. Changeling's hilt winked moonlit gold beside the silver of her braid; bright silver sparked and flashed along the edge of her sleeves, where mail-work shone the like of which later ages had forgotten. Moonlight touched Siptah's illusory dapples, the pale ends of his mane and tail.

They were enspelled—not with magics, but with the sense of change, of passage, the night sky's softening influence that made them part of a land to which they did not belong.

And Chei had sworn, on his life, that they might expect peace for a time on this ride.

They took the same slow pace when they had come to the Road, with its ancient stone bridge across the stream. Woods gave way briefly to meadow and to woods again, a tangled, unkept forest. A nightbird called. There was the sound of their horses' hooves—on earth and occasionally on stone, and eventually on the stone and damp sand of a ford which crossed a stream, perhaps tributary to the river they had left.

"I do not know its name," Chei said when Vanye asked. "I do not know. I only know we crossed it."

They let the horses drink, and rode further, in wilderness cut well back from the road, but unthinned beyond that. No woodsmen, Vanye thought, no caretaker. It was still wild woods, overgrown and rank with vines and thorns. But the trees grew straight and clean. Gate-force did not reach to this place. They were beyond the region in which they would know if the gate were used; and they were beyond the region in which some weapon of that nature could reach to them.

He felt Chei lean against him, briefly, and recover himself; felt it again; and again the same recovery; a third time: "No matter," he said. "Rest," and: "No," Chei murmured.

But in time Chei slumped a while against him, till they faced a stream-cut to go down and up again. "Chei," Vanye said, slapping him on the knee.

Chei came awake with a start and took his balance. Arrhan took the descent and the climb with dispatch then, and quickened her pace till she had overtaken Siptah.

They were still on the Road. It began to stretch away across a vast plain, country open under fewer and fewer stars, exposed to view as far as the eye could see, and Morgaine drew rein, pointing to the red seam along the horizon.

"Chei. That is the sun over there."

Chei said nothing.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"It is still the Road," Chei protested; and: "Lady, this is notthe land i know. northward—yes. but here—i have never been but the once. we are still on the road—we will make it—"

"How far does this go?" Her voice had an edge to it, a dangerous one. "Wake up, man. You know what I would know. You swore that you did. Do you want your enemies' attention? Or do you tell me full and free that you do not know where you are?"

"I know where I am! There is a kind of ruin, I do not know how far—I swear to you, we will reach it by morning." Chei's teeth chattered, and his breath hissed, not altogether, Vanye thought, of exhaustion and the night chill. "It was our starting-place misled me. The river must have bent. I know it is there. I swear it is. We can still come to it. But we can go wide, now." He pointed over westward, where the plain rolled away to the horizon. "We can pick up the trail yonder in the hills. Off Gault's lands."

"But equally off our way," Morgaine said, and held Siptah back, the dapple gray backing and circling. "How is Arrhan faring?"

"She will manage," Vanye said, and looked uneasily toward the lightening of the sky in the east, over low and rolling hills. "Liyo, I do not say yea or nay, but I had as lief be off this road. West is likely the best advice at this point."

"North," she said, and held Siptah still a moment, when he would have moved. "By morning, he swears. It is very little time."

She swung about and went on, not quickly, saving the horses.

"Are you mistaken?" Vanye asked of Chei.

"No," Chei said; and shivered, whether with cold he could not tell.

Morgaine had said it; there was only one way, ultimately, that they could go; and less and less he liked delay along this road, less and less he liked the prospect of a long journey aside, and more and more he disliked their situation.

"Best you be right, man."

Morgaine dropped back to ride beside. They went perforce at Arrhan's double-burdened pace, under an open sky and fading stars.

Chei hugged his blanket about him. It was terror kept him awake now. It was nightmare as dread as the wolves, this slow riding, this pain of half-healed sores and the slow, steady rhythm of horses which could go no faster, not though Gault and all his minions come riding off the horizon.

The sky brightened, the few wispy clouds in the east took faint and then pinker color, until at last all the world seemed one naked bowl of grass and one road going through it, unnaturally straight track through a land all dew-grayed green. At times Vanye and the lady spoke in a language he did not understand, a harsh speech which fell on the ear with strange rhythms, but softly spoken, little exchanges of a word and a few words. There was a grim tone to it. There was discontent. He imagined it involved him, though he dared not ask.

"Where are these ruins of yours?" Vanye asked then, and slapped him on the knee when he failed to realize that it was to him he had spoken.

"I know that they are there," he said, "I swear to you."

"Neither does the sun lie," Vanye said.

There was the beginning of daylight. There was the hint of color in things. And the white mare was weary now. Did their enemies find them, Chei thought, there was no way that the mare might run.

Did their enemies find them. . . .

But on that terrible hilltop, like a dream, he recalled light coming from Morgaine's fingers, and recalled chain melting and bending, and how Vanye had shielded him from that sight.

Weapons you may not like to see, Vanye had warned him.

He looked at the open land around him, and the treacherous roll of hills which might mask an army.

They would kill him first, he thought, if they suspected ambush. There was no doubt but what they would; he had failed them. They had cause to be angry.

The sun came up full. The land went gold and green.

And as they crested a rise of the plain and looked on a darkness that topped the rise ahead he felt a moment's dread that it was some band of riders—till his eye adjusted for the scope of the land and he knew it was woods that he saw.

They camped among ancient stones, beside a stream which crossed the low point among them, under the branches of trees which arched over and trailed their branches waterward. Among the ruins, a sparse and stubborn grass grew, on a ridge well-shielded by the trees; and there the horses grazed.

They ventured a fire only large enough to heat a little water, and ate bread Morgaine had made at the last camp, and fish they had smoked; and drank tea—Chei's prepared with herbs against the fever.

Chei had borne the ride, Vanye reckoned, very well—was weary, and only too glad to lie down to sleep, there in the sun-warmth, on the leafy bank. So, then, was he, leaving the watch to Morgaine, and listening to the water and the wind and the horses.

"It has been quiet," she whispered when she waked him, while Chei still slept. "Nothing has stirred. A bird or two. A creature I do not know came down to drink: it looked like a mink with a banded tail. There is a black snake sunning himself down on that log."

These were good signs, of a healthier vicinity. He drew a deep breath and yielded her up the blankets, and tucked himself down again in a nook out of the wind. He had a bite to eat, a quarter of the bread he had saved back from their breakfast; and a drink of clear water from the stream which ran here, more wholesome than the river had been.

And when toward dusk, Chei stirred from his sleep, he rose and stretched himself, and put together the makings of a little fire—again, hardly enough to warm water, quick to light and quick to bury, and a risk even as it was.

Morgaine roused them for tea and day-old cakes and smoked fish, and sat against the rock, sipping her portion of the tea and letting her eyes shut from time to time. Then her eyes opened with nothing of somnolence about them at all. "We might stay here a day," she said. "We have put distance between ourselves and the gate—which is very well. But this is the last place we may have leisure. Another night's riding—and we will be beyond Gault's holdings. Is that not the case?"

"That is the case," Chei said. "I swear to you."

"Bearing in mind that hereafter I will not permit Vanye's horse to carry double, and tire itself."

"I will walk. I can fend for myself, lady."

"Are you fit to walk? I tell you the truth: if you are not fit—we will give you that day's grace. But there may be other answers. Perhaps you know something of Morund's inner defenses."

Chei's eyes widened in dread. "Guarded," he said. "Well guarded."

"I," Vanye said, and rested his chin on his forearm, his knee tucked beneath his elbow. "I have stolen a horse or two in my life. I suppose Morund has pastures hereabouts. And for that matter, liyo, I can quite well walk."

Morgaine glanced his way. So he knew that he had guessed her intention all along, by that calm exchange. And he had had a queasy feeling in all this ride, good as the reasons were for quitting the last camp: Arrhan might carry double at a very slow pace, but not in haste—his liege not being a fool, to press one of their horses to the limit.

But that she risked them this far on this man's word had bewildered him, all the same—until she asked of Morund.

"Or," he said in the Kurshin tongue, "we might let our guide walk these trails he claims to know—alone. And we go the quicker way, the two of us, by night and by stealth, liyo, and get clear of this place. That is my opinion in the matter."

She gave him a sudden sidelong glance.

He gave a little lift of his shoulder. No frown was on her face, but that, he thought, was because there was a witness.

"I will have a word with thee," she said, and motioned off toward the streamside.

But: "I do not think there is overmuch to say," he said, and did not rise. "I am ilin. Ask. I will do it. Steal a horse? That is nothing. Perhaps I should take Morund. You hardly need trouble yourself."

"Thee is unreasonable!"

"I do not think I am unreasonable. Everything you wish, I will do. Can a man be more reasonable? Take Morund. Better that than walk in there. Far better than drag this poor man in there, since you are set on stirring up a trouble we could ride around. We have come this far on this man's advice. Take the rest of it, I say, and go where he bids us go, and let us go around this place."

For a moment she did not speak. There was sullen anger in the look she gave him. Then: "Oh, aye, and trust to luck and half a score human bands, shall we?"

"Better luck than this Gault, liyo. And what will we, do general murder? Is that what you want? It is what you lead us to. Someone will die, likest myself, since I have to shield you. I have a bruise the size of my fist on my right shoulder—"

"Whose fault, that?"

"—and a man by me I do not trust; or we do trust him, enough to let him free where he could cry alarm; or we do murder outright on this man—Which is it, do we kill him, do we tie him to a tree for the wolves and his enemies to find, or do we trust him to go free? Or if we trust him for that, why in Heaven's sweet reason do we not trust him down the back trail ourselves, and take ourselves clear of this damnable place before we raise hue and cry from here to the north?"

She rose abruptly to her feet and walked off. It left him Chei's frightened stare.

"We are having a dispute," Vanye said, "regarding the ease of finding horses."

Chei said nothing at all. He looked from one to the other of them, and for a long while Morgaine stood by the streamside, arms folded, staring off into the gathering dark.

Vanye buried their fire, and went down to wash the single pan they had used.

"Thee confuses me," Morgaine said, standing behind him as he rinsed the pan. "Thee considerably confuses me."

It was not, precisely, what he had expected her to say.

"Then," he said, "we confuse each other."

"What will you?"

That was not the question he was prepared for either—or it was the earnestness of it which confounded him.

"What will you?" He turned from the stream, for he sensed her precisely where she was, her back turned to their prisoner and the horses; and all manner of mischief possible. "I have no idea—"

"Thee does not kneel."

"I am washing the cursed dish," he retorted, "and you have your back to the man. Do you trust him that much?"

"Now thee is watching. I trust that thee is watching. What will thee? To let him free? Ride in among his folk, on his guidance? Or do we kill him or leave him for the wolves?"

"Ah. I thought it was his oath we trusted."

She drew in a sharp breath, and said nothing at all as he got to his feet. They were of a height. He stood lower on the bank. And for a long moment he did not move.

"Or," he said, "do you think we should not trust his guidance? Lord in Heaven, you took his oath. Did you count me so lightly? I do not recall my pledge was much different."

"Thee is Kurshin," she said, and recalled to him what he had forgotten: that it was more than the language she spoke, that she was, perhaps to a greater extent than he had thought—Andurin, out of the woodland cantons of his own land.

"You will not let me remember it," he said, and jutted a clenched jaw toward the man who waited by the dead fire. "He is human. But it is not considering my scruples you took his oath. You deceived him and you refused to confide in me. Why?"

"I do not deceive you."

"You do not tell the truth."

"Thee pleaded for his life."

"I had as soon have left him at the last camp, where he had some choice where to go. I had as soon gone further west from the beginning and come up through the hills."

She pressed her lips together in that way she had when she had said all she would. So their arguments tended to end—himself with the last word, and Morgaine lapsed into one of her silences that could last for hours and evaporate at the last as if there had never been a word of anger.

But always Morgaine did as she would—would simply ride her own way, if he would not go with her; there was no reasoning with her.

"I will get your cursed horse," he said.

She drew a sharp breath. "We will go his way, by the trails."

He felt his face go hot. "So we walk turn and turn."

"I did not ask that."

"That is a wounded man. How much do you think he can do?"

"I am willing to wait here. Did I not say as much?"

"Wait here! With the enemy over the next hill!"

"What would you?"

Now it was he who found no words. He only stood there a moment, half-choked with anger; then bowed his head and walked on past her, back to put the pan with their gear.

Chei looked at him with the same bewilderment, his eyes jerking from one to the other—lastly toward Morgaine, who came and sat down on her heels beside them.

Vanye sat as he was a moment, jabbing at the ground with a stick between his knees. "I reckon," he said mildly, "that we could make the back trails. If Chei and I rode and walked by turns."

Morgaine rested her arms on her knees, her brow on the heels of her hands. Then she dropped her arms and sat down cross-legged. "Myself," she said, "I am not of a mind to be inconvenienced by this Gault of Morund."

A touch of renewed panic hit him. "Liyo —"

"On the other hand," she said, "your suggestion is reasonable. Unless our guide knows where we might find horses, otherwise."

"Not except we raise the countryside," Chei said in a faint voice.

"How far a journey—clear of his lands?"

"By morning we are clear."

Vanye rested the stick in both his hands, "In the name of Heaven," he said in the Kurshin tongue, "he will tell you whatever he thinks will save his life: he was wrong this morning, and we rode under sun and in the open."

"Trusting him is thy advice, and first it is aye and then nay—which do I believe?"

"I am a Man. I can trust him without believing him. Or trust him in some things and not in others. He is desperate, do you understand. Wait here. I will go and steal you a horse."

"Enough on the horse!"

"I swear to you—"

"Vanye—"

"Or lord Gault's own cursed horse, if you like! But I should not like to leave you with this man. That would be my worry, liyo. Leaving you here, I would tie him to a tree, and I would not take his word how far it is across this cursed lord's land. I will tell you what I had rather do: I had rather do without the horse, strike out due west, far from here, and come north well within the hills."

"Except it needs much too long."

"Too long, too long—God in Heaven, liyo, it needs nothing but that we ride quietly, carefully, that we arrive in our own good time and disturb no one. I thought we had agreed."

"He named a name," Morgaine said.

"What, he? Chei? What name?"

"Skarrin, in Mante. This lord in the north."

His heart clenched up. "Someone you know?"

"Only an old name. We may be in great danger, Vanye. We may be in very great danger."

For a moment there was only the sound of the wind in the leaves.

"Of what sort?" he asked. "Who?"

"In the north," she said. "I am not certain, mind. It is only a very old name—and this north-lord may be an old man, very old, does thee mark me. And once he knows his danger, there are measures he might take which could trap us here. Does thee understand me?"

"Who is he?"

" I do not know who he is. I know what he is. Or I guess. And if I bind this man by oaths and any promise I can take from him—I do not loose him near that gate behind us, does thee understand? From Morund I might gain something. From Morund I might draw this north-lord south, out of reach of his own gate. But thee may be right—there is the chance too that this Gault is mad, and that there is no dealing with him."

"With a man who feeds his enemies to wolves?"

"With a devil, there is dealing—sometimes far easier than with an honest man. And by everything Chei has told us, there are Men enough among the qhal and not the other way about, so we need not worry for thy sake. But thee says trust this Man, and trust ourselves to his folk—"

"I did not say that!"

"What does thee say? Leave him? Kill him? Is that what thee is asking? Or ride on with him? We are too far into this to camp, and if this lord Gault finds us skulking about without his leave, that brings us to a fight or to Morund-gate, under worse terms."

Vanye raked his hair out of his eyes, where it fell forward of the braid, and raked it back again, resting his elbows on his knees.

In Andur-Kursh, Men would shoot a qhal on sight.

"Has Chei ever heard my other name? Did you by any chance tell it to him?"

"I do not know," he said, dismayed. "The one the Shiua used?" And when she nodded: "I do not know. I think not. I am not sure. I did not know—"

"Do not speak it. Ever. And do not ask me now."

He glanced at Chei, who stared at him and at her as his only hope of safety—his life, Chei surely sensed hung in the balance in this dispute he could not follow. It was a sensible man, Vanye thought, whose eyes followed all their moves, but who had the sense to hold his peace. "He is surely wondering what we say—Heaven knows what he understands of us—but in God's good mercy, liyo —"

She rose and walked back to Chei; and he rose and followed.

"Can you walk?" Morgaine asked in the qhalur tongue, looking to Chei. "Do you think you can walk through the night?"

"Yes," Chei said.

"He is telling you anything he thinks he must," Vanye said in the other. "He fears you. He fears to refuse any qhal, that is the trouble with him. Let him ride and I will walk, and let us go the trails he says he knows, quietly as we may. That is my advice. That is all the advice I have. Quickly and quietly, and without bruising a leaf. It is Men here I had rather trust. And you know that it is not my human blood makes me say it: I had no such feeling in the arrhend, and you well know it."

"My conscience," she named him. "And has thee forgotten—it is a world's honest men who will always fight us. I dread them, Vanye, I do dread them, more than the Gaults and all the rest."

"Not here," he said with conviction. "Not here, liyo. Nor, let me remind you, in my land, where you found me."

"Ah, no. Thee saw only the end of it. In Andur-Kursh I did my very worst. And most I killed were my friends." It was rare she would speak of that. There was a sudden bleakness in her face, as if it were carved of bone, and as if there were only the qhal-blood in her and nothing else. "But thee says it: this is not Andur-Kursh. Thee trusts this man, and I had rather be where I know what a man stands to gain—have I not said I have no virtue? But so be it. I do not say I have always been right, either. We will go his way."

He was frightened then, with a fear not unlike the moments before battle.

The north, she had said—an old enemy. And he argued against her instincts which had saved them a hundred times over, however unlikely her choices.

Heaven save them, who in this land could know her name, when they had never passed this way in their lives, nor had aught to do with the people of it?

"We are going on," he said to Chei, who looked at them with bewilderment. "I will walk. You ride. My liege thinks it too much risk to venture Morund for a horse."

There was still the bewilderment in Chei's eyes. And gratitude. "She is right," he said, in innocence.

He did not want to take it for omen.

He went up to the ridge and fetched the horses down. He saddled them, and arranged their gear.

"Get up," he said then to Chei, who waited, no more enlightened than before. "I am leading the horse. From time to time we will trade places."

"And hereafter," Morgaine said, touching Chei on the shoulder before he could get to the saddle, "should we meet anyone, if you have heard any other name than Morgaine and Vanye—consider your own safety and forget that ever you heard it: there are those who would do worse to you than ever Gault did, to have their hands on anyone who knew different—and you could not tell them what they would want. Do not ask me questions. For your own sake."

"Lady," Chei said to her, half-whispering. He looked straight into her eyes close at hand, and his face was pale. "Aye, lady."

Vanye walked, the qhal-witch rode, when they had come down the streamside and found that trail Chei knew—that narrow track the fey-minded deer and determined borderers took which ended, often with like result, on Gault's land.

Chei watched them from his vantage—the qhalur witch, the man who deferred to her at most times and argued with her with a reckless violence that made his gut tighten instinctively; a man knew, a Man knew lifelong, that the qhal-lords were not patient of such familiarity—or Vanye himself had deceived him, and was not human. But he could not believe that when he looked in Vanye's brown and often-worried eyes, or when Vanye would do him some small and unnecessary kindness or take his side—he knew that Vanye had done that—in argument.

What these two were to each other he still could not decide. He had watched all their movements, the gestures, the little instants that an expression would soften, or she would touch his arm at times when she gave an order—but never did he touch her in that same way or truly bid her anything, for all he might raise his voice and dispute her.

They are lovers, he thought sometimes. Then he was equally sure that they were not—not, in the way the man deferred to her: my lady, Vanye would say; or my liege, or a third word he did not understand, but which likely signified the same.

Now they raged at each other, argued in voices half-whisper, half-shout, in which debate he—Vanye had said it—was undoubtedly the center of matters.

It was not the threat to his life that bewildered him. It was that there was argument possible at all. And between arguments he saw a thing he had never, in all his life, beheld. He watched them in a fascination which, increasing, absorbed his fear.

Unholy, he thought. But there seemed profound affection between them. There was more than that—but not in the way of any man and any woman he had known. It was that loyalty which bound the bands together.

It was that devotion for which men had followed Ichandren till he died.

It was that motion of the heart which he thought had died in him; and it ached of a sudden, it ached so that he rode along with the branches and the leaves raking him, and the tears running down his face—not fear such as he had felt in the night, but a quiet ache, for no reason at all that he could think of except he was alone.

He reckoned even that it was a spell the witch had cast over him, that from the time she surprised him with that look into his eyes, from that moment his soul had been snared. Now he found himself weeping again—for Falwyn and the rest, and for Bron and Ichandren his lord, and even for his father, which was foolish, because his father was many years dead.

He was weak, that was all. When the lady reined back and the man stopped the horse under them, saying they would rest, he was ashamed, and pretended exhaustion, keeping his face toward the horse as he climbed down.

So he sat with them, at the side of what had become a dirt track, and tucked his knees up and bowed his head against his arms so he should not have to show his eyes damp.

He should find some means to get a weapon and break from them—in this night, in this tangle he knew and they did not. The man he had once been would have done something to resist them, be it only slide off the horse and hope that he could put brush between them and him, and lie hidden.

But he let go his hopes in all other directions. He began truly to mean the oath that he had sworn. He wiped his face, disguising tears as sweat, despite the night air, and took the cup of water they passed him, and took their concern—for all that he had thought Vanye's earlier anger was half for him, Vanye's hand was gentle on his shoulder, his voice was gentle as he inquired was he faint.

"No," he said. "No. I will walk a while."

"Horses will fly," Vanye muttered to that. "We have half the night gone. What do we look to find ahead?"

"I will know the border," he said. "We have come halfway."

"As you knew the plains yonder?"

"This, I know," he insisted, anxious, and found the stirrup as the lady mounted up. He heaved himself into the saddle and took his seat as the horse started to move, Vanye walking ahead on the road, defined in a ray of moonlight and gone again, ghostly warrior in forest-color and mail and leather, the white scarf about his helm, the sheen of the sword hilt at his shoulders the most visible aspect of him. And the lady was no more than gray horse and shadow: she had put on her cloak and the dark hood made her part of the night.

Only he himself was visible, truly visible, to any ambush—helmless, in a pale linen shirt and astride the white mare that shone like a star in the dark. He thought of arrows, thought of the gates of Morund which lay beyond the woods, across the ancient Road.

He thought of Ichandren's skull bleaching there, and the bodies of the others cast on Morund's midden heap, and shivered in the wind, taking up his gray blanket again and wrapping it about himself partly for the cold and partly that he felt all too visible and vulnerable. He trembled; his teeth chattered if he did not clench them, and every measured tread of the horse beneath him, the whisper of the wind, the small sounds of the night—seemed all part of a terrible dream begun at Gyllin-brook.

He had ridden this way, part of Ichandren's band. In those days they had been Gault's allies; in those days they had won victories. For a few years there had seemed to be a turning in their fortunes against the northlord.

It was the same road. But the boy who had traveled it, keen on revenge for both mother and father, on winning a sure victory against the thing Gault had become . . . had become a thin and beaten man, much the wiser, in the company of strangers and on a journey which at one moment seemed swift and full of turns, and in this forever-lasting night—such a peak of terror that it could not last; as the things they did to his comrades could not last; as the nights atop the hill could not last: there was always a morning, and done was done, and a man survived somehow, that was all—but O God, the hours between, that a man had to live. . . .

They rested yet again. Quietly the woman spoke—some suggestion which Vanye refused: perhaps, Chei thought, it was to put him off the horse and make him walk a time. And Vanye would not, whatever it was, which imagined kindness reassured him and made him warmer in the long night.

But he was afraid with a growing fear—that he had not accurately reckoned their pace: the rides he recalled had been swift and none of them had been afoot. Once he had misjudged the plains: that was the mistake of a shock-dazed memory. But now he misjudged again—he knew that he had, and that safety was further than daylight at the pace they were setting; and more difficult than he had thought, for the shock was done and the mind began reckoning clearly again, that since Ichandren was lost—any situation might prevail and the borders might have moved as they did after battles: things might not be what they had been and it was not to a known land that he was returning.

Nor was it any longer a known land in which he was both guide and hostage.

And to confess to them the fact that he had twice mistaken the distance—or given them false assurance—

He moistened his lips. He shifted his weight in the saddle. "Man," he whispered. "Vanye."

Then something else came to his ears beyond wind and leaf-whisper and the sound of their own horses. Vanye stopped the horse. The lady reined back and circled back toward them, then stopped again in mid-turn.

The woods felt wrong. Hairs lifted at his nape, and he shivered again, looking about him as Vanye did, at thicket and nightbound silence. The mare stood steady, hard-muscled under Vanye's touch. The gray stud yonder had his ears up, and they angled back and twitched as he shifted round, restless and with nostrils flared.

Of a sudden, in that silence—was another definite sound, faint and far ahead.

"Get down," Vanye whispered faintly. "Get down, man. Take cover. Quietly."

Chei looked at him in panic. "Gault's men," he whispered, with one wild thought of driving in his heels and seizing control of the horse—weaponless as he was, with Gault's hunters abroad.

"My lady has a weapon aimed at you," Vanye said, "and you will get down."

Chei looked in startlement. He saw no weapon at all, only the cloaked form and the lady's face. And in that instant, quick as a snake striking, Vanye had one hand entangled in his breeches-leg, and the mare was shying the other direction—the night suddenly, irrevocably upended and his shoulders and the back of his head meeting the ground before his hips and his legs did.

Colors exploded in his skull. He was helpless for the instant, the breath driven out of him; he saw Vanye leap to the saddle, saw the white mare shy over in quiet, mincing paces and move back again as Vanye carefully, quietly, drew his sword and lifted the fallen blanket from the dust.

Vanye flung it at him off the sword-tip, and he caught it, dazed as he was; flung himself over and scrambled for the brush and safety, hugging the blanket to him as he sprawled belly down.

The white and the gray horse had moved too, like ghosts over amongst the trees, a wisp of illusion, a pallor which did not belong and which a searching eye must see.

Chei wrapped the blanket about his own white shirt and made himself part of the ground, next a deadfall, next the smell of decaying leaves and rotting wood and the pungent, herbal stink of centurel that he had bruised in lying there.

Such a small accident could kill a man. A waft of wind. A breeze. A silence when no silence should be—as there was now; or the smell of crushed leaves reaching an enemy. He held himself from shivering, pressed as tight to the cold earth as if he could by willing himself, sink into it.