Exile's Gate (48 page)

He took her hand, numb in shock. He pressed it. It was all he could think to do for answer.

"Rest,"
she said. And rose and walked away from him, stopping for a moment to
look at Chei and the rest—at Rhanin, who still had the bowl in his
hands, beside the others. "I will make my own breakfast," she said; but
to Chei she said nothing. She only looked at him, and then walked on.
Changeling
still in her left hand.

Vanye
sat numb and incapable, for the moment, of moving. He trembled, and did
not know whether it was outrage or grief, or why, except he had always
thought she would betray him in one way, and she had found one he had
never anticipated.

You might have ordered me,
he raged at her in his mind.
If you were going to do such a thing,
liyo,
God
in Heaven, could you not have bidden me, could you not have laid it on
my honor, given me at least the chance to go into it of my own will?

But
he could not say these things. He could not quarrel with her, in front
of strangers. Or now, that he was fighting for his composure.

It was his protection she had intended. It was for every good reason. It promised—O Heaven!—

He could not imagine what it promised.

It
was, in any case, only the thought of a thought of himself she had
stolen. And if she had thought him too foolish to choose for himself,
that was so, sometimes. She was often right.

He
reached beside him, in the folds of his mail shirt, and felt after a
small, paper packet. He found it, and unfolded it, and saw the very
tiny beads that lay on the red paper—eight of them.

He
folded it up again, dragged his belt over and tucked the packet into
the slit-pocket where he kept small flat things, where, lately, had
been a small razor-edged blade. But Chei's men had taken that. He did
not, given the circumstances of his losing it, look to have it back
again.

He
lay back to rest, then, since he had no more likelihood of persuading
Morgaine than Chei did. There was justification for the delay: beyond
this point, he thought, rested horses and rested men might make the
difference, and Chei and his men had gotten little enough sleep last
night. If the horses were rested—they might dare the fringe of the
plain, and know that they had enough strength to run or to fight.

It was a risk that made his flesh crawl.

"She
is staying here," Chei came to him to say, standing over him, a
fair-haired shadow against the dawn. Chei was indignant. And came to
him for alliance.

He
found some small irony in that. "Man," he said quietly, reasonably,
"she will be thinking. Go to her. Be patient with her. As thoroughly,
as exactly as you can, tell her everything you know about the way
ahead: make her maps. Answer her questions. Then go away and let her
think. Whatever you have held back—to bargain for your lives—this is
the time to throw everything you have into her hands. She will not
betray you. You say you will follow her. Prove it."

It was not precisely the truth. But it was as good, he thought, as might save all their lives. Chei clearly doubted it.

But
Chei went away then, and presented himself where Morgaine was busy with
her gear; and knelt down with his hands on his knees and talked to her
and drew on the ground, answering her questions for some little time.

Himself,
he scanned the rough hills, the rocks and the scrub which rose like
walls about them, watched the flight of a hawk, or something hawklike.

Morgaine
was not utterly without calculation, he thought, in choosing this camp.
The valley was wide and either end of it was in view. Nowhere were they
in easy bowshot of the sides or cover a man could reach without
crossing open ground.

Until
now Chei and his company, riding ahead of them through the hills, had
run the risk of a gate-force ambush, two stones bridging their power
from side to side of a narrow pass. Chei had surely known that. And
doubtless Morgaine would put him and his company to the fore again when
they rode out of this place. Chei would not like that.

But there was small comfort having them
all
riding point, and surely neither of them would do it.

There
was better food at noon: Morgaine cooked it. Vanye stirred himself to
sit up in the shade, and to put his breeches on and walk about, and to
take a little exercise, a little sword-drill to work the legs, and the
abused shoulder, which had a great dark bruise working its way out from
the arrow-strike.

It
would go through several color-changes, he thought, and then thought
that it might not, for one reason or the other; and put all of that to
the back of his mind with a swing and flourish and extension that
worked the ribs as far as he thought safe for the moment. Vanity, he
chided himself, taking pleasure in Hesiyyn's respectful look, and was
careful to stand very still for a moment after, before he called it
enough and walked back to the shade and sat down.

He
went through the arrows Rhanin had collected then, and took his
harness-knife—the loss of the little razor vexed him—and sighted down
the shafts and saw to the fletchings, in both quivers finding only
three shafts to fault and mark with a cautioning stain on their gray
feathers, and one fletching that wanted repair.

Then
he gathered himself up again and went and saw to the horses, running
his hands over their legs, looking for strain, looking over their feet,
seeing whether there was any shoe needing resetting. The bending and
lifting was hard. And Morgaine was watching him: he felt her stare on
his back, and gentled the gray stud with particular care, lulling him
with all his skill to keep him from his rougher tricks—"So, so, lad,
you have no wish to make me a liar, do you?"

The
fine head turned, dark-eyed and thinking; the white-tipped tail lashed
and switched with considerable force and he stamped once, thunderously.
But: "Hai, hai, hai," Vanye chided him, and he surrendered the ticklish
hind foot, with which, he thanked Heaven, there was no problem, nor
with the others.

He did all these things. He wanted, looking to certain eventualities, to do them particularly well, and the way he always did.

"Sleep," he bade Morgaine, pausing to wash on his way back to the shade. "Sleep a while."

She looked at him with a worry she did not trouble to hide. He could bear very little of that.

"We have not that far to go," she said, "—Chei swears."

"Perhaps he has even learned to reckon distances."

Her
eyes flickered, a grim amusement that went even to a grin and a fond
look. "Aye. Perhaps. I do not think I will sleep. Go take what rest you
can." She drew the chain of the pyx from over her head. "Here. Best you
keep it now."

He closed his fist about it. It was not something he wanted to wear openly.

She
sketched rapidly in the dirt at her feet. "This is where we are. Chei
says. This is Mante. This is where we will ride. This hill, then
skirting the plain and up again. There is a pass. A gatehouse, but not
a Gate."

"We are that close."

"Under
Skarrin's very eye, if there were a mistake with stone or sword. We
will start at sundown. A single night to the pass, if we go direct."
She let go her breath. "We will
ask
at his gate."

"Ask!"

"We
will not come like enemies. It will be Chei's affair. He says he can
pass us through. We will have the greatest difficulty beyond that. So
Chei says." She sketched a pocket behind the line that represented the
cliffs.
"Neisyrrn Neith.
Death's Gate. A well of stone, very wide. There are gate-stones within it—here, and here, and here."

He sank down on his heels and onto his knees. His breath grew short.

"Chei
swears," Morgaine said, "there is—no other way in. In all their wars,
in all their internal wars—no enemy can come at them, except by the
highlands. And that, they rule utterly.
Those
lords are loyal."

"God save us." He drew breath after breath.
"Liyo,
—turn back. Turn back, give this more time. We can find a way—"

"Those
lords
are loyal, Vanye. And the south cannot stand against them. I have
thought of it. I have thought of pulling back to Morund and trying to
take the south—but it could not hold. This whole southern region is a
sink, Mante's midden-heap—it is where they send their exiles. It is
where they breed their human replacements." She went on drawing.
"Herot, Sethys, Stiyesse, Itheithe, Nenais—I forget the other names.
Here, here, here—this is a vast land. And I do not doubt this Skarrin
set the World-gate purposely on Morund. Perpetually on Morund, in the
case any intruder, any rebel, any rival—should attempt him. Here, below
these cliffs, this rift in the world—lie Men; and his exiles. Here
above, across all this continent—lie the qhalur lands. There is irony
in this. We knew our young guide was abysmally incapable of reckoning a
day's ride—"

"Or lied to us."

"—had
never traveled much in all his life, except the hills, except forest
trails and winding roads. Straight distances bewildered him. He lived
his life in so small a place. And he did not know anything beyond it.
The distance between Morund and Herot, is less than he thought. Sethys
and Stiyesse abut against marsh he did not know existed. These are
little places. These are holds humans once had. Qhal have moved in,
those exiled, those out of favor—like Qhiverin, who became Gault. The
south has no resource against the north, not if the north realized its
danger. And by now, since Tejhos—Skarrin does, though Chei does
swear—for what it is worth—that he did not tell Skarrin our purpose
here. That is the only grace we may have, if we can believe it."

He leaned his hands on his knees and bowed his head a moment. "We
should
have gone to Morund, the way you wanted to. We would have learned this. We could have dealt with whatever we found there—what
ever
we found there. This is my fault,
liyo,
it is
all
my—"

"It was my decision. It was
my
judgment.
Do not be so cursed free with blame. It is still my decision, and all
of this may be wrong. Chei has the notion we can come close before they
will take alarm."

"With
our
horses—"

"Or
his. That roan of his is no unremarkable beast, in itself. No, they
will surely know us: they will have gotten the description from their
watchers afield. It is a question of keeping them uncertain what we
intend." She looked at the ground in front of her and seemed lost for a
moment. "Chei says if they have thrown no great number of men into the
field since yesterday, they are taking a cautious path. He talked at
some length of his own difficulties with his Overlord—he was high-born,
was a member of a martial order that lost its influence at court:
disastrously for him, though more so for others. Connections saved his
life and sent him to Morund, to redeem himself, if ever he could—The
arrangement by which human lords were permitted to rule in the south
was collapsing, on evidence of human Gault's complicity with the rebels
in Mante—
that
was how they lured the original
Gault into their trap: and sentenced him and Qhiverin to one conjoined
existence—on that point Qhiverin's friends intervened virtually to
kidnap Gault from his jailers and coerce the gate-wardens to join them,
to forestall enemies who would have preferred not to have Qhiverin at
Morund."

"Where
he served their interests well enough—" "So he has done. So he fully
intended to come home, someday. Except—as thee says, possibly we could
have persuaded him to go against his lord from the beginning. He says
so. Certainly he is quick enough to commit treason. I do not know. At
least—he has had some little credit with Skarrin for setting affairs in
the south in order, if, as he says, they do not take that for too
much
success,
and if his connections in Mante have not lost all influence. That we
have arrived in the south without a force about us—that they have lost
contact with him, whom they do not trust, under uncertain
circumstances, after he has faithfully sent them a report from Tejhos
and seemed, there, under the witness of the wardens there, to be
fighting us—all of this, he thinks, might create some debate among
Skarrin's advisers. The question is whether we should attempt
stealth—or bewilder them further. Recall that there is one way in, that
we must pass within
that,
that thing they call
Seiyyin Neith,
the
Gate of Exiles, and within this league-wide pit of stone, that they
call Death's-gate—they can kill us with a thought. As you did say: a
man who thinks he is winning—will not flee."

"No, he will send us straightway to Hell,
liyo,
and we will hardly see it coming!"

"Chei will get us to Exile's Gate. There is where they will be vulnerable."

"God
in Heaven, are we leaning on this man's word?" She lifted her eyes to
him. "This man—wants to live. So do the men with him. Did I not say I
trusted him more than honest men? They
have
no
cause, no cause for which they would give up their lives. Skarrin
cannot promise them anything they would believe. Not as deeply as they
have tangled themselves. They know that."