Exile's Gate (52 page)

She
wiped the corner of his mouth, with fingers that came away, shaking,
with blood and dirt. Tears marred the dusty mask of her face. She
pressed her lips tight, held him by the arm and looked up and about the
slow circuit of the walls, seeking who had done this to them.

Then to Chei, in anger: "Is
this
—ordinary, Skarrin dropping his guests into this place? Is
this
the way to Mante you simply neglected to tell us?"

"I do not know." It was bewilderment. It was utter consternation. "No. Not—for what I know."

There
was fear—in Chei's look, in Rhanin's—even in cold Hesiyyn's eyes. It
was fear directed toward them both, for the healing the gates had done
for them, and the horses they rode, and not for themselves.

"None of us know," Rhanin said, a faint voice. "Never—never that I have known of—"

"Skarrin!"
Morgaine shouted to the walls and the sky.

"He has spared us," Vanye said.
"Liyo,
he has
spared
us—"

She
turned a look on him—not the face he loved, but a qhalur mask in white
dust, tear-streaked and implacable in purpose. "Do not believe it."

On
the one side, Chei and his companions, who knew something had been done
with gates such as ought not to have happened, within the laws they
knew—

On the other, Morgaine—

I
know things they do not. Call it my father's legacy. And if they should
know, Vanye, that secret, they would find others, that I will give no
one, that are not written on the sword
—
that I will not
permit
anyone to know and live
—

She hooked
Changeling
to
her belt. She walked a few steps and recovered his helm from the ground
and threw it to him. He caught it. The wind blew at his hair, still
shorn. His armor was filthy with dust and blood. Why this should be,
and other things mended, he did not understand.

He
did not hope to. Nor wish to. He put the helm on, slung the bow to his
shoulder, and followed her across the courtyard to the horses.

She stopped there. From that angle, among the standing stones, an open gateway was visible in the masonry wall.

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.