Exile's Gate (7 page)

Vanye gave another shrug. "How should we? I know great lords aplenty. Not that one."

"This is his land."

"Is it? And are you his man?"

"No," Chei said shortly.
"Nor would I be." He lowered his voice, spoke with a quickening of
breath. "Nor, unlike you, would I serve the qhal."

It was challenge, if
subdued and muttered. Vanye let it fly, it being so far off the mark.
"She is my liege," he said in all mildness, "and she is halfling, by
her own word. And in my own land folk called her a witch, which she is
not. I should take offense, but I would have said the same, once."

Chei occupied himself in his injuries.

"It was this Gault left you to die," Vanye said. "You said that much. Why? What had you done to him?"

It was that hawk's stare an
instant. There was outrage in it. "To Gault ep Mesyrun? He lives very
well in Morund. He drains the country dry. He respects neither God nor
devil, and he keeps a large guard of your kind as well as qhal."

"Tell me. Do you think he would thank us for freeing you?"

That told. There was a long silence, a slow and evident consideration of that idea.

"So you may reason we are
not his friends," Vanye said, "and my lady has done you a kindness,
which has so far gained us nothing but an alarm in the night and myself
a few bruises. Had you rather fight us to no gain at all? Or will you
ride with us a space—till we are off this lord Gault's land?"

Chei rested his head in his hands and remained so, sinking lower with his elbow against his knee.

"Or do you mislike that idea?" Vanye asked him.

"He will kill us," Chei
said, and lifted his face to look at him sidelong, head still propped
against his hand. "How did you find me?"

"By chance. We heard the wolves. We saw the birds."

"And by chance," Chei said harshly, "you were riding Gault's land."

The man wanted a key—best,
it seemed, give him a very small one. "Not chance," Vanye said. "The
road. And if our way runs through his land, so be it."

There was no answer.

"What did you do," Vanye asked again, "that deserved what this Gault did? Was it murder?"

"The murder was on their side. They murdered—"

"So?" Vanye asked when the man went suddenly silent.

Chei shook his head
angrily. Then his look went to one of entreaty, brow furrowed beneath
the drying and tangled hair as he looked up. "You have come here from
the gate," Chei said, "if that is the way you have come. I am not a
fool. Do not tell me that your lady is ignorant what land this is."

"Beyond the gate—" Vanye
considered a second time. It was a man's life in the balance. And it
was too easy to kill a man with a word. Or raise war and kill a
thousand men or ten thousand. There was a second silence, this one his.
Then: "I think you have come to questions my lady could answer for you."

"What do you want from me?" Chei asked.

"Simple things. Easy things. Some of which might suit you well."

Chei's look grew wary indeed. "Ask my lady." Vanye said.

It was a quieter,
saner-seeming man Vanye led, wrapped in one of their two blankets, to
the fireside where Morgaine waited, Chei with his hair and beard clean
and having some order about it once he had wet and combed it again. He
was barefoot, limping, wincing a little on the twigs that littered the
dusty ground. He had left all his gear down on the riverside—Heaven
knew how they would salvage it or what scouring could clean the
leather: none could save the cloth.

Chei set himself down and Vanye sat down at the fireside nearer him than Morgaine—in mistrust.

But Morgaine poured them
ordinary tea from a pan, using one of their smaller few bowls for a
third cup, and passed it round the bed of coals that the fire had
become, to Vanye and so to Chei. The wind made a soft whisper in the
leaves that moved and dappled the ground with a shifting light, the
fire had become a comfortable warmth which did not smoke, but relieved
what chill there was in the shade, and the horses, the dapple gray and
the white, grazed a little distance away, in their little patch of
grass and sunlight. There was no haste, no urgency in Morgaine.

Not to the eye, Vanye
thought. She had been quiet and easy even when he had come alone up the
hill bringing the cups, and told her everything he could recall, and
everything he had admitted to Chei—"He knows the gates," Vanye had
said, quickly, atop it all. "He believes that is how we got here, but
he insists we lie if we do not know this lord Gault and that we must
know where we are."

Morgaine sipped her tea
now, and did not hasten matters. "Vanye tells me you do not know where
we come from," she said after a moment. "But you think we should know
this place, and that we have somewhat to do with this lord of Morund.
We do not. The road out there brought us. That is all. It branches
beyond every gate. Do you not know that?"

Chei stared at her, not in defiance now, but in something like dismay.

"Like any road," said
Morgaine in that same hush of moving leaves and wind, "it leads
everywhere. That is the general way of roads. Name the farthest place
in the world. That road beyond this woods leads to it, one way or the
other. And this Gate leads through other gates. Which lead—to many
places. Vanye says you know this. Then you should know that too. And
knowing that—" Morgaine took up a peeled twig to stir her tea, and
carefully lifted something out of it, to flick it away. "You should
know that what a lord decrees is valid only so far as his hand reaches.
No further. And I have never heard of your lord Gault, nor care that I
have not heard. He seems to me to be no one worth my trouble."

"Then why am I?" Chei asked harshly, with no little desperation.

"You are not," Morgaine said. "You are a considerable inconvenience."

It was not what Chei had,
perhaps, expected. And Morgaine took a slow sip of tea, set the cup
down and poured more for herself, the while Chei said nothing at all.

"We cannot let you free,"
Morgaine said. "We do not care for this Gault; and having you fall
straightway into his hands would be no kindness to you and no good
thing for us either. Quiet is our preference. So you will go with us,
and somewhere we shall have to find you a horse—by one thing and the
other I suppose you are familiar with horses. Am I wrong?"

Chei stared at her, somewhere between incredulity and panic. "No," Chei said faintly. "No, lady. I know horses."

"And our business is not
truly needful for you to know, is it? Only that it has become yours, as
your safety has become conditional on ours—as I assure you it is. We
will find you a horse—somewhere hereabouts, I trust. Meanwhile you will
ride with Vanye—as soon as you are fit to ride. In the meanwhile you
eat our food, sleep in our blankets, use our medicines, and repay us
with insults." All of this so, so softly spoken. "This last will
change. You have naught to do today but lie in the sun, in what modesty
or lack of it will not affect me, I do assure you. You do not move
me.—How wide are Gault's lands? How far shall we ride before we cease
to worry about his attacking us?"

Chei sat there a moment
with a worried look. Then he bit his lip, shifted forward and pulled a
half-burned stick out of the coals to draw in the dirt with it. "Here
you found me. Here the road. Back here—" He swept a wide, vague area
with the stick. "The gate from which you came." The stick moved on to
inscribe the line of the road running past the hill of the wolves, and
up and up northward. "On either side here is woods. Beyond that—" He
gestured out beyond the trees, where the river was, and where meadow
shone gold. "The forest is scattered—a woods here, another there, at
some distance from the road."

"You are well familiar with this lord's land," Morgaine said.

The stick wavered, a shiver
that had no wind to cause it. "The north and the west I know. But this
last I do not forget. I watched where they took us." The stick moved
again, tracing the way, and slashed a line across the road. "This is
the Sethoy, this river. It comes from the mountains. A bridge crosses
it, an old bridge. The other side of it, northward across the plain,
lord Gault's own woods begin; and his pastures; and his fields; and
there is his hold, well back from the old Road. In the hills, a
village. A road between. He has that too. There are roads besides the
Old Road, there is a track goes across it from Morund and up again by
the hills; there is another runs by Gyllin-brook—that runs along these
hills and through them, up toward the village. None of these are safe
for you."

"Further over on either
side, " Morgaine said, and moved around the fire to indicate with her
finger the left and the right of the road. "Are there other roads?"

"Beyond the western hills." Chei retreated somewhat from her presence, and used his stick to trace small lines.

"Habitations?"

"High in the hills. No
friends of any strangers. They keep their borders against every
outsider: now and again the lords from the north come down and kill a
number of them—to prove whatever that proves. Who knows?"

There was perhaps a barb in that. Morgaine did not deign to notice it. She pointed to the other side. "And here to the east?"

"Qhalur holdings. Lord Herat and lord Sethys, with their armies."

"What would you counsel?"

Chei did not move for a
moment. Then he pointed with the stick to the roads on the west.
"There. Through the woods, beyond Gault's fields. Between Gault and the
hillmen."

"But one reaches the trail by the old Road."

"There, lady, just short of Gault's woods. I can guide you—from there. I
will
guide you, if you want to avoid Gault's hold. I want the same."

"Where are
you
from?" Vanye asked, the thing he had not said, and moved close on the other side. "Where is your home?"

Chei drew in a breath and pointed close above Morund land. "There."

"Of what hold?" Morgaine asked.

"
I was a free man," Chei said. "There are some of us—who come down from the hills."

"Well-armed free men," said Vanye.

Chei's eyes came at once back to him, alarmed.

"Are there many of your sort?" Morgaine asked.

Fear, then. True fear. "Fewer than there were," Chei said at last. "My lord is dead.
That
is my crime. That I was both armed, and a free Man. So once was Gault. But they took him. Now he is qhal—inside."

"Is that," Vanye asked, "the general fate of prisoners?"

"It happens," Chei said, looking anxiously from one to the other side of him.

"Tell us," Morgaine said, shifting position to point at the road where it continued. "What lies ahead?"

"Other qhal. Tejhos. Mante."

"What sort of place?" Vanye asked.

"I have no knowledge. A qhalur place.
You
would know, better than I."

"But Gault knows them."

"I am sure," Chei said in a hoarse small voice. "Perhaps you do."

"Perhaps we do not," Morgaine said softly, very softly. "Describe the way north. On the old Road."

Chei hesitated, then moved
the stick and drew the line northward with a large westward jog halfway
before an eastward trend. "Woods and hills," he said. "A thousand small
trails. Above this—is qhalur land. The High Lord. Skarrin."

"Skarrin. Of Mante."
Morgaine rested her chin on her hand, her brow knit, her fist clenched,
and for a long moment were no more questions. Then: "And what place had
Men in this land?"

Unhesitatingly, the stick
indicated the west. "There." And the east, about Morund. "And there.
Those in the west and those who live in qhalur lands. But in the west
are the only free Men."

"Of which you were one."

"Of which I was one, lady."
There was no flinching in that voice, which had become as quiet as
Morgaine's own. "You are kinder than Gault, that is all I know. If a
man has to swear to some qhal to live—better you than the lord that
Skarrin sent us. I will get you through Gault's lands. And if I serve
you well—believe me and trust my leading when you come near humans, and
I will guide you through."

"Against your own," Vanye said.

"I was Gault's prisoner. Do
you think human folk would trust me again? There have been too many
spies. No one is alive who went through Gyllin-brook, except me. My
lord Ichandren is dead. My brother is dead—Thank God's mercy for both."
For a moment his voice did break, but he sat still, his hands on his
knees. "No one is alive to vouch for me. I will not raise a hand
against human folk. But I do not want to die for nothing. One of my
comrades on that hill—he let the wolves have him. The second night. And
I knew then I did not want to die."

Tears spilled, wet trails
down his face. Chei looked at neither of them. His face was still
impassive. There were only the tears.

"So," Morgaine said after a moment, "is it an oath you will give us?"