Gate of Ivrel (4 page)

your life. Listen, for all that you are, you have been generous with me, and I am giving you good advice for it: the pass south of here leads through Aenor, and I am bound that way. I will somehow guide you through that land. I will bring you safely to the south of Aenor, where lands are warm, into Eriel, into the plains of Lun. They are savages that live there, but at least they have no bloodfeud with you and you can live there in safety. Listen to me and let me pay you with that thanks. That is the best that I can do for you, and I will do that honestly, grudging nothing."

"I refuse to grant exception," she said then, which was her right.

He swore, both foully and tearfully, and left her and went out and laid hands upon his horse's halter. He had time to think then, of the holy oath he had already made as ilin, and that oath-breaking was no light thing for his honor and least of all for his soul. He laid hand against the bay's rough cheek, and his head against its warm neck, and stayed there, shivering in the cold, but numb to it. Easy it would be if he could die there in the wind, robbed of warmth, to sink into the numbing snow and simply die, untouched by qujalin oaths.

New snow crunched beneath Morgaine's boots. She came and stood beside him, waiting for him to decide which he would, to yield up his soul by oath-breaking, or to risk it by serving the likes of her. For a man who was lost in either case, the only thing left was life: and life was sure to be longer by running now than by staying with Morgaine Frosthair.

Then he thought of the deer, and already he felt a twitching at the back of his shoulders as if she sought his life. He would not be able to outrace that: other weapons, perhaps, but not the thing that had slain the deer and left no wound.

"It is lawful," she said, "what I ask."

"With you," he objected, "that year is likely to be the last of my life. And after that, I would be a marked man in Andur-Kursh."

"I will admit that is true. My own life is likely to be no longer. I have no pity to spare for thee."

She held out her hand for his. He yielded it, and-she drew the ivory-hilted Honor blade from her belt and cut deeply, but not wide: the dark blood welled up slowly in the cold. She set her mouth to the wound, and then he did the same, the salt hot

taste of his own blood knotting his stomach in revulsion. Then she went inside, and brought ash to stop it with, smearing it with the clan-glyph of the Chya, writ in his blood and her hearth-ash across his hand, the ancient custom of Claiming.

Then he bowed to his forehead in the burning snow, and the ice numbed the fire in his hand and made it cease throbbing, she had certain responsibilities for him now: to see that he did not starve, neither he nor his horse, though certain of the hedge-lords were scant of that obligation, and kept the miserable ilinin they claimed lean and hungry and their horses in little better state when the ilinin were in hall.

Morgaine was of poorer estate: she had no hall to shelter either of them, and the clan she signed him—his own birth-clan— would as lief kill him as not. For his part, he must simply follow orders: no other law bound him now. He could even be ordered against homeland or blood kin, though it was no credit to the lord's honor if an ilin were so cruelly used. He must fight her enemies, tend her hearth—whatever things she required of him until a year had passed from the day of his oath.

Or she might simply name him a task to accomplish, and he would be bound to that task even beyond his year's time, until it was done. And that also was exceedingly cruel, but it was according to the law.

"What service?" he asked of her. "Will you let me guide you from here southward?"

"We go north," she said.

"Lady, it is suicide," he cried. "For you and for me."

"We go north," she said. "Come, I will bind up the hand."

"No," he said. He clutched snow in his fist, stopping the bleeding, and held the injured hand against him. "I want no medicines of yours. I will keep my oath. Let me tend to myself."

"I will not insist," she said.

Another thought, more terrible, occurred to him. He bowed in request another time, delaying her return to the cave.

"What else?" she asked him.

"If I die you are supposed to give me honorable burial. I do not want that."

"What—not to be buried?"

"Not by qujalin rites. No, I had rather the birds and the wolves than that."

She shrugged, as if that did not at all offend her. "Birds and wolves will likely care for both of us before all is done," she said. "I am glad thee sees the matter that way. I probably should have no time for amenities. Care for thyself and gather thy gear and mine. We are leaving this place."

"Where are we bound?"

"Where I will to go."

He bowed acceptance with a heavy heart, knowing of increasing certainty that he could not reason with her. She meant to die. It was cruel to have laid claim to an ilin under that circumstance, but that was the way of his oath. If a man survived his year, he was purged of crimes and disgrace. Heaven would have extracted due penance for his sins.

Many did not survive. It was presumed Heaven had exacted punishment. They were counted honorable suicides.

He bound up his hand with the cleanly remedies that he knew, though it hurt with dull persistence; and then he gathered up all their belongings, his and hers, and saddled both the horses. The sky was beginning to clear. The sun shone down on him as he worked, and glittered coldly off the golden hilt of the blade he hung upon the gray's saddle. The dragon leered at him, fringed mouth agape, clenching the blade in his teeth; his spread legs made the guard; his back-winding tail guarded the fingers.

He feared even to touch it. No Korish work, that, whatever hand had made the plain sheath. It was alien and otherly, and when he ventured in curiosity to ease the awful thing even a little way from its sheath, he found strange letters, the blade itself like a shard of glass—even touching it threatened injury. No blade ever existed of such substance: and yet it seemed more perilous than fragile.

He slipped it quickly back into its sheath, guilty as he heard Morgaine's tread behind him.

"Let it be," she said harshly. And when he stared at her, knowing of a surety he had done wrong, she said more gently: "It is a gift of one of my companions—a vanity. It pleased him. He had great skill. But if thee dislikes things qujalin, then keep hands from it."

He bowed, avoiding her eyes, and began working at his own gear, tying his few possessions into place at the back of the saddle.

The blade's name was Changeling. He remembered it of the songs, and wondered could a smith have given so unlucky a name to a blade, even were he qujal. His own sword was of humbler make, honest steel, well-tempered, nameless as befitted a common soldier or a lord's bastard son.

He hung it on his saddle, swung up to mount and waited upon Morgaine, who was hardly slower.

"Will you not listen to me?" He was willing to try reason a last time. "There is no safety for you in the north. Let us go south to Lun. There are tribes there that know nothing of you. You would be able to make your way among them. I have heard tell that there are cities far to the south. I would take you there. You could live. In the north, they will hunt you and kill you."

She did not even answer him, but guided the gray downhill.

CHAPTER 3

The wolves had been at the deer's carcass in the night, after the snow had ceased to fall so quickly. The area around the tattered bones was marked and patterned with the paws of wolves, and some of those tracks were wondrously large. Vanye looked down as their own trail crossed the trampled snow, and he saw the larger tracks he knew beyond doubt for beasts of Korish woods, more hound than wolf.

The carnage cast a further pall upon the morning, which was clearing to that ice-crystal brightness that blinded the senses, veiling all sins of ugliness into brilliance under a blue sky; but already the veil had been soiled for them. Death was with them, four-footed. Of natural wolves he had no great fear— they seldom bothered men, save in the most desperate Winters, But Koris-beasts were another breed. They killed. They killed and never meant to eat—a perversion in nature.

Morgaine looked down at the tracks too, and seemed unperturbed; perhaps, he thought, she had never seen the like in her time, before Thiye learned to warp the lightness of nature into shapes he chose. Perhaps magics had grown more powerful than she remembered, and she did not know the dangers toward which they rode.

Or perhaps—it was the worse thought—he himself failed to realize with what he rode, knee to knee and peaceful on this bright morning. He feared her for her reputation: that was natural. And yet, he thought, perhaps he did not hold fear enough of her presence. She could kill without touching and without wound: he could not rid his mind of the deer's wide-eyed look, that ought by rights not to have been dead. A gnawed bone lay athwart their path. His horse shied from it. They rode back into the valley of the Stones, crossing the frozen stream, cracking the yet thin ice, and rode the winding

trail beside the great gray rocks, under the shadow of the mound called Morgaine's Tomb. Despite the snow, the sky shimmered between the two carven pillars with the look of air above heated rocks.

Morgaine looked up at it as they rode. There was upon her face a curious loathing. He began to understand that it had been far from Morgaine's will to have ridden into such a thing with Heln's men behind her.

"Who freed you?" he asked suddenly. She looked back at him, puzzled.

"You said that someone must free you from this place. What. is it? How were you held there? And who freed you?"

"It is a Gate," she said, and into his mind there flashed the nightmare image of white rider against the sun: it was hard to remember such madness. Like dreams, it tended to fade, for the sake of sanity.

"If it is a gate," he said, "then from where did you come?" "I was between until something should disturb the field. That is the way with Gates that are not set. It is like a shallow pool of time, ever so shallow. I was washed up again, on this shore."

He gazed up at it, could not understand, and yet it was as good an explanation of what he had seen as any other. "Who freed you?" he asked.

"I do not know," she said. "I rode in with men at my heels; a shadow passed me; I rode out again. It was like closing my eyes. No—not that either. It was just between. Only it was thicker than any between I have ever ridden. I think that thee was—thee says, you—were—the one that did free me. But I do not know how, and I doubt that you know."

"It is impossible," he said. "I never came near the Stones." "I would not wager anything on that memory," she said. She turned her head; he rode behind her here, for the path was narrow at the bottom of the hill. He had view of the gray's white swaying tail and Morgaine's white-cloaked and insolent back; and the presence of this structure she called a Gate cast a pall upon all his thoughts. He had leisure to repent his oath in , this ill-omened place, and knew that in a year with Morgaine he was bound to see and hear many things an honest and once religious man would not find comfortable.

He had a sudden and uncomfortable vision as he saw her

riding ahead of him upon that stretch of the old paved road up between the lesser monoliths: that here was another kind of anachronism, like a man visiting the nursery of his childhood, surrounded by sad toys. Morgaine was indeed out of the long-ago; and yet it was known that the qujal had been evil and wise and able to work things that men had happily forgotten. Not needing transport, not needing such things as mortal weapons, qujal only wished and practiced sorceries, and what they wished became substance—until they grew yet more evil, and ruined themselves.

And yet Morgaine rode, live and powerful, and carried under her knee a blade of forgotten arts, in the ruins of things she might well have known as they once had been.

It was said that Thiye Thiye's-son was immortal, renewing his youth by taking life from others, and that he would never die so long as he could find unfortunates on whom to practice this. He had tended to scoff at the rumor: all men died.

But Morgaine had not, not in more than a hundred years, and still was young. She found the hundred years acceptable. Perhaps she had known longer sleeps than this.

The higher passes were choked with snow. Gray and bay fought drifts, struggling with such effort that they made little time. They must often pause to rest the animals. Yet by afternoon they seemed to have made it through the worst places, and without meeting any of the Myya or seeing tracks of beasts.

It was good fortune. It was bound not to last.

"Lady," he said during one of their rests, "if we go on as we are we will be in the valley of Morij Erd; and if we enter there, chances are you will not find welcome for either of us. This horse of mine is out of that land; and Gervaine its lord is Myya and he has sworn a great oath to have my head on a pike and other parts of me similarly distributed. There is no good prospect for you or for me in this direction."

She smiled slightly. She had been in lighter humor since the morning, when they had quitted the valley of Stones and entered the more honest shades of pine woods and unhewn crags. "We bear east before then, toward Koris."

"Lady, you know your way well enough," he protested glumly. "Why was it needful to share me for a guide?"