The Complete Morgaine (123 page)

On his, the dour, broad-bellied hedge-lord stood by with a clutch of his own men and with Bron and Chei both across that line and talking urgently to him—he had his arms folded, and scowled continually; but made no overt gesture of hostility, only repeated ones of impatience.

The priest, for his part, drew another line when the rapidly-forming circle took shape about the fire, a mark in the dust with his sword and a holy sign over it, the which sent a cold feeling to Vanye's gut.

“Poor manners, these folk,” he said to Morgaine, looking constantly to their flanks and refusing to be distracted by the priest's doings.

“No saying where the archers may be posted,” Morgaine said. “I will warrant there is one or two with clear vantage—that ridge yonder, perhaps. Mark you, we do not give up the weapons—hai, there—”

One man was moving to take the horses. Vanye moved to prevent it, one hand out, one hand on his sword; and that man stopped.

Chei's horse had strayed loose, uncertain and confused, and apt, Heaven knew, to bolt; but their own had stood where the reins had dropped, where Siptah now stood and jerked his head and snorted challenge, a wary eye on the man approaching.

“I would not,” he advised the man, who measured the warhorse's disposition and the owners' resolution with one nervous glance and kept his distance. “I would not touch him at all, man.”

That stopped the matter. The man looked left and right as if searching for help or new orders, and edged away, leaving the warhorse and the mare and all their belongings to stand unmolested. Vanye whistled a low and calming signal, and the Baien gray grunted and shook himself, lifting his head again with a wary and defiant whuff.

“My lady,” Chei came saying then. “Come. Please. Keep within the line.”

Morgaine walked toward the fire. Vanye walked after her, and stood behind her—
ilin's
place, hand on sword, within the wedge-shaped scratch in the dirt that made a corridor to the fire.

So Arunden stood, with his priest, and his men—all men: the only women were the servants, who came and went in the shadows.

“Sit,” Arunden muttered with no good grace, and sank down to sit cross-legged.

So Morgaine sat down in like fashion, and laid
Changeling
by her, largely shrouded in the folds of her cloak—which movement Arunden's eyes followed: Vanye saw it as he stood there.

But: “Vanye,” Morgaine said, and he took her meaning without dispute, and sank down beside her, as others were settling and gathering close, Chei and Bron among them, on Arunden's side of the line, but beside them on Vanye's side.

“So you found this boy with the wolves,” Arunden said. “How and why?”

“We were passing there,” Morgaine said. “And Vanye did not like the odds.”

“Not like the odds.” Arunden chuckled darkly, and with his sheathed sword poked at the fire so that sparks flew up. “Not like the odds. Where are you from? Mante?”

“Outside.”

There was long and sober silence. The fire crackled, the burning of new branches, the flare of pine needles.

“What—outside?”

“Beyond Mante. Things are very different there. I do not give my enemies to beasts. I deal with them myself.”

There was another long silence.

Then: “Cup!” Arunden said.

“My lord,” the priest objected vehemently, scrambling up.

“Sit
down
, priest!” And as the so-named priest sank down with ill grace: “Close up, close up, close up! Does a
qhalur
woman
frighten you? Close up!”

No one stirred for a moment. Then Chei edged closer on Vanye's side. After that there was a general movement, men moving from the back of the circle forward on Arunden's side, edging closer on either side of them, blurring and obliterating the line the priest had drawn, two rough-looking men crowding close on Morgaine's side, so that Vanye felt anxiously after his sword-hilt.

“You!” Arunden jabbed his sheathed sword toward him across the fire. “Sit
down!
”

“Sit as they do,” Morgaine said quietly, and Vanye drew a second nervous breath and came down off his heels to fold his legs under him, sitting cross-legged and a cursed deal further from a quick move. Morgaine reached and touched his hand, reminding him it was on the sword-hilt, forbidding him, and he let it go, glaring at Arunden with his vision wide on everything around him.

But a young woman brought a massive wooden bowl and gave it to Arunden: he held it out to the priest. “Here,” he said.
“Here!”

The priest drank. Arunden did, and passed the massive bowl to his right.

So from hand to hand it passed, all about the gathering on that side before it came to Bron and to Chei.

There was utter silence then, a profound hush in every movement in the circle.

And from Chei, as he gave it to Vanye's hands, a frightened look, a pleading look—What, Vanye wondered. That they not refuse? That there was some harm in it?

“Take it,” Chei said. “You must take it.”

It was honey drink, strong-smelling. Vanye looked doubtfully toward Morgaine, but he saw no likelihood of poison, seeing others had drunk, seeing that the moisture of it shone on Chei's mouth.
“Liyo?”

She gave a slight nod, and he drank one fiery and tiny sip, hardly touching the tip of his tongue to it.

“Drink,” Chei whispered from his left. “For God's sake, truly drink. They will know.”

He hesitated, feeling the sting of it, tasting herbs. Panic touched him. But
they would insist for Morgaine too, he thought; if there was harm in it, she had to know. He took a mouthful and swallowed it down, tracing fire all down his throat.

He passed it slowly, amid the soft murmur of those about the fire. He held onto the bowl a moment, feeling that fire hit his stomach, tasting it all the way down with the sense that he knew to use on bitter berries, unfamiliar fare at strange table. Slowly he let her take it, while the murmur grew; and there was a troubled frown on her face—full knowledge what he had done, and why.

So she looked at him and drank a very little, he thought that she truly did, her own judgment: but she was a woman, she might be delicate in her habits; it was his place to convince them, and he thought that he had, sufficient good faith for the two of them.

She passed the bowl on to the man at her right, and so it went on.

The murmur grew.

“Is there something remarkable in it?” Morgaine asked then, civilly.

“There is fen-wort in it,” Arunden said. “And neverfade.”

“To loosen tongues,” Chei said in a small voice, at Vanye's left, “and to bring out truth.”

“Liyo—”
Vanye said, for there was of a sudden too much warmth on his tongue for one sip of honey-mead. She glanced his direction.

“It is harmless—” Chei said. The cup was finishing its course. A young woman brought a skin and filled it, and it began a second passing.

The crowd-murmur grew. “Another bowl!” the priest objected. “It is unclean, unclean—”

But the bowl went to him. “Drink,” Arunden bade him, and clenched his hand in the priest's hair and compelled him, at which there was rough laughter, at which Vanye took in his breath and stared in horror, not knowing what to do, not knowing what the priest might do, or some man who respected him.

But no one did anything.

“Liyo,”
he said, wishing them out of this.

“Is thee all right?” she whispered back, past the laughter and the noise.

“I am all right,” he said, and it was true, as the moments passed and the cup went round and the priest wiped his mouth and frowned. He felt Chei take his arm and press it. “—no harm,” Chei was assuring him. “No harm in it—”

He reached that conclusion in his own reckoning, that it was very strong, that his stomach had been empty, but it was well enough: he thought that he would not fall if he rose, nor sleep if he sat, but that if he sat still a little while his head might not spin and his judgment might come back.

Chei's hand rested on his shoulder then, heavily, a friendly gesture, offering him the cup in the next round. Every detail seemed to stand out with unnatural clarity—like the effects of
akil
, very like that, but milder. There were more
and more cups offered about, bowls passed hand to hand, drink poured from skins, blurred voices murmuring words indistinct to him. More than one bowl came his way. He drank only a little and passed them on.

It was mad. There seemed no hostility in it, but it was all balanced on the knife's edge, a peculiar sort of intimacy in this passing of drink round and round. Yet another bowl came his way, and he only pretended to drink now, and gave it on to Morgaine, who likewise feigned drinking, and passed it on again.

“Say on now,” Arunden said, whose mustache glistened with beads of liquid in the firelight. “
Now
we talk. My lady
qhal
, fine lady, who shares my drink and shares my fire—what is it you want in my land?”

“Passage through.”

“Through, through,
where
through? To what—to
Mante?
”

“It is the gates,” Chei said unbidden. “My lady—
tell
him.”

“Chei means to say,” Morgaine said quietly, in a silence that had grown so sudden and so hushed there was only the wind in the leaves about them, among a hundred, perhaps a hundred fifty men, and words rang in the air like a hammer on iron: “that Vanye and I came through the southern gate and we are going out the northern one, against the interests of the
qhal
in this world. We will pass it, we will seal it, and there will be no more taking of men and changing them, there will be no more coming and going out the southern gate, with Gault bringing whatever he likes at your backs while the north brings war against you. There will be no more gate-force. Once I am done with them, they cannot bring them back to life.”

A great murmuring grew in the silence she left. “Ha,” Arunden cried, and gestured to one of the women, who filled a bowl. He drank deeply, and wiped his mouth. “Who will do this?”

“No great band of men will do it,” Morgaine said. “No force of arms. A Gate is far too dangerous to assault head-on.”

“Aye, there you say!” He took another deep draft. “So who will do it?”

“I am enough.”

“Ha!” He waved his hand. “
Drink
for our guests!
You
are enough! Woman, m'lady
qhal
, how do you propose to do that? Seduce Skarrin?”

“Liyo,”
Vanye said, but her hand rested on his arm, and she slid her hand to his and pressed it hard.

“Gate-force,” she said. “I am
qhal
—am I not? The most they have to fear—is one of their own with hostile intent.”

“Who says there has never been?
Qhal
feud and fight. And what has it ever done? You are lying or you are mad, woman.”

“Feud and fight they may. But they will not go that far. I will. They have no chance against you then. Do you see? I will give you the only chance you will ever have.”

“And the fires—the fires—in the valley!”

“The only chance,” Morgaine repeated, “you will ever have. Else Gault will widen his territory and yours will grow less and less. I set that fire—else Gault would be warned and warn his lord, and after
that
, my lord, you would see a hunt through these hills you would not wish to see. I will advise you: shelter me and mine tonight, and pass us through these woods in the morning as quietly and quickly as you can. Beyond that I can assure you the
qhal
will have other concerns; and beyond that you can do what you have never, I would surmise, been able to do: to come at Gault from the wooded south. That gate south of Morund will cease to be active. There will be no power there. Begin to think in those terms. Places you have not dared to go. Enemies you will not have when these present shapes age and fade—it is
that
which can make a
qhalur
enemy a most deadly threat, do you understand? It is the experience of a half a score lifespans fighting in the same land, against human folk who know only what they can learn in twenty years. That will cease. You will see them die. You will find their successors fewer and fewer. They do not bear half so frequently. That is what I offer you.”

Arunden wiped a hand across his mouth. The bowl tilted perilously in his hand. From time to time as Morgaine spoke the gathering murmured almost enough to drown her voice, but it was quiet now.

Arunden was entirely drunk, Vanye thought. He was drunk and half numb and the visitor he had tried to ply with drink and drug had spun a spell enough to muddle a man's mind—that was the witchery Morgaine practiced. He had seen her work it on more than one man with his wits about him; and he watched now a desperate and inebriate man trying to break the strands of that web, with sweating face and glittering eyes and quickened breath.

“Lies,” Arunden said.

“Wherein?”

“Because you will never do it! Because no one can get through.”

“That is my worry. I have said: shelter for the night. Safe passage through to the Road. That is all.”

“That is easy done,” Arunden said, wiping his mouth again. He held out the bowl which had come to him. “It is empty!”

A woman hastened to fill it. There were a great number of bowls filled, and a general and rising commotion among the onlookers. Chei's hand a second time rested on Vanye's shoulder.

“Quiet!” Arunden shouted, and took another deep draft of the bowl. “Quiet!”

There was a slow ebb of noise. Wind sighed in the leaves, and bodies shifted anxiously.

“Gault will move against us,” Arunden said, and motioned violently toward her with the bowl, spilling the liquor. “
That
is what you have done!”