The Complete Morgaine (71 page)

Then, pointing, they asked to see the other blade that he carried, and he frowned and shook his head, laying his hand on that carven hilt at his belt. They cajoled, and he would not, for an Honor-blade was not for their hands. It was for suicide, this one, and it was not his, but one he carried, on his oath to deliver it.

“An
elarrh
thing,” they concluded, in tones of awe; and he had not the least idea of their meaning, but they ceased asking, and showed no more desire to touch it.

“Sin,” he said, thinking to draw a little knowledge from the children, “do men with weapons come here?”

At once there was puzzlement on Sin's face and in the eyes of the others, down to the least child. “You are not of
our
forest,” Sin observed, and used the plural
you
—surmise which shot all too directly to the mark. Vanye shrugged, cursing his rashness, which had betrayed him even to children. They knew the conditions of their own land, and had sense enough to find out a stranger who knew not what he should.

“Where are you from?” a little girl asked. And, wide-eyed, with a touch of delicious horror: “Are you
sirren?
”

Others decried that suggestion in outrage, and Vanye, conscious of his helplessness in their small hands, bowed his head and busied himself hooking his sword to his belt. He pulled on the ring of the belt that crossed his chest, drawing the sword to his shoulder behind, hooked it to his side. Then: “I have business,” he said, and walked away. Sin made to follow. “Please no,” he said, and Sin fell back, looking troubled and thoughtful, which in no wise comforted him.

He walked back to the hall, and there found Morgaine, sitting with the clan elders and with some of the young men and women who had stayed from their day's work to attend her. Quietly he approached, and they made place for him as before. For a long time he sat listening to the talk that flowed back and forth between Morgaine and the others, understanding occasional small sentences, or the gist of them. Morgaine sometimes interrupted herself to give him an essential word—strange conversation for her, for they spoke much of their crops, and their livestock and their woods, of all the affairs of their village.

Like,
he thought,
a village discussing with its lord their state of affairs.
Yet she accepted this, and listened more than she spoke, as was ever her habit.

At last the villagers took their leave, and Morgaine settled next the fire and relaxed a time. Then he came and rested on his knees before her, embarrassed by what he had to confess, that he had betrayed them to children.

She smiled when he had told her. “So. Well, I do not think it much harm. I have not been able to learn much of how
qhal
may be involved in this land, but, Vanye, there are things here so strange I hardly see how we could avoid revealing ourselves as strangers.”

“What does
elarrh
mean?”

“It comes from
arrh,
that is
noble,
or
ar,
that is
power.
The words are akin, and it could be either, depending on the situation . . . either or both: for when one addressed a
qhal
-lord in the ancient days as
arrhtheis,
it meant both his status as a
qhal
and the power he had. To Men in those days, all
qhal
had to be
my lord,
and the power in question was that of the Gates, which were always free to them, and never to Men . . . it has that distressing meaning too.
Elarrh
meant something belonging to power, or to lords. A thing—of reverence or hazard. A thing which . . . Men do not touch.”

Qhalur
thoughts disturbed him, the more he comprehended the
qhalur
tongue. Such arrogance was hateful . . . and other things Morgaine had told him, which he had never guessed, of
qhalur
maneuverings with human folk, things which hinted at the foundations of his own world, and those disturbed him utterly. There was much more, he suspected, which she dared not tell him. “What will you say to these folk,” he asked, “and when—about the trouble we have brought on their land?
Liyo,
what do they reckon we are, and what do they think we are doing among them?”

She frowned, leaned forward, arms on knees. “I suspect that they reckon us both
qhal,
you perhaps halfling, . . . but after what fashion or with what feeling I can find no delicate means to ask. Warn them? I wish to. But I would likewise know what manner of thing we shall awaken here when I do so. These are gentle folk; all that I have seen and heard among them confirms that. But what defends them . . . may not be.”

It well agreed with his own opinion, that they trod a fragile place, safe in it, but perilously ignorant, and enmeshed in something that had its own ways.

“Be careful always what you say,” she advised him. “When you speak in the Kurshin tongue, beware of using names they might know, whatever the language. But henceforth you and I should speak in their language constantly. You must gather what you can of it. It is a matter of our safety, Vanye.”

“I am trying to do that,” he said. She nodded approval, and they occupied themselves the rest of the day in walking about the village and the edge of the fields, talking together, impressing in his memory every word that could be forced there.

 • • • 

He had expected that Morgaine would choose to leave by the next morning, and she did not; and when that night came and he asked her would they leave on the morrow, she shrugged and in talking of something else, never answered
the question. By the day after that, he did not ask, but took his ease in the village and settled into its routine, as Morgaine seemed to have done.

It was a healing quiet, as if the long nightmare that lay at their backs were illusion, and this sunny place were true and real. There was no word from Morgaine of leaving, as if by saying nothing she could wish away all hazard to them and their hosts.

But conscience worried at him, for the days they spent grew to many more than a handful. And he dreamed once, when they slept side by side—both slept, for sitting watch seemed unnecessary in the center of so friendly a place: he came awake sweating, and slept again, and wakened a second time with an outcry that sent Morgaine reaching for her weapons.

“Bad dreams in such a place as this?” she asked him. “There have been places with more reason for them.”

But she looked concerned that night too, and lay staring into the fire long afterward. What the dream had been he could not clearly remember, only that there seemed something as sinister in his recollection as the creeping of a serpent on a nest, and he could not prevent it.

These folk will haunt me,
he thought wretchedly. They two had no place here, and knew it; and yet selfishly lingered, out of time and place, seeking a little peace . . . taking it as a thief might take, stealing it from its possessors. He wondered whether Morgaine harbored the same guilt . . . or whether she had passed beyond it, being what she was, and impelled by the need to survive.

He was almost moved to argue it with her then; but a dark mood was on her, and he knew those. And when he faced her in the morning, there were folk about them; and later he put it off again, for when he faced the matter, the odds against them outside this place were something he had no haste to meet: Morgaine was gathering forces, and was not ready, and he was loath to urge her with arguments . . . when the
geas
fell on her, she passed beyond reason; and he did not want to be the one to start it.

So he bided, mending harness, working at arrows for a bow which he traded of a villager who was an excellent bowyer. It was offered free, once admired, but in his embarrassment Morgaine intervened with the offer of a return gift, a gold ring of strange workmanship, which must have lain buried in her kit a very long time. He was disturbed at that, suspecting that it might have meant something to her, but she laughed and said that it was time she left it behind.

So he had the bow, and the bowyer a ring that was the envy of his companions. He practiced his archery with the young folk and with Sin, who dogged his tracks faithfully, and strove to do everything that he did.

In the pen and agraze on the grassy margin of the fields, the horses grew sleek and lazy as the village's own cattle . . . and Morgaine, always the one who could not rest in an hour's delay, sat long hours in the sun and talked with the
elders and the young herders, drawing on a bit of goatskin what became a great marvel to the villagers, who had never seen a map. Though they had the knowledge of which it grew, they had never seen their world set forth in such a perspective.

Mirrind, the village was named; and the plain beyond the forest was Azeroth; the forest was Shathan. In the center of the great circle that was Azeroth, she drew a skein of rivers, feeding a great river called the Narn; amid that circle also was written
athatin,
which was
the Fires
—or plainly said, the Gate of the World.

So peaceful Mirrind knew of the Gate, and held it in awe:
Azerothen Athatin.
Thus far their knowledge of the world did extend. But Morgaine did not question them on it closely. She made her map and lettered it in
qhalur
runes, a fine fair hand.

Vanye learned such runes . . . as he learned the spoken language. He sat on the step of the meeting hall and traced the symbols in the dust, learning them by writing all the new words that he had learned, and trying to forget the scruples in such things that came of being Kurshin. The children of Mirrind, who thronged him when he would tend the horses or who had such zeal to fetch his arrows that he feared for their safety, quickly found this exercise tedious and deserted him.

“
Elarrh
-work,” they pronounced it, which meant anything that was above them. They had awe of it, but when there was no amusement to come of it, and no pictures, they drifted away—all but Sin, who squatted barefoot in the dust and tried to copy.

Vanye looked up at the lad, who worked so intently, and poignant recollection stirred in him, of himself, who had never been taught, but that he had sought it, who had insisted on having the things his legitimate brothers were born to have—and thereby gained what learning his mountain home could offer.

Now among all the children of Mirrind, here sat one who reached and wanted beyond the others, and who—when they had taken their leave—would be most hurt, having learned to desire something Mirrind could not give. The boy had no parents; they had died in some long-ago calamity. He had not asked into it. Sin was everyone's child, and no one's in particular.
The others will be only ordinary,
he thought,
but what of this one?
Remembering his sword in Sin's small hand, he felt a chill, and blessed himself.

“What do you,
khemeis?
” Sin asked.

“I wish you well.” He rubbed out the runes with his palm and rose up, with a great heaviness on him.

Sin looked at him strangely, and he turned to go up the steps of the hall. There was a sudden outcry somewhere down Mirrind's single street . . . not the shrieks of playing children, which were frequent, but a woman's outcry; and in
sudden apprehension he turned. Hard upon it came the shouting of men, in tones of grief and anger.

He hesitated, his pulse that had seemed to stop now quickening into familiar panic; he hung between that direction and Morgaine's, paralyzed in the moment, and then habit and duty sent him running up the steps to the shadowy hall, where Morgaine was speaking with two of the elders.

He needed not explain:
Changeling
was in her hand and she was coming, near to running.

Sin lingered at the bottom of the steps, and tagged after them as they walked the commons toward the gathering knot of villagers. The sound of weeping reached them . . . and when Morgaine arrived the gathering gave way for her, all but a few: the elders Melzein and Melzeis, who stood trying to hold back their tears; and a young woman and a couple in middle years who knelt holding their dead. To and fro they rocked, keening and shaking their heads.

“Eth,” Morgaine murmured, staring down at a young man who had been one of the brightest and best of the village: hardly in his twenties, Eth of clan Melzen, but skilled in hunting and archery, a happy man, a herder by trade, who had laughed much and loved his young wife and had no enemies. His throat had been cut, and on his half-naked body were other wounds that could not have brought death in themselves, but would have caused great pain before he was killed.

They gave him his death,
Vanye thought fearfully.
He must have told them what they wanted.
Then he reckoned what kind of man he had become, who could think foremost of that. He had known Eth. He found himself trembling and close to being sick as if he had never looked on the like.

Some of the children were sick, and clung to their parents crying. He found Sin against his side, and set his hand on the boy's shoulder, drew him over to his clan elders and gave him into their care. Bytheis took Sin in his arms and Sin's face was still set and stricken.

“Should the children look on this?” Morgaine asked, shocking them from their daze. “You are in danger. Set armed men out on the road and all about the village and let them watch. Where was he found? Who brought him?”

One of the youths stepped forward—Tal, whose clothes were bloody and his hands likewise. “I, lady. Across the ford.” Tears ran down his face. “Who has done this? Lady—
why?
”

 • • • 

Council met in the hall, the while the Melzen kindred prepared the body of their son for burial; and there was unbearable heaviness in the air. Bythein and Bytheis wept quietly; but Sersen-clan was angry in its grief, and its elders were long in gathering the self-possession to speak. The silence waited on them, and at last the old man of the pair rose and walked to and fro across the fireside.