Exiles Gate

'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?'

'I swear to you—' The eyes stayed fixed beyond her. 'I swear to you—every word is true. I will guide you. I will guide you away from all harm. On my soul I will not lie to you, lady. Whatever you want of me.'

Vanye drew in a breath and wrapped his arms about him, staring down at the man. Such terms he had sworn, himself, ilin –oath, by the scar on his palm and the white scarf about the helm— outcast warrior, taken up by a lord, an oath without recourse or exception. And hearing that oath, he felt something swell up in his throat—memory of that degree of desperation; and a certain remote jealousy, that of a sudden this man was speaking to Morgaine as his liege, when he knew nothing of her; or of him; or what he was undertaking.

God in Heaven, liyo, do you trust this man, and do you take him on my terms —have I trespassed too far, come too close to you, that now you take in another stray dog?

'I will take your oath,' Morgaine said. 'I will put you in Vanye's charge.'

'Do you believe him?' Morgaine asked him later, in the Kurshin tongue, while Chei lay naked in the sun on a blanket, sleeping, perhaps—far enough for decency on the grassy downslope of the riverside, but still visible from the campfire—sun is the best thing for such wounds, Morgaine had said. Sun and clean wind.

Not mentioning the salve and the oil and the matter of the man's fouled armor, which there was some salvaging, perhaps, with oil and work.

'A man swears,' Vanye said. 'The oath is as good as the man. But,' he said after a moment, kneeling there beside the dying fire, 'a man might sell his soul, for something of value to him. Such as his life.'