Exiles Gate

land, where you found me.'

'Ah, no. Thee saw only the end of it. In Andur-Kursh I did my very worst. And most I killed were my friends.' It was rare she would speak of that. There was a sudden bleakness in her face, as if it were carved of bone, and as if there were only the qhal-blood in her and nothing else. 'But thee says it: this is not Andur-Kursh. Thee trusts this man, and I had rather be where I know what a man stands to gain—have I not said I have no virtue? But so be it. I do not say I have always been right, either. We will go his way.'

He was frightened then, with a fear not unlike the moments before battle.

The north, she had said—an old enemy. And he argued against her instincts which had saved them a hundred times over, however unlikely her choices.

Heaven save them, who in this land could know her name, when they had never passed this way in their lives, nor had aught to do with the people of it?

'We are going on,' he said to Chei, who looked at them with bewilderment. 'I will walk. You ride. My liege thinks it too much risk to venture Morund for a horse.'

There was still the bewilderment in Chei's eyes. And gratitude. 'She is right,' he said, in innocence.

He did not want to take it for omen.

He went up to the ridge and fetched the horses down. He saddled them, and arranged their gear.

'Get up,' he said then to Chei, who waited, no more enlightened than before. 'I am leading the horse. From time to time we will trade places.'

'And hereafter,' Morgaine said, touching Chei on the shoulder before he could get to the saddle, 'should we meet anyone, if you have heard any other name than Morgaine and Vanye—consider your own safety and forget that ever you heard it: there are those who would do worse to you than ever Gault did, to have their hands on anyone who knew different—and you could not tell them what they would want. Do not ask me questions. For your own sake.'

'Lady,' Chei said to her, half-whispering. He looked straight into her eyes close at hand, and his face was pale. 'Aye, lady.'

Vanye walked, the qhal-witch rode, when they had come down the streamside and found that trail Chei knew—that narrow track the fey-minded deer and determined borderers took which ended, often with like result, on Gault's land.

Chei watched them from his vantage—the qhalur witch, the man who deferred to her at most times and argued with her with a reckless violence that made his gut tighten instinctively; a man knew, a Man knew lifelong, that the qhal-lords were not patient of such familiarity—or Vanye himself had deceived him, and was not human. But he could not believe that when he looked in Vanye's brown and often-worried eyes, or when Vanye would do him some small and unnecessary kindness or take his side—he knew that Vanye had done that—in argument.

What these two were to each other he still could not decide. He had watched all their movements, the gestures, the little instants that an expression would soften, or she would touch his arm at times when she gave an order—but never did he touch her in that same way or truly bid her anything, for all he might raise his voice and dispute her.

They are lovers, he thought sometimes. Then he was equally sure that they were not—not, in the way the man deferred to her: my lady, Vanye would say; or my liege, or a third word he did not understand, but which likely signified the same.

Now they raged at each other, argued in voices half-whisper, half-shout, in which debate he—Vanye had said it—was undoubtedly the center of matters.

It was not the threat to his life that bewildered him. It was that there was argument possible at all. And between arguments he saw a thing he had never, in all his life, beheld. He watched them in a fascination which, increasing, absorbed his fear.

Unholy, he thought. But there seemed profound affection between them. There was more than that—but not in the way of any man and any woman he had known. It was that loyalty which bound the bands together.

It was that devotion for which men had followed Ichandren till he died.

It was that motion of the heart which he thought had died in him; and it ached of a sudden, it ached so that he rode along with the branches and the leaves raking him, and the tears running down his face—not fear such as he had felt in the night, but a quiet ache, for no reason at all that he could think of except he was alone.

He reckoned even that it was a spell the witch had cast over him, that from the time she surprised him with that look into his eyes, from that moment his soul had been snared. Now he found himself weeping again—for Falwyn and the rest, and for Bron and Ichandren his lord, and even for his father, which was foolish, because his father was many years dead.

He was weak, that was all. When the lady reined back and the man stopped the horse under them, saying they would rest, he was ashamed, and pretended exhaustion, keeping his face toward the horse as he climbed down.

So he sat with them, at the side of what had become a dirt track, and tucked his knees up and bowed his head against his arms so he should not have to show his eyes damp.

He should find some means to get a weapon and break from them—in this night, in this tangle he knew and they did not. The man he had once been would have done something to resist them, be it only slide off the horse and hope that he could put brush between them and him, and lie hidden.

But he let go his hopes in all other directions. He began truly to mean the oath that he had sworn. He wiped his face, disguising tears as sweat, despite the night air, and took the cup of water they passed him, and took their concern—for all that he had thought Vanye's earlier anger was half for him, Vanye's hand was gentle on his shoulder, his voice was gentle as he inquired was he faint.

'No,' he said. 'No. I will walk a while.'

'Horses will fly,' Vanye muttered to that. 'We have half the night gone. What do we look to find ahead?'

'I will know the border,' he said. 'We have come halfway.'

'As you knew the plains yonder?'

'This, I know,' he insisted, anxious, and found the stirrup as the lady mounted up. He heaved himself into the saddle and took his seat as the horse started to move, Vanye walking ahead on the road, defined in a ray of moonlight and gone again, ghostly warrior in forest-color and mail and leather, the white scarf about his helm, the sheen of the sword hilt at his shoulders the most visible aspect of him. And the lady was no more than gray horse and shadow: she had put on her cloak and the dark hood made her part of the night.

Only he himself was visible, truly visible, to any ambush—helmless, in a pale linen shirt and astride the white mare that shone like a star in the dark. He thought of arrows, thought of the gates of Morund which lay beyond the woods, across the ancient Road.

He thought of Ichandren's skull bleaching there, and the bodies of the others cast on Morund's midden heap, and shivered in the wind, taking up his gray blanket again and wrapping it about himself partly for the cold and partly that he felt all too visible and vulnerable. He trembled; his teeth chattered if he did not clench them, and every measured tread of the horse beneath him, the whisper of the wind, the small sounds of the night—seemed all part of a terrible dream begun at Gyllin-brook.

He had ridden this way, part of Ichandren's band. In those days they had been Gault's allies; in those days they had won victories. For a few years there had seemed to be a turning in their fortunes against the northlord.

It was the same road. But the boy who had traveled it, keen on revenge for both mother and father, on winning a sure victory against the thing Gault had become . . . had become a thin and beaten man, much the wiser, in the company of strangers and on a journey which at one moment seemed swift and full of turns, and in this forever-lasting night—such a peak of terror that it could not last; as the things they did to his comrades could not last; as the nights atop the hill could not last: there was always a morning, and done was done, and a man survived somehow, that was all—but O God, the hours between, that a man had to live. . . .

They rested yet again. Quietly the woman spoke—some suggestion which Vanye refused: perhaps, Chei thought, it was to put him off the horse and make him walk a time. And Vanye would not, whatever it was, which imagined kindness reassured him and made him warmer in the long night.

But he was afraid with a growing fear—that he had not accurately reckoned their pace: the rides he recalled