Exiles Gate

'No.' He shook his head vehemently. 'No. Everything is the truth. I told you—I told you I had lied; but I did not mean to lie—'

'A second time I ask you.'

'I have not lied!'

'Nor omitted any truth.'

'I guide you the best that I know. I tell you that we cannot go back to that road, we have no choice but go through the hills.'

'Nor claimed to know more than you do.'

'I know these hills. I know the trails—here, here I do know where I am. This is where I fought. You asked me guide you through the other and I had only been that way the once, but here I know my way—I am trying, lady, I am trying to bring us through to the road beyond the passes; but if we go that road, through those passes, they will catch one glimpse of your hair, my lady, and we are all three dead.'

'Human folk, you mean.'

'Human folk. They watch the road. They pick off such as they can. They ambush qhal who come into the woods—'

'In this place where you lead us.'

'But they expect qhal to come in numbers. They expect humans serving the qhal, in bands of ten and twenty. They do not expect three.'

'It must happen,' Vanye said, 'that your folk fall to the qhal; and that such as Gault—know these self-same trails; and that Gault's folk have guides who bring them very well through these woods.'

'So my people will assume I am,' Chei said. 'That is exactly what they will think. That is why we do not go on that road. That is why moving quietly and quickly is the best that we can do. I am no safety to you. And you are a death sentence for me.'

'I believe him,' Morgaine said quietly, which was perhaps not the quarter from which Chei expected affirmation. He had that look, of a man taken thoroughly off his balance.

'So you will show us how to come on these folk,' Morgainesaid, 'by surprise.'

'I will show you how to avoid them.'

'No. You will bring us at their backs.'

Vanye opened his mouth in shock, to protest; and then disbelief warned him.

'To prove your good faith,' Morgaine said.

Surely Chei was thinking quickly. But every hesitation passed through his eyes, every fear for himself, every hope sorted and discarded. 'Aye,' he said in two more heartbeats. 'Ah. Now you have lied to me,' Morgaine said.

'No.' Chei shook his head vehemently. 'No. I will bring you there.'

'You are quick, I give you that; but a mortally unskilled liar, and you have scruples. Good. I wondered. Now I know the limit of what I can ask you. Rest assured I intend no such attack. Do you understand me?'

'Aye,' Chei said, his face gone from white to flushed, and his breath unsteady.

'I shall not overburden your conscience,' Morgaine said. 'I have one man with me who reminds me I have one.' She began to smother the fire with earth as if she had never noticed his discomfiture. 'Have no fear I shall harm your people. You will carry your own armor when we ride out tonight—on your horse or on your person, as you choose. I have some care of your life, and, plainly put, I want the weight off my horse.'

The flush was decided. Chei made a little formal bow where he sat—a quick-witted man, Vanye thought, and shamed by that deception of him, shamed again by a woman's kindly, arrogant manner with him. That she was qhal made it expected, perhaps—to a man attempting a new and unpalatable allegiance.

It was not a thing he could reason with, knowing Morgaine's short patience, and knowing well enough that she had that habit especially with strangers who put demands on her patience—blunt speech and a clear warning what her desires were and what she would have and not have.

She gave him the pots to scour; she re-packed the saddlebags. 'Go to sleep,' she bade Chei, who still sat opposite her. He was slow to move, but move he did, and went over where his saddle lay, and tucked down in his blanket.

'You are too harsh with him,' Vanye said to her,returning the pans wet from the spring.

'He is not a fool,' Morgaine said.

'Nor likes to be played for one.'

She gave him a moment's flat stare, nothing of the sort she gave Chei. It was a different kind of honesty. 'Nor do I. Lest he think of trying it.'

'You are qhal in his eyes. Be kinder.'

'And test his unbelief twice over?'

'You are a woman,' he said, because he had run out of lesser reasons. 'It is not the same. He is young. You shamed him just then.'

She gave him a second, flatter stare. 'He is a grown man. Let him manage.'

'You do not need to provoke him.'

'Nor he to provoke me. He is the one who needs worry where the limits are. Should I give him false confidence? I do not want to have to kill him, Vanye. That is where mistakes lead. Thee knows. Thee knows very well. Who of the two of us has ever laid hands on him?'

'I am a—'

'—man. Aye. Well, then explain to him that I did not shoot him when he ran and that was a great favor I did him. Explain that I will not lay hands on him if he makes a mistake. I will kill him without warning and from behind, and I will not lose sleep over it.' She tied the strings of the saddlebags and shifted Changeling's hilt toward her, where it lay, never far from her. 'In the meanwhile I shall be most mildly courteous, whatever you please. Go, rest. If we trusted this man, you and I both might get more sleep.'

'Plague take it, if you heard any—'

Across their little shoulder of rock and soil, the horses lifted their heads. Vanye caught it from the tail of his eye and his pulse quickened, all dispute stopped in mid breath. Morgaine stopped. Her gray eyes shifted from horses to the woods which shielded them from the road, as Chei lay rolled in his blanket, perhaps unaware.

Vanye got up carefully and Morgaine gathered herself at the same moment. He signed toward Chei's horse, tethered apart: that was the one that he worried might call out, and to that one he went while Morgaine went to their own pair, to keep them quiet.

The bay gelding had its ears up, its nostrils wide. He held it, jostled the tether as he would do with their own horses, held his hand ready should it take a notion to sound an alarm. It might be some predator had attracted their notice, even some straying deer, granted no worse things prowled these pine woods.

But in moments he heard the high clear ring of harness, of riders moving at a deliberate speed—down the road, he thought, and not ascending, though the hills played tricks. He ventured a glance back at Morgaine as he held his hand on the bay's nose and whispered to it in the Kurshin tongue. Between them Chei had lifted his head: Chei lay still and tense with his blanket up to his shoulder—facing him, his back to Morgaine, who was the one of them close enough to stop some outcry, but not in a position to see him about to make it.

Chei made no move, no sound. It was the horse that jerked its head and stamped, and Vanye clamped his hand down a moment, fighting it, sliding a worried glance Chei's way.

It was a long, long while that the sounds lasted in the wind and the distance, the dim, light jingle of harness, the sound of horses moving, in full daylight and with, perhaps, Heaven grant, more attention on the part of the riders to what was happening in the valley and what they might meet on the road, than to the chance someone might have occupied this withdrawn, rocky fold of the hills.

Thank Heaven, he thought, the fire was out, and the pots were washed, and the wind was coming off the road to them and not the other way.

There was quiet finally. A bird began to sing again. He gingerly let go the horse he held, looking at Chei all the while.

He nodded at Chei after a moment.

And Morgaine left the horses to walk back to the streamside.