Exiles Gate

Chapter Six

 'Come,' Bron said, his hands on Chei's shoulders, while Chei's thoughts reeled between one side and the other of the forces gathered there at odds. There was the lady and Vanye and there was Arunden ep Corys, a sudden and hard-handed lord. Calamity was possible at any instant.

But Bron held to him as if there were no chance in all the world that he was a piece of Gault's handiwork. 'Come,' Bron said gently, as if there were no lunacy at all in his arriving in camp in company with a qhalur witch and a man in strange armor. 'Tell me; tell me what I can do; O my God, Chei—' Of a sudden Bron hugged him tight again and pressed his head against his shoulder; and Chei embraced him a second time, appalled at how thin his strong brother had become, how there was so little between his hands and Bron's ribs, and how there was a fragile, insubstantial feel about him.

'I am not theirs,' Chei insisted, over and over again. 'Not theirs. I am not lying, Bron, I swear to you I am not Changed.'

'I believe you,' Bron said. 'I know, I know, what shall I do, what do you want me to do?'

'Just swear for me. Talk to Arunden.'

'Tell him what? Who are they? What are they?'

'Friends. Friends to us.'

Bron set him back and stared at him, bewildered, desperate—at his little brother who was a fool and could not think of anything but seeing him, until now, now that he knew what he had known from birth, that Bron would do the same as he—would believe him because he wanted to believe, and become another fool for his sake, risking his life and his soul for the remotest hope Chei was alive and still his brother. That was what was in Bron's eyes, that was the struggle to believe, while his hands trembled on Chei's arms and strayed once and twice to his face and his shoulders as if he could not believe he was flesh and blood.

'You look tolerably well,' Bron said.

'They have been good to me, Bron, truly—they have. You—?'

'Well enough, I am well enough.'

'You limp.'

'Ah, well, that will mend, it will mend. So do you.—My God, my God—'

'There was a brooch Mama had—it was a marsh rose. There was a place in the wall we used to hide our special things—'

'O God, Chei—'

'—I gave you that scar on your chin; I hit you with a harness buckle—you teased me about a girl; her name was Meltien. She died in the winter march—'

'Brother—' Bron hugged him to silence. They wept together; and when he could speak again:

'Bron, I have sworn to take them north on the Road; and I have to do that—'

'There are arrows aimed at us.' Bron took his face between his hands and looked again at him, intensely. 'Who are they? You will have to tell me. I do not understand. God knows Arunden does not. What shall we do?'

'I will talk to them. They will talk with Arunden if he will listen—'

'He will listen,' Bron said; and hugged him close against his side, so that they shielded each other as they went to Arunden, Bron armorless as he was, himself in a mail shirt that was in no wise proof against the lady's weapons.

But a man barred their way, a man with a drawn sword and the emblem on him of Holy Church; and Bron stopped still, his hand clenched on Chei's shirt.

'If you will not kill it,' the priest said, 'I  will. Your soul is in danger, Bron ep Kantory.'

'Your life is,' Chei answered, and would have pushed Bron behind him, but Bron stood fast. 'My lady!'

'Hold!' Arunden said.

'My lord,' the priest protested.

But Arunden walked into the matter, and waved the priest off. And Chei stood with a weakness still in his knees, uncertain which of them was supporting the other. Words froze in his throat. They always did, at the worst of times.

'There is a curse in him,' the priest said. 'It is a curse has come to us in a friend's shape. It is Gault's gift. Kill them. Have no words with them.'

'Then we would know nothing Gault wants,' Arunden said. 'Would we, priest?—Talk, boy. What have we here? What do you bring us, eh? More of Gault's handiwork?'

'The lord is talking, at least,' Vanye said in a low voice, seeing what transpired, with the brothers and Arunden and two armed men. His hand was still on his sword, from the first Chei had called out.

And he thanked Heaven that Arunden had moved to stop the man.

'Hope that this brother's word has some weight,' Morgaine said in the Kurshin tongue. 'I should not have let us leave the road. That was the first mistake. Stay to my left.'

'Aye,' he murmured, feeling the sting of that, and his heart was pounding, the old, familiar fear, the nightmare of too many such choices. But Chei came toward them and fear shifted to a frail, desperate hope, seeing that Bron continued to talk to Arunden.

'He will speak to you,' Chei said, casting an anxious glance between him and Morgaine. 'I swear to you— Arunden is not a treacherous man: God witness, he is not a careful one, either—he is afraid of you, lady, and he cannot admit it. Be patient with him. That is a priest of God—that one, with the sword. Be careful of him.'

Vanye looked a second time. It did not look like a priest. He drew in a quick, anxious breath. It had been long since he had found anything of the Church; and there had been so much doubtful he had had to choose on his own: so far he had come, and changed so much—and a priest—

He was starkly afraid to face anything of the Church nowadays: that was the proof that he was damned, and he did not need a priest to threaten him with Hell.

Or to threaten Morgaine, or curse her with curses she would not regard, but which would all the same bring no luck to them.

'We do not need the priest,' he muttered. 'Send him away.'

'I do not know,' Chei said in evident consternation. 'I do not think—I do not see how . . . my lady—'

'No matter,' Morgaine said. Gold flashed in the seam of her cloak. She rested Changeling's cap on the ground, her hands on the quillons of the dragon grip. 'If it saves us time, let us be done with this.'

Vanye opened his mouth to protest. But it was not that Morgaine did not know the Church. There was nothing he could tell her. There was nothing he knew how to tell her.

He longed—God in Heaven, he longed for someone to tell him he had done right, and that his soul was not so stained as he thought it was, or a gentle priest like those in Baien-an or even old San Romen, who would lay hands on him and pray over him and tell him if he did thus and thus he was not damned.

But this priest did not have any gentle look. This one was damnation and hellfire, and met them with the uplifted cross of a sword.

'No further,' the priest said, and drew a line in the dirt, between them and his lord. 'Talk behind that.'

Morgaine grounded Changeling just behind that line, the dragon hilt in her hands, and a hell between them that the priest could not in his wildest dreams, imagine.

'Do we talk to this?' she asked scornfully, looking past the priest to Arunden. 'Is he lord in this camp? Or are you?'

'My lady,' Chei cautioned her, and Bron, who had come halfway between Arunden and his brother, stopped still and looked appalled.

'I will talk with whoever is lord here,' Morgaine said. 'If it is this man, so be it. His word will bind you. And I will take it for yours.'