Exiles Gate

'If I say talk with the camp scullions, you talk with them!' Arunden snarled.

Vanye went stiff, but Morgaine's hand was up, preventing him, before the lord Arunden had even finished speaking.

'Well and good,' she said. 'To them I will offer my help, and turn this camp upside down, lord Arunden, when they profit from what I have to say. Or you can listen, and profit yourself and yours, and not come to Ichandren's fate or have to ask advice of your servants.'

'You are in a poor place to threaten us, woman! Have you looked around you?'

'Have you, my lord, and have you not noticed that qhal are taking your land and killing your people? I might make some difference in that. Let us talk, my lord Arunden! Let us sit down like sensible folk and I will tell you why I want to pass through your land.'

'No passage!' the priest cried, and people murmured in the shadows. But:

'Sit down,' Arunden said. 'Sit, and lie to us before we deal with you.'

More and more people appeared out of the dark and the woods, coming down into the light: a man or two at first, who stood with Arunden within the priest's line; and young women in breeches and braids, who scurried about seeing to the fire and bringing out blankets to spread by it—an appearance of decent courtesy, Vanye thought, standing by with his hand on his sword-hilt and a dart of his eye toward every move around the shadows on their own side of the line.

On his, the dour, broad-bellied hedge-lord stood by with a clutch of his own men and with Bron and Chei both across that line and talking urgently to him—he had his arms folded, and scowled continually; but made no overt gesture of hostility, only repeated ones of impatience.

The priest, for his part, drew another line when the rapidly-forming circle took shape about the fire, a mark in the dust with his sword and a holy sign over it, the which sent a cold feeling to Vanye's gut.

'Poor manners, these folk,' he said to Morgaine, looking constantly to their flanks and refusing to be distracted by the priest's doings.

'No saying where the archers may be posted,' Morgaine said. 'I will warrant there is one or two with clear vantage—that ridge yonder, perhaps. Mark you, we do not give up the weapons—hai, there—'

One man was moving to take the horses. Vanye moved to prevent it, one hand out, one hand on his sword; and that man stopped.

Chei's horse had strayed loose, uncertain and confused, and apt, Heaven knew, to bolt; but their own had stood where the reins had dropped, where Siptah now stood and jerked his head and snorted challenge, a wary eye on the man approaching.

'I would not,' he advised the man, who measured the war-horse's disposition and the owners' resolution with one nervous glance and kept his distance. 'I would not touch him at all, man.'

That stopped the matter. The man looked left and right as if searching for help or new orders, and edged away, leaving the warhorse and the mare and all their belongings to stand unmolested. Vanye whistled a low and calming signal, and the Baien gray grunted and shook himself, lifting his head again with a wary and defiant whuff.

'My lady,' Chei came saying then. 'Come. Please. Keep within the line.'

Morgaine walked toward the fire. Vanye walked after her, and stood behind her— ilin's place, hand on sword, within the wedge-shaped scratch in the dirt that made a corridor to the fire.

So Arunden stood, with his priest, and his men—all men: the only women were the servants, who came and went in the shadows.

'Sit,' Arunden muttered with no good grace, and sank down to sit cross-legged.

So Morgaine sat down in like fashion, and laid Changeling by her, largely shrouded in the folds of her cloak—which movement Arunden's eyes followed: Vanye saw it as he stood there.

But: 'Vanye,' Morgaine said, and he took her meaning without dispute, and sank down beside her, as others were settling and gathering close, Chei and Bron among them, on Arunden's side of the line, but beside them on Vanye's side.

'So you found this boy with the wolves,' Arunden said. 'How and why?'

'We were passing there,' Morgaine said. 'And Vanye did not like the odds.'

'Not like the odds.' Arunden chuckled darkly, and with his sheathed sword poked at the fire so that sparks flew up. 'Not like the odds. Where are you from? Mante?'

'Outside.'

There was long and sober silence. The fire crackled, the burning of new branches, the flare of pine needles.

'What—outside?'

'Beyond Mante. Things are very different there. I do not give my enemies to beasts. I deal with them myself.'

There was another long silence.

Then: 'Cup!' Arunden said.

'My lord,' the priest objected vehemently, scrambling up.

'Sit down, priest!' And as the so-named priest sank down with ill grace: 'Close up, close up, close up! Does a qhalur woman frighten you? Close up!'

No one stirred for a moment. Then Chei edged closer on Vanye's side. After that there was a general movement, men moving from the back of the circle forward on Arunden's side, edging closer on either side of them, blurring and obliterating the line the priest had drawn, two rough-looking men crowding close on Morgaine's side, so that Vanye felt anxiously after his sword-hilt.

'You!' Arunden jabbed his sheathed sword toward him across the fire. 'Sit down!'

'Sit as they do,' Morgaine said quietly, and Vanye drew a second nervous breath and came down off his heels to fold his legs under him, sitting cross-legged and a cursed deal further from a quick move. Morgaine reached and touched his hand, reminding him it was on the sword-hilt, forbidding him, and he let it go, glaring at Arunden with his vision wide on everything around him.

But a young woman brought a massive wooden bowl and gave it to Arunden: he held it out to the priest. 'Here,' he said. 'Here!'

The priest drank. Arunden did, and passed the massive bowl to his right.

So from hand to hand it passed, all about the gathering on that side before it came to Bron and to Chei.

There was utter silence then, a profound hush in every movement in the circle.

And from Chei, as he gave it to Vanye's hands, a frightened look, a pleading look—What, Vanye wondered. That they not refuse? That there was some harm in it?

'Take it,' Chei said. 'You must take it.'

It was honey drink, strong-smelling. Vanye looked doubtfully toward Morgaine, but he saw no likelihood of poison, seeing others had drunk, seeing that the moisture of it shone on Chei's mouth, 'liyo?'

She gave a slight nod, and he drank one fiery and tiny sip, hardly touching the tip of his tongue to it.

'Drink,' Chei whispered from his left. 'For God's sake, truly drink. They will know.'

He hesitated, feeling the sting of it, tasting herbs. Panic touched him. But they would insist for Morgaine too, he thought; if there was harm in it, she had to know. He took a mouthful and swallowed it down, tracing fire all down his throat.

He passed it slowly, amid the soft murmur of those about the fire. He held onto the bowl a moment, feeling that fire hit his stomach, tasting it all the way down with the sense that he knew to use on bitter berries, unfamiliar fare at strange table. Slowly he let her take it, while the murmur grew; and there was a troubled frown on her face—full knowledge what he had done, and why.

So she looked at him and drank a very little, he thought that she truly did, her own judgment: but she was a woman, she might be delicate in her habits; it was his place to convince them, and he thought that he had, sufficient good faith for the two of them.