Exiles Gate

Then a darkness greater than the night formed at Changeling's point, and drew in the air all about them. Wind shrieked and keened; men cried out in panic, and the dark lines went to chaos, some breaking forward to meet him, some turning to flee.

'Gate,' he heard cry throughout the enemy ranks, 'Gate!' —for gate it was, leading to Hell itself. He swung it and a horse and rider together went whirling away into dark, screaming with one terror. Others collided with each other in their attempt to escape his attack, and them he took in one stroke and the next, merciless, for there was no stopping it, there was no delicacy in it—it ate substance and spun it out again, streaming forms of living men away into Hell and cold—

—one and the next and the next as Arrhan cut a curving swath through attackers who trampled each other trying to flee it.

'Archers!' he heard cry. It was for his liege and his comrades he had concern. He reined aside to bring the hell-thing to the defense of his own—taking missiles askew with the wind, trying to shield his liege if he could find her in the unnatural light and the blinding wind.

'Liyo!' he shouted, desperate, fighting when he must, when some rider rushed him. The gate-force quivered through his arm and his shoulder and deafened him with its screaming; his eyes grew full of the hell-light and the sights and the faces till he was numb and blinded.

'Liyo!'

'Vanye!' he heard, and went to that thin sound, turning Arrhan, forcing her with his heels as the mare faltered in blind confusion.

Riders swept toward him. He swung the sword up at the nearest and saw the horrified face in the light of the blade, saw the mouth open in a cry of disbelief.

'Bron!' he cried, wrenching the blade aside, veering so that Arrhan skidded and fought wildly for balance.

Bron was gone. The bartered horse thundered past riderless.

He guided Arrhan about in a stumbling turn, and saw Morgaine beyond, silver and black, and Siptah's eyes wild in the opal fire.

'Follow!' she ordered him, and reined about and rode for the dark and the road.

He did not even think then; he followed. He drove his heels into Arrhan's flanks and swept to her right and behind, to keep Morgaine safe from what he did not know and could not see for the shock to his soul and the blinding of his eyes. If there were enemies still behind he did not know. He held Changeling naked to his right, protecting them both, for in that howling wind no arrow could reach them.

Up, up and up the steep slope, until horses faltered on the wet grass, and Siptah came about and Arrhan slowed, blowing froth back from her bit.

'Sheathe it,' Morgaine cried. 'Sheathe it!'

He discovered the sheath safe in its place at his side: he had done that much before he lost himself, reflexive and unremembered act. He took the sheath in a trembling hand and turned the other numbed and aching wrist to wobble the point toward safety, the only thing that would contain Changeling's fire.

That small aperture was a goal he suddenly feared he could not make without calamity. His hand began to shake.

'Give over!' Morgaine said in alarm.

He made it. He slid the point home and the fire dimmed and died, so that he was truly blind. His right arm ached from fingers to spine. He had no strength in it nor feeling in his fingers. 'I killed Bron,' he said with what voice he could manage, quite calmly. 'Where is Chei?'

'I do not know,' Morgaine said, reining Siptah close to him. There was hardness in her voice, was very steel. He could not have borne any softer thing. 'We did not take them all. Some escaped. I do not know which ones.'

'Forgive—' His breath seemed dammed up in him. 'I—'

'We are near Tejhos. There is a chance that Mante will mistake one gate-fire for the other. At least for the hour.' She turned Siptah on the slope and rode, Arrhan followed by her own will, dazed and blind as he.

'Too near the gate,' he heard her say. 'Too cursed near. We must be nearly on Tejhos-gate. I should never have given it to you.'

'Bron is dead,' he said again, in the vague thought that she might not have understood him. He had to say it again to believe it. The fabric of the world seemed thinned and perilously strained about him and what he had done seemed done half within some other place, unlinked and without effect here. Things that Were could not be mended piece to piece if he did not say it till it took hold of him. 'Chei may have gone with him—O God. O God!'

He began to weep, a leakage from his eyes that became a spasm bowing him over his saddle.

'Is thee hurt?' Morgaine asked him sharply, grasping Arrhan's rein. They had stopped somehow. He did not recall. 'Is thee hurt?'

'No,' he managed to say. 'No.' He felt Siptah brush hard against his leg and felt Morgaine touch him, a grip on his shoulder which he could hardly feel through the armor. He was alone inside, half deaf with the winds, blinded by the light which still swung as a red bar passing continually in his vision. He was drowning in it, could not breathe, and he was obliged to say: 'No. Not hurt,' when next he could draw a breath, because she had no time for a fool and a weakling who killed a comrade and then could not find his wits again. He pushed himself up by the saddlebow and groped after the reins.

'Give me the sword,' she said. 'Give it!'

He managed to wind the reins about his numbed right hand and to pass Changeling back to her with his left.

'Brighter,' he remembered, competent in this at least, that his mind recollected something so difficult amid the chaos. He indicated with a lifting of his left hand toward the northeast, as the road ran. 'There. There will be Tejhos gate.'

She stared in that direction; she hooked Changeling to her belt and they rode again at all the pace the horses could bear. His right arm ached in pulses that confused themselves with the rhythm of the horses or with his heartbeats, he could not tell which. He worked the fingers desperately, knowing the likelihood of enemies. He scanned darkened hills the crests of which swam with the blurring of his eyes.

'Gate-force,' Morgaine said in time. 'We are very near. Vanye, is thee feeling it?'

'Aye,' he murmured. 'Aye, liyo.' It was inside the armor with him, was coiled about his nerves and his sinew, it crept within his skull and corrupted sight and reason. They must go near that thing. Perhaps ambush waited for them.

We will lose everything we have done, he thought, everything she has suffered this far—lost, for a fool who mishandled the sword. I should have sheathed it when it went amiss. I should have ridden back. I should have—

—should have—known what I struck—

O God, it could as well have been her.

'Vanye!'

He caught himself before he pitched. He braced himself against the saddlehorn and felt Siptah's body hit his right leg, Morgaine holding him by the straps of his armor, though he was upright now without that.

'Can thee stay the saddle? Shall I take the reins?'

'I am well enough,' he murmured, and took the reins in his left hand and let his numbed right rest braced between him and the saddlebow. If he could do one thing right this cursed night it was to dispose himself where he could not fall off and compound his liege's troubles.

Siptah took to the lead then; and the mare lengthened her stride to match him, struggling now, on heart alone.

Where are we going? he wondered. Is it enemies she fears? Or do we go toward the gate, to hold it?

His very teeth ached now with the emanations, and he felt a pain like knives driven into every joint of his right arm, an ache that crept across his chest and into his vitals. He wished he had respite to faint away or to rest; and dutifully fought not to, for what use he was. The pain reached his spine and his skull, one with the pounding of