Exiles Gate

he said to them in the Kurshin tongue, and Siptah strained at his grip and shivered, one long twitch up his foreleg.

'One rider,' Morgaine said, venturing a quick look from the edge of the stone.

'One man makes no sense.'

'A good many have cause to follow us.'

'Past the gate at Tejhos? Alone?'

She drew the black weapon. It was a dead man rode that track, and did not know it. He leaned his shoulders against the stone and looked out past it, as the stone was canted at an angle to the road.

The rider came on a dark horse. Mail glinted about him in the starlight.

Vanye's heart leapt and jolted against his ribs. For a moment he could not breathe. 'Chei,' he said, and reached for Morgaine's arm. 'It is Chei.'

'Stay here!'

He turned his head in dismay to look at her, at the weapon still in her hand. 'Liyo, for the love of Heaven—'

'We do not know that it is Chei. Stay here. Wait.'

He waited, leaning against the rock and breathing in shorter and shorter breaths as the faltering hoofbeats came closer.

'Liyo,' he whispered in horror, seeing her arm lift.

She fired as the rider came past them, a red fire breaking out in the meadow-grass; and the exhausted horse shied and fought for balance as the rider reined up and about, facing them.

Chei slid down, holding to the saddlehorn and clinging to the reins.

'Chei,' Vanye said, and left the horses, walking out from between the stones.

'Stop,' Morgaine said; and he stopped.

Chei only stood there, as if he were numb.

'Bring your horse in,' Morgaine said. 'Sit down.'

Chei staggered toward them and led the horse as far as the first stone. 'Where is my brother?' he asked. 'Where did Bron go?'

It was not the question Vanye had expected. It took the breath out of him.

'Bron is dead,' Morgaine said.

'Where did he go?'

'Changeling's gate has no other side.'

Chei slid down the face of the stone and leaned against it, his head resting against the rock. Vanye sank down facing him.

'Chei—I could not stop it. I did not know him—Chei?'

Chei neither moved nor lifted his head. There was only silence, long and deep, in which Morgaine at last moved and retrieved her flask from Siptah's saddle.

'Here,' she said, offering it.

Chei looked up and took it as if his hands and his mind were far separate. He fumbled after the stopper and drank, and slowly, as if it were a thoroughly unfamiliar task, stopped it again and gave it back.

'I feared,' Vanye said desperately, 'that it was the both of you. I could not see, Chei.'

'Rest,' Morgaine said, and came close and stood with Changeling folded in her arms. 'So long as we rest. After that, go back to your own land.'

'No,' Chei said with a shake of his head.

'Then take my order. You will go no further with us.'

Vanye looked around at her in dismay, at a face implacable in the starlight, a figure that had as well be some warlike statue.

'Liyo —'

'He is a danger,' she said in the Kurshin tongue. 'There is a gate yonder. Has thee forgotten?'

'There is not enough time!'

'Tell me how long it takes. There were wounded aplenty back there.'

'It is Chei! Would a qhal come asking where his brother was? Is that the kind of question a qhal would ask first, who knows what the gates are?'

'Barring other chances, there is the matter of bloodfeud. Of revenge.'

'Revenge? God in Heaven, has the man come seeking revenge on me? I wish he would—I wish he would say something—'

'In time to come, at some point of crisis—yes. Being what he is, he may well think of revenge, when he wakes from the shock of it. I will not have him with us, at your back—or mine.'

'For the love of God, liyo! No! I refuse this. I will not have it.'

'We gave him what chance we could. Here is an end of it. He goes, Vanye.'

'And where is my voice in this?'

'Thee is always free to choose.'

He stared at her in shock, numb. It was the old answer. It was forever true. It was real now, an ultimatum, from which there was, on this plain, near the gates—no return within her trust.

'You will go,' she said to Chei.

'Lady—'

'Life I have given you. Use it.'

'You have taken my brother's!'

'Aye, and spared yours just now. Do not stay to rest. Take your horse and go. Now.'

'Vanye—' Chei said.

'I cannot,' he said, forcing the words. 'I cannot, Chei.'

Chei said nothing for a moment. Then he struggled toward his feet. Vanye put out a hand to help him and he struck it away, fumbling after his horse's reins.

'At least,' Vanye said to Morgaine, 'let him rest here!'

'No.'

Chei did not look at him until he was in the saddle, and then he was all shadow, there between the menhirs.

He rode away without a word, whipping the exhausted horse with blows Vanye felt in his own flesh.

'Liyo,' he said then to Morgaine, without looking at her, 'I know your reasons. I know everything you would say. But, Mother of God, could we not have let him rest, could we not have tried him —?'

'Pity,' she said, 'will be your undoing. I did this. I have spared you the necessity. For your sake—and mine. And I have given him cause to hate me. That is my best gift. Best he lose his zeal for us altogether—before it kills him. That is the pity I have for him. And best it come from me rather than you. That is all the mercy I have.'

He stared at her in the darkness, somewhere between numbness and outrage. Now it was temper from her. Now she was righteous. 'Aye,' he said, and sat down abruptly, deciding that numbness was better, for the night, perhaps for a good many days to come.

There was a pain behind his eyes. He rested his head on his arm and tried to make it go away, or the pain in his heart to stop, or the fear in his gut; and none of them had remedy, except that Morgaine knew that pain, Morgaine was still with him, Morgaine was sunk in her own silence and Morgaine was bearing unto herself—she had told the truth—all the cruelty of which he was not capable.

The road stretched on and on in the starlight, unremitting nightmare, and Gault-Qhiverin clung to the course with what followers he had left to him. There was a wetness all down his side, the wound broken open again, though he had bound it, and the roan horse's gait did nothing to lessen the pain of his wounds.

'Go back,' his captain said to him. 'My lord, let us continue. You go back. We dare not lose you—' Which was true: there were many in Gault's household who were there for reasons which had much to do with court and intrigue and the saving of their lives—lose him they dared not, for fear of who might replace him in Morund.