Exiles Gate

'Until winter sets in?' A frown leapt to her eyes. 'It—'

'A few days, for Heaven's own sake. A few days. Five. I do not know.'

He had not wanted debate with her. He found his muscles gone tense, his breathing quickened; and she dejectedly flung a pebble into the little rill that ran at their feet.

Fret and fret, she would; she could not stay still, could not delay, could not rest, as if no other thought would stay in her head.

'We cannot wait here for the snows.'

'God in Heaven, listen to me. Let them move. Let us find out what they will do. That is the purpose of this.'

'In the meanwhile—'

'God help us. Tomorrow—tomorrow I will scout out and around.'

'We will,' she said.

'You can stay in—'

'We can gain a few leagues north. That is all. If the next camp is not so comfortable, then the one after —'

He rested his brow against his joined hands. 'Aye.'

'Vanye, I take your advice—we go slowly. We let the horses build back their strength. But we dare not be further from that gate than we can reach—whatever the lord in Mante decides to do.'

'Let him! Whatever he will do, let him! He will come after us. He will try us. He will not bolt.'

'We are risking everything on that. Thee knows.'

'Why?' he asked. 'Tell me why this lord should leave his people?'

'It is possible that they are not his people.'

He had thought that he had the shape of things, in this strange war that stretched from land to land, with curving horizons and stars too few or too many and moons that came and went. He tried to make a wise answer to that, so she should not think all her teaching wasted.

'You mean that he might be a human man, in qhalur shape.'

'It is the name,' she said.

'Skarrin?' It had no qhalur sound. But there were qhal who had uncommon names.

'It is a name in a very old language. I do not know where he should have heard it. Perhaps it is all chance. Languages have coincidence. But this, on a qhal—this name: there are among the gate worlds, a kind older than the qhal. And such of them as survive—are very dangerous.'

'What are you saying—older than the qhal? Who is older?'

'Older than the calamity the qhal know. Did I ever say it had only happened but the once?'

He said nothing. He scarcely understood the first calamity, how the qhal had made the gates and made time flow amiss, till Heaven set matters straight again, or as straight as matters could be, where gates remained live and potent, pouring their magics (their power, Morgaine insisted, do not be superstitious) into worlds where qhal survived.

'Thee does not understand.'

He shook his head ruefully. 'No.'

'I do not know,' she said. 'Only the name troubles me. A name and not a name, in that language Skarrin means an outsider. A foreigner.'

The dark was gathering. The first stars were out. He crossed himself against the omen, whatever it should mean.

'My father,' Morgaine said, 'was one such.'

He looked at her as if some chasm had opened at his feet, and all of it dark. She had named comrades from before his time—from before he or his father before him was ever born.

Of kin she had never spoken. She might have risen out of the elements, out of moonbeams, out of the tales of his people.

Iam not qhal, she had said time and again. And at one time: I am halfling.

'Are you saying this Skarrin—then—is kin of yours?'

'None, that I know.'

'Who was your father?'

'An enemy.' She cast another pebble into the darkening water, and did not look at him. 'In a land before yours. He is dead. Let it rest.'

He would not have trod on that ground for any urging.

'He was qhal, to your way of thinking,' Morgaine said. 'Give it peace. It has no significance here. Anjhurin was his name. You have heard it. Now forget ever you heard it. This Skarrin is no one I know, but my name might warn him, changed as it is.'

He took in his breath and let it go again, stripping a bit of grass in his fingers, looking only at that. And for a long time neither of them spoke.

He shrugged. 'I will scout out tomorrow,' he said, to have the peace back, to ease her mind, however he could. 'When I go for forage. There might be something over the hills.'

'Aye,' she said, and shifted round to lean her shoulder against his back. He sighed at the relief that gave the center of his back, against the armor-weight. 'But two of us would—'

'I. Do we need start every bird and rabbit 'twixt us and Mante?' He felt a sense of impending calamity, such that his breath came in with a shiver, and he let it go again. 'I will go.'

'Afoot?'

'No. I can ride the stream-course. There will be no difficulty.' He sighed against her weight on his shoulders, and looked at the sky in which the stars had begun to appear. 'We should rest,' he said sullenly.

'Is thee angry?'

He drew in his breath, and shifted about to face her. Aye, he was about to say. But the sober, gentle look she gave him was rare enough he hesitated to offend it.

She was always and always the same, always devil-driven, always restless, incapable even of reason.

And she had brought them through, always, somehow—was always beforehand, always quicker than her enemies expected, and not where they expected.

She might drive a sane man mad.

'Vanye?' she asked.

'What more?' he said shortly.

She was silent then, and sat back with a wounded look that shot through him and muddled all the anger he could muster.

It was not, not, Heaven knew, the face she turned to the world. Only to him. Only to him, in all the world.

He got to his feet and snatched up a wildflower at his other side, knelt and solemnly offered the poor thing to her, all closed up for the night as it was. Bruised, it had a strong grass smell, the smell of spring lilies, that reminded him suddenly of rides on a brown pony, of—Heaven knew—his boyhood.

Her eyes sought up to his. Her mouth curved at the edges, and solemnly she took it, her fingers brushing his hand. 'Is this all thee offers?'

'Aye,' he said, off his balance in his foolishness: she always had the better of him with words—was not, he suddenly thought, taking it for a jest; or was; he did not know, suddenly; it was like everything between them. He gestured desperately beyond his shoulder. 'Or,' he said briskly, deliberately perverse, 'I might find others, if I walked along the stream there. I might bring you a handful.'

Her eyes lightened, went solemn then, and slowly she rose up to her knees and put her arms about his neck, whereat the world went giddy as the smell of flowers.

'Do it tomorrow,' she said, a long moment later; and gently she began the buckles of his armor, that she had helped him with a hundred times to different purpose.

Changeling slipped from its place and fell with a rattle as they made themselves a nest there of their cloaks and blankets. She reached out and laid the dragon sword down beside them, the hilt toward her hand, and loosed his hair from the ivory pin.