Exiles Gate

on, Vanye told himself, cursing every step the bay made under him. Sweat broke out, wind-chilled on his face. He clenched the saddlehorn and thought of the red packet in his belt-pocket.

Not yet, he thought. Not for this. To every jolt and every uneven spot: not for this, not for this—

Across the plain, the mountains—not the peaks of a range like the Cedur Maje of his homeland, but a wall of rock which giants might have built, as if the world had broken, and that were the breaking-point, under a sky so brilliant with stars and moon it all but cast a shadow.

'They are not preventing us this far,' he said to Morgaine.

He wished in one part of his reeling mind that the enemy would turn up, now, quickly, before they were committed to this—that somehow something would happen to send them on some other and better course.

But there was no sign of it.

They came down onto the plain at last, a gradual flattening of the course they rode. Vanye turned as best he could and looked back at the track they had made as they entered the grassy flat, a trail too cursed clear under the heavens. 'As well blaze a trail,' he muttered. If there had been the choice of skirting the hills instead of taking Chei's proposed course across the plain, it was rapidly diminishing.

They drew their company together now, Hesiyyn riding with them as they struck out straight across.

And the cliffs which had been clear from the hillside showed only as a rim against the horizon.

Then was easier riding. Then he finally seized hold of his right leg by the boot-top and hauled it with difficulty over the saddlehorn, wrapped his arms about his suffering ribs and with a look at Morgaine that assured him she knew he was going to rest for a while, bowed his head, leaned back against the cantle and gave himself over to the bay's steady pace in a sickly exhaustion.

He roused himself only when they paused to trade mounts about. 'No need,' Morgaine said, sliding down from Arrhan's back. 'That horse is fit enough to go on carrying you, and I will take Siptah: I weigh less.'

He was grateful. He took the medicines she carried for him, washed them down with a drink from her flask, and sat there ahorse while others stretched their legs. It was not sleep, that state of numbness he achieved. It was not precisely awareness either. He knew that they mounted up again; he knew that they moved, he trusted that Morgaine watched the land around them.

No other did he trust . . . except he reasoned if betrayal was what Chei and his men intended, it did not encompass losing their own lives, not lives so long and so dearly held; and that meant some warning to them.

Some warning was all his liege needed. And half-asleep and miserable as he was, he continually rode between her and them: it was a well-trained horse, if rough-gaited, and Siptah, he thanked Heaven, tolerated it going close by him.

He did truly sleep for a while. He jerked his head up with the thought that he was falling, caught his balance, and saw the cliffs no nearer.

Or they were vaster than the eye wanted to see. His leg had gone numb. He hauled it back over, and his eyes watered as the muscles extended. Everything hurt.

And the riding went on and on, while a few clouds drifted across the stars and passed, and a wind rose and rippled through the endless grass.

Another change of horses. This time he did dismount, and walked a little, as far as privacy to relieve himself, discovering that he could, which did for one long misery; and saw to Arrhan's girth and the bay's.

But facing the necessity to haul himself up again, he stood there holding the saddlehorn and trying, with several deep breaths, to gather the wind and the courage to make that pull.

'Vanye!' Morgaine said, just as he had found it. He stopped, unnerved, with a jolt that brought tears to his eyes; and: 'Chei,' she said, 'one of you give him a hand up.'

'My lady,' Chei said. And came and offered his hands for a stirrup.

Shame stung him. But he set his foot in Chei's linked hands and let Chei heave him up like some pregnant woman.

'For a like favor,' Chei said to him.

He recalled it. And flinching from Chei's hand on his knee, he backed Arrhan out of his reach.

The cliffs cut off the sky before them, against the dimming stars, and they had left a trail a child could follow, the swath of passage in tall grass. The horses caught mouthfuls now and again: there was no time to give them more than that.

Morgaine rode the bay now; it was Siptah due the rest. And the sky above the eastern hills was showing no stars: the sun was coming.

We are beyond recall now. That was the thought that kept gnawing at him. Wise or not, we are beyond any change of mind.

God save us.

By sunlight, at the lagging pace of weary horses, the rock face in front of them rose and filled all their view —a plain of dry grass, a wall of living stone, so abrupt and so tall it defied the eye's logic.

It had one gap, shadow-blued within the yellow stone, in noon sunlight, and closing it—the gatehouse that Chei had named to them. Seiyyin Neith.

Doors—the size of which a Kurshin eye refused to understand, until a hawk flew near them, a mote against their height.

Exile's Gate.

Chei turned the roan back a half-circle as they rode, reined in alongside and lifted a hand toward it. 'There,' he said, 'there, you see what we propose to assault. That is merely the nethermost skirt of Mante.' He leaned on his saddlebow and gave a twitch of his shoulders, a shiver. 'A man forgets it, whose eyes are used to Morund's size. And the boy, my friends, … is terrified.'

He gave a flick of the reins and sent his horse thundering on ahead to join his men.

Chapter Seventeen

Another space of riding. This time it had measure, that vision of the towering cliffs which rose steadily before them. Vanye looked up at the doors, whose valves were iron, whose surface held twelve bronze panels each, of figures far more than life-size, the actions of which he could not at first understand, until he saw the detail. They were scenes of execution, and torment.

'Can such things open?' he wondered aloud, and his voice was less steady than he wished. He expected some sally-port: he looked for it among the panels, and saw no joint.

'Oh, indeed,' Chei said, 'when Mante wishes to diminish its vassals—and its exiles. They do open.'

'Mante has a taste for excess,' Morgaine said.

'They want a man to remember,' Hesiyyn said, 'the difficulty of return.'

Vanye looked at Rhanin, who rode alone ahead of them, weary man riding one exhausted horse, leading another, dwarfed by the scenes of brutal cruelty looming over them.

He felt something move in him then, toward all of these his enemies, a pang that went to the heart.

He saw not Seiyyin Neith, of a sudden, but a steep road down from gray stone walls, and on it, beneath those walls which had seemed so high and dreadful, a grief-stricken boy in a white-scarfed helm, with exile in front of him.

This at least they had in common. And they were brave men who did not flinch now, in the face of this thing.

This barrier, Mante reared in the name of justice. This was the face it turned to its damned and its servants. This was what the power of the world held as honorable dealings with its own subjects —men hanged, and gutted and burned alive, and what other things, higher up the doors, he had no wish to see.

He drew a copper-edged breath and leaned on the saddle, a shift of weight that sent a wearying, monotonous pain through his sides and his gut, a cursed, always-present misery. He was not certain there was life