Exiles Gate

'That much,' he said, because anything less was betrayal, 'yes, I understand. On my oath, I will.' He looked up uncomfortably at their comrades, who did not understand what passed—their comrades, who expected, perhaps, betrayal prepared for themselves, in this exchange in another language.

'We will go on,' Morgaine said to them, and drew Siptah away from the water.

'Where do we go?' Chei asked.

'Did I promise I knew?' Morgaine answered, and led the gray horse on through the stable-court, down the empty rows.

'It makes no sense,' Hesiyyn said. 'There should be servants—there should be attendants. Where are the people?'

'Heaven knows,' Chei answered him, and found no incongruity in saying so. There was an angry young man in the center of his being, as lost as he was, in this place which had dominated both their lives and ruined their separate families—and which proved, after all, only hollow and full of echoes. 'People come here,' he said, half to the lady, who seemed some old acquaintance of Skarrin's. 'People serve the Overlord. What has become of them?'

She offered them no answer.

'Perhaps he is holding them elsewhere,' Hesiyyn said under his breath, and with an anxious look toward Chei.

Death, the lady had said; and in this court which should, at least, have horses, have some evidence of occupancy and life—Chei found a scattering of memory which was human and adult and frightened—

Gault had been imprisoned here, had been hailed up from the outskirts of this fortress by his kidnappers, to the gate above these walls. Gault remembered. And there had been others in that dark hour, there had been servants, there had been abundant life in this court, torchlit and echoing with confused shouts as Qhiverin's friends dragged him struggling and resisting toward the hell above these walls.

'Even the horses,' Chei-Gault-Qhiverin said aloud, finding a shiver down his spine and a terrible feeling of things gone amiss in this daylit, sterile vacancy, 'even the horses—No.' He quickened his pace, tugging at the weary roan he led, and caught Vanye's arm. 'There were people here. Now even the horses are gone. Something is direly wrong here. It is a trap. Make the lady listen.'

Vanye had rescued his arm at once. There was on his sullen face, a quick suspicion and a dark threat. The shorn hair blew across his eyes and reminded them both of things past, of miscalculations and mistakes disastrously multiplied. A muscle clenched in his jaw.

But if there was at the moment a voice of caution and reason in their company it was this Man, Chei believed it: the boy's experience told him so and Qhiverin's instincts went to him, puzzling even himself—except it was everywhere consonant with what the boy knew: a man absolute in duty, absolute enough and sane enough to lay aside everything that did not pertain to the immediate problem.

Trust him to listen, was the boy's advice. Nothing further.

And Qhiverin, within himself. Boy, if the one thing, with what lies between us, then anything; and you have been a mortal fool.

'It is for all our sakes,' he said. 'I swear to you, Nhi Vanye. We are walking into a trap. Every step of this is a trap. He has vacated the place. Even the horses. Even the horses. I do not know where.'

'The gate,' Vanye said, looking down the little distance Chei's slighter form needed.

'To Tejhos?' Chei asked. '—Or elsewhere?' Vanye cast a look toward Morgaine, whose face was stern and pale and set on the way before them, which led toward yet another gate in this maze.

'Anything is possible,' he said.

A man who is winning, he had said to Morgaine again and again, will not flee.

But the man of that face and that voice which had spoken to them—

—Go with you, it had said.

Convince me there is something different than one finds . . . everywhere. . . .

Older than the calamity, Morgaine had said of Skarrin.

And: Not of human measure, not predictable by human intentions, his own experience told him.

Deeper and deeper into this snare Morgaine went, leading the rest of them in what haste they dared—

Lest Skarrin strand them here, lest he go before them and seal the gate and leave them imprisoned here forevermore.

He did not question now. He understood the things that she had attempted to tell him throughout their journey—and he had overwhelmed her arguments, delayed her with his foolishness, his well-meant advice and his hopes and, Heaven forgive, his desire of her, which had stolen her good judgment and thrown his to the winds.

But for me, he kept thinking, the while he walked beside her: but for me she would have ridden straight to him and stayed him from this; but for me she would have gone straightway to Morund and enlisted qhalur aid and learned more at the start than ever young Chei could have taught us.

And perhaps Chei would be alive, himself, and Gault would be Gault, and their ally.

'Tell her,' Chei hissed at him.

'She has always understood,' he said to Chei and his murderer, 'better than I. Better than any of us. She gave you the chance to turn back. It is not too late to take it.'

The gate before them was open. He was not in the least surprised at that. And this one let into the building itself, into a shadowed hall which might hold more than ghosts—but he began to doubt that there need be guards or soldiery, nor any hand but Skarrin's own, which held the gate-force. He kept beside Morgaine as far as that doorway, and suddenly sent Arrhan through ahead ofthem, expecting no harm.

The arrhendur mare came to none, only stopped, confused, her feet striking echoes from polished pavement, in a hall supported by columns much lest vast than those of Neisyrrn Neith, but vast for all that, shaped of green stone and black.

A table was set there, set with pitchers and platters bearing fruit and bread and what else his eye did not trouble to see.

Skarrin's ghost hung before them, welcomed them, smiled at them with all beneficence and no little amusement.

'My guests,' he said; then, and with less mockery: 'My lady Morgaine Anjhuran, my youngest cousin—sit, take your ease. You can trust my table. Surely you know that. And you might indeed leave the horses outside my hall.'

'My lord Skarrin,' Morgaine said, 'forgive me. I have known so many and so bizarre things in my travels—I have found folk do things for remarkable reasons, some only because they can, some only for sport—I do not know you, my lord. So I keep my horse and my arms—and my servants. My father's friends may, for all I know, be no less mad than some others I have met on the way.'

The drifting image laughed, a soft sound, like the hissing of wind in grass. 'And thus you decline my hospitality?'

'I do not sit at table with shadows, my lord. Our mistrust is mutual—else you would not hesitate to come and meet me face to face—if you can.'

'My lady of outlaws and rebels—should I trust myself to your companions, when they think so ill of me?'

Morgaine laughed, let fall Siptah's reins, and walked over to the table, to pull out a chair and sit down. She picked up a pitcher and poured a cup of red wine.

Vanye let Arrhan stand alone too, and went and stood at the side of her chair as she lifted it and sipped it in courtesy to their shadowy host.

Whereupon Skarrin laughed softly, and drifted amid their table, severed at the waist. 'You are trusting.'

'No, my lord of Mante. Only interested. I knew when I heard your name from young Chei—who is host to my lord of Morund—what you might be. I took your gate-wardens' behavior for yours—to our mutual discomfiture. No one saw fit to apprise me of the truth—in which I do fault you, my lord of Mante. So much could have been saved, of affairs in the south, if I had known. Now I leave you a humankind in war and disorder—an