Exiles Gate

studs which marked its center.

It gave back on hall and hall and hall brightly lighted, leading toward other doors.

'Hold here!' she cried. 'All of you, hold the doors! Vanye—stay with them! Do not count Skarrin dead!'

She ran, before he could muster protest; and he thought then and knew he was guard of those who guarded them—to ward their retreat when it would surely be in haste.

'One of you,' he shouted at Chei, 'get down to the end of the hall and guard the horses!'

'Curse you, we are not your servants!'

'Dead men have no precedence! We are all in this, and likely to be stranded if we have no horses!'

'Rhanin!' Chei shouted, and Rhanin tucked his bow in hand and ran, vaulting dead men as he went.

That was the only one of them presently with other than a sword and dagger. Vanye longed for his own good bow, which he had left with Arrhan, and took a dead man's in its place, gathered up a quiver of arrows and slung it to his shoulder.

One arrow to the string, two others in his bow-hand. He tested the draw, and moved down to the intersection of the halls to set his shoulders against the wall where he had vantage of the right-hand corridor, while Chei took up a bow as well, and a quiver; and by the way he handled it, at least one part of him was no stranger to the weapon.

Morgaine's footfalls had died away in distance, within the farthest doorway, and he pressed his shoulders against the wall and watched, arms both at ease and ready on the instant, if there were any movement down the lighted corridor.

Such places he knew. There would be machines. There would be traps and such things as Morgaine dealt with better than ever he could in that room where she had gone, to deal with whatever Skarrin had done to the machines that controlled the gates. But he trembled as in winter cold, the reaction of muscles into which the bandages cut, and the fight which still had him drenched with sweat, and cooling now in the chill of Skarrin's keep. He blinked at the film on his eyes, shook his hair aside as it straggled into his face, his heart pounding in his chest with a kind of terror he had seldom felt in his life.

Qhalur enemies, he knew. Chei and Hesiyyn across the corridor from him made him anxious, no more than that. But this—

This man who knew the gates well enough to frighten Morgaine herself, whose mastery of them excelled hers—

What manner of enemy could die that death and not die, struck through the skull and through the heart?

Except there be witchcraft and sorcery which Morgaine denied existed.

But I am skilled in both. What matter it invokes no devils? I have metdevils left and right in her service, and slain no few, except this last, that says he cannot die —

O Heaven, could we come so far and across so many years and fall to this, this creature, at the height of the sky, while so many men are surely going about their business in the town below, in all ignorance what passes here—if they are there—if the whole of that great city has not gone like the servants.

God deliver us. I do not know what more to do than stand here and guard her back.

Chei shivered, against the wall, looking toward that portion of hallway which was his to guard. Exhaustion ached in his knees and his gut and trembled in his hands. And the lady—

The lady had not killed them. That much they knew of her. Nothing more, that the boy had believed of her. Nothing more, except she was perilous as ever Skarrin was—more than perilous: murderous and hellbent and—which she had said—more than a match for any gate-warden.

Skarrin's match—that was very clear. Of Skarrin's disposition: that remained to be seen.

Across the hall, Hesiyyn, warding the other direction; and at the opposite corner, Vanye; and the slow minutes passed, while something happened in that room down the hall—the master boards for the gates of all the world:that was what Morgaine Anjhuran had her hand to, who haddefeated Skarrin—thatwas the fact which could hardly take hold in a shaken mind: skarrin, who had ruled in mante from time out of mind, skarrin, ever-young and ruling through proxies, but cruel beyond measure when some rebellion came nigh him—

Skarrin, around whom conspiracies and plots continually moved, like a play acted for his amusement—

Gone—in a lightning-stroke, the simple act of a woman who had not come to parley at all.

And at whose actions with the gate, in that room—sent the lights brightening and dimming as if all Neneinn were wounded.

'What is she doing?' Chei asked furiously. 'What does she think to do?'

'What needs no hearers,' Vanye returned shortly across span of the hall which divided them. 'Trust her. If she wished you dead you would be dead with the rest.'

'I have no doubt,' Hesiyyn said, and tightened a buckle of his armor—wan and exhausted, Hesiyyn, as all of them, shadow-eyed and dusty. He took up his sword again from between his knees. 'But whatever she is, she has done fairly by us, and that hound Skarrin is dead or dead as fire can make him.' He made a kind of salute with the blade. 'There is all I need know.'

It was a desperate man, Hesiyyn who had no choices; and himself—himself with so much good and ill mixed in him of his varied lives that he could not see the world, either, in dark or light. And Nhi Vanye, who knew, with more confidence than either of them, where his loyalty belonged.

It was irony, Chei thought, with pain in his heart, that he, Qhiverin, found more and more reason to like this man, while the boy—the youth forgave him, him, Gault-Qhiverin, because of old betrayals and loss of kin and things in which they fit together like blade and sheath—never mind that some of those griefs had been at Qhiverin's hand, Qhiverin's fault, in the bloody deeds incumbent on a warden of the warlike South—Qhiverin could find sympathy, Qhiverin could embrace and comfort Chei in his desolation. There was no more war between them, except the boy would not forgive, would not listen, would not reason—

—for too much self-blame lay within it.

Here is insanity, Chei thought in a heart-weary panic. Peace, boy, or we both go under.

And the boy, who did not want to die: He will kill us if he can —finally, when we have done all they want, one or the other of them will kill us. Knowledge was all they ever wanted.

Then they made a poor bargain, did they not? He wiped tears from his eyes. Boy, we will guard his back. You are a fool, is all —a great fool. And would you had never made him my enemy. Your brother would have had more sense. It was yourself coming up on the man's sword-side, it was Bron drove his horse between to shy you off. That is the truth I remember.

Liar!

And your Gault, boy —your Gault the hero was a traitor the same as Arunden. He would have sold you all for his peace. Have you never known that? He betrayed Ichandren before I did. I took him, yonder, on that hill, because I had no choice. But ah, boy, he was a scoundrel. Scoundrel and fool. What a legacy you give me.

What a cursed great —

Light and sound came from the room at the end of the hall, where the lady had gone, a high thin moan which no living throat could make, and a deep roaring like thunder sustained.

'What is she doing?' Hesiyyn asked hoarsely, leaning against his wall. 'Lord human—'

'I do not know,' Vanye said, biting his lip, and looked toward the door which lay open at the end, where red light flashed, and the wailing grew. 'Hold our retreat open!'

He ran. He trusted the men for what they might be worth and raced down the slick stone hall at all the speed