Gate of Ivrel

Kasedre is capable of siring a son, he will most probably join his ancestors, and Liell will still be tutor to the son. I wonder,” she added irrelevantly, looking at the blade, “who sired Hshi and Tlin.”

“And on what,” Vanye muttered sourly. “Keep the blade, liyo. I do not want to carry it, and perhaps it may bring luck to you.”

“I am not qujal,” she said.

That assertion, he reflected, might have filled him with either doubt or relief some days ago, at their meeting; now it fitted uncomfortably well with the thing he had begun to suspect of her.

“Whatever you are,” he said, “spare me the knowing of it.”

She nodded, accepting his attitude without apparent offense. She slipped the knife within her belt and rose.

A green-feathered arrow hit the ground between her feet

She reached to her back, hand to weapon, quick as the arrow itself. And as quick, Vanye seized her and pushed her, heedless of hurting: Chya warning, that arrow. If she fired, they would both be green-feathered in an instant.

“Do not,” he appealed to her, and turned, both arms wide, toward their unseen observers. “Hai, Chya! Chya! Will you put kin-slaying on your souls? We are clan-welcome with you, cousins.”

Brush rustled. He watched the fair, tall men of his own mother’s kindred slip out of the shadows, where surely a few more kept arrows trained upon their hearts; and he set himself deliberately between them and Morgaine’s own arrogance, which was like a Myya’s for persistence, and likely to be the death of her.

They did not even ask names of them, but stood there waiting for them to speak and identify themselves. Looking at the living person of one who had been minutely described in ballads a century ago, wondering perhaps if they were not mad—he could estimate what passed in their minds. They only stared at Morgaine, and she at them, furiously, in her hand a weapon that could deal death faster than their arrows.

They would kill her of course, if she could die; but she would have done considerable damage: and her ilin who was her shield would be quite dead. He had heard of a certain Myya who strayed the border and was found with three Chya arrows lodged in his heart, all touching. Clan Chya lived in a hard land. They were impressed by few threats. It was typical of them that they had not yielded and begged shelter from the encroaching beasts, as had other folk; or died, as had two others. They used Hjemur’s vile beasts for game, and harried the border of Hjemur and kept Thiye contained out of sheer Chya effrontery.

Vanye placed hands on thighs and made a respectful bow, which Morgaine did not: she did not move, and it was possible that the Chya did not know that they were in danger.

“I am Nhi Vanye i Chya,” he said, “Ilin to this lady, who is clan-welcome with Chya.”

The leader, a smallish man with the simple braid of a second– uyo, cousin-kin to the main clan, grounded his longbow and set both hands upon it, eyes upon him. “Nhi Vanye, cousin to Chya Roh. You are i Chya, that is true, but I thought it was understood that you are not clan-welcome here.”

“She is,” he said, which was the proper answer: an ilin was not held to his own law when he served his liyo: he could trespass, as safe or as threatened as she was. “She is Morgaine kri Chya, who has a clan-welcome that was never withdrawn.”

They were frightened. They had the look of men watching a dream and trying not to become enmeshed in it. But they looked from her to the gray horse Siptah and back again, and swords stayed sheathed and bows lowered.

“We will take you to Ra-koris,” said the little man. “I am Taomen, tan-uyo.”

Then Morgaine gave him a bow of courtesy, and Vanye kept his silence hereafter, as befitted a servant whose liyo had finally deigned to take matters into her own hands.

The Chya were not happy at the meeting, it was clear. Clan-welcome had not been formally withdrawn because surely it had seemed a pointless vengeance on the dead. And the young lord of Chya, Chya Roh, his own cousin, whom he had never seen, still pursued bloodfeud with him for the sake of his mother’s dishonor at the hands of Rijan. Rob would as soon put an arrow through him as would Myya Gervaine, he was sure, and probably with greater accuracy.

There was a vast clearing in the Koriswood, that the noon sun blessed with a pleasant glow; the whole of it was full of sprawling huts of brush and logs. Chya, the only clan without a hall of stone. Once there had been the old Ra-koris, a splendid hall, home of the High Kings; its ruin lay some distance from this, and it was alleged to be haunted by angry ghosts of its proud defenders, that had held last and hardest against the advance of Hjemur. The grandsons and great-grandsons of the warriors of Morgaine’s age kept only this wooden hall, their possessions few and their treasures gone, only their bows and their skill and the gain of their hunting between them and starvation. Yet none of them looked sickly, and the women and children watching them as they rode in were straight and tall, though plain: there was beauty in this people, much different from the blighted look of clan Leth.

Boys raced ahead of them, yet all was strangely silent, as though they maintained hunter’s discipline even in their home. At the great arch of the main hut the greatest number of people had gathered, and here they dismounted, escorted still by Taomen and his men. They retained their weapons, and all was courtesy, men yielding back for them in haste.

Ra-koris was a smoky, earth-floored hall of rough logs, yet it had a certain splendor: it had two levels and many halls opening off the main room. Tasseled and wrought hides were the hangings, antlers and strange horns adorned its posts. It was lit by torches even at noontime, and by a hearth larger than many halls of stone could boast, its only masonry, that great hearth and its venting.

“Here you will be lodged until Roh can be called,” said Taomen.

Morgaine chose to settle at the main hearth, and by the timorous charity of the hall women, they were served a plain meal of waybread and venison and Chya mead, which they found good indeed after the suspect fare of Leth.

But folk avoided them, and watched them from the shadows of the wooden hall, whispering together.

Morgaine ignored them all and rested. Vanye nursed his sore hand and finally, troubled by the heat in the hall, at last gave up his pride and removed helm and coif, probing the soreness of the base of his skull, where Liell had struck him. A youth of the Chya laughed: a youth who did not yet even wear the braid; and Vanye looked at him angrily, then bowed his head and ignored the matter. He was not in such a position that he could complain of their treatment of him. Morgaine must be his chief concern, and she theirs.

And late in the day, when the bit of sky visible through the little windows of the high arch had gone from sun to shadow, there was a stir at the door and hunters came, men in brown leather, armed with bows and swords.

And among them was one that Vanye knew would be close kin of his, even before the youth came forward and met them as lord of the hall: for he had seen high-clan Chya before, when he was a child, and this was the image of all of them—of himself as well. The young lord looked more like a brother than his own brothers did.

“I am Chya Roh,” he said, stepping to the center of the rhowa, the earthen platform at the head of the hall. His lean, tanned features were set with anger at their presence, boding no good for them. “Morgaine kri Chya is dead,” he said, “a hundred years ago. What proof do you bear that you are she?”

Morgaine unfolded upward from her cross-legged posture with rare grace, smooth and silken, and without a bow of courtesy offered an object into Vanye’s hand. He arose with less grace, paused to look at the object before he passed it into Roh’s hand: it was the antlered insignia of the old High Kings of Koris, and when he saw that he knew it for a great treasure, and one that might have formed part of the lost crown treasury.

“It was Tiffwy’s,” she said. “His pledge of hospitality—should I need it, he said, to command of his men what I would.”

Roh’s face was pale. He looked at the amulet, and clenched it in his fist, and his manner was suddenly subdued. “Chya gave you what you asked a hundred years ago,” he said, “and not a man of the four thousand returned. You have much blood on your hands, Morgaine kri Chya; and yet I must honor my ancestor’s word—this once. What do you seek here?”

“Brief shelter. Silence. And whatever knowledge you have of Thiye and Hjemur.”

“All three you may have,” he said.

“Did Chya’s record survive?”

“The Ra-koris you know is ruin now. Wolves and other beasts have it to themselves. If Chya’s Book survives,