Gate of Ivrel

“It was the wind,” she said.

“ Liyo?” Her answer chilled him, like sudden madness. But she pressed her lips together and then looked at him.

“It was the wind,” she said again. “There was a gate-field there—warping down from Ivrel—and the mist there was that morning whipped into it like smoke up a chimney, a wind... a wind the like of which you do not imagine. That was what passed at Irien. Ten thousand men—sent through. Into nothing. We knew, my friends and I, we five: we knew, and I do not know whether it was more terrible for us knowing what was about to happen to us than for those that did not understand at all. There was only starry dark there. Only void in the mists... But I lived of course. I was the only one far back enough: it was my task to circle Irien, Lrie and the men of Leth and I—and when we were on the height, it began. I could not hold my men; they thought that they could aid those below, with their king, and they rode down; they would not listen to me, you see, because I am a woman. They thought that I was afraid, and because they were men and must not be, they went. I could not make them understand, and I could not follow them.” Her voice faltered; she steadied it. “I was too wise to go, you see. I am civilized; I knew better. And while I was being wise—it was too late. The wind came over us. For a moment one could not breathe. There was no air. And then it passed, and I coaxed poor Siptah to his feet, and I do not clearly remember what I did after, except that I rode toward Ivrel. There was a Hjemurn force in my way. I fell back and back then, and there was only the south left open. Koris held for a time. Then I lost that shelter; and I retreated to Leth and sheltered there a time before I retreated again toward Aenor-Pyven. I meant to raise an army there; but they would not hear me. When they came to kill me, I cast myself into the Gate: I had no other refuge left. I did not know it would be so long a wait.”

“Lady,” he said, “this—this thing that was done at Irien, killing men without a blow being struck... when we go there, could not Thiye send this wind down on us too?”

“If he knew the moment of our coming, yes. The wind—the wind was the very air rushing into that open Gate, a field cast to the Standing Stone in Irien. It opened some gulf between the stars. To maintain it extended more than a moment as it was would have been disaster to Hjemur. Even he could not be that reckless.”

“Then, at Irien—he knew.”

“Yes, he knew.” Morgaine’s face grew hard again. “There was one man who began to go with us, who never stood with us at Irien—he that wanted Tiffwy’s power, that betrayed Tiffwy with Tiffwy’s wife—that later stood tutor of Edjnel’s son, after killing Edjnel.”

“Chya Zri.”

“Aye, Zri, and to the end of my days I will believe it, though if it was so he was sadly paid by Hjemur. He aimed at a kingdom, and the one he had of it was not the one he planned.”

“Liell.” Vanye uttered the name almost without thinking it, and felt the sudden impact of her eyes upon his.

“What makes you think of him?”

“Roh said that there was question about the man. That Liell is... that he is old, liyo, that he is old as Thiye is old.”

Morgaine’s look grew intensely troubled. “Zri and Liell. Singularly without originality, to have drowned all the heirs of Leth—if drowned they were.”

He remembered the Gate shimmering above the lake, and knew what she meant. Doubts assailed him. He ventured a question he fully hated to ask. “Could you live by this means, if you wished?”

“Yes,” she answered him.

“Have you?”

“No,” she said. And, as if she read the thing in his mind: “It is by means of the Gates that it is done, and it is no light thing to take another body. I am not sure myself quite how it is done, although I think that I know. It is ugly: the body must come from someone, you see. And Liell, if that is true, is growing old.”

He shivered, remembering the touch of Liell’s fingers upon his arm, the hunger—he read it for hunger even then—within his eyes. Come with me and I will show you, he had said. She will have the soul from you before she is done. Come with me, Chya Vanye. She lies. She has lied before.

Come with me.

He breathed an oath, a prayer, something, and stumbled to his feet, to stand apart a moment, sick with horror, sensitive for the first time to his youth, his trained strength, as something that had been the object of covetousness.

He felt unclean.

“Vanye,” she said, concern in her voice.

“They say,” he managed then, turning to look at her, “that Thiye is aging too—that he has the look of an old man.”

“If,” she said levelly, “I am dead or lost and you go against Hjemur alone—do not consider being taken prisoner there. I would not by any means, Vanye.”

“Oh Heaven,” he murmured. Bile rose in his throat. Of a sudden he began to comprehend the stakes in these wars of qujal and men, and the prize there was for losing. He stared at her—he knew, like the first innocent, and met a lack of all proper horror.

“Would you do this?” he asked.

“I think that one day,” she said, “to do what I must do, I would have to consider it.”

He swore. For a very little he would have left her in that moment. She began at last to show concern of it, the smallest impulse of humanity, and it was that which held him.

“Sit down,” she said. He did so.

“Vanye,” she said then. “I have no leisure to be virtuous. I try, I try, with what of me there is left. But there is very little. What would you do, if you were dying, and you had only to reach out and kill—not for an extended old age, with pain, and sickness, but for another youth? For the qujal there is nothing after, no immortality, only to die. They have lost their gods, or lost whatever belief they ever had. That is all there is for them—to live, to enjoy pleasure—to enjoy power.”

“Did you lie to me? Are you of their blood?”

“I have not. I am not qujal. But I know them. Zri... if you are right, Vanye, it explains much. Not for ambition, but of desperation: to live. To save the Gates, on which he depends. I had not looked for that in him. What did he say to you, when he spoke with you?”

“Only that I should leave you and come with him.”

“Well that you had better sense. Otherwise—”

And then her eyes grew guarded, and she took the black weapon from her belt: he thought in the first heartbeat that she had perceived some intruder; and then to his shock he saw the thing directed at him. He froze, mind blank, save of the thought that she had suddenly gone mad.

“Otherwise,” she continued, “I should have had such a companion on my ride to Ivrel that would assure I did not live, such a companion as would wait until the nearness of the Gate lent him the means to deal with me—alive. I left you upon a bay mare, Chya Vanye, and you chose Liell’s horse thereafter. That was who I thought it was when first I saw you riding after me, and I was not anxious for Liell’s company alone. I was surprised to realize that it was you, instead.”

“Lady,” he exclaimed, holding forth his hands to show them empty of threat. “I have sworn to you... lady, I have not deceived you. Surely—it could not happen, it could not happen and I not know it. I would know, would I not?”

She arose, still watching him, constantly watching him, and drew back to the place where rested her cloak and her sword.

“Saddle my horse,” she bade him.

He went carefully, and did as she ordered him, knowing her at his back with that weapon. When he was done, he gave back for her, and she watched him carefully, even to the moment that she swung up into the saddle.

Then she reined about and toward the black horse. All at once he read her thoughts, to kill the beast and leave him afoot, since she would not kill him, ilin.

He hurled himself between, looked up with outraged horror; it was not honor to do such a thing, to abuse the