Gate of Ivrel

ilin–oath, to kill a man’s horse and leave him stranded. And for one moment there was such a look of wildness on her face that he feared she would use the weapon on him and the beast.

Suddenly she jerked Siptah’s head about to the north and spurred off, leaving him behind.

He stared after her a moment, dazed, knowing her mad.

And himself likewise.

He cursed and heaved up his gear, flung saddle on the black, secured the girth, hauled himself into the saddle and went—the beast knowing full well he belonged with the gray by now. The horse needed no touch of the heel to extend himself, but ran, downhill and around a turning, across a stream and up again, overtaking the loping gray.

He half expected a bolt that would take him from the saddle or tumble his horse dead instead; Morgaine turned in the saddle and saw him come. But she allowed it, began to rein in.

“Thee is an idiot,” she said when he had come alongside.

And she looked then as if she could give way to tears, but she did not. She thrust the black weapon into the back of her belt, under the cloak, and looked at him and shook her head. “And thee is Kurshin. Nothing else could be so honorably stupid. Zri would surely have run, unless Zri is braver than he once was. We are not brave, we that play this game with Gates; there is too much we can lose, to have the luxury to be virtuous, and to be brave. I envy you, Kurshin, I do envy anyone who can afford such gestures.”

He pressed his lips tightly. He felt simple, and shamed, realizing now she had tried to frighten him; none of it made sense with him—her moods, her distrust of him. His voice turned brittle. “I am easy to deceive, liyo, much more than you could be; any of your simplest tricks can amaze me, and no few of them frighten me.”

She had no answer for him.

At times she looked at him in a way he did not like. The air between them had gone poisonous. Go away, the look said. Go away, I will not stop you.

He would not have left her hurt and needing him; there was oath-breaking and there was oath-breaking, and to break ilin-bond when she was able to care for herself was a heavy matter, but there was that in her manner which convinced him that she was far from reasoning.

The light grew in the sky, into a cold, dreary morning, with clouds rolling in from the north.

And early in that morning the land fell away below them and the hills opened up into the slope of Irien.

It was a broad valley, pleasant to the eye. As they stopped upon the verge of that great bowl, Vanye was not sure that this was the place. But then he saw that its other side was Ivrel, and that there was a barrenness in its center, far below. They were too far to see so fine a detail as a single Standing Stone, but he reckoned that for the center of that place.

Morgaine slid down from Siptah’s back and troubled to unhook Changeling from its place, by which he knew she meant some long delay. He dismounted too; but when she turned and walked some distance away along the slope he did not estimate that she meant him to follow. He sat down upon a large rock and waited, gazing into the distances of the valley. In his mind he imagined the thousands that had ridden into it, upon one of those gray spring mornings that cloaked the valleys with mist, where men and horses moved like ghosts in the fog—of darkness swallowing up everything, the winds, as she had said, drawing the mist like smoke up a chimney.

But upon this morning there were the low-hanging clouds and a winter sun, and grass and trees below. A hundred years had repaired whatever scars there had been left, until one could not have reckoned what had happened there.

Morgaine did not return. He waited long past the time that he had begun to grow anxious about her; and at last he gathered up his resolve and rose and walked the way that she had gone, about the curve of he hill. He was relieved when he found her, only standing and gazing into the valley. For a moment he almost dared not go to her; and then he thought that he should, for she was not herself, and there were beasts and men in these hills that made them no place to be alone.

“ Liyo,” he called to her as he came. And she turned and came to him, and walked back with him to the place where they had left the horses. There she hung the sword where it belonged, and took up the reins of Siptah, and paused again, looking over the valley, “Vanye,” she said, “Vanye, I am tired.”

“Lady?” he asked of her, thinking at first she meant that they would stop here a time, and he did not like the thought of that. Then she looked at him, and he knew then it was a different tiredness she spoke of.

“I am afraid,” she admitted to him, “and I am alone, Vanye. And I have no more honor and no more lives to spend. Here”—she stretched out her hand, pointing down the slope—“here I left them, and rode round this rim, and from over there—” she pointed far off across the valley, where there was a rock and many trees upon the rim. “From that point I watched the army lost. We were a hundred strong, my comrades and I; and over the years we have grown fewer and fewer, and now there is only myself. I begin to understand the qujal. I begin to pity them. When it is so necessary to survive, then one cannot be brave anymore.”

He began then to understand the terror in her, the same intense terror there was in Liell, he thought, who also wished something of him. He wished no more truth of her: it was the kind that wrought nightmares, that held no peace, that asked him to forgive things that were unthinkable.

Spare us this, he wanted to say to her. I have honored you. Do not make this impossible. He held his tongue.

“I might have killed you,” she said, “in panic. I frighten easily, you see, I am not reasonable. I have ceased to take risks at all. It is unconscionable—that I should take risks with the burden I carry. I tell myself the only immorality I have committed is in trusting you after aiming at your life. Do you see, I have no luxury left, for virtues.”

“I do not understand,” he said.

“I hope that you do not.”

“What do you want of me?”

“Hold to your oath.” She swung up to Siptah’s back, waited for him to mount, then headed them not across the vale of Irien, but around the rim of the valley, that trail which she had followed the day of the battle.

She was in a mood that hovered on the brink of madness, not reasoning clearly. He became certain of it. She feared him as if he were death itself making itself friendly and comfortable with her, feared any reason that told her otherwise.

And forebore to kill, forbore to violate honor.

There was that small, precious difference between what he served and what pursued them. He clung to that, though Morgaine’s foreboding seeped into his thoughts, that it was that which would one day kill her.

The ride around the rim was long, and they must stop several times to rest. The sun went down the other part of the sky and the clouds began to gather thickly over Ivrel’s cone, portending storm, a northern storm of the sort that sometimes whirled snow down on such valleys as this, north of Chya, but more often meant tree-cracking ice, and misery of men and beasts.

The storm hovered, sifting small amounts of sleet. The day grew dimmer. They paused for one last rest before moving onto the side of Ivrel.

And chaos burst upon them—their only warning a breath from Siptah, a shying of both their horses. Another moment and they would have been afoot. Half-lighting, Vanye sprang back to the saddle, whipped out his longsword and laid about him in the twilight at the forms that hurled at them from the woods and from the rocks, men of Hjemur, fur-clad men afoot at first, and then men on ponies. Fire laced the dark, Morgaine’s little weapon taking toll of men and horses without mercy.

They spurred through, reached the down-turning of the trail. The slope was alive with them. They clambered up on foot, dark figures in the twilight, and not all of them looked human.

Knives flashed as the horde closed with them, threatening the vulnerable legs and bellies of the horses, and they fought and spurred the horses, turning them for whatever least resistance they could find for escape. Morgaine cried out, kicked a man in the face and rode him down. Vanye drove his heels into the black’s flanks and sent the horse flying in Siptah’s wake.

There was no hope in fighting. His liyo was doing the most sensible thing, laying quirt to the laboring gray, putting the big horse to the limit, even if it drove them off their chosen way; and Vanye