Gate of Ivrel

midlands villages by now—knew where he must run. There was a little pass at Baien-ei, and hard by it a ruined fort where every lad in Morija probably went at some time or another in their farings about the countryside. The best pasturage in all of Morija was in those hills, where ran the best horses; and the ruined fort was often explored by boys that herded for their fathers; and sometimes it served as rendezvous for fugitive lovers. It had had its share of tragedies, both military and private, that heap of stones.

And Morgaine’s guide was a Nhi harper with the imagination of a callow boy on lovers’ tryst, who would surely know no better than to lead her there for shelter, into a place that had but one way out.

There were men guarding the hillside. He had known there must be even before he set out toward it. Any break from Baien-ei by riders had to be through this narrow pass, and with archers placed there, that ride would be a short one.

He left the dapple tethered against the chance he might have to return; the branch he used was not stout, and should mischance take him or he find what he sought, the animal would grow restless and eventually pull free, seeking his own distant home. He took the sheathed sword in hand and entered the hills afoot

All the paths of the hills of Baien-ei could not be guarded: there were too many goat-tracks, too much hillside, too many streams and folds of rock: for this reason Baien-ei had been an unreliable defense even in the purpose for which it was built. Against a massive assault, it was strong enough, but when the jein, the peasant bowman, had come into his own, and wars were no longer clashes between deti-uyin who preferred open plain and fought even wars by accepted tradition, Baien-ei had become untenable—a trap for its holders more than a refuge.

He moved silently, with great patience, and now he could see the tower again, the ruined wall that he remembered from years ago. Sometimes running, sometimes inching forward on his belly and pausing to listen, he made himself part of the shadows as he drew near the place: skills acquired in two years evading Myya, in stealing food, in hunting to keep from starvation in the snowy heights of the Alis Kaje, no less wary than the wolves, and more solitary.

He came up against the wall and his fingers sought the crevices in the stonework, affording him the means to pull himself up the old defensework at its lowest point. He slipped over the crest, dropped, landed in wet grass and slid to the bottom of the little enclosure on the slope inside. He gathered himself up slowly, shaken, feeling in every bone the misery of the long ride, the weakness of hunger. He feared as he had feared all along, that it was nothing other than a trap laid for him by Erij: Myya-deviousness, not to have told him the truth. That his brother should have committed a mistake in telling him the truth and in trusting him was distressing; Erij’s mistakes were few. His shoulders itched. He had the feeling that there might be an arrow centered there from some watcher’s post.

He yielded to the fear, judging it sensible, and darted into shadows, rounded the corner of the building where it was tucked most securely against the hill. There was a crack in the wall there that he well remembered, wide as a door, and yet one that ought to be safest to use, sheltered as it was.

He crept along the wall to that position, caught the stable-scent of horses. Large bodies moved within.

“ Liyo!” he hissed into the dark. Nothing responded. He eased his way inside, the pale glimmer of Siptah to his left, to his right, blackness.

“Do not move,” came Morgaine’s whisper. “Vanye, thee knows I mean it.”

He froze, utterly still. Her voice was from before him. Someone—he judged it to be Ryn—moved from behind him, put his hands at his waist and searched him cursorily for some hidden weapon before taking hold of the sword belt. He moved his head so that the strap could pass it the more easily: he was unaccountably relieved at the passing of that weight, as if he had been in the grip of something vile and were gently disentangled from it and set free.

Ryn carried it to her: he saw the shadow pass a place of dim starlight. For his own part his knees were trembling. “Let me sit,” he asked of her. “I am done, liyo. I have been night and day in the saddle reaching this place.”

“Sit,” she said, and he dropped gratefully to his knees, would gladly have collapsed on his face and slept, but it was neither the place nor the moment for it. “Ryn,” she said, “keep an eye to the approaches. I have somewkat to ask of him.”

“Do not trust him,” Ryn said, which stung him with rage. “The Nhi would not have made him a gift of the sword and set him free for love of you, lady.”

Fury rose in him, hate of the youth, so smooth, so un-scarred, so sure of matters with Morgaine. He found words strangled in his throat, and simply shook his head. But Ryn left. He heard the rustle of Morgaine’s cloak as she settled kneeling a little distance from him.

“Well it was thee spoke out,” she said softly. “A dozen or so have tried that way these past two days, to their grief.”

“Lady.” He bowed and pressed his forehead briefly to earth, pushed himself wearily upright again. ‘There is a large force, either on its way or here already. Erij covets Thiye’s power, thinking he can have it for himself.”

“You cried at me not to trust him,” she said, “and that I did believe. But how do I trust you now? Was the sword gift or stolen?”

What she said frightened him, so much as anything had power to frighten him, tired as he was: he knew how little mercy there was in her for what she did not trust, and he had no proof. “The sword itself is all that I can give you to show you,” he said. “Erij drew it: it killed, and he feared to hold it. When it fell, I took it and ran—it is a powerful key, lady, to gates and doors.”

She was silent for a moment. He heard the whisper of the blade drawn partway, the soft click as it slipped back to rest. “Did thee hold it, drawn?”

She asked that in such a tone as if she wished otherwise.

“Yes,” he said in a faint voice. “I do not covet it, liyo, and I do not wish to carry it, not if I go weaponless.” He wished to tell her of the men of Myya, what had happened: he had no name for it, and saw in his mind those lost faces. In some deeper part of him, he did not want to know what had become of them.

“It taps the Gates themselves,” she said, and moved in the dark. “Ryn, do you see anything?”

“Nothing, lady.”

She settled back again, this time in the dim starlight that fell through the crack, so that he could see her face, half in shadow as it was, the light falling on it sideways. “We must move. Tonight. Does thee think otherwise, Vanye?”

“There are archers on the height out there. But I will do what you decide to do.”

“Do not trust him,” Ryn’s voice hissed from above. “Nhi Erij hated him too well to be careless with him or the blade.”

“What does thee say, Vanye?” Morgaine asked him.

“I say nothing,” he answered. Of a sudden the weariness settled upon him, and it was too much to argue with a boy. His eyes stayed upon Morgaine, waiting her decision.

‘The Nhi gave me back all but Changeling,” she said, “not knowing, I suspect, that some of the things they returned were weapons: they recognized the sword as what is was, but not these others. They also gave me back your belongings, your armor and your horse, your sword and your saddle. Go and make yourself ready. All the gear is in the corner together. I do not doubt but what you are right about the archers; but we have to move: all this coming and going of yours cannot have gone entirely unmarked.”

He felt his way, found the corner and the things she described, the familiar roughness of the mail that had been his other skin for years. The weight as he settled it upon him was greater than he remembered: his hands shook upon the buckles.

He considered the prospect of the ride they would make, down that throat of a pass, and began to reckon with growing fear that there was not enough left in him to make such a ride. He had spent and spent, and there was little more left in him.

It was not likely, he thought, that they would escape from this unscathed: Myya arrows were a sound that had come to strike a response in his flesh. He had escaped too many of them, in Erd and in Morija. The odds were in favor of the arrows.

Morgaine came upon him, sought his hand, took it and turned his wrist upward. The thing that hit was like a weapon, unexpected, and he flinched. “Thee does not approve,” she said. “But I will have it so. I have little of that to spend: unlike my other things, the sun does not renew it, and when it is gone, it is gone. But I will not lose thee,