Gate of Ivrel

“You are not listening,” Erij accused him.

“Aye,” he said, bunking and breaking the spell, and looking again toward Erij.

And ever and again after that, he saw Erij look curiously at him, and there was a growing sourness on Erij’s face, as if whatever alliance there had been to make them brothers this dawn in Ra-hjemur were fast shredding asunder. He held out little hope for his peace as he saw that sullen estimation grow more and more grim.

“There is none of the high-clan blood in Morija left, but us,” said Erij that noon, when the sun was almost warm, and they rode still knee to knee.

Oh Heaven, Vanye thought, looking out upon the sunlight and the hills with regret, now it comes; for he had long since come to the conclusion he was sure would occur to Erij: that, enemies as they were, Erij was mad to flaunt a high-clan prisoner in Morija. Without Ra-hjemur from which to rule, he had not power enough to bear a taint of dishonor—or a rival. Politics and ambitions would swarm about a bastard Chya like flies to honey. Such conclusions as Erij had no doubt reached were dishonorable, better meditated in the dark of night than in such a fair day.

“Bastard that you are,” said Erij, “you could make yourself a threat to me, if you were minded to do so. There is no lord in Chya. It comes to me, bastard brother, that you are heir to Chya, if you were to claim it, and that no lord can be claimed as ilin.”

“I have not laid any claim to Chya,” said Vanye. “I do not think I could, and I do not intend to.”

“They had rather own you than me, I do not doubt it at all,” said Erij. “And you are still the most dangerous man to me in all of Andur-Kursh, so long as you live.”

“I am not,” said Vanye, “because I regard my oath. But you do not regard your own honor enough to trust mine.”

“You did not regard your oath in Ra-hjemur.”

“You were not in danger from Morgaine. I did not have to.”

Erij gazed long at him, then reached across. “Give me your hand,” he said, and Vanye, puzzling, yielded it to his left-handed handclasp. His brother pressed it in almost friendly fashion.

“Leave,” said Erij. “If I hear of you after this I will hunt you down ... or if you come to Morija, I will set Claim on you and let you work off that year you owe me. But I do not think you will come to Morija.”

And he gestured with a nod to the road ahead.

“If she will have you—go.”

Vanye stared at him, then gripped his brother’s strong, dry hand the more tightly before he broke the clasp.

Then he set heels to the horse, dismissing from his mind every thought that he was weaponless and that Morgaine would have opened a wide lead on them during the morning.

He would gain that distance back. He would find her. He realized much later to his grief that he had not even looked back once at his brother, that he had severed that tangled tie without half the pain he thought it must have cost Erij to let him go.

In that loosing, he thought, Erij had paid for everything; he wished that he had spoken some word of thanks.

Erij would have sneered at it.

He did not find her on the road. In the second day, he cut off the track the two had used, and took the one on which Liell had come from Ivrel, the one he thought Morgaine would surely choose. Ivrel was close and there was no more time left for stopping, though he was aching from the ride and the horse’s breath came in great gasps, such that he must dismount and half pull the beast up the steeper places of the trail. The delay tormented him and he began to fear that he had lost the way, that he would lose her once for all.

And yet finally, finally, when he came out upon the height, there stood Ivrel’s great side to be seen, and the barren shoulder of the mountain where the Gate would be. He urged the black to what speed the horse could bear and climbed, sometimes losing sight of his goal, sometimes finding it again, until he entered the forest of twisted pines and lost it altogether.

In the snow were footprints, the old ones of many men, and some of animals, and some of those not good to imagine what had made them; but now and again he could sort out new ones.

Roh-Liell-Zri, upon the black mare, most likely, and Morgaine upon his trail.

Breath hung frozen in the sunlight, and air cut the lungs. He had at last to walk the horse, out of mercy, and scanned the black sickly pines about him, remembering all too keenly that he had no weapons at all, and was too bone weary for headlong flight.

Then through those pines he caught a glimmer of movement, a white movement amid the blaze of sun on snow, and he whipped up his horse and made what speed he could on the trail.

“Wait!” he cried.

She waited for him. He came in beside her breathless with relief, and she leaned from the saddle and reached for his hand.

“Vanye, Vanye, you ought not to have followed me.”

“Are you going through?” he asked.

She looked up at the Gate, shimmering dark again, stars and blackness above them in the daylight. “ Yes,” she said, and then looked down at him. “Do not delay me further. This following me is nonsense. I do not know how the Gate is behaving, whether that will bring me through to the same place that Zri has fled or whether it will fling me out elsewhere. And you do not belong. You were useful for a time. You with your ilin–codes and your holds and your kinships... this is your world, and I needed a man who could maneuver things as I needed them. You have served your purpose. Now there is an end of the matter. You are free, and be glad of it.”

He did not speak. He supposed finally that he merely stared at her, until he felt her hand slip from his arm, and she moved away. He watched her begin the long slope, Siptah refusing it at first. She took firm grip on the reins and began to force the animal against his will, driving him brutally until he decided to go, gathering himself in a long climb into the dark.

And was gone.

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.

He sat still a moment looked about the slope, and considered the tormented trees and the cold, and the long ride to Morija, cast off by her, begging Erij to bear his presence in Andur-Kursh.

And there was pain in every direction but one: as the sword had known the way to its own source, his senses did.

Of a sudden he laid heels to his horse and began to drive the beast upslope. There was only a token refusing. Siptah had gone: the black understood what was expected of him.

The gulf yawned before him, black and starry, without the wind that had howled there before. There was only enough breeze to let him know it was there.

And dark, utter dark, and falling. The horse heaved and twisted under him, clawing for support.

And found it.

They were running again, on a grassy shore, and the air was warm. The horse snorted in surprise, then extended himself to run.

A pale shape was on the hill before them, under a double moon.

“ Liyo!” he shouted. “Wait for me!”

She paused, looking back, then slid off to stand upon the hillside.

He rode in alongside and slid down from his exhausted horse even before the animal had quite stopped moving. Then he hesitated, not knowing whether he would meet joy or rage from her.

But she laughed and flung her arms about him, and he about her, pressing her tightly until she flung back her head and looked at him.

It was the second time he had ever seen her cry.