he shrugged. “We cannot amend that. It is a large camp. If I were in the place of such men, I would not rush to authority and boast that I had deserted my lord.”
“Are you not doing so now?” Kithan asked.
Heat flamed in his face. “Yes,” he admitted hoarsely. “By her leave; but those are details Roh need not know... only that Ohtij-in has fallen, and that we are escaped from it.”
Kithan considered that a moment “I will help you,” he said. “Perhaps my word can bring you to your cousin. Seeing Hetharu discomfited will be pleasure enough to reward me.”
Vanye stared at him, weighing the truth behind that cynical gaze, and looked questioningly also at Jhirun, past whom they had been talking. She looked afraid in that reckoning, as if she, a peasant, knew her worth in the affairs of lords who strove for power.
“Jhirun?” he questioned her.
“I want to live,” she said. He looked into the fierceness of that determination and doubted, suddenly; perhaps she saw it, for her lips tightened. “I will stay with you,” she said then.
Tears shone in her eyes, of pain or fear or what other cause he did not know, nor spare further thought to wonder. He had no care for either of them, Myya nor halfling lord, only so they did not ruin him. His mind was already racing apace, to the encamped thousands that lay ahead, beginning to plot what approach they might make so that none would slay them out of hand.
Whatever their need for haste, it could be measured by the fact that none of the horde that followed Roh had yet begun to move: the watchfires still glowed in the murky beginnings of dawn. It was best, he thought, to ride in slowly, as many a party must have done, come to join the movement that flowed toward the Well: anxiously he measured the rising light against the distance to the far edge of the fires, and liked not the reckoning. They could not make it all before the light showed them for the ill-assorted companions they were. But there was no other course that promised better.
Soon they rode out of the ruin altogether, and among the stumps of young trees, saplings that had been hewn off the beginning slope of the mountain—for shelters, or to feed the fires of the camp. And soon enough they rode within scent of cookfires, and the sound of voices.
Sentries started from their posts, seizing up spears and advancing on them. Vanye kept riding at a steady pace, the others with him; and when they had come close in the dim light, the sentries—dark-haired Men—stood confused by the sight of them and backed away, making no challenge. Perhaps it was the presence of Kithan, Vanye thought, resisting the temptation to look back; or perhaps—the thought came to him with peculiar irony—it was himself, cousin to Roh, similar in arms and even in mount, for the two horses, Roh’s mare and his gelding, were of the same hold and breeding.
They entered the camp, that sprawled in disorder on either side of the paved road. At a leisurely pace they rode past the wretched Shiua, who huddled drowsing by their fires, or looked up and stared with furtive curiosity at what passed them in the dawning.
“We must find the Well,” Vanye observed softly; “I trust that is where we will find Roh.”
“Road’s-end,” answered Kithan, and nodded toward the way ahead, that began to wind up to the shoulder of the mountains. “The Old Ones built high.”
Somewhere a horn sounded, thin and far, a lonely sound off the mountain-slopes. Over and over it sounded, sending the echoes tumbling off the valley walls; and about them the camp began to stir. Voices began to be heard, strained with excitement; fires began to be extinguished, sending up plumes of smoke.
Jhirun looked from one side to the other in apprehension. “They are beginning to move,” she said. “Lord, surely the Well is open, and they are beginning to move.”
It was true: everywhere men were stripping shelters and gathering their meager belongings; children were crying and animals were bawling in alarm and disturbance. In moments, those lightest burdened had begun to seek the road, pouring out onto that way that led them to the Well.
Roh’s gift, Vanye thought, his heart pained for the treason he felt, his human soul torn by the sight of the overburdened folk about him, that edged from the path of their horses. Morgaine would have doomed them; but they were going to live.
He came, to bow at Roh’s feet—and one day to kill him; and by that, to betray these folk: he saw himself, an evil presence gently threading his way among them, whose faces were set in a delirious and desperate hope.
He served Morgaine.
There was at least a time you chose for yourself, she had said.
Thee will not appoint thyself my conscience, Nhi Vanye. Thee is not qualified.
He began to know.
With a grimace of pain he laid spurs and the reins’ ends to the black gelding, startling Shiua peasants from his path, frightened folk yielding to him and his two companions, that held close behind him. Faces tore away in the dim light before him, stark with fear and dismay.
The road wound steeply upward. An archway rose athwart it, massive and strange. They passed beneath, passed through the vanguard of the human masses that toiled up the heights, and suddenly rode upon forces of
A band of
Vanye reined back and reached for his sword. “No,” Kithan said at once. “They are Sotharra. They will not stop us.”
Uneasily Vanye conceded the approach to Kithan, rode at his shoulder and with Jhirun at his own rein hand, as they drew to a slow halt before the halflings, with levelled pikes all about them.
Little Kithan had to say to them: a handful of words, of which one was Ohtij-in and another was Roh and another was Kithan’s own name; and the Sotharra lord straightened in his saddle, and reined aside, the pikes of his men-at-arms flourishing up and away.
But when they had ridden through, the Sotharra rode behind them at their pace; and Vanye ill-liked it, though it gave them passage through the other masses of halflings that rode the winding ascent. Hereafter was no retreat: he was committed to the hands of
And if Roh had already passed, and if it were Hetharu who must approve his passage: Vanye drove that thought from his mind.
A turning of the road brought them suddenly into sight of a round hill, ringed about by throngs of halfling folk: the horses slowed of their own accord, snorting, walking skittishly, weary as they were.
It grew upon the senses, that oppression that Vanye knew of Gates, that nerve-prickling unease that made the skin feel raw and the senses over-weighted. It was almost sound, and not. It was almost touch, and not.
He saw the place to which they went, in a day that yet had a murkiness in its pastel clouds: there were tents; there were horses; and the road came to an end in a place shadowed by slanted spires.
And the Well.
It was a circle of Standing Stones, like that of Hiuaj: not a single Gate, but a gathering of them, and they were alive. Opal colors streamed within them, like illusion in the daylight, a constant interplay of powers that filled the air with uneasiness; but one Gate held the azure blue of sky, that was terrible with depth, that made the eyes ache with beholding it.
Kithan swore.
“They are real,” the
Vanye forced the reluctant gelding to a steady walk, shouldered into Jhirun’s mare by a sudden rebellion of the horse, and saw Jhirun’s eyes, dazed, still fixed upon the horror of the Gates; her hand was at her throat, where bits of metal and a white feather and a stone cross offered her what belief she knew. He spoke her name, sharply, and she tore her gaze from the hillside and kept by his side.
The camp at the base of the hill was already astir. Shouts attended their arrival, voices thin and lost in that heaviness of the air. Men fair-haired and armored gathered to stare at them: “Kithan Roktija.” Vanye heard whispered: he unhooked his sword and rode with it across the saddle as they rode slowly past pale, gray-eyed
