Exile's Gate (16 page)

But Chei was armed again,
after a fashion: he had the harness-knife, small as it was, a gesture
Morgaine had made to him at their setting-out; for peace, Vanye
reckoned. Or it was another test of him.

Certainly Chei had looked
confused, and then: "My lady," he had said, in a respectful, astonished
tone, the while Vanye's gut had knotted up and his hand clenched tight
on his own blade-hilt, considering how close Morgaine stood to Chei,
with the knife in his hand.

But Chei had put it away in
its sheath on his saddle-skirt, and tied his armor up behind his horse
with his blanket and his saddlebags; and rode now to the fore of them,
conscious, surely of his sword and of Morgaine's weapon at his back, if
treachery ever crossed his mind.

It was a wooded track, Chei had assured them. It was a way they would stand less chance of being seen.

It was also a track in
which they could not see the turns ahead in the nightbound forest, in
which they did not know the way and were utterly dependent on their
guide, the same one who had twice mistaken his way—he swore.

Vanye himself had argued
for this. Morgaine would have walked brazenly into Morund and demanded
hospitality, and thrust Chei into Gault's very hold and hall and forced
Gault to take him for a guest . . . backed by power enough to deal with
any qhalur hedge-lord.

He had persuaded her
otherwise, into this, with the land afire and men dead, half a score of
them, and a twice-mistaken guide holding their lives in his hand—

Lady, Chei called her now,
not witch. If Chei thought of sorcery it was surely tempered, living
near qhal as he did, by the knowledge that what qhal did came not
entirely from empty air and ill intent; it was not a thoroughly
superstitious belief, and Chei surely knew by now that there was a
qhalur weapon involved. When it came to fine distinctions beyond that—

—When it came to that,
Vanye himself was not well sure whether it was witchcraft, or what it
was he carried against his heart, or what that blade was that Morgaine
carried, and both guarded and hated with all that was in her.

If they had met some innocent folk family on the valley road, if some children—

God help them, he thought; God help us.

And tried to forget the
face which lingered behind his eyes, the sixteen year old boy,
open-eyed and startled and dead in the starlight of the road.

It stood for everything that had gone amiss.

He rubbed his eyes that
stung with weariness—short sleep, trading watches, with the smell of
smoke still hanging about the hills and the surety that by now there
was commotion behind them, deadly as a river in spate—Heaven send it
was not in front of them as well.

At a point where the road
reached the turning and the climbing was steep to the shoulder of the
hill, Chei drew rein and hesitated, drawing his horse back about in the
starlight, coming even with them.

Then he gave his horse his heels and took the ascent with the impetus it needed.

I am not eluding you, that gesture was to say. Follow me.

Morgaine sent Siptah after;
Vanye allowed the big gray the room he needed on the narrow track, then
gave Arrhan the touch of his heel.

For a moment they were in
starlight, climbing that slot among the rocks; then they came among the
pines again, and into thicker brush, where boughs whispered in a
ghostly voice above the creak of harness and the sound of the horses, a
climb for a long, long distance until the way began to wind down again,
through deep shadow, such as it was in this land where the stars shone
in such numbers and so bright, and white Arrhan and even the Baien gray
and his gray-cloaked rider seemed to glow by night.

Then they broke out upon a
broader track, and Chei's gelding struck a faster pace, along a
streamside and across shallow water that kicked up white in the
night-glow.

Morgaine suddenly put
Siptah to a run, so that Vanye's heart skipped a beat and he kicked
Arrhan in the same moment that Arrhan leapt forward on her own: the
mare cleared the water in a few reckless strides to bring him up on
Morgaine's flank as she overtook Chei and cut him off with Siptah's
shoulder. The gelding shied off, scrambling up against a steep bank and
recovering its balance at disadvantage. Chei drew in, his eyes and hair
shirting pale in the starlight.

"Slower," Morgaine said. "Where do you think to go, so surely and so fast? A trail you know? To what?"

"It is a way I know," Chei
said, and restrained his horse as it backed against the bank and shied
and threw its head. "Where should I lead you? I swear I know this
place."

"That also I wonder. We are making far too much noise for my liking."

"Vanye," Chei appealed to him, "for God's sake—"

"Liyo,"
Vanye
said, and eased Arrhan forward, his heart beating so the pulse seemed
to make his hands shake. No man called his name. Few in his own land
had cared to know it; excepting Nhi and Chya and Myya, and his Chya
cousin, who was not wont to use a Kurshin name when he could help it,
and called him only
cousin
when he was kindest. But in Chei's mouth it was not a curse, it was like a spell cast on him, was the way Morgaine used it.

Fool, he told himself. And his heart moved in him all the same.

"Where are we going?" he asked Chei.

"Where I told you from the beginning—across the hills to the road. Before God I have not lied. Vanye, tell her so. Tell—"

What sound it had been
Vanye could not identify, even in hearing it. But it had been there;
and none of them moved or breathed for the instant.

The black weapon was in Morgaine's hand, beneath the cloak. Vanye knew it, as well as he knew where sky and earth was.
Changeling
rode at her side tonight, since she went hooded; and there was power enough in her hand to deal with any single enemy.

Chei shook his head, faint
movement. His eyes rolled toward the woods, a gleam of white in a
shadowed face. "I do not know," he whispered, ever so faintly. "I swear
to God I do not know who that is, I did not plan this—Please. Let me
go, let me ride to them. It may be they are human—I expect that they
are. If they are not, you can deal with them. If they are, then likely
I can ride in on them."

"And tell them what?" Morgaine asked in a flat voice.

"After that—God knows. They
may kill me. But likeliest they will want to know what they can find
out." His voice trembled. His teeth were chattering, and he drew in a
rough breath. "Lady, if we go on we will ride into ambush and they will
raise all the hills against us. We have no choice! Let me go to them!"

"You are supposing we would ride in after you," Morgaine said.

"I am supposing," Chei
whispered back, "nothing. Except we are too few to threaten them. That
is all the safety we have. I can talk to them, I can tell them you are
no friend of Gault's—Let me
try,
lady. It is the only way. They are bowmen. We will not have a chance if they begin to hunt us."

"He is brave enough," Vanye said in his own language.

"Brave indeed," Morgaine said. "He has courted this, curse him."

It might well be true. Honest men, Morgaine had warned him.

"What can we do now," Vanye asked with a sinking heart, "that costs less?"

"Try," Morgaine said to Chei.

"Hold." Vanye edged Arrhan
up next the gelding to pull the ties free which held the heavy bundle
of mail and leather atop Chei's other gear. He pulled it free and
handed it to him. "Put it on."

In
the case, he thought, that Chei was on their side.

Chei did not argue. He took
the offered help, and took the mail on his arms, ducked his head and
slid it on, leaving it unbelted.

Then he took up the reins and urged the gelding quietly ahead, up the bank and into the woods.
In
a moment more there was a whistle from that direction, low and strange. Siptah threw his head and Morgaine held him steady.

It was not a safe vantage
they had. Vanye interposed himself and his horse between her and the
woods, on the side the bank did not shelter; but their backs he could
not defend.

There was nothing then but the dark and the bubbling of the stream behind them, the sighing of the leaves.

Another sound, from their side: Morgaine unfastened the hook which held
Changeling
at her side, and brought it sheath and all, to rest crosswise on her saddle.

Doomsday. His hand went on reflex to that pyx he had beneath his armor, and he felt it like a coal against his heart.

Destruction.

Once that sword was drawn there was no peace in the world. Once that was drawn there would be deaths heaped up and uncountable.

He sat his horse still,
thinking of archers beyond the trees; and that by now Chei had either
fallen to some silent killer, or found the allies he had led them to,
for whatever purpose.

The movements were
virtually silent, the rustle of a branch, the brush of a body against
leaves. The gelding shifted and snorted and stamped, breaking twigs and
working at the bit; and Chei held him in place.

"Who are you?" came a voice hardly above the wind.

"A human man," Chei
answered in a normal voice, and did not turn in his saddle. "Ep
Kantory. Chei ep Kantory, asking passage. There are three of us, no
more, two at the streamside. One of us is qhal."

There was long silence, very long. He heard a whisper, and another, but he could not hear the words. He did not turn his head.

"Get off your horse," the whisper came.

He did that, and drew a
whole breath, though his legs wanted to shake under him. One qhal, he
had told them. It was enigma enough to confuse them and make them ask
further. He had made himself defenseless. He had ridden without true
stealth. Therefore he was still alive. He stepped down in the little
clear space and held his horse close to the bit, forestalling its
nervous shifting as branches stirred and a shadow afoot came out of the
brush into filtered starlight only slightly better than the forest dark.

That shadow came to him and took his horse's reins and led it away from him. He did not resist.

He did not resist when others came up behind him and took his arms in a painful grip.

"It is passage I ask," he
said to them in a hushed voice. "The qhal with me is a woman, alone
with one human man. They are enemies of Gault's. Gault is hunting us."

A slight weight rested on
his shoulder, and moved till the cold, flat metal of a sword-blade
rested against his neck. "Where do you come from?"

It was death to move. It
was death to give the wrong answer, and for the moment he could think
of nothing at all, the forest air seeming too thin, his senses wanting
to leave him as if the world had shifted again, and he should be back
on that hilltop, all that he had to tell them become a dream, a
delirium. He could not even believe, for one dizzy moment, in the
companions he had left on that streamside, or in the things that had
happened to him, at the same time that he knew he was back among human
men.

The sword turned edge-on against his neck.

"I am still human," he
said. "So is the man with her. She is here on business of her own. It
would be well—to find out what that is. They have told me something of
it—enough I knew I ought to bring them here. I swear you have never
seen anything like her. Or like the man with her—he
is
a
Man, and from somewhere I do not know. Let me go back to them and I
will lead them to the falls. There is no way out of that place but
back. You know that there is not. We will camp there and wait, and you
can ask what questions you want."

There was another long pause. Then: "Ep Kantory," the whisper in front of him said, "your brother is with us."

His heart lurched. As a trick, it was cruel. "My brother died at Gyllin-brook. Ichandren at Morund. I am the last alive."

"Bron ep Kantory is alive," the whisper said. "He is with Arunden. In our camp."

He did not know whether,
then, he could stand on his feet. He was numb. He felt his breath short
and anger blinded him and hope came by turns, between the conviction
they were lying and hope—remotest and terrible hope, that it might be
true.

"Who is this," the same voice continued to ask, "that you travel with?"

He could not speak. He
could not find his voice. He had been better than this when Gault's men
led him to the hilltop. He had been better than this in the depths of
Morund-hall when Ichandren died. His senses came and went, as if he
would faint, and here and there wavered.

"Did you think that you could do this?" the whisper asked him. "Did you think that you could deceive us?"

"I am Chei ep Kantory. My brother's name is Bron. He fell at Gyllin-brook—"

The blade pressed against his neck. A strong grip drove the blood from his hands.

"And who else are you? What other name?"