Exile's Gate (18 page)

"Chei!" a voice called out
of the dark, and a man was coming down the slope of a sudden, limping
and making his way with difficulty on the uneven ground among the trees
and huts.

Vanye let his sword
surreptitiously back to its sheath, as Morgaine had stopped near him,
her hands shrouded in her cloak and her jaw set.

"Bron, it is not your brother," Arunden shouted uphill as that man came on, and waved him to stand off.

But: "Bron," Chei said, quietly. "O Bron—"

The man came resolutely
forward, limping somewhat—unarmored, wearing only breeches and shirt
and boots, weaponless; he came and he stopped in doubt a little the
other side of the fire; as Chei for his part stood still—wisely, Vanye
thought with that prickling between his own shoulder-blades that
weapons at his back set there.

"I am not Changed," Chei
said in a voice that scarcely carried, a voice which trembled. "Bron,
Ichandren is dead. Everyone is dead. Gault gave the last of us to the
wolves. Myself, Falwyn, ep Cnary—" His voice did break, quiet as it
was. "They died. That was what happened to them. I thought you had died
on the field."

"What do you want here?" Bron asked, in a voice colder than Arunden's. "What is it you want?"

Chei turned his face away as if it he had been dealt a blow, and shook his head vehemently.

"What do you want, Chei?"

"Passage," Chei said after
a moment, looking back toward his brother. "Safety. I am sworn, Bron,
my lord was dead, you were dead, the lady and this man found me, they
took me away from the wolves, healed my hurts—He is not qhal, Bron, he
is a man like I am and
she
set me free and
gave me a horse and tells me things that Arunden ought to know, that
all of us ought to know, Bron—I swear to you, I know there is no way to
prove anything I say. But you know me, you know everything I could
know—try me, whether I have forgotten anything. Bron—for the love of
Heaven—"

Bron's face worked, somewhere between desperation and grief.

And suddenly he held out his open arms.

"No," Arunden cried. "Fool!"

But Chei came to him,
slowly, carefully. They embraced each other, and wept, for very long,
till Bron set Chei back by the shoulders and looked at him as if he
could discover the truth by firelight.

Vanye watched with a pang
of his own—the which he could not comprehend, only something in him
hurt, perhaps that a man could come home again; or that brothers could
prove true.

Or that Chei had just deserted them for a deeper loyalty, whatever the issue of this place.

Fool, he thought. Well that there
be
some help for us here.

There was Morgaine beside
him, who was all his own concern; and Chei at the moment was hers, he
reckoned, their guide and the source of everything they knew in this
world. She would wreak havoc to keep him safe, Chei was very right; had
Arunden attempted to stop him or to strike him or his brother, Morgaine
would have acted, fatally for Arunden and half the village before she
was done.

But she and Arunden and all
of them stood baffled by this, that Bron ep Kantory took his brother
into his arms without being sure what he was embracing: he made himself
a hostage to stop those who cared for either of them, and by one move
held them all powerless.

Chapter Six

"Come," Bron said, his
hands on Chei's shoulders, while Chei's thoughts reeled between one
side and the other of the forces gathered there at odds. There was the
lady and Vanye and there was Arunden ep Corys, a sudden and hard-handed
lord. Calamity was possible at any instant.

But Bron held to him as if
there were no chance in all the world that he was a piece of Gault's
handiwork. "Come," Bron said gently, as if there were no lunacy at all
in his arriving in camp in company with a qhalur witch and a man in
strange armor. "Tell me; tell me what I can do; O my God, Chei—" Of a
sudden Bron hugged him tight again and pressed his head against his
shoulder; and Chei embraced him a second time, appalled at how thin his
strong brother had become, how there was so little between his hands
and Bron's ribs, and how there was a fragile, insubstantial feel about
him.

"I am not theirs," Chei insisted, over and over again. "Not theirs. I am not lying, Bron, I swear to you I am not Changed."

"I believe you," Bron said. "I know, I know, what shall I do, what do you want me to do?"

"Just swear for me.
Talk
to Arunden."

"Tell him what? Who are they? What are they?"

"Friends. Friends to us."

Bron set him back and
stared at him, bewildered, desperate—at his little brother who was a
fool and could not think of anything but seeing him, until now, now
that he knew what he had known from birth, that Bron would do the same
as he—would believe him because he wanted to believe, and become
another fool for his sake, risking his life and his soul for the
remotest hope Chei was alive and still his brother. That was what was
in Bron's eyes, that was the struggle to believe, while his hands
trembled on Chei's arms and strayed once and twice to his face and his
shoulders as if he could not believe he was flesh and blood.

"You
look
tolerably well," Bron said.

"They have been good to me, Bron, truly—they have. You—?"

"Well enough, I am well enough."

"You limp."

"Ah, well, that will mend, it will mend. So do you.—My God, my God—"

"There was a brooch Mama had—it was a marsh rose. There was a place in the wall we used to hide our special things—"

"O
God,
Chei—"

"—I gave you that scar on
your chin; I hit you with a harness buckle—you teased me about a girl;
her name was Meltien. She died in the winter march—"

"Brother—" Bron hugged him to silence. They wept together; and when he could speak again:

"Bron, I have sworn to take them north on the Road; and I have to do that—"

"There are arrows aimed at
us." Bron took his face between his hands and looked again at him,
intensely. "Who are they? You will have to tell me. I do not
understand. God knows Arunden does not. What shall we do?"

"I will talk to them.
They
will talk with Arunden if he will listen—"

"He will listen," Bron
said; and hugged him close against his side, so that they shielded each
other as they went to Arunden, Bron armorless as he was, himself in a
mail shirt that was in no wise proof against the lady's weapons.

But a man barred their way,
a man with a drawn sword and the emblem on him of Holy Church; and Bron
stopped still, his hand clenched on Chei's shirt.

"If you will not kill it," the priest said, "I will. Your soul is in danger, Bron ep Kantory."

"Your
life
is," Chei answered, and would have pushed Bron behind him, but Bron stood fast. "My lady!"

"Hold!" Arunden said.

"My lord," the priest protested.

But Arunden walked into the
matter, and waved the priest off. And Chei stood with a weakness still
in his knees, uncertain which of them was supporting the other. Words
froze in his throat. They always did, at the worst of times.

"There is a curse in him,"
the priest said. "It is a curse has come to us in a friend's shape. It
is Gault's gift. Kill them. Have no words with them."

"Then we would know nothing
Gault wants," Arunden said. "Would we, priest?—Talk, boy. What have we
here? What do you bring us, eh? More of Gault's handiwork?"

"The lord is talking, at
least," Vanye said in a low voice, seeing what transpired, with the
brothers and Arunden and two armed men. His hand was still on his
sword, from the first Chei had called out.

And he thanked Heaven that Arunden had moved to stop the man.

"Hope that this brother's
word has some weight," Morgaine said in the Kurshin tongue. "I should
not have let us leave the road. That was the first mistake. Stay to my
left."

"Aye," he murmured, feeling
the sting of that, and his heart was pounding, the old, familiar fear,
the nightmare of too many such choices. But Chei came toward them and
fear shifted to a frail, desperate hope, seeing that Bron continued to
talk to Arunden.

"He will speak to you,"
Chei said, casting an anxious glance between him and Morgaine. "I swear
to you—Arunden is not a treacherous man: God witness, he is not a
careful one, either—he is afraid of you, lady, and he cannot admit it.
Be patient with him. That is a priest of God—that one, with the sword.
Be careful of him."

Vanye looked a second time.
It did not look like a priest. He drew in a quick, anxious breath. It
had been long since he had found anything of the Church; and there had
been so much doubtful he had had to choose on his own: so far he had
come, and changed so much—and a priest—

He was starkly afraid to
face anything of the Church nowadays: that was the proof that he was
damned, and he did not need a priest to threaten him with Hell.

Or to threaten Morgaine, or curse her with curses she would not regard, but which would all the same bring no luck to them.

"We do not need the priest," he muttered. "Send him away."

"I do not know," Chei said in evident consternation. "I do not think—I do not see how . . . my lady—"

"No matter," Morgaine said. Gold flashed in the seam of her cloak. She rested
Changeling's
cap on the ground, her hands on the quillons of the dragon grip. "If it saves us time, let us be done with this."

Vanye opened his mouth to
protest. But it was not that Morgaine did not know the Church. There
was nothing he could tell her. There was nothing he knew how to tell
her.

He longed—God in Heaven, he
longed for someone to tell him he had done right, and that his soul was
not so stained as he thought it was, or a gentle priest like those in
Baien-an or even old San Romen, who would lay hands on him and pray
over him and tell him if he did thus and thus he was not damned.

But this priest did not
have any gentle look. This one was damnation and hellfire, and met them
with the uplifted cross of a sword.

"No further," the priest said, and drew a line in the dirt, between them and his lord. "Talk behind that."

Morgaine grounded
Changeling
just
behind that line, the dragon hilt in her hands, and a hell between them
that the priest could not in his wildest dreams, imagine.

"Do we talk to this?" she asked scornfully, looking past the priest to Arunden. "Is he lord in this camp? Or are you?"

"My lady," Chei cautioned
her, and Bron, who had come halfway between Arunden and his brother,
stopped still and looked appalled.

"I will talk with whoever
is lord here," Morgaine said. "If it is this man, so be it. His word
will bind you. And I will take it for yours."

"If I say talk with the camp scullions, you talk with them!" Arunden snarled.

Vanye went stiff, but Morgaine's hand was up, preventing him, before the lord Arunden had even finished speaking.

"Well and good," she said. "To
them
I will offer my help, and turn this camp upside down, lord Arunden, when they profit from what I have to say.
Or
you can listen, and profit yourself and yours, and not come to Ichandren's fate or have to ask advice of your servants."

"You are in a poor place to threaten us, woman! Have you looked around you?"

"Have
you,
my
lord, and have you not noticed that qhal are taking your land and
killing your people? I might make some difference in that. Let us talk,
my lord Arunden! Let us sit down like sensible folk and I will tell you
why I want to pass through your land."

"No passage!" the priest cried, and people murmured in the shadows. But:

"Sit down," Arunden said.
"Sit,
and
lie
to us before we deal with you."

More and more people
appeared out of the dark and the woods, coming down into the light: a
man or two at first, who stood with Arunden within the priest's line;
and young women in breeches and braids, who scurried about seeing to
the fire and bringing out blankets to spread by it—an appearance of
decent courtesy, Vanye thought, standing by with his hand on his
sword-hilt and a dart of his eye toward every move around the shadows
on their own side of the line.

On his, the dour,
broad-bellied hedge-lord stood by with a clutch of his own men and with
Bron and Chei both across that line and talking urgently to him—he had
his arms folded, and scowled continually; but made no overt gesture of
hostility, only repeated ones of impatience.

The priest, for his part,
drew another line when the rapidly-forming circle took shape about the
fire, a mark in the dust with his sword and a holy sign over it, the
which sent a cold feeling to Vanye's gut.

"Poor manners, these folk,"
he said to Morgaine, looking constantly to their flanks and refusing to
be distracted by the priest's doings.