Exile's Gate (19 page)

"No saying where the
archers may be posted," Morgaine said. "I will warrant there is one or
two with clear vantage—that ridge yonder, perhaps. Mark you, we do not
give up the weapons—hai, there—"

One man was moving to take the horses. Vanye moved to prevent it, one hand out, one hand on his sword; and that man stopped.

Chei's horse had strayed
loose, uncertain and confused, and apt, Heaven knew, to bolt; but their
own had stood where the reins had dropped, where Siptah now stood and
jerked his head and snorted challenge, a wary eye on the man
approaching.

"I would not," he advised
the man, who measured the warhorse's disposition and the owners'
resolution with one nervous glance and kept his distance. "I would not
touch him at all, man."

That stopped the matter.
The man looked left and right as if searching for help or new orders,
and edged away, leaving the warhorse and the mare and all their
belongings to stand unmolested. Vanye whistled a low and calming
signal, and the Baien gray grunted and shook himself, lifting his head
again with a wary and defiant whuff.

"My lady," Chei came saying then. "Come. Please. Keep within the line."

Morgaine walked toward the fire. Vanye walked after her, and stood behind her—
ilin's
place, hand on sword, within the wedge-shaped scratch in the dirt that made a corridor to the fire.

So Arunden stood, with his priest, and his men—all men: the only women were the servants, who came and went in the shadows.

"Sit," Arunden muttered with no good grace, and sank down to sit cross-legged.

So Morgaine sat down in like fashion, and laid
Changeling
by her, largely shrouded in the folds of her cloak—which movement Arunden's eyes followed: Vanye saw it as he stood there.

But: "Vanye," Morgaine
said, and he took her meaning without dispute, and sank down beside
her, as others were settling and gathering close, Chei and Bron among
them, on Arunden's side of the line, but beside them on Vanye's side.

"So you found this boy with the wolves," Arunden said. "How and why?"

"We were passing there," Morgaine said. "And Vanye did not like the odds."

"Not like the odds."
Arunden chuckled darkly, and with his sheathed sword poked at the fire
so that sparks flew up. "Not like the odds. Where are you from? Mante?"

"Outside."

There was long and sober silence. The fire crackled, the burning of new branches, the flare of pine needles.

"What—outside?"

"Beyond Mante. Things are very different there. I do not give my enemies to beasts. I deal with them myself."

There was another long silence.

Then: "Cup!" Arunden said.

"My lord," the priest objected vehemently, scrambling up.

"Sit
down,
priest!" And as the so-named priest sank down with ill grace: "Close up, close up, close up! Does a qhalur
woman
frighten you? Close up!"

No one stirred for a
moment. Then Chei edged closer on Vanye's side. After that there was a
general movement, men moving from the back of the circle forward on
Arunden's side, edging closer on either side of them, blurring and
obliterating the line the priest had drawn, two rough-looking men
crowding close on Morgaine's side, so that Vanye felt anxiously after
his sword-hilt.

"You!" Arunden jabbed his sheathed sword toward him across the fire. "Sit
down!"

"Sit as they do," Morgaine
said quietly, and Vanye drew a second nervous breath and came down off
his heels to fold his legs under him, sitting cross-legged and a cursed
deal further from a quick move. Morgaine reached and touched his hand,
reminding him it was on the sword-hilt, forbidding him, and he let it
go, glaring at Arunden with his vision wide on everything around him.

But a young woman brought a massive wooden bowl and gave it to Arunden: he held it out to the priest. "Here," he said.
"Here!"

The priest drank. Arunden did, and passed the massive bowl to his right.

So from hand to hand it passed, all about the gathering on that side before it came to Bron and to Chei.

There was utter silence then, a profound hush in every movement in the circle.

And from Chei, as he gave
it to Vanye's hands, a frightened look, a pleading look—What, Vanye
wondered. That they not refuse? That there was some harm in it?

"Take it," Chei said. "You must take it."

It was honey drink,
strong-smelling. Vanye looked doubtfully toward Morgaine, but he saw no
likelihood of poison, seeing others had drunk, seeing that the moisture
of it shone on Chei's mouth,
"liyo?"

She gave a slight nod, and he drank one fiery and tiny sip, hardly touching the tip of his tongue to it.

"Drink," Chei whispered from his left. "For God's sake, truly drink. They will know."

He hesitated, feeling the
sting of it, tasting herbs. Panic touched him. But they would insist
for Morgaine too, he thought; if there was harm in it, she had to know.
He took a mouthful and swallowed it down, tracing fire all down his
throat.

He passed it slowly, amid
the soft murmur of those about the fire. He held onto the bowl a
moment, feeling that fire hit his stomach, tasting it all the way down
with the sense that he knew to use on bitter berries, unfamiliar fare
at strange table. Slowly he let her take it, while the murmur grew; and
there was a troubled frown on her face—full knowledge what he had done,
and why.

So she looked at him and
drank a very little, he thought that she truly did, her own judgment:
but she was a woman, she might be delicate in her habits; it was his
place to convince them, and he thought that he had, sufficient good
faith for the two of them.

She passed the bowl on to the man at her right, and so it went on.

The murmur grew.

"Is there something remarkable in it?" Morgaine asked then, civilly.

"There is fen-wort in it," Arunden said. "And neverfade."

"
To loosen tongues," Chei said in a small voice, at Vanye's left, "and to bring out truth."

"Liyo
—
"
Vanye said, for there was of a sudden too much warmth on his tongue for one sip of honey-mead. She glanced his direction.

"It is harmless—" Chei
said. The cup was finishing its course. A young woman brought a skin
and filled it, and it began a second passing.

The crowd-murmur grew. "Another bowl!" the priest objected. "It is unclean, unclean—"

But the bowl went to him.
"Drink," Arunden bade him, and clenched his hand in the priest's hair
and compelled him, at which there was rough laughter, at which Vanye
took in his breath and stared in horror, not knowing what to do, not
knowing what the priest might do, or some man who respected him.

But no one did anything.

"Liyo, "
he said, wishing them out of this.

"Is thee all right?" she whispered back, past the laughter and the noise.

"I am all right," he said,
and it was true, as the moments passed and the cup went round and the
priest wiped his mouth and frowned. He felt Chei take his arm and press
it—"—no harm," Chei was assuring him. "No harm in it—"

He reached that conclusion
in his own reckoning, that it was very strong, that his stomach had
been empty, but it was well enough: he thought that he would not fall
if he rose, nor sleep if he sat, but that if he sat still a little
while his head might not spin and his judgment might come back.

Chei's hand rested on his
shoulder then, heavily, a friendly gesture, offering him the cup in the
next round. Every detail seemed to stand out with unnatural
clarity—like the effects of
akil,
very like
that, but milder. There were more and more cups offered about, bowls
passed hand to hand, drink poured from skins, blurred voices murmuring
words indistinct to him. More than one bowl came his way. He drank only
a little and passed them on.

It was mad. There seemed no
hostility in it, but it was all balanced on the knife's edge, a
peculiar sort of intimacy in this passing of drink round and round. Yet
another bowl came his way, and he only pretended to drink now, and gave
it on to Morgaine, who likewise feigned drinking, and passed it on
again.

"Say on now," Arunden said, whose mustache glistened with beads of liquid in the firelight.
"Now
we talk. My lady qhal, fine lady, who shares my drink and shares my fire—what is it you want in my land?"

"Passage through."

"Through, through,
where
through? To what—to
Mante?"

"It is the gates," Chei said unbidden. "My lady—
tell
him."

"Chei means to say,"
Morgaine said quietly, in a silence that had grown so sudden and so
hushed there was only the wind in the leaves about them, among a
hundred, perhaps a hundred fifty men, and words rang in the air like a
hammer on iron: "that Vanye and I came through the southern gate and we
are going out the northern one, against the interests of the qhal in
this world. We will pass it, we will seal it, and there will be no more
taking of men and changing them, there will be no more coming and going
out the southern gate, with Gault bringing whatever he likes at your
backs while the north brings war against you. There will be no more
gate-force. Once I am done with them, they cannot bring them back to
life."

A great murmuring grew in
the silence she left. "Ha," Arunden cried, and gestured to one of the
women, who filled a bowl. He drank deeply, and wiped his mouth. "Who
will do this?"

"No great band of men will do it," Morgaine said. "No force of arms. A Gate is far too dangerous to assault head-on."

"Aye, there you say!" He took another deep draft. "So who will do it?"

"I am enough."

"Ha!" He waved his hand.
"Drink
for our guests!
You
are enough! Woman, m'lady qhal, how do you propose to do that? Seduce Skarrin?"

"Liyo,"
Vanye said, but her hand rested on his arm, and she slid her hand to his and pressed it hard.

"Gate-force," she said. "I am qhal—am I not? The most they have to fear—is one of their own with hostile intent."

"Who says there has never been? Qhal feud and fight. And what has it ever done? You are lying or you are mad, woman."

"Feud and fight they may.
But they will not go that far. I will. They have no chance against you
then. Do you see? I will give you the only chance you will ever have."

"And the fires—the fires—in the valley!"

"The only chance," Morgaine
repeated, "you will ever have. Else Gault will widen his territory and
yours will grow less and less. I set that fire—else Gault would be
warned and warn his lord, and after
that,
my
lord, you would see a hunt through these hills you would not wish to
see. I will advise you: shelter me and mine tonight, and pass us
through these woods in the morning as quietly and quickly as you can.
Beyond that I can assure you the qhal will have other concerns; and
beyond that you can do what you have never, I would surmise, been able
to do: to come at Gault from the wooded south. That gate south of
Morund will cease to be active. There will be no power there. Begin to
think in those terms. Places you have not dared to go. Enemies you will
not have when these present shapes age and fade—it is
that
which
can make a qhalur enemy a most deadly threat, do you understand? It is
the experience of a half a score lifespans fighting in the same land,
against human folk who know only what they can learn in twenty years.
That will cease. You will see them die. You will find their successors
fewer and fewer. They do not bear half so frequently. That is what I
offer you."

Arunden wiped a hand across
his mouth. The bowl tilted perilously in his hand. From time to time as
Morgaine spoke the gathering murmured almost enough to drown her voice,
but it was quiet now.

Arunden was entirely drunk,
Vanye thought. He was drunk and half numb and the visitor he had tried
to ply with drink and drug had spun a spell enough to muddle a man's
mind—that was the witchery Morgaine practiced. He had seen her work it
on more than one man with his wits about him; and he watched now a
desperate and inebriate man trying to break the strands of that web,
with sweating face and glittering eyes and quickened breath.

"Lies," Arunden said.

"Wherein?"

"Because you will never do it! Because no one can get through."

"That is my worry. I have said: shelter for the night. Safe passage through to the road. That is all."

"That is easy done," Arunden said, wiping his mouth again. He held out the bowl which had come to him. "It is empty!"

A woman hastened to fill
it. There were a great number of bowls filled, and a general and rising
commotion among the onlookers. Chei's hand a second time rested on
Vanye's shoulder.

"Quiet!" Arunden shouted, and took another deep draft of the bowl. "Quiet!"