Exile's Gate (3 page)

—back, then, to that
moment. The wolves shied away, their grip leaving him, all but the gray
bitch, and a sword flashed, the rider of the white horse leaning from
the saddle to strike—

He cried out then, falling
against the post, which did not belong on that riverbank. It began
again. He fell, and the riders, afoot, walking their horses across the
debris of bones, came to take him to torment. That was the worst
cruelty, that he was lost in a dream wherein the end began it all again.

The man fought him. Well he
might, though there was little strength left in him. "Have care!"
Morgaine cried as the chain swung, but Vanye jerked his head out of the
way, guarded himself against a knee-thrust, and with the press of his
weight and a twist at the arm, disarmed the wild-haired, armored man of
the chain he wielded. It did not end the fight, but he had the man,
then, beyond any dispute, gripped in both arms and carried struggling
to the ground.

"Be still," he said in his own language, for the man was human. "Be still. We are not your enemies."

That did no good. "We are not here to harm you," Morgaine said in the qhalur tongue. And in the human: "Hold him still."

Vanye saw what she was
about and edged further from the post, dragging the struggling man with
him and drawing the ankle chain taut between the man and the post, as
Morgaine took that small black weapon of hers and burned it. A smell of
heated metal went up. One link reddened and bent under the pull, and
the man writhed and fought his hold, but Vanye freed a hand and laid it
on his cheek, shielding his vision from what a man of simple beliefs
might not want to see, while iron sparked and sputtered and parted.

"There, man, there. You are free of that."

"Tie him," Morgaine said, being the crueler and the more practical of them both.

"I must," Vanye said, and
patted the man's face and shared a look with him, one glance into blue
and desperate eyes that sought—perhaps—some hope of him, before he took
the man in both his arms, wrestled him over face down and sat on him
till he could work loose one of the leather thongs from his belt and
tie his hands behind him.

After that, the man seemed
sane, for he stopped fighting and lay inert, only turning his face out
of the unwholesome dirt, his cheek against the ground, his eyes open
and staring elsewhere as if nothing that proceeded could interest him
further.

He was thin, beneath the
armor. There was filth all about, a stench of death and human waste and
wolf. Vanye got up and brushed himself off, and bent to drag the man up
to his feet with him.

The man kicked, a futile
effort, easily turned. Vanye shrugged it off and hauled him up to his
feet with a shake at the scruff, grabbed him up in a tight embrace from
behind and held him there against his struggles. "Enough," he said, and
when he had gotten his breath:
"Liyo,
a drink of water might improve his opinion of us."

Morgaine fetched the water
flask from her saddle, unstopped it, filled the little cup that was its
cap. "Careful," Vanye said, anxious, but careful she was, standing to
the side, offering it for a moment until the man turned his head and
committed himself to their charity.

Rapid sips, then, a
trembling throughout the man's body then and after Morgaine drew the
cup away. "We will not harm you," she said. "Do you understand?"

The man nodded then, a
single movement of his head. And shivered in Vanye's grip—a young man,
his beard and hair sunbleached blond and matted with every manner of
filth. He stank, like all the air about this hill; dirt and gall-marks
were about his neck where the edge of his armor had rubbed him raw, and
the chained ankle would not bear his full weight.

"Who put you here?" Vanye asked him in the qhalur language, as Morgaine had spoken.

"Lord Gault," he thought the answer was. Or some name like that, which told him nothing.

"We will put you on my horse," Vanye said. "We will take you somewhere safe. We will not harm you. Do you understand me?"

Again a nod. The trembling did not cease.

"Easy," Vanye said, and
supported him gently, the grip become an embrace of his left arm. He
slowly led him to the slope where their horses stood—well-trained and
waiting, but skittish near so much wolf-smell and decay. He sought
after Arrhan's reins, but Morgaine took them up and held the mare
steady for him. He did not offer the man the stirrup, considering his
hands were bound. He only steadied the prisoner against Arrhan's side
and offered his hands for a stirrup: "Left foot. Come."

The man did as he was told.
Vanye heaved him upward, pressing close with his body while Arrhan
shifted and fretted, and the man landed belly down on the saddle,
struggling then to right himself. Vanye set his own foot in the
stirrup, stepped up and rested his leg across the low cantle and
blanket roll till he could get hold of the man and haul him upright
enough. Then he slid down behind him, occupying most of the saddle, all
the while Morgaine held Arrhan to an uneasy standstill; and the
prisoner rested against him, his leg hooked round the horn, for he had
no strength to bring it over.

"I have him," Vanye said, and took the reins Morgaine handed up to him.

She had a worried look. So,
he reckoned, had he; and he wanted clear of this place, wanted them on
lower ground and less conspicuous, wanted the stink of death out of his
nostrils—but he held it against him in human shape, inhaled it through
his mouth much as he could, and thought that even his armor and his
gear would hold the smell for days.

In front of him, leaning against him, the man gave a racking cough.
Disease and plague,
Vanye
thought. It went with such places. He reined about carefully, following
Morgaine as she mounted up on the gray. The stud was fractious too,
snorting and working at the reins, but she did not let Siptah have his
head. They rode carefully over the bone-littered ground.

"Are they near," Vanye asked the prisoner, "the men who did this to you?"

Perhaps the man understood.
Perhaps he did not. He did not answer. Intermittently he underwent
spasms of coughing, racking and harsh, then, exhausted, slumped against
him, his body rolling more and more to the motion of the horse.

"He is fainting," Vanye said to Morgaine. "I think all his strength is going."

In a little time more, the
man's head fell forward, and it was loose weight leaning against him.
But when Vanye pressed his hand over the man's heart he felt it beating
steadily. It was a strong heart, he thought, of a man stubborn beyond
all reason, and such a man might touch his sympathy—might, except such
a man might be fair or foul, and he had known more than one enemy and
more than one madman on this Road.

Morgaine led them back to
the road again, and across it, to a place where a small river ran at
woods-edge. In the last light, they rode a pathless track among the
trees, in a land where they already knew that there were wolves, and
men who had done the like of this. It was enough to know.

They gave him water, they
brought him a long dazed ride deep within the twisted forest, laid him
on a streamside and there freed his hands, the man of the pair giving
him a little waybread soaked in cordial so strong it stung Chei's
throat.

After which they let him
lie, busy at the making of their camp, and through his slitted, aching
eyes, Chei saw them moving here and there in the light of a tiny fire,
illusory and ominous. Chei's heart beat in panic when they would come
near; it eased whenever they would seem occupied about their own
business. Then he knew that he was safe for a while, as he had known
that he was safe when the wolves were feeding: and in such intervals,
as then, he drifted only scantly waking.

A shadow fell between him
and the fire. He came awake, saw the reach toward him, and feigned
unconsciousness as a hand rested on his brow. "There is tea," a man's
voice said, in the qhalur tongue, "here, drink."

He did not intend to break
his pretense. He was still even when a hand slipped beneath his neck,
though his heart was hammering in fright; he stayed quite limp as the
man lifted his head and slid support under his shoulders.

But the cup which touched
his lips smelled of herbs and honey. A little of it trickled between
his lips, warm and wholesome, and he swallowed, risking the harm in
it—a sip which touched off a spate of coughing and destroyed his
pretense of unconsciousness. The cup retreated, came back to his lips.
He drank again, eyes shut, tears leaking from between his lids as he
fought the rawness in his throat; and drank a third sip, after which
his head rested on the man's knee and a gentle hand soothed his brow.

He ventured to open his eyes, and met a face human as his own—but he had learned to doubt appearances.

All about them were twisted
trees, the night, the fire. He knew that he had come to Hell, and that
this qhalur woman from beyond the gate had laid claim to what the
qhal-lord this side of the gate had flung away. These strangers had no
use for revenge: there was nothing he personally had done to them save
be born. There was nothing he knew that would be valuable to them.
There was no cause at all for their mercy to him save that they had use
for him, and what use the tall, lordly qhal had for a young and
fair-haired human man he knew all too well.

They would take him through
the gate with them. He would come back again, but with such a guest in
him as Gault had, an old thing, a living hell which spoke with Gault's
mouth and looked out through Gault's eyes, and which was a sojourner
there. Qhal did not use qhal in that way, or it was rare. A healthy
human body would serve, when a qhal outlived the one he was born with.

So they touched him gently,
this qhalur woman and this maybe-qhal who did her bidding. So they gave
him drink, delicate drink, perhaps because the great qhal-lords gave
him what they themselves drank, because it did not occur to them that
it was too precious to waste. So the man let his head down to the soft
grass and spoke to him reassuringly, looking to the iron that banded
his swollen ankle: "This is a simple lock; I can strike it off, have no
fear of me, I will take good care." And he fetched a hand-axe and one
flat stone and another, to Chei's misgiving—but the axe-blade was for a
wedge, the one rock for a brace, the other for striking, and the woman
came and with her own hands gave him more of the cordial against the
shocks that ran through his nerves, gave him enough that his raw throat
was soothed and his head spun while the man worked in soft, steady
blows.

Surely they took good care
for the body they claimed. There was something terrible in such
careless use of their rich things, in the gentle touch of the woman's
hand as it rested on his shoulder, and in her soft reassurances: "He
will not hurt you."

It was one with the other
madness, and Chei's senses spun, so that he was not sure whether the
ground was level or not. The soft ringing of the metal resounded in his
skull, the pain ran up from the bones of his leg and into his hip, till
the iron fell away, and the man very delicately, with his knife, slit
the stitching of his boot and said something to the qhal in words which
made no sense—but Chei was far gone in the pain that began about his
ankle from the moment it was free of its confinement, an ache that made
him wish the chain back again, the boot intact, anything but that
misery which made him vulnerable. He tried not to show it, he tried not
to react when the man probed the joint; but his back stiffened, and he
could not help the intake of breath.

The world was dim for a
time after that shock. They went away from him. He was glad to lie
still and not heave up the moisture they had given him; and he thought
that he would, for a time, if he lifted his head at all. But the man
brought a wet doth warm from the fire, and washed his face and his neck
and his hands with it.

"Do you want more water?" the man asked.

He did. He did not ask. It
was a trick, he thought, to make him believe them, and he did not want
to talk to them. Somewhere in the distance, wolves howled, and he
shivered at the chill of water rolling down under his collar; that
small twitch he could not suppress. For the rest he did nothing, lay
still and cared as little as possible what they did.

Until he felt the man's hands at his armor buckles, unfastening them.

"No," he said then, and flinched from under that touch.

"Man, I will not hurt you. Let me rid you of this and wash the dirt off—only the worst of it. Then you can sleep till morning."

"No," he said again, and
blinked the man clear in his vision—a human face, faintly lit by fire.
The place was real, like the woods overhead, branches the fire lit in
ghostly ways. He flinched as the touch came at his shoulder again, and
struck feebly at it, being desperate.

"Man—"

"No. Let me be."

"As you will. It is your
choice." Another touch, this time on his wrist, from which again he
moved his hand. "Peace, peace, rest, then. Rest. Whoever did this to
you is no friend of ours. You can sleep."

The words made no sense at
all to him. He thought of the wolves, the ones he had named—he had
known their faces, he had known their ways. They were terrible, but he
knew them, what they would do, when they would do it: he had learned
his enemy and he had known the limits of his misery.