Exile's Gate (35 page)

It was the last of the cordial they shared, the last sweet taste of arrhendur honey.

They
watched the sun go down over the hill in a film of cloud and silken
colors, and they sat a while under a golden twilight, leaned shoulder
against shoulder and watched the horses drink from the rill and eat the
forage he had gotten for them in places he did not think cutting would
be evident.

He
was content. Morgaine leaned back against the hill and smiled at him in
her turn, one of her rare, kindly smiles. The quiet, and the brief,
fond glance of her eyes set his heart to racing as if they were both
be-spelled. Twilight touched her slanted cheekbones, touched her gray
eyes and silver hair and the edges of the mail of her over-sleeves, the
black leather, the buckles of her armor, and—like a watchful familiar,
the dragon-sword lying beside her against a stone. Its ruby eyes winked
red and wicked.

I am here,
it said.
I never sleep.

But
it was familiar to him too. Like Morgaine—her silences, the little
shifts of her expression which he could read or thought he read—as now
he read something in her level, continual stare which had the silence
of the night about it, and the dying light dancing in gray, qhalur eyes
and a face every line of which he knew in his sweetest and most
terrible dreams.

"How long," she said at last, "does thee think to camp here?"

He frowned as he found himself suddenly back in an argument he had thought he had just won.
"Liyo,
do not think of it. Do not think of when.
Stay camped,
do nothing. Do not move or stir: let the enemy do that, that is my counsel in the matter."

"Until winter sets in?" A frown leapt to her eyes. "It—"

"A few days, for Heaven's own sake. A few days. Five. I do not know."

He
had not wanted debate with her. He found his muscles gone tense, his
breathing quickened; and she dejectedly flung a pebble into the little
rill that ran at their feet.

Fret
and fret, she would; she could not stay still, could not delay, could
not rest, as if no other thought would stay in her head.

"We cannot wait here for the snows."

"God in Heaven,
listen
to me. Let them move. Let us find out what they will do. That is the purpose of this."

"In the meanwhile—"

"God help us. Tomorrow—tomorrow I will scout out and around."

"We
will," she said.

"You can stay in—"

"We can gain a few leagues north. That is all. If the next camp is not so comfortable, then the one after—"

He rested his brow against his joined hands. "Aye."

"Vanye,
I take your advice—we go slowly. We let the horses build back their
strength. But we dare not be further from that gate than we can
reach—whatever the lord in Mante decides to do."

"Let him! Whatever he will do, let him! He will come after us. He will try us. He will not bolt."

"We are risking everything on that. Thee knows."

"Why?" he asked. "Tell me why this lord should leave his people?"

"It is possible that they are
not
his people."

He
had thought that he had the shape of things, in this strange war that
stretched from land to land, with curving horizons and stars too few or
too many and moons that came and went. He tried to make a wise answer
to that, so she should not think all her teaching wasted.

"You mean that he might be a human man, in qhalur shape."

"It is the name," she said.

"Skarrin?" It had no qhalur sound. But there were qhal who had uncommon names.

"It
is a name in a very old language. I do not know where he should have
heard it. Perhaps it is all chance. Languages have coincidence. But
this, on a qhal—this name: there are among the gate worlds, a kind
older than the qhal. And such of them as survive—are very dangerous."

"What are you saying—older than the qhal? Who is older?"

"Older than the calamity the qhal know. Did I ever say it had only happened but the once?"

He
said nothing. He scarcely understood the first calamity, how the qhal
had made the gates and made time flow amiss, till Heaven set matters
straight again, or as straight as matters could be, where gates
remained live and potent, pouring their magics
(their power,
Morgaine insisted,
do not be superstitious)
into worlds where qhal survived.

"Thee does not understand."

He shook his head ruefully. "No."

"I
do not know," she said. "Only the name troubles me. A name and not a
name, in that language Skarrin means an outsider. A foreigner."

The dark was gathering. The first stars were out. He crossed himself against the omen, whatever it should mean.

"My father," Morgaine said, "was one such."

He
looked at her as if some chasm had opened at his feet, and all of it
dark. She had named comrades from before his time—from before he or his
father before him was ever born.

Of kin she had never spoken. She might have risen out of the elements, out of moonbeams, out of the tales of his people.

I
am not qhal,
she had said time and again. And at one time:
I am halfling.

"Are you saying this Skarrin—then—is kin of yours?"

"None, that I know."

"Who
was
your father?"

"An
enemy." She cast another pebble into the darkening water, and did not
look at him. "In a land before yours. He is dead. Let it rest."

He would not have trod on that ground for any urging.

"He
was qhal, to your way of thinking," Morgaine said. "Give it peace. It
has no significance here. Anjhurin was his name. You have heard it. Now
forget ever you heard it. This Skarrin is no one I know, but my name
might warn him, changed as it is."

He
took in his breath and let it go again, stripping a bit of grass in his
fingers, looking only at that. And for a long time neither of them
spoke.

He
shrugged. "I will scout out tomorrow," he said, to have the peace back,
to ease her mind, however he could. "When I go for forage. There might
be something over the hills."

"Aye,"
she said, and shifted round to lean her shoulder against his back. He
sighed at the relief that gave the center of his back, against the
armor-weight. "But two of us would—"

"I.
Do we need start every bird and rabbit 'twixt us and Mante?" He felt a
sense of impending calamity, such that his breath came in with a
shiver, and he let it go again. "I will go."

"Afoot?"

"No.
I can ride the stream-course. There will be no difficulty." He sighed
against her weight on his shoulders, and looked at the sky in which the
stars had begun to appear. "We should rest," he said sullenly.

"Is thee angry?"

He drew in his breath, and shifted about to face her.
Aye,
he was about to say. But the sober, gentle look she gave him was rare enough he hesitated to offend it.

She was always and always the same, always devil-driven, always restless, incapable even of reason.

And she had brought them through, always, somehow—was always beforehand, always quicker than her enemies expected, and not
where
they expected.

She might drive a sane man mad.

"Vanye?" she asked.

"What more?"
he said shortly.

She was silent then, and sat back with a wounded look that shot through him and muddled all the anger he could muster.

It was not, not, Heaven knew, the face she turned to the world. Only to him. Only to him, in all the world.

He
got to his feet and snatched up a wildflower at his other side, knelt
and solemnly offered the poor thing to her, all closed up for the night
as it was. Bruised, it had a strong grass smell, the smell of spring
lilies, that reminded him suddenly of rides on a brown pony, of—Heaven
knew—his boyhood.

Her
eyes sought up to his. Her mouth curved at the edges, and solemnly she
took it, her fingers brushing his hand. "Is this all thee offers?"

"Aye,"
he said, off his balance in his foolishness: she always had the better
of him with words—was not, he suddenly thought, taking it for a jest;
or was; he did not know, suddenly; it was like everything between them.
He gestured desperately beyond his shoulder. "Or," he said briskly,
deliberately perverse, "I might find others, if I walked along the
stream there. I might bring you a handful."

Her
eyes lightened, went solemn then, and slowly she rose up to her knees
and put her arms about his neck, whereat the world went giddy as the
smell of flowers.

"Do
it tomorrow," she said, a long moment later; and gently she began the
buckles of his armor, that she had helped him with a hundred times to
different purpose.

Changeling
slipped
from its place and fell with a rattle as they made themselves a nest
there of their cloaks and blankets. She reached out and laid the dragon
sword down beside them, the hilt toward her hand, and loosed his hair
from the ivory pin.

So
he laid his own sword, close by the other side. They never quite
forgot. There had been too many ambushes, that they could ever quite
forget.

It
was up and prepare to move at sunrise, in the dewy chill and the damp;
and Vanye shut his eyes, wrapped in his blanket, leaning his back
against Morgaine's knee and letting her comb and braid his hair this
morning, carefully and at leisure, which a lady might do for her man.
He sighed in that quiet, and that contentment.

There
was no blight could touch the hour, nothing at all wrong with the world
or with anyone in it, and the quick deft touch of Morgaine's fingers
near lulled him to sleep again. He shut his eyes till she pushed his
head forward to plait the braid, and rested so, head bowed, till she
tied it off and brought it through and pinned it in its simple knot at
the back of his neck.

So
she was done with him. So it was time to think about the day. He leaned
his head back against her knees and sighed to a touch of her fingers
pulling at a lock by his temple. "Does thee intend to tie this someday?
Or go blind by degrees?"

"Do what you like." No blade came on an
uyo's
hair,
except for judicious barbering, at his own hand. But his hair was twice
hacked and hewn and grown out again, and truth, some of it was often in
his eyes. "Cut it," he said, nerving himself. His Kurshin half was
aghast. But it was Chya clan which had taken him from his outlawry, it
was a Chya he served, it had been a Chya who had proved his true
kinsman; and a Chya was what he became, less and less careful of
proprieties. He faced about and leaned on one hand, while she took her
Honor-blade and cut the straying lock; and cut it again, and cut
another.

At that he opened his mouth to protest, then shut his eyes to keep the hair out and bit his lip.

"It was another one."

"Aye,"
he said. He was determined not to be superstitious; he prepared himself
to see her cast the locks away, he would not play the fool with her,
not make her think him simple.

But she played him that kind of turn she did so often, and put the locks of hair into his hand as if she had known Kurshin ways.

He scattered them on the moving water, since they had no fire; so any omen was gone, and no one could harm his soul.

And he turned on his knee and settled again on both knees, like a man who would make a request.
,

"Liyo-"

"I have a name."

She
had had some lover before him. He knew that now. But into that he did
not ever want to ask. Folly to look back, profoundest folly, and
against all her counsel—

She had so little she could part with. Least of all her purposes.

"Morgaine,"
he said, whispered. Her name was ill-omen. It burned with the legends
of kings and sorceries, and too much of death. Morgaine Anjhuran was
the other face, not the one he loved. For the woman he knew, he did not
have a name at all. But he tried to fit that one around her, and took
both her hands in his as he knelt and she sat on a stone as if it were
some high queen's throne, under the last few stars. "Listen, my liege—"

"Do not you kneel," she said harshly, and clenched her hands on his. "How often have I told thee?"

"Well, it is my habit." He began to get up; then sank back again, jaw set. "It still is."

"You are a free man."

"Well, then, I do what I please, do I not? And since you are a lord, my lady-liege, and since I am only
dai-uyo
at
best, I still call you my liege and I still go on my knees when I see
fit, for decency, my liege. And I ask you—" She started to speak and he
pressed her hands, hard. "While I am gone, stay close, take no chances,
and for the love of Heaven—trust me, however long. If I meet trouble I
can wait it out until they leave. If I have to wonder about your riding
into it, then I have to do something else. So do me the grace and wait
here, and be patient. Then neither of us will have to worry, is that
not reasonable?"