Exile's Gate (38 page)

"My
lord," someone said, and asked a question. Chei blinked again, feeling
dizzied and strangely absent from what they did, as if he were only
spectator, not participant.

"Do
what you like," he murmured to a question regarding the prisoner; he
did not care to focus on it. He remembered his anger. And the dead,
Jestryn-Bron. And the sight of his men vanishing into gate-spawned
chaos.

It
was the woman he wanted within his reach. It was the sword, against
which there was no power in Mante could withstand him—the woman with
her skills, and himself with a valued hostage. There was—a thought so
fantastical it dizzied him—power over Mante itself, a true chance at
what they had never dared aim for.

He
retired to the rock, sat down, felt its weathered texture beneath his
right hand. He heard commotion from his men, glanced that way with half
attention. "Let him alone," he said to the man who hovered near him.
"The man will not last till Mante if you go on, and then what hostage
have we against the gate-weapons? Twilight. Twilight is soon enough."

It
was as if the strength the gate had lent him had begun to dissipate. He
heard voices at a distance. He saw them drag their captive up against
one of two fair-sized trees at the edge of the brush, along the stream,
saw him kick at one of them, and take a blow in return.

"Stubborn
man," he murmured with a pain about him that might be Jestryn and might
be Bron and might be outrage that this man he had trusted had not
prevented all the ill that had befallen him.

Or
it was pointless melancholy. Sometimes a man newly Changed wept for no
cause. Sometimes one grew irrationally angry, at others felt
resentments against oneself. It was the scattered memories of the
previous tenant, attempting to find place with the new, which had
destroyed it.

He
had fought this battle before. He knew coldly and calmly what was
happening to him, and how to deal with it—how he must to deal with the
memories that tried to reorganize themselves, for his heart sped and
his body broke out in sweat, and he saw the wolves, the wolves that ep
Kantory mustered like demons out of the dark; he heard the breaking of
bones and the mutter of wolfish voices as he walked across the trampled
ground, to where his men had managed finally to bind the prisoner's
hands about the tree.

"Chei—"
Vanye said, looking up at him through the blood and the mud. And
stirred a memory of a riverbank, and kindness done. It ached. It
summoned other memories of the man, other kindnesses, gifts given,
defense of him; and murder—Bron's face. "Chei. Sit. Talk with me. I
will tell you anything you ask."

Fear
touched him. He knew the trap in that. "Ah," he said, and sank down all
the same, resting his arms across his knees. "What will you tell me?
What have you to trade?"

"What do you want?"

"So you will offer me—what? The lady's fickle favor? I went hunting Gault,
friend.
That is what you left me. And I am so much the wiser for it. I should thank you."

"Chei—"

"I
went of my own accord. We discovered things in common. What should I,
follow after you till you served me as you served Bron?
I was welcome enough with your enemies."

Vanye flinched. But: "Chei," he said reasonably, "Chei—" As if he were talking to a child.

"I will send you to Hell, Vanye. Where you sent Bron."

Vanye's eyes set on his in dismay.

"I say that I was willing. Better to
be
a wolf, than to be the deer. That is what you taught me,
friend.
The boy is older, the
boy
cannot be cozened, the
boy
knows how you lied to him, and how you despised him. Never mind the face,
friend:
I am much, much wiser than the boy you lied to."

"There was no lie. I swear, Chei. On my soul.—
For God's sake, fight him, Chei
—
Did you never mean to fight him?"

Chei
snatched his knife from its sheath and jerked the man's head back by
the braid he wore, held him so, till breath came hard and the muscles
that kept the neck from breaking began to weaken. The man's eyes were
shut; he made no struggle except the instinctive one, quiet now.

"No more words? No more advice? Are you finished, Man?
Eh?"

There was no answer.

Chei jerked again and cut across the braid, flung it on the ground.

The
man recovered his breath then in a kind of shock, threw his head back
with a crack against the tree and looked at him as if he had taken some
mortal wound.

It
was a man's vanity, in the hills. It was more than that, to this Man.
It was a chance stroke, and a satisfaction, that put distress on that
sullen face and a crack in that stubborn pride.

Chei sheathed the knife and smiled at human outrage and human frailty and walked away from it.

Afterward,
he saw the man with his head bowed, his shorn hair fallen about his
face. Perhaps it was the pain of his bruises reached him finally, in
the long wait till dark, and his joints stiffened.

But something seemed to have gone from him, all the same.

By
sundown he might well be disposed to trade a great deal—to betray his
lover, among other things: the first smell of the iron would come very
different to a man already shaken; and that was the beginning of
payments ... his pride, his honor, his lover, his life; and the
acquisition of all the weapons the lady held.

Always,
Qhiverin insisted, more than one purpose, in any undertaking: it was
that sober sense restrained him, where Chei's darkness prevailed:
revenge might be better than profit; but profitable revenge was best of
all.

And there were those in Mante who would join him, even yet. . . .

Unease
suddenly flared in the air, like the opening of a gate. A man of his
cried out, and dropped something amid the man's scattered belongings
down along the streamside, a mote that shone like a star.

"Do
not touch it!" Chei sprang up and strode to the site at the same time
as the captain from Mante, and was before him, gathering up that jewel
which had fallen before his own man could be a fool and reach for it
again—a stone not large enough to harm the bare hand, not here, this
far from Mante and Tejhos: but it prickled the hairs at his nape and
lit the edges of his fingers in red.

And there was raw fear in the look of the man who had found it.

"My lord," the captain objected. There was fear there, too. Alarm.
That is not for the likes of you,
was what the captain would say if he dared.

But to a lord of Mante, even an exiled one, the captain dared not say that.

Chei
stooped and picked up the tiny box which his startled man had dropped
amid Vanye's other belongings, and shut the jewel in it. Storm-sense
left the air like the lifting of a weight. "I will deliver this," Chei
said, staring at the captain. His own voice seemed far away in his
ears. He dropped the chain over his head. "Who else should handle it? I
still outrank you,—captain."

The captain said nothing, only stood there with a troubled look.

This,
a Man had carried. The answering muddle of thoughts rang like discord,
for part of him was human, and part of him despised the breed. That
inner noise was the price of immortality. The very old became more and
more dilute in humankind: many went mad.

Except
the high lord condemned some qhal to bear some favorite of his—damning
some rebel against his power, to host a very old and very complex mind,
well able to subdue even a qhalur host and sift away all his memories.

From
that damnation, at least, his friends at court had saved him, when he
had given up Qhiverin's pure blood and Qhiverin's wholly qhalur mind
for Gault's, which memories were there too—mostly those which had loved
Jestryn when Jestryn was human. And knowledge of the land, and of
Gault's allies—and Gault's victims—when Gault was human: but those were
fading, as unused memory would.

There
were a few things worth saving from that mind, things like the
knowledge of Morund's halls and the chance remembrance of sun and a
window, a knowledge that, for instance, Ithond's fields produced
annually five baskets of grain—some memories so crossed with his own
experience at Morund that he was not sure whether they were Gault's
recollections or his own.

Gault's
war was over. He no longer asserted himself. It was the Chei-self,
ironically, which had done it—human and forceful and flowing like water
along well-cut channels: young, and uncertain of himself, and willing
to take an older memory for the sake of the assurance it offered, whose
superstition and doubts scattered and faded in the short shrift the
Qhiverin-essence made of it: wrong, wrong, and wrong, the
Qhiverin-thoughts said when Chei tried to be afraid of the stone he
held.
Let us not be a fool, boy.

This is power
—
and
the captain has to respect it; and very much wishes he had Mante to
consult. And what I can do with it and with what the lady carries, you
do not imagine.

"Place your men," he ordered the captain.

"My lord," the man said. Typthyn was his name.

The serpent's man. Skarrin's personal spy.

Chei drew a long breath through his nostrils and looked at the sky, in which the sun had only then passed zenith.

The
sun went down over the hill, the shadow came, and they built a fire,
careless of the smoke. Vanye watched all this, these slow events within
the long misery of frozen joints and swollen fingers. He had not
achieved unconsciousness in the afternoon. He had wished to. He wished
to now, or soon after they began with him, and he was not sure which
would hurt the worse, the burning or the strain any flinching would put
on his joints.

He
flexed his shoulders such as he could, and moved his legs and arched
his spine, slowly, once and twice, to have as much strength in his
muscles as he could muster.

In
the chance she might come, in the chance his liege, being both wise and
clever, might accomplish a miracle, and take this camp, and somehow
avoid killing him, remembering—he prayed Heaven—that there was a
gate-stone loose and in the hands of an enemy.

But
if that miracle happened, and if he survived, then he would have to be
able to get on his feet. Then he had to go with her and not slow her
down, because there was no doubt there were forces coming south out of
Mante, and he must not, somehow must not, hinder her and force her to
seek shelter in these too-naked hills, caring for a crippled partner.

A partner fool enough to have brought himself to this.

That
was the thing that gnawed at him more than any other—which course he
should take, whether he should do everything the enemy wished of him
and trust his liege to stay clear-headed; or whether he should refuse
for fear she would not, and then be maimed and a burden to her if she
did somehow get to him.

Then
there was that other thought, coldly reasonable, that love was not
enough for her, against what she served. There had been some man before
him. And she traveled light, and did always the sensible thing—no need
ever fear that she would do something foolish.

He
told himself that: he could do what he liked, cry out or remain silent,
and have the qhal dice him up piecemeal, and it would do neither harm
nor good. He had been on his own since she rode out of here, and would
be, till the qhal dragged him as far as Mante and either killed him or,
more likely, treated his wounds and kept him very gently till some qhal
claimed him for his own use.

Or—it
was an occasional thought, one he banished with furious insistence—she
might have run straight into forces sent from Mante, and be pinned down
and unable to come back—or worse; or very much worse. A harried mind
conjured all sorts of nightmares, in the real and present one of the
smell of smoke and the unpleasant, nervous laughter of men
contemplating another man's slow destruction.

The darkness grew to dusk. The qhal finished their supper, and talked among themselves.

When Chei came to him, to stand over him in the shadows and ask him whether he had any inclination to do what they wanted.

"I
will call out to her," Vanye said, not saying what he would call out,
once he should see her. "Only I doubt she is here to listen. She is
well on her way down the road, that is where she is."

"I doubt that." Chei dropped down to his heels, and took off the pyx that swung from its chain about his neck. "Your property."

He said nothing to that baiting.

"So you will call out to her," Chei said. "Do it now. Ask her to come to the edge of camp—only to talk with us."

He looked at Chei. Of a sudden his breath seemed too little to do what Chei asked, the silence of the hills too great.

"Do it," Chei urged him.

He shaped a cut lip as best he could and whistled, once and piercingly.
"Liyo!"

And with a thought not sudden, but one that had come to him in the long afternoon: "Morgaine,
Morgaine!
For God's sake hear me! They want to talk with you!"