Exile's Gate (39 page)

"That
is not enough," Chei said, and opened the box, so that a light shone up
on his face from the gate-jewel there. The light glared; flesh crawled.
Everything about it was excessive and twisted.

"You
have only to feel that thing," Vanye said, "to know there is something
wrong in the gate at Mante. Truth, man. I have felt others. I know when
one is wrong."

"You—
know."

"You
have no right one to compare it against. It is wrong. It is pouring
force out—" He lost his thought as Chei took the jewel in his fingers
and laid it down again in the box, and set the open box on the ground
beside him.

"So she will know where you are. Call to her again."

"If
she is there, she heard me." He had hope of that small box and its
stone. The light that made him visible in the twilight, made Chei a
target, if Morgaine were there, if she could be sure enough whether the
man kneeling by him was the one she wanted. She might be very
accurate—unlike a bowman. Several men might be on their way to the
ground before they knew they were under attack.

Or she might, instead, be far on her way to Mante.

"That
is not enough," Chei said, and called to the men at the fire in rising.
"You can," he said then, looking down, "give her far more reason."

He
was not going to put them off, then. He might shout, make a useless
appeal: he spared himself that indignity and drew several quick, deep
breaths before they got to him.

When the iron touched him he did not even try to hold it back.

It
went on, and on. There was laughter. A human spat in his face, and some
thought that amusing. Others, elegant qhal, simply watched.

She has gotten clear,
he kept thinking, he insisted to think, like a litany, imagining gray horse, silver-haired rider, far and far across
the hills.
She is far too
wise for them to catch.

And that is well. That is very well.

"O God—!"

Then: "M'lord!" someone said sharply, and a hand gripped his hair and a knife pricked his throat.

It
is over,
he thought.

But
something pale appeared and drifted like a cloud in the dark across the
stream. He blinked and haze cleared momentarily on a glimmer of silver
hair in the dark, black figure in the starlight, the dragon sword,
sheathed, set point down in front of her.

"Liyo, "
he cried from a raw throat.
"Archers!"

The knife pierced his skin; Chei struck it aside.

"We have a man of yours!" Chei shouted out.

"Liyo,
they know—"

A blow smashed into his skull, jolting everything into dark, his sense of place, of whether he had warned her or only meant to—

"Do you want me or do you want to talk?" Morgaine's clear voice rang out of the dark.

Vanye
slid his eyes to the open box, the gate-jewel. She could not draw, with
that unshielded, without taking him as Bron had gone. He struggled
against those who held him, only to bring his legs around, tears of
pain running through the sweat on his face.

"Do you want your lover back?" Chei taunted her. "Come in and bargain for him."

Vanye gave a sudden heave, swung his left leg over and brought it down on the lid. The light went out. He was blind.

Then
Changeling's
light
flared out, a bar of opal which grew to a white blaze, a shimmering
into colors the eye did not want to see. Qhal who had faced that thing
before scrambled to escape.

But Chei snatched the box and rolled to cover at Vanye's back, beside the tree.

"I have the stone in my hand," Chei yelled. "Come near my men and I uncover it!"

"Vanye?" her voice rang out. He saw her and all the brush and hill about her lit in
Changeling's
fire.
He saw her hesitate, stopped still. But the winds still blew, howling
and blowing the grass. No arrow could fly true in that.

"Liyo,
he is telling the truth. Do what you have to. They will not keep me in any comfort."

"In perfect comfort," Chei called out, "if you are reasonable."

"What do you want?"

"Liyo,
it is Chei!"

There
was silence then, and he lay back against the tree, satisfied, then, he
had gotten out what would tell her everything. It was all she needed
know.

Perhaps
there would be a miracle. He thought not. The only thing he hoped now
was that she would not try further, understanding now there was no
bargain to be made—not with Chei, who knew far too much about her
intentions.

"Curse
you for that," Chei said at his shoulder, and surprised him into a
painful laugh. It was altogether Chei's expression, plaintive and
indignant.

"Let
me free," he said to Chei. "It is the only bargain you can make. At the
least you will have to keep me in better state than this."

"We
have him," Chei shouted out into the dark. "Come near us and he will
suffer for it, all the way to Mante—he will wear that stone about his
neck, lest you have notions otherwise!"

"Let me tell
you,
I will take your men one by one, and you will not kill him—you will not
dare
harm
him, else your men die faster, my lord, you will see how fast. And you
will not kill him, for your own life's sake, because he is the only
thing keeping you alive. Lest you doubt me—"

A man cried out and fell, and Chei whirled half about and clenched his hand on Vanye's shoulder.

"Now what will you do?" Vanye taunted him.

"Damn
you—"

Vanye grinned, for all the pain it cost him.

On the slope,
Changeling's
fire went out, leaving them blind to the dark.

And Chei's men murmured in indignation and fear.

They
gave him food at the dawn—not much, but a piece of waybread and a kind
of porridge that was tolerable to his stomach; they let him eat with
his hands free, and drink from the stream and wash, with two score men
watching him and most of them close enough to fall on him and weigh him
down if nothing else. The humor of it was salve for the pain which rode
every breath and slightest movement. He would, he hoped, grow more
limber the longer he did move, and he refused to show them the pain
that he was in or to ask any consideration they dared refuse. The burns
on his chest and stomach bid fair to be the worst, the more so that
they intended to set him in armor again—lest, Chei argued loudly with a
captain who objected, some accident take him on the road.

Chei
prevailed, by shouting, and the forty-odd men watched him sullenly as
he pulled on his breeches and his shirt and padding, and the mail,
which weight felt ten times what it was wont; but it made his bruised
and burned ribs and stomach feel the safer from chance blows. He
fumbled about with the straps of the leather, and Chei cursed him,
whereat he hurried no more than before, having judged Chei had no wish
to try his fortunes and discommode his men before the day was even
begun.

Then
Chei ordered him tied. He had known that they were going nowhere until
they had done it; he had known they would take what revenge they dared
in the doing of it, and he resolutely disappointed them by standing
quietly and yielding his hands behind him, using his strength only when
they put pressure on his arms, intentionally to cause him pain.

And
the stone, which had been unshielded the night long, pouring its evil
into the air, Chei brought him and hung about his neck as he had said,
eye to eye with him for that moment.

"There will be ways," Chei said to him.

"You
can save your men, Chei. Give me my horse and let me go. That is all
you have to do. You have fifty good years as you are, whether we win or
lose. Otherwise you have only a handful of days—if you have that. Do
you think you will be the last my lady leaves alive with me?"

There
was fear in Chei's eyes. And hate. Chei drew his hand away, and smashed
it across his face before he could entirely evade the blow.

There was fear, when he shook the hair back and looked past Chei at his men. There was outright resentment.

"Threats," Chei scoffed, and went to his horse. He waved his hand at the others. "Move! Mount up! We have ground to cover."

There
was a small, dull sound. The man holding the red roan for him fell
without an outcry, only a puff of foul smoke hanging in the air. The
camp broke into chaos, the horse shied. A second man fell, further away.

Chei
whirled and flung himself at Vanye, arms about his waist, and came down
on top of him with an impact that drove the breath out of him and half
stunned him with the blow to the back of his head. He came to himself
in pain, being dragged to a sitting position with Chei's arm about him
and Chei shouting orders at his men to find Morgaine.

Not
likely, he thought. He did not resist being used as a shield. He sat
there with his eyes shut and drew small breaths that did not hurt. "If
she wants you," he murmured to Chei, "she will surely take you."

There
had been forty men and two in their company last night. He had taken
account. Losing one last night, two this morning, there were
thirty-nine, counting himself.

"Shut up," Chei hissed at him.

He rested, that was all.

When
the men, by ones and twos, trailed back from their search of the
hillsides, there were thirty-seven, and Chei, standing, shouted furious
orders to mount up.

"There
are reinforcements coming," the second in command protested, in full
hearing of the others. "We should raise a fortification and stay here.
You are losing men, Qhiverin, all for your damnable insistence on going
ahead with this—"

"Do as I tell you!" Chei shouted at the man. "Get to horse! We are riding out of here!"

The qhalur captain, tall and elegant, bowed his head with ill grace and went for his horse.

To
all this Vanye said nothing at all, considering the state of his ribs
and his gut. Chei grabbed him by the hair getting him on his feet and
even this he bore, that and the hard grip of the men who pushed him at
Arrhan. But one of them hit her when she shied from them and at that he
resisted, an instant's bracing of muscles before he thought quickly
that men of their ilk might as like kill her to spite him. So he
struggled to get his foot into the stirrup and let them shove him up
onto her back. They tied Arrhan's reins to a sorrel gelding's saddle
and she did not like that either, sidestepping and jerking till he
tapped her with his heels and spoke to her in the Kurshin tongue,
softly, one friend in this situation, where he had as soon not have had
her.

The company rode out of the camp and across country, toward the road.

He
was not surprised by that. They hoped to deprive Morgaine of cover from
which to strike at them. All day they would be thinking of means to
save themselves and to have revenge on them both.

Himself,
he gave himself up to Arrhan's gait and slept, in what stretches he
could, between the pain of burns and stiff muscles and the ache of his
shoulders and back, and the peculiar unpleasantness of the unshielded
stone which rode close against his throat, as Chei had tied it, a sense
of gate-force which reached a mind-numbing pitch and stayed there,
never abating.

When
Morgaine needed him to do something she would signal him. He had no
doubt she would do it in some fashion—perhaps through the stone itself,
if it would not likewise advise their enemy.

Beyond
that he did not try to think, except where the qhal themselves afforded
him something to wonder on. To think what the end of this might be, or
to think how he had wandered into this, was too deadly a sink, a place
in which he could lose himself. This much he had learned of Morgaine,
to deal with the moment and keep his mind flowing with it—like
swordplay, like that intricate art in which there was no time to spare
for forever.

He waited, that was all.

And by afternoon another man pitched from the saddle.

There were outcries, there was shouting—some men broke and ran and the whole company did, stringing out in disorder.

Two riders veered far off toward the northwest, and kept going.

"They are cowards!" Chei yelled at the rest. "Likeliest they are dead men. Stay with the column."

"Let him go!" one of the qhal shouted back. "Let him
go,
let us ride back to Morund!"

"Silence!" Chei bade him. "Do you think any of us would live out the hour?"

"No
one would prevent you," Vanye said. "Go home. It is your high lords who
use the gates—this one is spending your lives to no—"

He
ducked his head and put his shoulder in the way of Chei's sheathed
sword as it came whistling round for him, ducked again from the second
blow, and as Arrhan shied, drove his heels in.

The
mare jerked and bolted, hitting the reins with all her weight and
throwing the other horse into a wild stagger after balance. For a
moment he kept her circling and shying up under the impacts of his
heels.