Exile's Gate (47 page)

Chapter Sixteen

"Vanye.
Vanye,"
Morgaine's voice called him gently.

"Aye,
liyo."
He opened his eyes, trying to bring her face out of the dusk. He could not, quite.

"Vanye, will you trust me?"

"Aye,
liyo."

"I
am going to go over there and rest, the night. Listen to me. I have not
the strength to take care of thee—" Her fingers brushed his cheek. Her
voice shook. "Chei will help thee, he will do everything he can for
thee—he has agreed, at peril of his life. Does thee understand, Vanye?
I do not want thee waking and not knowing where I am. And if he hurts
thee I will shoot him. And if thee does not mend I will shoot him. And
he knows it."

He blinked at her. When she took that tone it was her intention beyond a doubt, even if it made no sense at all.

"Thee understands?"

"Aye," he said.

The dark swallowed him up a time, and there was movement about him—firelit faces between him and the night sky.

One was Chei's.

He forgot, then, where he was.

"Ah," he cried, and tried desperately to fight them.

"Be still," Chei said, and put his hand over his mouth. "Be still, man. Vanye. Vanye—listen to me."

He recalled then, some insanity that Morgaine was with him. Or would come. He could not remember which.

"Look."
Chei lifted his head, carefully, gently, and showed him a strange
sight: showed him Siptah, and at Siptah's feet a stump, or some object,
and Morgaine sitting with her hands between her knees. He was afraid,
until he saw
Changeling
across her lap

"You are safe," Chei said. "You are quite safe with us."

"She
has promised to shoot one of us." Hesiyyn gently unfastened a buckle at
his side as Chei let his head back. "I have no doubt which one of us.
My lord Chei is necessary, Rhanin wins everyone, and I am told I make
enemies. I pray you know I shall be careful."

He
blinked dazedly. He recalled some such thing, mad as it was, and lay
still, until they needed to work the mail shirt off. But that they did
gently, easing his arms as they worked it free.

It
was all one with the dark, the fever, the nightmare that began to
become ease of pain. They put warm compresses on his hurts, renewing
them constantly; they put hot cloths over him, soaked in herbals; they
made him drink something complex and musky, and breathe something that
gave his throat ease. He became comfortable, finally.

And slept till Chei roused him and made him drink something else.

"No more," he said.

"Drink this," Chei said fiercely. "Damn you, drink; we will not die for your convenience."

He heard the harshness of panic in that voice. He recalled a nightmare, wherein Morgaine had asked him bear with everything.

He struggled onto his arm, dislodging compresses, to see was she safe and his memory true.

She was there.
Changeling
was still with her. Siptah stood close by her. Her head had fallen forward, her pale hair touched with fire-glow and starlight.

"Drink," Rhanin said.

He
trusted them then, and drank, with a clearer head than he had had. He
shivered, and the bruises hurt less. They renewed the compresses out of
a pan of hot water, and smothered him in blankets.

Only
his chest hurt sharply, where ribs might be cracked. But that, he
thought, was bearable, if he were not so drained and weak. The burns
hurt far less; the other injuries that had near taken his mind with
pain, were so much relieved he seemed to drift in enervated numbness.

The
qhal whispered among themselves, urgently, debating something they
might give him. Or how much they might give him, to put him on his
feet. One said no, there was risk. Another objected he had to ride, and
could not else: he would never last in the saddle. And that was Chei
and Hesiyyn.

He
lay and thought about that. He tested his breathing, how much it hurt;
he moved his right leg, to test whether it hurt as it had, and looked
at the two who argued.

"Is there something," he asked faintly, in a lull, "will let me ride today?"

He shocked them, perhaps. There was a moment's utter hush.

"Yes,"
Chei said. "There is something that will. But the end of it is worse
than the first. Best you do without it. You will ride. That is what she
asked. That is what she will have. We have kept our end of the bargain."

"Do you drink it," he asked, the faintest of whispers, "or swallow it?"

"Not, I say."

"Chei—tell me what it will do."

"It will kill you, that is what it will do. And no."

"It
would keep a dead man on his feet," Hesiyyn said. "It would not improve
his judgment. And my lord says the truth: it would take a heavy toll."

"Give it to me. To carry. Chei, give it to me and we are quit of a great deal."

Chei
gnawed at his lip—young Chei's face, a mature qhal's calculation as he
rested with his arm on his knee and his eyes, by firelight, flickering
with changes.

"You
would take only a taste of it on your tongue," he said. "I will tell
you the truth, man, if you use it in extremity—you will not survive it."

He
thought about that. He drew breaths against the ache in his ribs, and
knew what his sword-arm or his archery was worth at the moment. He
thought how far they had yet to go.

"You
are not the man I would choose," he said. "But there is a great deal
you could learn from my liege. There are more worlds than you know. If
you knew more than you did, I think you might understand her more. You
would know why she is right. More than I do. Give me this thing and do
not tell her. The important thing is that we get there."

Chei
looked at him in profound disturbance. His fist clenched and
unclenched, of the arm which supported his chin, and his brow was
ridged and glistening with sweat. "And you do what—lay this in her lap?
Tell her then we tried to kill you?"

"We will have no quarrel, Chei. What do you want? That she stop somewhere further on—for my sake? That is what she
is
doing. Give it to me."

Chei
delved into his belongings, and gathered out a packet. "One pellet.
One. No more than that. Three and your heart would burst. I am putting
it with your belongings. That is all I will do." He busied himself and
mixed something with water, and boiled it.

"What is this?" he asked, when Hesiyyn intended he drink it.

"I thought we were allies," Hesiyyn said. "Drink. This is for the fever."

"Also," Hesiyyn said when he had drunk it, "it will make you sleep."

The
sun came up, and Morgaine still drowsed, he saw as he lifted his head,
with Siptah's tether passed across her shoulder, with the sword in her
lap, her back against a rock, and the small black weapon between her
knees, in both her hands.

It was Chei whose eyes had shadows. It was Chei who offered him an overcooked porridge, with a hand that shook with exhaustion.

He took it. He forced it down. It came at too much cost to refuse.

Across
the little distance, Siptah jerked his head up and snorted challenge to
Rhanin's approach. Morgaine lifted her head abruptly, the weapon in her
hand.

But it was a bowl Rhanin brought, offering it to her. Rhanin came no closer, and Morgaine got quickly to her feet,
Changeling
in one hand, the black weapon in the other, and stopped, staring not at Rhanin, but toward him.

He stared back at her, weak as he was, and got up on his arm, feeling the shock of cold air as the blanket fell.

For a long moment she said nothing. Then: "How does thee fare this morning?"

"Much better," he said. "Much better,
liyo."

"I had not meant to fall so far asleep—"

He
drew a breath, such as yesterday would have cost him pain. It amazed
him it did not, overmuch. Only it would be very easy, just now, to
weep, and he moved, suddenly, and shoved himself up with a sudden
straightening of his arm so that a twinge took his mind off it. He was
dizzy
then. The whole world swung round.

She came to him and swept
Changeling,
sheathed and crosswise, in curt dismissal of the others, who drew back a few paces. Then she knelt and spared a glance for him.

"I think the porridge is safe," he murmured, "but I would not eat it."

"Has thee?"

"Aye," he said. "It is truly wretched."

She
slid the black weapon into place at her belt, touched him with that
hand, brushed the hair off his unshaven cheek. She looked tired, tired
and mortally worried. "We will ride at night," she said.

"Liyo,
we cannot wait!"

"Now
how are we arguing? I take your advice and you will none of it. We are
safe here for the moment. The horses are resting. We can make up the
time."

"We cannot make up two days. I can ride." He sat upright and tucked his leg up; and she put her hand onto his knee.

"Thee
will lie down, thee will rest, that is what. Thee will not undo
everything." She touched his ribs, where Hesiyyn had wound a tight
bandage. "Broken, does thee think?"

"No.
Sore." He drew a breath, testing it as he had tested it again and
again: if he kept his back straight it was much better. "I will manage."

"Vanye." Her hand sought his wrist and closed on it, hard. "Do not give up. Hear me? I will tell thee a thing may comfort thee—"

She
hesitated, then. That reticence did not seem to herald anything that
should comfort him; and ice settled into his stomach. "What?" he asked.
"What would you tell me,
liyo?"

"Thee
knows—how substance goes into a gate—It . . . disarranges itself . .
and some similar arrangement comes together at the other side—"

"You
have told me." He did not like to talk of such things. He did not like
to think of them oftener than he must—especially now, facing a gate
which was not behaving as it should. He wished she would go straight to
the point.

"Thee
will find—thy hurts—will not trouble thee the other side. Thee will not
carry the scars of this beyond it. Thee will mend."

She
could lie with such simplicity. Or with webs of truth. Except that it
was something kept from him, that he would not like. In such things she
would not meet his eyes. It was that simple.

"What are you saying?" he asked.

"I
chose a time," she said. "I made a pattern, for thee as for me ... a
rested pattern, a whole pattern, a pattern without flaw. Within its
limits—and it has them—it will always restore it. Every gate, on every
world—will recognize thee, and always restore it—restore
thee,
as thee was, so far as it has substance to work with. There will be no scars. Nothing to remind thee."

It made no sense for a moment. He put his hand to his ribs, wondering could it mend more than the surface.

Or what other things they had done to him.

"There
will always be the weakness in the knee," she said. "That happened
before the pattern was made. Would I had done it before that. But there
was never the leisure it needed."

"Shathan," he said. "Azeroth-gate."

"Aye.
There. The gates will abhor any deviation from that moment. They will
restore that moment, so far as they can, always. The thoughts go on.
The memories. But the body—will not change."

"Will not
change?
Ever?" A sense of panic took him. He thought that he should be grateful. He thought that it was a kind of gift.

But it was Gate-given. And every Gate-magic was flawed—

"I shall grow older—"

"Never. Not in body."

"O
my God," he murmured. For a moment the dizziness was back. Mortality
was, reminding him with a sharp pain in his side and a twinge in the
hip.

He
had always had an image of himself, older, grown to his mature
strength—had begun to see it, in breadth of shoulder, strength of arm.
A man looked forward to such a thing.

It would never happen. His life was stopped. He thought of the dragon, frozen in snow, in mid-reach.

"My God, my God." He crossed himself, gone cold, inside and out.

"Injuries
will never take their toll of thee. Age—will have no power over thee.
Thee will grow wiser. But thee will always mend in a gate-passage,
always shed the days and years."

"Why such as Chei, then? Why Gault?
Why Thiye, in Heaven's name?"
He
wanted to weep. He found himself lost again, lost at this end of his
journey as at the beginning. "If it can be done like this, why did they
choose to kill—?"

"Because," she said, "they are qhal. And I know things they do not. Call it my father's legacy. And if they should know, Vanye,
that
secret, they would find others, that I will give no one, that are not written on the sword—that I will not
permit
anyone
to know and live—" Again her hand brushed his cheek. "Forgive me. I had
meant to tell thee—some better time. But best thee know, now—Forgive
me. I need thee too much. And the road would grow too lonely."