Exile's Gate (49 page)

For
a moment he truly could not breathe. His eyes went involuntarily to see
where Chei and the others were, but they were not in earshot, even for
Hesiyyn's qhalur hearing, and it was the Kurshin tongue they spoke.

"The sword—" he said. "If we use it at this Gate of Exiles—will be very near those standing stones."

"The sword is unstable. Like the gate. We cannot predict. There is no way to predict—what will happen."

"Aye," he said, and wiped at the sweat which gathered on his lip, and wiped his hands on his knees.

She scratched through the map once, twice. "Go, rest, take whatever sleep thee can. Thee will need it."

He
went back and lay down again, staring at the sky through the branches,
counting leaves, that being better than other thoughts that pressed on
him. He put the stone about his neck, and lay with his hand closed
about the pyx to shield it, to be certain of its safety.

And
when the sun started below the hill he rose up and dressed
methodically, laced up the padding tight and worked the mail shirt on:
that was worst. Morgaine came to help him with it; and with the buckles
beneath the arm.

"I will saddle up," she said. "No arguments from thee. Hear?"

"Aye," he said, though it fretted him. "Pull it tight,
liyo.
It can take another notch there."

"Thee has to get on the horse."

"I have to stay there," he said.

To that she said nothing. She only tightened the strap.

They
mounted up while there was still a little light beyond the hills. It
was Hesiyyn who rode farthest point, Hesiyyn with his brown cloak about
him, his pale hair loose about his shoulders, his weapons all covered.
His horse was a fine blood bay with no white markings.

It
was Hesiyyn's own reasoning that he should ride foremost, to forestall
any ambushes: "It is likely the only company in which I shall ever find
myself the most respectable."

With
which the qhal-lordling put his horse well out to the fore, passing out
of sight around the bending of the stream, while Chei and Rhanin went a
distance behind. "Come," Morgaine said, and chose her own distance from
that pair—herself cloaked in black; and Vanye swept his own cloak about
him when he had gotten up, and threw up the hood over the white-scarfed
helm.

Ambush was possible. Hesiyyn might betray them, signaling to some band out from Mante. Everything, henceforward, was possible—

Even
that they should come to the verge of the starlit plain unmolested—a
last hillside, a trail down a steep, rocky slope, on which Hesiyyn sat
waiting for them, resting his horse, spinning and spinning a curious
object on the surface of the slab of rock on which he sat.

"The lots come up three, three, and three: are you superstitious?"

"Curse your humor," Chei said, reining back his horse from the descent.

They
changed about with the remounts, one to the three qhal, the blaze-faced
bay going turn and turn with Siptah and Arrhan: and again Hesiyyn went
to the lead, but not so far separated from them now.

Down and down to the plain, a difficult slope, a long and miserable jolting.
Hang on,
Vanye
told himself, cursing every step the bay made under him. Sweat broke
out, wind-chilled on his face. He clenched the saddlehorn and thought
of the red packet in his belt-pocket.

Not yet, he thought. Not for this. To every jolt and every uneven spot: not for this, not for this—

Across
the plain, the mountains—not the peaks of a range like the Cedur Maje
of his homeland, but a wall of rock which giants might have built, as
if the world had broken, and that were the breaking-point, under a sky
so brilliant with stars and moon it all but cast a shadow.

"They are not preventing us this far," he said to Morgaine.

He
wished in one part of his reeling mind that the enemy would turn up,
now, quickly, before they were committed to this—that somehow something
would happen to send them on some other and better course.

But there was no sign of it.

They
came down onto the plain at last, a gradual flattening of the course
they rode. Vanye turned as best he could and looked back at the track
they had made as they entered the grassy flat, a trail too cursed clear
under the heavens. "As well blaze a trail," he muttered. If there had
been the choice of skirting the hills instead of taking Chei's proposed
course across the plain, it was rapidly diminishing.

They drew their company together now, Hesiyyn riding with them as they struck out straight across.

And the cliffs which had been clear from the hillside showed only as a rim against the horizon.

Then
was easier riding. Then he finally seized hold of his right leg by the
boot-top and hauled it with difficulty over the saddlehorn, wrapped his
arms about his suffering ribs and with a look at Morgaine that assured
him she knew he was going to rest for a while, bowed his head, leaned
back against the cantle and gave himself over to the bay's steady pace
in a sickly exhaustion.

He
roused himself only when they paused to trade mounts about. "No need,"
Morgaine said, sliding down from Arrhan's back. "That horse is fit
enough to go on carrying you, and I will take Siptah: I weigh less."

He
was grateful. He took the medicines she carried for him, washed them
down with a drink from her flask, and sat there ahorse while others
stretched their legs. It was not sleep, that state of numbness he
achieved. It was not precisely awareness either. He knew that they
mounted up again; he knew that they moved, he trusted that Morgaine
watched the land around them.

No
other did he trust . . . except he reasoned if betrayal was what Chei
and his men intended, it did not encompass losing their own lives, not
lives so long and so dearly held; and that meant some warning to them.

Some
warning was all his liege needed. And half-asleep and miserable as he
was, he continually rode between her and them: it was a well-trained
horse, if rough-gaited, and Siptah, he thanked Heaven, tolerated it
going close by him.

He
did truly sleep for a while. He jerked his head up with the thought
that he was falling, caught his balance, and saw the cliffs no nearer.

Or
they were vaster than the eye wanted to see. His leg had gone numb. He
hauled it back over, and his eyes watered as the muscles extended.
Everything hurt.

And
the riding went on and on, while a few clouds drifted across the stars
and passed, and a wind rose and rippled through the endless grass.

Another
change of horses. This time he did dismount, and walked a little, as
far as privacy to relieve himself, discovering that he could, which did
for one long misery; and saw to Arrhan's girth and the bay's.

But
facing the necessity to haul himself up again, he stood there holding
the saddlehorn and trying, with several deep breaths, to gather the
wind and the courage to make that pull.

"Vanye!"
Morgaine said, just as he had found it. He stopped, unnerved, with a
jolt that brought tears to his eyes; and: "Chei," she said, "one of you
give him a hand up."

"My lady," Chei said. And came and offered his hands for a stirrup.

Shame stung him. But he set his foot in Chei's linked hands and let Chei heave him up like some pregnant woman.

"For a like favor," Chei said to him.

He recalled it. And flinching from Chei's hand on his knee, he backed Arrhan out of his reach.

The
cliffs cut off the sky before them, against the dimming stars, and they
had left a trail a child could follow, the swath of passage in tall
grass. The horses caught mouthfuls now and again: there was no time to
give them more than that.

Morgaine
rode the bay now; it was Siptah due the rest. And the sky above the
eastern hills was showing no stars: the sun was coming.

We are beyond recall now.
That was the thought that kept gnawing
at him.
Wise or not, we are beyond any change of mind.

God save us.

By
sunlight, at the lagging pace of weary horses, the rock face in front
of them rose and filled all their view—a plain of dry grass, a wall of
living stone, so abrupt and so tall it defied the eye's logic.

It had one gap, shadow-blued within the yellow stone, in noon sunlight, and closing it—the gatehouse that Chei had named to
them.
Seiyyin Neith.

Doors—the size of which a Kurshin eye refused to understand, until a hawk flew near them, a mote against their height.

Exile's Gate.

Chei
turned the roan back a half-circle as they rode, reined in alongside
and lifted a hand toward it. "There," he said, "there, you see what we
propose to assault. That is merely the nethermost skirt of Mante." He
leaned on his saddlebow and gave a twitch of his shoulders, a shiver.
"A man forgets it, whose eyes are used to Morund's size. And the boy,
my friends, ... is terrified."

He gave a flick of the reins and sent his horse thundering on ahead to join his men.

Chapter Seventeen

Another
space of riding. This time it had measure, that vision of the towering
cliffs which rose steadily before them. Vanye looked up at the doors,
whose valves were iron, whose surface held twelve bronze panels each,
of figures far more than life-size, the actions of which he could not
at first understand, until he saw the detail. They were scenes of
execution, and torment.

"Can
such things open?" he wondered aloud, and his voice was less steady
than he wished. He expected some sally-port: he looked for it among the
panels, and saw no joint.

"Oh, indeed," Chei said, "when Mante wishes to diminish its vassals—and its exiles. They do open."

"Mante has a taste for excess," Morgaine said.

"They want a man to remember," Hesiyyn said, "the difficulty of return."

Vanye
looked at Rhanin, who rode alone ahead of them, weary man riding one
exhausted horse, leading another, dwarfed by the scenes of brutal
cruelty looming over them.

He felt something move in him then, toward all of these his enemies, a pang that went to the heart.

He
saw not Seiyyin Neith, of a sudden, but a steep road down from gray
stone walls, and on it, beneath those walls which had seemed so high
and dreadful, a grief-stricken boy in a white-scarfed helm, with exile
in front of him.

This at least they had in common. And they were brave men who did not flinch now, in the face of this thing.

This
barrier,
Mante reared in the name of justice. This was the face it turned to its
damned and its servants. This was what the power of the world held as
honorable dealings with its own subjects—men hanged, and gutted and
burned alive, and what other things, higher up the doors, he had no
wish to see.

He
drew a copper-edged breath and leaned on the saddle, a shift of weight
that sent a wearying, monotonous pain through his sides and his gut, a
cursed, always-present misery. He was not certain there was life left
in his legs. He had found a few positions that hurt less, and kept
shifting between them. But the approach to this place meant different
necessities, meant—Heaven knew what. If they must fight here, he could
do that, he thought, as long as they stayed mounted.

"How is thee faring?" Morgaine asked him.

"I will manage," he said.

She looked at him, long, as they rode. "On thy oath, Nhi Vanye."

That
shook him. He was much too close to judgment to trifle with damnation.
It was unfairly she dealt with him—but she had no conscience in such
matters, he had long known it.

"Vanye, does thee leave me to guess?"

"I
will stay ahorse," he said, half the truth. "I can defend myself." But
he could imagine her relying on him in some rush to cover, or doing
something foolish to rescue him if he should fall. He sweated, feeling
a coldness in the pit of his stomach. He had not used the qhalur
medicines. He abhorred such things. More, he did not think they could
deal with a numbness that had his right leg all but useless, prickling
like needles all up the inside. "It is walking I am not sure of. But my
head is clear."

She
said nothing then. She was thinking, he decided—thinking through things
he did not know, thinking what to do, how far to believe him, and what
of her plans she must now change—all these things, because he had been
a fool and brought them to this pass, and now began to be a burden on
her.

I
shall not be,
he would have protested. But he already was. And knew it.

He
let Arrhan fall a little back then—the horses fretted and snorted,
having the scent of strangeness in the wind, the prospect of a
fight—always, always, the prospect of war wherever they came to
habitations of any kind. The qhal cared little what he did. And
Morgaine had her eyes set on the thing in front of them.