Exile's Gate (55 page)

"You are arrogant."

"So
I am told." She walked two paces forward and stood wide-legged. "I am
terminus. And perhaps I am inception. Time will prove that. My origin
is very recent as you measure time. I have never existed until now."

"As you dream—you have not existed."

"I am
Anjhurin
s daughter, Anjhurin who claimed to have seen the calamity. Think of
that,
my lord. And my mother came down a thread he had never known, that one which leads to stars outside, my lord. By seizing
that
he
hoped to widen his power. But causality doomed him. He used force. She
despised him. So, my lord, did I. And I destroyed him."

"You."

"With a will, my lord. All of Anjhurin's causality rests in
me.
That
is my weight in the web of time—the youngest and the oldest of us, in
one, and I reach outside. In me, every causality meets."

Skarrin backed a pace.

She
lifted her hand so naturally and so quickly the red fire had touched
the lord before Vanye could both realize the weapon was in her hand and
draw in his breath.

"I cannot
die
—/"
Skarrin cried; as a second time the red light touched him, from
Morgaine's hand, amid the forehead: he fell with a horrified expression.

Die . . . die . . . die . . .
the
walls and the vaulted ceiling gave back. They echoed the heavy fall of
Skarrin's body, and the nervous shifting of the horses.

Vanye caught his breath, shaken in every bone, not believing it had been so sudden or so without warning.

And
knowing then by the dread in Morgaine's face as she turned that it was
not over. It was far from over. It was wizardry they fought, whatever
Morgaine named it; wizardry that could knit bone and heal flesh and put
blood back in veins—and his liege's face was pale and desperate.
"Follow me!" she cried, and ran toward the dark of the corridor.

Chapter Nineteen

Vanye
ran, sword in hand, abandoning everything to Chei and his comrades—ran
with a desperate burst of speed to close the gap between himself and
Morgaine as she headed alone toward the corridor inward.

He
heard someone behind him then, and spun to a halt and saw Chei and the
other two coming. "Watch the horses!" he shouted at them, not wanting
them at his liege's back, not wanting the horses unguarded either.

Then
he raced after Morgaine, reaching the corner an instant after her—the
corridor ahead filled at short range with a double rank of drawn bows
and loosed arrows.

He
hit her from behind in utter panic—that quickly the arrows flew and he
fell to the floor atop her, did not think, except they were both like
to die here, did not know what he did, except that the enemy had to
nock their next arrows and he was already rolling toward them, onto his
feet and toward them with a Kurshin
yell—"Haaaaaiiiiiiii—Haiii!"—hurtling for the flank of their double
line with sword swinging even while they were thinking some of them to
shoot him and some nearest him to parry him with bowstaves and daggers.

The
curved blade swept along the parry of a bowstaff and, skidding off it,
came around into an unprotected arm and neck, and he laid about him
left and right and round about without time to see where attack was
coming from until it came within his circle, and then he killed it,
with sword in his right hand and then Honor-blade in the left, for what
came at him too close.

A
blade scored his armor at his back; he gained room with the
Honor-blade, and followed with a sword-stroke. A bow whistled round
toward his head; he ducked under it, stabbed under a rash fool's chin,
as some fallen enemy groped after a hold about his knees, raking the
heavy leather and braces of his breeches and boots with a dagger
stroke. He sprang aside from that, used his bow-arm bracer to counter a
descending blade on one hand, clove a man's face horribly in a slash to
the right and brought the blade back to deal with the return stroke on
the left.

That
enemy fell arrowshot through the neck, and he did not know where it had
come from, except he saw the flash of red on a man's armor that meant
Morgaine's weapon, and there were fewer and fewer enemies. He gasped
for air and struck out, turning, sliding off a blade with his curved
one to deal a man a blow that staggered him—hard effort then on the
desperate one after, and on the parry he swept around to save his own
skull. Steel rang on steel, bound and slipped as he made his sweep the
faster, out of breath now, sight hazed and sweat streaming, on a
carnage widening by the instant, red fire taking man after man. One man
fled him; red flashed on his armor and he fell, screaming, on a heap of
his comrades.

Others tried to surrender. Fire cut them down as they were halfway to their knees, and fire swept the wounded on the ground.
"Liyo!"
Vanye
cried in consternation—but it was done, there were none alive as he
staggered clear of the bodies and hit the wall with his back, gasping
after air and gazing in horror on the slaughter.

Chei
pulled his sword from a body and Hesiyyn and Rhanin stood back as
Morgaine recovered herself, there at the edge of the carnage, the black
weapon in her hand.
She will kill them too,
Vanye thought on the instant. There was no reason and no mercy on Morgaine's face.

Then
she caught her breath and ran for the undefended door, opened it with
quick passes of her hand on the studs which marked its center.

It gave back on hall and hall and hall brightly lighted, leading toward other doors.

"Hold here!" she cried. "All of you, hold the doors! Vanye—stay with them! Do not count Skarrin dead!"

She
ran, before he could muster protest; and he thought then and knew he
was guard of those who guarded them—to ward their retreat when it would
surely be in haste.

"One of you," he shouted at Chei, "get down to the end of the hall and guard the horses!"

"Curse you, we are not your servants!"

"Dead men
have
no precedence! We are all in this, and likely to be stranded if we have no horses!"

"Rhanin!" Chei shouted, and Rhanin tucked his bow in hand and ran, vaulting dead men as he went.

That
was the only one of them presently with other than a sword and dagger.
Vanye longed for his own good bow, which he had left with Arrhan, and
took a dead man's in its place, gathered up a quiver of arrows and
slung it to his shoulder.

One
arrow to the string, two others in his bow-hand. He tested the draw,
and moved down to the intersection of the halls to set his shoulders
against the wall where he had vantage of the right-hand corridor, while
Chei took up a bow as well, and a quiver; and by the way he handled it,
at least one part of him was no stranger to the weapon.

Morgaine's
footfalls had died away in distance, within the farthest doorway, and
he pressed his shoulders against the wall and watched, arms both at
ease and ready on the instant, if there were any movement down the
lighted corridor.

Such
places he knew. There would be machines. There would be traps and such
things as Morgaine dealt with better than ever he could in that room
where she had gone, to deal with whatever Skarrin had done to the
machines that controlled the gates. But he trembled as in winter cold,
the reaction of muscles into which the bandages cut, and the fight
which still had him drenched with sweat, and cooling now in the chill
of Skarrin's keep. He blinked at the film on his eyes, shook his hair
aside as it straggled into his face, his heart pounding in his chest
with a kind of terror he had seldom felt in his life.

Qhalur enemies, he knew. Chei and Hesiyyn across the corridor from him made him anxious, no more than that. But this—

This man who knew the gates well enough to frighten Morgaine herself, whose mastery of them excelled hers—

What manner of enemy could die that death and not die, struck through the skull and through the heart?

Except there be witchcraft and sorcery which Morgaine denied existed.

But I am skilled in both. What matter it invokes no devils? I have
met
devils left and right in her service, and slain no few, except this last, that says he cannot die
—

O
Heaven, could we come so far and across so many years and fall to this,
this creature, at the height of the sky, while so many men are surely
going about their business in the town below, in all ignorance what
passes here—if they are there—if the whole of that great city has not
gone like the servants.

God deliver us. I do not know what more to do than stand here and guard her back.

Chei
shivered, against the wall, looking toward that portion of hallway
which was his to guard. Exhaustion ached in his knees and his gut and
trembled in his hands. And the lady—

The lady had not killed them. That much they knew of her. Nothing more, that the boy had believed of her.
Nothing
more,
except she was perilous as ever Skarrin was—more than perilous:
murderous and hellbent and—which she had said—more than a match for any
gate-warden.

Skarrin's match—that was very clear. Of Skarrin's disposition: that remained to be seen.

Across
the hall, Hesiyyn, warding the other direction; and at the opposite
corner, Vanye; and the slow minutes passed, while something happened in
that room down the hall—the master boards for the gates of all the
world:
that
was what Morgaine Anjhuran had her hand to, who had
defeated
Skarrin—that
was the fact which could hardly take hold in a shaken mind: Skarrin,
who had ruled in Mante from time out of mind, Skarrin, ever-young and
ruling through proxies, but cruel beyond measure when some rebellion
came nigh him—

Skarrin, around whom conspiracies and plots continually moved, like a play acted for his amusement—

Gone—in a lightning-stroke, the simple act of a woman who had not come to parley at all.

And at whose actions with the gate, in that room—sent the lights brightening and dimming as if all Neneinn were wounded.

"What is she doing?" Chei asked furiously. "What does she think to do?"

"What needs no hearers," Vanye returned shortly across span of
the hall which divided them. "Trust her. If she wished you dead you would be dead with the rest."

"I
have no doubt," Hesiyyn said, and tightened a buckle of his armor—wan
and exhausted, Hesiyyn, as all of them, shadow-eyed and dusty. He took
up his sword again from between his knees. "But whatever she is, she
has done fairly by us, and that hound Skarrin is dead or dead as fire
can make him." He made a kind of salute with the blade. "There is all I
need know."

It
was a desperate man, Hesiyyn who had no choices; and himself—himself
with so much good and ill mixed in him of his varied lives that he
could not see the world, either, in dark or light. And Nhi Vanye, who
knew, with more confidence than either of them, where his loyalty
belonged.

It
was irony, Chei thought, with pain in his heart, that he, Qhiverin,
found more and more reason to like this man, while the boy—the youth
forgave him,
him,
Gault-Qhiverin, because of
old betrayals and loss of kin and things in which they fit together
like blade and sheath—never mind that some of those griefs had been at
Qhiverin's hand, Qhiverin's fault, in the bloody deeds incumbent on a
warden of the warlike South—Qhiverin could find sympathy, Qhiverin
could embrace and comfort Chei in his desolation. There
was
no more war between them, except the boy would not forgive, would not listen, would not reason—

—for too much self-blame lay within it.

Here is insanity,
Chei thought in a heart-weary panic.
Peace, boy, or we both go under.

And the boy, who did not want to die:
He will kill us if he can
—
finally, when we have done all they want, one or the other of them will kill us. Knowledge was all they ever wanted.

Then they made a poor bargain, did they not?
He wiped tears from his eyes.
Boy, we will guard his back. You are a fool, is all
—
a
great fool. And would you had never made him my enemy. Your brother
would have had more sense. It was yourself coming up on the man's
sword-side, it was Bron drove his horse between to shy
you
off. That is the truth I remember.

Liar!

And your Gault, boy
—
your
Gault the hero was a traitor the same as Arunden. He would have sold
you all for his peace. Have you never known that? He betrayed Ichandren
before I did.
I
took him, yonder, on that
hill, because I had no choice. But ah, boy, he was a scoundrel.
Scoundrel and fool. What a legacy you give me.

What a cursed great
—

Light
and sound came from the room at the end of the hall, where the lady had
gone, a high thin moan which no living throat could make, and a deep
roaring like thunder sustained.

"What is she
doing?"
Hesiyyn asked hoarsely, leaning against his wall. "Lord human—"