Exile's Gate (33 page)

She spoke finally. It was to remark on the land, as if there had never been a quarrel.

"Aye,"
he said, and: "Aye, my liege," choking down his temper—for hers was
gone, vanished. That was the way of her. He was Nhi on one side of the
blanket and Chya on the other and temper once it rose was next to
madness, it blinded and it drove him—even to fratricide; after which he
had learned to smother it under
ilin
-law. O Heaven, he thought,
ilin
to a temper-prone woman was one thing. Both lover and shieldman to a woman half-mad and geas-driven was another.

He
had the warrior's braid back. The cool air on his neck, the high-clan
honor that forever reminded him he could take another path, the
ilin's
oath
that bound him to a liege he could in no wise leave—unwise, unwise,
ever to tangle matters further, unwise to have drifted closer and
closer until she could wound him, and drive him mad, and then absently
forget she had struck at him at all.

But it had happened. He was snared. He had been enspelled from the beginning.

And
she left him with his ghosts—thinking at one time he heard more horses
than their two, thinking at another moment that Chei and Bron were
behind him. They haunted the tail of his eye so that a bit of brush, a
stone, a trick of the rising sun, persuaded his sight that they were
there.

Both.

Chei is dead,
he thought with a chill, and crossed himself.
Chei is
dead.

And
he could not say why he suddenly believed this, or why it was two
riders that haunted him, except it was guilt, or foreknowledge what
they had sent Chei to, in a land where he had qhal-taint on him.

He wept, the tears running down his face, without expression. Beside him, Morgaine said some word.

"Vanye," she said then.

There was no place for a man to go, except to turn his face away.

She
was silent after. The wind dried his face. There seemed nothing to say,
that would not lead to things he did not want to discuss. He only gave
a sigh and shifted in his saddle and looked at her, so that she would
know that he was all right.

The
sun came up by degrees in the sky and showed them other ghosts, the
heights of hills which had not been there, showed them a land of crags
and rough land ahead of them, all painted in shadows of gold and cloud.

"Rest,"
she said again, when they had come to water, a little pond between two
hills, and this time again he took Siptah's bridle as she dismounted.

She
laid her hand on his back as she walked past him, as he slipped the
horses' bits to let them graze and rest a little. He felt it faintly
through the armor, and it set the thoughts moiling in him, a little of
relief, a great deal of reluctance to do or say anything with her. It
was not a quarrel of woman and man. It was, he decided finally, that
their blood was up, both, that they had killed, that she had fighting
in her mind and so did he, and to expect any gentleness or to offer any
was unwise.

He went and washed his hands and his face and his neck in the pond, wetting his boots in the boggy grass.

"Do
not drink," she said from behind him, reminding him of cautions that he
knew as well as she, and he turned half about with a sudden, trapped
fury in him.

He
said nothing, and rose and walked back to sit down on his heels and
press his wet hands to the back of his neck and to his brow.

"Sleep," he said without looking at her. "You are due that."

"I should not have chided thee."

"No, you should have let a fool drink from standing water. It is not Kursh, or Andur,
liyo.
I know that. I was not that much fool."

"Thee can take the rest. Thee has more need."

"Why,
because I am short-tempered? I have killed a man. I have killed one man
I held for a friend. And we have lost the other. No matter." He wiped
the hair back from his stubbled face, the wisps that had come loose
from his braid and trailed about brow and ears, and he had not the will
left to do more than wipe them out of his way. "I am learning."

Then the reach of what he had said shot through him. He
glanced up at her face.
My God, why did I say that?

The
mask had come back over her countenance, pale as it was. She shrugged
and looked aside at the ground. "Well that we save our shafts for our
enemies."

"Forgive
me." He went to his knees and she moved so suddenly he thought she
would strike him in the face, but it was his shoulder she caught, hard,
with the heel of her hand, before he could even think to bow to the
ground as reflex made natural. He met her angry stare and there was
nothing woman-gentle in the blow that had stopped him from the
obeisance. He had meant to make peace. Now he only stared at her.

She
looked dismayed too, finally, the anger fading. Her hand went gentle on
his shoulder and trailed down his arm. "There is no way back," she
said. "If you learn anything of me, learn that."

He
felt his throat tighten. He drew breaths to find an adequate one and
finally shook his head, and turned aside and got up clumsily, since she
gave him no room.

"I
am sorry," he said with his back to her. The arm that had wielded the
sword ached again, and he rubbed at the shoulder she had struck. "I
have my wits about me, better than you see. God knows, we are going to
need our rest. And I do you no service to rob you of yours. I am not
the first man mistook a friend in a fight, God knows I am not—" He
remembered the harper, with a wince. He could not but wound her, no
matter what he did or said; no more than she with him. He could not
think where they would find rest, or where he would shake the phantoms
in the tail of his eye, and of a sudden panic came over him, thinking
what odds mounted against their passing those mountains ahead.

It was speed they needed. And human bodies and exhausted horses could only do so much before hearts broke and flesh failed.

"They
are my mistakes," she said. He heard her move, and her shadow fell past
him and merged with his on the thin grass, "to have taken them with us,
to have given thee the sword. It was thy own strength betrayed thee,
that thee kept using it. Never—
never
bear it
till it wields thee. That is what happened. That, I did not make thee
understand. It has happened to me. Thee learns. And sometimes even
then—"

She
did not finish. He looked half around at her and nodded, and refused to
regard the phantom that beckoned him from the tail of his eye, a shadow
on the horizon of the road. Her hand rested on his arm and his pressed
hers.

Until that phantom insisted, and this time he must look, seeing a horseman atop the ridge.

"Liyo!"
he hissed. "On the road—"

He
leapt up and she did; and hurried for the horses, to tighten cinches
and refit bridles: he caught Siptah first, his duty to his liege, and
she left him to that for economy of motion and did the same for Arrhan,
still working as he led Siptah to her.

A last buckle and she was done. He cast a glance over his shoulder and saw the oncoming riders, twenty, thirty or more.

"They
are Gault's or they are out of the gate," Morgaine said, and set her
foot in Siptah's stirrup. "If the latter, we have no knowledge
what
weapons they have, and I do not like this ground—Ride!"

He
sprang to the saddle and reined to her left as they made the road.
There was no question but that they were seen by now, but the narrowing
of the road left them little choice—and that in itself put a fear into
him. Many things about the gates bewildered him, but crossing from
here
to
there
did
not, and if Gault's men had gone from Tejhos to Mante and back, Mante
itself was warned and might have riders coming south to head them off.

It
was more and more of narrow passage ahead of them: the rising sun had
limned rougher land stretching eastward and north, and that meant fewer
and fewer choices of any sort.

They
had won so many battles. The odds grew and the land shaped itself
against them. "Get off the road," he shouted at Morgaine as he rode
alongside. "For Heaven's own sake,
liyo,
we
cannot win straight through—we cannot outride them behind and before!
Let us get into the hills, let them hunt us there, let them hunt us the
winter long, if that is what it takes to let them grow careless—"

It
was an outlaw's counsel. He had that to give. He looked at Morgaine and
saw her face set and pale in that unreason that drove her. He despaired
then.

"We make as much ground as we can," she called across to him, "as long as we can."

He
looked back over his shoulder, where their pursuers made a darkness on
either margin of the road, running beside the sporadic white stone.

"Then stop and fight them," he said.
"Liyo,
in Heaven's name, one or the other!"

"There
might be others," she shouted back, meaning overland, through the
hills; and he caught the gist of her fears and reckoned as she
reckoned, on Mante, and stones, and gates.

The riders so easily seen might be a lure to delay or herd them.

Still, still, she was the elder and warier of them.

They
crested a hill and for a time they were running alone, at an easier
gait, for a long enough time that he looked back once and twice looking
for their pursuers; and Morgaine looked, her silver hair whipping in
the wind.

They were gone.

"I do not like this," she said as they rode.

The road which had held straight so far, through so much of the land, took a bend toward the east which Chei had never mapped.

And his own instincts cried trap.

"Liyo,
I beg you, let us get off this!"

Morgaine
said nothing, but of a sudden turned Siptah aside into a fold of the
hills, keeping a quick pace on grassy and uneven ground, down the
course the hills gave them.

Deeper and deeper into land in which they no longer had a guide.

They rode more quietly at last, finding their way by the sun in a wandering course through grassy hills, brush and scrub forest.

They
watched the hilltops and the edges of the thickets, and from time to
time looked behind them or stopped and listened and watched the flight
of birds for omens of pursuers.

Morgaine did not speak now. He rode silent as she, senses wide and listening, for any hint of other presence.

Only
as the sun sank: "The dark is their friend tonight," Morgaine said,
"more than ours, in a land we do not know. We had best find ourselves a
place and lie quiet a while."

"Thank
Heaven," he muttered; and when they had found that place, a deep fold
of the hills well-grown with brush, and when they had gotten the horses
sheltered up against an overhang of the hills and rubbed them down and
fed them, then he felt that he could breathe again and he had a little
appetite for the fireless supper they made.

"Tomorrow,"
he said anxiously, "we will camp here, and I will go a little down the
way and bring back forage for the horses—I do not think we ought to
stir out of here for a few days. Listen to me!" he said, as she began
to answer him. "Whatever you ask, I will do, you know that. But hear me
out. Time will serve us. If it takes us months—we will live to get to
Mante."

"No,"
she said. "No. We have no months. We have no days. Does thee understand
me? This Skarrin—this lord in Mante—" She fell silent again, leaning
her chin on her arm, resting on her knee, and there was a line between
her brows, in the fading of the light. "There are qhal and there are
qhal, and Skarrin's is an old name, Vanye, a very old name."

"Do you know him?"

"If he is what I think he is—I know
what
he
is; and I tell thee there is no risk we have ever run—" Her fist
clenched. "Only believe what I tell thee: we have no time with this
man."

"What
is he?"

"Something I hoped did not exist. Perhaps I am wrong." She sighed and worked the fingers of that hand. "Talk of something else."

"Of what?"

"Of anything."

He
drew a breath. He cast back. It was Morija came to mind. It always did.
But darker things overshadowed it—a keep surrounded with flood. A
forest, haunted with things which did not love human or qhal. Of his
cousin. But that was a memory too fraught with dark things too.

"At least we are warmer," he said, desperate recourse to the weather.

"And dry," she said.

"Good grazing here. A few days," he said.
"Liyo,
—we can rest a few days. The horses will not take more of this."

"Vanye—"

"Forgive me."

"No, thee is right, but we have no choice. Vanye—I
had
no choice."

It was not their moving on that she meant. Her voice trembled.

"I know that," he said, no steadier.