Exile's Gate (53 page)

Old,
Vanye thought with a chill,
old
—
more than a Man can reckon.

And
he found himself staring into Morgaine's eyes, lost, beyond
understanding what she did or what she meant to do any longer, and with
the least and dreadful fear—that she had found something in common with
this lord who contemned everything he ruled, who despised the qhal, who
themselves used human folk for cattle
—

She
had had to defend her companying with a human man. He had sensed that.
He imagined the questions which had gone by him, and fitted her answers
to them, his liege, his lover . . . defiant, in the beginning—toward a
man of her own kind, who could speak with her, trade words with her in
a language she had never taught him, quickly and unexpectedly draw the
sort of laugh and light answer from her such as had taken him—oh, so
long to win.

"We will do as he asks," Morgaine said.

"Aye,"
he said. He was too far into strange territory to say anything more. He
did not even agree for loyalty or love or out of common sense. He was
only lost, on ground which continually shifted and threatened to shift
again. They stood in a foreign lord's elegant forecourt with three
confused horses in their charge, and three men awaiting their fate
outside who were, surely, no less bewildered.

Then:
a clear target,
he thought, like a shock of cold water.

How else do we come at him—except she draw him out?

And how can she persuade him?

"Call Chei and the rest," she bade him in the Kurshin tongue. "Quickly."

He
left Arrhan to stand and went back to the sunlight. "My lord," he said
to Chei at the doorway, and lowered his voice. He was determined to
observe courtesy with the man and forestall argument. "We are going
ahead. We do not know into what. Be aware: the Overlord brought up the
matter of your exile. My lady claimed you for her own and Skarrin gave
you to her. So if you have any scruples, I think you are honorably quit
of debts to him, but I do not know what favor this wins of him if
things go amiss."

Chei
looked at him and gnawed at his lip. It was young Chei's expression for
the instant. It was doubt; and then amusement. "I was quit of debts to
him when he failed to kill me," Chei-Qhiverin said. "That was
his
mistake."

Chei
led his horse forward. Hesiyyn and Rhanin followed, Rhanin with his bow
strung and slung over his shoulder. Vanye cleared the doorway, gathered
up Arrhan's reins, and led the white mare up alongside Siptah as
Morgaine began that course Skarrin chose for them.

Ambush was in his thoughts, constantly. But Morgaine went, with
Changeling
slung at her hip, and walked the long court in which the horses' pacing made a forlorn and lonely sound.

"Games," she said to the air. "I do not like games, my lord Skarrin."

At the end a door whisked open, in that way which doors could move, in such places of gate-force—on a sunlit court.

Vanye
cut the lead next the bay's bridle and sent it ambling past them with
one slap and another on its dusty rump. It came to no grief in the
doorway. And they came through into afternoon sunlight, into a stable
court clean and well-supplied with straw and haystack, rows of stables,
with well and stone trough. The bay went straightway to the water, and
Siptah and Arrhan flared their nostrils and pricked up their ears and
approached the trough with keen interest.

"Hospitality,"
Vanye muttered, for the first time beginning to wonder was there good
will in this beckoning of doors and corridors and ghosts. "Dare we
trust it?"

"He
needs no ambush," Morgaine said, and bent and washed her hands and her
face, and let the water wash black, clean trails over her dusty armor.
She drank from the demon-mouth that poured fresh water continually into
the trough.

He
took the chance for himself, doused face and hands in cool water, wiped
his hair back from his eyes, washed and drank as Chei and the others
arrived.

There
was no one to threaten them. There was not a horse other than theirs in
all the stable-court. There was no servant and no groom to serve them.
Vanye stood, with the wind chilling the water on his face, scanning the
walls around them, looking for some sign of life and seeing nothing but
bare stone.

"Ghosts," he said aloud. "And of them this Skarrin seems chief."

"More
than ghosts," Morgaine whispered in the Kurshin tongue, and caught his
shoulder and leaned close to him. "We may be overheard. I do not know
how many languages he may have known or where he may have traveled."

His heart leapt in him and fell again. "Even Kursh?"

"There
are tracks among the Gates: thee knows. No knowing which path he has
come to arrive here. There are a handful of the old blood, in all the
worlds gates reach. They have no congress with one another. They are
too proud. Each settles to a world—for a while—using a knowledge of the
gates the qhal do not have—They
rule.
There is
no likelihood that they will fail to rule. They direct affairs, they
make changes at their pleasure. And inevitably they grow bored—and they
move on, through time or space or both. Some are older than the
calamity, older than the one before it. My father claimed to be."

"What
'one before it,' what—"

"—And some are born into
this
age—of
one whose life has stretched across ages. Some are born of events which
cannot be duplicated, events on which vast changes depend—Some lives,
in that way, anchor time itself. So the lords assure themselves of
continuance—in more than one way. Such am I—but not what my father
planned.
I
exist. Therefore other things do not. Therefore
he
does not."

"I do not understand. You have left me." He felt a shiver despite the sun. "What shall we do?"

"I shall court this man," she hissed softly. "By any means, Vanye,
any
means, and thee must not object, does thee understand that?"

"Let
us take the sword, let us go through this place until we find him—" He
felt cold to the heart now. "That is the only sense."

"He will not be there. He can retreat
within
the gate. He can leave us here. Has thee forgotten?"

"You cannot fight him hand to hand,
liyo,
in the name of Heaven, you cannot think of—"

"I will do what I have to do. I tell thee now: do not attempt
anything
with this man. I beg thee. I do not want help in this. Or hindrance. Thee says thee is still
ilin.
Nothing have I asked of thee by that oath—in very long.
This
I ask. For my sake. For thine."

"Tell
me what we shall do!"

"On thy oath. Nothing.
I
will do it."

"And I tell you—if you hang my soul and my salvation on it—I will throw them away, if it comes to harm—"

"Thee
will take the sword if it comes to that. Thee will bear it. Thee will
trust Chei and the rest if it comes to that. All these things—I ask
thee, as thee loves me,—do. Does thee love me? Does thee understand
what I ask?"

It reached him, then, the thing that she
was
asking
of him, and the sense of it. It shook the breath from him for a moment.
It was not the sort of thing a man wanted to agree to, who loved a
woman. It was harder than dying for her, to agree to leave her to die.

"That
much," he said, because anything less was betrayal, "yes, I understand.
On my oath, I will." He looked up uncomfortably at their comrades, who
did not understand what passed—their comrades, who expected, perhaps,
betrayal prepared for themselves, in this exchange in another language.

"We will go on," Morgaine said to them, and drew Siptah away from the water.

"Where
do we go?" Chei asked.

"Did I promise I knew?" Morgaine answered, and led the gray horse on through the stable-court, down the empty rows.

"It makes no sense," Hesiyyn said. "There should be servants—there should be attendants.
Where
are the people?"

"Heaven
knows," Chei answered him, and found no incongruity in saying so. There
was an angry young man in the center of his being, as lost as he was,
in this place which had dominated both their lives and ruined their
separate families—and which proved, after all, only hollow and full of
echoes. "People come here," he said, half to the lady, who seemed some
old acquaintance of Skarrin's. "People serve the Overlord. What has
become of them?"

She offered them no answer.

"Perhaps he is holding them elsewhere," Hesiyyn said under his breath, and with an anxious look toward Chei.

Death,
the lady had said; and in this court which should, at least, have
horses, have some evidence of occupancy and life—Chei found a
scattering of memory which was human and adult and frightened—

Gault
had
been imprisoned here, had been hailed up from the outskirts of this
fortress by his kidnappers, to the gate above these walls.
Gault
remembered.
And there had been others in that dark hour, there had been servants,
there had been abundant life in this court, torchlit and echoing with
confused shouts as Qhiverin's friends dragged him struggling and
resisting toward the hell above these walls.

"Even
the horses," Chei-Gault-Qhiverin said aloud, finding a shiver down his
spine and a terrible feeling of things gone amiss in this daylit,
sterile vacancy, "even the horses—No." He quickened his pace, tugging
at the weary roan he led, and caught Vanye's arm. "There were people
here. Now even the horses are gone.
Something
is direly wrong here. It is a trap. Make the lady listen."

Vanye
had rescued his arm at once. There was on his sullen face, a quick
suspicion and a dark threat. The shorn hair blew across his eyes and
reminded them both of things past, of miscalculations and mistakes
disastrously multiplied. A muscle clenched in his jaw.

But
if there was at the moment a voice of caution and reason in their
company it was this Man, Chei believed it: the boy's experience told
him so and Qhiverin's instincts went to him, puzzling even
himself—except it was everywhere consonant with what the boy knew: a
man absolute in duty, absolute enough and sane enough to lay aside
everything that did not pertain to the immediate problem.

Trust him to listen,
was the boy's advice.
Nothing further.

And Qhiverin, within himself.
Boy, if the one thing, with what lies between us, then anything; and you have been a mortal fool.

"It
is for all our sakes," he said. "I swear to you, Nhi Vanye. We are
walking into a trap. Every step of this is a trap. He has vacated the
place. Even the horses. Even the horses. I do not know where."

"The gate," Vanye said, looking down the little distance Chei's slighter form needed.

"To Tejhos?" Chei asked. "
—
Or
elsewhere?" Vanye cast a look toward Morgaine, whose face was stern and
pale and set on the way before them, which led toward yet another gate
in this maze.

"Anything is possible," he said.

A man who is winning, he had said to Morgaine again and again, will not flee.

But the man of that face and that voice which had spoken to them—

—Go
with
you, it had said.

Convince me there is something different than one finds . . . everywhere. . . .

Older than the calamity, Morgaine had said of Skarrin.

And:
Not of human measure, not predictable by human intentions,
his own
experience told him.

Deeper and deeper into this snare Morgaine went, leading the rest of them in what haste they dared—

Lest Skarrin strand them here, lest he go before them and seal the gate and leave them imprisoned here forevermore.

He
did not question now. He understood the things that she had attempted
to tell him throughout their journey—and he had overwhelmed her
arguments, delayed her with his foolishness, his well-meant advice and
his hopes and, Heaven forgive, his desire of her, which had stolen her
good judgment and thrown his to the winds.

But
for me, he kept thinking, the while he walked beside her: but for me
she would have ridden straight to him and stayed him from this; but for
me she would have gone straightway to Morund and enlisted qhalur aid
and learned more at the start than ever young Chei could have taught us.

And perhaps Chei would be alive, himself, and Gault would be Gault, and their ally.

"Tell her," Chei hissed at him.

"She
has always understood," he said to Chei and his murderer, "better than
I. Better than any of us. She gave you the chance to turn back. It is
not too late to take it."

The
gate before them was open. He was not in the least surprised at that.
And this one let into the building itself, into a shadowed hall which
might hold more than ghosts—but he began to doubt that there need be
guards or soldiery, nor any hand but Skarrin's own, which held the
gate-force. He kept beside Morgaine as far as that doorway, and
suddenly sent Arrhan through ahead of them, expecting no harm.