Harness jingled, the sudden lifting of Siptah’s head, the clink of slipped bit and snaffle ring that his ears knew before his eyes lifted. The stallion stood with ears pricked, gazing toward the road.
Morgaine rose instantly and moved to take the horses in hand and lead them inward of the stones for cover from the road.
He rose shakily to his feet and held the reins, soothing them, stroking one nose and the other—“Quiet, quiet,” he said to them in the Kurshin tongue, and Siptah strained at his grip and shivered, one long twitch up his foreleg.
“One rider,” Morgaine said, venturing a quick look from the edge of the stone.
“One man makes no sense.”
“A good many have cause to follow us.”
“Past the gate at Tejhos? Alone?”
She drew the black weapon. It was a dead man rode that track, and did not know it. He leaned his shoulders against the stone and looked out past it, as the stone was canted at an angle to the road.
The rider came on a dark horse. Mail glinted about him in the starlight.
Vanye’s heart leapt and jolted against his ribs. For a moment he could not breathe. “Chei,” he said, and reached for Morgaine’s arm. “It is Chei.”
“Stay here.”
He turned his head in dismay to look at her, at the weapon still in her hand. “Liyo, for the love of Heaven—”
“We do not know that it is Chei. Stay here. Wait.”
He waited, leaning against the rock and breathing in shorter and shorter breaths as the faltering hoofbeats came closer.
“Liyo,” he whispered in horror, seeing her arm lift.
She fired as the rider came past them, a red fire breaking out in the meadow-grass; and the exhausted horse shied and fought for balance as the rider reined up and about, facing them.
Chei slid down, holding to the saddlehorn and clinging to the reins.
“Chei,” Vanye said, and left the horses, walking out from between the stones.
“Stop,” Morgaine said; and he stopped.
Chei only stood there, as if he were numb.
“Bring your horse in,” Morgaine said. “Sit down.”
Chei staggered toward them and led the horse as far as the first stone. “Where is my brother?” he asked. “Where did Bron go?”
It was not the question Vanye had expected. It took the breath out of him.
“Bron is dead,” Morgaine said.
“Where did he go?”
“Changeling’s gate has no other side.”
Chei slid down the face of the stone and leaned against it, his head resting against the rock. Vanye sank down facing him.
“Chei—I could not stop it. I did not know him—Chei?”
Chei neither moved nor lifted his head. There was only silence, long and deep, in which Morgaine at last moved and retrieved her flask from Siptah’s saddle.
“Here,” she said, offering it.
Chei looked up and took it as if his hands and his mind were far separate. He fumbled after the stopper and drank, and slowly, as if it were a thoroughly unfamiliar task, stopped it again and gave it back.
“I feared,” Vanye said desperately, “that it was the both of you. I could not see, Chei.”
“Rest,” Morgaine said, and came close and stood with Changeling folded in her arms. “So long as we rest. After that, go back to your own land.”
“No,” Chei said with a shake of his head.
“Then take my order. You will go no further with us.”
Vanye looked around at her in dismay, at a face implacable in the starlight, a figure that had as well be some warlike statue.
“Liyo—”
“He is a danger,” she said in the Kurshin tongue. “There is a gate yonder. Has thee forgotten?”
“There is not enough time!”
“Tell me how long it takes. There were wounded aplenty back there.”
“It is Chei! Would a qhal come asking where his brother was? Is that the kind of question a qhal would ask first, who knows what the gates are?”
“Barring other chances, there is the matter of bloodfeud. Of revenge.”
“Revenge? God in Heaven, has the man come seeking revenge on me? I wish he would—I wish he would say something—”
“In time to come, at some point of crisis—yes. Being what he is, he may well think of revenge, when he wakes from the shock of it. I will not have him with us, at your back—or mine.”
“For the love of God, liyo! No! I refuse this. I will not have it.”
“We gave him what chance we could. Here is an end of it. He goes, Vanye.”
“And where is my voice in this?”
“Thee is always free to choose.”
He stared at her in shock, numb. It was the old answer. It was forever true. It was real now, an ultimatum, from which there was, on this plain, near the gates—no return within her trust.
“You will go,” she said to Chei.
“Lady—”
“Life I have given you. Use it.”
“You have taken my brother’s!”
“Aye, and spared yours just now. Do not stay to rest. Take your horse and go. Now.”
“Vanye—” Chei said.
“I cannot,” he said, forcing the words. “I cannot, Chei.”
Chei said nothing for a moment. Then he struggled toward his feet. Vanye put out a hand to help him and he struck it away, fumbling after his horse’s reins.
“At least,” Vanye said to Morgaine, “let him rest here!”
“No.”
Chei did not look at him until he was in the saddle, and then he was all shadow, there between the menhirs.
He rode away without a word, whipping the exhausted horse with blows Vanye felt in his own flesh.
“Liyo,” he said then to Morgaine, without looking at her, “I know your reasons. I know everything you would say. But, Mother of God, could we not have let him rest, could we not have tried him—?”
“Pity,” she said, “will be your undoing. I did this. I have spared you the necessity. For your sake—and mine. And I have given him cause to hate me. That is my best gift. Best he lose his zeal for us altogether—before it kills him. That is the pity I have for him. And best it come from me rather than you. That is all the mercy I have.”
He stared at her in the darkness, somewhere between numbness and outrage. Now it was temper from her. Now she was righteous. “Aye,” he said, and sat down abruptly, deciding that numbness was better, for the night, perhaps for a good many days to come.
There was a pain behind his eyes. He rested his head on his arm and tried to make it go away, or the pain in his heart to stop, or the fear in his gut; and none of them had remedy, except that Morgaine knew that pain, Morgaine was still with him, Morgaine was sunk in her own silence and Morgaine was bearing unto herself—she had told the truth—all the cruelty of which he was not capable.
• • •
The road stretched on and on in the starlight, unremitting nightmare, and Gault-Qhiverin clung to the course with what followers he had left to him. There was a wetness all down his side, the wound broken open again, though he had bound it, and the roan horse’s gait did nothing to lessen the pain of his wounds.
“Go back,” his captain said to him. “My lord, let us continue. You go back. We dare not lose you—” Which was true: there were many in Gault’s household who were there for reasons which had much to do with court and intrigue and the saving of their lives—lose him they dared not, for fear of who might replace him in Morund.
But they were not mortal wounds, that bled down his side and across his back. He would live to deal with consequences, and he had said things and compromised himself in front of witnesses, in ways that required personal action to redeem him: no, my lord, treason was never my purpose. I only
queried them to learn their business: my offers to them were a lie.
Form meant a great deal in Mante, whatever the Overlord knew of true purposes.
There was most of all, most of all—revenge. And the saving of his reputation: Gault was never without double purposes, even in something so precious to him as his best friend’s life. There were ways and ways to accomplish anything; and revenge was always best if it accomplished more than its immediate aims.
This was the common sense that had settled into Gault now the blood was cool and the purpose formed: alliance was not possible and therefore he would be virtuous, serve his own interests in the other way—and survive to deal with his and Pyverrn’s enemies.
The pair of them first for himself; and, failing that, for Mante and Skarrin’s gentle inquiries. That was the object of his ride.
But there was something before him on the road, a single moving darkness that advanced and gained detail at the combined speed of their horses.
“What is that?” one of his company asked. “Who is that?”—for Tejhos was behind them on the road, where the two members of their own company had gone message-bearing and asking after troops. This could be no answer Mante had sent—from upland, from that direction.
Closer and closer the rider came, on a horse weary and faltering in the night.
“Lord Gault!” the rider cried. “Lord Gault!”
Gault spurred the roan forward of the rest. “Who are you?” he yelled back at the oncoming rider.
And had his answer as the pale-haired rider came straight for him with a howl neither human nor qhal.
“Gault—!”
A sword glittered in the starlight. He whipped his own out and up, and metal rang on metal as the fool tried to leave his saddle and bear him off the horse.
But a knife was in the other hand. It scored his armor and found a chink in his belly, and he yelled in shock as he brought his own sword-hilt round, the only weapon he could bring to bear at too close a range, battering at his enemy who was ripping the knife upward in his belly before his men could close in and pull the man off.
“My lord,” his men cried, holding him in their arms, lifting him from the saddle, as he clamped a hand to his gut and stared down at the wild man the rest of them had caught and pinned.
“Do not kill him!” he managed to say, while his gut leaked blood through his fingers and the chill came on him. “Do not kill this one.”
The Man screamed and lunged at him, trying before the others could stop him to tear him down by the feet, by the knees; but they held him.
“Do not hurt him,” Gault said again, and the man struggled and screamed at him, calling him butcher and coward and what other things Gault’s dimming hearing lost track of.
“I am Chei ep Kantory,” the man yelled at him. “Try again, Gault. Do you want a shape to wear? Do you need one? I will give you one—I will give you mine.”
“He is mad,” someone said.
“What do you want?” Gault asked, fascinated despite the pain that racked him and the cold that came on him. “What price—for this partnership?”
“For my brother,” ep Kantory said. His sobs stilled. He became quite calm. “We have a common enemy. What is it worth to you—to have me willing?”
Chapter 11
It was a procession as fraught with fear as the last trek Chei had made with Gault and his company—the same, in that many of these were the same men that had taken him to Morund-gate; but here was no one stumbling along afoot: they let him ride, and though he was bound, none of them struck him, none of them offered him any threat or harm, and their handling had put not so much as a bruise on him.
They went now with what speed they could, such that it must cost Gault agony: Chei knew and cherished that thought for the little comfort he could get from it.
Mostly, in this dreadful place of barren hills and night sky and stars, he thought of his own fate, and from time to time of Bron, but not Bron in their youth, not Bron in better times, but Bron’s face when the sword had taken him. That horror was burned into his sight, every nuance of it, every interpretation of what word Bron had tried to call out and for whom he had meant it, and whether he had known what was happening to him as he fell away into nowhere at all.
And it was all to no purpose, serving allies who despised them both, who killed Bron and then cast off the faith he had tried to keep for his brother as if it was some soiled rag, himself qhal-tainted, henceforth not to be trusted—so much the clans might have done, for their own safety—but something, something, they could have said, something—anything, to make Bron’s death noble, or something less horrible than it was. They might have offered regret—Forgive, they could have said: we dare not trust you. Forgive me, Vanye could have said: could have prevailed with the lady—the man who had taken him from the wolves, been his ally—
—killed Bron.
—then cast him out with a shrug of his shoulders, seeing the lady threaten him with death by fire—with the sword itself.
But that was not the fate that he had chosen.
He felt power in the air as they passed the shoulder of a hill—felt it stronger and stronger, so that the hair stood up on his head and his body, and the horses shied and fought the bit.
Men dismounted; some led Gault’s horse and some led his after this, though the gelding fought and resisted and Gault’s roan horse threw its head and tried to turn away.
“Not far now,” one said; and Chei felt cold inside. “Not far—” As they passed that hill and the black menhirs rose up like teeth against the stars.
Beyond, atop the hill, the gate of Tejhos itself hove up against the sky, monstrous and dark, a simple square arch that framed a single bright star.
Then Chei’s courage faltered. Then, his exhausted horse led perforce toward the base of that hill, he doubted everything that he had purposed, whether any revenge was worth this. He pulled furtively at the cords that held him and found them secure. He looked about and measured how far he could ride if he should kick the horse and startle it free—but the horse was doing all it could to free itself already, as men held it close by the bit and crowded it close.
Suddenly other figures came into their path, from among the rocks, accosting Gault; words passed; swords were drawn. What is this? Chei wondered numbly. It occurred to him that something threatened Gault himself, and that some other presence had arrived that had the guards all about him reaching for weapons. It was too complex. He had come into a qhal matter, and their deviousness and their scheming threatened to swallow him up all by accident.
But the difficulty seemed resolved. The qhal who had met them broke their line and allowed Gault to pass. Then they began to move again, toward the hill. They passed between the masked warders themselves, strange helmed figures with visors in the shape of demons and beasts, with naked swords that gleamed silver in the starlight.
This was Hell, and he had come to it of his own accord. They left the warders behind, he and the men who led his horse and surrounded him with force. The gate loomed above them. There was no way back and no way of escape, and he had done everything knowing that such would be the case, knowing himself now, that he was not a man who could die simply or easily, or lay down his life of his own accord.
At every step of this he had planned that they would take care of the matter for him: they would shoot him down on the road—Gault would be dead or refuse to fight him, and the whole band would ride against him—he would find them scattered on the road and kill a few of them before the odds ran out—or he would ride all the way to Morund-keep itself, and hail out qhal one after the other till they killed him.
Or his first purpose would succeed, Gault would answer his challenge and Gault would skewer him outright or he would kill Gault before Gault’s men killed him—
And last of all they might take him prisoner and use him as they planned to now,
if there was desperate need—
That was the bargain he ventured. He had heard while he was in Gault’s prisons, that when they took a body, sometimes the qhal who tried it lost, and utter madness was the end; or now and again (so they whispered, devising vague hopes and schemes in that stinking dark) the war inside that body went on for years, mind and mind in the same flesh.
There was not a clan in the hills would have him now. There was nothing going home could offer him.
But this . . . this offered something.
He had planned this when he drove himself straight at Gault and gotten his way past Gault’s guard by sheer berserk desperation, and driven a harness-knife for Gault’s vitals, even while half a hundred men moved to stop him.
He kept believing it possible, as the horse fought and jolted under him, and men whipped it and forced it.
War on different grounds, he thought, you and I, inside, with no escape for either of us—I shall embrace you, Gault-my-enemy. That leaves us your hate and mine, and my anger and yours; and what I want and what you want, and which is stronger, qhalur lord?
Was Gault-the-Man afraid when you took him? But I am not. I welcome you. I shall welcome this fight with all my damned soul, Gault-my-enemy. I came back from Hell once, where you sent me. Do you think I will not come back again?
“A little farther,” someone said.
Or seemed to say. But it was harder and harder to think at all, in the jolting steps the horse made under him in its struggles, in the sensation crawling like insects over his skin. The gate loomed nearer and nearer, and the horse shied and faltered under him, so that the men finally stopped it, as it stumbled nearly to its knees. “Get down,” that voice said, and they pulled him from the saddle, their hands no longer gentle, everything passing further and further from the familiar and the known.