• • •
There was a rider on the road ahead, sai-uyo, Vanye thought, uyo of the lesser clans, but uyo, and armored: he rode like a warrior. There was no hope that the little beast he rode could match a proper horse. There was no avoiding the meeting. Vanye rode along at leisure, legs dangling, like any herder-boy returning at evening. Only upon the heights the warning-fires still gleamed, and the roads were watched; and he for his part could not look to be a herdsman, for boots and breeches were of weathered leather such as was proper to an uyo, not a countryman, he carried a great sword, and his shirt of white lawn marked him for a man untimely rushed from some great hall, high-clan: dai-uyo, Nhi.
This man, he thought unhappily, he might have to kill. He reached to the belt, unhooked the sheath, and gripped the sheath of Changeling in one hand and the hilt in the other, and the sai-uyo on his fine dappled charger came closer.
And perhaps he already recognized what quarry he had started, for he moved his leg and lifted his blade from its place on the saddle, and rode also with his sheathed blade in hand.
It was one of Torin Athan’s sons: he did not know the man, but the look of the sons of Athan was almost that of a clan apart: long-faced, almost mournful men, with a dour attitude at variance with most of the flamboyant men of Torin. Athan was also a prolific family: there were a score of sons, nearly all legitimate.
“Uyo,” Vanye hailed him, “I have no wish to draw on you: I am Nhi Vanye, outlawed, but I have no quarrel with you.”
The man—he was surely one of the breed of Athan—relaxed somewhat. He let Vanye ride nearer, though he himself had stopped. He looked at him curiously, wondering, no doubt, what sort of madman he faced, so dressed, and upon such a homely pony. Even fleeing, a man might do better than this.
“Nhi Vanye,” he said, “we had thought you were down in Erd.”
“I am bound now for Baien. I borrowed this horse last night, and it is spent.”
“If you look to borrow another, uyo, look to your head. You are not armored, and I have no wish to commit murder. You are Rijan’s son, and killing you even outlawed as you are would not be a lucky thing for the likes of a sai-uyo.”
Vanye bowed slightly in acknowledgment of that reasoning, then lifted up the sword he carried. “And this, uyo, is a blade I do not want to draw. It is a named-blade, and cursed, and I carry it for someone else, in whose service I am ilin and immune to other law. Ask in Ra-morij and they will tell you what thing you narrowly escaped.”
And he drew Changeling part of the way from its sheath, so that the blade remained transparent, save only the symbols on it. The man’s eyes grew wide and his face pale, and his hands stayed still upon his own blade.
“To whom are you ilin,” he asked, “that you bear a thing like that? It is qujalin work.”
“Ask in Ra-morij,” he said again. “But under ilin-law I have passage, since my liyo is in Morija, and you may not lawfully execute Rijan’s decree on me. I beg you, get down. Strip your horse of gear and I will exchange with you: I am a desperate man, but no thief, and I will not ride your beast to the death if I have any choice about it. This pony is of San. If yours knows the way home, I will set him loose again as soon as I can find a chance.”
The man considered the prospects of battle and then wisely capitulated, slid down and busily stripped off saddle and belongings.
“This horse is of Torin,” he said, “and if loosed anywhere in this district can find his way; but I beg you, I am fond of him.”
Vanye bowed, then gripped the dapple’s mane in his hands and vaulted up, turned the animal and headed off at a gallop, for there was a bow among the sai-uyo’s gear, which he reckoned would be shortly strung, and he had no wish for a red-feathered Torin arrow in his back.
And from place to place across the face of Morija, his pursuers would have found ready replacements for their mounts, fine horses, with saddles and all their equipment.
The night was falling again, coming on apace, and the signal fires glowed brighter upon the hilltops, one blaze upon each of the greater hills, from edge to edge of Morija.
And when that uyo managed to reach San-morij with the little pony—Vanye intensely imagined the man’s mortification, his fine gear borne by that shaggy little beast—then there would be two signals ablaze on the hill by San-morij and upon that by San-hei, and no doubt which fork of the road he had gone. There would be the whole of San and now the clan of Torin riding after him, and the Nhi and the Myya upon the other road, to meet him at Baien-ei.
To have stripped the man of weapons and armor which he so desperately needed would likely have meant killing him: but Changeling was not the kind of blade that left a corpse to be robbed. To have killed the man would have been well too, but he had not, would not: it was his nature not to kill unless cornered; it was the only honor he still possessed, to know there was a moral limit to what he would do, and he would not surrender it.
It would not be paid with gratitude when Torin caught him, and least of all when they brought him to Nhi and Myya.
Now he and the whole of Ra-morij—and if messengers had sped in the wake of his pursuers, the whole of the midlands villages by now—knew where he must run. There was a little pass at Baien-ei, and hard by it a ruined fort where every lad in Morija probably went at some time or another in their farings about the countryside. The best pasturage in all of Morija was in those hills, where ran the best horses; and the ruined fort was often explored by boys that herded for their fathers; and sometimes it served as rendezvous for fugitive lovers. It had had its share of tragedies, both military and private, that heap of stones.
And Morgaine’s guide was a Nhi harper with the imagination of a callow boy on a lovers’ tryst, who would surely know no better than to lead her there for shelter, into a place that had but one way out.
• • •
There were men guarding the hillside. He had known there must be even before he set out toward it. Any break from Baien-ei by riders had to be through this narrow pass, and with archers placed there, that ride would be a short one.
He left the dapple tethered against the chance he might have to return; the branch he used was not stout, and should mischance take him or he find what he sought, the animal would grow restless and eventually pull free, seeking his own distant home. He took the sheathed sword in hand and entered the hills afoot.
All the paths of the hills of Baien-ei could not be guarded: there were too many goat tracks, too much hillside, too many streams and folds of rock: for this reason Baien-ei had been an unreliable defense even in the purpose for which it was built. Against a massive assault, it was strong enough, but when the fein, the peasant bowman, had come into his own, and wars were no longer clashes between dai-uyin who preferred open plain and fought even wars by accepted tradition, Baien-ei had become untenable—a trap for its holders more than a refuge.
He moved silently, with great patience, and now he could see the tower again, the ruined wall that he remembered from years ago. Sometimes running, sometimes inching forward on his belly and pausing to listen, he made himself part of the shadows as he drew near the place: skills acquired in two years evading Myya, in stealing food, in hunting to keep from starvation in the snowy heights of the Alis Kaje, no less wary than the wolves, and more solitary.
He came up against the wall and his fingers sought the crevices in the stonework, affording him the means to pull himself up the old defensework at its lowest point. He slipped over the crest, dropped, landed in wet grass and slid to the bottom of the little enclosure on the slope inside. He gathered himself up slowly, shaken, feeling in every bone the misery of the long ride, the weakness of hunger. He feared as he had feared all along, that it was nothing other than a trap laid for him by Erij: Myya deviousness, not to have told him the truth. That his brother should have committed a mistake in telling him the truth and in trusting him was distressing. Erij’s mist
akes were few. His shoulders itched. He had the feeling that there might be an arrow centered there from some watcher’s post.
He yielded to the fear, judging it sensible, and darted into shadows, rounded the corner of the building where it was tucked most securely against the hill. There was a crack in the wall there that he well remembered, wide as a door, and yet one that ought to be safest to use, sheltered as it was.
He crept along the wall to that position, caught the stable-scent of horses. Large bodies moved within.
“Liyo!” he hissed into the dark. Nothing responded. He eased his way inside, the pale glimmer of Siptah to his left, to his right, blackness.
“Do not move,” came Morgaine’s whisper. “Vanye, thee knows I mean it.”
He froze, utterly still. Her voice was from before him. Someone—he judged it to be Ryn—moved from behind him, put his hands at his waist and searched him cursorily for some hidden weapon before taking hold of the sword belt. He moved his head so that the strap could pass it the more easily: he was unaccountably relieved at the passing of that weight, as if he had been in the grip of something vile and were gently disentangled from it and set free.
Ryn carried it to her: he saw the shadow pass a place of dim starlight. For his own part his knees were trembling. “Let me sit,” he asked of her. “I am done, liyo. I have been night and day in the saddle reaching this place.”
“Sit,” she said, and he dropped gratefully to his knees, would gladly have collapsed on his face and slept, but it was neither the place nor the moment for it. “Ryn,” she said, “keep an eye to the approaches. I have somewhat to ask of him.”
“Do not trust him,” Ryn said, which stung him with rage. “The Nhi would not have made him a gift of the sword and set him free for love of you, lady.”
Fury rose in him, hate of the youth, so smooth, so unscarred, so sure of matters with Morgaine. He found words strangled in his throat, and simply shook his head. But Ryn left. He heard the rustle of Morgaine’s cloak as she settled kneeling a little distance from him.
“Well it was thee spoke out,” she said softly. “A dozen or so have tried that way these past two days, to their grief.”
“Lady.” He bowed and pressed his forehead briefly to earth, pushed himself wearily upright again. “There is a large force, either on its way or here already. Erij covets Thiye’s power, thinking he can have it for himself.”
“You cried at me not to trust him,” she said, “and that I did believe. But how do I trust you now? Was the sword gift or stolen?”
What she said frightened him, so much as anything had power to frighten him, tired as he was: he knew how little mercy there was in her for what she did not trust, and he had no proof. “The sword itself is all that I can give you to show you,” he said. “Erij drew it; it killed, and he feared to hold it. When it fell, I took it and ran—it is a powerful key, lady, to gates and doors.”
She was silent for a moment. He heard the whisper of the blade drawn partway, the soft click as it slipped back to rest. “Did thee hold it, drawn?”
She asked that in such a tone as if she wished otherwise.
“Yes,” he said in a faint voice. “I do not covet it, liyo, and I do not wish to carry it, not if I go weaponless.” He wished to tell her of the men of Myya, what had happened: he had no name for it, and saw in his mind those lost faces. In some deeper part of him, he did not want to know what had become of them.
“It taps the Gates themselves,” she said, and moved in the dark. “Ryn, do you see anything?”
“Nothing, lady.”
She settled back again, this time in the dim starlight that fell through the crack, so that he could see her face, half in shadow as it was, the light falling on it sideways. “We must move. Tonight. Does thee think otherwise, Vanye?”
“There are archers on the height out there. But I will do what you decide to do.”
“Do not trust him,” Ryn’s voice hissed from above. “Nhi Erij hated him too well to be careless with him or the blade.”
“What does thee say, Vanye?” Morgaine asked him.
“I say nothing,” he answered. Of a sudden the weariness settled upon him, and it was too much to argue with a boy. His eyes stayed upon Morgaine, waiting her decision.
“The Nhi gave me back all but Changeling,” she said, “not knowing. I suspect, that some of the things they returned were weapons: they recognized the sword as what it was, but not these others. They also gave me back your belongings, your armor and your horse, your sword and your saddle. Go and make yourself ready. All the gear is in the corner together. I do not doubt but that you are right about the archers; but we have to move: all this coming and going of yours cannot have gone entirely unmarked.”
He felt his way, found the corner and the things she described, the familiar roughness of the mail that had been his other skin for years. The weight as he settled it upon him was greater than he remembered: his hands shook upon the buckles.
He considered the prospect of the ride they would make, down that throat of a pass, and began to reckon with growing fear that there was not enough left in him to make such a ride. He had spent and spent, and there was little more left in him.
It was not likely, he thought, that they would escape from this unscathed: Myya arrows were a sound that had come to strike a response in his flesh. He had escaped too many of them, in Erd and in Morija. The odds were in favor of the arrows.
Morgaine came upon him, sought his hand, took it and turned his wrist upward. The thing that hit was like a weapon, unexpected, and he flinched. “Thee does not approve,” she said. “But I will have it so. I have little of that to spend: unlike my other things, the sun does not renew it, and when it is gone, it is gone. But I will not lose thee, ilin.”
He rubbed at the sore place, expecting a wound, finding none, and beginning to feel something amiss with himself, the tiredness melting, his blood moving more strongly. It was qujalin, or whatever race she named as her origin, and once the thing she had done would have terrified him: once she had promised him she would not do such things with him.
I will not lose thee, ilin.
She had lingered in this snare in Morija because of Changeling. He knew that in his heart and did not blame her. But there was in that word a small bit of concern for the ilin who served her, and that, from Morgaine, was much.
He set to work about his preparations with the determination that he would not be lost, that so long as he had a horse under him he would make it down the pass and into Baien’s hills.
They had three horses: Siptah; the ungrateful black, who tried to bite and desisted sullenly with a rap of the quirt along his jaw; and Ryn’s dun horse, hardly fine-blooded, but long in the legs and deep in the chest. Vanye estimated that the beast might hold the courses they set, at least as long as need be; and the youth could ride: he was Morij, and Nhi.
“Leave the harp,” Vanye protested when he saw the thing slung on the youth’s back, as they led their horses out into the starlight. “The rattle of it will kill us all.”
“No,” said the youth flatly, which was what one might expect of Nhi Ryn Paren’s-son. And rather than snatch it from him and delay for argument, Vanye cast a stern look at Morgaine, for he knew that the boy would heed her word.
But she forbore to do anything, and, effectively set in his place, Vanye led the black after Siptah’s tail, until they were at the corner. There was a gate to be opened: he led the black to that point and heaved back the rusty bolt, shouldered it wide; and Morgaine and Ryn thundered through, Vanye only an instant slower, springing to the saddle and laying heels to the animal. Siptah’s white tail flipped gay insolence as the big gray took the retaining wall, warning Vanye what he had forgotten over the years: that there was a jump there. Ryn took it; his own black gathered and jolted down to a landing, skidding downslope, haunches down like a bird in landing, for the gr
ass was wet.
And arrows flew. Vanye tucked down to the black’s opposite side, making himself as inconspicuous as possible. He hoped the others had the same sense. But through the black’s flying mane he saw a streak of red fire, Morgaine’s handweapon; and there was silence from that quarter then, no more arrows. Whether she had hit anything firing blind, he did not know, but they were Morij, those men, and in his heart he hoped that the archers had simply lost heart and run.
Bruising force hit his side. He gasped and nearly lost his grip for the pain of it, and he knew that he had been hit: but no arrow at that range could pierce the mail. His worst fears were for the vulnerable horse. It went against Morij honor to hit a man’s horse, but here was no chivalry. These men must face Erij if they let them through, and that was no pleasant prospect for them.
They were near the end of the pass. He laid heels to the black and drove him harder, and the panicked beast gathered himself, saliva spattering back against Vanye’s leg as the horse took the rein he wanted. He passed even Siptah, answered to main force as Vanye hauled his head round toward the north again, toward the cleft of Baien’s pass through the hills, and leaped forward under the brutal impact of Vanye’s heels. In that instant he almost loved the vile beast: there was heart in him.
Morgaine, low in the saddle, was by him again: Siptah’s head, nostrils wide, was alongside with the starlight in his white mane. Unaccountably Morgaine laughed, reached out a hand to him that did not touch, and clung again to the mane.
And they were through. Beyond all range of archers, safe on Baien’s level plain, they were through, and Vanye reined down the snorting black and brought him to a stop, only then remembering the youth who rode in their wake. He came, a good bowshot behind them, and they both waited—silent, Vanye reckoned, in the same concern, that the boy might have been hit, for he rode low in the saddle.