It grew as they walked, until there was no more sky. The Lethen with them balked, and Vanye thought for one wild soaring moment that they would lose their courage and fail to hold him. But Liell cursed them and threatened them, and they drew him up and up, until they stood swaying in that awesome wind, poised upon a level place near the Gate.
There Liell bade them unbind his hands and hold him fast: “I will not enter an impaired shelter,” he said. And this they did, but held his numb arms and strengthless wrists still wrenched behind him with such cruel force that he could not struggle free. He stared up into that great gulf, dizzied, faltered and lost his balance even standing still.
“How is it done?” he asked of Liell. He did not want to know, but his courage was never proof against the unknown: he feared that he would shame himself at the last, crying out, if he did not know. He knew Morgaine’s things, that there were laws and realities that governed them; he insisted to believe so even in this.
“It is less pleasant for me than for you,” said Liell. “I must ruin this present body of mine, enough to die; but you—you will only seem to fall for a moment. You will never reach bottom. Do not fear; you will not suffer.”
Liell knew his fear and mocked him with it. Vanye set his lips and forbore to say anything, head bowed.
“Those companions of yours,” Liell said. “Have you fondness for them?”
“Yes,” he said.
Liell’s lips made a slight smile, which his eyes did not share. “As for Chya Roh, that is an old and personal matter, which I shall enjoy settling. That which you are about to bequeath me is well capable of handling the lord of Chya, of claiming what he rules, by the blood you share; and claiming Morija too. You never appreciated your heredity as I do. And do not fear so much for Morgaine. Without her weapons she is harmless, and she has knowledge that will be of great interest to me. And in other ways, with your youth, she is of interest. Flis is tiresome.”
Vanye made a sound like spitting, at which Liell was neither amused nor troubled, and they began to climb again. He balked, had his arms painfully wrenched, and gave up resistance, lost in what loomed over them.
Dark was all their vision now, stars more numerous than shone in the sky, clouds upon clouds of stars. The air was dead. It numbed. The vision seemed about to drink them into that shimmering nothing—though they climbed, it seemed a pit, a downward plunge into which one could fall and fall, and that they leaned impossibly above it. The mountain on which they walked seemed out of proper alignment with earth. The wind skirled about them, maleficent and voiced, humming with power, blurring senses.
Liell reached the Gate and touched its arch; his fingers moved upon it, and all at once there was utter dark within the Gate. The wind ceased. The humming altered its tone, higher pitched. The opalescence of Changeling itself burst and coruscated within the arch, flung light at them.
The Lethen faltered. Vanye spun, flung himself downslope, lost footing and slid, brought up against a level place and staggered to his feet, dazed, blinded, aware of shouting ahead and behind in the gathering dark.
Out, was the only thing his senses grasped at the moment; and hard upon that single light of reason: Morgaine.
He could not help her. They would have a dozen men upon him before he could free her.
Changeling.
He ran, sliding, mail-protected, but leaving skin of his hands on rocks, battering himself in one spill and another. Men tried to head him off at the bottom. He gasped air, spun left, veering off from Morgaine and Roh, scattering horses as he fled. Then there was the familiar black before him: he vaulted for the saddle, shied the beast and clung, clawed his way firmly into the saddle and caught the flying reins. The beast knew him, gathered himself and sprang forward under his guidance.
Riders were already starting after him. Tumult and shouting were in his wake, though no arrows flew. He did not even seek the hill, to brave that weight of air, that awful climb, not with pursuit and enemies and a frightened horse to confound matters. He headed back along their trail.
If the Gate were barred to him, there was still Ra-hjemur, where Thiye ruled. There was Changeling under his knee, its dragon-hilt familiar to his anxious fingers. With that in hand and the power of the Gate to feed it, he could force his way to the heart of Thiye’s power, destroy its source, whatever it was, destroy the Gate—destroy himself and Morgaine too, he knew.
And Liell.
The world had not yet seen what Liell could do with the power of Morgaine added to his own. Thiye was small compared to that evil.
He rode the horse without mercy, whipped the poor beast down snowy slopes and across trails and down, doing all he could to clear Ivrel.
Even Liell must have care of him now. Even Morgaine’s other weapons were nothing to the power of the opal blade, that drank attack and cast it elsewhere, that drank lives and cast them into nothing. And armed as he was, with that power in his hands, it was madness to kill the horse that was his best hope of reaching Hjemur: he came to his senses when he had cleared the steepest portion of the road, and come to the main trail. There he slowed his pace at last, let the horse breathe.
Around the limb of the lower slope the main road led, bending toward Ra-hjemur. It must be. There was no other place in Hjemur that could even boast a road.
He kept the horse to a holding pace. Lethen might be reluctant to follow, but Liell would drive them to it—timid as Morgaine avowed herself to be, able to spend others’ lives before her own, she was capable of fearful risks when it became necessary; and Liell surely would prove no different: when caution would not serve, then there would be nothing reserved, nothing. When Liell knew finally that the Gates themselves were at stake, he would surely follow. The only hope was that he had yet to understand what Changeling was, or that a Morij ilin might understand what had to be done with the blade.
A shadow thundered out at him. The black screamed shrilly and shied, and an impact hit his shoulder, tumbling him inexorably over the black’s rump, head over heels, and into snow and hard ice.
• • •
Joints moved, bones unbroken, but shaken; he tried to gain command of his battered limbs and move, but a shortsword pressed under his chin, forcing his head down again into the numbing snow. A body hovered over him, the arm that rested across the figure’s knee ending abruptly.
“Brother,” said Erij, whispering.
Chapter 10
“Erij.” Vanye tried a second time to rise, and in a sudden move Erij moved back and let him. Then he snapped the Honor blade back into his belt and stalked up the road a space where his horse stood, along with Vanye’s black.
Vanye stumbled up from the ditch, limping, trying vainly to overtake him and prevent him, saw to his dismay that Erij had already found what the black horse bore on its saddle.
A fierce grin spread over Erij’s face as he took the sheathed blade in hand, and with the sheath in the crook of his arm and his hand upon its hilt, he waited Vanye’s coming.
Vanye stopped short of the threat he posed him, still shaking in all his limbs, trying to gather his breath and his wits and frame some reasonable argument.
“There is a qujal out of Leth,” he began, his voice hardly audible. “Erij, Erij, there are Lethen and the devil himself behind me. We are both in danger. I will go with you clear of this road—not try at escape, at least that far. I swear, I swear it, Erij.”
Erij considered, his dark eyes fluid in the dark. Then he nodded abrupt decision, hooked the sheath of Changeling to his own belt—one-handed as he was, he wore it at his hip, not his back—and swung up to mount.
Vanye hauled his aching body into the saddle on a second effort, sent the black galloping down the road in Erij’s company, down side trails into forest, though at every turn the forest looked more ominous in itself. The horses went at a careful pace now, wending their way down into rocky ground. Here were still
patches of snow in which to leave prints, but brush and woods were so thick that pursuit of them could not be easy for any group of men, and their trail was somewhat obscured. It held no feeling of safety, this place—rather, the same kind of queasiness that all of Erij’s ambushes had held, from boyhood up, screaming alarm, such that he thought, like another dream by Aenor-Pyvvn, that he might have ridden this place in some bad dream, wherein he had died. The trees, the rocks etched themselves into his sight, his senses clinging to them as strongly as fingers might cling to some last handhold on solidity. I am losing these, he thought, and: I am mad to go with him like this. But he had no strength left, and Erij held Changeling, held his duty as ilin to hostage: Erij could reason, could be reasoned with—his hope insisted so.
Then, in a clear place among the trees, Erij reined in and ordered him down.
Panic struck him. Almost he did lay heels to the horse. But he found himself climbing down, careful of strained knees as he caught his balance on the ground. He moved out uncertainly as Erij motioned him to the center of the clearing.
“Where is she?” Erij asked then, and as he asked, climbed down, and unhooked the sheath of Changeling.
Then he knew of a certainty that Erij meant to kill him when he had answered; and Changeling slipped inexorably from its sheath, Erij knowing the nature of the blade now, well able to wield it.
Vanye hurled himself at Erij waist-high, grappled and came down with him, Changeling falling still sheathed.
Erij’s elbow crashed into his face, blinding him. Vanye was suddenly underneath again, losing, as he had always lost, as it had always been with his brothers. He could not see, could not breathe, could not feel for a moment. With his last effort he heaved over and clung, fighting only for leverage. Then his hands were slamming Erij’s head into the snowy ground, again and again, until Erij’s limbs weakened and ceased to struggle. He scrambled up to find Changeling, his mind next clearing as he reached his horse, holding the sword-sheath, groping blindly for the reins.
The horse shied. Erij’s rush carried into his lower back, hurling him, stunned, almost under the hooves. Changeling flew from his nerveless fingers, beyond reach, and when he struggled after it, Erij kicked him over by the shoulder. He came halfway up, staggered, and met Erij’s fist, which laid him backward into the snow. Then Erij fell upon him with a knee upon his chest and his maimed arm still strong enough to strike his arm aside: Erij ripped the Honor blade from his belt and slipped it within the throat-laces of his armor, cutting down the thongs like so much rotten thread.
“A third of Nhi died at Irn-Svejur,” Erij gasped at him, hoarse and out of breath. “Your doing—and hers. Where is she?”
Vanye swallowed against the blade’s pressure, unable to answer. He fought instinctively to breathe and froze, trembling with the effort, when he felt moisture trickling down the sides of his neck. Raw pain rode on the edge of the blade as it eased slightly.
“Answer me,” Erij hissed.
“Leth.” He moved an arm as heavy as his whole body ought to be, ceased. “Qujal—men from Leth caught her—to make her give them what she knows. Erij—Erij, no, do not kill me. They will have her knowledge—theirs—Thiye’s—together—against us.”
The pressure eased altogether, but it was there. The faint hope there was of Erij’s interest sent the sweat coursing over him, Erij’s knee hampered his breathing: he felt himself losing touch with his senses again, dizzied and numb. “And you, bastard?” Erij asked him. “What are you doing loose and alone?”
“Hjemur—the source. That can stop them. I am to kill Thiye—take Ra-hjemur. Erij, let me go.”
“Bastard, I have chased you from Irn-Svejur. The others had no stomach for Hjemur’s territory and Morgaine’s weapons, but I swore to them that I would go where I had to go to bring back your head. I would bring back the whole of you alive, but one-handed as I am, I know I cannot manage that. For Nhi and for Myya, for San and Torin—most especially for Nhi and its dead, I will do this thing, and then find how to put this gift you have given me to best use. I have no enemies I need fear so long as I wield that. If it would bring you safely to Ra-hjemur, then it could bring me there too.”
“Go with me there, then.”
“I offered you the chance of sharing power once, bastard, and I meant it; but you loved the witch more than you loved Morija, enough to kill Nhi for her.”
“Erij, you know at least that I will not break an oath. Help me—to Ra-hjemur. Now. Before our enemy takes it. Let me have my revenge on Thiye—for Morgaine; on the qujal too if I can. I am speaking sense, Erij. Listen to me. There are weapons in Ra-hjemur, surely—and if our enemy lays hands on them, even holding Changeling might not be enough to take the citadel. Do this. Come with me. That is my oath to her—to deal with Thiye. After that, anything that is between us will be between us, and I will not cry foul at anything.”
Erij’s shadowed eyes took on a narrow, reckoning look. “You were condemned to be ilin by our father’s law, for Kandrys; and you will be clean of that if I listen to you. But you have me yet to satisfy. Suppose I were to sentence you to another year.”
“I would think that was too slight a thing to satisfy you.”
“Swear,” said Erij, “by that oath you regard with her, that you will stay for Claiming by me, no treachery, no aid from her if she should somehow live. And that will not be a year that you will thank me for, Chya bastard, and it will not stop me from turning you over to the kinsmen of Paren and Bren when it is finished. But if it is worth the price to you, I will refrain from cutting your throat here and now. I will even go with you to Ra-hjemur. Is that the way you want it, bastard? Will you pay that?”
“Yes,” Vanye said without hesitating; but Erij’s blade still rested under his chin.
“And I will wager,” said Erij, “that you know the use of the sword and that you know the witch herself better than any now living. If taking Hjemur purges you of her—that being the service she named for you, and not merely a year—then let us agree, my brother, that when Hjemur falls, it is mine, and you are mine—from that moment. And you will not speak of this oath of ours—not to her, not to Thiye, not to anyone.”
He saw the trap then, which Erij wove for Morgaine, treachery suspecting treachery in everyone, and admired the cunning of the man: Myya to the heart, thinking of all possibilities save one—that neither of them would survive the taking of Hjemur.
He did not like the oath: it was woven too tightly.
“I will agree,” he said.
“And upon your soul you will not betray me,” Erij said. “You will hand me Hjemur and hand me Thiye and the witch and this qujal himself.”
“As many as live,” Vanye agreed.
“That you will not desert me or raise hand against me before then.”
“I agree.”
“Your hand,” said Erij.
It was not right to do: by ilin-law he ought not to yield another oath, and any crossing of the two obligations was on his soul, his own fault; but Erij insisted, and he yielded up his hand and clenched his teeth as Erij drew the black across the palm. Then Erij touched it with his mouth, and Vanye likewise, spat blood into the snow. It was not Claiming, for there was no signing with it, but it was an oath and a binding one, and when Erij released him to get to his feet, he knelt clenching numbing snow in his fist as he had knelt once in a cave in Aenor-Pyvvn, shaking this time in utter misery, such that his senses threatened to leave him.
The liyo he served could by rights curse his soul to perdition; he had yielded his brother the same right. And yet he knew that he would have mercy of Morgaine, and none at all of Erij. He knew his liyo, that though she was cruel in other ways, she would not curse him; and that knowledge of her perversely made him sure which oath he would follow.
And kill his brother, as he had killed a third of Nhi.
He had done this for his liyo, serving
her: ilin-oath had bound him, and he had killed kinsmen. There had seemed no worse act that he could be drawn to commit.
Until this, that he oath-broke, and murdered his brother by his silence.
I owe it to thee to tell thee plainly; if thee uses Changeling as I have told thee to do—thee will die.
Changeling was not selective in its destructions.
“Come, on your feet,” said Erij. He hooked the blade to his saddle-harness, displacing his own to the useless right-hand fastenings. Then he gathered reins and climbed up, waiting for him.
Vanye gathered himself up and sought the black, who stood, reins dangling, some distance away across the clearing. He set foot in the stirrup and rose into the saddle with a wince of strained muscles.
“You are guide,” said Erij. “Lead. And be mindful of your oath.”
He retraced the way that they had come, then cut north, aiming to come out upon the highroad at a different place than they had left it. When they had it in sight among the trees he was relieved to see that there were as yet no tracks marring the snow.
Only as they came out into the open road, something fluttered through the trees, alarmed by their passing—a rapid clap of wings in the dark. Erij stared after it with hate in his face, the honest loathing of a human man for things that frequented these woods.
Vanye had even ceased to shudder at such things. He set a good pace, reckoning that they were laying a clear trail for Liell and his men if they would follow; but it could not be helped. There was one quick way to Hjemur’s heart, and they were on it.
The black was laboring. It was impossible to drive the horse further, hard-put as he had been on the road to Ivrel. And at last Vanye reined in, looked back and considered stopping. It was an uncomfortable place. Forest was on one side, high rocks upon the other.