I know what is written in the runes on that blade, Roh had said; at least the gist of it. The words shot back into his mind out of all the confusion of pain and akil, turning him cold to the heart. Little of that time he did remember clearly; but this came back.
“He knows more,” he said hoarsely. “He has at least part of Changeling’s knowledge.”
A moment she stared at him, stark-stricken, and then bowed against her hands, murmured a word in her own lost language, over and over.
“I have killed him,” Vanye said. “By telling you that, I have killed him, have I not?”
It was long before she looked up at him. “Nhi honor,” she said.
“I do not think I will sleep well hereafter.”
“Thee also serves something stronger than thyself.”
“It is as cold a bedfellow as that you serve. Perhaps that is why I have always understood you. Only keep Changeling from him. What wants doing—I will do, if you cannot be moved.”
“I cannot have that.”
“In this, liyo, I do not care what you will and will not.”
She folded her arms and rested her head against them.
The light eventually burned out; neither of them slept but by snatches, nor spoke, while it burned. It was only afterward that Vanye fell into deeper sleep, and that still sitting, his head upon his arms.
• • •
They slept late in the morning; the arrhend made no haste to wake them, but had breakfast prepared when they came out, Morgaine dressed in her white garments, Vanye in the clothing which the arrhendim had provided. And still Roh did not choose to sit with them, nor even to eat, though his guards brought him food and tried to persuade him. He only drank a little, and sat with his head bowed on his arms after.
“We will take Roh,” Morgaine said to Merir and the others when they had done with breakfast. “Our ways must part now, yours and ours; but Roh must go with us.”
“If you will it so,” said Merir, “but we would go all the way to the Fires with you.”
“Best we ride this last day alone. Go back, lord. Give our love to the Mirrindim and the Carrhendim. Tell them why we could not come back.”
“There is also,” said Vanye, “a boy named Sin, of Mirrind, who wants to be khemeis.”
“We know him,” said Sharrn.
“Teach him,” Vanye asked of the old arrhen. He saw then a touch of longing come to the qhal’s gray eyes.
“Aye,” said Sharrn. “I shall. The Fires may go, but the arrhend must remain.”
Vanye nodded slowly, comforted.
“We would come with you,” said Lellin, “Sezar and I. Not to the Fires, but through them. It would be hard to leave our forests, harder yet to leave the arrhend . . . but—”
Morgaine regarded him, and Merir’s pain, and shook her head. “You belong here. Shathan is in your keeping; it would be wrong to desert it. Where we go—well, you have given us all that we need and more than we could ask. We will fare well enough, Vanye and I.”
And Roh? The question flickered briefly into the eyes of the arrhendim, and there remained dread after. They seemed then to realize, and there was silence.
“We had better go,” Morgaine said. From her neck she lifted the chain, and the gold medallion, and gave it back into Merir’s hands. “It was a great gift, lord Merir.”
“It was borne by one we shall not forget.”
“We do not ask your forgiveness, lord Merir, but some things we much regret.”
“You do not need it, lady. It will be sung why these things were done; you and your khemeis will be honored in our songs as long as there are arrhendim to sing them.”
“And that is itself a great gift, my lord.”
Merir inclined his head, and set his hand then on Vanye’s shoulder. “Khemeis, when you prepare, take the white horse for your own. None of ours can keep up with the gray, but only she.”
“Lord,” he said, dismayed and touched at once. “She is yours.”
“She is great-granddaughter to one who was mine, khemeis; I treasure her, and therefore I give her to you, to one who will love her well. The saddle and bridle are hers; Arrhan is her name. May she bear you safely and long. And this more.” Merir pressed into his hand the small case of an arrha’s jewel. “All these will die in this land as the Fires die. If your lady permits, I give you this . . . no weapon, but a protection, and a means to find your way, should you ever be parted.”
He looked at Morgaine, and she nodded, well-pleased. “Lord,” he said, and would have knelt to thank him, but the old lord prevented him.
“No. We honor you. Khemeis, I shall not live so much longer. But even when our children are dust, you and your lady and my small gift to you . . . will be yet upon your journey, perhaps not even across the simple step you will take this evening. Far, far travelling. I shall think of that when I die. And it will please me to be remembered.”
“We shall do that, lord.”
Merir nodded, and turned away, bidding the arrhendim break camp.
• • •
They armed with care for this ride, in armor partly familiar and partly arrhendur and each of them had a good arrhendur bow and a full quiver of brown-fletched arrows besides. Only Roh went unarmed; Morgaine bound his bow, unstrung, upon her saddle, and his sword was on Vanye’s.
Roh seemed not at all surprised when told that they required him to ride with them.
He bowed then, and mounted the bay horse which the arrhend had provided him. He yet moved painfully, and used his right hand more than his left, even in rising to the saddle.
Vanye mounted up on white Arrhan, and turned her gently to Morgaine’s side.
“Goodbye,” said Merir.
“Goodbye,” they said together.
“Farewell,” Lellin offered them, and he and Sezar were first to turn away, Merir after, but Sharrn lingered.
“Farewell,” Sharrn said to them, and looked last on Roh. “Chya Roh—”
“For your kindness,” Roh said, almost the first words he had spoken in days, “I thank you, Sharrn Thiallin.”
Then Sharrn left, and the rest of the arrhendim, riding quickly across the plain toward the north.
Morgaine started Siptah moving south, in no great haste, for the Fires would not die until the night, and they had the day before them with no far distance to ride.
Roh looked back from time to time, and Vanye did, until the distance and the sunlight swallowed up the arrhendim, until even the dust had vanished.
And no word had any of them spoken.
“You are not taking me with you,” said Roh, “through the Gate.”
“No,” said Morgaine.
Roh nodded slowly.
“I am waiting for you,” said Morgaine, “to say something in the matter.”
Roh shrugged, and for a time he made no answer, but the sweat beaded on his face, calm as it remained.
“We are old enemies, Morgaine kri Chya. Why this is, I have never understood . . . until late, until Nehmin. At least—I know your purpose. I find some peace with that. I only wonder why you have insisted on my survival this far. Can you not make up your mind? I do not believe at all that you have changed your intentions.”
“I told you. I have a distaste for murder.”
Roh laughed outright, then flung his head back, eyes shut against the sun. He smiled, smiled still when he looked at them. “I thank you,” he said hoarsely. “It is up to me, is it not? You are waiting for me to decide; of course. You bade Vanye carry that Honor-blade of mine, long since hoping. If you will give it back to me, I think that—outside the sight of the Gate—I shall have the strength to use that gift. Only—there—I could not say what I would do, if you bring me close to that place. There are things I do not want to remember.”
Morgaine reined to a halt. There was nothing bu
t grass about them, no sight yet of the Gate, nor of the forest, nor anything living. Roh’s face was very pale. She handed across to him the bone-hilted Honor-blade, his own. He took it, kissed the hilt, sheathed it. She gave him then his bow, and the one arrow that was his; and nodded to Vanye. “Give him his sword back.”
Vanye did so, and was relieved to see that at the moment the stranger was gone and only Roh was with them; there was on Roh’s face only a sober look, a strangely mild regret.
“I will not speak to him directly,” Morgaine said at Roh’s back. “My face stirs up other memories, I think, and perhaps it is best he look on it as little as possible under these circumstances. He has avoided me zealously. But do you know him, Vanye?”
“Yes, liyo. He is in command of himself . . . has been, I think, more than you have believed.”
“Only with you . . . in Shathan. And with difficulty . . . now. I am the worst possible company for him; I am the only enemy Roh and Liell share. He cannot go with us. Chya Roh, you have knowledge enough it is deadly to leave you here; all that I do would rest on your will to rule that other nature of yours. You might bring the Gate to life again in this land, undo all that we have done, work ruin on us, and on this land.”
He shook his head. “No. I much doubt that I could.”
“Truth, Chya Roh?”
“The truth is that I do not know. There is a remote chance.”
“Then I give you choice, Chya Roh. That you have the means with you and the strength to leave this life: choose that, if you think that safest for you and for Shathan; but if you choose . . . if you can for the rest of your years be strong enough . . . choose Shathan.”
He backed his horse and looked at her, shaken for the first time, terror on his face. “I do not believe you could offer that.”
“Vanye and I can make the Gate from here; we will wait here until we see you over the horizon, and then we will ride like the wind itself and reach it before you could. There we will wait until we know that you cannot follow. That eliminates the one chance. But the other, that you might do harm here—that rests on Chya Roh. I know now which man is making the choice: Roh would not risk harm to this land.”
For a long time Roh said nothing, his head bowed, his hands clenched upon the sword and the Chya longbow which lay across his saddle.
“Suppose that I am strong enough?” he asked.
“Then Sharrn will be glad to find you coming after him,” said Morgaine. “And Vanye and I would envy you this exile.”
A light came to Roh’s face, and with a sudden move he reined about and rode—but he stopped then, and came back to them as they watched, bowed in the saddle to Morgaine, and then rode close to Vanye, leaned across and embraced him.
There were tears in his eyes. It was Roh, utterly. Vanye himself wept; a man might, at such a time.
Roh’s hand pressed the back of his neck, bared now by the warrior’s knot. “Chya braid,” Roh said. “You have gotten back your honor, Nhi Vanye i Chya; I am glad of that. And you have given me mine. Your road I do not truly envy. I thank you, cousin, for many things.”
“It will not be easy for you.”
“I swear to you,” said Roh, “and I will keep that oath.”
Then he rode away, and the distance and the sunlight came between.
Siptah eased up next Arrhan, quiet moving of horse and harness.
“I thank you,” Vanye said.
“I am frightened,” Morgaine said in a still voice. “It is the most conscienceless thing I have ever done.”
“He will not harm Shathan.”
“And I have set an oath on the arrha, that should he stay in this land, they would guard Nehmin still.”
He looked at her, dismayed that she had borne this intention secret from him.
“Even my mercies,” she said, “are not without calculation. You know this of me.”
“I know,” he said.
Roh passed out of sight over the horizon.
“Come,” she said then, turning Siptah about. He reined Arrhan around and touched heel to her as Siptah sprang forward into a run. The golden grass flew under their hooves.
Soon the Gate itself was in sight, opal fire in the daylight.
Epilogue
It was a late spring . . . green grass covered all of Azeroth’s plain, with wildflowers spangling areas gold and white.
And it was an unaccustomed place for arrhendim.
Four days the two had ridden from Shathan’s edge, to this place where the land lay flat and empty on all sides and the forest could not even be seen. It gave them a curious feeling of nakedness, under the eye of the spring sun.
Loneliness came on them more when they came within sight of what they had come to find.
The Gate towered above the plain, stark and unnatural. As they rode near, the horses’ hooves disturbed stones in the tall grass, bits of old wood, mostly rotted, which remained of a great camp that had once sat at the base of it.
They drew rein almost beneath the Gate, in a patch of sun which fell through the empty arch. Age-pitted it was, and one of the great stones stood aslant, after only so few years. The swiftness of that ruin sent a chill upon them.
The khemeis of the pair dismounted . . . a smallish man, his dark hair much streaked with silver. An iron ring was on his finger. He looked into the Gate, which only looked through into more of the grassland and the flowers, and stood staring at that until his arrhen came walking up behind him and set his hand on his shoulder.
“What must it have been?” Sin wondered aloud. “Ellur, what was it to look on when it led somewhere?”
The qhal had no answer, only stared, his gray eyes full of thoughts. And at last he pressed Sin’s shoulder and turned away. There was a longbow bound to the saddle of Sin’s horse. Ellur loosed it and brought it to him.
Sin took the aged bow into his hands, reverently handled the dark, strange wood, of design unlike any made in Shathan, and strung it with great care. It was uncertain whether it had the strength to be fired any longer; it had been long since its master had set hand to it. But one arrow they had brought, green-fletched, and Sin set that to the string, drew back full, aimed it high into the sun.
It flew, lost from sight when it fell.
He unstrung the bow and laid it within the arch of the Gate. Then he stepped back and gazed there a last time.
“Come,” Ellur urged him. “Sin, do not grieve. The old bowman would not wish it.”
“I do not,” he said, but his eyes stung, and he wiped at them.
He turned then, and rose into the saddle to put the place behind him. Ellur joined him. Four days would see them safe in forest shadow.
Ellur looked back once, but Sin did not. He clenched his hand upon the ring and stared straight ahead.
Exile’s Gate
Prologue
The qhal found the first Gate on a dead world of their own sun.
Who made it, or what befell those makers, the qhal of that age never learned. Their interest was in the dazzling prospect it offered them, a means to limitless power and freedom, a means to shortcut space and leap from world to world and star to star—instantaneous travel, once qhalur ships had crossed space at real-time, to carry to each new site the technology of the Gates and establish the link. Gates were built on every qhalur world, a web of eyeblink transport, binding together a vast empire in space.
That was their undoing . . . for Gates led not alone where but when, both forward and backward along the course of worlds and suns.
The qhal gained power beyond their wildest imaginings; they were freed of time. They seeded worlds with gatherings from the far reaches of Gate-spanned space . . . beasts, and plants, even qhal-like species. They created beauty, and whimsy, and leaped ahead in time to see the flowerings of civilizations they had planned—while their subjects lived real years and died in normal spa
n, barred from the freedom of the Gates.
Real-time for qhal became too tedious. The familiar present, the mundane and ordinary, assumed the shape of a confinement no qhal had to bear . . . the future promised infinite escape. Yet once a qhal made that first forward journey, there could be no return. It was too dangerous, too fraught with dire possibilities, to open up backtime. There was the deadly risk of changing what Was. Only the future was accessible; and qhal went.
Some went further than certainty, pursuing the hope of Gates which might or might not exist where they were predicted to be built. More lost their courage completely and ceased to believe in further futures, lingering until horror overwhelmed them, in a present crowded with living ancestors in greater and greater numbers. Reality began to ripple with unstable possibilities.
Perhaps some desperate soul fled to backtime, seeking origins or a lost life or a memory; or perhaps at last the very weight of extended time and energies grew too much. Might-have-been and Was were confounded. Qhal went mad, perceiving things no longer true, remembering what had never been true in the worlds which now existed.
Time was ripping loose about them—from ripplings to vast disturbances, the overstrained fabric of space and time undone, convulsed, imploded, hurling all their reality asunder.
Then all the qhalur worlds lay ruined. There remained only fragments of their past glory . . . stones strangely immune to time in some places, and in others suddenly and unnaturally victim to it . . . lands where civilization rebuilt itself, and others where all life failed, and only ruins remained.
The Gates themselves, which were outside all time and space . . . they endured.
A few qhal survived, remembering a past which had been/might have been true.
Last came humans, exploring that dark desert of worlds the qhal had touched . . . and found the Gates.
• • •
Men had been there before . . . having been victims of the qhal and therefore involved in the ruin; Men looked into the Gates, and feared what they saw, the power and the desolation. A hundred went out those Gates, both male and female, a mission with no return. There could only be forward for them; they must seal the Gates from the far side of time, one and the next and the next, destroying them, unweaving the deadly web the qhal had woven . . . to the very Ultimate Gate or the end of time.