Gate of Ivrel

by C. J. Cherryh

  And at last the weariness that was upon him overcame the rest of his scruples. He thought that he was probably meant to spend the night guilty and miserable, crouching at the hearth rather than sleep in that ghastly bed.

  But he was Nhi enough to be contrary, and determined that he would not let himself be prey to the ghost that hovered about this room, angry at its murder. He drew back the covers and settled himself in, stripped only of boots, though it was the custom of men that slept in hall to sleep naked.

  He did not trust the hospitality of Morija that far. It was a weary time since he had had relief of the weight of the mail even at night, and that alone was enough to make him comfortable. He slept as soon as he had warmed the cold bedclothes with his body, as soon as the tension had passed from his muscles, and if he dreamed, he did not remember it.

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  Chapter 7

  There was the scrape of a step on stone, something hovering over him.

  Vanye in sudden panic turned onto his back, flinging his arm and the covers aside, seeking to rise.

  Then a man in black and silver stepped back from him and Vanye stopped, one bare foot on the floor. The fire had almost died. Daylight poured wanly through the narrow slit of a window, accompanied by a cold draft.

  It was Erij— older, harder of face, the black hair twisted into the different braid that was for hall-lord. The eyes were the same— insolent and mocking.

  Vanye thrust himself to his feet, seeing at once that they were alone in the room and that the door was shut. There would be men outside. He had no illusions of safety. He put up a brave face against Erij and ignored him for the moment, going about the necessary business of getting his boots on.

  Then he went over to the leavings of last night's wine and had a sip of the wretched stuff, returning to the fireside to drink it, for the chill crept quickly into his bones. All this Erij let him do without troubling him.

  And then while he knelt feeding the fire to life he heard Erij's tread behind him, and felt the gentle touch of Erij's long fingers gather back his hair, which hung loose about his shoulders. It was long enough to gather in the hand, not yet long enough to resume the braid that marked a warrior. Erij tugged at it gently, as a man might a child's.

  He lifted his head perforce. He did not try to turn, but braced himself for the cruel wrench he was sure would come. It did not.

  "I would have thought," said Erij, "that the honors bestowed on you at your leaving would have counseled you against coming back."

  Erij let go his hair. Vanye seized the chance to turn and rise. Erij was taller than he: he could not help looking up at his elder brother, close as he stood to him. His back was to the hearth. The heat was unpleasant, Erij did not back a pace to let him away from it.

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  And then he saw that Erij had no right hand: the member that he kept thrust within the breast of his tunic was a stump. He stared, horrified, and Erij held it up the better for him to see.

  "Your doing," said Erij. "Like much else."

  He did not offer his sorrow for it; he could not say at the moment that he felt it, or anything else save shock. Erij had been the vain one, the skilled one, his hands clever with the sword, with the harp, with the bow.

  The pain of the fire in his legs was intense. He pushed free of Erij. The wine cup spilled on the floor and rolled a trail of red droplets darkly across the thirsty dust.

  "You come in strange company," said Erij. "Is she real?"

  "Yes," said Vanye.

  Erij considered that. He was Myya and coldly practical; Myya doubted much and believed little: they were not notoriously religious. It was doubtful which side in him would win, god-fearing Nhi or cynical Myya.

  "I have had a look at some of the things she carried," he said. "And that would seem to support it. But she bleeds like any mortal."

  "There are enemies on her trail and mine," he said hoarsely, "that will be no boon to Morija. Let us be on our way as soon as she can ride, and we will be no trouble to you and neither will they. Hjemur will be far too busy with the both of us to trouble with Morija. If you try to hold her here, it may well be otherwise."

  "And if she dies here?"

  He stared at Erij, gauging him, and began to reckon with the two years and what they had wrought: the boy was dead, and the man would kill, cold-bloodedly. Erij had been a creature of tempers, of vanities, of sometime kindness— different than Kandrys. Erij's features now seemed those of a man who never smiled. A new scar marred one cheek. There had come to be lines about the eyes.

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  "Let her pass," said Vanye. "They will want her and all that ever was hers; you cannot deal with Hjemur. There is no dealing with them at all, and you know it."

  "Is that where she is going?" he asked.

  "The less Morija has to do with her the better. She has bloodfeud with them, and she is more danger to them than to you. I am telling you the truth."

  Erij thought upon that a moment, leaned upon the fireplace and thrust the maimed limb within his tunic once more. His dark eyes rested upon Vanye, hard and calculating. "The last I heard of you was through Myya Gervaine, the matter of a killing and a horse-theft in Erd."

  "It took the better part of two years to pass the land of your cousins of Myya," Vanye acknowledged. "I lived off them; and took the horse in trade for mine."

  Erij's lips tightened in grim mirth at the insolence. "Before you acquired a service, I take it?"

  "Before that, yes."

  "And how was it that you acquired that service?"

  Vanye shrugged. He was cold. He returned to the fire, folding his arms against the chill. "Carelessness," he said. "I sheltered where I ought not—too intent on the woman to remember that she had lord-right. It was fair Claiming."

  "Do you sleep with her?"

  He looked up at his brother in shock. "Ilin with liyo, and the like of her?

  No, I do not. Did not."

  "She is beautiful. She is also qujal. I do not like having her under roof.

  She claims no hearth-right here, and I do not intend she should obtain it."

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  "She does not wish it," said Vanye. "Only send us on our way."

  "What is the term of your service to her? What does she claim of you?"

  "I do not think I am at liberty to say that. But it has nothing to do with Morija. We only turned here after we were harried in this direction by Hjemur."

  "And if released, she will go— where?"

  "Out of your lands, by the quickest means." He looked his brother in the face, dropping all arrogance: Erij was due his revenge, had had it in the hospitality he gave them. "I swear it, Erij; and I hold nothing against you for this welcome of yours. If you let us go I will take every care that it brings no trouble on the land— on my life, Erij."

  "What do you ask of me, what help?"

  "Only return to us the gear you took from us. Give us provisions, if you would. We are scant of everything. And we will go as soon as she can ride."

  Erij stared into the fire, sidelong; his eyes flicked back again, frowning.

  "There is a charge on that charity."

  "What charge?"

  "You." And when Vanye only stared at him, blank and hardly comprehending: "I will release her," said Erij, "today, with provisions, with horses, with all your gear; and she may go where she will. But you I will not release. That is the charge on my hospitality."

  Bargain us a refuge, she had ordered him before she sank into delirium, however you can. He knew that it dishonored her, to abandon him, but he knew the compulsion there was in Morgaine: she lived for that, and for nothing else, her face set toward Hjemur. She would gladly spend his life if it would set her safe at Hjemur's border: she had said that in her own words.

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  "When I have fulfilled my service with her," he offere
d, trying that, "I will come back to Morija."

  "No," said Erij.

  "Then," he said at last, "for such a bargain you owe me fair payment: swear that she will go from here with all that is ours, horses and weapons and provisions adequate to see her to any of our borders she chooses: and let her ride free away from the very gate— no double-dealing."

  "And for your part?" asked Erij. "If I grant this, I will have no curse from you or from her?"

  "None," said Vanye; and Erij named his oath and swore: it was one that even a half-Myya ought to respect.

  And Erij left. Vanye was overcome with cold thereafter and knelt on the hearth, feeding the wood in slowly, until the blaze grew intense. The room was still. He looked into the shadows beyond the light and saw only Kandrys' things. He had never much credited the beliefs that the unhappy dead hovered close about the living, though he served one who should have been dead a century ago; but there remained a chill about the room, a biding discomfort that might be guilt, or fear, or some power of Kandrys'

  soul that lingered here.

  Eventually there was a clatter in the courtyard. He went to the slit of a window and looked out, and saw the black and Siptah saddled, saw men about them.

  And, aided by two men, Morgaine was brought down and set upon her horse. She scarcely had the strength to stay the saddle, and caught the reins with an awkward gesture that showed she had almost dropped them.

  Anger churned in him, that she was being turned out in such condition.

  Erij meant for her to die.

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  He forced his shoulder through the narrow opening, shouted down at her.

  "Liyo!" he cried, his voice carried away on the biting wind. But she looked up, her eyes scanning the high walls. "Liyo!"

  She lifted her hand. She saw him. She turned to those about her, and the attitude of her body was one of anger, and theirs that of embarrassment.

  They turned from her, all save those that must hold the horses.

  Then he grew afraid for her, that she would take arms and be killed, not knowing the case of things.

  "The matter of a bargain," he shouted down at her. "You are free on his oath, but do not trust him, liyo!"

  It seemed then she understood. She suddenly turned Siptah's head and laid heels to him, putting him to a pace headed for the gate, such that he feared she would fall at the turning. The black that had been Liell's followed, jerked along by the rein made fast to Siptah's saddle. There was a pack on the black's saddle— his own gear.

  And one other followed, before the gate swung shut again.

  Ryn the singer, harp slung to his back, spurred his pony after her. Tears sprang to Vanye's eyes, though he could not say why; he thought afterward that it was anger, seeing her take another innocent as she had taken him to ruin.

  He sank down by the fireside again, bowed his head upon his arms and tried not to think of what lay in store for him.

  * * *

  "Father died," said Erij, "six months ago." He stretched his legs out before the fire in his own clean and carpeted apartments, which had been their father's, and looked down where Vanye sat cross-legged upon the hearthstones, unwilling guest for the evening. The air reeked of wine. Erij manipulated cup, then pitcher, upon the table at his left hand, by gesture offered more to Vanye. He refused.

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  "And you killed him," Erij added then, as if they had been discussing some distant acquaintance, "in the sense that you killed Kandrys: Father grew morbid over Kandrys. Kept the room as you see it. Everything the same. Harness down in the stable— the same. Turned his horse out. Good animal, gone wild now. Or maybe gone to the wolves, who knows? But Father made a great mound down there by the west woods, and there he buried Kandrys. Mother could not reason with him. She fell ill, what with his moods— and she died in a fall down the stairs. Or he pushed her. He was terrible when he was in one of his moods. After she died he took to sitting long hours out in the open, out on the edge of the mound. Mother was buried out there too. And that was the way he died. It rained. We rode out to bring him in perforce. And he took ill and died."

  Vanye did not look at him, only listened, finding his brother's voice unpleasantly like that of Leth Kasedre. The manner was there, the casual cruelty. It had been terrible enough when they were children: now that a man who ruled Nhi sat playing these same games of pointless cruelty, it had a yet more unwholesome flavor.

  Erij nudged him with his foot. "He never did forgive you, you know."

  "I did not expect that he would," Vanye said without turning around.

  "He never forgave me either," said Erij after a moment, "for being the one of us two legitimate sons that lived. And for being less than perfect afterward. Father loved perfection— in women, in horses— in his sons.

  You disappointed him first. And scarred me. He hated leaving Nhi to a cripple."

  Vanye could bear it no longer. He turned upon his knees and made the bow he had never paid his brother, that of respect due his head-of-clan, pressing his brow to the stones. Then he straightened, looked up in desperate appeal. "Let me ride out of here, brother. I have duty to her. She was not well, and I have an oath to her that I have to keep. If I survive that, then I will come back, and we will settle matters."

  Erij only looked at him. He thought that perhaps this was what Erij was seeking after all, that he lose his pride. Erij smiled gently.

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  "Go to your room," he said.

  Vanye swore, angry and miserable, and rose up and did as he was bidden, back to the wretchedness of Kandrys' room, back to dust and ghosts and filth, forced to sleep in Kandrys' bed, and wear Kandrys' clothes, and pace the floor in loneliness.

  It rained that night. Water splashed in through the crack in the unpainted and rotting shutters, and thunder crashed alarmingly as it always did off the side of the mountains. He squinted against the lightning flashes and stared out into the relief of hills against the clouds, wondering how Morgaine fared, whether she lived or had succumbed to her wound, and whether she had managed to find shelter. In time, the rain turned to sleet, and the thunder continued to roll.

  By morning a little crust of snow lay on everything, and Ra-morij's ancient stones were clean. But traffic back and forth in the courtyard soon began, and tracked the ground into brown. Snow never stayed long in Morija, except in Alis Kaje, or the cap of Proeth.

  It would, he thought, make things easier for any that followed a trail, and that thought made him doubly uneasy.

  All that day, as the day before, no one came, not even to supply him with food. And in the evening came the summons that he expected, and he must again sit with Erij at table, he at one side and Erij at the other.

  This evening there was a Chya longbow in the middle of the table amid the dishes and the wine.

  "Am I supposed to ask the meaning of it?" Vanye said finally.

  "Chya tried our border in the night. Your prediction was true: Morgaine does have unusual followers."

  "I am sure," said Vanye, "that she did not summon them."

  "We killed five of them," said Erij, self-pleased.

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  "I met a man in Ra-leth," said Vanye, thin-lipped, the while he poured himself wine, "whose image you have grown to be, legitimate brother, heir of Rijan. Who kept rooms as you keep them, and guests as you keep them, and honor as you keep it."

  Erij seemed amused by that, but the cover was thin. "Bastard brother, your humor is sharp this evening. You are growing over-confident in my hospitality."

  "Brother-killing will be no better for you than it was to me," Vanye said, keeping his voice quiet and calm, far more so than he felt inside. "Even if you are able to keep your hall well filled with Myya, like those fine servants of yours the other side of the door— it is Nhi that you rule. You ought to remember that. Cut my throat and there are Nhi who will not forget it."r />
  "Do you think so?" Erij returned, leaning back. "You have no direct kin in Nhi, bastard brother: only me. And I do not think Chya will be able to do anything— if they cared, which I much doubt they do. And she was quick enough to leave you. I would that I knew what there was in the witch that could turn the likes of you into the faithful servant, Vanye the self-serving, Vanye the coward. And no bed-sharing, either. That is a great sorcery, that you would give that loyal a service to anyone. You were always much better at ambushes."

  Some that Erij said of him he owned for the truth: younger brother against the older, bastard against the heir-sons, he had not always stayed by the terms of honor. And they had laid ambushes of their own, the more so after his nurse died and he came to take up residence in the fortress of Ra-morij.

  That was, he recalled, the time when they had ceased to be brothers: when he came to live in the fortress, and they perceived him not as poor relation, but as rival. He had not understood clearly how it was at the time. He had been nine.

  Erij was twelve, Kandrys thirteen: it was at that age that boys could be most mindfully, mindlessly cruel.

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  "We were children," Vanye said. "Things were different."

  "When you killed Kandrys," said Erij, "you were plain enough."

  "I did not want to kill him," Vanye protested. "Father said he never struck to kill, but I did not know that. Erij, he drove at me: you saw, you saw it.

  And I never would have struck for you."

  Erij stared at him, cold and void. "Except that my hand chanced to be shielding him after he had got his death-wound. He was down, bastard brother."