Exiles Gate com-4

by C. J. Cherryh

  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 giveyou one—iwill 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 Eleven

  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. Bu
t 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.

  He looked up at the span of the gate and saw that the roan horse had gone further; but now the men lifted Gault from his saddle and carried him, while others seized his own arms and started him toward that height, toward the night sky shimmering like air over fire, within the towering frame of the gate.

  Closer and closer, until he could see nothing but the sky past those pillars, and a single star within that arch, a point of light that quivered and danced in the air. There was a singing in the wind, the thrum of bowstrings, of voices, spectral and quivering in his bones.

  Closer yet. The sky seemed to shift downward within the gate, and the thrumming was in his brain. His bowels turned to water in him, and his knees quaked, and the men holding him were all that enabled him to walk. O God, he thought, God, what can a Man hope to do here, with them?

  And again: Fear is Gault's weapon. I must not be open to it. I dare not let fear in. Hate is all I have. Hate greater than his—

  They reached the crest almost together, Gault holding his hand pressed to his belly, but walking at the last, leaning on the men who attended him. The black pillars seemed to throw off a kind of light, none for themselves, but a white hell-glow that played about the ground and that ran up the legs and the bodies and the faces of men who passed within its compass. Small sounds were swallowed up. The sky twisted and writhed like a gaping pit.

  As far as the pillars that dwarfed them, Gault went, and leaned against the left-hand stone holding to it for his support, laying his hand on one place and another as if it were a living thing, and himself in communion with it—qhalur wizardry, Chei thought, breathing with difficulty, watching with small jerks of his eyes and knowing that his face betrayed terror; but so was there terror in the grip of hands which numbed his arms and held him upright despite his failing knees. They were all afraid, he, the qhal themselves—it was a strange reliance he began to have on them, who would defend his safety now with their own lives, who were there to hold him and keep him from failing his resolution or from tumbling untimely into that place—A little longer, a little longer, he told himself; and concentrated on the little pain they caused his arms as the only saving of his sanity:

  Help me, do not let me go; we are all flesh, and flesh does not belong next this thing —

  They gathered him up; they brought him closer, and Gault staggered forth to meet him in front of that dark archway, on the edge of the sky.

  "Free him," Gault bade them, and a rough sawing cut the cords on his hands. They let go their grip on him, and Chei lurched out of balance, staring at the sky which now had lost all stars, which did not show the hills beyond, or anything but night—stared helplessly at Gault's face, suddenly, as Gault caught his arms. Hell-light shimmered over them, turning flesh dead white; Gault caught him closer, as suddenly the air began to move about them, stirring Gault's hair, howling with the force of summer storm.

  The gate was opening, greater than the gate the sword had made, louder than the howling of the winds which had taken Bron.

  "Have you changed your mind?" Gault asked, and embraced him closer still. "Is it still willingly?"

  Chei fought down his gorge and nodded, and his heart pounded in shock when he felt Gault seek his hand and press the hilt of a knife into his cold fingers. "Then you may do what you so much wish so much to do," Gault said, and slid his hand to the back of his neck, winding fingers into his hair, holding him tight. "Friend."

  Chei rammed upward with the knife in a spasm of outrage, under Gault's jaw, toward the brain.

  Someone pushed him. He felt the hands strike him, and the hill fell away under him and the man who was locked with him in a sickening fall of cold and wind and void.

  Something began to go wrong then, his senses going out one by one: he saw things he could not name, and was blinded by light that was pain. He screamed and screamed as he fell, alone now, falling slower—a drifting dark, in which something else walked, and that thing was a thought that waked in him and called itself Chei, but it was not himself. It remembered dying, remembered the shock of a blade in its bowels, and one beneath its jaw, stopping breath and speech; the pain was all for a moment.

  Then it ebbed, retreating to the past, safe and bearable.

  He knew then what had happened to him, and that realization itself was fleeting, shredding away from him in the dark as something he dared not reconcile, except that he had died—he knew that recent memory had his death in it, and he did not want to delve into that, here, in the dark, naked to the winds and the cold.

  He had use for his life. He discovered it and clung to it. He called it Bron and he called it Jestryn and Pyverrn, and he could not remember whether it had been brother or friend, or whether the man or the woman had killed him, but it was one and the same. He had a revenge to take, and that it was the one thing that had brought him north or south on that nightbound road, whichever direction he had been traveling, whichever horse he had been riding.

  Then, having discovered his heart was whole, he was less afraid. He felt other things slipping away, pieces that might matter, but he was no longer in doubt where his course was and that the men waiting for him would follow him.

  He knew all of Morund. He knew the hills. He knew Mante. He saw a hold set in the mountains, and the great Gate which ruled all gates, and knew the intricacies of politics which had sent the warders who waited below the hill: the Overlord Skarrin had received his first message and sent this handful of his underlings to guard the approach and to discover what they could, while Skarrin questioned at length the messengers he had sent. Skarrin's men had tried to bar him from use of the gate, until he could have permission of the high lord.

  They had hoped, perhaps, that he would die.

  But now, in his recollections, he had something indeed to tell them, which would stir Skarrin out of his lethargy and bring forces south.

  Tell them the urgency of it he would, but he would not tell all he knew—nor stay for them or wait on Skarrin's pleasure. He had been Qhiverin Asfelles. He and Pyverrn had fought in these lands between Tejhos and Mante, against various of the high lord's enemies; he knew the secret ways into the hills, off the Road and back to it. He had utter freedom of the land, the high lord himself had cause to fear him and his connections within the warrior Societies, and he was as likely as any to profit by the present chaos—by whatever means turned up under his hand.

  He drew a breath.

  He felt the winds again, when a moment before had been only cold that numbed all feeling.

  He heard the sounds, when a moment before had been only stillness. It was as if a ripple were sweeping through the dark, bearing him closer and closer to the shores of the world.

  He moved his limbs, finding himself weaker than he remembered, lighter of limb. It was a young body. It was skilled and agile and had a long-muscled, runner's strength different than the slower, mature power of the body he recalled as Gault's—was far more like Qhiverin's; was nearly as fair as a qhal; and that pleased him.

  He had a mature mind, too, that took the skittish thoughts of a younger and impulsive man and calmed them and spread wider and further into connections from which he shied back, of a sudden: there was too much memory, and it needed long meditation to reconcile it.

  Witch-mind, a part of him said.

  Nature, said the other, nature and knowledge.

  God! part of him cried.

  The other part said: Nature.

  Vision cleared in a shimmer like the surface of a pond. The hill grew firm under his feet and the men who gathered anxiously to meet him were all friend
ly and familiar to him.

  "Hesiyyn," he said, and laid his hand on a tall qhal's shoulder with easy humor, knowing how Hesiyyn loathed humankind.

  "Lord Chei," Hesiyyn hailed him with deep irony. It was custom. It was the penalty of the twice-and-three-times-born.

  The Men among them would be confused. They would murmur things about souls, which Chei dismissed and refused to think about. But tall, elegant qhal had no hesitation in bowing the head and offering homage to him, to Chei ep Kantory, lord of Morund—the intimates of his household, his servants, the remnant of the human levies, even the troublesome and arrogant warders from Mante, who waited below, with their captain.

  He felt wounds on him. He felt bruises. His knees ached with exhaustion. That was the penalty this body brought with it. None were unbearable.

  He sought weapons—the sword which the Man had given him: that was one weapon he did not intend to lose. It was qhalur-work, and foreign—from further, he was sure, than merely overseas, and he delighted in it when he tried its balance.

  He took his own bow; and the red roan; the lame gelding he turned out to fend for itself: perhaps it would recover.

  But he declined more weapons than that, and declined to go in more than the breeches and mended boots and light mail that came with the man.

  "This is the shape they will expect," he said to Hesiyyn.

  "Wake," Morgaine's voice whispered out of nowhere, and muscles jumped and body tensed all in one spasm as on the edge of a fall—But it was stone at Vanye's back, and he pressed himself against it, controlling his breaths and blinking at the shadow that stood between him and the horses. "I might have hit you," he said. "Oh, Heaven—" He caught his breath and brushed loose hair out of his eyes with a trembling hand. "I dreamed—" But he did not tell those dreams, that took him back to old places, old terrors. "I did not mean to sleep."