Gate of Ivrel com-1

by C. J. Cherryh

  And the girl perhaps would spawn more of her own kind, misery breeding misery.

  They could not be more than twelve, the pair of them, and they seemed to be brother and sister—perhaps twins. They had the same wolf-look in their eyes, the same pointed leanness to their faces as they huddled together away from the dangerous hooves.

  “Food,” they still pleaded, holding out each a hand.

  “We have enough to spare.” Vanye directed his words to Morgaine, a request, for their saddlebags were still heavy with the frozen venison of days before. He pitied such as these children, loathsome as they were, always gave them charity when he could—for luck, remembering what he was.

  And when Morgaine consented with a nod he leaned across and lifted the saddlebag from Siptah’s gray back and was about to open it when the girl, venturing close to Mai, snatched his saddleroll off the rear of the saddle, slashing one of its bindings.

  He cursed volubly, wiser than to drop their food and give chase to one while the boy lingered: he tossed the leather-wrapped packet at Morgaine, flung his leg over the horn. The boy fled too, vaulting the wall. Vanye went close after him.

  “Have a care,” Morgaine wished him.

  But the fleeing urchins dropped his belongings. Content with that, he paused to gather things up, annoyed that they returned to jeer at him like the naughty children they were, dancing about him.

  He snatched as the boy darted too close to him, meaning no more than to cuff him and shake him to sober sense; the boy twisted in his grip and gave forth a stream of curses, and the girl with a shriek rushed at him and clawed at his hand upon the boy—a bodkin in her hand. It pierced deep, enough that he snatched back his hand.

  They shrieked and ran, leaving him with the spoils, and vanished among the trees. He was still cursing under his breath when he returned to Morgaine, sucking at the painful wound the little minx had dealt his hand.

  “Children of imps,” he muttered. “Thieves. Misgotten brigands.” He had lost face before his liyo, his lady-lord, and swung up into Mai’s saddle with sullen grace, having tied his gear behind. Until this time he had felt unworthily used, taken in treachery and unworthily on her part: it was the first time he had to feel that he had fallen short in his obligation, and that made him doubly debted, disgracing both himself and his liyo.

  And then he began to feel strange, like a man having drunk too much wine, his head humming and his whole person strangely at variance with all that was about him.

  He gazed at Morgaine in alarm, reluctant to plead for help, but suddenly he felt he needed it. He could not understand what was the matter with his senses. It was like the onset of fever. He swayed in the saddle.

  Morgaine’s slim arm stayed him. She put Siptah close to him, holding him. He heard her voice speaking sharply to him and sternly ordering him to hold himself up.

  He centered his weight and slumped, wit enough to do that, at least, distributing his failing body over Mai’s neck. The saddlehorn was painful; the bending cut off his wind. He could not even summon the strength in his arms to deal with that.

  Morgaine was afoot. She had his injured hand. He felt pain in it, distantly, felt her warm mouth touch it. She dealt with it like snakebite, spitting out the poison, cursing at him or at her own fell spirits in a tongue he could not understand, which frightened him.

  He tried to help her. He could not think of anything for a time, and was surprised to find that she had moved again, and was upon Siptah, leading his horse by the reins, and that they were riding again upon the snowy road. She had on his own plain cloak: the furs were warming him.

  He clung to the saddle until his numb body finally told him that she had bound him so that he could not fall. He let himself go then, and yielded to the horse’s motion. Thirst plagued him. He could not summon the will to ask for anything. He was dimly aware of interludes of travel, interspersed with darkness.

  And the darkness was growing in the sky.

  He was dying. He became sure of it. It began to trouble him that he might die and she forget her promise and send him into the hereafter with alien rites. He was terrified at the thought: for that terror alone he refused to die. He fought every lapse into unconsciousness. At times he almost gained will and wit enough to speak to her, but all his words came out twisted, and she generally ignored him, assuming him fevered, or not caring.

  Then he knew that there were riders about them. He saw the crest upon him that led them, that of wolf with a deer within its jaws, and he knew the mark and tried desperately to warn her.

  Still even they took his words for raving. Morgaine fell in with them, and they were escorted down into the vale of Koris, toward Ra-leth.

  CHAPTER IV

  THERE WAS A tattered look about the hall, full of cobwebs in the corners, the mortar crumbling here and there, making hollow gaps between the big irregular stones so that spiders had abundant hiding places. The wooden frame did not quite meet the stone about the door. The bracket for the burning torch hung most precariously by a single one of its four bolts.

  The bed itself sagged uncomfortably. Vanye searched about with his left hand to discover the limits of it: his right hand was sorely swollen, puffed with venom. He could not clearly remember what had been done, save that he lay here while things came clear again, and there was a person who hovered about him from time to time, fending others away.

  He realized finally that the person was Morgaine, Morgaine without her cloak, black-clad and slim in men’s clothing, and yet with the most incongrous tgihio–overrobe—of silver and black: she had a barbaric bent yet unsuspected; and the blade Changeling was hung over her chair, and her other gear propping her feet—most unwomanly.

  He gazed at her trying to bring his mind to clarity and remember how they had come there, and still could not. She saw him and smiled tautly.

  “Well,” she said, “thee will not lose the arm.”

  He moved the sore hand and tried to flex the fingers. They were too swollen. What she had said still frightened him, for the arm was affected up to the elbow, and that hurt to bend.

  “Flis!” Morgaine called.

  A girl appeared, backing into the room, for she had hands full of linens and a basin of steaming water.

  The girl made shift to bow obeisance to Morgaine, and Morgaine scowled at her and jerked her head in the direction of Vanye.

  The hot water pained him. He set his teeth and endured the compresses of hot towels, and directed his attention instead to his attendant. Flis was dark-haired and sloe-eyed, intensely, hotly female. The low peasant bodice gaped a bit as she bent; she smiled at him and touched his face. Her bearing, her manner, was that of many a girl in hall that was low-clan or no clan, who hoped to get of some lord a child to lift her to honorable estate. No seed of his could ennoble anyone, but she surely plied her arts with him because he was safe at the moment and he was a stranger.

  She soothed his fever with her hands and gave him well-watered wine to drink, and talked to him in little sweet words which made no particular sense. When her hands touched his brow he realized that she made no objection of his shorn hair, which would have warned any sensible woman of his character and his station and sent her indignantly hence.

  Then he remembered that he was surely in the hall of clan Leth, where outcasts and outlaws were welcome so long as they bore the whims of lord Kasedre and were not particular what orders they obeyed. Here such a man as he was no novelty, perhaps of no less honor than the rest.

  Then he saw Morgaine on her feet, looking at him over the shoulder of the girl Flis, and Morgaine gave him a faintly disgusted look, judgment of the awkwardly predatory maid. She turned and paced to the window, out of convenient view.

  He closed his eyes then, content to have the pain of his arm attended, required to do nothing. He had lost all the face a man could lose, being rescued by his liyo, a woman, and given over to servants such as this.

  Leth tolerated Morgaine’s presence, even paid her honor, to judge by
the splendor of the guest-robe they offered her, and indulged her lord-right, treating her as equal.

  Flis’s hand strayed. He moved it, indignant at such treatment in his liyo’s presence, and her a woman. Flis giggled.

  Brocade rustled. Morgaine paced back again, scowled and nodded curtly to the girl. Flis grew quickly sober, gathered up her basin and her towels with graceless haste.

  “Leave them,” Morgaine ordered.

  Flis abandoned them on the table beside the door and bowed her way out.

  Morgaine walked over to the bed, lifted the compress on Vanye’s injured hand, shook her head. Then she went over to the door and slid the chair over in such fashion that no one outside could easily open the door.

  “Are we threatened?” Vanye asked, disturbed by such precautions.

  Morgaine busied herself with her own gear, extracting some of her own unguents from the kit. “I imagine we are,” she said. “But that is not why I barred the door. We are not provided with a lock and I grow weary of that minx spying on my business.”

  He watched uneasily as she set her medicines out on the table beside him. “I do not want—”

  “Objections denied.” She opened a jar and smeared a little medication into the wound, which was wider and more painful than before, since the compress. The medication stung and made it throb, but numbed the wound thereafter. She mixed something into water for him to drink, and insisted and ordered him to drink it.

  Thereafter he was sleepy again, and began to perceive that Morgaine was the agent of it this time.

  She was sitting by him still when he awoke, polishing his much-battered helm, tending his armor, he supposed, from boredom. She tilted her head to one side and considered him.

  “How fare you now?”

  “Better,” he said, for he seemed free of fever.

  “Can you rise?”

  He tried. It was not easy. He realized in his blindness and his concern with the effort itself, that he was not clothed, and snatched at the sheet, nearly falling in the act: Kurshin were a modest folk. But it mattered little to Morgaine. She estimated him with an analytical eye that was in itself more embarrassing than the blush she did not own.

  “You will not ride with any great endurance,” she said, “which is an inconvenience. I have no liking for this place. I do not trust our host at all, and I may wish to quit this hall suddenly.”

  He sank down again, reached for his clothing and tried to dress, one-handed as he was.

  “Our host,” he said, “is Kasedre, lord of Leth. And you are right. He is mad.”

  He omitted to mention that Kasedre was reputed to have qujalin blood in his veins, and that that heredity was given as reason for his madness; Morgaine, though unnerving in her oddness, was at least sane.

  “Rest,” she bade him when he had dressed, for the effort had taxed him greatly. “You may need your strength. They have our horses in stables downstairs near the front entry, down this hall outside to the left, three turns down the stairs and left to the first door. Mark that. Listen, I will show you what I have observed of this place, in the case we must take our leave separately.”

  And sitting on the bed beside him she traced among the bedclothes the pattern of the halls and the location of doors and rooms, so that he had a fair estimation of where things lay without having laid eye upon them. She had a good faculty for such things: he was pleased to learn his liyo was sensible and experienced in matters of defense. He began to be more optimistic of their chances in this place.

  “Are we prisoners,” he asked, “or are we guests?”

  “I am a guest in name, at least,” she said, “but this is not a happy place for guesting.”

  There was a knock at the door. Someone tried it. When it did not yield, the visitor padded off down the hall.

  “Do you have any wish to linger here?” he asked.

  “I feel,” she said, “rather like a mouse passing a cat: probably there is no harm and the beast looks well-fed and lazy; but it would be a mistake to scurry.”

  “If the cat is truly hungry,” he said, “we delude ourselves.”

  She nodded.

  This time there was a deliberate knock at the door.

  Vanye scrambled for his longsword, hooked it to his belt, convenient to the left hand. Morgaine moved the chair and opened the door.

  It was Flis again. The girl smiled uncertainly and bowed. Vanye saw her in clearer light this time, without the haze of fever. She was not as young as he had thought. It was paint that blushed her cheek and her dress was not country and innocence: it was blowsy. She simpered and smiled past Morgaine at Vanye.

  “You are wanted,” she said.

  “Where?” asked Morgaine.

  Flis did not want to look up into Morgaine’s eyes: addressed, she had no choice. She did so and visibly cringed: her head only reached Morgaine’s shoulders, and her halo of frizzled brown seemed dull next to Morgaine’s black and silver. “To hall, lady.” She cast a second wishing look back at Vanye, back again. “Only you, lady. They did not ask the man.”

  “He is ilin to me,” she said. “What is the occasion?”

  “To meet my lord,” said Flis. “It is all right,” she insisted. “I can take care for him.”

  “Never mind,” said Morgaine. “He will do very well without, Flis. That will be all.”

  Flis blinked: she did not seem particularly intelligent. Then she backed off and bowed and went away, beginning to run.

  Morgaine turned about and looked at Vanye. “My apologies,” she said dryly. “Are you fit to go down to hall?”

  He bowed assent, thoroughly embarrassed by Morgaine, and wondering whether he should be outraged. He did not want Flis. Protesting it was graceless too. He ignored her gibe and avowed that he was fit. He was not steady on his feet. He thought that it would pass.

  She nodded to him and led the way out of the room.

  Everything outside was much the same as she had described to him. The hall was in general disrepair, like some long abandoned fortress suddenly occupied and not yet quite liveable. There was a mustiness about the air, a queasy feeling of dirt, and effluvium of last night’s feasting, of grease and age and untended cracks, and earth and damp.

  “Let us simply walk for the door,” Vanye suggested when they reached that lower floor and he knew that the lefthand way led to the outside, and their horses, and a wild, quick ride out of this place of madmen. “Liyo, let us not stay here. Let us take nothing from this place, let us go, now, quickly.”

  “Thee is not fit for a chase,” she said. “Or I would, gladly. Be still. Do not offend our hosts.”

  They walked unescorted down the long corridors, where sometimes were servants that looked like beggars that sometimes appeared at hold gates, asking their free days of lawful charity. It was shame to a lord to keep folk of his hall in such a state. And the hold of Leth was huge. Its stones were older than Morgaine’s ride to Irien, older by far in all its parts, and in its day it had been a grand hall, most fabled in its beauty. If she had seen it then, it was sadly otherwise now, with the tapestries in greasy rags and bare stone showing through the tattered and dirty carpets on the floors. There were corridors which they did not take, great open halls that breathed with damp and decay, closed doors that looked to have remained undisturbed for years. Rats scurried sullenly out of their path, seeking the large cracks in the masonry, staring out at them with small glittering eyes.

  “How much of this place have you seen?” he asked of her.

  “Enough,” she said, “to know that there is much amiss here. Nhi Vanye, whatever bloodfeuds you have with Leth, you are ilin to me. Remember it.”

  “I have none with Leth,” he said. “Sensible men avoid them altogether. Madness is like yeast in this whole loaf. It breeds and rises. Guard what you say, liyo, even if you are offended.”

  And of a sudden he saw the lean face of the boy leering out at them from a cross-corridor, the sister beside him, rat-eyed and smiling. Vanye blinked.
They were not there. He could not be sure whether he had seen them or not.

  The door to the main hall gaped ahead of them. He hastened to overtake Morgaine. There were any number of bizarre personages about, a clutch of men that looked more fit to surround some hillside campfire as bandits—they lounged at the rear of the hall; and a few high-clan uyin that he took for Leth, who lounged about the high tables in the hall. These latter were also lean and hungry and out-at-the-elbows, their trousers gaudy, but frayed at hems: to do justice to their charity and hospitality to Morgaine, they were indeed less elegant than what they had lent to her.

  And there was a man that could only have been Leth Kasedre, who sat in the chair of honor at center, youngish to look upon—he could surely have been no more than thirty, and yet his babyish face was sallow, beneath a fringe of dark hair that wanted trimming; no warrior’s braid for this one, and much else that went to make up a man seemed likely wanting too. His hair hung in twining ringlets. His eyes were hunted, darting from this to that; his mouth was like that of a sick man, loose, moist at the edges. He exuded heat and chill at once, like fever.

  And his clothing was splendor itself, cloth-of-gold, his narrow chest adorned with brooches and clasps and chains of gold. A jeweled Honor blade was at his belt, and a jeweled longsword, which added decoration useless and pathetic. The air about him was thick with the reek of perfumes that masked decay. As they came near him there was no doubt. It was a sickroom smell

  Kasedre arose, extended a thin hand to offer place to Morgaine, who tucked up her feet and settled on the low bench courtiers had vacated for her, a place of honor; she wore Changeling high at her back and released the hook mat secured the shoulderstrap at her waist, letting strap and blade slide to her hip for comfort, sitting. She bowed gracefully; Kasedre returned the courtesy.

  Vanye must perforce kneel at the Leth’s feet and touch brow to floor, respect which the Leth hardly deigned to acknowledge, intent as he was on Morgaine. Vanye crept aside to his place behind her. It was bitter: he was a warrior—had been, at least; he had been proud, though bastard, and certainly Nhi Rijan’s bastard ranked higher than this most notorious of hedge-lords. But he had seen ilinin at Ra-morij forced to such humiliation, refused Claiming, forgotten, ignored, no one reckoning what the man might have been before he became ilin and nameless. It was not worth protest now: the Leth was supremely dangerous.