Vanye looked at Morgaine, shaped the beginning of a plea with his lips. She frowned and suddenly nodded. “What effect on you, Chya Liell, for this treason?”
“Loss of my head if I am caught. And loss of a hall to live in if Kasedre’s clan attacks you, as I fear they will, with or without his wishing it. Come, lady, come. I will guide you from here. They are all quiet, even the guards. I put melorne in Kasedre’s wine at bedside. He will not wake, and the others are not suspecting. Come.”
There was no one stirring in the hall outside. They trod the stairs carefully, down and down the several turns that led them to main level. A sentry sat in a chair by the door, head sunk upon his breast. Something about the pose jarred the senses: the right hand hung at the man’s side in a way that looked uncomfortable for anyone sober.
Drugged too, Vanye thought. They walked carefully past the man nonetheless, up to the very door.
Then Vanye saw the wet dark stain that dyed the whole front of the man’s robe, less conspicuous on the dark fabric. Suspicion leaped up. It chilled him, that a man was killed so casually.
“Your work?” he whispered at Liell, in Morgaine’s hearing. He did not know whom he warned: he only feared, and thought it well that whoever was innocent mark it now and be advised.
“Hurry,” said Liell, easing open the great door. They were out in the front courtyard, where one great evergreen shaded them into darkness. “This way lies the stables. Everything is ready.”
They kept to the shadows and ran. More dead men lay at the stable door. It suddenly occurred to Vanye that Liell had an easy defense against any charge of murder: that they themselves would be called the killers.
And if they refused to come, Liell would have been in difficulty. He had risked greatly, unless murder were only trivial in this hall, among madmen.
He stifled in such dread thoughts. He yearned to break free of Leth’s walls. The quick thrust of a familiar velvet nose in the dark, the pungency of hay and leather and horse purged his lungs of the cloying decay of Leth-hall. He had his own bay mare in hand, swung up to her back; and Morgaine thrust the dragon blade into its accustomed place on her saddle and mounted Siptah.
Then he saw Liell lead another horse out of the shadows, likewise saddled.
“I will see you safely to the end of Leth’s territories,” he said. “No one here questions my authority to come and go. I am here and I am not, and at the moment, I think it best I am not.”
But a shadow scurried from their path as they rode at a quiet walk through the yard, a shadow double-bodied and small. A patter of feet hurried to the stones of the walk.
Liell swore. It was the twins.
“Ride now,” he said, “There is no hiding it longer.”
They put their heels to the horses and reached the gate. Here too were dead men, three of them. Liell sharply ordered Vanye to see to the gate, and Vanye sprang down and heaved the bar up and the gate open, throwing himself out of the way as the black horse of Liell and gray Siptah hurtled past him, bearing the two into the night.
He hurled himself to the back of the bay mare—poor pony, not the equal of those two beasts—and urged her after them with the sudden terror that death itself was stirring and waking behind them.
CHAPTER V
THE LAKE OF Domen was ill-famed in more than the Book of Leth. The old road ran along its shore and by the bare-limbed trees that writhed against the night sky. It did not snow here: snow was rare in Korish lands, low as they were, although the forests nearest the mountains went wintry and dead. The lake reflected the stars, sluggish and mirrorlike—still, because, men said, parts of it were very deep.
They rode at a walk now. The horses’ overheated breath blew puffs of steam in the dark, and the hooves made a lonely sound on the occasional stretch of stones over which the trail ran.
And about them was the forest. It had a familiar look. Of a sudden Vanye realized it for the semblance of the vale of Aenor-Pyven.
The presence of Stones of Power: that accounted for the twisting, the unusual barrenness in a place so rife with trees as Koriswood. It was the Gate of Koris-leth that they were nearing. The air had a peculiar oppression, like the air before a storm.
And soon as they passed along the winding shore of the lake they saw a great pillar thrusting up out of the black waters. In the dim moonlight there seemed some engraving on it. Soon other stumps of pillars were visible as they rode farther, marking old and qujalin ruins sunk beneath the waters of the lake.
And two pillars greater than the others crowned a bald hill on the opposite shore.
Morgaine reined in, gazing at the strange and somber view of sunken city and pillars silhouetted against the stars. Even at night the air shimmered about the pillars and the brightest stars that the shimmer could not dim gleamed through that Gate as through a film of troubled water.
“We are safe from pursuit,” said Liell. “Kasedre’s clan fears this lakeshore.”
“They seem prone to drowning,” Morgaine observed. She dismounted, rubbed Siptah’s cheek and dried her hand on the edge of his blanket.
Vanye slid down as they did, and caught his breath, reached for Siptah’s reins and those of Liell’s black horse. The two beasts would not abide each other. Exhausted, out of patience, he walked Siptah and his own bay mare to cool them and spread his own cloak over Liell’s ill-tempered black in the meantime. The air was chill. They had ridden such a pace that the two greater horses were spent and his own little Mai had nearly burst her heart keeping up with them. Long after the two blooded horses were cooled and fit he was still tending to Mai, rubbing her to keep her from chill, until at last he dared let her drink the icy water and have a little grain from their stores. He was well content afterward to curl up on his cloak which he had recovered from the black, and try to sleep, shivering himself in what he feared was a recurrence of fever. He heard Liell’s soft voice and that of Morgaine, discussing the business of Leth, discussing old murders or old accidents that had happened on this lakeshore.
Then Morgaine disturbed his rest, for she never parted from Changeling, and wanted it from her gear. She slipped the dragon blade’s Korish-work strap over her head and hung it from her shoulder to her hip, and walked the shore a time with Liell’s black figure beside hers.
Then, in the great stillness, Vanye heard the coming of distant riders. Of that impulse he sprang up, flung saddle upon Siptah first: she was his first duty; and by this time Morgaine and Liell seemed to have heard, for they were coming back. Vanye pulled Siptah’s girth to its proper tension and secured it, then furiously began to saddle poor Mai. The mare would die. If they were harried much farther, the little beast would go down under him. He hurt for her: the Nhi blood in him loved horses too well to use them so, though Nhi could be cruel in other ways.
Liell flung saddle to the black himself. “I still much doubt,” he said, “that they will come to this shore.”
“I trust distance more than luck,” said Morgaine. “Do as you will, Chya Liell.”
And she swung up to Siptah’s back, having settled Changeling in its accustomed place at the saddle, and laid heels to the gray.
Vanye attempted to mount and follow after. Liell’s hand caught his arm, pulled him off balance, so that he staggered and looked at the man in outrage.
“Do not follow her,” hissed Liell. “Listen to me. She will have the soul from you before she is done, Chya, Listen to me.”
“I am ilin,” he protested. “I have no choice.”
“What is an oath?” Liell whispered urgently, all the while Siptah’s hooves grew faint upon the shingle. “She seeks the power to ruin the middle lands. You do not know how great an evil you are aiding. She lies, Chya Vanye. She has lied before, to the ruin of Koris, of Baien, of the best of the clans and the death of Morij-Yla. Will you help her? Will you turn on your own? The oath says betray family, betray hearth, but not the liyo; but does it say betray your own kind? Come with me, come with me, Chya Vanye.”
For an aging man, Liell had surprising power in his hand: it numbed the blood from Vanye’s hand by its grip upon his elbow. The eyes were hard and glittering, close to him in the dark. The sound of pursuit was nearer.
“No,” Vanye cried, ripping loose, and started to mount. Pain exploded across the base of his skull. The world turned in his vision and he had momentary view of Mai’s belly passing over him as the mare bolted. She jumped him, managing to avoid him with her hooves; he scrambled up against the earthen bank, half-blind, seeking to draw his sword.
Liell was upon him then, wresting his hand from the hilt, close to overpowering him, dazed as he was; but the thought of being taken by Leth animated him to frenzy. He twisted, not even trying to defend himself, only to tear free, to reach Morgaine’s side and keep his oath for his soul’s sake. Mai was out of reach; the black was at hand. He sprang for that saddle and laid heels to him before he was even sure of the reins, gathering them up and settling low in the saddle from his precarious balance. Black legs flashed long in the dark, muscles reached and gathered, bounding obstacles, splashing over inlets of the lake, surging up rises of the shore.
The black at last had run all he chose to run, beyond the shore and far upon the trail: Vanye laid heel to him again, merciless in his fear. The animal gathered himself and plunged forward again.
Morgaine’s pale form was ahead. At last she looked around, seeming to hear him; she whipped up Siptah, and he cried out to her in despair, urging the black to further effort.
And she held back, pulling up, weapon in hand until he had come closer.
“Vanye,” she exclaimed softly as he drew alongside. “Is thee thief too? What came of Liell?”
He reached behind his head, felt a tenderness at the back of his head despite the leather coif. Dizziness assailed him, whether of the blow or of the fever, he did not know.
“Liell is no friend of yours,” he said.
“Did you kill him?”
“No,” he breathed, and was content to hang over the saddlebow a moment until his sight cleared. Then he urged the black into a gentle pace, Siptah keeping with him: no horses that had run all the distance from Ra-leth could overtake them now.
“Is thee much hurt?” she asked.
“No.”
“What did he? Did he lift weapon against you?”
“Tried to hold me—tried to persuade me to break oath.”
And the other thing he would not tell her, the urging and then the vile feeling he had had of the look in Liell’s eyes, a feverish anxiousness that had wanted something of him, a touch that had twice sunk cruelly into his arm, an avarice matching the hunger in his eyes.
It was not a thing he could tell anyone: he did not know what to name it, or why he had provoked it, or what it aimed at, only that he would die before he fell into the hands of Leth, and most especially those of Liell.
His back had been turned: the man could easily have cut him across the backs of the knees, quickest way to disable a man elsewhere armored, slain him out of hand; instead he had fetched him a crack across the skull, had risked greatly taking him hand to hand when he could have killed him safely: he had wanted him alive.
He could not remember it without shuddering. He wanted nothing of the man. It filled him with loathing to possess the gear and the horse that he had stolen: the black beast with its ill temper was a creature more splendid and less honest than his little Mai, and leaving his little mare in those hands grieved him.
Deep forest closed about them, straight and proper trees now, and they walked the horses until there was no sky overhead, only the interlacing branches. The horses were spent and they themselves were blind with weariness. “This is no place to stop,” he protested when Morgaine reined in. “Lady, let us sleep in the saddle tonight, walk the horses while they may. This is Koriswood, and it may have been different in your day, but this is the thick of it. Please.”
She sighed in misery, but for once she looked at him and listened, and consented with a nod of her head. He dismounted and took the reins of both horses, both too weary to contest each other, and led them.
She rested a time, then leaned down and bade him stop, offered to take the reins and walk and lead the horses; he looked at her, tired as he was, and had not wit to argue with her. He only turned his back and kept walking, to which she consented by silence.
And eventually she slept, Kurshin-wise, in the saddle.
He walked so far as he could, long hours, until he was stumbling with exhaustion. He stopped then and put his hand on Siptah’s neck.
“Lady,” he said softly, not to break the hush of the listening wood. “Lady, now you must wake because I must sleep. Things are quiet.”
“Well enough,” she agreed, and slid down. “I know the road, although this land was tamer then.”
“I must tell you,” he continued hoarsely, “I think Chya Liell will follow when he can gather the forces. I think he lied to us in much, liyo.”
“What was it happened back there, Vanye?”
He sought to tell her. He gathered the words, still could not. “He is a strange man,” he said, “and he was anxious that I desert you. He attempted twice to persuade me—this last time in plain words.”
She frowned at him. “Indeed. What form did this proposal take?”
“That I should forget my oath and go with him.”
“To what?”
“I do not know.” The remembering made his voice shake; he thought that she might detect the tremor, and quickly gathered up the black’s reins and flung himself into the saddle. “The first time—I almost went. The second—somehow I preferred your company.”
Her odd pale face stared up at him in the starlight. “Many of the house of Leth have drowned in that lake. Or have at least vanished there. I did not know that you were in difficulty. I would not gladly have left you. I did judge that there was some connivance between you and Liell: so when you did not follow—I dared not delay there between two who might be enemies.”
“I was reared Nhi,” he said. “We do not oath-break. We do not oath-break, liyo.”
“I beg pardon,” she said, which liyo was never obliged to say to ilin, no matter how aggrieved. “I failed to understand.”
And of that moment the horses shied, exhausted as they were, heads back and nostrils flaring, whites of the eyes showing in the dim light. Something reptilian slithered on four legs, whipping serpentwise into the thicher brush. It had been large and pale, leprous in color. They could still hear it skittering away.
Vanye swore, his stomach still threatening him, his hands managing without his mind, to calm the panicked horse.
“Idiocy,” Morgaine exclaimed softly. “Thiye does not know what he is doing. Are there many such abroad?”
“The woods are full of beasts of his making,” Vanye said. “Some are shy and harm no one. Others are terrible things, beyond belief. They say the Koris-wolves were made, that they were never so fierce and never man-killers before—” He had almost said, before Irien, but did not, in respect of her. “That is why we must not sleep here, lady. They are made things, and hard to kill.”
“They are not made,” she said, “but brought through. But you are right that this is no good place to rest. These beasts—some will die, like infants thrust prematurely into too chill or too warm a place: some will be harmless; but some will thrive and breed. Ivrel must be sweeping a wide field. Ah, Vanye, Thiye is an ignorant man. He is loosing things—he knows not what. Either that or he enjoys the wasteland he is creating.”
“Where do they come from, such things as that?”
“From places where such things are natural. From other tonights, and other Gates, and places where that was fair and proper. And there will be no native beasts to survive this onslaught if it is not checked. It is not man that such an attack wars on—it is nature. The whole of Andur-Kursh will find such things straying into its meadows. Come. Come.”
But he had lost his inclination to sleep, and kept the re
ins in his own hand. He closed his eyes as Morgaine set them on their way again, still saw the pale lizard form, large as a man, running across the open space. That was one of the witless nonsensities in Koriswood, more ugly than dangerous.
Report told of worse. Sometimes, legend said, carcasses were found near Irien, things impossible, abortions of Thiye’s art, some almost formless and baneful to the touch, and others of forms so fantastical that none would imagine what aspect the living beast had had.
His only comfort in this place was that Morgaine herself was horrified; she had that much at least of human senses in her. Then he remembered her coming to him, out of the place she called between, Washed up, she said, on this shore.
He began to have dim suspicion what she was, although he could not say it in words: that Morgaine and the pale horror had reached Andur-Kursh in the same way, only she had come by no accident, had come with purpose.
Aimed at Gates, at Thiye’s power.
Aimed at dislocating all that lay on this shore, as these unnatural things had come. Standing where the Hjemur-lord stood, she would be no less perilous. She shared nothing with Andur-Kursh, not even birth, if his fears were true, and owed them nothing. This he served.
And Liell had said she lied. One of the twain lied: that was certain. He wondered in an agony of mind how it should be if he learned of a certainty that it was Morgaine.
Something else fluttered in the dark—honest owl, or something sinister; it passed close overhead. He tautened his grip upon his nerves and patted the nervous black’s neck.
It was long until the morning, until in a clear place upon the trail they dared stop and let sleep take them by turns. Morgaine’s was the first sleep, and he paced to keep himself awake, or chose an uncomfortable place to sit, when he must sit, and at last fell to meddling with the black horse’s gear, that the horse still bore, for in such place they dared not unsaddle, only loosened the girths. It shamed him, to have stolen a second time; and he felt the keeping of more than he needed of the theft was not honorable, but all the same it was not sense to cast things away. He searched the saddlebags and kit to learn what he had possessed and, it was in the back of his thoughts, to learn something of the man Liell.
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