Gate of Ivrel com-1

by C. J. Cherryh

  “What makes you think of him?”

  “Roh said that there was question about the man. That Liell is... that he is old, liyo, that he is old as Thiye is old.”

  Morgaine’s look grew intensely troubled. “Zri and Liell. Singularly without originality, to have drowned all the heirs of Leth—if drowned they were.”

  He remembered the Gate shimmering above the lake, and knew what she meant. Doubts assailed him. He ventured a question he fully hated to ask. “Could you live by this means, if you wished?”

  “Yes,” she answered him.

  “Have you?”

  “No,” she said. And, as if she read the thing in his mind: “It is by means of the Gates that it is done, and it is no light thing to take another body. I am not sure myself quite how it is done, although I think that I know. It is ugly: the body must come from someone, you see. And Liell, if that is true, is growing old.”

  He shivered, remembering the touch of Liell’s fingers upon his arm, the hunger—he read it for hunger even then—within his eyes. Come with me and I will show you, he had said. She will have the soul from you before she is done. Come with me, Chya Vanye. She lies. She has lied before.

  Come with me.

  He breathed an oath, a prayer, something, and stumbled to his feet, to stand apart a moment, sick with horror, sensitive for the first time to his youth, his trained strength, as something that had been the object of covetousness.

  He felt unclean.

  “Vanye,” she said, concern in her voice.

  “They say,” he managed then, turning to look at her, “that Thiye is aging too—that he has the look of an old man.”

  “If,” she said levelly, “I am dead or lost and you go against Hjemur alone—do not consider being taken prisoner there. I would not by any means, Vanye.”

  “Oh Heaven,” he murmured. Bile rose in his throat. Of a sudden he began to comprehend the stakes in these wars of qujal and men, and the prize there was for losing. He stared at her—he knew, like the first innocent, and met a lack of all proper horror.

  “Would you do this?” he asked.

  “I think that one day,” she said, “to do what I must do, I would have to consider it.”

  He swore. For a very little he would have left her in that moment. She began at last to show concern of it, the smallest impulse of humanity, and it was that which held him.

  “Sit down,” she said. He did so.

  “Vanye,” she said then. “I have no leisure to be virtuous. I try, I try, with what of me there is left. But there is very little. What would you do, if you were dying, and you had only to reach out and kill—not for an extended old age, with pain, and sickness, but for another youth? For the qujal there is nothing after, no immortality, only to die. They have lost their gods, or lost whatever belief they ever had. That is all there is for them—to live, to enjoy pleasure—to enjoy power.”

  “Did you lie to me? Are you of their blood?”

  “I have not. I am not qujal. But I know them. Zri... if you are right, Vanye, it explains much. Not for ambition, but of desperation: to live. To save the Gates, on which he depends. I had not looked for that in him. What did he say to you, when he spoke with you?”

  “Only that I should leave you and come with him.”

  “Well that you had better sense. Otherwise—”

  And then her eyes grew guarded, and she took the black weapon from her belt: he thought in the first heartbeat that she had perceived some intruder; and then to his shock he saw the thing directed at him. He froze, mind blank, save of the thought that she had suddenly gone mad.

  “Otherwise,” she continued, “I should have had such a companion on my ride to Ivrel that would assure I did not live, such a companion as would wait until the nearness of the Gate lent him the means to deal with me—alive. I left you upon a bay mare, Chya Vanye, and you chose Liell’s horse thereafter. That was who I thought it was when first I saw you riding after me, and I was not anxious for Liell’s company alone. I was surprised to realize that it was you, instead.”

  “Lady,” he exclaimed, holding forth his hands to show them empty of threat. “I have sworn to you... lady, I have not deceived you. Surely—it could not happen, it could not happen and I not know it. I would know, would I not?”

  She arose, still watching him, constantly watching him, and drew back to the place where rested her cloak and her sword.

  “Saddle my horse,” she bade him.

  He went carefully, and did as she ordered him, knowing her at his back with that weapon. When he was done, he gave back for her, and she watched him carefully, even to the moment that she swung up into the saddle.

  Then she reined about and toward the black horse. All at once he read her thoughts, to kill the beast and leave him afoot, since she would not kill him, ilin.

  He hurled himself between, looked up with outraged horror; it was not honor to do such a thing, to abuse the ilin–oath, to kill a man’s horse and leave him stranded. And for one moment there was such a look of wildness on her face that he feared she would use the weapon on him and the beast.

  Suddenly she jerked Siptah’s head about to the north and spurred off, leaving him behind.

  He stared after her a moment, dazed, knowing her mad.

  And himself likewise.

  He cursed and heaved up his gear, flung saddle on the black, secured the girth, hauled himself into the saddle and went—the beast knowing full well he belonged with the gray by now. The horse needed no touch of the heel to extend himself, but ran, downhill and around a turning, across a stream and up again, overtaking the loping gray.

  He half expected a bolt that would take him from the saddle or tumble his horse dead instead; Morgaine turned in the saddle and saw him come. But she allowed it, began to rein in.

  “Thee is an idiot,” she said when he had come alongside.

  And she looked then as if she could give way to tears, but she did not. She thrust the black weapon into the back of her belt, under the cloak, and looked at him and shook her head. “And thee is Kurshin. Nothing else could be so honorably stupid. Zri would surely have run, unless Zri is braver than he once was. We are not brave, we that play this game with Gates; there is too much we can lose, to have the luxury to be virtuous, and to be brave. I envy you, Kurshin, I do envy anyone who can afford such gestures.”

  He pressed his lips tightly. He felt simple, and shamed, realizing now she had tried to frighten him; none of it made sense with him—her moods, her distrust of him. His voice turned brittle. “I am easy to deceive, liyo, much more than you could be; any of your simplest tricks can amaze me, and no few of them frighten me.”

  She had no answer for him.

  At times she looked at him in a way he did not like. The air between them had gone poisonous. Go away, the look said. Go away, I will not stop you.

  He would not have left her hurt and needing him; there was oath-breaking and there was oath-breaking, and to break ilin-bond when she was able to care for herself was a heavy matter, but there was that in her manner which convinced him that she was far from reasoning.

  The light grew in the sky, into a cold, dreary morning, with clouds rolling in from the north.

  And early in that morning the land fell away below them and the hills opened up into the slope of Irien.

  It was a broad valley, pleasant to the eye. As they stopped upon the verge of that great bowl, Vanye was not sure that this was the place. But then he saw that its other side was Ivrel, and that there was a barrenness in its center, far below. They were too far to see so fine a detail as a single Standing Stone, but he reckoned that for the center of that place.

  Morgaine slid down from Siptah’s back and troubled to unhook Changeling from its place, by which he knew she meant some long delay. He dismounted too; but when she turned and walked some distance away along the slope he did not estimate that she meant him to follow. He sat down upon a large rock and waited, gazing into the distances of the valley. In his mind h
e imagined the thousands that had ridden into it, upon one of those gray spring mornings that cloaked the valleys with mist, where men and horses moved like ghosts in the fog—of darkness swallowing up everything, the winds, as she had said, drawing the mist like smoke up a chimney.

  But upon this morning there were the low-hanging clouds and a winter sun, and grass and trees below. A hundred years had repaired whatever scars there had been left, until one could not have reckoned what had happened there.

  Morgaine did not return. He waited long past the time that he had begun to grow anxious about her; and at last he gathered up his resolve and rose and walked the way that she had gone, about the curve of he hill. He was relieved when he found her, only standing and gazing into the valley. For a moment he almost dared not go to her; and then he thought that he should, for she was not herself, and there were beasts and men in these hills that made them no place to be alone.

  “ Liyo,” he called to her as he came. And she turned and came to him, and walked back with him to the place where they had left the horses. There she hung the sword where it belonged, and took up the reins of Siptah, and paused again, looking over the valley, “Vanye,” she said, “Vanye, I am tired.”

  “Lady?” he asked of her, thinking at first she meant that they would stop here a time, and he did not like the thought of that. Then she looked at him, and he knew then it was a different tiredness she spoke of.

  “I am afraid,” she admitted to him, “and I am alone, Vanye. And I have no more honor and no more lives to spend. Here”—she stretched out her hand, pointing down the slope—“here I left them, and rode round this rim, and from over there—” she pointed far off across the valley, where there was a rock and many trees upon the rim. “From that point I watched the army lost. We were a hundred strong, my comrades and I; and over the years we have grown fewer and fewer, and now there is only myself. I begin to understand the qujal. I begin to pity them. When it is so necessary to survive, then one cannot be brave anymore.”

  He began then to understand the terror in her, the same intense terror there was in Liell, he thought, who also wished something of him. He wished no more truth of her: it was the kind that wrought nightmares, that held no peace, that asked him to forgive things that were unthinkable.

  Spare us this, he wanted to say to her. I have honored you. Do not make this impossible. He held his tongue.

  “I might have killed you,” she said, “in panic. I frighten easily, you see, I am not reasonable. I have ceased to take risks at all. It is unconscionable—that I should take risks with the burden I carry. I tell myself the only immorality I have committed is in trusting you after aiming at your life. Do you see, I have no luxury left, for virtues.”

  “I do not understand,” he said.

  “I hope that you do not.”

  “What do you want of me?”

  “Hold to your oath.” She swung up to Siptah’s back, waited for him to mount, then headed them not across the vale of Irien, but around the rim of the valley, that trail which she had followed the day of the battle.

  She was in a mood that hovered on the brink of madness, not reasoning clearly. He became certain of it. She feared him as if he were death itself making itself friendly and comfortable with her, feared any reason that told her otherwise.

  And forebore to kill, forbore to violate honor.

  There was that small, precious difference between what he served and what pursued them. He clung to that, though Morgaine’s foreboding seeped into his thoughts, that it was that which would one day kill her.

  The ride around the rim was long, and they must stop several times to rest. The sun went down the other part of the sky and the clouds began to gather thickly over Ivrel’s cone, portending storm, a northern storm of the sort that sometimes whirled snow down on such valleys as this, north of Chya, but more often meant tree-cracking ice, and misery of men and beasts.

  The storm hovered, sifting small amounts of sleet. The day grew dimmer. They paused for one last rest before moving onto the side of Ivrel.

  And chaos burst upon them—their only warning a breath from Siptah, a shying of both their horses. Another moment and they would have been afoot. Half-lighting, Vanye sprang back to the saddle, whipped out his longsword and laid about him in the twilight at the forms that hurled at them from the woods and from the rocks, men of Hjemur, fur-clad men afoot at first, and then men on ponies. Fire laced the dark, Morgaine’s little weapon taking toll of men and horses without mercy.

  They spurred through, reached the down-turning of the trail. The slope was alive with them. They clambered up on foot, dark figures in the twilight, and not all of them looked human.

  Knives flashed as the horde closed with them, threatening the vulnerable legs and bellies of the horses, and they fought and spurred the horses, turning them for whatever least resistance they could find for escape. Morgaine cried out, kicked a man in the face and rode him down. Vanye drove his heels into the black’s flanks and sent the horse flying in Siptah’s wake.

  There was no hope in fighting. His liyo was doing the most sensible thing, laying quirt to the laboring gray, putting the big horse to the limit, even if it drove them off their chosen way; and Vanye did the same, his heart in his throat no less for the way they rode than for the pursuit behind them—skidding down a rocky slope, threading the blind shadows along unknown trail and through a narrow defile in the rocks to reach the flat to Irien’s west.

  There, weary as their horses were, they had the advantage over the Hjemurn ponies that followed them, for the horses’ long legs devoured the ground, and at last pursuit seemed failing.

  Then out of the west, riders appeared ahead of them, coming from the narrow crease of hills, an arc of riders that swept to enclose them, thrusting them back.

  Morgaine turned yet again, charging them at their outer edge, trying to slip that arc before it cut them off from the north, refusing to be thrust back into the ambush at Irien. Siptah could hardly run now. He faltered. They were not going to make it. And here she reined in, weapon in hand, and Vanye drew the winded black in beside her, sword drawn, to guard her left.

  The riders ringed them about on all sides now, and began to close inward.

  ‘The horses are done,” Vanye said. “Lady, I think we shall die here.”

  “I have no intention of doing so,” she said. “Stay clear of me, ilin. Do not cross in front of me or even ride even with me.”

  And then he knew the spotted pony of one that was at the head of the others, ordering his riders to come inward; and near him there was the blaze-faced bay that he expected to see.

  They were Morij riders, that ran the border by Alis Kaje, and sometimes harried even into this land when Hjemur’s forces or Chya’s grew restive.

  He snatched at Morgaine’s arm, received at once an angry look, quick suspicion. Terror.

  “They are Morij,” he pleaded with her. “My clan. Nhi. Liyo, take none of their lives. My father—he is their lord, and he is not a forgiving man, but he is honorable. Ilin’s law says my crimes cannot taint you: and whatever you have done, Morija has no bloodfeud with you. Please, lady. Do not take these men’s lives.”

  She considered; but it was sense that he argued with her, and she must know it. The horses were likely to die under them if they must go on running. There would likely be more Hjemurn forces to the north even if they should break clear now. Here was refuge, if no welcome. She lowered her weapon.

  “On your soul,” she hissed at him. “On your soul, if you lie to me in this.”

  “That is the condition of my oath,” he said, shaken, “and you have known that as long as I have been with you. I would not betray you. On my soul, liyo.”

  The weapon went back into its place. “Speak to them,” she said then. “And if you have not a dozen arrows in you—I will be willing to go with them on your word.”

  He put up his sword and lifted his hands wide, prodding the exhausted black a little forward, until he was wit
hin hailing distance of the advancing riders, whose circle had never ceased to narrow.

  “I am ilin,” he cried to them, for it was no honor to kill ilin without reckoning of his lord. “I am Nhi Vanye. Nhi Paren, Paren, Lellen’s-son—you know my voice.”

  “Whose service, ilin Nhi Vanye?” came back Paren’s voice, gruff and familiar and blessedly welcome.

  “Nhi Paren—these hills are full of Hjemur-folk tonight, and Leth too, most likely. In Heaven’s mercy, take us into your protection and we will make our appeal at Ra-morij.”

  “Then you serve some enemy of ours,” observed Nhi Paren, “or you would give us an honest name.”

  “That is so,” said Vanye, “but none that threatens you now. We ask shelter, Nhi Paren, and that is the Nhi’s right to grant or refuse, not yours, so you must send to Ra-morij.”

  There was a silence. Then: “Take them both,” came across the distance. The riders closed together. For a moment as they were closely surrounded, Vanye had the overwhelming fear that Morgaine might suddenly panic and bring death on both of them, the more so as Paren demanded the surrender of their weapons.

  And then Paren had his first clear sight of Morgaine in the darkness, and exclaimed the beginning of an invocation to Heaven. The men about him made signs against evil.

  “I do not think that it will be comfortable for you to handle my weapons, being that your religion forbids,” said Morgaine then. “Lend me a cloak and I will wrap them, so that you may know that I will not use them, but I will continue to carry them. I think that we were well out of this area. Vanye spoke the truth about Hjemur.”

  “We will go back to Alis Kaje,” Paren said. And he looked at her as if he thought long about the matter of the weapons. Then he bade Vanye give her his cloak, arid watched carefully while she wrapped all her gear within the cloak and laid it across her saddlebow. “Form up,” he bade his men then, and though they were surrounded by riders, he put no restraint on them.

  They rode knee to knee, he and Morgaine, with men all about them; and before they had ridden far, Morgaine made to pass the cloak-wrapped arms to him. He feared to take it, knowing how the Nhi would see it; and it was instant: weapons crowded them. A man of clan San, more reckless than the others, took them from him, and Vanye looked at Morgaine in distress, knowing how she would bear that.