Gate of Ivrel com-1

by C. J. Cherryh

  “When I have fulfilled my service with her,” he offered, 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 Handrys’s 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 Handrys’s 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.

  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.

  Rvn 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.

  “And you killed him,” Erij added then, as if they had been discussing some distant acquaintance, “in the sense that you killed Handrys: Father grew morbid over Handrys. 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 Handrys. 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.

  “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 Handrys’s room, back to dust and ghosts and filth, forced to sleep in Handrys’s bed, and wear Handrys’s 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 cracked 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.

  “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.”

  “Do you think so?” Erij returned, leaning back. “You have no direct kin in Nhi, bastard brot
her: 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, Handrys thirteen: it was at that age that boys could be most mindfully, mindlessly cruel.

  “We were children,” Vanye said. “Things were different.”

  “When you killed Handrys,” 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.”

  “I was too pressed to think. I was wrong. I am guilty. I do penance for it.”

  “Actually,” said Erij, “Handrys meant to mar you somewhat: he never liked you, not at all. He did not find it to his liking that you were given a place among the warriors: he said that he would see you own that you had no right there. Myself, it was neither here nor there with me; but that was how it was: Handrys was my brother. If he had decided to cut your throat, he was heir to the Nhi and I would have considered that too. Pity we aimed at so little. You were better with that blade than we thought you were, else Handrys would not have baited you in the casual way he did. I have to give you due credit, bastard brother: you were good.”

  Vanye reached for the cup, swallowed the last, the wine souring in his mouth. “Father had a fine choice of heirs, did he not? Three would-be murderers.”

  “Father was the best of all,” said Erij. “He killed our mother: I am sure of it. He pushed Handrys to his death, favoring you as much as he did once. No wonder he saw ghosts.”

  “Then purify this hall of them. Let me ride out of here. Our father was no better to you than he was to me. Let me go from here.”

  “You keep asking; I refuse. Why do you not try to escape?”

  “I thought that you expected me to keep my given word,” he said. “Besides, I would never reach the ground floor of Ra-morij.”

  “You might be sorry later that you missed the chance.”

  “You want to frighten me. I know the game, Erij. You were always expert at that. I always believed the things you told me, and I always trusted you more than I did Handrys. I always wanted to think that mere was some sense of honor in you—whatever it was that he was lacking.”

  “You hated the both of us.”

  “I was sorry about you; I was even sorry about Handrys.”

  Erij smiled and rose from the table, walked near the fire, where it was warm. Vanye joined him there. Erij still had his cup in hand, and took his accustomed chair, while Vanye settled on the warm stones. There was silence between them for a long time, almost peace. Two more cups of wine passed from Erij’s cup, and his tanned face grew flushed and his breathing heavy.

  “You drink too much,” said Vanye at last. “This evening and last—you drink too much.”

  Erij lifted the stump of his arm. ‘This—pains me of cold evenings. For a long time I drank to ease my sleep at night. Probably I shall have to stop it, or come to what Father did. It was the wine that helped ruin him, I well know that. When he drank, which was constantly after Handrys died, he grew unreasonable. When he would get drunk he would go out and sit by his tomb and see ghosts. I should hate to die like that.”

  It was the rationality in Erij that made him seem most mad; at times Vanye almost thought him amenable to reason, to forgiveness. A man could not speak so with an enemy. At such times they were more brothers than they had ever been. At such times he almost understood Erij, through the moods and the hates and the lines that began to be graven into his face, making him look several years older than was the truth.

  “Your lady,” said Erij then, “has not quitted Morija as you said she would.”

  Vayne looked up sharply. “Where is she?”

  “You might know,” said Erij, “since I think you know full well what she is about.”

  “That is her business.”

  “Shall I recall her and ask her or shall I ask you again?”

  Vanye stared at him, beginning suddenly to see purpose within the madness, the sickly, fragile humors. He liked it no less. “Her business is with Hjemur, and she is no friend of Thiye. Let that suffice.”

  “Truly?”

  “It is truth, Erij.”

  “All the same,” said Erij, “she has not quitted Morija. And all my promises were conditional on that.”

  “So were mine,” said Vanye, “conditional.”

  Erij looked down at him. There was no mirth there at all. Of a sudden it was Nhi Rijan in that look, young and hard and full of malice. “You are dismissed.”

  “Do nothing against her,” Vanye warned him.

  “You are dismissed,” said Erij.

  Vanye gathered himself up and took his leave with a scant bow, maintaining the slender thread of courtesy between them. There were the guards outside to take him—there always were: Myya; Erij trusted no Nhi to do this duty, walking him to and from his quarters.

  But they had doubled since he had come into the room. There had been two. Now four waited.

  Suddenly he tried to retreat back within the room, heard the whisper of steel and saw Erij drawing his longsword from its sheath. In that instant of hesitation they hauled him back and tried to hold him.

  He had nothing to lose. He knew it, and flung himself at his brother, intent on cracking his skull at least: there should no Myya whelp lord it in Ra-morij, that benefit for the unfortunate Nhi if nothing else.

  But they overhauled him, stumbling over each other and overturning furniture in their haste to seize him; and Erij’s fist, guarded by the pommel, came hard against the side of his head, dropping him to his knees.

  He knew these nether portions of the fortress, those carved deep into the hill for the holding of supplies in the event of siege, a veritable warren of tunnels and rooms of dripping ceilings, frozen in winter. It was this which made the whole east wing unsafe, so that no one lived there: collapse had been reckoned imminent as long as anyone could remember, though the tunnels were shored up and the storerooms braced with pillars and some filled with dirt. As children they had been forbidden these places: as children they had used the upper storerooms on the safe west for their amusements in the bitter days of winter and the heat of summer.

  And one time after he came to live in Ra-morij, his brothers had dared him to come with them down to the nethermost depths: they had taken a single lamp and ventured into this place of damp and cold and moldering beams and crumbling masonry.

  Here they had left him, where his screams could in nowise be heard above.

  And it was into this place that the Myya sealed him, without light and without water, with only his thin shirt against the numbing cold. He fought against them, dazed as he yet was, panicked by the fear that they would bind him here as Handrys had: fled their grasp and meant to fight them.

  They closed the door on him, plunged him into utter dark; the bolt outside crashed across and eckoed.

  He tried his strength against it until he was exhausted, his shoulder bruised and
his hands torn. Then he sank down against it, the only sure point in this absolute dark, the only place that was not cold earth and stone. He caught his breath and heard for a time only the slow and distant drip of water.

  Then the rats began to stir again, timid at first, stopping when he would make a sound. Gradually they grew bolder. He heard their small feet, both along the walls and overhead, in the maze of unseen beams.

  He loathed them, since that nightmare in the basement of Ra-morij; he hated even seeing them in light, despising them there: the very sight of them brought back the memory, reminding him of dark places where they thrived in numbers, a realm within the walls, under foundations, where they were the terror and he small and helpless.

  He no longer dared lie there. They generally avoided a man who was awake: he knew this sensibly, in spite of his fear; but he had heard too much of what they might do to a man asleep. He paced to keep himself awake, and once, when he did lie down to rest, and felt something light skitter over his leg, he came up with a shuddering cry that echoed madly through the dark, and gathered himself to his feet.

  The sound made a pause in all the scurryings—only a moment. Then they proceeded fearlessly about their business.

  Sometime, eventually, he would have to sleep. There had to be a time that he would fall down exhausted. Already his knees were shaking. He paced until he had to take his rest by leaning against the walls, until he had long moments of knowing nothing, and woke again in the midst of a fall to the ground, to scramble up again, dusting his hands and shuddering, holding himself on his shaking legs with difficulty.

  Then, at last, came a clatter in the hall, a light under the door, and it opened, blazing torchlight into his face, dark figures of men. He went to them as to dear friends, flung himself into their arms as into a place of refuge.

  They brought him back upstairs, back to the fine hall that was Erij’s apartment. It was night outside the window, so that he knew it had been a night and a day since he had slept; and now his knees were shaking and his hands almost incapable of handling the utensils as he seated himself at the accustomed table opposite his brother.