Exile's Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  Excepting only, Chei said, the half-wolves. Gault's pets.

  Or once, when war had made chaos of the middle lands—then Chei remembered the wild wolves coming down to human camps and villages to take the sheep. He remembered his folk moving a great deal—where, he did not know, except it had been in the hills.

  "Then," Chei said, looking mostly at the fire, as if his thoughts ranged distant, "then we settled in Perot's freehold, in Aglund. We felt safe there. But that only lasted—at most, a year. Then Gault was fighting along with the other lords. I was a boy then. I remember—I remember wars, I remember having to move and move again. I remember the winters, with the snow chest-deep on the horses—and people died, many died. We came to Gault's freehold, in Morund. We were borderers, for him. Those were the good years. I rode with Ichandren. My brother, my father and I. They are dead. All."

  He was silent for a time, then.

  "Mother?" Morgaine asked.

  Chei did not look at her. His throat worked. But the eyes never shifted from their wide gaze on the fire. "I do not know. I saw her last—" A lift of one shoulder. "I was thirteen winters. That was before Morund fell and Gault went north. He came back . . . Changed. After that—after that, he and the qhal from the north killed most of the human men at Morund-keep. Killed most everyone, and brought in men from the east. They would fight for Gault. Some of those from Morund might have wanted to, but if they took them at all, they marched them west, to serve the other qhal-lords. Gault would never trust men who had served him before he was qhal. Aye, nor women either. They put them all on wagons. We lost—twenty men trying to take the women from the guards. My father died then. There were just too many."

  There was more of silence. The fire snapped and spat.

  "But I doubt very much my mother was alive," Chei said. "Even then. My father believed it. But no one else did. She was not a strong woman. And it was a bad year."

  Twenty men lost, Vanye thought, amid a man's grief, and thought by the way he had said it that twenty had been a devastating loss. There were just too many. . . .

  He met Morgaine's eyes across the fire and knew that she had added that as quickly and set things somewhat in proportions—she, who had taught a young outlaw something beyond woodcraft and ambush; his lady-liege, who had ridden to war and sat in the affairs of kings a hundred years before he was born.

  But she had led him into both war and kings' councils since then.

  He rested his arms on his knees and probed the coals with a stick, watching it take fire.

  "The trees," Morgaine said. "Do you mark them, Chei, how they twist here? Yet there is no present feeling of unease in this woods. Birds come here. They tolerate the gate-force very little. Why do you suppose this is?"

  "I do not know," Chei said faintly.

  Morgaine did not answer.

  "Why would it be?" Chei asked her then.

  Morgaine shifted the dragon sword to her lap, tucking one knee up, and hugged that knee against her. "If I cast leaves in the fire, it would flare. Would it not?"

  "Yes, lady."

  "And you would move back. Would you not?"

  "Yes," Chei said, more faintly still, as if he regretted ever asking into qhalish lore.

  "Quickly?"

  "Yes, lady."

  "So the birds would fly for their comfort if that gate yonder opened this moment. And you would feel it in your bones."

  Chei flinched, visibly.

  "So this is a very good place for a camp," Morgaine said, "for us who have no desire for unannounced visitors. How frequently do you suppose this gate is used?"

  "I would not know."

  "Perhaps not. So of that use we would have warning. If we ride from here we have Gault to concern us. How long—might we ride, slowly, on the road itself, before we came to his notice?"

  "If we left after sundown—" Chei's breath came rapidly. "We could make the western road and be deep in the woods before daybreak. Lady, I do not know where his riders may be, no one could say that, but I know where they are likeliest not. We could make a safe camp in that woods near his lands, stay there the day, and pick up the west road. No one would be traveling that at night; and by one more morning we can reach the hills. We rest during the day, we travel at night. That is the best thing to do."

  "So," Morgaine said, and glanced Vanye's way, a quick shift of her eyes. "We can reach the woods before the dawn," she said, looking back at Chei. "You are sure of that."

  "A-horse, I know that we could."

  "Then we will go," she said quietly. "If our guest swears he can bear the saddle, we had best leave this place. We do not know how long our welcome will last."

  Vanye nodded, agreeing, with misgivings he knew she shared, and with a quiet as carefully maintained.

  The place, true, had a ward as great as any fabled witchery could provide—that they would feel any disturbance in the gate.

  But it held danger too: it was remotely possible—that that flaring of power could simply take them, at this range, if there were some unshielded gate-stone to which the force might reach—and if their enemies had found them.

  Vanye had one change of clothes, cloth breeches and a fine shirt—the one for those times they could lay aside the armor, which did not look likely here: light and fine, delicately sewn—a waste to wear such a gift on the trail; but the giver had insisted.

  Now he laid all this at Chei's side, along with the mended boots, as Morgaine was meticulously packing and weight-measuring with their bags.

  "You could not bear the armor on your shoulders," Vanye said. "My liege will carry it; I will carry you on my horse. We are taking your word we can make cover before sunrise."

  Chei took up the fine cloth and frowned in surprise. Well he might, Vanye thought; and went to prepare his own gear, and to saddle the horses in the dark. They knew that there was a journey to come, and stamped and shifted in impatience at this meddling about.

  He saddled them both, and hung his sword at Arrhan's right side, where he would not carry it on a ride like this, except he had Chei at his back. He tied a folded blanket flat under thongs bound to the rings that ordinarily held it rolled, scratched Arrhan in the soft underside of her throat, and Siptah under his chin, snatching his fingers from the stud's half-hearted nip—trouble, he thought. Siptah had been trouble of one kind before, well-trained as he was; now that he had acquired the mare, Siptah had other thoughts in his head, and Arrhan had like ones.

  "Fool," he muttered to himself, that ever he had taken her, that ever he had brought her to a land like this. He was Kurshin, was a horseman from his birth. And he had been, a handful of days ago, under a fair sun, too willing to hope—Heaven save them—for something other than this.

  Fool, he thought again. For disaster went about the gates. Where power was, there the worst men gathered—too rarely, the best. He had ridden out among the twisted trees, among ruins, into murder and wars—

  And all his subtle plans—for Morgaine was mad, at times, and drove them too hard and wore herself to bone and will—all his plans, ill-thought that they were, involved a means to travel at a saner pace. For that, he had accepted the mare, knowing there was a risk—but hoping for a more peaceful passage, for leisure and time, even to drop a foal of the Baien stud: such thoughts the arrhend had made reasonable, and now they seemed mad.

  Now it was his own instincts urged they run.

  He hugged the mare about the neck, pressed his head against her cheek, patted her hard, all with a pang of bitter guilt. "So we go," he whispered to her. She ducked her head free and nosed him in the side with a horse's thoughtless strength.

  No stopping the stallion or the mare. No stopping any horse from what it truly willed to do, even if it was a fatal thing. It was always their own vitality that killed them, a horseman knew that.

  He heard a step behind him, and turned his head. It was Morgaine, bringing the saddlebags. She let them down at his feet, then, standing close, rested her hand on his shoulder, and walked aw
ay, so startling him by that gesture he simply stood and stared at her retreating back.

  What was that? he wondered.

  Apology, of a kind? Sympathy?

  She did these things to him, and walked away in her silences, and left him to saddle the horses and wonder, in a kind of biding panic, what had moved her to that.

  He did not even know, Heaven witness, why he should be disturbed, or why his heart was beating in panic, except it was the old familiar business of snatched sleep and arming by dark and riding through hostile lands, sleeping by turns in the daylight, tucked close in some concealment.

  Except it was Morgaine who, like Heaven, decided where they should go and when; and there had been all too much of comradely understanding in that small gesture—as if she had confessed that she was weary, too, and there were no miracles.

  From his liege, he did not want such admissions.

  He finished his work. He overtook her at the buried fire, leading the horses; and having the horses between him and Chei, he took his Honor-blade sheathed from his belt and gave it to her without a word—for safety's sake. She knew. She slipped it into her belt next her own ivory-hilted Korish blade, and pulled and hooked the belt ring which slid the dragon sword up to ride between her shoulders, before she took Siptah's reins from his hand and climbed into the saddle. The gray stud snorted his impatience and worked at the bit.

  Vanye set his foot in Arrhan's stirrup and settled himself in the saddle, reining her about, where Chei waited, dressed in his borrowed clothing and his own mended boots, and holding his sleeping blanket rolled in his arms.

  "You will want that on the ride," Vanye said, taking the blanket roll into his lap, and cleared his left stirrup for the man. Chei set his foot, took his offered hand as Arrhan shifted weight, and came astride and well-balanced so quickly that Vanye gave the mare the loose rein she expected. It made the mare happier about the double load; she pricked her ears up and switched her tail and took a brisk stride behind Siptah.

  Through the trees and down along the river which had guided them—by the light of an incredible starry heaven and a slivered moon, so brilliant a night as the sunlight left the sky utterly, that the pale grass shone and the water had sheen on its darkness.

  Behind him, Chei wrapped the blanket about himself, for the breeze was chill here in the open; and Vanye drew an easier breath, bringing Arrhan up on Siptah's left—the left, with Morgaine, shield-side and never the perilous right. She had her hair braided for this ride: not the clan-lord's knot to which she was entitled, but the simple warrior's knot of clan Chya of Koris, like his own. Changeling's hilt winked moonlit gold beside the silver of her braid; bright silver sparked and flashed along the edge of her sleeves, where mail-work shone the like of which later ages had forgotten. Moonlight touched Siptah's illusory dapples, the pale ends of his mane and tail.

  They were enspelled—not with magics, but with the sense of change, of passage, the night sky's softening influence that made them part of a land to which they did not belong.

  And Chei had sworn, on his life, that they might expect peace for a time on this ride.

  They took the same slow pace when they had come to the Road, with its ancient stone bridge across the stream. Woods gave way briefly to meadow and to woods again, a tangled, unkept forest. A nightbird called. There was the sound of their horses' hooves—on earth and occasionally on stone, and eventually on the stone and damp sand of a ford which crossed a stream, perhaps tributary to the river they had left.

  "I do not know its name," Chei said when Vanye asked. "I do not know. I only know we crossed it."

  They let the horses drink, and rode further, in wilderness cut well back from the road, but unthinned beyond that. No woodsmen, Vanye thought, no caretaker. It was still wild woods, overgrown and rank with vines and thorns. But the trees grew straight and clean. Gate-force did not reach to this place. They were beyond the region in which they would know if the gate were used; and they were beyond the region in which some weapon of that nature could reach to them.

  He felt Chei lean against him, briefly, and recover himself; felt it again; and again the same recovery; a third time: "No matter," he said. "Rest," and: "No," Chei murmured.

  But in time Chei slumped a while against him, till they faced a stream-cut to go down and up again. "Chei," Vanye said, slapping him on the knee.

  Chei came awake with a start and took his balance. Arrhan took the descent and the climb with dispatch then, and quickened her pace till she had overtaken Siptah.

  They were still on the Road. It began to stretch away across a vast plain, country open under fewer and fewer stars, exposed to view as far as the eye could see, and Morgaine drew rein, pointing to the red seam along the horizon.

  "Chei. That is the sun over there."

  Chei said nothing.

  "Where are we?" she asked.

  "It is still the Road," Chei protested; and: "Lady, this is not the land I know. Northward—yes. But here—I have never been but the once. We are still on the Road—we will make it—"

  "How far does this go?" Her voice had an edge to it, a dangerous one. "Wake up, man. You know what I would know. You swore that you did. Do you want your enemies' attention? Or do you tell me full and free that you do not know where you are?"

  "I know where I am! There is a kind of ruin, I do not know how far—I swear to you, we will reach it by morning." Chei's teeth chattered, and his breath hissed, not altogether, Vanye thought, of exhaustion and the night chill. "It was our starting-place misled me. The river must have bent. I know it is there. I swear it is. We can still come to it. But we can go wide, now." He pointed over westward, where the plain rolled away to the horizon. "We can pick up the trail yonder in the hills. Off Gault's lands."

  "But equally off our way," Morgaine said, and held Siptah back, the dapple gray backing and circling. "How is Arrhan faring?"

  "She will manage," Vanye said, and looked uneasily toward the lightening of the sky in the east, over low and rolling hills. "Liyo, I do not say yea or nay, but I had as lief be off this road. West is likely the best advice at this point."

  "North," she said, and held Siptah still a moment, when he would have moved. "By morning, he swears. It is very little time."

  She swung about and went on, not quickly, saving the horses.

  "Are you mistaken?" Vanye asked of Chei.

  "No," Chei said; and shivered, whether with cold he could not tell.

  Morgaine had said it; there was only one way, ultimately, that they could go; and less and less he liked delay along this road, less and less he liked the prospect of a long journey aside, and more and more he disliked their situation.

  "Best you be right, man."

  Morgaine dropped back to ride beside. They went perforce at Arrhan's double-burdened pace, under an open sky and fading stars.

  Chei hugged his blanket about him. It was terror kept him awake now. It was nightmare as dread as the wolves, this slow riding, this pain of half-healed sores and the slow, steady rhythm of horses which could go no faster, not though Gault and all his minions come riding off the horizon.

  The sky brightened, the few wispy clouds in the east took faint and then pinker color, until at last all the world seemed one naked bowl of grass and one road going through it, unnaturally straight track through a land all dew-grayed green. At times Vanye and the lady spoke in a language he did not understand, a harsh speech which fell on the ear with strange rhythms, but softly spoken, little exchanges of a word and a few words. There was a grim tone to it. There was discontent. He imagined it involved him, though he dared not ask.

  "Where are these ruins of yours?" Vanye asked then, and slapped him on the knee when he failed to realize that it was to him he had spoken.

  "I know that they are there," he said, "I swear to you."

  "Neither does the sun lie," Vanye said.

  There was the beginning of daylight. There was the hint of color in things. And the white mare was weary now. Did their
enemies find them, Chei thought, there was no way that the mare might run.

  Did their enemies find them. . . .

  But on that terrible hilltop, like a dream, he recalled light coming from Morgaine's fingers, and recalled chain melting and bending, and how Vanye had shielded him from that sight.

  Weapons you may not like to see, Vanye had warned him.

  He looked at the open land around him, and the treacherous roll of hills which might mask an army.

  They would kill him first, he thought, if they suspected ambush. There was no doubt but what they would; he had failed them. They had cause to be angry.

  The sun came up full. The land went gold and green.

  And as they crested a rise of the plain and looked on a darkness that topped the rise ahead he felt a moment's dread that it was some band of riders—till his eye adjusted for the scope of the land and he knew it was woods that he saw.

  They camped among ancient stones, beside a stream which crossed the low point among them, under the branches of trees which arched over and trailed their branches waterward. Among the ruins, a sparse and stubborn grass grew, on a ridge well-shielded by the trees; and there the horses grazed.

  They ventured a fire only large enough to heat a little water, and ate bread Morgaine had made at the last camp, and fish they had smoked; and drank tea—Chei's prepared with herbs against the fever.

  Chei had borne the ride, Vanye reckoned, very well—was weary, and only too glad to lie down to sleep, there in the sun-warmth, on the leafy bank. So, then, was he, leaving the watch to Morgaine, and listening to the water and the wind and the horses.

  "It has been quiet," she whispered when she waked him, while Chei still slept. "Nothing has stirred. A bird or two. A creature I do not know came down to drink: it looked like a mink with a banded tail. There is a black snake sunning himself down on that log."

  These were good signs, of a healthier vicinity. He drew a deep breath and yielded her up the blankets, and tucked himself down again in a nook out of the wind. He had a bite to eat, a quarter of the bread he had saved back from their breakfast; and a drink of clear water from the stream which ran here, more wholesome than the river had been.