Exile's Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  "I am not Changed," Chei said in a voice that scarcely carried, a voice which trembled. "Bron, Ichandren is dead. Everyone is dead. Gault gave the last of us to the wolves. Myself, Falwyn, ep Cnary—" His voice did break, quiet as it was. "They died. That was what happened to them. I thought you had died on the field."

  "What do you want here?" Bron asked, in a voice colder than Arunden's. "What is it you want?"

  Chei turned his face away as if it he had been dealt a blow, and shook his head vehemently.

  "What do you want, Chei?"

  "Passage," Chei said after a moment, looking back toward his brother. "Safety. I am sworn, Bron, my lord was dead, you were dead, the lady and this man found me, they took me away from the wolves, healed my hurts—He is not qhal, Bron, he is a man like I am and she set me free and gave me a horse and tells me things that Arunden ought to know, that all of us ought to know, Bron—I swear to you, I know there is no way to prove anything I say. But you know me, you know everything I could know—try me, whether I have forgotten anything. Bron—for the love of Heaven—"

  Bron's face worked, somewhere between desperation and grief.

  And suddenly he held out his open arms.

  "No," Arunden cried. "Fool!"

  But Chei came to him, slowly, carefully. They embraced each other, and wept, for very long, till Bron set Chei back by the shoulders and looked at him as if he could discover the truth by firelight.

  Vanye watched with a pang of his own—the which he could not comprehend, only something in him hurt, perhaps that a man could come home again; or that brothers could prove true.

  Or that Chei had just deserted them for a deeper loyalty, whatever the issue of this place.

  Fool, he thought. Well that there be some help for us here.

  There was Morgaine beside him, who was all his own concern; and Chei at the moment was hers, he reckoned, their guide and the source of everything they knew in this world. She would wreak havoc to keep him safe, Chei was very right; had Arunden attempted to stop him or to strike him or his brother, Morgaine would have acted, fatally for Arunden and half the village before she was done.

  But she and Arunden and all of them stood baffled by this, that Bron ep Kantory took his brother into his arms without being sure what he was embracing: he made himself a hostage to stop those who cared for either of them, and by one move held them all powerless.

  Chapter 6

  "Come," Bron said, his hands on Chei's shoulders, while Chei's thoughts reeled between one side and the other of the forces gathered there at odds. There was the lady and Vanye and there was Arunden ep Corys, a sudden and hard-handed lord. Calamity was possible at any instant.

  But Bron held to him as if there were no chance in all the world that he was a piece of Gault's handiwork. "Come," Bron said gently, as if there were no lunacy at all in his arriving in camp in company with a qhalur witch and a man in strange armor. "Tell me; tell me what I can do; O my God, Chei—" Of a sudden Bron hugged him tight again and pressed his head against his shoulder; and Chei embraced him a second time, appalled at how thin his strong brother had become, how there was so little between his hands and Bron's ribs, and how there was a fragile, insubstantial feel about him.

  "I am not theirs," Chei insisted, over and over again. "Not theirs. I am not lying, Bron, I swear to you I am not Changed."

  "I believe you," Bron said. "I know, I know, what shall I do, what do you want me to do?"

  "Just swear for me. Talk to Arunden."

  "Tell him what? Who are they? What are they?"

  "Friends. Friends to us."

  Bron set him back and stared at him, bewildered, desperate—at his little brother who was a fool and could not think of anything but seeing him, until now, now that he knew what he had known from birth, that Bron would do the same as he—would believe him because he wanted to believe, and become another fool for his sake, risking his life and his soul for the remotest hope Chei was alive and still his brother. That was what was in Bron's eyes, that was the struggle to believe, while his hands trembled on Chei's arms and strayed once and twice to his face and his shoulders as if he could not believe he was flesh and blood.

  "You look tolerably well," Bron said.

  "They have been good to me, Bron, truly—they have. You—?"

  "Well enough, I am well enough."

  "You limp."

  "Ah, well, that will mend, it will mend. So do you.—My God, my God—"

  "There was a brooch Mama had—it was a marsh rose. There was a place in the wall we used to hide our special things—"

  "O God, Chei—"

  "—I gave you that scar on your chin; I hit you with a harness buckle—you teased me about a girl; her name was Meltien. She died in the winter march—"

  "Brother—" Bron hugged him to silence. They wept together; and when he could speak again:

  "Bron, I have sworn to take them north on the Road; and I have to do that—"

  "There are arrows aimed at us." Bron took his face between his hands and looked again at him, intensely. "Who are they? You will have to tell me. I do not understand. God knows Arunden does not. What shall we do?"

  "I will talk to them. They will talk with Arunden if he will listen—"

  "He will listen," Bron said; and hugged him close against his side, so that they shielded each other as they went to Arunden, Bron armorless as he was, himself in a mail shirt that was in no wise proof against the lady's weapons.

  But a man barred their way, a man with a drawn sword and the emblem on him of Holy Church; and Bron stopped still, his hand clenched on Chei's shirt.

  "If you will not kill it," the priest said, "I will. Your soul is in danger, Bron ep Kantory."

  "Your life is," Chei answered, and would have pushed Bron behind him, but Bron stood fast. "My lady!"

  "Hold!" Arunden said.

  "My lord," the priest protested.

  But Arunden walked into the matter, and waved the priest off. And Chei stood with a weakness still in his knees, uncertain which of them was supporting the other. Words froze in his throat. They always did, at the worst of times.

  "There is a curse in him," the priest said. "It is a curse has come to us in a friend's shape. It is Gault's gift. Kill them. Have no words with them."

  "Then we would know nothing Gault wants," Arunden said. "Would we, priest?—Talk, boy. What have we here? What do you bring us, eh? More of Gault's handiwork?"

  "The lord is talking, at least," Vanye said in a low voice, seeing what transpired, with the brothers and Arunden and two armed men. His hand was still on his sword, from the first Chei had called out.

  And he thanked Heaven that Arunden had moved to stop the man.

  "Hope that this brother's word has some weight," Morgaine said in the Kurshin tongue. "I should not have let us leave the road. That was the first mistake. Stay to my left."

  "Aye," he murmured, feeling the sting of that, and his heart was pounding, the old, familiar fear, the nightmare of too many such choices. But Chei came toward them and fear shifted to a frail, desperate hope, seeing that Bron continued to talk to Arunden.

  "He will speak to you," Chei said, casting an anxious glance between him and Morgaine. "I swear to you—Arunden is not a treacherous man: God witness, he is not a careful one, either—he is afraid of you, lady, and he cannot admit it. Be patient with him. That is a priest of God—that one, with the sword. Be careful of him."

  Vanye looked a second time. It did not look like a priest. He drew in a quick, anxious breath. It had been long since he had found anything of the Church; and there had been so much doubtful he had had to choose on his own: so far he had come, and changed so much—and a priest—

  He was starkly afraid to face anything of the Church nowadays: that was the proof that he was damned, and he did not need a priest to threaten him with Hell.

  Or to threaten Morgaine, or curse her with curses she would not regard, but which would all the same bring no luck to them.

 
"We do not need the priest," he muttered. "Send him away."

  "I do not know," Chei said in evident consternation. "I do not think—I do not see how . . . my lady—"

  "No matter," Morgaine said. Gold flashed in the seam of her cloak. She rested Changeling's cap on the ground, her hands on the quillons of the dragon grip. "If it saves us time, let us be done with this."

  Vanye opened his mouth to protest. But it was not that Morgaine did not know the Church. There was nothing he could tell her. There was nothing he knew how to tell her.

  He longed—God in Heaven, he longed for someone to tell him he had done right, and that his soul was not so stained as he thought it was, or a gentle priest like those in Baien-an or even old San Romen, who would lay hands on him and pray over him and tell him if he did thus and thus he was not damned.

  But this priest did not have any gentle look. This one was damnation and hellfire, and met them with the uplifted cross of a sword.

  "No further," the priest said, and drew a line in the dirt, between them and his lord. "Talk behind that."

  Morgaine grounded Changeling just behind that line, the dragon hilt in her hands, and a hell between them that the priest could not in his wildest dreams, imagine.

  "Do we talk to this?" she asked scornfully, looking past the priest to Arunden. "Is he lord in this camp? Or are you?"

  "My lady," Chei cautioned her, and Bron, who had come halfway between Arunden and his brother, stopped still and looked appalled.

  "I will talk with whoever is lord here," Morgaine said. "If it is this man, so be it. His word will bind you. And I will take it for yours."

  "If I say talk with the camp scullions, you talk with them!" Arunden snarled.

  Vanye went stiff, but Morgaine's hand was up, preventing him, before the lord Arunden had even finished speaking.

  "Well and good," she said. "To them I will offer my help, and turn this camp upside down, lord Arunden, when they profit from what I have to say. Or you can listen, and profit yourself and yours, and not come to Ichandren's fate or have to ask advice of your servants."

  "You are in a poor place to threaten us, woman! Have you looked around you?"

  "Have you, my lord, and have you not noticed that qhal are taking your land and killing your people? I might make some difference in that. Let us talk, my lord Arunden! Let us sit down like sensible folk and I will tell you why I want to pass through your land."

  "No passage!" the priest cried, and people murmured in the shadows. But:

  "Sit down," Arunden said. "Sit, and lie to us before we deal with you."

  More and more people appeared out of the dark and the woods, coming down into the light: a man or two at first, who stood with Arunden within the priest's line; and young women in breeches and braids, who scurried about seeing to the fire and bringing out blankets to spread by it—an appearance of decent courtesy, Vanye thought, standing by with his hand on his sword-hilt and a dart of his eye toward every move around the shadows on their own side of the line.

  On his, the dour, broad-bellied hedge-lord stood by with a clutch of his own men and with Bron and Chei both across that line and talking urgently to him—he had his arms folded, and scowled continually; but made no overt gesture of hostility, only repeated ones of impatience.

  The priest, for his part, drew another line when the rapidly-forming circle took shape about the fire, a mark in the dust with his sword and a holy sign over it, the which sent a cold feeling to Vanye's gut.

  "Poor manners, these folk," he said to Morgaine, looking constantly to their flanks and refusing to be distracted by the priest's doings.

  "No saying where the archers may be posted," Morgaine said. "I will warrant there is one or two with clear vantage—that ridge yonder, perhaps. Mark you, we do not give up the weapons—hai, there—"

  One man was moving to take the horses. Vanye moved to prevent it, one hand out, one hand on his sword; and that man stopped.

  Chei's horse had strayed loose, uncertain and confused, and apt, Heaven knew, to bolt; but their own had stood where the reins had dropped, where Siptah now stood and jerked his head and snorted challenge, a wary eye on the man approaching.

  "I would not," he advised the man, who measured the war-horse's disposition and the owners' resolution with one nervous glance and kept his distance. "I would not touch him at all, man."

  That stopped the matter. The man looked left and right as if searching for help or new orders, and edged away, leaving the warhorse and the mare and all their belongings to stand unmolested. Vanye whistled a low and calming signal, and the Baien gray grunted and shook himself, lifting his head again with a wary and defiant whuff.

  "My lady," Chei came saying then. "Come. Please. Keep within the line."

  Morgaine walked toward the fire. Vanye walked after her, and stood behind her—ilin's place, hand on sword, within the wedge-shaped scratch in the dirt that made a corridor to the fire.

  So Arunden stood, with his priest, and his men—all men: the only women were the servants, who came and went in the shadows.

  "Sit," Arunden muttered with no good grace, and sank down to sit cross-legged.

  So Morgaine sat down in like fashion, and laid Changeling by her, largely shrouded in the folds of her cloak—which movement Arunden's eyes followed: Vanye saw it as he stood there.

  But: "Vanye," Morgaine said, and he took her meaning without dispute, and sank down beside her, as others were settling and gathering close, Chei and Bron among them, on Arunden's side of the line, but beside them on Vanye's side.

  "So you found this boy with the wolves," Arunden said. "How and why?"

  "We were passing there," Morgaine said. "And Vanye did not like the odds."

  "Not like the odds." Arunden chuckled darkly, and with his sheathed sword poked at the fire so that sparks flew up. "Not like the odds. Where are you from? Mante?"

  "Outside."

  There was long and sober silence. The fire crackled, the burning of new branches, the flare of pine needles.

  "What—outside?"

  "Beyond Mante. Things are very different there. I do not give my enemies to beasts. I deal with them myself."

  There was another long silence.

  Then: "Cup!" Arunden said.

  "My lord," the priest objected vehemently, scrambling up.

  "Sit down, priest!" And as the so-named priest sank down with ill grace: "Close up, close up, close up! Does a qhalur woman frighten you? Close up!"

  No one stirred for a moment. Then Chei edged closer on Vanye's side. After that there was a general movement, men moving from the back of the circle forward on Arunden's side, edging closer on either side of them, blurring and obliterating the line the priest had drawn, two rough-looking men crowding close on Morgaine's side, so that Vanye felt anxiously after his sword-hilt.

  "You!" Arunden jabbed his sheathed sword toward him across the fire. "Sit down!"

  "Sit as they do," Morgaine said quietly, and Vanye drew a second nervous breath and came down off his heels to fold his legs under him, sitting cross-legged and a cursed deal further from a quick move. Morgaine reached and touched his hand, reminding him it was on the sword-hilt, forbidding him, and he let it go, glaring at Arunden with his vision wide on everything around him.

  But a young woman brought a massive wooden bowl and gave it to Arunden: he held it out to the priest. "Here," he said. "Here!"

  The priest drank. Arunden did, and passed the massive bowl to his right.

  So from hand to hand it passed, all about the gathering on that side before it came to Bron and to Chei.

  There was utter silence then, a profound hush in every movement in the circle.

  And from Chei, as he gave it to Vanye's hands, a frightened look, a pleading look—What, Vanye wondered. That they not refuse? That there was some harm in it?

  "Take it," Chei said. "You must take it."

  It was honey drink, strong-smelling. Vanye looked doubtfully toward Morgaine, but he saw no likelihood
of poison, seeing others had drunk, seeing that the moisture of it shone on Chei's mouth, "liyo?"

  She gave a slight nod, and he drank one fiery and tiny sip, hardly touching the tip of his tongue to it.

  "Drink," Chei whispered from his left. "For God's sake, truly drink. They will know."

  He hesitated, feeling the sting of it, tasting herbs. Panic touched him. But they would insist for Morgaine too, he thought; if there was harm in it, she had to know. He took a mouthful and swallowed it down, tracing fire all down his throat.

  He passed it slowly, amid the soft murmur of those about the fire. He held onto the bowl a moment, feeling that fire hit his stomach, tasting it all the way down with the sense that he knew to use on bitter berries, unfamiliar fare at strange table. Slowly he let her take it, while the murmur grew; and there was a troubled frown on her face—full knowledge what he had done, and why.

  So she looked at him and drank a very little, he thought that she truly did, her own judgment: but she was a woman, she might be delicate in her habits; it was his place to convince them, and he thought that he had, sufficient good faith for the two of them.

  She passed the bowl on to the man at her right, and so it went on.

  The murmur grew.

  "Is there something remarkable in it?" Morgaine asked then, civilly.

  "There is fen-wort in it," Arunden said. "And neverfade."

  "To loosen tongues," Chei said in a small voice, at Vanye's left, "and to bring out truth."

  "Liyo—"Vanye said, for there was of a sudden too much warmth on his tongue for one sip of honey-mead. She glanced his direction.

  "It is harmless—" Chei said. The cup was finishing its course. A young woman brought a skin and filled it, and it began a second passing.

  The crowd-murmur grew. "Another bowl!" the priest objected. "It is unclean, unclean—"

  But the bowl went to him. "Drink," Arunden bade him, and clenched his hand in the priest's hair and compelled him, at which there was rough laughter, at which Vanye took in his breath and stared in horror, not knowing what to do, not knowing what the priest might do, or some man who respected him.