Exile's Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  The bowman drew back, aiming a high arc for a distance shot.

  "You are in her range," Vanye said quietly, and the bowman eased off the draw.

  "Fire!" Chei said.

  The bowman drew again, with careful aim. And a second time eased off.

  "Fire, curse you!"

  "The wind is gusting." A third time the bowman lifted the bow and drew. His arm trembled with the strain as he sought an arc and a lull in the wind.

  "Wind does not trouble her," Vanye said.

  "Wait your target," Chei said then, and the bowman eased off a third time, trembling. Chei relaxed his grip on Vanye's hair, then shifted his hand to his shoulder and pressed gently. "Stay still, man, stay still."

  It was worse than the other. His leg began to shake, at its unnatural angle. He moved it. And Morgaine walked closer still, the bowman's necessary arc continually diminishing.

  She reached half-range. The bowman lifted his bow, made a swift draw.

  "Haaaaiiii!" Vanye yelled, and Chei jerked his head back. The shaft flew.

  Morgaine dropped, and sprang up again, covering ground at a run.

  The blade stung, and a slow trickle ran down Vanye's neck. "I will kill him," Chei yelled.

  Morgaine stopped. The bowman stopped, a second arrow nocked and drawn.

  "Ride off!" Chei shouted at her. "You leave me nothing to lose, woman!"

  "I will bargain with you!" Morgaine's voice came faintly on the wind at full shout.

  "I will bargain with you, woman. Throw down the sword and I will give you both your lives. Or I will cut his throat here and now."

  She walked closer, and a second shaft flew, amiss on a gust of wind.

  "Curse you," Chei said to the bowman. "Fire!"

  The bowman brought up another arrow. But Morgaine had stopped. She lifted her hand, aimed dead at them. "An easy shot for me. Let him free and you are free to ride south. My word on it! Any one of you that wants to live, walk clear."

  The bowman lowered his bow; and: "My lord," the qhal on Chei's other side said, and reached, and pressed the blade back from Vanye's throat with his bare hand. "My lord. We are the last. She will kill us. Let him go. We have lost."

  There was long silence. Chei's grip faltered on his shoulder and tightened again.

  "Let him free!" Morgaine said.

  "For a price," Chei said.

  "Name it!"

  "I will name it later," Chei said. "Do you want him on those terms?"

  "Let him go!" Morgaine said. "And I will give you your lives and your gear—or flay the skin off you if you harm him! Let him go!"

  Chei's hand loosed. The sword withdrew and Chei shoved him carefully aside and stood up, a clear target "Free him," Chei said "Let him go."

  The second man took a knife and cut Vanye's hands free, and with a hand under his arm, helped him to his feet. He was not one of those who had been forward to do him harm—a tall, silver-haired qhal, expressionless even now in this shift of fortunes. His hand was firm and steady, and gently tested his balance before he let him free.

  Vanye walked, the whole of the sky seeming for a moment gone to metal and his hands, lifeless and swinging beside him, seeming to belong, like his feet, to some other man. He staggered on a hole in the ground, recovered himself short of a fall, and kept walking, the gusts of wind touching the sweat on his face and stinging in the cuts on his throat.

  But the sky went stranger still, peculiarly translucent, and he was on one knee without knowing how he had gotten there, Morgaine rushing up to kneel and seize him by the shoulder.

  "I am all right," he said. There was a look of dismay on her face; and rage; and she whirled on one knee and aimed her weapon at their enemies.

  "No," he said on a breath, and caught her arm.

  She did not fire. He did not know why he had said it, only that it was one more mistake like the rest he had made. He felt the shorn hair blowing about his face and into his eyes, the most visible of the dishonors they had put on him, and her; and that expression of horror was still in her eyes. "I am sorry," he said to her, when he could say anything.

  "Curse them for this!"

  "It was their doing, not mine." He knelt there shifting glances between her and their unmoving enemy, for she had stopped paying them attention. He did not offer the head-to-ground obeisance that might have made some amends for his shame with a Kurshin liege, did not ask for duel with the man who had done this, did not do any of the things that would have driven her to fury with him. "Liyo, I am tired, is all."

  "I have Arrhan with me. Yonder, beyond the hill." She made a motion of her head. "And all your gear. With her and Siptah to trade about, there was no way they could outrun me." She found the cord that bound the stone about his neck and pulled it from beneath his armor, which itself was great relief. She laid down the black weapon a moment to take her Honor-blade and cut it free. "Where is the case for this thing?"

  "Chei has it."

  "That is one thing I will get from him.—Is it Gault?"

  "Yes." In the tail of his eye, he saw Chei walk toward them. "In Heaven's name, liyo, watch them—"

  Her gray eyes flicked past his with a killing fury—for them, not for him. He knew then the measure of it, in her red-rimmed and shadowed gaze—the pace she had to have kept, to set ambush after ambush, the strain, constantly to be sure of her targets.

  She gathered up her weapon. She rose to her feet, and Vanye levered himself up to stand by her.

  "The matter of a price," Chei called out.

  "There is no price," Morgaine shouted back, "but your lives, my lord, and that is for old grudges, not new ones! You have the casing for the stone. Let it fall. And get out of my sight!"

  "The price, my lady!"

  Her hand lifted, the weapon aimed. "You go too far with me."

  "My enemies—and passage through the gate, for me and mine." Chei strode forward and stopped, hands held wide and empty. "There is no way back for us."

  "No way back from hell, my lord, and you are treading on the brink. Vanye wants your life, I have no least notion why—you can thank him on your knees, before you ride out of here. Now! Drop the case, man!"

  Chei's hand moved to his neck. A silver chain glittered in the sun as he lifted it over his head and dropped it.

  "On your knees, my lord, and thank him, else I will shoot the legs out from under you."

  Chei went down.

  "Thank him."

  "Liyo," Vanye protested.

  "Thank him!"

  "I give you my thanks, Nhi Vanye."

  Morgaine dropped her hand, and stood staring as Chei got up and went to the roan horse and his remount; and the others, the qhal and the bowman who wore human shape, claimed their own.

  "There was one more man—" Vanye recalled with a sudden chill.

  "The one who chased the horses?" Morgaine asked. "That one I accounted for." She half-turned and whistled for Siptah. The gray horse threw his head and shook himself and tended in their direction, reins trailing, as they walked toward the place Chei had dropped the casing.

  Chei and his men rode off, southward, with no delaying. Vanye knelt, fighting dizziness, and picked up the gray box that Chei had dropped in the trampled grass. Morgaine gave him the stone and its cord and he made a ball of it and put it inside. Its raw power left the air like the feeling after storm, and his hands were shaking as he hung it again about his neck on its proper chain, safe and still.

  "What did they do?" she asked fiercely. "What did they do?"

  He did not meet her eyes. He gathered up his helm, from where it had fallen. The gray horse came up to them, snorting and throwing his head, and he went and caught the trailing reins and laid his hand on Siptah's neck, for the comfort of a creature who asked no questions. "Nothing, past the time you put a fear in them. Mostly want of food and rest."

  "Get up," she said. "I will ride behind. We will find Arrhan and quit this place."

  He was glad enough of that. He wiped the hair back fro
m his face, put the helm on, slung the reins over and put his foot in the stirrup with a little effort, with a greater one hauled himself onto Siptah's back and cleared the right stirrup for Morgaine. She climbed up by the cantle and her hand on his leg, and held only to the cantle when they started out, so she knew well enough he was in pain, and did not touch him as they rode. She only gave him directions, and they went over the road and beyond the further hill, where Arrhan placidly cropped the grass with a pair of Chei's strayed horses.

  She slid down. He climbed down and went and gave his hands to Arrhan's offered muzzle, endured her head-butting in his sore ribs and leaned himself against her shoulder.

  His bow, his quiver, hung on Arrhan's saddle, though different men had stolen them. There was a fine qhalur sword, that one of the lords had worn.

  He looked around at Morgaine, at a face as qhal-pale as theirs, and a vengefulness far colder. For a moment she seemed changed far more than Chei.

  Then she walked past him to take the rest that she had won, the horses that grazed oblivious to their change of politics. "Remounts," she said, leading them back. "Can thee ride, Nhi Vanye?"

  "Aye," he murmured. She was brusque and distant with him, giving him room to recover himself; he inhaled the air of freedom and set his foot in his own stirrup and flung himself up to Arrhan's back, gathering up the sword as the mare began to move. He wanted that in its place at his belt first; even before water, and a little food, and a cool spring to wash in.

  Even that impossible gift Morgaine gave him, finding among the hills and the rocks, a place where cold water spilled down between two hills and trees shaded the beginnings of a brook. She reined in there and got down, letting Siptah and the remounts drink; and he slid down, holding to the saddle-ties and the stirrup-leather: he was that undone, now that the fighting was done, and his legs were unsteady when he let go and sank down to drink and wash.

  He looked and she was unsaddling the gray stud. "We have pushed the horses further than we ought," she said, which was all she said on the matter.

  He lay down on the bank then, sprawled back and let his helmet roll from his head, letting his senses go on the reeling journey they had been trying to take. He felt his arm fall, and heard the horses moving, and thought once in terror that it had been a dream, that in the next moment he would find his brothers' hands on him, or his enemies' faces over him.

  But when he slitted his eyes it was Morgaine who sat against the tree, her arms tucked about her knees, the dragon sword close by her side. So he was safe. And he slept.

  He waked with the sun fading. For a moment panic jolted him and he could not remember where he was. But he turned his head and saw Morgaine still sitting where she had been, still watching over him. He let go a shaking breath.

  She would not have slept while he slept. He saw the exhaustion in her posture, the bruised look about her eyes. "Liyo," he said, and levered himself up on his arm, and up to his knees.

  "We have a little time till dark," she said. "If thee can travel at all. Thee should tend those hurts before they go stiff. And if need be, we will spend another day here."

  There was fever in her eyes, restraint in her bearing. It was one thing and the other with her, a balance the present direction of which he did not guess at, rage and anxiety in delicate equilibrium.

  He felt after the straps of his armor and unbuckled it. "No," he said when she moved to help him. He managed it all himself, glad of the twilight that put a haze between her and the filth and the sores, but while time was that he would have gone out of her witness to bathe, now it seemed a rebuff to her. He only turned his body to hide the worst of it as he slid into the chill water.

  Then he ducked his head and shoulders under, holding fast to the rocks on the bank, for he did not swim. Cold numbed the pain. Clean water washed away other memory, and he held there a moment and drifted with his eyes shut till Morgaine came to the bank with salves and a blanket and his personal kit, and sternly bade him get out.

  "Thee will put a chill in the wounds," she said, and was right, he knew. He heaved himself up onto the dry rock and wrapped himself quickly in the blanket she flung around him. He made a tent of it to keep the wind off while he shaved and brushed his teeth, careful around the cuts and the swollen spots, and afterward sat rubbing his hair dry.

  She came up behind him and laid her hands on his shoulders, and took the fold of the blanket and began to dry his hair herself.

  So he knew she forgave him his disgrace. He bowed his head on his arms and did not flinch when she combed it with her fingers—only when she put her arms about his shoulders and rested her head against him. Then it was hard to get his breath.

  "I did not deserve it of them," he said, in his own defense. "I swear that, liyo. Except my falling into their trap in the first place. For that—I have no excuse at all."

  Her arms tightened. "I tried to come round north and warn thee. But I came too far. By the time I came back again it was too late. And thee had come riding in. Looking for me. True?—True. Is it not?"

  "Aye," he murmured, his face afire with shame, recollecting the well-trampled stream, recollecting every mistaken reasoning. "It might have been you in their hands. I thought you were, else you would have been there—"

  "To warn thee off. Aye. But I was being a fool, thinking thee was like to rush into it for fear I had been a fool; and thee knew something was wrong, well enough, that I was not somewhere about. It was as much my fault as thine." She moved around where she could see his face. "We cannot do a thing like this again. We cannot be lovers and fools. Trust me, does thee hear, and I will trust thee, and we will not give our enemies the advantage after this."

  He pressed his hand over hers, drew it to his lips and then let go, his eyes shut for a moment. "Will you hear hard truth, liyo?"

  "Yes."

  "You take half my opinion and do half of yours, and whether mine is good or ill I do not know, but half apiece of two good opinions makes one very bad one, to my way of thinking. Hear me out! I beg you." His voice cracked. He steadied it. "If your way is straight down the road, straight we go and I will say no word. My way, to tell the truth, has not fared very well in recent days."

  She sat hill-fashion, on her heels, her arms between her knees. "Why, I thought I had done tolerably well by your way in the last few days—I did think I had learned well enough."

  "You learned nothing of me—"

  "Constantly. Does thee think me that dull, that I learn nothing?"

  His heart lifted a little, a very little, not that he counted himself so gullible.

  "Does not believe me?" she asked.

  "No, liyo." He even managed a smile. "But it is kind."

  Her mouth tightened and trembled, not for hurt, it seemed, only of weariness. She put out her hand and touched his face with her fingertips, gently, very gently. "It is true. I did not know what to do. I only thought what thee would do, if it were the other way about."

  "I would have gone in straightway like a fool."

  She shook her head. "Separately, we are rarely fools. That is what we have to mend." She brushed a lock of hair from his eyes. "Trust me, that I will not be. And trust that I trust thee."

  He glanced at the dragon sword behind her shoulder, that thing she did not part with even now, that one thing for which she would leave him.

  Perhaps she understood the direction of that glance. She settled back on her heels with a bruised and weary gaze into his eyes.

  "With my life," he said.

  It was not enough to say. He wished he had not had that thought, or given way to it.

  I believed you might come, only because we were still far enough from the gate.

  Beyond such a point, she had no such loyalties, nor could help herself. He believed that. With the sword, at such a time, she fought for nothing but the geas,—and for her sanity.

  At such a time, liyo, you would have taken me with your enemies.

  And always that is true.

  "Trut
h, liyo, I had no doubt."

  She looked so weary, so desperately weary. He rose up on his knees and put his arms about her, her head against his bare shoulder, her slim, armored body making one brief shiver, hard as it was. Her arms went about him.

  "We have no choice but move on," she said, her voice gone hoarse. "Chei has gone back toward Tejhos. I do not think he will go all the way south."

  "Chei has done murder," he said. "He killed a captain Mante sent by way of Tejhos. The captain's men deserted."

  "Was that the division." Her shoulders heaved to a sigh, and for a moment her weight rested against him. "None of them escaped. Plague take it—I should have killed him—long since. . . ."

  "Chei," he murmured, "went to them . . . willingly, he said. And Mante knows everything he knows by now. I have no doubt they do. There may be more than a few riders out from there."

  She nodded against his shoulder. "Aye. I know that."

  "And neither of us is fit to ride. What could you do? What could I? Sleep."

  She was limp in his arms, and moved her hand then to push away from him, and abandoned the effort, slumping bonelessly into his arms. "Not wise, not wise, of me. I know. We have to move. This place is not safe—'tis not safe at all—"

  It was, perhaps, the first time in recent days she had done more than close her eyes.

  Chei splashed water over his face and wiped it back over his hair, crouching at the stream. Across from him in the dusk, the remnant the witch had left to him—witch, he insisted to himself, against all the knowledge qhalur rationality could muster. He grew superstitious. He knew that his soul was lost, whatever that was, simply because he did not know how to believe in it any longer; or in witchcraft, except that in the workings of the world there might conceivably be prescience, and outsiders might know things he did not understand.

  Ichandren had believed in unnatural forces. Bron had never doubted them. The man across the rill of water from him had known them, Rhanin ep Eorund, before he housed a qhalur bowman, and perhaps even yet. They were foreign only to Hesiyyn, the qhal, whose face was a long-eyed, high-boned mask, immune to the worry that creased Rhanin's brow—human expression, woven into the composite like so many subtle things.