Gate of Ivrel

CHAPTER X

“ERIJ.” VANYE TRIED a second time to rise, and in a sudden move Erij moved back and let him. Then he snapped the Honor blade back into his belt and stalked up the road a space where his horse stood, along with Vanye’s black.

Vanye stumbled up from the ditch, limping, trying vainly to overtake him and prevent him, saw to his dismay that Erij had already found what the black horse bore on its saddle.

A fierce grin spread over Erij’s face as he took the sheathed blade in hand, and with the sheath in the crook of his arm and his hand upon its hilt, he waited Vanye’s coming.

Vanye stopped short of the threat he posed him, still shaking in all his limbs, trying to gather his breath and his wits and frame some reasonable argument.

“There is a qujal out of Leth,” he began, his voice hardly audible. “Erij, Erij, there are Lethen and the devil himself behind me. We are both in danger. I will go with you clear of this road—not try at escape, at least that far. I swear, I swear it, Erij.”

Erij considered, his dark eyes fluid in the dark. Then he nodded abrupt decision, hooked the sheath of Changeling to his own belt—one-handed as he was, he wore it at his hip, not his back—and swung up to mount.

Vanye hauled his aching body into the saddle on a second effort, sent the black galloping down the road in Erij’s company, down side trails into forest, though at every turn the forest looked more ominous in itself. The horses went at a careful pace now, wending their way down into rocky ground. Here was still patches of snow in which to leave prints, but brush and woods were so thick that pursuit of them could not be easy for any group of men, and their trail was somewhat obscured. It held no feeling of safety, this place—rather, the same kind of queasiness that all of Erij’s ambushes had held, from boyhood up, screaming alarm, such that he thought, like another dream by Aenor-Pyven, that he might have ridden this place in some bad dream, wherein he had died. The trees, the rocks etched themselves into his sight, his senses clinging to them as strongly as fingers might cling to some last handhold on solidity. I am losing these, he thought, and: I am mad to go with him like this. But he had no strength left, and Erij held Changeling, held his duty as ilin to hostage: Erij could reason, could be reasoned with—his hope insisted so.

Then, in a clear place among the trees, Erij reined in and ordered him down.

Panic struck him. Almost he did lay heels to the horse. But he found himself climbing down, careful of strained knees as he caught his balance on the ground. He moved out uncertainly as Erij motioned him to the center of the clearing.

“Where is she?” Erij asked then, and as he asked, climbed down, and unhooked the sheath of Changeling.

Then he knew of a certainty that Erij meant to kill him when he had answered; and Changeling slipped inexorably from its sheath, Erij knowing the nature of the blade now, well able to wield it

Vanye hurled himself at Erij waist-high, grappled and came down with him, Changeling falling still sheathed.

Erij’s elbow crashed into his face, blinding him. Vanye was suddenly underneath again, losing, as he had always lost, as it had always been with his brothers. He could not see, could not breathe, could not feel for a moment. With his last effort he heaved over and clung, fighting only for leverage. Then his hands were slamming Erij’s head into the snowy ground, again and again, until Erij’s limbs weakened and ceased to struggle. He scrambled up to find Changeling, his mind now clearing as he reached his horse, holding the sword-sheath, groping blindly for the reins.

The horse shied. Erij’s rush carried into his lower back, hurling him, stunned, almost under the hooves. Changeling flew from his nerveless fingers, beyond reach, and when he struggled after it, Erij kicked him over by the shoulder. He came halfway up, staggered, and met Erij’s fist, which laid him backward into the snow. Then Erij fell upon him with a knee upon his chest and his maimed arm still strong enough to strike his arm aside: Erij ripped the Honor blade from his belt and slipped it within the throat-laces of his armor, cutting down the thongs like so much rotten thread.

“A third of Nhi died at Irn-Svejur,” Erij gasped at him, hoarse and out of breath. “Your doing—and hers. Where is she?”

Vanye swallowed against the blade’s pressure, unable to answer. He fought instinctively to breathe and froze, trembling with the effort, when he felt moisture trickling down the sides of his neck. Raw pain rode on the edge of the blade as it eased slightly.

“Answer me,” Erij hissed.

“Leth.” He moved an arm as heavy as his whole body ought to be, ceased. “ Qujal–men from Leth caught her—to make her give them what she knows. Erij—Erij, no, do not kill me. They will have her knowledge—theirs—Thiye’s—together—against us.”

The pressure eased altogether, but it was there. The faint hope there was of Erij’s interest sent the sweat coursing over him. Erij’s knee hampered his breathing: he felt himself losing touch with his senses again, dizzied and numb. “And you, bastard?” Erij asked him. “What are you doing loose and alone?”

“Hjemur—the source. That can stop them. I am to kill Thiye—take Ra-hjemur. Erij, let me go.”

“Bastard, I have chased you from Irn-Svejur. The others had no stomach for Hjemur’s territory and Morgaine’s weapons, but I swore to them that I would go where I had to go to bring back your head. I would bring back the whole of you alive, but one-handed as I am, I know I cannot manage that. For Nhi and for Myya, for San and Torin—most especially for Nhi and its dead, I will do this thing, and then find how to put this gift you have given me to best use. I have no enemies I need fear so long as I wield that. If it would bring you safely to Ra-hjemur, then it could bring me there too.”

“Go with me there, then.”

“I offered you the chance of sharing power once, bastard, and I meant it; but you loved the witch more than you loved Morija, enough to kill Nhi for her.”

“Erij, you know at least that I will not break an oath. Help me—to Ra-hjemur. Now. Before our enemy takes it. Let me have my revenge on Thiye—for Morgaine; on the qujal too if I can. I am speaking sense, Erij. Listen to me. There are weapons in Ra-hjemur, surely—and if our enemy lays hands on them, even holding Changeling might not be enough to take the citadel. Do this. Come with me. That is my oath to her—to deal with Thiye. After that, anything that is between us will be between us, and I will not cry foul at anything.”

Erij’s shadowed eyes took on a narrow, reckoning look. “You were condemned to be ilin by our father’s law, for Handrys; and you will be clean of that if I listen to you. But you have me yet to satisfy. Suppose I were to sentence you to another year.”

“I would think that was too slight a thing to satisfy you.”

“Swear,” said Erij, “by that oath you regard with her, that you will stay for Claiming by me, no treachery, no aid from her if she should somehow live. And that will not be a year that you will thank me for, Chya bastard, and it will not stop me from turning you over to the kinsmen of Paren and Bren when it is finished. But if it is worth the price to you, I will refrain from cutting your throat here and now. I will even go with you to Ra-hjemur. Is that the way you want it, bastard? Will you pay that?”

“Yes,” Vanye said without hesitating; but Erij’s blade still rested under his chin.

“And I will wager,” said Erij, “that you know the use of the sword and that you know the witch herself better than any now living. If taking Hjemur purges you of her—that being the service she named for you, and not merely a year—then let us agree, my brother, that when Hjemur falls, it is mine, and you are mine—from that moment. And you will not speak of this oath of ours—not to her, not to Thiye, not to anyone.”

He saw the trap then, which Erij wove for Morgaine, treachery suspecting treachery in everyone, and admired the cunning of the man: Myya to the heart, thinking of all possibilities save one—that neither of them would survive the taking of Hjemur.

He did not like the oath: it was woven too tightly.

“I will agree,” he said.

“And upon your soul you will not betray me,” Erij said. “You will hand me Hjemur and hand me Thiye and the witch and this qujal himself.”

“As many as live,” Vanye agreed.

“That you will not desert me or raise hand against me before then.”

“I agree.”

“Your hand,” said Erij.

It was not right to do: by ilin–law he ought not to yield another oath, and any crossing of the two obligations was on his soul, his own fault; but Erij insisted, and he yielded up his hand and clenched his teeth as Erij drew the blade across the palm. Then Erij touched it with his mouth, and Vanye likewise, spat blood into the snow. It was not Claiming, for there was no signing with it, but it was an oath and a binding one, and when Erij released him to get to his feet, he knelt clenching numbing snow in his fist as he had knelt once in a cave in Aenor-Pyven, shaking this time in utter misery, such that his senses threatened to leave him.

The liyo he served could by rights curse his soul to perdition; he had yielded his brother the same right. And yet he knew that he would have mercy of Morgaine, and none at all of Erij. He knew his liyo, that though she was cruel in other ways, she would not curse him; and that knowledge of her perversely made him sure which oath he would follow.

And kill his brother, as he had killed a third of Nhi.

He had done this for his liyo, serving her: ilin–oath had bound him, and he had killed kinsmen. There had seemed no worse act that he could be drawn to commit.

Until this, that he oath-broke, and murdered his brother by his silence.

I owe it to thee to tell thee plainly; if thee uses Changeling as I have told thee to do—thee will die.

Changeling was not selective in its destructions.

“Come, on your feet,” said Erij. He hooked the blade to his saddle-harness, displacing his own to the useless right-hand fastenings. Then he gathered reins and climbed up, waiting for him.

Vanye gathered himself up and sought the black, who stood, reins dangling, some distance away across the clearing. He set foot in the stirrup and rose into the saddle with a wince of strained muscles.

“You are guide,” said Erij. “Lead. And be mindful of your oath.”

He retraced the way that they had come, then cut north, aiming to come out upon the highroad at a different place than they had left it. When they had it in sight among the trees he was relieved to see that there were as yet no tracks marring the snow.

Only as they came out into the open road, something fluttered through the trees, alarmed by their passing—a rapid clap of wings in the dark. Erij stared after it with hate in his face, the honest loathing of a human man for things that frequented these woods. Vanye had even ceased to shudder at such things. He set a good pace, reckoning that they were laying a clear trail for Liell and his men if they would follow; but it could not be helped. There was one quick way to Hjemur’s heart, and they were on it.

The black was laboring. It was impossible to drive the horse farther, hard-put as he had been on the road to Ivrel. And at last Vanye reined in, looked back and considered stopping. It was an uncomfortable place. Forest was on one side, high rocks upon the other.

“Let us be moving,” Erij said.

“I am not going to kill this horse,” Vanye protested, but he kept the animal at a walk all the same, and did not stop.

Then Erij spurred his own horse and the black dutifully matched the pace. Vanye smothered his temper and hoped that the horse would last to the gates of Ra-hjemur.

And they came upon tracked snow, where an unexpected road intersected theirs at an angle from the direction of Ivrel. Men afoot—horses—the short-footed sign of the smallish northerners, Hjemurn mixed with the larger prints of men: Andurin.

And blood upon the snow, and bodies lying in the road, abandoned.

Vanye swung down, Erij ordering him otherwise: he ignored his brother, went quickly from one body to the other, turning them to see the faces. Two were Lethen. The other three were the small, dark men of Hjemur, and one fair, like qujal. Relief flooded over him.

Erij hissed, drawing his attention: suddenly there was a stirring, a crunch of snow and a rattling of rocks, and he pulled himself out of his thoughts, looked up to see a dark shadow crouched upon the ledge overhanging the road.

He ran, sprang for the horse, hauled himself into the saddle as the startled animal began to run: he gathered reins awkwardly and tucked low as Erij did.

“Erij,” he gasped when he could, “Hjemurn have come in behind, but Chya Liell and the Lethen are on the road ahead of us—the Hjemurn could not hold them. Ease off, ease off, or we will be riding into them.”

“Then,” said Erij, “we will be one enemy the less.”

Morgaine too, and Roh, if they still lived: Erij, who held the sword, would as gladly kill them both as Chya Liell and Lethen: Nhi’s bloodfeud with Chya was old and well-exercised, and that with Morgaine was as fresh as Irn-Svejur, and still painful.

“Give me a sword,” Vanye asked of him then, for he had not so much as a dagger. “If not hers, then at least some weapon.”

“Not at my back,” said Erij, insulting the oath there was between them. But that was Erij’s privilege: it did not lessen the oath.

Vanye pressed his lips tightly in anger and kept with him, counting Erij for a madman, to press both horses so, to ride unshielded after any company containing Morgaine after his bitter lesson at Irn-Svejur. He regretted his oath for a new reason: that Erij would kill the both of them and hand Changeling to the enemy, madder than Chya Roh and almost as great an idiot.

The road was winding, the turns blind, woods and rocks cutting off their view upon the right, trees almost taking the road in places upon the left.

And they met it, inevitably: the rear of Liell’s column, men warned by their noise and braced to receive them with a hedge of spears, a bristling shadow in the dark.

Erij ripped Changeling loose and let its sheath slide, lost, nothing hesitating. He spurred his uncertain horse and drove the beast at the spears, while the blade flared into opal and a peculiar starry dark hovered at its tip. The Lethen that touched it were quickly nothing: others fled aside, closed in, in renewed determination as Vanye tried to ride through, but few, few of them. Instead came dark, fur-clad bodies off the ridge, dropping thick upon his path– Hjemurn, howling their blood-chilling cries. In his last clear sight of the column ahead he saw a glimmer of white—Siptah among those horses: and the Lethen riders began to run, abandoning those on foot, perhaps knowing what pursued them.

Dark bodies poured between. Vanye kicked his faltering horse, himself and the beast being pulled down together. A spear rammed at his ribs and rocked him badly. Weaponless, he seized the shaft with both hands and tried to wrench it free from its owner.

Then the horse collapsed, and arms encircled him, pulling him to the ground at the same moment. A blade flashed down and rebounded off his mail, surprising the would-be killer. Others hacked at him, with the same result, bruising, driving the wind from him. He was smothered in bodies and sinking into dark.

And as suddenly released.

He scrambled for his feet, still dazed, and sprawled in the stained snow. Screams were in his ears, then silence, a howl of wind, hollow and abruptly silenced too.

He struggled to one knee as steps crunched up to him, looked dazedly upon Erij, who held the sword in the sheath. There were no bodies, and there were no Hjemurn to be seen, only themselves, and the horses standing side by side.

Quickly, he twisted about to look in the direction the riders had taken. There was nothing to be seen there either.

“The riders,” Vanye said. “Killed or fled?”

“Fled,” said Erij. “If you had not fallen—but that must be the Chya blood in you. Get up.”

He rose, steadied unexpectedly by Erij’s hand, and he was surprised into a closer look at his brother, that same dark expression he had known in Ra-morij—anger compounded by something else violent; but the hand that still held him was solidly gentle.

“Why stay for me?” Vanye taunted him, for he truly suspected some brotherly sentiment in the man. “Did you want revenge that badly?”

Erij’s lips trembled in anger. “Bastard that you are, I will not leave even Nhi refuse for the Hjemurn. Get mounted.”

And out of the contradictions that were Erij, he pushed him and hit him at once, no cuff, but a blow that brought him to one knee, dizzy as he was. Vanye gathered himself to rise, went after Erij, and halted as Erij’s own longsword hit the snow between them. He seized it up without hesitating.

And there was Erij by his horse, glaring at him with hate and fear staring naked out of his eyes.

If he had not known Erij he would have thought him mad as Kasedre himself; but of a sudden he knew the feeling himself, an old one, and familiar. Erij did fear him. Maimed by him, his former skill cut away by him, Erij feared, and likely wakened in the night in such dreams as Vanye himself knew, dreams of Rijan, of Handrys, and a morning in the armory court.

Father loved perfection, Erij had told him once. He hated leaving Nhi to a cripple. He never forgave me either, for being the one of us two legitimate sons that lived. And for being less than perfect afterward.

But Erij had sense enough finally to arm him, in spite of all instincts otherwise. A one-handed man coming alone into Hjemur... he perhaps feared to die less than he feared to be proved weak.

Vanye bowed an awkward respect to his brother. “Likely we will die,” he said, that sure knowledge a weight of guilt at his heart. “Erij, lend me Changeling instead. I do swear to you, I will go through with it myself. Whatever can be done by a man carrying that thing, I will do. I will hand you Ra-hjemur if I live, and if I do not, then it was impossible anyway. Erij, I mean it. I owe you to do that.”

Erij gave a short and uneasy laugk, tucked his handless arm behind him. “Your gratitude is unnecessary, bastard brother. The fact is, I dropped the sword-sheath and came back after it.”

“You came back in time,” Vanye insisted doggedly. “Erij, do not make it nothing. I know what you did; and I say I would do this.”

“You are expert in treachery, and I am not about to trust you, especially where she is concerned. You are trying to delay me now, and there is an end of it. Get mounted.”

He could not hold the course Erij set. He came near to falling as they took a slippery downslope, hung on grimly, but dropped a rein. The horse stopped at the bottom as a consequence, well-trained, stood with its own sides heaving between his knees, and Vanye slowly bent over the saddle, trying to clear his vision and making no effort to recover the lost rein.

Erij rode close to him, hit his horse and started it forward. He clung, but the horse stopped again, and he disregarded Erij and used his remaining strength to climb down and walk, leading his horse, toward a place where a flat rock promised a place to sit. He walked like a drunken man, and ached so that he more fell down than sat down when he reached it He lay over on his side, tucked his limbs up against the cold and simply ignored Erij’s attempts to rouse him: a time to let the pain leave his gut—it was all he asked.

Erij pulled at him roughly, and Vanye realized finally that Erij was attempting to lift his head upon his maimed arm; and himself took the wine flask and drank.

“You are chilled,” Erij said distantly. “Sit, sit up.”

He understood then that Erij was trying to put his cloak about him, and leaned against his brother, warmed against him so that finally he began to shiver and abused muscles began to knot up in reaction to cold.

“Drink,” said Erij again. he drank. Then, briefly, he slept

He meant it to be brief, only a closing of his eyes. But he awoke with the sun warming him, and Erij sitting nearby with Changeling tucked within his arms as Morgaine was wont to rest. Erij did not sleep: Vanye’s first move brought him alert and sharp-eyed with suspicion.

“There is food,” said Erij after a moment. “Get to horse and we will eat in the saddle. We have wasted enough time.”

He did not contest the order, but dragged his aching limbs up and obeyed. There was an edge to the wind when they were out of the fold of the hill; he was glad of the little bit of wine Erij shared with him, and the coarse, crumbling bread and strong cheese. Food put strength into him. He looked at his brother in the daylight and saw a man equally haggard, shadow-eyed, hollow-cheeked, unshaven; but at a sane pace and with provisions to last them, he reckoned their chances of reaching Ra-hjemur better, at least, than he had reckoned them last night.

“They are surely making little better time than we,” he said to Erij. “Ahead of us that they are... still, there is a limit to their horses, and their strength.”

“It is possible that we can overtake them,” said Erij. “It is at least possible.”

Erij seemed soberly sane after the impulses of the night had run themselves out: for a moment there seemed even implied apology in his tone. Vanye snatched at it instantly.

“I am stronger,” Vanye said. “I could go on. Listen to me. You have made a kind of Claiming; and once I am quit of my oath to her, then I serve your interests at that point, and I will hold Ra-hjemur for you.”

“And of course the witch would let you.”

“She has no ambitions for Ra-hjemur: only to settle with Thiye and then to go her own way. She will not come back. She is no threat to you, none. Erij, I beg you, I earnestly beg you, do not seek to kill her.”

“You have to ask that, of course, being ilin to her; I respect that. But knowing that—of course I have to go with you into Ra-hjemur and above all I will not put this blade into your loyal hands, bastard brother. You had me willing to believe you once, and that cost me, that cost me bitterly in lives and in honor. Do not expect me to make the same mistake twice.”

Then, Vanye concluded, he must obtain the blade from Erij by force or by theft, or somehow deceive Erij so that Erij himself would do what had to be done—oath-breaking and murder at once.

And ever since he had known of Morgaine what must be done, he had begun to suspect what manner of death there would be for him when he had obeyed her orders.

Its field directed at its own source of power would effect the ruin of all the Gates, she had said. And: Cast back within the Gate itself, it would be the same: unsheathe it and hurl it through. Either way should be sufficient.

Changeling fed upon the Witchfires of Ivrel. The black void beyond the Gate was that tiny nothingness that glimmered at Changeling’s tip, to seize whole men and whirl them through, winds howling into skies where men could not survive, as the dragon had perished in the snow... other skies where there was never day. Changeling aimed at the Gate would be void aimed at void, wind sucking into wind, ripping at its own substance and drawing all things in.

And perhaps even Ra-hjemur itself would follow it, and all within it The force that had taken ten thousand men upon the winds at Irien and left no trace behind could not be so delicate as to take one man, if rent wide open, destroying itself.

He thought with a shudder of the retreating faces of those he had seen drawn into the field, the horror, the bewilderment, like men new arrived in Hell.

This would be theirs, this ending for the surviving sons of Nhi Rijan, for all their hate and striving against each other.

He kept his face turned from Erij until the wind had dried the tears upon his face, and gave himself up finally to do what he had given oath to do.

There lay before them the greatest valley in the north, and of Hjemur’s hold, a grassy land ringed about by snow-capped peaks, fair to be seen save in one place, and that bare and blighted, even from such a distance.

“That,” said Vanye, pointing to the ugliness, and thinking of the waste the Gates made about them, “that would be Ra-hjemur.” And when he strained his eyes he could see the beginning of a rise there, a hill such as might be Ra-hjemur, hazy in distance.

They had not, after all, overtaken Liell. There lay the road. Nothing moved upon it. They seemed alone in all the land.

“It is too fair,” said Erij, “too open. I should feel naked upon that road, by daylight.”

“By night. That seems the only good sense.”

“I can tell you better,” Vanye said, persistent to the last. “That you let me do this.”

Erij stared at him and seemed to estimate him, so fearful in his own expression that fear of discovery wound itself through Vanye’s belly. Almost he expected some harsh words, some flaring suspicion.

“What is it?” Erij asked, his tone curiously earnest “What is it you expect down there? Has she warned you?”

“Brother,” said Vanye, “the both of you have me by oath; and if my proper liyo is alive and with them... I have one responsibility to Morgaine, another to you. Between the two of you, you will be the death of me, and I could think more clearly if there were not the two of you in one place, about to go for each other’s throats.”

“I will give you this much,” said Erij, “that if she does not seem to need killing, I will not. I have never killed a woman. I do not like the idea.”

“Thank you for that” Vanye said earnestly.

And then, thinking of Liell: “Erij. If it comes to being captured—die. Those tales of Thiye’s long life are true. If they took you, your body would go on ruling either in Ra-hjemur or Morija, but it would not be your soul in it.”

Erij swore softly. ‘Truth?”

“For my sake, you have an ally if Morgaine is alive. Help me set her free and our chances of living become a thousandfold better.”

Erij merely stared at him, hard-eyed.

“I am almost as ignorant as you are,” Vanye protested. “I do not know the half of what is contained down there. I think she does. And for her own sake she would take our side. It is sure that no one else would. If you are going to start by killing our only possible ally in this business, or in keeping her helpless, well, then, you might as well tie me hand and foot before we go, since I am hers for a time yet... the hands, of which her science is the mind in this matter: and you would be wiser if you make use of both.”

Erij gave him no answer, yet it seemed he thought seriously about his words, and they rode down together into a wooded place where they could no longer see the valley.

“We will rest here a time,” said Erij, “and come in by night. Can Thiye resist Liell’s entry?”

“I do not know,” answered Vanye. “I think Morgaine thinks Thiye once was master and Liell his servant, at least at Irien; and that they had some falling-out. But if Liell brings Morgaine to Thiye, she may be the key that opens doors for him. And then, I think, if the same ambitions move qujal as move human men—which I do not know—then there may be treachery, and we may have either Thiye or Liell to deal with, whichever one wins the throw. I think perhaps Liell has waited a very long time to find some key that would admit him to Ra-hjemur. But this is my estimation: Morgaine said nothing of her own reckoning of their plans.” He added, as Erij sat still upon his horse, listening, “I am not sure that Thiye is qujal or whether he is not simply some human man who employed a qujal for a servant and is now about to reap his reward for meddling; meddler is what Morgaine called him, and ignorant, and the Witchfires have no healthful effect on anything living. For some reason, if rumor is true, at least, he has let himself grow old. So Thiye may not be qujal at all, and I know that Morgaine is not, whatever you believe—but Liell is. That is the sum of it, Erij. Thiye is the matter of my oath, but I extend that oath to Liell most of all: and in good sense, you will let me do that.”

“You wish to free the witch, that is what.”

“Yes. But in doing that, I will kill Liell, who is a threat to both our causes, and I want your help in it, Erij. I want you to understand that I have business in Ra-hjemur beyond Thiye, and that freeing Morgaine would not be treachery against you.”

Erij slid down. Vanye did not, and Erij looked up at him, face drawn against the winter sun. “There is one clear point in all of this: you will guard my life and help me take Ra-hjemur for myself. That is the sum of matters.”

“You have taken my oath,” Vanye said, miserable at heart. “I know that that is the sum of matters.”

There was no moon, and clouds had moved in. There was that help, at least.

Ra-hjemur sat upon a low, barren hill, a citadel surely of the qujal, for it was simply a vast cube, unadorned, un-towered, without protecting ring-walls or any defense evident to the eye. A stony path ran up to its gate; no grass grew upon it, but then, no grass grew anywhere on the hill.

They crouched a time by the bend of the knoll where they had left their horses, merely surveying the place. There was no stir of life.

Erij looked at him as if seeking his opinion.

“The sword can breach the door,” Vanye said. “But beware of traps, brother, and mind that I am behind you: I do not care to die by the same chance that Ryn did.”

Erij nodded understanding, then slipped from cover, seeking other shadows, Vanye quick to follow. They came not directly up the road to the gate, but up under the walls, and in their shadow, to the gate itself.

It was graven with runes upon its metal pillars, but the gate was iron and wood, like the door of many an ordinary fortress; and when Erij drew Changeling and touched its black field to the joining of the doors the air sang with the groan of metals. The doors parted their joinings, and the pillars too, and stone rumbled, loosed from its supports. Dust choked them, and when it cleared a mass of rubble partly blocked the entry.

Erij gazed but a moment at the destruction he had wrought, then clambered over the rubble and sought the echoing inside of the place, which burned with light no fires supplied.

Vanye hurried through, asweat with dread, snatched up a sizable rock in the process, and as Erij started to look back at him, smashed it to Erij’s helmeted skull. It was not enough. Erij fell, but still retained half-senses and heaved up with the blade.

Vanye saw it coming, twisted to evade the shimmer, kicked Erij’s arm so that it wrung from him a cry of pain, and the sword fell.

He snatched it up then, gazed down on his brother, whose face was contorted with fury and fear. Erij cursed him, deliberately and with thought, such that it chilled his blood.

He took the sheath from Erij, who did not resist him; and upon an impulse to pity for Erij, he cast down Erij’s own longsword.

Arrows flew.

He heard their loosing even before he whirled and knew they had come from the stairs, but Changeling in his warding hand made an easy path to elsewhere for the arrows, and they both remained unharmed. He knew the sword’s properties, had seen Morgaine wield it, and knew its uses in ways Erij did not. Erij would as likely have taken an arrow as not.

And perhaps Erij understood that fact, or understood at the least that continuing their private dispute could be fatal to them both: Erij gathered up the longsword with but a glowering promise in his eyes, and rose, following as Vanye began to lead the way.

Killing a man from behind was an easy matter, even were he in mail; but Erij needed more hands than one: he risked everything on it.

And quickly he dismissed the threat of Erij from his mind, overwhelmed by the alien place. Breath almost failed him when he considered the size of the hall, the multitude of doors and stairs. Morgaine had sent him here ignorant, and there was nothing to do but probe every hall, every hiding place, until he either found what he was seeking or his enemies found his back.

Save that, held straight before them, Changeling gave forth a brighter glow, and when lifted, sent a coursing of impulses through the dragon-hilt, such that it seemed to live.

Carefully, Erij treading in his wake, he took the stairs to the level above.

They found a hall very like the one below, save that at its end there was a metal door, of that shining metal very like the pillars of the Witchfires. Changeling began to emit a sound, a bone-piercing hum that made his fingers ache; it grew stronger as he neared it. He ran toward that gate, figuring speed their best defense against a rally from Hjemurn: and froze, startled, as that vast door lightly parted to welcome him.

And startled more by the sight of gleaming metal and light that stretched away into distance, glowing with colors and humming with the power of the fires themselves. Changeling throbbed, his arm growing numb from holding it.

The field directed at its own source of power would effect the ruin of all the Gates.

The pulsing of conflicting powers reached up his arm into his brain, and he did not know whether the blade’s wailing was in the air or in his own outraged senses.

He lifted it, expecting death, found instead that it did not much worsen, save when he angled it right. Then the pain increased.

“Vanye,” Erij shouted at him, catching his shoulder. He saw stark fear on his brother’s face.

“This is the way,” Vanye said to him. “Stay here, guard my back.” But Erij did not. He knew his brother’s presence close behind him as he entered that hall.

He understood now: it greatly disagreed with Morgaine’s careful nature, to have expected him to carry out so important a thing with so few instructions. There had been no need: the sword itself guided them, by its impulses of sound and pain. After a time of walking down that glowing corridor of qujalin works, the sound wiped out other senses until nothing but vision was left.

And in that vision stood an old man, hairless and wrinkled and robed in gray, who held out hands to them and mouthed silent words, pleading. Blood marred his aged face.

Vanye lifted the sword, threatening with that dreadful point, but the vision would not yield, barring their path with his very life.

Thiye, some sense told him: Thiye Thiye’s-son, lord of Hjemur.

All at once the old man fell, clawing at the air, and there was an arrow in the robes at his back, and the red blood spreading.

A figure stood clear of the hall behind, gray and green, the young lord of Chya, lowering his bow. With sudden, breathless haste, Roh started toward them, slinging his strung bow to his back.

Vanye sought Changeling’s sheath at once, hope surging in him. The sudden silence in the air as that point found its proper haven was overwhelming: his abused ears could hardly hear Roh’s voice. He felt Roh’s eager hands grasp his arms, distant even from that sensation.

“Vanye, cousin,” Roh cried, ignoring the threat of his blood-enemy Erij who stood beside, sword in hand. “Cousin, Thiye—Liell—they are at odds. Morgaine escaped them both, but—”

“Is she alive?” Vanye demanded.

“Alive, aye, well alive. She had the hold, Vanye. She means to destroy it. Come, come, clear this place. It will tumble down stone from stone. Hurry.”

“Where is she?”

Roh’s eyes gestured up, toward the stairs. “Barricaded up there, with her weapons in her possession again, and willing to kill anyone who comes within range. Vanye, do not try to reach her. She is mad. She will kill you too. You cannot reason with her.”

“Liell?”

“Dead. They are all dead, and most of Thiye’s servants are fled. You are free of your oath, Vanye. You are free. Escape this place. There is no need of your dying.”

Roh’s fingers tugged at him, his dark eyes full of agony; but of a sudden Vanye broke the hold and began to run toward the stairs upward. Then he looked back. Roh hesitated, then began to run in the other direction, vanishing quickly toward the safety of the downward stairs, a wraith in green. Erij cast a look in either direction, as if torn between, then raced toward the ascending stairs, longsword in hand, pointed it at Vanye, his eyes wild.

“Thiye is dead,” Erij said. “He is dead. Your oath to the witch is done. Now stop her.”

The fact of it hit him like a hammer blow: he stared helplessly at Erij, owning the justice of his claim, trying to think where his obligation truly lay. Then he shook off everything and suspended thought: his duty to either one lay in reaching Morgaine with all possible speed.

He turned and ran, taking the steps two at a time, unto he came up, breathless, into yet another hall like the one below.

And confronted Morgaine, as Roh had warned him, hale and well and facing them both with the deadly black weapon secure in her hand.

“ Liyo!” he cried, flung up his empty hand as if that alone could ward off harm, and with the other cast Changeling at her feet.

“No!” Erij cried in fury, but bit off further protest as Morgaine smoothly gathered the sheathed blade up, yet keeping the black weapon trained upon them. Then she lowered it.

“Vanye,” said Morgaine. “Well met.”

And she joined them, and began to descend the stairs from which they had come, carefully, trusting Vanye at her back; of a sudden he surmised what she sought thus cautiously.

“Thiye is dead,” he said.

Her gray eyes cast back an unexpected look of agony. “Your doing?”

“No. Roh’s.”

“Not Roh’s,” she said. “Thiye freed me—that being his only hope of defeating Liell and keeping his life. He gave me this slim chance. I would have saved his life if I could. Is Roh down there?”

“He ran,” said Vanye, “saying you meant to destroy this place.” Horrid suspicion came over him. “It was not Roh, was it?”

“No,” said Morgaine. “Roh died at Ivrel, in your place.”

And she raced then down the stairs, pausing only to be careful at the turning, and came into that dread hall of qujalin design.

It was empty, save for Thiye’s sprawled corpse in a widening pool of blood.

Morgaine ran, her footsteps echoing upon the floor, and Vanye followed, knowing that Erij was still with them, and little caring at the time. Anger seethed in him for Liell’s mocking treachery with him; and dread was in him too for what Morgaine might intend with these strange powers.

She reached the very end of the hall, where there rose a vast double pillar of lights, and her hand abandoned the sword upon the counter an instant, while she wove a sure, practiced pattern among the lights. Noise thundered from the walls, voices gibbered ghostlike in unknown languages. Lights flared up and down the pillars, and began to pulse in increasing agitation.

She made it all cease, as quick as a move of her hand, and leaned against the counter, head bowed, like one who had suffered some mortal blow.

Then she turned and lifted her head, her eyes fixed earnestly on Vanye’s.

“You and your brother must quit this place as quickly as you can,” she said. “Liell spoke the truth in one thing: it will be destroyed. The machine is locked in such a way I cannot free it, and Ra-hjemur will be rubble in the time a rider could reach Ivrel. You are free of your oath. You have paid it all. Good-bye.”

And with that she brushed past him and walked quickly down the long aisle alone, headed for the stairs.

“ Liyo!” he cried, stopping her. “Where are you going?”

“He has locked the Gate open on a place of his choosing, and I am going after him. I have not much time: he has a good start on me, and surely he has allowed only what he thinks enough time for himself. But he is timid, this Liell: I am hoping that he has given himself too much grace, too much margin.”

And with that she turned again, and began to walk and more quickly, and at last to run.

Vanye started forward a pace. “Brother,” Erij reminded him. He stopped. She vanished down the stairs.

When the last sound of her footsteps was gone he turned again, of necessity, to face the anger in his brother’s face. He went down upon the chill floor and pressed his forehead to it, making the obeisance his oath made due Erij.

“Your humility is a little late,” said Erij. “Get up. I like to see your eyes when you answer questions.”

He did so.

“Did she tell the truth?” Erij asked then.

“Yes,” said Vanye. “I think it was the truth. Or if you doubt it, at least doubt it from a day’s-ride distance from here. If you see it still standing after that, then it was not the truth.”

“What is this of Gates?”

“I do not know,” he said, “only that sometimes there is another side to the Witchfires and sometimes not, and that once she goes, she will be nowhere we can reach. I am sorry. It was not a thing she explained clearly. But she will not be back. Ivrel is a Gate that will close when this place dies, and after that there will be no more Witchfires, no more Thiyes, no more magics in the world.”

He looked around him at the place, for that complexity was like the living inside of some great beast, though its veins were conduits of lights and its heart and pulse glowed and faded slowly.

“If you do not want to die, Erij,” he said, “I suggest we take her advice and be as far from here as possible when it happens.”

The horses were where they had left them, patiently waiting in the gray dawn, cropping the sparse grass as if there were nothing unusual in the day. Vanye checked the girths and heaved himself up, and Erij did the same. They rode the open and faster road this time, pausing for a view of the great cube of Ra-hjemur, which looked, with its breached gate, like a creature with a mortal wound.

Then they set out together for Morija.

“There is no more lord of Hjemur,” said Vanye at last “You and Baien are all the clan-lords left of any stature at all. It is within your reach to gain the High Kingship without Hjemurn magics after all, and perhaps that will be better for human folk.”

“Baien’s lord is old,” said Erij, “and has a daughter. I do not think that he will want a war to cloud his old age and ruin his land. I will perhaps be able to make an alliance with him. And Chya Roh left no heirs. His people will be less trouble to us. Pyven’s lady is Chya, and with Chya in Koris in our hands, Pyven will submit.” Erij sounded almost cheerful, counting his prospects and reckoning lightly of a few wars.

But Vanye gazed to the road ahead, where it wound out of sight and into view again toward the south, hoping earnestly to see her, seeing her in his mind, at least, as she had ridden that evening out of Aenor-Pyven’s Gate.

“You are not listening,” Erij accused him.

“Aye,” he said, bunking and breaking the spell, and looking again toward Erij.

And ever and again after that, he saw Erij look curiously at him, and there was a growing sourness on Erij’s face, as if whatever alliance there had been to make them brothers this dawn in Ra-hjemur were fast shredding asunder. He held out little hope for his peace as he saw that sullen estimation grow more and more grim.

“There is none of the high-clan blood in Morija left, but us,” said Erij that noon, when the sun was almost warm, and they rode still knee to knee.

Oh Heaven, Vanye thought, looking out upon the sunlight and the hills with regret, now it comes; for he had long since come to the conclusion he was sure would occur to Erij: that, enemies as they were, Erij was mad to flaunt a high-clan prisoner in Morija. Without Ra-hjemur from which to rule, he had not power enough to bear a taint of dishonor—or a rival. Politics and ambitions would swarm about a bastard Chya like flies to honey. Such conclusions as Erij had no doubt reached were dishonorable, better meditated in the dark of night than in such a fair day.

“Bastard that you are,” said Erij, “you could make yourself a threat to me, if you were minded to do so. There is no lord in Chya. It comes to me, bastard brother, that you are heir to Chya, if you were to claim it, and that no lord can be claimed as ilin.”

“I have not laid any claim to Chya,” said Vanye. “I do not think I could, and I do not intend to.”

“They had rather own you than me, I do not doubt it at all,” said Erij. “And you are still the most dangerous man to me in all of Andur-Kursh, so long as you live.”

“I am not,” said Vanye, “because I regard my oath. But you do not regard your own honor enough to trust mine.”

“You did not regard your oath in Ra-hjemur.”

“You were not in danger from Morgaine. I did not have to.”

Erij gazed long at him, then reached across. “Give me your hand,” he said, and Vanye, puzzling, yielded it to his left-handed handclasp. His brother pressed it in almost friendly fashion.

“Leave,” said Erij. “If I hear of you after this I will hunt you down ... or if you come to Morija, I will set Claim on you and let you work off that year you owe me. But I do not think you will come to Morija.”

And he gestured with a nod to the road ahead.

“If she will have you—go.”

Vanye stared at him, then gripped his brother’s strong, dry hand the more tightly before he broke the clasp.

Then he set heels to the horse, dismissing from his mind every thought that he was weaponless and that Morgaine would have opened a wide lead on them during the morning.

He would gain that distance back. He would find her. He realized much later to his grief that he had not even looked back once at his brother, that he had severed that tangled tie without half the pain he thought it must have cost Erij to let him go.

In that loosing, he thought, Erij had paid for everything; he wished that he had spoken some word of thanks.

Erij would have sneered at it.

He did not find her on the road. In the second day, he cut off the track the two had used, and took the one on which Liell had come from Ivrel, the one he thought Morgaine would surely choose. Ivrel was close and there was no more time left for stopping, though he was aching from the ride and the horse’s breath came in great gasps, such that he must dismount and half pull the beast up the steeper places of the trail. The delay tormented him and he began to fear that he had lost the way, that he would lose her once for all.

And yet finally, finally, when he came out upon the height, there stood Ivrel’s great side to be seen, and the barren shoulder of the mountain where the Gate would be. He urged the black to what speed the horse could bear and climbed, sometimes losing sight of his goal, sometimes finding it again, until he entered the forest of twisted pines and lost it altogether.

In the snow were footprints, the old ones of many men, and some of animals, and some of those not good to imagine what had made them; but now and again he could sort out new ones.

Roh-Liell-Zri, upon the black mare, most likely, and Morgaine upon his trail.

Breath hung frozen in the sunlight, and air cut the lungs. He had at last to walk the horse, out of mercy, and scanned the black sickly pines about him, remembering all too keenly that he had no weapons at all, and was too bone weary for headlong flight.

Then through those pines he caught a glimmer of movement, a white movement amid the blaze of sun on snow, and he whipped up his horse and made what speed he could on the trail.

“Wait!” he cried.

She waited for him. He came in beside her breathless with relief, and she leaned from the saddle and reached for his hand.

“Vanye, Vanye, you ought not to have followed me.”

“Are you going through?” he asked.

She looked up at the Gate, shimmering dark again, stars and blackness above them in the daylight. “ Yes,” she said, and then looked down at him. “Do not delay me further. This following me is nonsense. I do not know how the Gate is behaving, whether that will bring me through to the same place that Zri has fled or whether it will fling me out elsewhere. And you do not belong. You were useful for a time. You with your ilin–codes and your holds and your kinships... this is your world, and I needed a man who could maneuver things as I needed them. You have served your purpose. Now there is an end of the matter. You are free, and be glad of it.”

He did not speak. He supposed finally that he merely stared at her, until he felt her hand slip from his arm, and she moved away. He watched her begin the long slope, Siptah refusing it at first. She took firm grip on the reins and began to force the animal against his will, driving him brutally until he decided to go, gathering himself in a long climb into the dark.

And was gone.

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.

He sat still a moment looked about the slope, and considered the tormented trees and the cold, and the long ride to Morija, cast off by her, begging Erij to bear his presence in Andur-Kursh.

And there was pain in every direction but one: as the sword had known the way to its own source, his senses did.

Of a sudden he laid heels to his horse and began to drive the beast upslope. There was only a token refusing. Siptah had gone: the black understood what was expected of him.

The gulf yawned before him, black and starry, without the wind that had howled there before. There was only enough breeze to let him know it was there.

And dark, utter dark, and falling. The horse heaved and twisted under him, clawing for support.

And found it.

They were running again, on a grassy shore, and the air was warm. The horse snorted in surprise, then extended himself to run.

A pale shape was on the hill before them, under a double moon.

“ Liyo!” he shouted. “Wait for me!”

She paused, looking back, then slid off to stand upon the hillside.

He rode in alongside and slid down from his exhausted horse even before the animal had quite stopped moving. Then he hesitated, not knowing whether he would meet joy or rage from her.

But she laughed and flung her arms about him, and he about her, pressing her tightly until she flung back her head and looked at him.

It was the second time he had ever seen her cry.