Gate of Ivrel

CHAPTER II

A FIRE blazed in the shallow cave’s mouth, putting a wall of warmth between them and the driving snow. He did not want the meat, but he was many days weak with hunger, so that his joints ached and the least exertion put a tremor in his muscles. He must sit and smell it cooking, and when she had cooked and offered a bit to him, it looked no different than other meat, and smelled so achingly good that his empty belly ruled his other scruples. A man would not lose his soul for a little bit of venison, however the beast had been slain.

The night was beyond. Occasional snowflakes pelted past the barrier of the fire’s heat, driven on a fierce gust. Outside, the horses, witch-horse and ordinary bay, stood together against the unfriendly wind; and when hot venison had taken the shaking from Vanye’s limbs and put strength into him, he took a portion of what grain he had left and went outside, fed half to each. The gray—of that famous breed of Baien, so men sang—nuzzled his hands as eagerly and warmly as his own little mare. His heart was touched by the beauty of the gray stud. For the moment he forgot the evil and smoothed the pale mane and gazed into the great pale-lashed eyes and thought (for the Nhi were breeders of good horses) that he would much covet the get of that fine animal, in any herd: they were the breed of the lost High Kings of Andur, those great gray horses. But there were no more High Kings, only the lords of clans; and the breed had passed as the glories of Andur had passed.

Now of great kings there remained only the Hjemur-lord, far different than the brave bright kings of golden Koris-sith and Baien, that breed of men apart from clans, and greater. An older thing, a darker thing had stirred to life when the Hjemur-lord arose, and more than an army had gone down to die in Irien.

With that thought he shivered in the ice-edged wind and returned to the fire, to the center of all things unnatural in the night, where Morgaine sat wrapped in her snowy furs, beside her horse’s gear and the dragon-blade glittering in its plain sheath. The silence between them had been as deep as that between old friends.

The wind whirled snow through the cave’s mouth. It was a great storm. He reckoned for the first time that he would have died this night, unsheltered, weak from hunger. Had it not been for the meeting on the road, the deer, the offering of the cave, then he would have been in the open when the storm came down, and he much doubted that his failing strength could have endured an Aenish storm.

There was wood piled up by the door. How it had been cut he was loath to know, only that it gave them warmth. And when he came to put a little more upon the fire, to keep the barrier between them and the insistent wind, he saw Morgaine kneeling upon a place at the back of the cave and seeking for something beneath a pile of small stones.

I have used this place before, she had told him.

He looked in doubtful curiosity and saw that she drew forth a leather sack that was stiff and moldering, and when she poured into her hand it was only powder that came down. She snatched her hand from that as if she had touched something foul, and wiped her fingers on the earth. A bloody streak was upon her arm, parting the black leather of her sleeve where she had thrust the arm forth from the enveloping cloak, and her clean hand stole to that

She sat there shivering, like one in the grip of some great fear. He sank down on his heels near her, puzzled, even pitying her, and wondering in the back of his mind how she had chanced to hurt herself in so short a time: no, it looked old; it was drying. She must have done it while he was busy at the deer’s carcass.

“How long?” she asked him. “How long have I been away?”

“More than a hundred years,” he said.

“I had thought—rather less.” She moved her hand and looked down at the hurt, brushed at it, seemed to decide to ignore it, for it was not deep enough to be dangerous, only painful.

“Wait,” he said, and obtained his own kit, and would gladly have tried to treat the wound for her: he thought he owed her that at least for this night’s shelter. But she would have none of it, and insisted upon her own. He sat and watched uneasily while she drew out her own things, small metal containers, and other things he had no knowledge of. She treated her own injury, and did not bandage it, but a pinkish film covered it when she had done, and it did not bleed. Qujalin medicines, he judged; and perhaps she could not abide honest remedies, or feared they had been blessed, and might be harmful to her.

“How came you by that?” he asked, for it looked like an ax-stroke or sword-cut; but she had no tools, however the wood had been cut, and high on her arm as it was he could not judge how she could have chanced to do it.

“Aenorin,” she said. “Lord Ris Heln Gyr’s-son, he and his men.”

Heln was nearly a hundred years in his own grave. Then he felt an uneasiness at his stomach and well understood the look Morgaine had had. She had ridden out of the Aenorin’s chase and across his path—a hundred years in what by that wound had been the blink of an eye.

It was insane. He bowed down upon his face and then retreated, glad to leave her to her own thoughts.

And because he was saddle-weary and harried beyond any immediate concern of magics or fear of beasts, he wrapped himself in his thin cloak and leaned against the rock wall to sleep.

The crash of a new piece of wood into the fire awakened him, still unrested, and he saw Morgaine brush snow from her cloak and settle again in her accustomed place. Her eyes went to him, fixed unwelcomely upon his, so that he could not pretend he slept

“Is thee rested?” she asked of him, and that curious Korish accent was of long ago, and chilled him more than the wind or the stone at his back.

“Somewhat,” he said, and forced stiff muscles to set him upright. He had slept in armor many a night, and occasionally he had slept colder; but there had been too many days in the saddle lately, and too little rest between, and none at all the night before.

“Vanye,” she said.

“Lady?”

“Come, near the fire. I have questions for thee.”

He did so, not gladly, and settled wrapped in his threadbare cloak and cherished the heat. She sat wrapped in her furs, her face half in shadow, and gazed into his eyes.

“Heln found this place,” she said. “A hunter I did not kill told him. Aenor-Pyven rose in arms then. They sent an army after me—” She laughed, the merest breath. “An army, to take this little cave. Of course I knew their coming. How not? They filled the southern field. I fled at once—yet it was close. But they even dared the valley of Stones; so I fled where they could not—would not—follow. And there I must wait until someone freed me. I am no older; I knew nothing of the years. But things have gone to dust, else the horses and we would fare better tonight. Thee fears me—”

It was so, it was clearly so: from a man his enemy he would have resented those words; Morgaine he feared and he was not ashamed. His heart beat painfully at each direct glance of those gray, unhuman eyes. If he did not know of a certainty that he would die, he would flee this little place and her company; but there was the storm. It scowled outside with the fury of winter. He knew the mountains. Sometimes there was no break in the snow for days. Men unprotected died, turned up in spring all twisted and stiff in the melting snow, along with carcasses of horses and deer that the wolves had somehow missed.

“There is no harm in words between us,” she said. She offered him wine of her own flask. He took it hesitantly, but the night was chill, and he had already shared food with her. He drank a little and gave it back. She wiped the mouth fastidiously and drank also, and stopped the flask again.

“I beg thee tell me the end of my tale,” she said. “I was not able to know. What became of the men I knew? What was it I did?”

He stared into her eyes, this most cursed of all enemies of Andur-Kursh, the traitor guide that had sent ten thousand men to die and sunk half the Middle Kingdoms into ruin. And those words would not come to him. He would easily say them of her to someone else: but in that fair and unguarded face there was something that unfolded to him, that strangled the curse in his throat.

He found no words for her at all.

“I do not think then,” she said, “that it has a pleasant ending, since thee does not want to say. But say it, Nhi Vanye.”

“There is no more to tell,” he said. “After Irien, after so great a defeat for Andur-Kursh, Hjemur took Koris, took all the lands from Alis Kaje east. You were not to be found, not after the chase the Aenorin gave you. You vanished. What allies you had left surrendered. All that followed you died. They say that there were prosperous villages and holds in south Koris in your day. There are none now. It is as desolate as these mountains. And Irien itself is cursed ground, and no one enters there, even of Hjemur’s men. There is rumor,” he added, “that the Thiye who rules now is the same that ruled then. I do not know if that is true. The Hjemur-lord has always been called Thiye Thiye’s-son. But the country people say that it is the same man, kept young a hundred years.”

“It could be done,” she said in a low and joyless voice.

That is the end of it,” he said. “Everyone died.” And he thrust from his mind what she said of Thiye, for it occurred to him that she was living proof that it could be done, that things could be done for which he wanted no explanation. He must share this place with her: he wanted to share nothing else.

She let him be then, asking no more questions, and he retreated to the other side of the fire and curled up again to sleep.

The morning came, miserable and still spitting snow. But soon there began to be a break in the clouds, which cheered Vanye’s heart. He had feared one of those storms that stayed for days, that might seal him in this place with her unwelcome company, while the poor horses froze outside.

And she cooked strips of venison over the fire for their breakfast, and offered him a little of the wine too. He cut bits from the steaming venison with his knife against his thumb, and watched her with amusement as she, more delicate, cut hers most awkwardly into bits, and dusted each piece and inspected it, and only then cooked it further and prised it off me dagger tip for eating, tiny bites and manageable.

Then she wrapped up the rest in a square of leather that he had of his gear for the purpose.

“Will you not keep some,” he asked, “or are you taking it?”

“What means the white scarf?” she asked him.

He swallowed the last bit of venison as if it had turned to dust in his mouth. All at once the rest that he had eaten and drunk turned to sickness in his belly.

“I am ilin,” he said.

“Thee has sheltered with me, taken food,” she said. “And the Chya of Koris gave me clan-welcome, and gave me lord-right, ilin.”

He bowed his head to his hands upon the floor. She spoke the truth: alone of women, this was true of Morgaine, killer of armies. He raged at himself, even while his stomach knotted in fear; he had not even reckoned of it, for her being a woman; he had sheltered at her fire as he would have taken shelter at that of some Aenish farmwife. Such folk had no claim to make against an ilin.

Morgaine did.

“I beg exception,” he said from that position. He was entitled to ask that, and he had no shame in asking. He dared look up at her. “I have kinsmen in Aenor-Pyven. I was going there. Lady, I am exiled in every province of Morija—I dare not go back there. I am little help to anyone.” He took the helmet from his head—he had set it on again to go out into the cold—and, which he had not done, even for sleeping, he unlaced his coif at the throat and slipped it back from the shame of his shorn head, the fair brown hair falling free about his ears and across his brow. “I am outlawed in my clan: the Nhi and the Myya hunt me. So I became ilin. But I can find shelter only in Aenor-Pyven, and there you have said yourself you cannot go.”

“For what was this done to thee?” she asked him, and he saw that he had succeeded in bringing shock even to the eyes of Morgaine.

“For murder, for brother-killing.” He had told this to none, had avoided men and shelters even of country folk. The words came with difficulty to his lips. “It was a fight he forced, lady, but I killed my brother—my half-brother—and he was Myya. So there are two clans with blood-debt against me, and I am no help to you. I am grateful for the shelter—I thank you: but it is no use to you to make claim against me. Only name me some reasonable service and I will do that for you in payment. You cannot stay here, you are cursed in every hold in Andur-Kursh, and no one that hears your name or sees you will refrain from your life. Listen, for all that you are, you have been generous with me, and I am giving you good advice for it: the pass south of here leads through Aenor, and I am bound that way. I will somehow guide you through that land. I will bring you safely to the south of Aenor, where lands are warm, into Eriel, into the plains of Lun. They are savages that live there, but at least they have no blood feud with you and you can live there in safety. Listen to me and let me pay you with that thanks. That is the best that I can do for you, and I will do that honestly, grudging nothing.”

“I refuse to grant exception,” she said then, which was her right.

He swore, both foully and tearfully, and left her and went out and laid hands upon his horse’s halter. He had time to think then, of the holy oath he had already made as ilin, and that oath-breaking was no light thing for his honor and least of all for his soul. He laid hand against the bay’s rough cheek, and his head against its warm neck, and stayed there, shivering in the cold, but numb to it. Easy it would be if he could die there in the wind, robbed of warmth, to sink into the numbing snow and simply die, untouched by qujalin oaths.

New snow crunched beneath Morgaine’s boots. She came and stood beside him, waiting for him to decide which he would, to yield up his soul by oath-breaking, or to risk it by serving the likes of her. For a man who was lost in either case, the only thing left was life: and life was sure to be longer by running now than by staying with Morgaine Frosthair.

Then he thought of the deer, and already he felt a twitching at the back of his shoulders as if she sought his life. He would not be able to outrace that: other weapons, perhaps, but not the thing that had slain the deer and left no wound.

“It is lawful,” she said, “what I ask.”

“With you,” he objected, “that year is likely to be the last of my life. And after that, I would be a marked man in Andur-Kursh.”

“I will admit that is true. My own life is likely to be no longer. I have no pity to spare for thee.”

She held out her hand for his. He yielded it, and she drew the ivory-hilted Honor blade from her belt and cut deeply, but not wide: the dark blood welled up slowly in the cold. She set her mouth to the wound, and then he did the same, the salt hot taste of his own blood knotting his stomach in revulsion. Then she went inside, and brought ash to stop it with, smearing it with the clan-glyph of the Chya, writ in his blood and her hearth-ash across his hand, the ancient custom of Claiming.

Then he bowed to his forehead in the burning snow, and the ice numbed the fire in his hand and made it cease throbbing. She had certain responsibilities for him now: to see that he did not starve, neither he nor his horse, though certain of the hedge-lords were scant of that obligation, and kept the miserable ilinin they claimed lean and hungry and their horses in little better state when the ilinin were in hall.

Morgaine was of poorer estate: she had no hall to shelter either of them, and the clan she signed him—his own birth-clan—would as soon kill him as not. For his part, he must simply follow orders: no other law bound him now. He could even be ordered against homeland or blood kin, though it was no credit to the lord’s honor if an ilin were so cruelly used. He must fight her enemies, tend her hearth—whatever things she required of him until a year had passed from the day of his oath.

Or she might simply name him a task to accomplish, and he would be bound to that task even beyond his year’s time, until it was done. And that also was exceedingly cruel, but it was according to the law.

“What service?” he asked of her. “Will you let me guide you from here southward?”

“We go north,” she said.

“Lady, it is suicide,” he cried. “For you and for me.”

“We go north,” she said. “Come, I will bind up the hand.”

“No,” he said. He clutched snow in his fist, stopping the bleeding, and held the injured hand against him. “I want no medicines of yours. I will keep my oath. Let me tend to myself.”

“I will not insist,” she said.

Another thought, more terrible, occurred to him. He bowed in request another time, delaying her return to the cave.

“What else?” she asked him.

“If I die you are supposed to give me honorable burial. I do not want that.”

“What—not to be buried?”

“Not by qujalin rites. No, I had rather the birds and the wolves than that.”

She shrugged, as if that did not at all offend her. “Birds and wolves will likely care for both of us before all is done,” she said. “I am glad thee sees the matter that way. I probably should have no time for amenities. Care for thyself and gather thy gear and mine. We are leaving this place.”

“Where are we bound?”

“Where I will to go.”

He bowed acceptance with a heavy heart, knowing of increasing certainty that he could not reason with her. She meant to die. It was cruel to have laid claim to an ilin under that circumstance, but that was the way of his oath. If a man survived his year, he was purged of crimes and disgrace. Heaven would have exacted due penance for his sins.

Many did not survive. It was presumed Heaven had exacted punishment. They were counted honorable suicides.

He bound up his hand with the cleanly remedies that he knew, though it hurt with dull persistence; and then he gathered up all their belongings, his and hers, and saddled both the horses. The sky was beginning to clear. The sun shone down on him as he worked, and glittered coldly off the golden hilt of the blade he hung upon the gray’s saddle. The dragon leered at him, fringed mouth agape, clenching the blade in his teeth; his spread legs made the guard; his back-winding tail guarded the fingers.

He feared even to touch it. No Korish work, that, whatever hand had made the plain sheath. It was alien and otherly, and when he ventured in curiosity to ease the awful thing even a little way from its sheath, he found strange letters on the blade itself like a shard of glass—even touching it threatened injury. No blade ever existed of such substance: and yet it seemed more perilous than fragile.

He slipped it quickly back into its sheath, guilty as he heard Morgaine’s tread behind him.

“Let it be,” she said harshly. And when he stared at her, knowing of a surety he had done wrong, she said more gently: “It is a gift of one of my companions—a vanity. It pleased him. He had great skill. But if thee dislikes things qujalin, then keep hands from it.”

He bowed, avoiding her eyes, and began working at his own gear, tying his few possessions into place at the back of the saddle.

The blade’s name was Changeling. He remembered it of the songs, and wondered could a smith have given so unlucky a name to a blade, even were he qujal. His own sword was of humbler make, honest steel, well-tempered, nameless as befitted a common soldier or a lord’s bastard son.

He hung it on his saddle, swung up to mount and waited upon Morgaine, who was hardly slower.

“Will you not listen to me?” He was willing to try reason a last time. “There is no safety for you in the north. Let us go south to Lun. There are tribes there that know nothing of you. You would be able to make your way among them. I have heard tell that there are cities far to the south. I would take you there. You could live. In the north, they will hunt you and kill you.”

She did not even answer him, but guided the gray downhill.