Gate of Ivrel

CHAPTER III

THE WOLVES had been at the deer’s carcass in the night, after the snow had ceased to fall so quickly. The area around the tattered bones were marked and patterned with the paws of wolves, and some of those tracks were wondrously large. Vanye looked down as their own trail crossed the trampled snow, and he saw the larger tracks he knew beyond doubt for beasts of Korish woods, more hound than wolf.

The carnage cast a further pall upon the morning, which was clearing to that ice-crystal brightness that blinded the senses, veiling all sins of ugliness into brilliance under a blue sky; but already the veil had been soiled for them, death with them, four-footed. Of natural wolves he had no great fear—they seldom bothered men, save in the most desperate winters. But Koris-beasts were another breed. They killed. They killed and never meant to eat—a perversion in nature.

Morgaine looked down at the tracks too, and seemed unperturbed; perhaps, he thought, she had never seen the like in her time, before Thiye learned to warp the rightness of nature into shapes he chose. Perhaps magics had grown more powerful than she remembered, and she did not know the dangers toward which they rode.

Or perhaps—it was the worse thought—he himself failed to realize with what he rode, knee-to-knee and peaceful on this bright morning. He feared her for her reputation: that was natural. And yet, he thought, perhaps he did not hold fear enough of her presence. She could kill without touching and without wound: he could not rid his mind of the deer’s wide-eyed look that ought by rights not to have been dead.

A gnawed bone lay athwart their path. His horse shied from it.

They rode back into the valley of the Stones, crossing the frozen stream, cracking the yet thin ice, and rode the winding trail beside the great gray rocks, under the shadow of the mound called Morgaine’s Tomb. Despite the snow, the sky shimmered between the two carven pillars with the look of air above the heated rocks.

Morgaine looked up at it as they rode. There was upon her face a curious loathing. He began to understand that it had been far from Morgaine’s will to have ridden into such a thing with Heln’s men behind her.

“Who freed you?” he asked suddenly.

She looked back at him, puzzled.

“You said that someone must free you from this place. What is it? How were you held there? And who freed you?”

“It is a Gate,” she said, and into his mind there flashed the nightmare image of white rider against the sun: it was hard to remember such madness. Like dreams, it tended to fade, for the sake of sanity.

“If it is a gate,” he said, “then from where did you come?”

“I was between until something should disturb the field. That is the way with Gates that are not set. It is like a shallow pool of time, ever so shallow. I was washed up again, on this shore.”

He gazed up at it, could not understand, and yet it was as good an explanation of what he had seen as any other.

“Who freed you?” he asked.

“I do not know,” she said. “I rode in with men at my heels; a shadow passed me; I rode out again. It was like closing my eyes. No—not that either. It was just between. Only it was thicker than any between I have ever ridden. I think that thee was—thee says, you–were the one that did free me. But I do not know how, and I doubt that you know.”

“It is impossible,” he said. “I never came near the Stones.”

“I would not wager anything on that memory,” she said.

She turned her head; he rode behind her here, for the path was narrow at the bottom of the bin. He had view of the gray’s white swaying tail and Morgaine’s white-cloaked and insolent back; and the presence of this structure she called a Gate cast a pall upon all his thoughts. He had leisure to repent his oath in this ill-omened place, and knew that in a year with Morgaine he was bound to see and hear many things an honest and once religious man would not find comfortable.

He had a sudden and uncomfortable vision as he saw her riding ahead of him upon that stretch of the old paved road up between the lesser monoliths: that here was another kind of anachronism, like a man visiting the nursery of his childhood, surrounded by sad toys. Morgaine was indeed out of the long-ago; and yet it was known that the qujal had been evil and wise and able to work things that men had happily forgotten. Not needing transport, not needing such things as mortal weapons, qujal only wished and practiced sorceries, and what they wished became substance—until they grew yet more evil, and ruined themselves.

And yet Morgaine rode, live and powerful, and carried under her knee a blade of forgotten arts, in the ruins of things she might well have known as they once had been.

It was said that Thiye Thiye’s-son was immortal, renewing his youth by taking life from others, and that he would never die so long as he could find unfortunates on whom to practice this. He had tended to scoff at the rumor: all men died.

But Morgaine had not, not in more than a hundred years, and still was young. She found the hundred years acceptable. Perhaps she had known longer sleeps than this.

The higher passes were choked with snow. Gray and bay fought drifts, struggling with such effort that they made little time. They must often pause to rest the animals. Yet by afternoon they seemed to have made it through the worst places, and without meeting any of the Myya or seeing tracks of beasts.

It was good fortune. It was bound not to last.

“Lady,” he said during one of their rests, “if we go on as we are we will be in the valley of Morij Erd; and if we enter there, chances are you will not find welcome for either of us. This horse of mine is out of that land; and Gervaine its lord is Myya and he has sworn a great oath to have my head on a pike and other parts of me similarly distributed. There is no good prospect for you or for me in this direction.”

She smiled slightly. She had been in lighter humor since the morning, when they had quitted the valley of Stones and entered the more honest shade of pine woods and unhewn crags. “We bear east before then, toward Koris.”

“Lady, you know your way well enough,” he protested glumly. “Why was it needful to snare me for a guide?”

“How should I know otherwise that Gervaine is lord of Morij Erd?” she asked, still smiling. The eyes did not. “Besides, I did not say that you were to be a guide in these lands .”

“What, then?”

But she did not answer. She had that habit when he asked what displeased her. More human folk might dispute, protest, argue. Morgaine was simply silent, and against that there was no argument, only deep frustration.

He climbed back into his saddle and saw thereafter that they bore more easterly, toward east Koris, toward that land that was most firmly in Thiye’s hands.

Toward dusk they were in pine forest again. Gray-centered clouds sailed across the moon, increasingly frequent as the night deepened, and yet they rode, fearful of more storms, fearful for the horses, for there was little grain remaining in both their saddlebags, and they wished to make what easy time they could, hopeful of coming to the lower country before the winter set a firm grip on the passes before them. The bright moon showed them the way.

But at last the clouds were thick and the trail became hardly passable, trees crowding close and obscuring the sky with their bristling shadow. A downed tree beside the road promised them at least a drier place to rest, and wood for fire. They stopped and Vanye hacked off smaller branches and heaped them into a proper form for a damp-wood fire.

How the fire came to be, Vanye did not see: he turned his back to fetch more wood, and turned again and it was started, a tiny tongue of fire within the damp branches. It smoked untidily: wet wood; but it remained, Morgaine leaning close to encourage it, and he gingerly fed it tinder.

“There is a certain danger in this,” he advised Morgaine, looking at her closely over the little fire. “There may be men hereabouts to see the light or smell the smoke, and no men in these woods are friendly to any other. I do not care to meet what this may attract, and it is best we keep it small and not keep it the night long.”

She opened her hand and in the dim light showed him a black and shiny thing, queer and ugly. It revolted him: he could not determine why, only that it would not be made by any hand he knew, and there was a foul unloveliness about the thing in her fair slim hand. “This is sufficient for brigands and for beasts,” she said. “And I trust you are somewhat skilled with sword and with bow. Ilinin otherwise do not long survive.”

He nodded silent acknowledgement

“Fetch our gear,” she bade him.

He did so, clearing snow from the great tree and resting all that could be harmed by damp upon that. She began to make a meal for them of the almost frozen meat, while he doled out a bit of the remaining grain to the poor horses. They nudged him in the ribs and coaxed pitiably, wanting the rest of it: but he steeled his heart against them, grieved and out of appetite for the good venison they had. Kurshin that he was, he could not eat with his animals in want. A man was to be judged by his horses and the fitness of them; and had it been grain they themselves were eating he would gladly have given them his share and gone hungry.

He went and settled glumly by the fire, working his stiffening hand, which was affected by the cold. “We must somehow get down from this height,” he said, “by tomorrow, even if it takes us by some more dangerous road. We are out of grain but for one day. These horses cannot force drifts like these and go hungry too. We will kill them if we keep on.”

She nodded quietly. “We are on a short road,” she said.

“Lady, I do not know this way, and I have ridden the track from Morija to Koris’s border to Erd several ways.”

“It is a road I knew,” she said, and looked up at the clouding sky, the pinetops black against the veiled moon. “It was less overgrown then.”

He made a gesture against evil, unthought and reflexive. He thought then that it would anger her. Instead she glanced down briefly, as if avoiding reply.

“Where are we going?” he asked her. “Are we looking for something?”

“No,” she said. “I know where it lies.”

“Lady,” he asked of her, for she seemed about to sink into another of her silences. He made a bow, earnestly; he could not bear another day of that. “Lady, where? Where are we going?”

‘To Ivrel.” And when in dread he opened his mouth to protest that madness: “I have not told you yet,” she said, “what service I claim of thee.”

“No,” he agreed, “you have not.”

“It is this. To kill the Hjemur-lord Thiye and to destroy his citadel if I die.”

A laugh escaped him, became a sob. This was the thing she had promised the six lords she would do. Ten thousand men had died in that attempt, so that many surmised she had never been enemy to Thiye of Hjemur, but friend and servant-witch, set out to ruin the Middle Lands.

“Ah, I will go with thee,” she said. “ I do not ask you to do this thing alone; but if I am lost, that is your service to me.”

“Why?” he asked abruptly. “For revenge? What wrong have I done you, lady?”

“I came to seal the Gates,” she said, “and if I should be lost, that is the means to do it. I do not think I can teach you otherwise. But take my weapons and strike at the heart of Hjemur’s hold: that would do it as well as I ever could.”

“If you wish to ruin the Gates,” he said bitterly, for he did not half believe her, “there was a beginning to be made at Aenor-Pyven’s fires, and you rode past it.”

“Pointless to meddle with it. They are all dangerous; but the master Gate is that you call the Witchfires: without it all the others must fade. They all once led to there: now they only exist, without depth or direction. They are the one thing that Thiye has not fully discovered how to manage. He cannot stop or use them singly. Thiye is no blood of mine, but he has had instruction. He plays with things he only half understands, although it may be,” she added, “that a hundred years may have increased his wisdom.”

“I understand nothing at all,” he protested. “Set me free of this thing. It does no honor to you to ask such a thing of me. I will go with you, I swear this: I will do you ilin’s service until you have seen through what you will do, no matter how mean or how miserable things you ask of me. I swear that, even beyond my year, even to Ivrel, if that is where you are going. But do not ask me to do this thing and hang my oath as ilin on it.”

“All these things,” she said softly, “I have of the oath you have already given me.” And then her voice became almost kindly: “Vanye, I am desperate. Five of us came here and four are dead, because we did not know clearly what we faced. Not all the old knowledge is dead here; Thiye has found teachers for himself, and perhaps he has indeed grown in knowledge: in some part I hope he has. His ignorance is as dangerous as his malice. But if I send you, I will not send you totally ignorant.”

He bowed his head. “Do not tell me these things. If you need a right arm, I am there. No more than that.”

“Well enough,” she said, “well enough for now. I will not force any knowledge on thee that does not have to be.”

And she applied knife to a twig and sharpened it to hold the strips of venison.

He slipped his helmet off, for it hurt his brow from long wearing, but he did not slip the coif: it was cold and shame still prevented him, even in her sight. He wrapped the cloak about him and undertook to cook his own food, and shared wine with her. He went over to the log after that, and stretched himself upon the higher part of it, and she upon the lower a time later. It was a peculiar sort of bed, but better by far than the cold snow below them; and he tucked himself up like a warrior on a bier, his longsword clasped upon his breast, for he did not want to let it out of his grasp on this night, and in this place. He did not even keep it in its sheath.

And late, when the fire had become very low, he became uneasy with the impression that there was something stirring besides the wind that cracked the icy branches, something large and of weight; and he strained his eyes and hearing and held his breath to see and listen to what it might be.

Suddenly he saw Morgaine’s hand seek toward her belt beneath her cloak, and he knew that she was awake.

“I will put wood upon the fire,” he said, this also for any watcher. He rolled off the log into a crouch, almost expecting a rush of something.

Brush cracked. Snow crunched, rapidly receding.

He looked at Morgaine.

“It was no wolf,” she said. “Go feed the fire, and keep an eye to the horses. If we ride out now we are perhaps no better target than we are sitting here, but I fear this trail has changed too much to chance it in the dark.”

It was an uneasy night thereafter. The clouds grew thicker. Toward morning there came the first siftings of snow.

Vanye swore, heartbreakingly, with feeling. He hated the cold like death itself; it closed in about them until all the world was white, and they drifted through the veiling wind as they rode, like wraiths, nearly losing one another upon occasion, until the lowering sky ceased to sift down on them and they had an afternoon free of misery.

The trail ceased to be a trail at all, yet Morgaine still professed to know the way: she had, she avowed, ridden it only a few days ago, when trees were still young that now were old, where others stood that now did not, and the path was fair and well-ridden. Yet she insisted she would not mistake their way.

And toward evening they did indeed come to what seemed a proper road, or the remnant of one, and made a camp in a pleasant place that was at least sheltered from the rising wind, a hollow among rocks that looked out upon an open meadow—rare in these hills. With the wind up and no dry bed for their rest, he did what he could with pine boughs, and tried beneath the snow for grass for the horses, but it was too deep, and iced. He fed the animals the last of the grain, wondering what would become of them on the morrow, and then returned to the fire that Morgaine had made, there to sit hunched in his cloak like a winter bird, miserable and dejected. He slept early, taking what rest he could until Morgaine nudged him with her foot. Thereafter she slept in the warm place he had quitted, and he sat slumped against a rock and wrapped his arms and legs about his longsword, trying against his weariness to hold himself alert.

He nodded, unintended, jerked erect again. One of the horses snorted. He thought that he himself had startled it by his sudden movement, but the uneasiness nagged at him.

Then he rose up with unsheathed sword in hand and walked out to see the horses.

A weight hit his back, snarling and spitting and sounding human. He cried out and spun, wrist shocked as the sword bit bone; and something went loping off, hunched and shadowy in the dark. There were others joining it in its retreat. He saw a light flash, spun about to see Morgaine.

For an instant he cringed, fearing what she held no less than he feared beasts out of Koris, and still trembling in every limb from the attack.

She waited for him, and he came back to her, knelt down on the mat of boughs and zealously cleaned his sword in snow and rubbed it dry. He loathed the blood of Koris-things upon the clean steel. His hurts were numb; he hoped that there had not been any to break the skin. He did not think they had pierced the mail shirt.

“These are not natural beasts,” she said.

“No,” he agreed. “They are far from natural. But they can die by natural weapons.”

“Is thee hurt?”

“No,” he judged, surprised, even pleased that she had asked; he nodded his head in a half-bow, tribute to courtesy which liyo did not owe ilin. “No, I do not think so.”

She settled again. “Will rest? I will wake a while.”

“No,” he said again. “I could not sleep.”

She nodded, settled, and curled herself back to sleep.

The snows had passed by morning; the sun rose clear and bright upon them, beginning even to melt a little of the snow, and they took their way down the other side of the mountain ridge, among pines and rocks and increasing openness of the road.

Upon a height they suddenly had view of lower lands, of white shading into green, where lesser altitudes had gained less snow, and forest lay as far as the eye could see into lesser Koris and into the lower lands.

Far away beyond the haze lay the ominous cone of Ivrel, but it was much too far to see. There were only the hazy white caps of Alis Kaje, mother of eagles, and of Cedur Maje, which were the mountain walls of Morija, dividing Kursh from Andur, Thiye’s realms from those of men.

They rode easily this day, found grass for the horses and stopped to rest a time, rode on farther and in lighter spirits. They came upon a fence, a low shepherd’s fence of rough stones, the first indication that they had found of human habitation.

It was the first sight of anything human that Vanye had seen since the last brush of a Myya arrow, and he was glad to see the evidence of plain herder folk, and breathed easier. In the last few days and in such company as he now rode one could forget humanity, farms and sheep and normal folk.

Then there was a little house, a homely place with rough stone walls and a garden that had gone to weeds, snow-covered in patches. The shutters hung.

Morgaine shook her head, incredulity in her eyes.

“What was this place?” he asked her.

“A farm,” said Morgaine, “a fair and pleasant one.” And then: “I spent the night here—hardly a month of my life ago. They were kindly folk who lived here.”

He thought to himself that they must also have been fearless to have sheltered Morgaine after Irien; and he saw by leaning round in his saddle when they had passed to the far side of the house, that the back portion of the roof had fallen in.

Fire? he wondered. It was not a surprising vengeance taken on people that had sheltered the witch. Morgaine had an uncommon history of disasters where she passed, most often to the innocent.

She did not see. She rode ahead without looking back, and he let his bay—he called the beast Mai, as all his horses would be Mai—overtake the gray. They rode knee to knee, morose and silent Morgaine was never joyous company. This sight made her melancholy indeed.

Then, upon a sudden winding of the trail, as the pines began to crowd close upon them and upon the little fence, there sat two ragged children.

Male and female they seemed to be, raggle-taggle, shag-haired little waifs of enormous dark eyes and pinched cheeks, sitting on the fence itself despite the snow. They scrambled up, eyes pools of distress, stretching out bony hands.

“Food, food,” they cried, “for charity.”

The gray, Siptah, reared up, lashing with his hooves; and Morgaine reined him aside, narrowly missing the boy. She had hard shift to hold the animal, who shied, wide-nostrilled and round-eyed until his haunches brought up against the wall upon the other side, and Vanye curbed his Mai with a hard hand, cursing at the reckless children. Such waifs were not an uncommon sight in Koris. They begged, stole shamelessly.

There but for Rijan, Vanye thought occasionally: lord’s bastards sometimes came to other fates than he had known before his exile. The poor were frequent in the hills of Andur, clan-less and destitute, and poor girls’ fatherless children generally came to ill ends. If they survived childhood they grew up as bandits in earnest.

And the girl perhaps would spawn more of her own kind, misery breeding misery.

They could not be more than twelve, the pair of them, and they seemed to be brother and sister—perhaps twins. They had the same wolf-look in their eyes, the same pointed leanness to their faces as they huddled together away from the dangerous hooves.

“Food,” they still pleaded, holding out each a hand.

“We have enough to spare.” Vanye directed his words to Morgaine, a request, for their saddlebags were still heavy with the frozen venison of days before. He pitied such as these children, loathsome as they were, always gave them charity when he could—for luck, remembering what he was.

And when Morgaine consented with a nod he leaned across and lifted the saddlebag from Siptah’s gray back and was about to open it when the girl, venturing close to Mai, snatched his saddleroll off the rear of the saddle, slashing one of its bindings.

He cursed volubly, wiser than to drop their food and give chase to one while the boy lingered: he tossed the leather-wrapped packet at Morgaine, flung his leg over the horn. The boy fled too, vaulting the wall. Vanye went close after him.

“Have a care,” Morgaine wished him.

But the fleeing urchins dropped his belongings. Content with that, he paused to gather things up, annoyed that they returned to jeer at him like the naughty children they were, dancing about him.

He snatched as the boy darted too close to him, meaning no more than to cuff him and shake him to sober sense; the boy twisted in his grip and gave forth a stream of curses, and the girl with a shriek rushed at him and clawed at his hand upon the boy—a bodkin in her hand. It pierced deep, enough that he snatched back his hand.

They shrieked and ran, leaving him with the spoils, and vanished among the trees. He was still cursing under his breath when he returned to Morgaine, sucking at the painful wound the little minx had dealt his hand.

“Children of imps,” he muttered. “Thieves. Misgotten brigands.” He had lost face before his liyo, his lady-lord, and swung up into Mai’s saddle with sullen grace, having tied his gear behind. Until this time he had felt unworthily used, taken in treachery and unworthily on her part: it was the first time he had to feel that he had fallen short in his obligation, and that made him doubly debted, disgracing both himself and his liyo.

And then he began to feel strange, like a man having drunk too much wine, his head humming and his whole person strangely at variance with all that was about him.

He gazed at Morgaine in alarm, reluctant to plead for help, but suddenly he felt he needed it. He could not understand what was the matter with his senses. It was like the onset of fever. He swayed in the saddle.

Morgaine’s slim arm stayed him. She put Siptah close to him, holding him. He heard her voice speaking sharply to him and sternly ordering him to hold himself up.

He centered his weight and slumped, wit enough to do that, at least, distributing his failing body over Mai’s neck. The saddlehorn was painful; the bending cut off his wind. He could not even summon the strength in his arms to deal with that.

Morgaine was afoot. She had his injured hand. He felt pain in it, distantly, felt her warm mouth touch it. She dealt with it like snakebite, spitting out the poison, cursing at him or at her own fell spirits in a tongue he could not understand, which frightened him.

He tried to help her. He could not think of anything for a time, and was surprised to find that she had moved again, and was upon Siptah, leading his horse by the reins, and that they were riding again upon the snowy road. She had on his own plain cloak: the furs were warming him.

He clung to the saddle until his numb body finally told him that she had bound him so that he could not fall. He let himself go then, and yielded to the horse’s motion. Thirst plagued him. He could not summon the will to ask for anything. He was dimly aware of interludes of travel, interspersed with darkness.

And the darkness was growing in the sky.

He was dying. He became sure of it. It began to trouble him that he might die and she forget her promise and send him into the hereafter with alien rites. He was terrified at the thought: for that terror alone he refused to die. He fought every lapse into unconsciousness. At times he almost gained will and wit enough to speak to her, but all his words came out twisted, and she generally ignored him, assuming him fevered, or not caring.

Then he knew that there were riders about them. He saw the crest upon him that led them, that of wolf with a deer within its jaws, and he knew the mark and tried desperately to warn her.

Still even they took his words for raving. Morgaine fell in with them, and they were escorted down into the vale of Koris, toward Ra-leth.