Gate of Ivrel

Vanye did not look at him, only listened, finding his brother’s voice unpleasantly like that of Leth Kasedre. The ma

Erij nudged him with his foot. “He never did forgive you, you know.”

“I did not expect that he would,” Vanye said without turning around.

“He never forgave me either,” said Erij after a moment, “for being the one of us two legitimate sons that lived. And for being less than perfect afterward. Father loved perfection—in women, in horses—in his sons. You disappointed him first. And scarred me. He hated leaving Nhi to a cripple.”

Vanye could bear it no longer. He turned upon his knees and made the bow he had never paid his brother, that of respect due his head-of-clan, pressing his brow to the stones. Then he straightened, looked up in desperate appeal. “Let me ride out of here, brother. I have duty to her. she was not well, and I have an oath to her that I have to keep. If I survive that, then I will come back, and we will settle matters.”

Erij only looked at him. He thought that perhaps this was what Erij was seeking after all, that he lose his pride. Erij smiled gently.

“Go to your room,” he said.

Vanye swore, angry and miserable, and rose up and did as he was bidden, back to the wretchedness of Handrys’s room, back to dust and ghosts and filth, forced to sleep in Handrys’s bed, and wear Handrys’s clothes, and pace the floor in loneliness.

It rained that night. Water splashed in through the crack in the unpainted and rotting shutters, and thunder cracked alarmingly as it always did off the side of the mountains. He squinted against the lightning flashes and stared out into the relief of hills against the clouds, wondering how Morgaine fared, whether she lived or had succumbed to her wound, and whether she had managed to find shelter. In time, the rain turned to sleet, and the thunder continued to roll.

By morning a little crust of snow lay on everything, and Ra-morij’s ancient stones were clean. But traffic back and forth in the courtyard soon began, and tracked the ground into brown. Snow never stayed long in Morija, except in Alis Kaje, or the cap of Proeth.

It would, he thought, make things easier for any that followed a trail, and that thought made him doubly uneasy.

All that day, as the day before, no one came, not even to supply him with food. And in the evening came the summons that he expected, and he must again sit with Erij at table, he at one side and Erij at the other.

This evening there was a Chya longbow in the middle of the table amid the dishes and the wine.

“Am I supposed to ask the meaning of it?” Vanye said finally.

“Chya tried our border in the night. Your prediction was true: Morgaine does have unusual followers.”

“I am sure,” said Vanye, “that she did not summon them.”

“We killed five of them,” said Erij, self-pleased.

“I met a man in Ra-leth,” said Vanye, thin-lipped, the while he poured himself wine, “whose image you have grown to be, legitimate brother, heir of Rijan. Who kept rooms as you keep them, and guests as you keep them, and honor as you keep it.”

Erij seemed amused by that, but the cover was thin. “Bastard brother, your humor is sharp this evening. You are growing over-confident in my hospitality.”

“Brother-killing will be no better for you than it was to me,” Vanye said, keeping his voice quiet and calm, far more so than he felt inside. “Even if you are able to keep your hall well filled with Myya, like those fine servants of yours the other side of the door—it is Nhi that you rule. You ought to remember that. Cut my throat and there are Nhi who will not forget it.”

“Do you think so?” Erij returned, leaning back. “You have no direct kin in Nhi, bastard brother: only me. And I do not think Chya will be able to do anything—if they cared, which I much doubt they do. And she was quick enough to leave you. I would that I knew what there was in the witch that could turn the likes of you into the faithful servant, Vanye the self-serving, Vanye the coward. And no bed-sharing, either. That is a great sorcery, that you would give that loyal a service to anyone. You were always much better at ambushes.”

Some that Erij said of him he owned for the truth: younger brother against the older, bastard against the heir-sons, he had not always stayed by the terms of honor. And they had laid ambushes of their own, the more so after his nurse died and he came to take up residence in the fortress of Ra-morij.

That was, he recalled, the time when they had ceased to be brothers: when he came to live in the fortress, and they perceived him not as poor relation, but as rival. He had not understood clearly how it was at the time. He had been nine.

Erij was twelve, Handrys thirteen: it was at that age that boys could be most mindfully, mindlessly cruel.

“We were children,” Vanye said. “Things were different.”

“When you killed Handrys,” said Erij, “you were plain enough.”

“I did not want to kill him,” Vanye protested. “Father said he never struck to kill, but I did not know that. Erij, he drove at me: you saw, you saw it. And I never would have struck for you.”

Erij stared at him, cold and void. “Except that my hand chanced to be shielding him after he had got his death-wound. He was down, bastard brother.”

“I was too pressed to think. I was wrong. I am guilty. I do penance for it.”

“Actually,” said Erij, “Handrys meant to mar you somewhat: he never liked you, not at all. He did not find it to his liking that you were given a place among the warriors: he said that he would see you own that you had no right there. Myself, it was neither here nor there with me; but that was how it was: Handrys was my brother. If he had decided to cut your throat, he was heir to the Nhi and I would have considered that too. Pity we aimed at so little. You were better with that blade than we thought you were, else Handrys would not have baited you in the casual way he did. I have to give you due credit, bastard brother: you were good.”

Vanye reached for the cup, swallowed the last, the wine souring in his mouth. “Father had a fine choice of heirs, did he not? Three would-be murderers.”

“Father was the best of all,” said Erij. “He killed our mother: I am sure of it. He pushed Handrys to his death, favoring you as much as he did once. No wonder he saw ghosts.”

“Then purify this hall of them. Let me ride out of here. Our father was no better to you than he was to me. Let me go from here.”

“You keep asking; I refuse. Why do you not try to escape?”

“I thought that you expected me to keep my given word,” he said. “Besides, I would never reach the ground floor of Ra-morij.”

“You might be sorry later that you missed the chance.”

“You want to frighten me. I know the game, Erij. You were always expert at that. I always believed the things you told me, and I always trusted you more than I did Handrys. I always wanted to think that mere was some sense of honor in you—whatever it was that he was lacking.”

“You hated the both of us.”

“I was sorry about you; I was even sorry about Handrys.”

Erij smiled and rose from the table, walked near the fire, where it was warm. Vanye joined him there. Erij still had his cup in hand, and took his accustomed chair, while Vanye settled on the warm stones. There was silence between them for a long time, almost peace. Two more cups of wine passed from Erij’s cup, and his ta

“You drink too much,” said Vanye at last. “This evening and last—you drink too much.”

Erij lifted the stump of his arm. ‘This—pains me of cold evenings. For a long time I drank to ease my sleep at night. Probably I shall have to stop it, or come to what Father did. It was the wine that helped ruin him, I well know that. When he drank, which was constantly after Handrys died, he grew unreasonable. When he would get drunk he would go out and sit by his tomb and see ghosts. I should hate to die like that.”

It was the rationality in Erij that made him seem most mad; at times Vanye almost thought him amenable to reason, to forgiveness. A man could not speak so with an enemy. At such times they were more brothers than they had ever been. At such times he almost understood Erij, through the moods and the hates and the lines that began to be graven into his face, making him look several years older than was the truth.

“Your lady,” said Erij then, “has not quitted Morija as you said she would.”

Vayne looked up sharply. “Where is she?”

“You might know,” said Erij, “since I think you know full well what she is about.”

“That is her business.”

“Shall I recall her and ask her or shall I ask you again?”

Vanye stared at him, begi

“Truly?”

“It is truth, Erij.”

“All the same,” said Erij, “she has not quitted Morija. And all my promises were conditional on that.”

“So were mine,” said Vanye, “conditional.”

Erij looked down at him. There was no mirth there at all. Of a sudden it was Nhi Rijan in that look, young and hard and full of malice. “You are dismissed.”

“Do nothing against her,” Vanye warned him.

“You are dismissed,” said Erij.

Vanye gathered himself up and took his leave with a scant bow, maintaining the slender thread of courtesy between them. There were the guards outside to take him—there always were: Myya; Erij trusted no Nhi to do this duty, walking him to and from his quarters.

But they had doubled since he had come into the room. There had been two. Now four waited.

Suddenly he tried to retreat back within the room, heard the whisper of steel and saw Erij drawing his longsword from its sheath. In that instant of hesitation they hauled him back and tried to hold him.

He had nothing to lose. He knew it, and flung himself at his brother, intent on cracking his skull at least: there should no Myya whelp lord it in Ra-morij, that benefit for the unfortunate Nhi if nothing else.

But they overhauled him, stumbling over each other and overturning furniture in their haste to seize him; and Erij’s fist, guarded by the pommel, came hard against the side of his head, dropping him to his knees.