Gate of Ivrel

“One of us may not be,” he acknowledged, “but she avows at least she is not qujal .” Their gentle eyes were much troubled at that answer; and perhaps through the legends they know who and what she was, if sanity would let them believe it

“We give shelter,” they said, “to all that enter here under peace, even to those of tainted blood and those that company with them, if they should need it. We thank you for telling us. We will purify the house after you have gone. This was courtesy on your part, and we will respect your privacy. Are you a human man?”

“I am human born,” he said, and returned their bows of farewell. “Brothers,” he added when they began to turn away. They looked back, sunta

They bowed together. “That is of no account. We will pray for you,” said one. And they went away.

The sunshine felt cold when they had done so. He could not sleep, and watched far beyond the time that he should have called Ryn to take his place. As last, when he was very weary, he went down the steps and gathered up the earthen jars and took them inside, letting Ryn replace him on the step.

Morgaine wakened. There was black bread and honey and salted butter, a crock of broth and another of boiled beans, which both were cooling, but wonderful to Morgaine, whose fare had been less delicate than his the last many days, he suspected; and he took Ryn his portion out upon the step, and the youth ate as if he were famished.

The Brothers brought down great armloads of hay and buckets of grain for their horses, which Vanye saw to, storing the grain in saddlebags against future need; and in the peace of the evening, with the sun headed toward the western mountains, Ryn sat in the little doorway and took his harp and played quiet songs, his sensitive fingers tuning and meddling with the strings in such a way that even that seemed pleasant. Some of the Brothers came down from the hill to stand by the gate and listen to the harper. Ryn smiled at them in an absent way. But they grew grave and sober-eyed when Morgaine appeared in the door; some blessed themselves in dread of her, and this seemed greatly to sadden her. She bowed them courtesy all the same, which most returned, and retired to the i

“We must be out of this place tonight,” she said when Vanye knelt there beside her.

He was surprised. “ Liyo , there is no safer place for us to be.”

“I am not looking for a refuge: my aim is Ivrel, and that is all. This is my order, Vanye.”

“Aye,” he said, and bowed. She looked at him when he straightened again and frowned.

“What is this?” she asked of him, and gestured toward the back of her own neck, and his hand lifted, encountered the ragged edge of his hair, and his face went hot.

“Do not ask me,” he said.

“Thee is ilin ,” she said, a tone that reproved such a shameful thing. And then: “Was it done, or did thee—”

“It was my choice.”

“What chanced in Ra-morij, between you and your brother?”

“Do you bid me straightly tell you?”

Her lips tightened, her gray eyes bore into him, perhaps reading misery. “No,” she said.

It was not like her to leave things unknown, where it might touch her safety. He acknowledged her trust, grateful for it, and settled against the warm stones of the hearth, listening to the harp, watching Ryn’s rapt face silhouetted against the dying light, the pine-dotted hill beyond, the monastery and church with the bell-tower. This was beauty, earthly and not, the boy with the harp. The song paused briefly: a lock of hair fell across Ryn’s face and he brushed it back, anchored it behind an ear. Not yet of the warriors, this youth, but about to be, when he made choice. His honor, his pride, were both untouched.

The hands resumed their rippling play over the strings, quiet, pleasant songs, in tribute to the place, and to the Brothers, who listened.

Then the vesper bell sounded, drawing the gray lines of monks back into their holiness on the hill, and the light began to leave them quickly.

They finished the food the Brothers gave them, and gave themselves by turns to sleep for most of the night.

Then Morgaine, whose watch it was, shook them and bade them up and make ready.

The red line of dawn was appearing on the horizon.

They were quickly armed and the horses saddled, and Morgaine warmed herself a last time by the fire and looked about the room, seeming distressed. “I do not think that they would have any parting-gift of me,” she said at last. “And there is nothing I have anyway.”

“They bade us be free of the matter,” Vanye assured her, and it was certain that his own gear was i

Ryn searched his own things, took out a few coins and left them on the bed, a few pe

It was upon the road with the morning light still barely bringing color to things that Vanye remembered the harp, and did not find it about the person of Ryn.

There was instead only the bow slung from his shoulders, and he was strangely sorry for that. Later he saw Morgaine realize the same thing, and open her lips to speak; but she did not. It was Ryn’s choice.

It was said by men of Baien that Baien-an was a fragment left from the making of Heaven. However that was, it was true that this place surpassed even Morija for fairness. Winter though it was, the golden grass and green cedar gave it grace, and the mighty range of Kath Vrej and Kath Svejur embraced the valley with great ridges crowned with snow. There was a straight road, with hedges beside it—one did not see hedges kept so anywhere else but in Baien—and twice they saw villages off the road, golden-thatched and somnolent in the wintry sun, with white flocks of sheep grazing near like errant clouds.

And once they must pass through a village, where children huddled wide-eyed at their mothers’ skirts and men paused with their work in hand, as if they were held between rushing to arms or bidding them good day. Morgaine kept her hood upon her at that time, but if there was not the strangeness of her, riding astride and with a sword-sheath under her knee, there was Siptah himself, who had been foaled in this land, before all the great herd of king Tiffwy had been taken by Hjemur’s bandits. Mischance had befallen them, and they had been seen no more: Baienen said that it was because they were the horses of kings, and would not carry the likes of their Hjemurn masters.

But perhaps the villagers blinked again in the sunlight, and persuaded themselves that they had no proper business with travelers going east: it was only those who came from it, out of Hjemur, that need trouble them to take arms; and there were gray horses foaled who were not of the old blood. Siptah had grown leaner; he was muddy about legs and belly; and he spent none of his strength on high-blooded skittishness, although his ears pricked up toward any chance move and his nostrils drank in every smell.

“ Liyo ,” said Vanye when they were quit of the town, “they will hear of us in Ra-baien by evening.”

“By evening,” she said, “surely we will be in those hills.”

“If we had turned aside there, and sought welcome at Ra-baien,” he insisted, “they might have taken you in.”

“As they did in Ra-morij?” she answered him. “No. And I will accept no more delays.”

“What is our haste?” he protested. “Lady, we are all tired, you not least of all. After a hundred years of delay, what is a day to rest? We should have stayed at the Monastery.”

“Are you fit to ride?”

“I am fit,” he acknowledged, which was, under less compulsion, a lie. He ached, his bones ached, but he was well sure that she was in no better case, and shame kept him from pleading his own. She had that fever in her again, that burning compulsion toward Ivrel; he knew how it was to stand in the way of that, and if she would not be reasoned into delay, it was sure that there was little else would stop her.

Then, when the sun was at their backs, reddening into evening upon the snows of Kath Svejur before them, Vanye looked back along the road they had come as he did from time to time.

This time the thing he had constantly dreaded was there.

They were pursued.

“ Liyo ,” he said quietly. Both she and Ryn looked. Ryn’s face was pale.

“They will surely have changed horses in Ra-baien,” Ryn said.

“That is what I have feared,” she said, “that there is no war nor feud between Morija and Baien.”

And she put Siptah to a slightly quicker pace, but not to a run. Vanye looked back again. The riders were coming steadily, not killing their horses either, but at a better pace than they.

“We will make the hills and choose a place for them to overtake us as far as we can toward the border,” said Morgaine. This is a fight I do not want, but we may have it all the same.”

Vanye looked back yet again. He began to be sure who it was, and there was a leaden feeling in his belly. He had already committed one fratricide. To fight and to kill at a liyo’s order was the duty of an ilin , even if he were ordered against family. That was cruel, but it was also the law.

“They will be Nhi,” he said to Ryn. “This fight is not lawful for you. You are not ilin , and until you lift hand against Erij and your kinsmen, you are not an outlaw. Go apart from us. Go home.”

Ryn’s young face held doubt. But it was a man’s look too, not the petulance of a boy, which was not going to yield to his reason.

“Do as he tells you,” Morgaine said.

“I take oath,” he said, “that I will not.”

That was the end of it He was a free man, was Ryn; he rode what way he chose, and it was with them. It pained Vanye that Ryn had no more than the Honor blade at his belt, no longsword; but then, boys had no business to attempt the longsword in a battle; he was safest with the bow.

“Do you know this road?” Morgaine asked.

“Yes,” said Vanye. “So do they. Follow.”

He put himself in the lead, minded of a place within the hills, past the entry into Koris, where Erij might be less rash to follow, near as it was to Irien. The horses might be able to hold the pace, though it was climbing for some part. He cast a look over his shoulder, to know how things were with those behind.

The Morijen had fresh mounts surely, to press them so, grace of the lord of Ra-baien, and how much Baien knew of them or how Baien felt toward them was yet uncertain.