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Then he sprang to horse, keeping reins and sheath in one hand, holding the shimmering blade in the other, and rode. Arrows hissed about him. One plunged within the well of darkness at Changeling's tip and was lost.

Another scraped his horse's rump and stung the beast to a near stumble.

But he was through. Frightened warders unbarred the gates under the menace of that blade and he was free of the outer gate, clattering down the height of the paved road and onto the soft earth of the slopes.

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There was no rush to follow him. He imagined Erij cursing his men to order, trying to find some who would dare it— and that Erij himself would follow he did not doubt. He knew his brother too well to think that he would cease what he had decided to do.

And Erij would well know what road he would ride. If he were not Morij-bred, he would have no chance to evade them, to ride the shorter trails and the quick ones, but he had as fine a knowledge of the web of unmarked roads in the country as did Erij.

It was a matter of reaching Baien-ei and Morgaine, if it were possible, before the Myya and their arrows.

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Chapter 8

The pursuit was behind him again. When he looked back against some patch of unmelted snow in the starlight, he could see a dark knot atop a hill or along the road; but the laboring bay kept the same distance between them.

They had not delayed long. There were most of all the arrows to fear. If they had him once within arrow range, he could not survive it; and he did not doubt that they were Myya, and keen on killing him— it was the only way to safely wrest away the thing he carried.

It was the stopping that was the most dangerous. At times he had to stop and rest the horse; and he chose such times as he did not see them behind him and reckoned that they were doing the same, well knowing that at some time he might make an error, or fail to run again in time. They had come a day across the plain of Morija, and the signal fires were still lit: he could see their glow on hilltops, warning the whole land that there was an enemy abroad, a stranger that meant no good to Morija. That net of signals was the countryside's defense. All good men would turn out to patrol the roads, to challenge any comer near the vital passes, and he had no wish to kill— or whatever it was the witchblade did to them that fell within its power; besides, some of the countrymen, of clans San and Torin, were no mean archers themselves, and he feared any meeting with them.

At their first stopping he had contrived to sheathe the horrid blade, fearing to expose his own flesh to the danger of that fire, which was that about the Gates themselves. He laid the sheath on the ground and eased the point within, fearful that even that could not contain it. But the light ceased the moment the point had gone within, and then it was possible to lift and bear it like any normal sword.

It was the look of the four men of Myya that he could not get from his mind, that awful lostness as they whirled away into that vast and tiny darkness, men who could not understand how they were dying.

If it were possible he would gladly have hurled Changelingfrom him, have rid himself of that dread weight and let it lie for some other 147

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unfortunate master. But it was his in charge, and it was for Morgaine, who had sense enough to keep it sheathed. He himself dreaded the thought of drawing it again, almost more than he dreaded the arrows behind him.

There was sinister power about it that was far more lingering than the ugliness of Morgaine's older— lesser— weapons. His arm still hurt from wielding it.

In the hours' passing he tried at last just to keep the bay moving, stopping dead only when he must; he knew that the animal was going to fade long before he could make Baien-ei and Morgaine's camp. There were villages: the Myya could have remounts; they would run him to the bay's death. His insides hurt from the constant jolting, already bruised from the beating he had had of them. He began to have the taste of blood in his mouth and he did not know if this was from his bruised jaw or from somewhere inside.

And when he looked back of a sudden the Myya were no longer with him.

There was no hope left but to go off the main road, to try to confuse pursuit and hope that he could fight through ambush at the end, at Baien-ei. The next time that he saw the chance of another lane, one already well marred with tracks since the melting of the snow, he took that road and coaxed the poor horse to what pace he could maintain.

He knew the road. A little village lay a distance past the second winding, the hamlet of San-morij, a clan that possessed a score of smaller villages hereabouts— common and unpretentious as the earth they held, kindly folk, but fierce to enemies. There was a farmhouse that he well remembered, that of the old chief armorer of Ra-morij, San Romen; he owed a great debt to that old tutor of his, who alone of men in Ra-morij had shown some sympathy for a lord's bastard, who had soothed his hurts and treated the hidden wounds with drafts of rough affection.

It was a debt that deserved better payment than he was about to give; but desperation smothered any impulses to honor. He knew where the stable was, around at the back of the little house, a place where he and Erij had watered their mounts once upon a better time. He left the bay tied to a branch by the side of the road, and took Changelingupon his shoulder, and slipped down the ditch by the roadside until he was within sight of the stable.

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Then he ran across the yard, skidded into the shadows and flung open the door, already hearing the livestock astir: the men of Romen's house would be waking, seeking arms at any moment, and ru

Ru

* * *

There was a rider on the road ahead,

sai-uyo,

Vanye thought,

uyo

of the lesser clans, but

uyo,

and armored: he rode like a warrior. There was no hope that the little beast he rode could match a proper horse. There was no avoiding the meeting. Vanye rode along at leisure, legs dangling, like any herder-boy returning at evening. Only upon the heights the warning-fires still gleamed, and the roads were watched; and he for his part could not look to be a herdsman, for boots and breeches were of weathered leather such as was proper to an

uyo,

not a countryman, he carried a great sword, and his shirt of white lawn marked him for a man untimely rushed from some great hall, high-clan:

dai-uyo

, Nhi.

This man, he thought unhappily, he might have to kill. He reached to the belt, unhooked the sheath, and gripped the sheath of Changelingin one hand and the hilt in the other, and the sai-uyoon his fine dappled charger came closer.

And perhaps he already recognized what quarry he had started, for he moved his leg and lifted his blade from its place on the saddle, and rode also with his sheathed blade in hand.