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He could not help her. They would have a dozen men upon him before he could free her.

Changeling.

He ran, sliding, mail-protected, but leaving skin of his hands on rocks, battering himself in one spill and another. Men tried to head him off at the bottom. He gasped air, spun left, veering off from Morgaine and Roh, scattering horses as he fled. Then there was the familiar black before him: he vaulted for the saddle, shied the beast and clung, clawed his way firmly into the saddle and caught the flying reins. The beast knew him, gathered himself and sprang forward under his guidance.

Riders were already starting after him. Tumult and shouting were in his wake, though no arrows flew. He did not even seek the hill, to brave that weight of air, that awful climb, not with pursuit and enemies and a frightened horse to confound matters. He headed back along their trail.

If the Gate were barred to him, there was still Ra-hjemur, where Thiye ruled. There was Changelingunder his knee, its dragon-hilt familiar to his anxious fingers. With that in hand and the power of the Gate to feed it, he could force his way to the heart of Thiye's power, destroy its source, whatever it was, destroy the Gate— destroy himself and Morgaine too, he knew.

And Liell.

The world had not yet seen what Liell could do with the power of Morgaine added to his own. Thiye was small compared to that evil.

He rode the horse without mercy, whipped the poor beast down snowy slopes and across trails and down, doing all he could to clear Ivrel.

Even Liell must have care of him now. Even Morgaine's other weapons were nothing to the power of the opal blade, that drank attack and cast it elsewhere, that drank lives and cast them into nothing. And armed as he was, with that power in his hands, it was madness to kill the horse that was his best hope of reaching Hjemur: he came to his senses when he had 191

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cleared the steepest portion of the road, and come to the main trail. There he slowed his pace at last, let the horse breathe.

Around the limb of the lower slope the main road led, bending toward Rahjemur. It must be. There was no other place in Hjemur that could even boast a road.

He kept the horse to a holding pace. Lethen might be reluctant to follow, but Liell would drive them to it— timid as Morgaine avowed herself to be, able to spend others' lives before her own, she was capable of fearful risks when it became necessary; and Liell surely would prove no different: when caution would not serve, then there would be nothing reserved, nothing. When Liell knew finally that the Gates themselves were at stake, he would surely follow. The only hope was that he had yet to understand what Changelingwas, or that a Morij ilinmight understand what had to be done with the blade.

A shadow thundered out at him. The black screamed shrilly and shied, and an impact hit his shoulder, tumbling him inexorably over the black's rump, head over heels, and into snow and hard ice.

* * *

Joints moved, bones unbroken, but shaken; he tried to gain command of his battered limbs and move, but a shortsword pressed under his chin, forcing his head down again into the numbing snow. A body hovered over him, the arm that rested across the figure's knee ending abruptly.

"Brother," said Erij, whispering.

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Chapter 10

"Erij." Vanye tried a second time to rise, and in a sudden move Erij moved back and let him. Then he snapped the Honor blade back into his belt and stalked up the road a space where his horse stood, along with Vanye's black.

Vanye stumbled up from the ditch, limping, trying vainly to overtake him and prevent him, saw to his dismay that Erij had already found what the black horse bore on its saddle.

A fierce grin spread over Erij's face as he took the sheathed blade in hand, and with the sheath in the crook of his arm and his hand upon its hilt, he waited Vanye's coming.

Vanye stopped short of the threat he posed him, still shaking in all his limbs, trying to gather his breath and his wits and frame some reasonable argument.

"There is a qujalout of Leth," he began, his voice hardly audible. "Erij, Erij, there are Lethen and the devil himself behind me. We are both in danger. I will go with you clear of this road— not try at escape, at least that far. I swear, I swear it, Erij."

Erij considered, his dark eyes fluid in the dark. Then he nodded abrupt decision, hooked the sheath of Changelingto his own belt— one-handed as he was, he wore it at his hip, not his back— and swung up to mount.

Vanye hauled his aching body into the saddle on a second effort, sent the black galloping down the road in Erij's company, down side trails into forest, though at every turn the forest looked more ominous in itself. The horses went at a careful pace now, wending their way down into rocky ground. Here were still patches of snow in which to leave prints, but brush and woods were so thick that pursuit of them could not be easy for any group of men, and their trail was somewhat obscured. It held no feeling of safety, this place— rather, the same kind of queasiness that all of Erij's ambushes had held, from boyhood up, screaming alarm, such that he thought, like another dream by Aenor-Pyvvn, that he might have ridden 193

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this place in some bad dream, wherein he had died. The trees, the rocks etched themselves into his sight, his senses clinging to them as strongly as fingers might cling to some last handhold on solidity. I am losing these,he thought, and: I am mad to go with him like this.But he had no strength left, and Erij held Changeling, held his duty as ilinto hostage: Erij could reason, could be reasoned with— his hope insisted so.

Then, in a clear place among the trees, Erij reined in and ordered him down.

Panic struck him. Almost he did lay heels to the horse. But he found himself climbing down, careful of strained knees as he caught his balance on the ground. He moved out uncertainly as Erij motioned him to the center of the clearing.

"Where is she?" Erij asked then, and as he asked, climbed down, and unhooked the sheath of Changeling.

Then he knew of a certainty that Erij meant to kill him when he had answered; and Changelingslipped inexorably from its sheath, Erij knowing the nature of the blade now, well able to wield it.

Vanye hurled himself at Erij waist-high, grappled and came down with him, Changelingfalling still sheathed.

Erij's elbow crashed into his face, blinding him. Vanye was suddenly underneath again, losing, as he had always lost, as it had always been with his brothers. He could not see, could not breathe, could not feel for a moment. With his last effort he heaved over and clung, fighting only for leverage. Then his hands were slamming Erij's head into the snowy ground, again and again, until Erij's limbs weakened and ceased to struggle. He scrambled up to find Changeling, his mind next clearing as he reached his horse, holding the sword-sheath, groping blindly for the reins.

The horse shied. Erij's rush carried into his lower back, hurling him, stu

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laid him backward into the snow. Then Erij fell upon him with a knee upon his chest and his maimed arm still strong enough to strike his arm aside: Erij ripped the Honor blade from his belt and slipped it within the throat-laces of his armor, cutting down the thongs like so much rotten thread.