Exile's Gate

"How far does this go?" Her voice had an edge to it, a dangerous one. "Wake up, man. You know what I would know. You swore that you did. Do you want your enemies' attention? Or do you tell me full and free that you do not know where you are?"

"I know where I am! There is a kind of ruin, I do not know how far—I swear to you, we will reach it by morning." Chei's teeth chattered, and his breath hissed, not altogether, Vanye thought, of exhaustion and the night chill. "It was our starting-place misled me. The river must have bent. I know it is there. I swear it is. We can still come to it. But we can go wide, now." He pointed over westward, where the plain rolled away to the horizon. "We can pick up the trail yonder in the hills. Off Gault's lands."

"But equally off our way," Morgaine said, and held Siptah back, the dapple gray backing and circling. "How is Arrhan faring?"

"She will manage," Vanye said, and looked uneasily toward the lightening of the sky in the east, over low and rolling hills. "Liyo,I do not say yea or nay, but I had as lief be off this road. West is likely the best advice at this point."

"North," she said, and held Siptah still a moment, when he would have moved. "By morning, he swears. It is very little time."

She swung about and went on, not quickly, saving the horses.

"Areyou mistaken?" Vanye asked of Chei.

"No," Chei said; and shivered, whether with cold he could not tell.

Morgaine had said it; there was only one way, ultimately, that they could go; and less and less he liked delay along this road, less and less he liked the prospect of a long journey aside, and more and more he disliked their situation.

"Best you be right, man."

Morgaine dropped back to ride beside. They went perforce at Arrhan's double-burdened pace, under an open sky and fading stars.

Chei hugged his blanket about him. It was terror kept him awake now. It was nightmare as dread as the wolves, this slow riding, this pain of half-healed sores and the slow, steady rhythm of horses which could go no faster, not though Gault and all his minions come riding off the horizon.

The sky brightened, the few wispy clouds in the east took faint and then pinker color, until at last all the world seemed one naked bowl of grass and one road going through it, u

"Where are these ruins of yours?" Vanye asked then, and slapped him on the knee when he failed to realize that it was to him he had spoken.

"I know that they are there," he said, "I swear to you."

"Neither does the sun lie," Vanye said.

There was the begi

Did their enemies find them. . . .

But on that terrible hilltop, like a dream, he recalled light coming from Morgaine's fingers, and recalled chain melting and bending, and how Vanye had shielded him from that sight.

Weapons you may not like to see,Vanye had warned him.

He looked at the open land around him, and the treacherous roll of hills which might mask an army.

They would kill him first, he thought, if they suspected ambush. There was no doubt but what they would; he had failed them. They had cause to be angry.

The sun came up full. The land went gold and green.

And as they crested a rise of the plain and looked on a darkness that topped the rise ahead he felt a moment's dread that it was some band of riders—till his eye adjusted for the scope of the land and he knew it was woods that he saw.

They camped among ancient stones, beside a stream which crossed the low point among them, under the branches of trees which arched over and trailed their branches waterward. Among the ruins, a sparse and stubborn grass grew, on a ridge well-shielded by the trees; and there the horses grazed.

They ventured a fire only large enough to heat a little water, and ate bread Morgaine had made at the last camp, and fish they had smoked; and drank tea—Chei's prepared with herbs against the fever.

Chei had borne the ride, Vanye reckoned, very well—was weary, and only too glad to lie down to sleep, there in the sun-warmth, on the leafy bank. So, then, was he, leaving the watch to Morgaine, and listening to the water and the wind and the horses.

"It has been quiet," she whispered when she waked him, while Chei still slept. "Nothing has stirred. A bird or two. A creature I do not know came down to drink: it looked like a mink with a banded tail. There is a black snake su

These were good signs, of a healthier vicinity. He drew a deep breath and yielded her up the blankets, and tucked himself down again in a nook out of the wind. He had a bite to eat, a quarter of the bread he had saved back from their breakfast; and a drink of clear water from the stream which ran here, more wholesome than the river had been.

And when toward dusk, Chei stirred from his sleep, he rose and stretched himself, and put together the makings of a little fire—again, hardly enough to warm water, quick to light and quick to bury, and a risk even as it was.

Morgaine roused them for tea and day-old cakes and smoked fish, and sat against the rock, sipping her portion of the tea and letting her eyes shut from time to time. Then her eyes opened with nothing of somnolence about them at all. "We might stay here a day," she said. "We have put distance between ourselves and the gate—which is very well. But this is the last place we may have leisure. Another night's riding—and we will be beyond Gault's holdings. Is that not the case?"

"That is the case," Chei said. "I swear to you."

"Bearing in mind that hereafter I will not permit Vanye's horse to carry double, and tire itself."

"I will walk. I can fend for myself, lady."

"Are you fit to walk? I tell you the truth: if you are not fit—we will give you that day's grace. But there may be other answers. Perhaps you know something of Morund's i

Chei's eyes widened in dread. "Guarded," he said. "Well guarded."

"I," Vanye said, and rested his chin on his forearm, his knee tucked beneath his elbow. "I have stolen a horse or two in my life. I suppose Morund has pastures hereabouts. And for that matter, liyo,I can quite well walk."

Morgaine glanced his way. So he knew that he had guessed her intention all along, by that calm exchange. And he had had a queasy feeling in all this ride, good as the reasons were for quitting the last camp: Arrhan might carry double at a very slow pace, but not in haste—his liege not being a fool, to press one of their horses to the limit.

But that she risked them this far on this man's word had bewildered him, all the same—until she asked of Morund.

"Or," he said in the Kurshin tongue, "we might let our guide walk these trails he claims to know—alone. And we go the quicker way, the two of us, by night and by stealth, liyo,and get clear of this place. That is my opinion in the matter."

She gave him a sudden sidelong glance.