Exile's Gate

"Passage," Chei said after a moment, looking back toward his brother. "Safety. I am sworn, Bron, my lord was dead, you were dead, the lady and this man found me, they took me away from the wolves, healed my hurts—He is not qhal, Bron, he is a man like I am and sheset me free and gave me a horse and tells me things that Arunden ought to know, that all of us ought to know, Bron—I swear to you, I know there is no way to prove anything I say. But you know me, you know everything I could know—try me, whether I have forgotten anything. Bron—for the love of Heaven—"

Bron's face worked, somewhere between desperation and grief.

And suddenly he held out his open arms.

"No," Arunden cried. "Fool!"

But Chei came to him, slowly, carefully. They embraced each other, and wept, for very long, till Bron set Chei back by the shoulders and looked at him as if he could discover the truth by firelight.

Vanye watched with a pang of his own—the which he could not comprehend, only something in him hurt, perhaps that a man could come home again; or that brothers could prove true.

Or that Chei had just deserted them for a deeper loyalty, whatever the issue of this place.

Fool, he thought. Well that there besome help for us here.

There was Morgaine beside him, who was all his own concern; and Chei at the moment was hers, he reckoned, their guide and the source of everything they knew in this world. She would wreak havoc to keep him safe, Chei was very right; had Arunden attempted to stop him or to strike him or his brother, Morgaine would have acted, fatally for Arunden and half the village before she was done.

But she and Arunden and all of them stood baffled by this, that Bron ep Kantory took his brother into his arms without being sure what he was embracing: he made himself a hostage to stop those who cared for either of them, and by one move held them all powerless.

Chapter Six

"Come," Bron said, his hands on Chei's shoulders, while Chei's thoughts reeled between one side and the other of the forces gathered there at odds. There was the lady and Vanye and there was Arunden ep Corys, a sudden and hard-handed lord. Calamity was possible at any instant.

But Bron held to him as if there were no chance in all the world that he was a piece of Gault's handiwork. "Come," Bron said gently, as if there were no lunacy at all in his arriving in camp in company with a qhalur witch and a man in strange armor. "Tell me; tell me what I can do; O my God, Chei—" Of a sudden Bron hugged him tight again and pressed his head against his shoulder; and Chei embraced him a second time, appalled at how thin his strong brother had become, how there was so little between his hands and Bron's ribs, and how there was a fragile, insubstantial feel about him.

"I am not theirs," Chei insisted, over and over again. "Not theirs. I am not lying, Bron, I swear to you I am not Changed."

"I believe you," Bron said. "I know, I know, what shall I do, what do you want me to do?"

"Just swear for me. Talkto Arunden."

"Tell him what? Who are they? What are they?"

"Friends. Friends to us."

Bron set him back and stared at him, bewildered, desperate—at his little brother who was a fool and could not think of anything but seeing him, until now, now that he knew what he had known from birth, that Bron would do the same as he—would believe him because he wanted to believe, and become another fool for his sake, risking his life and his soul for the remotest hope Chei was alive and still his brother. That was what was in Bron's eyes, that was the struggle to believe, while his hands trembled on Chei's arms and strayed once and twice to his face and his shoulders as if he could not believe he was flesh and blood.

"You looktolerably well," Bron said.

"They have been good to me, Bron, truly—they have. You—?"

"Well enough, I am well enough."

"You limp."

"Ah, well, that will mend, it will mend. So do you.—My God, my God—"

"There was a brooch Mama had—it was a marsh rose. There was a place in the wall we used to hide our special things—"

"O God,Chei—"

"—I gave you that scar on your chin; I hit you with a harness buckle—you teased me about a girl; her name was Meltien. She died in the winter march—"

"Brother—" Bron hugged him to silence. They wept together; and when he could speak again:

"Bron, I have sworn to take them north on the Road; and I have to do that—"

"There are arrows aimed at us." Bron took his face between his hands and looked again at him, intensely. "Who are they? You will have to tell me. I do not understand. God knows Arunden does not. What shall we do?"

"I will talk to them. Theywill talk with Arunden if he will listen—"

"He will listen," Bron said; and hugged him close against his side, so that they shielded each other as they went to Arunden, Bron armorless as he was, himself in a mail shirt that was in no wise proof against the lady's weapons.

But a man barred their way, a man with a drawn sword and the emblem on him of Holy Church; and Bron stopped still, his hand clenched on Chei's shirt.

"If you will not kill it," the priest said, "I will. Your soul is in danger, Bron ep Kantory."

"Your lifeis," Chei answered, and would have pushed Bron behind him, but Bron stood fast. "My lady!"

"Hold!" Arunden said.

"My lord," the priest protested.

But Arunden walked into the matter, and waved the priest off. And Chei stood with a weakness still in his knees, uncertain which of them was supporting the other. Words froze in his throat. They always did, at the worst of times.

"There is a curse in him," the priest said. "It is a curse has come to us in a friend's shape. It is Gault's gift. Kill them. Have no words with them."

"Then we would know nothing Gault wants," Arunden said. "Would we, priest?—Talk, boy. What have we here? What do you bring us, eh? More of Gault's handiwork?"

"The lord is talking, at least," Vanye said in a low voice, seeing what transpired, with the brothers and Arunden and two armed men. His hand was still on his sword, from the first Chei had called out.

And he thanked Heaven that Arunden had moved to stop the man.

"Hope that this brother's word has some weight," Morgaine said in the Kurshin tongue. "I should not have let us leave the road. That was the first mistake. Stay to my left."

"Aye," he murmured, feeling the sting of that, and his heart was pounding, the old, familiar fear, the nightmare of too many such choices. But Chei came toward them and fear shifted to a frail, desperate hope, seeing that Bron continued to talk to Arunden.

"He will speak to you," Chei said, casting an anxious glance between him and Morgaine. "I swear to you—Arunden is not a treacherous man: God witness, he is not a careful one, either—he is afraid of you, lady, and he ca

Vanye looked a second time. It did not look like a priest. He drew in a quick, anxious breath. It had been long since he had found anything of the Church; and there had been so much doubtful he had had to choose on his own: so far he had come, and changed so much—and a priest—

He was starkly afraid to face anything of the Church nowadays: that was the proof that he was damned, and he did not need a priest to threaten him with Hell.