Exile's Gate

"Vanye," Chei's voice came from outside the shelter, and he caught his breath and his balance and broke apart from her with a whispered curse; at which a second touch of Morgaine's hands, lightly this time, on his arm, sliding to trail over his fingers—

"What?" he asked, far too harshly, flinging back the door-flap.

Perhaps there was murder in his look; perhaps his rapid breaths said something; or perhaps the firelight struck his face amiss, for Chei's expression went from startlement to thorough dismay.

"I was about to say," Chei said, above the uproar from about the fire, "I have told them where to picket the horses, yonder. I am going to go back to the fire, if you—I think I should—Bron and I. . . . Your pardon," Chei said suddenly, and backed and made a hasty retreat, not without a backward look; and a second, and a third, before he suddenly had to dodge a tree and vanished around it.

Vanye caught his breath and, muddled somewhere between outrage and embarrassment, let the door-flap fall again.

Morgaine's hands rested on his shoulders, and her head against the back of his neck. "We had best take the sleep," she whispered, her breath disturbing the fine hairs there.

"Aye," he said with difficulty, thinking that sleep was not going to come easily despite the liquor and the drug and the exhaustion. "They are fools out there. At least ninety and nine of them. I ca

"I do not think he is," she said. "I think he has found his brother, that is all. Let him be."

Fire and clangor of arms, one brother lying dead at his hand, the other lying under the knife in hall—and after that, after that was exile, ilin-ban,and every kinsman's hand against him. The old nightmare came tumbling back again, of bastardy and years of torment before he reacted, once, frightened—no, angry—cornered in a practice match.

Kandrys had not intended his death. He had reasoned his way to that understanding: it would have been only another baiting—except it was the wrong day, the wrong moment, Kandrys' bastard brother grown better and more desperate than Kandrys knew.

And he had always wanted most that Kandrys would forgive him his existence and his parentage.

He drew a sudden, gasping breath, as if a cold wind had blown out of that dream, and brought the grave-chill with it.

"Vanye?"

"It is that cursed drink," he murmured. "Likely Chei has his ear to matters out there—my mind is wandering. I am hungry, but I think I am too tired to get into the packs. Did you drink anything of it?"

"No more than I must."

"They have left us more of the stuff. What kind of fools raise such a noise, living as they do? That is a priestout there—"

She leaned her head against him. "This is not Andur-Kursh. And they are fools who have fought their war too long," she said. "Fools who are losing it, year by year, and see a hope. If they are not thinking how to betray us anddo Gault harm. How far can we trust Chei, do you think? For a few leagues still?"

"I do not know," he said. He slipped her grasp, turning to look at her, as laughter and shrieks rose from the gathering at the fire. "He may. There is no honor for a man here. He is too good for this. This is a sink, liyo,a man who could not hold his folk, except he binds them with that—out there. That is the game this hedge-lord plays. Only he is gone in it himself. Heaven knows about Chei's brother."

"Heaven knows when Chei knew about his brother," Morgaine said. "Curse him, he forced this, hehas gotten us into this tangle; I do not say he was not taken by surprise, I do not know whether he wanted this from the begi

"Aye," he said forlornly, and with a sense of anger: "It is a waste, liyo,this whole place is a waste. Heaven knows we could do better for him."

"Or far worse," she said.

"Aye."

She caught him by the arm and held him so. Perhaps her eyes could see him in the dark. She was faceless to him. "If he ties himself too closely to us—will they ever forget? If he stays then, is he or his brother safe, when once the gates die, and powers start to topple? Or if we take them with us— whereare they then? Can you promise them better? Best, I say, we let him go. The eight down in the valley are only an earnest of what we shall do here. When power falls here, it will fall hard."

"Lord in Heaven, liyo—"

"Truth, Nhi Vanye, bitter truth. That is the ciphering I do: thee knows, thee knows I have no happier choices—except we leave him, here, near a great fool, who will vaunt his way to calamity with the power he imagines he has; and Chei, being Chei, will know when to quit this hedge-lord—or supplant him. Thatis the best gift we can give him. To leave him among his own kind and kin."

He drew several large and quietening breaths, "Aye," he said again, reasoning his way through that. "In my heart I know that."

"Then be his friend. And let him go."

"Is it that clear?"

"Vanye, Vanye—" But what else she would have said, she did not say, not for some little moment. Then: "Did I not tell thee, thee could leave me? I warned thee. Why did thee not listen?"

He said nothing for a moment, in confusion, a sudden hurt, and deep. He traced it several times, trying to understand how she had gotten to that, or what he had said or done to bring her to that offer again.

Then he realized it for her wound, not his—a doubt she could not lose.

"There will never be a time," he said. "There will never be. Liyo,when will you believe it? I ca

There was long silence. He wished that he could see her. The very air ached.

"I do not know," she said finally, in a voice hushed and faint. "Ido not know why thee should love me."

"God in Heaven—"

But it was not a simple thing that she meant. It was all that she was. It was the whole that she was.

Chei, then, was not the one she had meant— be his friend. Let him go.

He took her face between his hands. He kissed her on the brow, and on either cheek, as a man might his kin. He kissed her a third time on the lips, not after the same fashion. It was desperate; it became passionate, and her arms came around him, while the tumult went on outside.

Then he remembered she had not wanted this, and he heard the arrival of the horses out beside the shelter; and reckoned that there was too much of ill in this place and too much chance of disturbance and too much that they risked. Perhaps she had the same sense of things. He separated himself from her in consternation, and she touched his face.

"I think they have brought the horses," she said, foolish for the moment as he was, one heartbeat, one way of thinking, one intention between them, and all of it sliding in that way a dream might—coming apart and passing into the ordinary.

"Aye," he said, feeling himself still breathing in time with her, and all the world having shifted in its balances, and still reeling. He drew another breath. "Best I see where the rest of our gear is."

And outside, with the horses, dealing with the several men who tried with little success to deal with the gray—"Let him be," he said, and took the reins himself. "Put the tack over there—" He gave orders while the figures at the fire moved darkly against the glare, and shouts rang out, and his mind was dangerously busier with his liege than it was with Arunden's men and with Chei and Bron, who had deserted them.