Exile's Gate

She turned a look on him—not the face he loved, but a qhalur mask in white dust, tear-streaked and implacable in purpose. "Do not believe it."

On the one side, Chei and his companions, who knew something had been done with gates such as ought not to have happened, within the laws they knew—

On the other, Morgaine—

I know things they do not. Call it my father's legacy. And if they should know, Vanye, that secret, they would find others, that I will give no one, that are not written on the sword— that I will notpermit anyone to know and live—

She hooked Changelingto her belt. She walked a few steps and recovered his helm from the ground and threw it to him. He caught it. The wind blew at his hair, still shorn. His armor was filthy with dust and blood. Why this should be, and other things mended, he did not understand.

He did not hope to. Nor wish to. He put the helm on, slung the bow to his shoulder, and followed her across the courtyard to the horses.

She stopped there. From that angle, among the standing stones, an open gateway was visible in the masonry wall.

Chapter Eighteen

There was no sound in the high-walled courtyard, save their own movements and those of the horses. There was nothing above them but the sky.

And the open gateway, among the standing stones.

Morgaine took Siptah in hand to look him over and Vanye looked over the exhausted bay and gathered up Arrhan's reins, as Chei and his two comrades led their exhausted horses toward them, slow clatter of iron on stone.

"There is the way out," Morgaine said. "Such as our host gives us. Do you have any reckoning where we are?"

"Nenei

"The Gate itself?"

Hesiyyn looked about him, at the sky, the walls; and pointed off to the right of the open gateway. "There, by my guess. The gate is close—very close to Nenei

Morgaine was silent a moment, looking at Hesiyyn. The tall qhal-lord wore an unwontedly anxious expression.

"Where is your loyalty?" she asked him.

"Assuredly not in Nenei

"None of us has any loyalty here," Chei said. "I assure you. Nor prospects."

There was nothing of arrogance in them. Their courage seemed frayed, their strength flagging in the face of their own u

"Then tell Skarrin nothing," Morgaine said shortly, and turned and hooked Siptah's left stirrup to the horn. She let out the girth no small bit, at which the warhorse grunted and sighed.

Arrhan needed the same. Vanye saw to it, hung his bow from Arrhan's saddlehorn and let out first Arrhan's girth and then the straps of his own body-armor, that were tight to the point of misery; but the bandages and the padding he could not reach, and he drew a breath and strained at them, trying to stretch against what would bind his draw and his sword arm.

Even in blackest sorcery, he thought, gathering his gear about him, there were cursedly maddening shortcomings.

Morgaine flung the stirrup down and gathered up Siptah's reins, looking back toward Chei and the rest. "I will warn you," she said. "You may be safer here. Death—may be safer than where we go. Choose for yourselves."

Chei looked astonished. It was young Chei's expression. The frown which followed was Gault's. Or Qhiverin's. "You jest, lady."

"No," she said. "I do not." And led Siptah among the tall stones, toward the open gateway.

Vanye led Arrhan after her, the blaze-faced bay following perforce, with lagging, wearied steps.

The others came behind him, then, a clatter of iron-shod hooves on stone.

He had as lief not have them at his back. He recollected the medicine Chei had given him, and what it had done to him when at last he had had to rely on it—

—Chei had warned him, he recollected. To do justice to the man, Chei had warned him clearly.

Chei had given it to him after that warning, of course—in hope, perhaps, of nothaving him between them and Morgaine—in any sense. And if he had used it before that, Heaven knew what would have been the outcome.

He kept constantly between Morgaine and the qhal, now, on the winding track among the stones, pale gold of standing stones and of pavings and masonry—and of more sunlit paving visible through the gateway.

Another trap, he thought.

But the gateway opened out into yet another such courtyard, this one with a single standing stone in its center ... a flat, paved courtyard, the end of which a building closed, jumbled planes of wall and tower, and at the sides—

A sheer drop: and buildings upon buildings, upon buildings and buildings, pale gold stone, red roofs, as far as the eye could see.

He stopped in his tracks and stared—only stared, senses confounded, when he was mountain-born and used to heights and perspectives.

But not to men and the works of men so vast they spread like a blanket about the hill and across the plain—to the verge of the cliffs that dropped away into the circular abyss of Neisyrrn Neith, and along and away till the roofs lost themselves in haze and distance.

Morgaine had stopped. So had the others.

"Mante," Chei said softly. So a man might speak of Heaven and Hell in one.

The others said nothing at all.

And Vanye could not forbear looking at it, though he tangled his fingers in Arrhan's coarse mane and feared irrationally that the sight might drive the horses mad, and bring them too near the edge, however far away they stood.

Morgaine led Siptah further. It was the sound of the gray's steps that woke him from trance, and brought him after her, resolutely, as she walked toward the open doorway at the end of the courtyard.

The others followed, at distance.

This door—had little sunlight about it. This one let into the very heart of the fortress, by a long narrow aisle, shadowed by columns.

They had seen such before, of many kinds. Such buildings were always near the World-gates. They held the machines to command and direct the forces.

It was what they had come to find; and Morgaine would go in. He had no doubt of it. He saw her lay her hand on the sword-hilt.

"Liyo. "He searched after the chain of the stone he wore about his neck, drew it from his collar and over his head as he led Arrhan quickly to overtake her. It was a weak thing—stronger by far than the Warden's mote or many another sending-stone in this land, he suspected, but not Changeling'smatch. It was useless to him, a means to sudden death, if he matched it against anything of Changeling'spower.

Or against the gate Hesiyyn swore must lie close hereabouts.

"He knows you have a gate-weapon," he said. "Takeit. It is larger than the ones they use. It may be he will mistake this for it."

She understood him then. And refused it with a shake of her head. "The sword," she said in his language. "I ca

"The sword is too dangerous," he whispered hoarsely, and started at a movement in the corner of his vision, in the deep shadow within the narrow aisle ahead—a qhalur man, alone, nor very old.