Exile's Gate

Some high servant, he thought, the while his heart skipped a beat and his hand went for his sword-hilt; and then he thought otherwise, seeing the eldritch figure drifted, mirage-like, and was only an image.

It spoke. It spoke words he could not understand, but he knew, whatever they were, that they were not meant for him, or for Chei, or any of them other than Morgaine. He heard Morgaine answer in that tongue, and saw the man's figure grow dimmer as it retreated down that aisle.

She walked forward.

Vanye caught at her arm, the barest touch, before she reached that threshold. She looked at him. That was all; and she turned and hit Siptah a resounding blow on the rump.

The Baien gray sprang through the door, hooves echoing on stone, off high walls, and stopped inside, unscathed.

She went, then, through the doorway, in a single step and a second one which cleared a path for him to follow. He did so, in a motion so quick he did not think of it: he was there, Arrhan was behind him, and he whipped the arrhendur blade from its sheath, for what it was worth against this illusion and the more substantial things it might call down on them.

A question then, from the man of light and shadow. The voice echoed about them, rang off the walls of this long, narrow passage.

"He does not understand you," Morgaine said.

"He is human," the image said then. "I have read everything—in the gate-field. I know what you carry. Yes. How could I fail to remark—a thing like that forming in the patterns? I read his suffering. I intervened, against my habit, to save him. I trusted there wasa pattern—if you valued him. And I was not mistaken."

"I thank you for that," Morgaine said.

"I wished to please you,—who come wandering the worlds. Anjhurin's daughter. It is likely that we are kin—remote as that kinship may be. How does Anjhurin fare?"

"He is dead," Morgaine said shortly.

"Ah." The regret seemed genuine. The image murmured something in the other language.

"Perhaps," Morgaine said, "he was weary of living. He said as much."

Again it spoke.

"No," Morgaine said. And to another query: "No." And: "I travel, my lord."

A harder voice then.

"For my companion's sake," she said. "Speak so he can understand." And after another such: "Because he understands it and because I wish it." And again: "That may be. I would be glad of it." She lapsed for a moment into the other tongue. Then, gently: "It has been a long time, my lord, since I have spoken the language. It has been a long time—since I have had the occasion."

"You bring me felons and rebels." The mouth of the image quirked upward slightly at the corners. "As well as this human warrior. You have turned my court upside down, lifted every rotten log and sent the vermin scurrying forth—from Morund-gate to the highest houses in Mante. What shall I do for you in return?"

"Why, give me the three rebels in question," Morgaine said, "and the pleasure of your company, and in due time, the freedom of your gate. I am a wanderer. I seek no domain of my own."

"Nor to share one?"

She laughed. "We do not sharea world. My father taught me that much. I will find a place. Or do you give this one up, my lord of shadows, and come wander the worlds with us."

"With a rebel, a killer, a doggerel poet and a human lordling?"

Skarrin laughed in his own turn. "Come ahead into my courtyards, my lady of light. Wash off the dust. Take my hospitality." The drifting face became melancholy, even wistful. "Go with you. That is a thought. That is indeed a thought. You will sit with me, my lady, and tell me where you have traveled and the things you have seen—convince me there is something different than one finds . . . everywhere...."

The image faded.

The voice drifted into silence, leaving the stillness of the tomb behind it.

Old,Vanye thought with a chill, old— more than a Man can reckon.

And he found himself staring into Morgaine's eyes, lost, beyond understanding what she did or what she meant to do any longer, and with the least and dreadful fear—that she had found something in common with this lord who contemned everything he ruled, who despised the qhal, who themselves used human folk for cattle—

She had had to defend her companying with a human man. He had sensed that. He imagined the questions which had gone by him, and fitted her answers to them, his liege, his lover . . . defiant, in the begi

"We will do as he asks," Morgaine said.

"Aye," he said. He was too far into strange territory to say anything more. He did not even agree for loyalty or love or out of common sense. He was only lost, on ground which continually shifted and threatened to shift again. They stood in a foreign lord's elegant forecourt with three confused horses in their charge, and three men awaiting their fate outside who were, surely, no less bewildered.

Then: a clear target,he thought, like a shock of cold water.

How else do we come at him—except she draw him out?

And how can she persuade him?

"Call Chei and the rest," she bade him in the Kurshin tongue. "Quickly."

He left Arrhan to stand and went back to the sunlight. "My lord," he said to Chei at the doorway, and lowered his voice. He was determined to observe courtesy with the man and forestall argument. "We are going ahead. We do not know into what. Be aware: the Overlord brought up the matter of your exile. My lady claimed you for her own and Skarrin gave you to her. So if you have any scruples, I think you are honorably quit of debts to him, but I do not know what favor this wins of him if things go amiss."

Chei looked at him and gnawed at his lip. It was young Chei's expression for the instant. It was doubt; and then amusement. "I was quit of debts to him when he failed to kill me," Chei-Qhiverin said. "That was hismistake."

Chei led his horse forward. Hesiyyn and Rhanin followed, Rhanin with his bow strung and slung over his shoulder. Vanye cleared the doorway, gathered up Arrhan's reins, and led the white mare up alongside Siptah as Morgaine began that course Skarrin chose for them.

Ambush was in his thoughts, constantly. But Morgaine went, with Changelingslung at her hip, and walked the long court in which the horses' pacing made a forlorn and lonely sound.

"Games," she said to the air. "I do not like games, my lord Skarrin."

At the end a door whisked open, in that way which doors could move, in such places of gate-force—on a sunlit court.

Vanye cut the lead next the bay's bridle and sent it ambling past them with one slap and another on its dusty rump. It came to no grief in the doorway. And they came through into afternoon sunlight, into a stable court clean and well-supplied with straw and haystack, rows of stables, with well and stone trough. The bay went straightway to the water, and Siptah and Arrhan flared their nostrils and pricked up their ears and approached the trough with keen interest.

"Hospitality," Vanye muttered, for the first time begi

"He needs no ambush," Morgaine said, and bent and washed her hands and her face, and let the water wash black, clean trails over her dusty armor. She drank from the demon-mouth that poured fresh water continually into the trough.