Exile's Gate

And: Not of human measure, not predictable by human intentions,his own experience told him.

Deeper and deeper into this snare Morgaine went, leading the rest of them in what haste they dared—

Lest Skarrin strand them here, lest he go before them and seal the gate and leave them imprisoned here forevermore.

He did not question now. He understood the things that she had attempted to tell him throughout their journey—and he had overwhelmed her arguments, delayed her with his foolishness, his well-meant advice and his hopes and, Heaven forgive, his desire of her, which had stolen her good judgment and thrown his to the winds.

But for me, he kept thinking, the while he walked beside her: but for me she would have ridden straight to him and stayed him from this; but for me she would have gone straightway to Morund and enlisted qhalur aid and learned more at the start than ever young Chei could have taught us.

And perhaps Chei would be alive, himself, and Gault would be Gault, and their ally.

"Tell her," Chei hissed at him.

"She has always understood," he said to Chei and his murderer, "better than I. Better than any of us. She gave you the chance to turn back. It is not too late to take it."

The gate before them was open. He was not in the least surprised at that. And this one let into the building itself, into a shadowed hall which might hold more than ghosts—but he began to doubt that there need be guards or soldiery, nor any hand but Skarrin's own, which held the gate-force. He kept beside Morgaine as far as that doorway, and suddenly sent Arrhan through ahead of them, expecting no harm.

The arrhendur mare came to none, only stopped, confused, her feet striking echoes from polished pavement, in a hall supported by columns much lest vast than those of Neisyrrn Neith, but vast for all that, shaped of green stone and black.

A table was set there, set with pitchers and platters bearing fruit and bread and what else his eye did not trouble to see.

Skarrin's ghost hung before them, welcomed them, smiled at them with all beneficence and no little amusement.

"My guests," he said; then, and with less mockery: "My lady Morgaine Anjhuran, my youngest cousin—sit, take your ease. You can trust my table. Surely you know that. And you might indeed leave the horses outside my hall."

"My lord Skarrin," Morgaine said, "forgive me. I have known so many and so bizarre things in my travels—I have found folk do things for remarkable reasons, some only because they can, some only for sport—I do not know you, my lord. So I keep my horse and my arms—and my servants. My father's friends may, for all I know, be no less mad than some others I have met on the way."

The drifting image laughed, a soft sound, like the hissing of wind in grass. "And thus you decline my hospitality?"

"I do not sit at table with shadows, my lord. Our mistrust is mutual—else you would not hesitate to come and meet me face to face—if you can."

"My lady of outlaws and rebels—should I trust myself to your companions, when they think so ill of me?"

Morgaine laughed, let fall Siptah's reins, and walked over to the table, to pull out a chair and sit down. She picked up a pitcher and poured a cup of red wine.

Vanye let Arrhan stand alone too, and went and stood at the side of her chair as she lifted it and sipped it in courtesy to their shadowy host.

Whereupon Skarrin laughed softly, and drifted amid their table, severed at the waist. "You are trusting."

"No, my lord of Mante. Only interested. I knew when I heard your name from young Chei—who is host to my lord of Morund—what you mightbe. I took your gate-wardens' behavior for yours—to our mutual discomfiture. No one saw fit to apprise me of the truth—in which I do fault you, my lord of Mante. So much could have been saved, of affairs in the south, if I had known. Now I leave you a humankind in war and disorder—an inconvenience, at the least, for which I do apologize."

"There are other lands. The world is wide. I weary of Mante."

"I took this for the greatest of your cities. Are there others? Truly, this one is a wonder to see."

"Ah, there are hundreds. Everywhere—there are cities, as unvarying as the worlds. Everywhere is boredom, my lady of light, until you came—traveling, as you say. With a human servant, no less—what is his name?"

"Nhi Vanye i Chya. Nhi Vanye, if you please."

"My lord," Vanye said. To say something seemed incumbent on him, when the image turned its cold eyes in his direction and the face seemed to gaze straight at him. He was in danger. He knew beyond a doubt that he was in peril of his life, only for being human, and for standing where he stood, and for more than that: it was the look a man gave a man where a woman was in question—and blood was.

The glass-gray stare passed from him and turned slowly to the others, and back again to Morgaine.

"Why have you come?"

"Why should I not?" Morgaine said. "I take my father's lesson, who found one world and a succession of worlds—far too small for him. Thatwas Anjhurin." She leaned back, posing the chair on its rearmost legs, and stared up at the image. "From all you say, you have arrived at the same place as he—you have wielded power over world and world and world—am I right? And you have found this world much the same as the last."

"And the one before," Skarrin said. "And before that. You are young."

"As you see me."

"Very young," Skarrin said softly, this young man with gray, gentle eyes.

"You knew Anjhurin," Morgaine said.

"A very, very long time ago." The image became merely a face, drifting in the shadow, a handsome face, with Morgaine's own look, so like her among qhal it might have been a brother. "Anjhurin dead! Worlds should shake."

"They have," Morgaine said softly. "And things change,my lord of dust and stability. You do not love your life. Come risk it with me. Come join me."

"To what purpose?"

"The changing of worlds, my lord, change that sweeps through space and time."

"Even this, I have seen. I have ties in many ages, many worlds. I will survive even the next calamity. What new can you offer me?"

"Have you riskedthat hope, elder cousin? It is risk makes immortality bearable—to know that personal calamity is possible, oh, very possible, and tranquility, what time it exists, is precious. Anjhurin is dead. Does that not tell you that fatality is possible? Come with me. There are worlds full of chances."

"Full of cattle. Full of same choices and same tragedies and same small hearts and smaller minds which lead to them. Full of stale poets who think their ideas are a towering novelty in the cosmos. Full of rebels who think they can change worlds for the better and murderers who see no further than the selfish moment. Mostly, full of cattle, content with their mouthful of grass and their little herd and endless procreation of other cattle. And we are finite, calamity endlessly regenerate, disaster in a bubble. One day it will burst of sheer tedium. And the universe will never notice."

"No," Morgaine said, and reached and took Vanye by the arm, drawing him to the table edge. "I have news to give you, my lord. Qhalreached outside. They stole hisancestors in real-space, and his cousins voyage there, notwith the gates, notwithin them so far as they know—"

"It will not save them."

"No. But they are widening the bubble, my lord who sees no change. They are involving all who meet them—and all who meet their allies. Do you see, my lord of shadows? There is chance and change. Hiskind—humankind—have realized the trap. They have refused it. More, they have set out to prick the bubble themselves."