Gate of Ivrel (24 page)

Roh frowned, looking up at her. "What is there that you have to gain at Ivrel?" he said. "What is it you are looking for?"

"I do not think that is here or there with us, Roh. Good-bye."

"No," he said harshly, and when she would have urged Sip-tah past, ignoring him: "I ask you, Morgaine kri Chya, by the welcome we gave you, I ask you. And if you ride past me I will follow you until I know what manner of thing I have helped, whether good or evil."

"I cannot tell you," she said. "Except that I will do no harm to Koris. I will close a Gate, and you will have seen the last of me. I have told you everything in that, but you still do not understand. If I wished to leave you the means to raise another Thiye, I might pause to explain, but it would take too long and I should hate to leave that knowledge behind me."

Roh gazed up at her, no better comforted than before, and

then turned his face toward Vanye. "Kinsman," he said, "will you take me up behind?"

"No," said Morgaine.

"I do not have her leave," Vanye said.

"You will slow us, Roh," said Morgaine, "and that could be trouble for us."

Roh thrust his hands into the back of his belt and scowled up at her. "Then I will follow," he said.

Morgaine turned Siptah for the northeast, and Vanye with heavy heart laid heels to his own horse, Roh trudging behind. Though they would go easily, wanting to spare the horses, they were passing beyond the bounds of Koris and of Chya, and there was no longer safety for Roh or for any man afoot. He could follow, until such time that they came under attack of beasts or men of Hjemur. Morgaine would let him die before she would let him delay her.

So must he. In a fight he dared not have his horse encumbered. In flight, his oath insisted he must keep to Morgaine's side, and he could not do that carrying double, nor risk tiring the horse before the hour of her need.

"Roh," he pleaded with his cousin, "it will be the end of you."

Roh did not answer him, but hitched his gear to a more comfortable position on his shoulder, and walked. Being Chya-reared, Roh would be able to walk for considerable distances and at considerable pace, but Roh must know also that he stood almost certainly to lose his life.

Had it been his own decision, Vanye thought, he would have ridden far ahead at full gallop, so that Roh must realize that he could not keep up and abandon this madness; but it was not his to decide. Morgaine walked her horse. That was the pace she set; and at noon rest Roh was able to overtake them and share food with them—this grace she granted without stinting; but he fell behind again when they set out.

But for knowing where they were, the land was still fair for some considerable distance; but when pines began to take the place of lowland trees, and they climbed into snowy ground, then Vanye suffered for Roh and looked back often to see how he fared.

"Liyo," he said then, "let me get off and walk a time, and he will ride. That can tire the horse no more."

"His choice to come was his affair," she said. "If trouble

comes on us unexpectedly, I want you, not him, beside me. No. Thee will not."

"Do you not trust him, liyo? We slept in Ra-koris in his keeping, and there was chance enough for him to do us harm."

"That is so," she said, "and of men in Andur-Kursh, I trust Roh next to you; but thee knows how little trust I have to extend; and I have less of charity."

And then he fell to thinking of the night and day ahead, which he had yet to serve, and that she had said that she would die. That saddened him, so that for a time he did not think of Roh, but reckoned that there was something weighing on her mind.

She spoke of the same matter, late in the afternoon, when the horses had struck easier going along a ridge. Crusted snow cracked under them, and their breath hung in frosty puffs even in sunlight, but it was an easy place after the rocks and ice that they had passed.

"Vanye," she said, "thee will find it difficult to pass from Hjemur after I am gone. It would be best if thee had a place to go to. What will thee do? Nhi Erij will not forgive thee for what I have done."

"I do not know what I will do," he said miserably. "There is Chya, there is still Chya, if only Roh and I both come through this alive."

"I wish thee well," she said softly.

"Must you die?" he asked her.

Her gray eyes went strangely gentle. "If I have the choice," she said, "I shall not. But if I do, then thee is not free. Thee knows what thee has to do: kill Thiye. And perhaps then Roh might serve thee well: so I let him follow. But if I live, all the same, I shall pass the Gate of Ivrel, and in passing, close it. Then there will be an end of Thiye all the same. When Ivrel closes, all the Gates in this world must die. And without the Gates, Thiye cannot sustain his unnatural life: he will live until this body fails him, and be unable to take another. So also with Liell, and with every evil thing that survives by means of the Gates."

"And what of you?"

She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. "I do not know where I shall be. Another place. Or scattered, as the men were at Kath Svejur. I shall not know until I pass the Gate where I

can make it take me. That is my task, to seal Gates. I shall go until there are no more—and I shall not know that, I fear, until I step out the last one and find nothing there."

He tried to grasp the thing she told him, could not imagine, and shivered. He did not know what to say to her, because he did not know what it meant.

"Vanye," she said, "you have drawn Changeling. You have a proper fear of it."

"Aye," he acknowledged. Loathing was in his voice. Her gray eyes reckoned him up and down, and she cast a quick look over her shoulder at Roh's distant figure.

"I will tell thee," she said softly, "if something befall me, it could be that thee would need to know. Thee does not need to read what is written on the blade. But it is the key. Chan wrote it upon the blade for fear that all of us would die, or that it would come to another generation of us—hoping that with that, Ivrel still might be sealed. It is to be used at Ra-hjemur, if thee must: its field directed at its own source of power would effect the ruin of all the Gates here. Or cast back within the Gate itself, the true Gate, it would be the same: unsheath it and hurl it through. Either way would be sufficient."

"What are the writings on it?"

"Enough that could give any able to read them more knowledge of Gates than I would wish to have known. That is why I carry it so close. It is indestructible save by Gates. I dare not leave it. I dare not destroy it. Chan was mad to have made such a thing. It was too great a chance. We all warned him that qujalin knowledge was not for us to use. But it is made, and it cannot be unmade."

"Save by the Witchfires themselves."

"Save by that."

And after they had ridden a distance: "Vanye. Thee is a brave man. I owe it to thee to tell thee plainly: if thee uses Changeling, as I have told thee to do, thee will die."

The cold seeped inward, self-knowledge. "I am not a brave man, liyo."

"I think otherwise. Can thee hold the oath?"

He gathered the threads of his thoughts, scattered and snarled for a moment with the knowledge she had given him. He was strangely calm then, what he had known from the beginning settling into place as it ought to be.

"I will hold to it," he said.

He is coming," said Vanye with relief. Snow crunched underfoot beyond the place where they had stopped to wait, around the bend of the trees and the hillside. It was dark. Snow lit by the stars was all about them, bright save in the shadow of the pines. They had lost sight of Roh for a time. "Let me ride back to him."

"Hold where you are," she said. "If it is Roh, he will arrive all the same."

And eventually, a mere shadow among the barred shadows of the pines on the lower slope, there trudged Roh, stumbling with weariness.

"Ride down to him," said Morgaine then, the only grace she had shown the bowman for his efforts.

Vanye did so gladly, met Roh halfway down the hill and drew his horse to a halt, offering stirrup and hand.

Roh's face was drawn, his lips parted and the frosted air coming in great raw gasps. For a moment Vanye did not think that Roh would accept any kindness of him now: there was anger there. But he dismounted and helped his cousin up, and rose into the saddle after. Roh slumped against him. He urged the horse uphill at a walk, for the air grew thin here, and hurt the lungs.

"This is a proper place for a camp," said Morgaine when they joined her. "It is defensible." She indicated a place of rocks and brush, and it was true: however acquired, Morgaine had an eye to such things.

"Surely," said Vanye, "we had better do without the fire tonight."

"I think it would be wise," she agreed. She slid down, shouldered the strap of Changeling, and began to undo her saddle. Siptah pawed disconsolately at the frozen earth. There was still grain left from the supply the Brothers had given them; there was food left too. It would not be a bitter camp, compared to others they had spent near Aenor-Pyvvn.

Vanye let Roh slide to the ground, and slid down after. The bowman fell, began at once to try to gather himself up, but Vanye knelt beside him and offered him drink, unfrozen, the flask carried next the horse's warmth. Then he began to chafe

warmth into the man. There was danger of freezing in his extremities, particularly in his feet. Roh was not dressed for this.

Morgaine silently bent and exchanged her cloak for Roh's, and the bowman nodded gratitude, his eyes fixed on her with thanks and anger so mingled in him that it was hard to know which prevailed.

They fed the horses and ate, which warmed them. There was little spoken. Perhaps there would have been, had Roh not been there; but Morgaine was not in the mood for speech.

"Why?" Roh asked, his voice almost inaudible from cold. "Why do you insist to go to this place?"

"That is the same question you asked before," she said.

"I have not yet had it answered."

"Then I cannot answer it to your satisfaction," she said.

And she held out Roh's cloak to him, and took her own again, and went over to a rock where there was shelter from the wind. There she slept, Changeling in her arms as always.

"Sleep," said Vanye then to Roh.

"I am too cold," said Roh; which complaint Vanye felt with a pang of conscience, and looked at him apologetically. Roh was silent a time, his face drawn in misery and fatigue, his limbs huddled within his thin cloak. "I think"—Roh's voice was hoarse, hardly audible—"I think that I shall die on this road."

"It is only another day more," Vanye tried to encourage him. "Only one day, Roh. You can last that."

"It may be." Roh let his arms fall forward on his knees and bowed his head upon them, lifting his head after a moment, his eyes sunk in shadow. "Cousin. Vanye, for kinship's sake answer me. What is it she is after, so terrible she cannot have me know it?"

"It is nothing that threatens Chya or Koris."

"Are you sure enough to take oath on that?"

"Roh," Vanye pleaded, "do not keep pressing me. I cannot keep answering question and question and question. I know what you would do, to have me defend my way step by step into answering you as you wish, and I will not, Roh. Enough. Leave the matter."

"I think that you yourself do not know," said Roh.

"Enough. Roh, if things go amiss at Ivrel, then I will tell

you all that I do know. But until that time, I am bound to remain silent. Go to sleep, Roh. Go to sleep."

Roh sat a time with his arms folded again about him and his knees drawn up, plunged in thought, and at last shook his head. "I cannot sleep. My bones are still frozen through. I will stay awake a little while. Go and sleep yourself. My oath I will see you take no harm."

"I have an oath of my own," said Vanye, though he was bone-weary and his eyes were heavy. "She did not give me leave to trade my watch to you."

"Must she give you leave in everything, kinsman?" Roh's eyes were kind, his voice gentle as a brother's ought to be. It recalled a night in Ra-koris, when they had sat together at the hearth, and Roh had bidden him return someday to Chya.

"That is the way of the thing I swore to her."

But after an hour or more, the forest still, the weight of the long ride and days of riding and sleeplessness before began to settle heavily upon him. He had a dark moment, jerked awake to find a shadow by him, Roh's hand on his shoulder. He almost cried out, stifled that outcry as he realized in the same instant that it was only Roh, waking him.

"Cousin, you are spent. I tell you that I will take your watch."

It was reasonable. It was sensible.

He heard in his mind what Morgaine would say to such a thing. "No," he said wearily. "It is her time to watch. Rest. I will move about a while. If that will not wake me, then she will wake and take the watch. I have no leave to do otherwise."

He rose, stumbled a little in the action, his legs that numb with exhaustion and cold. He thought Roh meant to help him.

Then pain crashed through his skull. He reached out hands to keep himself from falling, hit, lost most senses; then the weight hit his skull a second and third time, and he went down into dark.