Текст книги "Exile's Gate "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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In front of him, leaning against him, the man gave a racking cough. Disease and plague,Vanye thought. It went with such places. He reined about carefully, following Morgaine as she mounted up on the gray. The stud was fractious too, snorting and working at the reins, but she did not let Siptah have his head. They rode carefully over the bone-littered ground.

"Are they near," Vanye asked the prisoner, "the men who did this to you?"

Perhaps the man understood. Perhaps he did not. He did not answer. Intermittently he underwent spasms of coughing, racking and harsh, then, exhausted, slumped against him, his body rolling more and more to the motion of the horse.

"He is fainting," Vanye said to Morgaine. "I think all his strength is going."

In a little time more, the man's head fell forward, and it was loose weight leaning against him. But when Vanye pressed his hand over the man's heart he felt it beating steadily. It was a strong heart, he thought, of a man stubborn beyond all reason, and such a man might touch his sympathy—might, except such a man might be fair or foul, and he had known more than one enemy and more than one madman on this Road.

Morgaine led them back to the road again, and across it, to a place where a small river ran at woods-edge. In the last light, they rode a pathless track among the trees, in a land where they already knew that there were wolves, and men who had done the like of this. It was enough to know.

They gave him water, they brought him a long dazed ride deep within the twisted forest, laid him on a streamside and there freed his hands, the man of the pair giving him a little waybread soaked in cordial so strong it stung Chei's throat.

After which they let him lie, busy at the making of their camp, and through his slitted, aching eyes, Chei saw them moving here and there in the light of a tiny fire, illusory and ominous. Chei's heart beat in panic when they would come near; it eased whenever they would seem occupied about their own business. Then he knew that he was safe for a while, as he had known that he was safe when the wolves were feeding: and in such intervals, as then, he drifted only scantly waking.

A shadow fell between him and the fire. He came awake, saw the reach toward him, and feigned unconsciousness as a hand rested on his brow. "There is tea," a man's voice said, in the qhalur tongue, "here, drink."

He did not intend to break his pretense. He was still even when a hand slipped beneath his neck, though his heart was hammering in fright; he stayed quite limp as the man lifted his head and slid support under his shoulders.

But the cup which touched his lips smelled of herbs and honey. A little of it trickled between his lips, warm and wholesome, and he swallowed, risking the harm in it—a sip which touched off a spate of coughing and destroyed his pretense of unconsciousness. The cup retreated, came back to his lips. He drank again, eyes shut, tears leaking from between his lids as he fought the rawness in his throat; and drank a third sip, after which his head rested on the man's knee and a gentle hand soothed his brow.

He ventured to open his eyes, and met a face human as his own—but he had learned to doubt appearances.

All about them were twisted trees, the night, the fire. He knew that he had come to Hell, and that this qhalur woman from beyond the gate had laid claim to what the qhal-lord this side of the gate had flung away. These strangers had no use for revenge: there was nothing he personally had done to them save be born. There was nothing he knew that would be valuable to them. There was no cause at all for their mercy to him save that they had use for him, and what use the tall, lordly qhal had for a young and fair-haired human man he knew all too well.

They would take him through the gate with them. He would come back again, but with such a guest in him as Gault had, an old thing, a living hell which spoke with Gault's mouth and looked out through Gault's eyes, and which was a sojourner there. Qhal did not use qhal in that way, or it was rare. A healthy human body would serve, when a qhal outlived the one he was born with.

So they touched him gently, this qhalur woman and this maybe-qhal who did her bidding. So they gave him drink, delicate drink, perhaps because the great qhal-lords gave him what they themselves drank, because it did not occur to them that it was too precious to waste. So the man let his head down to the soft grass and spoke to him reassuringly, looking to the iron that banded his swollen ankle: "This is a simple lock; I can strike it off, have no fear of me, I will take good care." And he fetched a hand-axe and one flat stone and another, to Chei's misgiving—but the axe-blade was for a wedge, the one rock for a brace, the other for striking, and the woman came and with her own hands gave him more of the cordial against the shocks that ran through his nerves, gave him enough that his raw throat was soothed and his head spun while the man worked in soft, steady blows.

Surely they took good care for the body they claimed. There was something terrible in such careless use of their rich things, in the gentle touch of the woman's hand as it rested on his shoulder, and in her soft reassurances: "He will not hurt you."

It was one with the other madness, and Chei's senses spun, so that he was not sure whether the ground was level or not. The soft ringing of the metal resounded in his skull, the pain ran up from the bones of his leg and into his hip, till the iron fell away, and the man very delicately, with his knife, slit the stitching of his boot and said something to the qhal in words which made no sense—but Chei was far gone in the pain that began about his ankle from the moment it was free of its confinement, an ache that made him wish the chain back again, the boot intact, anything but that misery which made him vulnerable. He tried not to show it, he tried not to react when the man probed the joint; but his back stiffened, and he could not help the intake of breath.

The world was dim for a time after that shock. They went away from him. He was glad to lie still and not heave up the moisture they had given him; and he thought that he would, for a time, if he lifted his head at all. But the man brought a wet doth warm from the fire, and washed his face and his neck and his hands with it.

"Do you want more water?" the man asked.

He did. He did not ask. It was a trick, he thought, to make him believe them, and he did not want to talk to them. Somewhere in the distance, wolves howled, and he shivered at the chill of water rolling down under his collar; that small twitch he could not suppress. For the rest he did nothing, lay still and cared as little as possible what they did.

Until he felt the man's hands at his armor buckles, unfastening them.

"No," he said then, and flinched from under that touch.

"Man, I will not hurt you. Let me rid you of this and wash the dirt off—only the worst of it. Then you can sleep till morning."

"No," he said again, and blinked the man clear in his vision—a human face, faintly lit by fire. The place was real, like the woods overhead, branches the fire lit in ghostly ways. He flinched as the touch came at his shoulder again, and struck feebly at it, being desperate.

"Man—"

"No. Let me be."

"As you will. It is your choice." Another touch, this time on his wrist, from which again he moved his hand. "Peace, peace, rest, then. Rest. Whoever did this to you is no friend of ours. You can sleep."

The words made no sense at all to him. He thought of the wolves, the ones he had named—he had known their faces, he had known their ways. They were terrible, but he knew them, what they would do, when they would do it: he had learned his enemy and he had known the limits of his misery.

But the qhal he could not understand. They would guard his sleep, fend away the wolves, do him whatever kindnesses pleased them: they would do no terrible thing until they had brought him to the gate, or to their own lands. There was no limit, then, no mercy such as the wolves would have shown.

"He might be a murderer," Vanye said, at the fire with Morgaine, sitting on his heels in that way that years out of hall made comfortable enough for him. "But so am I," he added with a shrug. "Whoever put him there—God requite."

"He will run," Morgaine said.

"Not with that foot. At least tonight. God in Heaven, liyo—"

Vayne hugged his arms about him, in the scant warmth of the fire they risked, and shook his head, and cast a glance toward the dark lump that was their guest, lying just beyond the firelight. It was a fair, green land they had left the other side of the gate. Their friends were aged and gone, a kinsman of his—was dust, he thought, for he once had thought the gates led only between lands; but now he knew that their span was years and centuries; and knew that if he looked up away from the fire he would see the too-abundant stars in no familiar pattern, the which sight he could not, this moment, bear. The breath seemed choked in him.

"We do not let him free," Morgaine said harshly. The fire shone on the planes of her face, winked redly from the eyes of the dragon sword. It had not left her side. It would not, this night.

"No," he said. "That I do know."

He felt cold, and bereft, and victim of a cruel choice which was Morgaine's doing—that she asked everything of him, every possession, every kinship, every scruple, the sum of which choices brought him here, where men fed each other to wolves. I had every thing I thought that I had dreamed of. Everything was in my hands– honor, kinship, a home that was mine– within the arrhend. There was peace—

But Morgaine would have gone on without him. And with her, the warmth in the sun would have gone. And no one could ever have warmed him again, man or woman, kinsman or friend. The essential thing would have left his life, and beyond that, beyond that—

He had ridden into that dark gulf of the gates—it had been this morning, a bright meadow, a parting with his cousin, last save Morgaine herself who could speak the language of his homeland, last save Morgaine who knew his customs, knew the things he believed, remembered the sights of home. And it was already too late. Was dust, between two strides of the horses that bore them.

He shivered, a convulsive twitch as if a cold wind had blown over his back; and he bowed his head and rubbed the back of his neck, which the warrior's braid made bare. Honor demanded. Honor, he had back again. But he did not put off the white scarf, which made him ilin,a Claimed warrior, soul-bound to the liege he served; and when he asked himself why this was, his thoughts slid away from that question as it did from the things Morgaine tried to explain to him, how worlds circled suns and what made the constellations change their shapes.

So he thought, listening to the wolves, thinking that they were not alone, that this world had touched them already. They had in their care a man who depended on them for life, and who in someone's estimation had deserved to die by a terrible means.

He wished that he knew less than he did, or had seen less in their journeying.

"We cannot leave him; Heaven knows we cannot make speed carrying double. And Heaven knows—fever may take him by morning."

Morgaine stared at him, a flash of her eyes across the fire, out of a brooding silence. So he knew he had gotten to the heart of her thoughts, that she dismissed his worry for their guest as shortsighted, the matter of one life. She weighed it against other things.

"We will do what we have to," she said, and beneath that was: I will do, and you will, or our ways part.

There was always that choice. It was knowing that, perhaps, that made him choose to stay within ilin-oath and keep himself from other, more damning choices. He could not take another direction, in a strange land and outside the law he knew. And where was honor—when a man chose a woman, and refused to leave her even for his honor's sake; and a liege, and must not desert her, else he had no honor at all; and that woman and that liege lord, being one and the same, would never turn left or right for his sake, being bound by an oath still more dreadful than his.

He had no wish to serve what she served. Serving her, he served that terrible thing, as much as a man could and hold out any vestige of hope for his soul. Being Kurshin, and Nhi, and honorable, he sought after absolutes of law, and right; and that truth of hers, which killed the innocent and shattered law and right, shimmered beyond all his horizons, stark as the sword she bore– here is absolute truth, man, here is truth beyond truths, which makes all justice void.

Morgaine understood it. Morgaine did all that she did for that thing she served, did all that flesh and blood could do, woman or man; and took so little care for herself that she would not eat or drink, at times, would forget these things if he were not there to put food into her hand and to protest that he, he, being a natural man, needed rest even if she did not. He distracted her from her pursuit from time to time. And so few things could.

He gave her such comfort as he could, and they were not even lovers, Heaven knew and few guessed. They had shared a blanket in the beginning with her sword between, lately without so much as that caution to stay them; which was intolerable and gave him the more reason to chafe at this unwanted guest, and the demands of his own stubborn honor.

"I think," Vanye said quietly, "that he has no love of qhal."

"He is human," Morgaine said with a shrug. "And we do not know who left him to die."

I am not qhal,she was wont to insist, as long as he had known her—for in his own lost land the qhal were dreaded and damned; halflinghad been Morgaine's ultimate admission to him, when at last he won a little of truth from her, none so many days ago as their time ran.

Now she let the implication of qhalur blood pass without a protestation. Perhaps she was preoccupied; perhaps she finally believed him enough to give up the lie—that pretense which had begun perhaps in kindness on her part and lasted in doubt of him.

Was that the last test, that I should ride this gate with you? But did you doubt me,liyo, that I would keep my word?

"Go, rest," she told him, brushing the last crumbs of their dinner into the fire. "I will watch a while."

He shifted his eyes to their guest, in the shadows. "If he has need of anything, wake me; do not go near him."

"I have no such notion," she said, and slid the pan into her saddlebag, there by her side, as if they could leave in the morning with their guest as weak as he was. But it was only prudence. They had not survived this long by leaving gear behind, if attack came on them. "If he has need of anything in your watch," she said, "you will wake me, the same."

"He is one man," Vanye said with a little indignation, and she frowned at him.

"Wake me," she said, being unreasonable on the matter.

So this land had frightened her too. And she grew irrational in little things.

"Aye," he said, and shrugged. It was little enough concession.

He loosened his armor, and wrapped himself in his cloak, wrinkling his nose from the stink the cloth had taken on from its little contact with the man, and thinking that he might never have it clean again.

In the morning, in the daylight, after sleep, he thought, the man might be reasonable—Heaven help them, they had no means to deal with a madman.

He must see what could be done to salvage the man's gear—as long as they were not traveling.

But for his part he was very weary, and his bones ached. So with his liege, he thought; but she had thinking to do, and he had none—it was Morgaine chose their way, Morgaine who decided matters, it was Morgaine who told him what he should do, and therefore he did not worry about that—only about the little matters—the horses, the gear, and how they should do what Morgaine had set them to do. And he was content enough with that arrangement.

Morgaine threw her own blanket over him as he lay there, a little settling of added warmth, in the which, his head pillowed on Arrhan's saddle, he relaxed. She patted his ankle as she let down the blanket, a gentle good night, a comfort at which he sighed, and thought after that, staring into the dark—for she had a way of doing that to him—that perhaps that gesture of hers had been intended for more than that, that if not for the damnable matter of their uninvited guest, if not for this world that threatened them and set them to sleeping turn and turn about, in their armor, that cursed, familiar burden which seemed to settle on heart and soul, with all its habits of fear—

So close they had been to being lovers. So very close.

He sighed again, but not for the same reason, and tried with all his mind to go quickly to sleep, with that good sense he had learned on this trail—that unbroken sleep was precious as food and water, and very often harder come by.

A hard lump pressed beneath his armor, against his heart. He felt after the chain which held it and pulled it loose for his comfort . . . careful of the case, for it was a perilous thing within, more perilous still as near the Gate as they were camped. The stone in it might tell him the way to another Gate. It might find another stone of its kind which was near enough. That was the virtue in it, which held so much else of danger.

It had been a parting-gift, from a man he had begun to love, one he had wished had been his father. But in Morgaine's service there were only partings—and deaths. Only the small stone and the white horse, these he owned, besides his gear, both of which he knew for foolishness and dangerous vanity—a mare, and white at that; and a stone which marked him equal to a qhal-lord—and reminded him of the arrhend.

That land they had traded irrevocably for this one, where the gates themselves threw out power enough to misshape the trees and make all their vicinity unwholesome.

It was that lost, beautiful forest and another, less wholesome, which haunted his sleep. He dreamed that Morgaine had left him and he could not overtake her.

He dreamed of a ride wherein he had seen a dragon frozen in the snow, beyond which time nothing had been ordinary in his life. For the most part, he thought, folk chose to be where they were born, with familiar dangers. It might be a terrible place or a good one, might be love or hate that came to them, they might have their freedom merely by turning their faces from what they knew and walking straight ahead—yet they would not go, not though the place where they were would kill them. He might have been such a man as that. He had hovered for two years close about the region of his exile, when he was eighteen and an outlaw, despite his danger: he had imagined nothing beyond that.

Till Morgaine had found him.

She had shown him things which made no sense in the world he knew. And like the dragon which perished, bewildered, in the snow—he had known he was out of his element from the moment he had begun to follow her.

Therefore he dreamed of endless following. Therefore he walked with his fist clenched on the stone; and lay bewildered, wondering where he was; and where Morgaine was; and was terrified until he had found her, a familiar shadow, beneath the ancient and twisted tree, in more starlight than any world he had yet seen.

He drifted off again. The horses remained quiet. The wind blew and rattled the branches, and there was no sound that did not belong.

But—a brief darkness then; and a snap like a burning log, that brought him out of his sleep reaching for his sword, aware first that Morgaine was at his left and that their guest was to his right and moving, staggering to his feet and reeling away among the trees at no slight speed. Fire burned in the leaf mold. That was the result of Morgaine's weapon: he knew it well enough—knew that was the sound that had waked him; and he scrambled up sleep-dazed as he was and overtook the man before he had gotten as far as the horses he strove to reach—overtook him and seized him at the shoulders, bearing him down in a crash to the leaves at the very hooves of the gray warhorse.

The gray reared up with a challenge and Morgaine's whistle cut the dark. "Siptah!" she shouted, as Vanye shielded his head with his arms, the prisoner with his body, and the iron-shod hooves came down, flinging dirt and leaves into his face and clipping his shoulder, thunder of hooves all about them as the warhorse scrambled over them, missing them with every stride but one. The prisoner beneath him did not move.

"Is thee hurt?" Morgaine was asking. "Vanye, is thee hurt?"

Vanye gathered himself up off the man and caught his own breath in great frightened gasps, looking up at his liege, who had caught firm hold of Siptah's halter rope. He flexed the shoulder as he rose and thanked Heaven the hoof had clipped only leather and a mail shirt.

"He could have had a knife," Morgaine raged at him. "He might have had any sort of weapon! Thee did not know!"

He thought the same, now it was done; more, he thought of the hoof-strike that had missed his head, and his knees went to water. The big gray had shifted balance in mid-attack and all but fallen trying to miss him; that was what had saved them.

At his feet the prisoner moaned and moved, a half-conscious stir of his limbs. Vanye set his foot in the man's back when he tried to get an arm under him and pressed him flat, not gently.

"He is not altogether lame," Morgaine observed dryly, then, having recovered her humor.

"No," Vanye said, still hard-breathing. The deserved reproof of his mercy stung more than the bruise did. "Nor in any wise grateful."

Chapter Two

Dawn light grew in the clearing, and Vanye probed the ashes of their fire with a bit of kindling, as he had fed it from time to time in the hours of his watch. Yellow threads of fire climbed and sparked in the threads of inner bark of something very like willow. He added a few other twigs, then arranged more substantial pieces, deliberate in his leisure. It was a rare moment in which nothing pressed them, in which he knew that they were not riding on, and all he needed think on was the fire, the mystery that was always homelike, no matter what the sky over him, or the number of moons in it. The horses grazed in the clearing on the riverside, where the twisted trees let in enough light for grass—faithful sentries both, dapple gray Siptah wise to war and ambushes, Arrhan forest-wise and sensible. Something might escape human ears, but the horses would give alarm—and they found nothing amiss in this morning. Catastrophe had attempted them in the night—and failed.

On the other side of the fire, the glow falling on slender hand and silver hair, Morgaine slept on, which small vision he cherished in that same quiet way as he did the fire and the dimly rising sun.

"Sleep," he whispered when she stirred. Sometimes, in such rare leisure, she would yield him the body-warmed blankets, so he might sleep a little while she made breakfast—or he yielded them to her, whichever of them had sat the watch into dawn.

She half-opened her eyes and lifted her head, nose above the blankets. "Thee can sleep," she said, in the Kurshin tongue, as he had spoken—but it was an older accent, forgotten by the time he was born. It was a habit she had when she spoke to him alone, or when she was muddled with sleep.

"I am full awake," he said, which was a lie: he felt the long hours of his watch in a slight prickling in his eyes, his bruised shoulder ached, and the blankets were tempting shelter from the morning chill. But he saved her from hardship when he could—so often that it became a contest between them, of frowns and maneuverings, each favoring the other in a perpetual rivalry which tilted one way or the other according to the day and the need.

"Sleep," he said now. Morgaine sank back and covered her head; and he smiled with a certain satisfaction as he delved into their saddlebags and brought out a pan for mixing and cooking.

The prisoner too, lying prone in his cloak, showed signs of life, rolling onto his side. Vanye reckoned what his most pressing need likely was, and reckoned that it could wait a time: shepherding an escape-prone madman out to the woods meant waking Morgaine to put her on guard; or letting their breakfast go cold—neither of which he felt inclined to do, considering the prisoner was healthy enough to have sprinted for the horses last night, and considering he had won a stiff arm for his last attempted kindness.

Morgaine bestirred herself as the smell of cakes and bacon wafted into the air—enough to draw the hungry for leagues about, Vanye reckoned—the most of them bent on banditry, if what they had seen was any guide.

And another glance toward the prisoner showed him lying on his side, staring in their direction with such misery and desolation that Vanye felt his eyes on him even when he looked back at their breakfast.

"I should see to him," Vanye muttered unhappily when Morgaine came back from the riverside. He poured tea into their smallest mixing bowl, wrapped a cloth about it to keep it warm, and set out a cake and a bit of bacon on the cloth that wrapped his cooking-gear, while Morgaine sat down to eat. "Have your own," he said, "before it cools."

It did not look like a madman who stared up at him as he came over to his place among the tree-roots. It looked like a very miserable, very hungry man who hoped that food truly was coming to him. "I will free your hands," Vanye said, dropping down on his heels beside him. He set the food down carefully on the dead leaves of the forest floor. "But not your feet. Meddle with that and I will stop you, do you understand? For other necessities I trust you can wait like any civilized man." It was the qhalur language he spoke, and it did not go so lightly over his tongue as it ought. He was not sure, at times, what hearers did understand of him. "Do you agree? Or do I take the food back?"

"The food," the man said, a faint, hoarse voice. "Yes."

"You agree."

A nod of the head, a worried gnawing of the lip.

He turned the prisoner over and gently worked the knots free on his hands. The man only gave a great sigh and lay still on his face a moment, his arms at rest beside him, as a man would who had spent the night with his hands and shoulders going numb.

"He is quieter," he reported then to Morgaine, in his own tongue, when he settled down to breakfast beside her. He took a cup of tea and considered his hands, where he had touched the man. It was death-stink, lingering: the man was that filthy; and he could not eat until he had walked down to the river and washed his hands.

It was overdone bacon then; Morgaine kept the breakfast warm for him on the coals, along with the tea which by now was bitter-edged. He drank and made a face.

"I should have gotten up," Morgaine said.

"No," he said. "No, you ought not. I will take care of him. I will have him down to the river before the sun is much higher, and I swear to you he will be cleaner before you have to deal with him."

"I want you to talk to him."

"Me?"

"You can manage that."

"Aye—but—"

"Not?"

"I will do it." Rarely nowadays she put any hard task on him: and he took it, distasteful as it was, likely as he was to make a muddle of things. "But—"

"But?"

"He can lie to me. How should I know? How should I know anything he told me? I have no subtlety with lies."

"Is thee saying I do?"

"I did not say—"

She smiled, a quirk of her mouth, gray eyes flickering. "Man and man; Man and Man. That is the fact. Between one thing and the other I am not the one of us two he will trust. No. Learn what brought him here. Promise him what thee sees fit to promise. Only—" She reached out and laid a hand on his arm. "He will not go free. We cannot allow that. Thee knows what I will give—and what I will not."

"I know," he said, and thought as he said it that he had chosen the road that brought him to this pass—thought suddenly how more than one land cursed Morgaine kri Chya for the deaths she brought. He had tried in his life to be an honorable man, and not to lie.

But he had chosen to go with her.

It was far more warily the man regarded him on his return, tucked up with his back against a tree, eyes following every move he made—a filthy, desperate figure their guest was by daylight, his nose having bled into his white-blond mustache and down his unkept and patchy beard, dirt-sores and crusted lines on his face, a trickle of dried blood having run from under the matted hair at his temple—a reminder of the night previous, Vanye thought. Likely more than the man's arms ached this morning.

But he had not touched the binding on his ankles. He had eaten every bit of the cake and the bacon off the cloth, down to the crumbs. And there was still a look on his face, as if having eaten off their charity, he felt there was a chance something else of hope might happen, but much doubted it.

"I will tell you," Vanye said, sinking down on his heels, arms on knees, in front of him, "how I am. I hold no grudge. A man in the dark and fevered—he may do strange things. I reckon that this was the case last night. On the other hand, if you take some other mad notion that endangers my liege, I shall not hesitate to break your neck, do you understand?"

The man said nothing at all. There was only a stare of wary blue eyes, beneath the tangled hair, and the stink of filth was overwhelming.

"Now I think you have been a warrior," Vanye said. "And you do not choose to be filthy or to be a madman. So I should like to take you down to the water and give you oil and salve and help you present a better face to my lady, do you understand me at all, man?"

"I understand," the man said then, the faintest of voices.

"So you should know," Vanye said, taking out his Honor-blade from his belt and beginning to undo the knots which bound the man's feet, "my lady is herself a very excellent shot, with weapons you may not like to see—in case you should think of dealing with me." He freed the knot and unwrapped the leather, tucking it in his belt to save. "There." With a touch on the man's bare and swollen right foot. "Ah. That did the swelling no good at all. Can you walk?—Have you a name, man?"