Текст книги "Exile's Gate "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Vanye had rescued his arm at once. There was on his sullen face, a quick suspicion and a dark threat. The shorn hair blew across his eyes and reminded them both of things past, of miscalculations and mistakes disastrously multiplied. A muscle clenched in his jaw.

But if there was at the moment a voice of caution and reason in their company it was this Man, Chei believed it: the boy's experience told him so and Qhiverin's instincts went to him, puzzling even himself—except it was everywhere consonant with what the boy knew: a man absolute in duty, absolute enough and sane enough to lay aside everything that did not pertain to the immediate problem.

Trust him to listen,was the boy's advice. Nothing further.

And Qhiverin, within himself. Boy, if the one thing, with what lies between us, then anything; and you have been a mortal fool.

"It is for all our sakes," he said. "I swear to you, Nhi Vanye. We are walking into a trap. Every step of this is a trap. He has vacated the place. Even the horses. Even the horses. I do not know where."

"The gate," Vanye said, looking down the little distance Chei's slighter form needed.

"To Tejhos?" Chei asked. "—Or elsewhere?" Vanye cast a look toward Morgaine, whose face was stern and pale and set on the way before them, which led toward yet another gate in this maze.

"Anything is possible," he said.

A man who is winning, he had said to Morgaine again and again, will not flee.

But the man of that face and that voice which had spoken to them—

–Go withyou, it had said.

Convince me there is something different than one finds . . . everywhere. . . .

Older than the calamity, Morgaine had said of Skarrin.

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."

There was long silence.

"It would doom them," Skarrin said.

"Perhaps. Theirthreads reach far beyond their own world, but they were not that deeply entangled."

"If they have taken it on themselves to do this, by that very act they are entangled."

"And they know otherraces who know others still."

Vanye listened through that silence, his heart beating harder and harder. Morgaine's light hand upon his elbow held him fast, by oath and by the surety that somewhere in this exchange he had become all humanity, and that existence was the prize of this struggle– What must I do, what must I say, what is she telling him– of threads and bubbles?

This man can kill us all. He has stripped this house of its servants, its goods, its cattle. He has destroyed them or he has sent them through the gate before him– and means to follow.

– Humankind– has refused the trap.

What is she telling him?

"Change," Morgaine said, "is very possible. That is the work I do."

"And this—for heir," Skarrin said. "This for companion. His get—for inheritors."

"Come with me," Morgaine said, "down the thread that leads to infinity. Or bind yourself more and more irrevocably to the one you have followed thus far. Eventually change maybecome impossible. But you will not find it inside the patterns; you find it linked to these—to qhal, and to humankind. And to me,lord Skarrin, and to those with me."

"So I should serve your purposes."

"Follow your own. Did I ever say I wished to share more than a road and the pleasure of your company? We will bid one another farewell—in time, in time I cannot predict, my lord Skarrin, nor can you. That is chance,my lord Skarrin. Have you grown too attached to this age and to what is? Have you found your own end of time, and are you content with solitude among your subjects—or do I tempt you?"

"You tempt me."

"We have a horse to spare." She held Vanye's arm the tighter, and laughed softly. "What want you, an entourage, a clutter of servants, lord Skarrin? I have my few, who will serve you the same as me. A horse, a bedroll, and the sky overhead —your bones are still young, and your heart is not that cold. Come and learn what a younger generation has learned."

The image smiled, slowly and fondly. "Was Anjhurin—fate's way of creating you—who see no wider than that?"

"Perhaps that is all there is worthwhile, my lord kinsman. Freedom. "

"Freedom! Oh, young cousin, lady, you mistake the roof for the sky. We are prisoners, all. Insidethe bubble we work what we will and we shift and change. The gates end and the gates begin. And all the hope you bring me is that the contagion is spreading and the bubble widens. Is thatcause to hope? I think not. In the wide universe we are still without significance."

"You are melancholy, my lord of shadows."

"I am a god. The cattle have made me so." There came laughter, soft and terrible. "Tell me, is that not cause for melancholy?"

"They name me Death. Is it not reasonable that I am the youngest of us, and the most cheerful?" Again she laughed, and stood and leaned against Vanye's shoulder, clasping his arm. "Few of humankind love me. But, lord of shadows, I shall live longest, and so will those who ride with me. It is helpers I seek. Come ride the wave with me, down to the last shore. Or do you want eternity in Mante, with shapes of your own devising, in a world of your own making? Another stone palace and more worshippers? Come, let us see if we can shake the worlds."

The image faded abruptly to dark. The hall was very still, except the random shift of a horse's foot, which rang like doom on the pavings.

"What are you saying?" Chei asked, suddenly breaking that peace. "What areyou, what are you talking about—waves and shores? Who areyou?"

"I have said," Morgaine said quietly, and her hand never left Vanye's shoulder, a calming touch. If it had not been there he would have reached for a weapon for comfort. It was; and he felt himself numb like a bird in the eye of the serpent—not afraid, not capable, he thought, of fear at all any longer. He knew her lies, even when they were told with the truth. Even when they were entirely the truth. He trusted. That was all there was left to do.

"Perhaps you can flee," Morgaine said to the others. "It seems likely. I do not think he will trouble himself with you."

Rhanin edged away. And stopped, as if he did not know what to do, or as if he had expected the others would, or as if he had had second thoughts. He only stood there.

Then distantly, softly echoing, came footsteps in the corridors.

This time, Vanye thought, it was substance which came to them; it was substance which appeared in the shadows of the corridor which let into this hall.

It was Skarrin himself who walked out into the light which was always available in such places, that power drawn of gate-force, come full in the room.

"My lady of mysteries," Skarrin said, halted there in that entry. "Am I in truth welcome?"

"Oh, indeed," Morgaine said in a still, hushed voice. "Good day to you, shadow-lord." She walked a few paces closer, and stopped, and Vanye stood with a shiver running through his limbs, a twitch that was the impulse to follow her, stay with her instantly; but that was a fool's move, to show hostility to this lord, and useless. He watched Morgaine stop and stand, hands on hips, head tilted cheerfully. "You are smaller than I thought."

For the least instant he frowned, then laughed in offended surprise. "We are well-matched." His gaze swept the room. "And this, the company you ask me to keep. You—Man. Come here."

Vanye's heart turned over. He measured the separation between him and Morgaine and between him and Skarrin with a nervous sweep of his eye, and used that small chance to bring himself even with Morgaine.

"I take my lady's orders," he said as mildly as he could, while his heart beat in panic.

"Defiance from a human?"

"From me,"Morgaine said, and walked a little forward, to stop again with hand on hip. "Not that I am discourteous, my lord, but I do not lend my servants; I will reckon you have your own, and I will trust there are loyal folk among them. Or has this kingship of yours gotten too old and the intrigues too many? Or have you ceased to care? My folk will serve you. Bring your own servants—I care not, only so they are strong enough to last the course and honest enough to guard our backs. Let us set the gate and quit this tedious place. Keep to my path a while. I shall at very least value your company—and your advice. I am, after all, youngest. You can teach me—very much. And I can teach you,lord of dusty Mante—that there are new things under new suns, I am sufficient guarantee of that."

"You are arrogant."

"So I am told." She walked two paces forward and stood wide-legged. "I am terminus. And perhaps I am inception. Time will prove that. My origin is very recent as you measure time. I have never existed until now."

"As you dream—you have not existed."

"I am Anjhurins daughter, Anjhurin who claimed to have seen the calamity. Think of that,my lord. And my mother came down a thread he had never known, that one which leads to stars outside, my lord. By seizing thathe hoped to widen his power. But causality doomed him. He used force. She despised him. So, my lord, did I. And I destroyed him."

"You."

"With a will, my lord. All of Anjhurin's causality rests in me.That is my weight in the web of time—the youngest and the oldest of us, in one, and I reach outside. In me, every causality meets."

Skarrin backed a pace.

She lifted her hand so naturally and so quickly the red fire had touched the lord before Vanye could both realize the weapon was in her hand and draw in his breath.

"I cannot die—/" Skarrin cried; as a second time the red light touched him, from Morgaine's hand, amid the forehead: he fell with a horrified expression.

Die . . . die . . . die . . .the walls and the vaulted ceiling gave back. They echoed the heavy fall of Skarrin's body, and the nervous shifting of the horses.

Vanye caught his breath, shaken in every bone, not believing it had been so sudden or so without warning.

And knowing then by the dread in Morgaine's face as she turned that it was not over. It was far from over. It was wizardry they fought, whatever Morgaine named it; wizardry that could knit bone and heal flesh and put blood back in veins—and his liege's face was pale and desperate. "Follow me!" she cried, and ran toward the dark of the corridor.

Chapter Nineteen

Vanye ran, sword in hand, abandoning everything to Chei and his comrades—ran with a desperate burst of speed to close the gap between himself and Morgaine as she headed alone toward the corridor inward.

He heard someone behind him then, and spun to a halt and saw Chei and the other two coming. "Watch the horses!" he shouted at them, not wanting them at his liege's back, not wanting the horses unguarded either.

Then he raced after Morgaine, reaching the corner an instant after her—the corridor ahead filled at short range with a double rank of drawn bows and loosed arrows.

He hit her from behind in utter panic—that quickly the arrows flew and he fell to the floor atop her, did not think, except they were both like to die here, did not know what he did, except that the enemy had to nock their next arrows and he was already rolling toward them, onto his feet and toward them with a Kurshin yell—"Haaaaaiiiiiiii—Haiii!"—hurtling for the flank of their double line with sword swinging even while they were thinking some of them to shoot him and some nearest him to parry him with bowstaves and daggers.

The curved blade swept along the parry of a bowstaff and, skidding off it, came around into an unprotected arm and neck, and he laid about him left and right and round about without time to see where attack was coming from until it came within his circle, and then he killed it, with sword in his right hand and then Honor-blade in the left, for what came at him too close.

A blade scored his armor at his back; he gained room with the Honor-blade, and followed with a sword-stroke. A bow whistled round toward his head; he ducked under it, stabbed under a rash fool's chin, as some fallen enemy groped after a hold about his knees, raking the heavy leather and braces of his breeches and boots with a dagger stroke. He sprang aside from that, used his bow-arm bracer to counter a descending blade on one hand, clove a man's face horribly in a slash to the right and brought the blade back to deal with the return stroke on the left.

That enemy fell arrowshot through the neck, and he did not know where it had come from, except he saw the flash of red on a man's armor that meant Morgaine's weapon, and there were fewer and fewer enemies. He gasped for air and struck out, turning, sliding off a blade with his curved one to deal a man a blow that staggered him—hard effort then on the desperate one after, and on the parry he swept around to save his own skull. Steel rang on steel, bound and slipped as he made his sweep the faster, out of breath now, sight hazed and sweat streaming, on a carnage widening by the instant, red fire taking man after man. One man fled him; red flashed on his armor and he fell, screaming, on a heap of his comrades.

Others tried to surrender. Fire cut them down as they were halfway to their knees, and fire swept the wounded on the ground. "Liyo!"Vanye cried in consternation—but it was done, there were none alive as he staggered clear of the bodies and hit the wall with his back, gasping after air and gazing in horror on the slaughter.

Chei pulled his sword from a body and Hesiyyn and Rhanin stood back as Morgaine recovered herself, there at the edge of the carnage, the black weapon in her hand. She will kill them too,Vanye thought on the instant. There was no reason and no mercy on Morgaine's face.

Then she caught her breath and ran for the undefended door, opened it with quick passes of her hand on the studs which marked its center.

It gave back on hall and hall and hall brightly lighted, leading toward other doors.

"Hold here!" she cried. "All of you, hold the doors! Vanye—stay with them! Do not count Skarrin dead!"

She ran, before he could muster protest; and he thought then and knew he was guard of those who guarded them—to ward their retreat when it would surely be in haste.

"One of you," he shouted at Chei, "get down to the end of the hall and guard the horses!"

"Curse you, we are not your servants!"

"Dead men haveno precedence! We are all in this, and likely to be stranded if we have no horses!"

"Rhanin!" Chei shouted, and Rhanin tucked his bow in hand and ran, vaulting dead men as he went.

That was the only one of them presently with other than a sword and dagger. Vanye longed for his own good bow, which he had left with Arrhan, and took a dead man's in its place, gathered up a quiver of arrows and slung it to his shoulder.

One arrow to the string, two others in his bow-hand. He tested the draw, and moved down to the intersection of the halls to set his shoulders against the wall where he had vantage of the right-hand corridor, while Chei took up a bow as well, and a quiver; and by the way he handled it, at least one part of him was no stranger to the weapon.

Morgaine's footfalls had died away in distance, within the farthest doorway, and he pressed his shoulders against the wall and watched, arms both at ease and ready on the instant, if there were any movement down the lighted corridor.

Such places he knew. There would be machines. There would be traps and such things as Morgaine dealt with better than ever he could in that room where she had gone, to deal with whatever Skarrin had done to the machines that controlled the gates. But he trembled as in winter cold, the reaction of muscles into which the bandages cut, and the fight which still had him drenched with sweat, and cooling now in the chill of Skarrin's keep. He blinked at the film on his eyes, shook his hair aside as it straggled into his face, his heart pounding in his chest with a kind of terror he had seldom felt in his life.

Qhalur enemies, he knew. Chei and Hesiyyn across the corridor from him made him anxious, no more than that. But this—

This man who knew the gates well enough to frighten Morgaine herself, whose mastery of them excelled hers—

What manner of enemy could die that death and not die, struck through the skull and through the heart?

Except there be witchcraft and sorcery which Morgaine denied existed.

But I am skilled in both. What matter it invokes no devils? I havemet devils left and right in her service, and slain no few, except this last, that says he cannot die—

O Heaven, could we come so far and across so many years and fall to this, this creature, at the height of the sky, while so many men are surely going about their business in the town below, in all ignorance what passes here—if they are there—if the whole of that great city has not gone like the servants.

God deliver us. I do not know what more to do than stand here and guard her back.

Chei shivered, against the wall, looking toward that portion of hallway which was his to guard. Exhaustion ached in his knees and his gut and trembled in his hands. And the lady—

The lady had not killed them. That much they knew of her. Nothing more, that the boy had believed of her. Nothingmore, except she was perilous as ever Skarrin was—more than perilous: murderous and hellbent and—which she had said—more than a match for any gate-warden.

Skarrin's match—that was very clear. Of Skarrin's disposition: that remained to be seen.

Across the hall, Hesiyyn, warding the other direction; and at the opposite corner, Vanye; and the slow minutes passed, while something happened in that room down the hall—the master boards for the gates of all the world: thatwas what Morgaine Anjhuran had her hand to, who had defeatedSkarrin—that was the fact which could hardly take hold in a shaken mind: Skarrin, who had ruled in Mante from time out of mind, Skarrin, ever-young and ruling through proxies, but cruel beyond measure when some rebellion came nigh him—

Skarrin, around whom conspiracies and plots continually moved, like a play acted for his amusement—

Gone—in a lightning-stroke, the simple act of a woman who had not come to parley at all.

And at whose actions with the gate, in that room—sent the lights brightening and dimming as if all Neneinn were wounded.

"What is she doing?" Chei asked furiously. "What does she think to do?"

"What needs no hearers," Vanye returned shortly across span of the hall which divided them. "Trust her. If she wished you dead you would be dead with the rest."

"I have no doubt," Hesiyyn said, and tightened a buckle of his armor—wan and exhausted, Hesiyyn, as all of them, shadow-eyed and dusty. He took up his sword again from between his knees. "But whatever she is, she has done fairly by us, and that hound Skarrin is dead or dead as fire can make him." He made a kind of salute with the blade. "There is all I need know."

It was a desperate man, Hesiyyn who had no choices; and himself—himself with so much good and ill mixed in him of his varied lives that he could not see the world, either, in dark or light. And Nhi Vanye, who knew, with more confidence than either of them, where his loyalty belonged.

It was irony, Chei thought, with pain in his heart, that he, Qhiverin, found more and more reason to like this man, while the boy—the youth forgave him, him,Gault-Qhiverin, because of old betrayals and loss of kin and things in which they fit together like blade and sheath—never mind that some of those griefs had been at Qhiverin's hand, Qhiverin's fault, in the bloody deeds incumbent on a warden of the warlike South—Qhiverin could find sympathy, Qhiverin could embrace and comfort Chei in his desolation. There wasno more war between them, except the boy would not forgive, would not listen, would not reason—

–for too much self-blame lay within it.

Here is insanity,Chei thought in a heart-weary panic. Peace, boy, or we both go under.

And the boy, who did not want to die: He will kill us if he can– finally, when we have done all they want, one or the other of them will kill us. Knowledge was all they ever wanted.

Then they made a poor bargain, did they not?He wiped tears from his eyes. Boy, we will guard his back. You are a fool, is all– a great fool. And would you had never made him my enemy. Your brother would have had more sense. It was yourself coming up on the man's sword-side, it was Bron drove his horse between to shyyou off. That is the truth I remember.

Liar!

And your Gault, boy– your Gault the hero was a traitor the same as Arunden. He would have sold you all for his peace. Have you never known that? He betrayed Ichandren before I did.I took him, yonder, on that hill, because I had no choice. But ah, boy, he was a scoundrel. Scoundrel and fool. What a legacy you give me.

What a cursed great—

Light and sound came from the room at the end of the hall, where the lady had gone, a high thin moan which no living throat could make, and a deep roaring like thunder sustained.

"What is she doing?"Hesiyyn asked hoarsely, leaning against his wall. "Lord human—"

"I do not know," Vanye said, biting his lip, and looked toward the door which lay open at the end, where red light flashed, and the wailing grew. "Hold our retreat open!"

He ran. He trusted the men for what they might be worth and raced down the slick stone hall at all the speed he could manage, down the hall and through the gaping doors and into such a place as he had seen more than once in his travels—where light dyed everything the color of blood, and inhuman voices wailed and thundered and shrieked from overhead and all about.

"Liyo!" he shouted into that overpowering racket. "Liyo!—"

She turned, red-dyed with the light from silver hair to metal of her black armor, with the light flaring about her and behind her as the boards blinked alarm.

"He is not dead," she cried. "Vanye, he has stored his essence inside the gate—he is still alive, for the next poor soul that ventures that gate."

He tried to understand that. He stood there staring at her and thought it through twice and three times.

"For us, "she shouted. "He has trapped us and I cannot dislodge him!—That is the wrongness we have felt in the gates—he has kept his pattern there continually, kept it bound to him, day and night—He will takethe next living man that enters the World-gate! He will go through, he will be free, there is no way we can stop him!" She came to him and caught at his arm, turning him for the door, not running, but walking quickly, by which and by the flashing of the lights at their back and the uncomfortable prickling in the air, he knew that the gate of Mante was set on its own destruction, on some near time which—he hoped to Heaven—she had chosen. "He had a snare set that would have sealed the gate once he was free. I broke that lock easily enough. I set it to a new time, a few hours hence. I dare not leave it longer. There is too much knowledge in this place,—and the chance of someone re-opening it, except I build destruction into its pathways—that, I dare not risk."