Gate of Ivrel

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Father," he cried, and the back of Nhi Rijan's hand smashed the word from his mouth and left him wiping blood from his lips. Vanye bowed down again and wept.

  "What shall I do with you?" asked Rijan at last.

  "I do not know," said Vanye.

  "A man carries his own honor. He knows."

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  Vanye looked up, sick and shaking. He could not speak in answer to that.

  To fall upon his own blade and die— this, his father asked of him. Love and hate were so confounded in him that he felt rent in two, and tears blinded him, making him more ashamed.

  "Will you use it?" asked Rijan.

  It was Nhi honor. But the Chya blood was strong in him too, and the Chya loved life too well.

  The silence weighed upon the air.

  "Nhi cannot kill Nhi," said Rijan at last. "You will leave us, then."

  "I had no wish to kill him."

  "You are skilled. It is clear that your hand is more honest than your mouth.

  You struck to kill. Your brother is dead. You meant to kill both brothers, and Erij was not even armed. You can give me no other answer. You will become ilin. This I set on you."

  "Yes, sir," said Vanye, touching brow to the floor, and there was the taste of ashes in his mouth. There was only short prospect for a masterless ilin, and such men often became mere bandits, and ended badly.

  "You are skilled," said his father again. "It is most likely that you will find place in Aenor, since a Chya woman is wife to the Ris in Aenor-Pyvvn.

  But there is lord Gervaine's land to cross, among the Myya. If Myya Gervaine kills you, your brother will be avenged, and it will be without blood on Nhi hands or Nhi steel."

  "Do you wish that?" asked Vanye.

  "You have chosen to live," said his father. And from Vanye's own belt he took the Honor blade that was the peculiar distinction of the uyin, and he seized Vanye's long hair that was the mark of Nhi manhood, and sheared it off roughly in irregular lengths. The hair, Chya and fairer than was thought honest human blood among most clans, fell to the stone floor in its 9

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  several braids; and when it was done, Nhi Rijan set his heel on the blade and broke it, casting the pieces into Vanye's lap.

  "Mend that," said Nhi Rijan, "if you can."

  The wind cold upon his shorn neck, Vanye found the strength to rise; and his numb fingers still held the halves of the shortsword. "Shall I have horse and arms?" he asked, by no means sure of that, but without them he would surely die.

  "Take all that is yours," said the Nhi. "Clan Nhi wants to forget you. If you are caught within our borders you will die as a stranger and an enemy."

  Vanye bowed, turned and left.

  "Coward," his father's voice shouted after him, reminding him of the unsatisfied honor of the Nhi, which demanded his death; and now he wished earnestly to die, but it was no longer help for his personal dishonor. He was marked like a felon for hanging, like the lowest of criminals: exile had not demanded this further punishment— it was lord Nhi Rijan's own justice, for the Nhi had also a darker nature, which was implacable and excessive in revenge.

  He put on his armor, hiding the shame of his head under a leather coif and a peaked helm, and bound about the helm the white scarf of the ilin, wandering warrior, to be claimed by whatever lord chose to grant him hearth-right.

  Ilinin were often criminals, or clanless, or unclaimed bastards, and some religious men doing penance for some particular sin, bound in virtual slavery according to the soul-binding law of the ilin codes, to serve for a year at their Claiming.

  Not a few turned mercenary, taking pay, losing uyin rank; or, in outright dishonor, became thieves; or, if honest and honorable, starved, or were robbed and murdered, either by outlaws or by hedge-lords that took their service and then laid claim to all that they had.

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  The Middle Realms were not at peace: they had not been at peace since Irien and the generation before; but neither were there great wars, such as could make an ilin's life profitable. There was only grinding poverty for midlands villages, and in Koris, the evil of Hjemur's minions— dark sorceries and outlaw lords much worse than the outlaws of the high mountains.

  And there was lord Myya Gervaine's small land of Morij Erd which barred his way to Aenor and separated him from his only hope of safety.

  * * *

  It was the second winter, the cold of the high passes of the mountains, and a dead horse that finally drove him to the desperate step of trying to cross the lands of Gervaine. A black Myya arrow had felled his gelding, poor Mai, that had been his mount since he first reached manhood; and Mai's gear now was on a bay mare he had of the Myya— the owner being beyond need for her.

  They had harried him from Luo to Ethrith-mri, and only once had he turned to fight. Hill by hill they had forced him against the mountains of the south. He ran willingly now, though he was faint with hunger and there was scant grain left for his horse. Aenor was just across the next ridges. The Myya were no friends of the Ris in Aenor-Pyvvn, and would not risk his land.

  It was late that he realized the nature of the road he had begun to travel, that it was the old qujalin road and not the one he sought. Occasional paving rang under the bay mare's hooves. Occasional stones thrust up by the roadside and he began to fear indeed that it led to the dead places, the cursed grounds. Snow fell for a time, whiting everything out-stopping pursuit (he hoped that, at least). And he spent the night in the saddle, daring only to sleep a time in the early morning, after the movings in the brush were silenced and he no longer feared wolves.

  Then he rode the long day down from the Aenish side of the pass, weak and sick with hunger.

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  He found himself entering a valley of standing stones.

  There was no longer doubt that qujalin hands had reared such monoliths.

  It was Morgaine's vale: he knew it now, of the songs and of evil rumor. It was a place no man of Kursh or Andur would have traveled with a light heart at noontide, and the sun was sinking quickly toward dark, with another bank of cloud rolling in off the ridge of the mountains at his back.

  He dared look up between the pillars that crowned the conical hill called Morgaine's Tomb, and the declining sun shimmered there like a butterfly caught in a web, all torn and fluttering. It was the effect of Witchfires, like the great Witch-fire on Mount Ivrel where the Hjemur-lord ruled, proving qujalin powers were not entirely faded there or here.

  Vanye wrapped his tattered cloak about his mailed shoulders and put the exhausted horse to a quicker pace, past the tangle of unhallowed stones at the base of the hill. The fair-haired witch had shaken all Andur-Kursh in war, cast half the Middle Realms into the lap of Thiye Thiye's-son. Here the air was still uneasy, whether with the power of the Stones or with the memory of Morgaine, it was uncertain.

  When Thiye ruled in Hjemur

  came strangers riding there,

  and three were dark and one was gold,

  and one like frost was fair.

  The mare's hooves upon the crusted snow echoed the old verses in his mind, an ill song for the place and the hour. For many years after the world had seen the welcome last of Morgaine Frosthair, demented men claimed to have seen her, while others said that she slept, waiting to draw a new generation of men to their ruin, as she had ruined Andur once at Irien.

  Fair was she, and fatal as fair,

  and cursed who gave her ear;

  now men are few and wolves are more,

  and the Winter drawing near.

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  If in fact the mound did hold Morgaine's bones, it was fitting burial for one of her old, inhuman blood. Even the trees hereabouts grew crooked: so did they wherever there were Stones of Power, as though even the nature of the patient trees was warped by the near presence of the Stones; like souls twisted and stunted by living in the c
ontinual presence of evil. The top of the hill was barren: no trees grew there at all.

  He was glad when he had passed the narrow stream-channel between the hills and left the vicinity of the Stones. And suddenly he had before him a sign that he had run into better fortunes, and that heaven and the land of his cousins of Aenor-Pyvvn promised him safety.

  A small band of deer wandered belly-deep in the snows by the little brook, hungrily stripping the red howan berries from the thicket.

  It was a land blessedly unlike that of the harsh Cedur Maje, or Gervaine's Morij Erd, where even the wolves often went hungry, for Aenor-Pyvvn lay far southward from Hjemur, still untouched by the troubles that had so long lain over the Middle Realms.

  He feverishly unslung his bow and strung it, his hands shaking with weakness, and he launched one of the gray-feathered Nhi shafts at the nearest buck. But the mare chose that moment to shift weight, and he cursed in frustration and aching hunger: the shaft sped amiss and hit the buck in the flank, scattered the others.

  The wounded buck lunged and stumbled and began to run, crazed with pain and splashing the white snow with great gouts of blood. Vanye had no time for a second arrow. It ran back into Morgaine's valley, and there he would not follow it. He saw it climb— insane, as if the queerness in that valley had taken its fear-hazed wits and driven it against nature, killing itself in its exertions, driving it toward that shimmering web which even insects and growing things avoided.

  It struck between the pillars and vanished.

  So did the tracks and the blood.

  The deer grazed, on the other side of the stream.

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  He gazed at the valley of the Stones, where there was no doubt that qujalin hands had reared such monoliths. It was Morgaine's vale: he knew it. The sight stirred something, a sense of déjà-vu so strong it dazed him for a moment, and he passed the back of his hand over his eyes, rubbing things into focus. The sun was sinking quickly toward dark, with another bank of cloud rolling in off the ridge of the mountains, shadowing most of the sky at his back.

  He looked up between the pillars that crowned the conical hill called Morgaine's Tomb, and the declining sun shimmered there like a puddle of gold just disturbed by a plunging stone.

  In that shimmer appeared the head of a horse, and its fore-quarters, and a rider, and the whole animal: white rider on a gray horse, and the whole was limned against the brilliant amber sun so that he blinked and rubbed his eyes.

  The rider descended the snowy hill into the shadows across his path—substantial. A pelt of white anomen was the cloak, and the stranger's breath and that of the gray horse made puffs on the frosty air.

  He knew that he should set spurs to the mare, yet he felt curiously numb, as though he had been wakened from one dream and plunged into the midst of another.

  He looked into the tanned woman's face within the fur hood and met hair and brows like the winter sun at noon, and eyes as gray as the clouds in the east.

  "Good day," she gave him, in a quaint and gentle accent, and he saw that beneath her knee upon the gray's saddle was a great blade with a golden hilt in the fashion of a dragon, and that it was Korish-work upon her horse's gear. He was sure then, for such details were in the songs they sang of her and in the book of Yla.

  "My way lies north," she said in that low, accented voice. "Thee seems to go otherwise. But the sun is setting soon. I will ride with thee a ways."

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  "I know you," he said then.

  The pale brows lifted. "Has thee come hunting me?"

  "No," he said, and the ice crept downward from heart to belly so that he was no longer sure what words he answered, or why he answered at all.

  "How is thee called?"

  "Nhi Vanye, ep Morija."

  "Vanye— no Morij name."

  Old pride stung him. The name was Korish, mother's-clan, reminder of his illegitimacy. Then to speak or dispute with her at all seemed madness.

  What he had seen happen upon the hilltop refused to take shape in his memory, and he began to insist to himself that the hunger that had made him weak had begun to twist his senses as well, and that he had encountered some strange high-clan woman upon the forsaken road, and that his weakness stole his senses and made him forget how she had come.

  Yet however she had come, she was at least half- qujal, eyes and hair bore witness to that: she was qujal and soulless and well at home in this blighted place of dead trees and snow.

  "I know a place," she said, "where the wind does not reach. Come."

  She turned the gray's head toward the south, as he had been headed, so that he did not know where else to go. He went as in a dream. Dusk was gathering, hurried on by the veil of cloud that was rolling across the sky.

  The wraithlike pallor of Morgaine drifted before him, but the gray's hooves cracked substantially into the crusted snow, leaving tracks.

  They rounded the turning of the hill and startled a small band of deer that fed upon howan by the streamside. It was the first game he had seen in days. Despite his circumstance, he reached for his bow.

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  Before he could string it, a light blazed from Morgaine's outstretched hand and a buck fell dead. The others scattered.

  Morgaine pointed to the hillside on their right. "There is a cave for shelter.

  I have used it before. Take what venison we need: the rest is due smaller hunters."

  She rode away upon the slope. He took his skinning-knife and prepared to do her bidding, though he liked it little. He found no wound upon the body, only a little blood from its nostrils to spot the snow, and all at once the red on the snow brought back the dream, and made him shiver. He had no stomach for a thing killed in such a way, and the wide-eyed horned head seemed as spellbound as he— unwilling dreamer too.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Morgaine stood upon the shoulder of the hill holding the gray's reins, watching him. The first flakes of snow drifted across the wind.

  He set his knife to the carcass and did not look it in the eye.

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  Chapter 2

  A fire blazed in the shallow cave's mouth, putting a wall of warmth between them and the driving snow. He did not want the meat, but he was many days weak with hunger, so that his joints ached and the least exertion put a tremor in his muscles. He must sit and smell it cooking, and when she had cooked and offered a bit to him, it looked no different than other meat, and smelled so achingly good that his empty belly ruled his other scruples. A man would not lose his soul for a little bit of venison, however the beast had been slain.

  The night was beyond. Occasional snowflakes pelted past the barrier of the fire's heat, driven on a fierce gust. Outside, the horses, witch-horse and ordinary bay, stood together against the unfriendly wind; and when hot venison had taken the shaking from Vanye's limbs and put strength into him, he took a portion of what grain he had left and went outside, fed half to each. The gray— of that famous breed of Baien, so men sang— nuzzled his hands as eagerly and warmly as his own little mare. His heart was touched by the beauty of the gray stud. For the moment he forgot the evil and smoothed the pale mane and gazed into the great pale-lashed eyes and thought (for the Nhi were breeders of good horses) that he would much covet the get of that fine animal, in any herd: they were the breed of the lost High Kings of Andur, those great gray horses. But there were no more High Kings, only the lords of clans; and the breed had passed as the glories of Andur had passed.

  Now of great kings there remained only the Hjemur-lord, far different than the brave bright kings of golden Koris-sith and Baien, that breed of men apart from clans, and greater. An older thing, a darker thing had stirred to life when the Hjemur-lord arose, and more than an army had gone down to die in Irien.

  With that thought he shivered in the ice-edged wind and returned to the fire, to the center of all things unnatural in the night, w
here Morgaine sat wrapped in her snowy furs, beside her horse's gear and the dragon-blade glittering in its plain sheath. The silence between them had been as deep as that between old friends.

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  The wind whirled snow through the cave's mouth. It was a great storm. He reckoned for the first time that he would have died this night, unsheltered, weak from hunger. Had it not been for the meeting on the road, the deer, the offering of the cave, then he would have been in the open when the storm came down, and he much doubted that his failing strength could have endured an Aenish storm.

  There was wood piled up by the door. How it had been cut he was loath to know, only that it gave them warmth. And when he came to put a little more upon the fire, to keep the barrier between them and the insistent wind, he saw Morgaine kneeling upon a place at the back of the cave and seeking for something beneath a pile of small stones.

  I have used this place before, she had told him.

  He looked in doubtful curiosity and saw that she drew forth a leather sack that was stiff and moldering, and when she poured into her hand it was only powder that came down. She snatched her hand from that as if she had touched something foul, and wiped her fingers on the earth. A bloody streak was upon her arm, parting the black leather of her sleeve where she had thrust the arm forth from the enveloping cloak, and her clean hand stole to that.

  She sat there shivering, like one in the grip of some great fear. He sank down on his heels near her, puzzled, even pitying her, and wondering in the back of his mind how she had chanced to hurt herself in so short a time: no, it looked old; it was drying. She must have done it while he was busy at the deer's carcass.