Gate of Ivrel

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Now," said Roh, "and truthfully, Nhi Vanye, account for her and for your business with her."

  "Nothing she told you was a lie and nothing less than the truth. She is Morgaine, and I am an ilin to her."

  Roh looked him over, long and harshly. "So Rijan threw you out. You robbed him of one of his Myya wife's precious nestlings and he banished you. But you are due no kinship from us. My aunt did not choose your begetting. I only blame her because she did not leave Morija and come back to us. She was no captive by then, great with child as she was."

  "To what should she come back— to your welcome?" Temper overcame sense, for Roh's words stung. "I honor her, Chya. And Chya's honor would not have taken her back as she had been, not after Rijan had had her, whether or not she was willing. She gave me life and died doing it, and I know the misery she had of Rijan better than you folk, that had not the stomach for coming into Morija to get her back, after Rijan rode into Chya lands to take her from you. Where is your honor, men of Chya?"

  The stillness was absolute. Suddenly the hall was deserted but for them.

  The fire crackled. A log fell, showering embers.

  "What became of her?" asked Roh at last, tilting the balance toward life and reason. "Was it death in childbirth, as they said?"

  "Yes."

  Roh let go his breath slowly. "Better had Rijan drowned you. Perhaps he regretted that he did not. But you are here. So live, Nhi Vanye, Rijan's bastard. Now what shall we do with you?"

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  "Do as she asked and let us pass from this hall tomorrow."

  "Do you serve her willingly?"

  "Yes," he said, "it was fair Claiming. I was in need. Now I am in her debt and I must pay it."

  "Where is she going?"

  "She is my lady," he said, "and it is not right for me to say anything of her business. Look to your own. You will have Leth at your borders for her sake."

  "Where is she going, Nhi Vanye?"

  "Ask her, I say."

  Roh snapped his fingers. Men reached for the blades laid before them.

  They unsheathed them so that the points formed a ring about him.

  Somewhere in hall a dish fell. A woman ran cat-footed into the corridor beyond, drew the curtain and was gone.

  "Ask Morgaine," Vanye said again; and when his breathing space grew less and an edge rested familiarly on his shoulder, he maintained his composure and did not flinch, though his heart was beating fit to burst. "If you continue, Chya Roh, I shall decide there is no honor at all in Chya.

  And I shall be ashamed for that."

  Roh considered him in silence. Vanye went sick inside: his nerves were strung, Waiting, the least pressure from them likely to send from his lips a shout to raise the hall and Morgaine from sleep. He was not brave. He had long ago discovered in himself that he had no courage for enduring pain or threat. His brothers had discovered that in him before he had. It was the same feeling that churned in him now, the same that he had known when they, out of old San Romen's protective witness, had bullied him to his knees and" brought tears to his eyes. That one fatal time he had seized arms against Kandrys' tormenting of him, one time only: his hands had killed, not his mind, which was blank and terrified, and had his hands not 89

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  been filled with a weapon they would have found him as always, as he was now.

  But Roh snapped his fingers a second time and they let him alone. "Get to your place," said Roh, "ilin."

  He rose then, and bowed, and walked— it was incredible that he could walk steadily— to the place he had left at the hearth. There he lay down again, and wrapped himself in his cloak and clenched his teeth and let the fire warm the tremors from his muscles.

  He wanted to kill. For every affront ever paid him, for all the terror ever set into him, he wanted to kill; and he squeezed the tears from his eyes and began to reckon that perhaps his father had been right, that his hand had been more honest than he knew. He feared a great many things: he feared death; he feared Morgaine and he feared Liell and the madness of Kasedre; but there never was fear such as there was in being alone among kinsmen, among whom he was always bastard and outcast.

  Once, when he was a child, Kandrys and Erji had lured him into the storage basements of Ra-morij, and there overpowered him and hung him from a beam in the deep cellars, alone in the dark and with the rats. They had only come after him after the blood had left his hands and he could not find the strength to scream any longer. Then they had come with lights, and cut him down, hovering over him white-faced and terrified for fear that they had killed him. Afterward they had threatened worse if he showed the cruel marks the ropes had made.

  He had not complained to anyone. He had learned the conditions of his welcome in Nhi even then, had learned to clutch his scraps of honor to himself in silence, had practiced, had bit his lip and kept his own counsel, until he had fairly won the honor of the warrior's braid, and until the demands of uyin honor must keep Kandrys and Erij from their more petty tormentings of him.

  But the looks were there, the subtle, hating looks and secret contempt that became evident when he committed any error that cost him honor.

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  Even the Chya tried him, in the same way— scented fear and went for it, like wolves to a deer.

  Yet something there was in him that yearned to like the lord of Chya, this man so like himself, that showed kindred blood in his face and in his bearing. Roh was legitimate: Roh's father had virtually abandoned the lady Ilel to her fate, captive and bearing Rijan's bastard, that must in nowise return to confound the purity of Chya— to contest with his son Roh.

  And Chya both feared him, and scented fear, and would have gone for his throat if not for their debt to Morgaine.

  Late, late into the long night, his not-quite-rest was disturbed by a booted foot crunching a cinder not far from his head, and he came up on his arm as Roh dropped to his haunches looking down at him. In panic he reached for the sword beside him; Roth clamped his hand down on the hilt, preventing him.

  "You came from Leth," said Roh softly. "Where did you meet her?"

  "At Aenor-Pyvvn." He sat up, tucked his feet under him, tossed the loose hair from his eyes. "And I still say, ask Morgaine her business, not her servant."

  Roh nodded slowly. "I can guess some things. That she still purposes what she always did, whatever it was. She will be the death of you, Nhi Vanye i Chya. But you know that already. Take her hence as quickly as you can in the morning. We have Leth breathing at our borders this night. Reports of it have come in. Men have died. Liell will stop her if he can. And there is a limit to what service we will pay this time in Chya lives."

  Vanye stared into the brown eyes of his cousin and found there a grudging acceptance of him: for the first time the man was talking to him, as if he still had the dignity of an uyo of the high clan. It was as if he had not acquitted himself so poorly after all, as if Roh acknowledged some kinship between them. He drew a deep breath and let it go again.

  "What do you know of Liell?" he asked of Roh. "Is he Chya?"

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  "There was a Chya Liell," said Roh. "And our Liell was a good man, before he became counselor in Leth." Roh looked down at the stones and up again, his face drawn in loathing. "I do not know. There are rumors it is the same man. There are rumors he in Leth is qujal. That he— like Thiye of Hjemur— is old. What I can tell you is that he is the power in Leth, but if you have come from Leth, you know that. At times he is a quiet enemy, and when the worst beasts have come into Koris-wood, the worst sendings of Thiye, Liell's folk have been no less zealous than we to rid Koris of the plague: we observe hunter's peace on occasion, for our mutual good. But our harboring Morgaine will not better relations between Leth and Chya."

  "I believe your rumors," said Vanye at last. Coldness rested in his belly, when he thought back to the lakeshore.

  "I did not," said Roh,
"until this night, that she came into hall."

  "We will go in the morning," said Vanye.

  Roh stared into his face yet a moment more. "There is Chya in you," he said. "Cousin, I pity you, your fate. How long have you to go of your service with her?"

  "My year," he said, "has only begun."

  And there passed between them the silent communication that that year would be his last, accepted with a sorrowful shake of Roh's head.

  "If so happen," said Roh, "if so happen you find yourself free— return to Chya."

  And before Vanye could answer anything, Roh had walked off, retiring to a distant corridor of the rambling hall that led to other huts, warrenlike.

  He was shaken then by the thing that he had never dreamed to receive: Chya would take him in.

  In a way it was only cruelty. He would die before his year was out.

  Morgaine was death-prone, and he would follow; and in it he had no choice. A moment ago he had had no particular hope.

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  Only now there was. He looked about at the hall, surely one of the strangest of all holds in Andur-Kursh. Here was refuge, and welcome, and a life.

  A woman. Children. Honor.

  These were not his, and would not be. He turned and clasped his arms about his knees, staring desolately into the fire. Even should she die, which was probably the thought in Roh's mind, he had his further bond, to ruin Hjemur.

  If so happen you find yourself free.

  In all the history of man, Hjemur had never fallen.

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  Chapter 6

  The whole of Chya seemed to have turned out in the morning to see them leave, as silent at their going as they had been at their arrival; and yet there seemed no ill feeling about them now that Roh attended them to their horses, and himself held the stirrup for Morgaine to mount.

  Roh bowed most courteously when Morgaine was in the saddle, and spoke loudly enough in wishing her well that the whole of Chya could hear. "We will watch your backtrail at least," he said, "so that I do not think you will have anyone following you through Chya territories very quickly. Be mindful of our safety too, lady."

  Morgaine bowed from the saddle. "We are grateful, Chya Roh, to you and all your people. Neither of us has slept secure until we slept under your roof. Peace on your house, Chya Roh."

  And with that she turned and rode away, Vanye after her, amid a great murmuring of the people. And as at their coming, so at their going, the children of Chya were their escort, running along beside the horses, heedless of the proprieties of their elders. There was wild excitement in their eyes to see the old days come to life, that they had heard in songs and ballads. They did not at all seem to fear or hate her, and with the delightedness of childhood took this great wonder as primarily for their benefit.

  It was, Vanye thought, that she was so fair it was hard for them to think ill of her. She shone in sunlight, like sun on ice.

  "Morgaine!" they called at her, softly, as Chya always spoke, "Morgaine!"

  And at last even her heart was touched, and she waved at them, and smiled, briefly.

  Then she laid heels to Siptah, and they left the pleasant hall behind, with all the warmth of Chya in the sunlight. The forest closed in again, chilling their hearts with its shadow, and for a very long time they both were silent.

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  He did not even speak to her the wish of his heart, that they turn and go back to Chya, where there was at least the hope of welcome. There was none for her. Perhaps it was that, he thought, that made her face so downcast throughout the morning.

  As the day went on, he knew of a certainty that it was not the darkness of the woods that bore upon her heart. Once they heard a strange wild cry through the branches, and she looked up, such an expression on her face as one might have who had been distracted from some deep and private grief, bewildered, as if she had forgotten where she was.

  That night they camped in the thick of the wood. Morgaine gathered the wood for the fire herself, making it small, for these were woods where it was not well to draw visitors. And she laughed sometimes and spoke with him, a banality he was not accustomed to in her: the laughter had no true ring, and at times she would look at him in such a way that he knew he lay near the center of her thoughts.

  It filled him with unease. He could not laugh in turn; and he stared at her finally, and then suddenly bowed himself to the earth, like one asking grace.

  She did not speak, only stared back at him when he had risen up, and had the look of one unmasked, looking truth back, if he could know how to read it.

  Questions trembled on his lips, He could not sort out one that he dared ask, that he did not think would meet some cold rebuff or what was more likely, silence.

  "Go to sleep," she bade him then.

  He bowed his head and retreated to his place, and did so, until his watch.

  Her mood had passed by the morning. She smiled, lightly enough, talked with him over breakfast about old friends— hers: of the King. Tiffwy, how his son had been, of the lady who was his wife. It was that kind of thing one might hear from old people, talk of folk long dead, not shared 95

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  with the young; the worse thing was that she seemed to know it, and her gray eyes grew wistful, and searched his, seeking understanding, some small appreciation of the only things she knew how to say with him.

  "Tiffwy," he said, "must have been a great man. I would like to have known him."

  "Immortality," she said, "would be unbearable except among immortals."

  And she smiled, but he saw through it.

  She was silent thereafter, and seemed downcast, even while they rode. She thought much. He still did not know how to enter those moods. She was locked within herself.

  It was as if he had snapped whatever thin cord bound them by that word: I would like to have known him. She had detected the pity. She would not have it of him.

  By evening they could see the hills, as the forest gave way to scattered meadows. In the west rose the great mass of Alis Kaje, its peaks white with snow: Alis Kaje, the barrier behind which lay Morija. Vanye looked at it as a stranger to this side of the mountain wall, and found all the view unfamiliar to him, save great Mount Proeth, but it was a view of home.

  And thereafter the land opened more to the north and they stood still upon a hillside looking out upon the great northern range.

  Ivrel.

  The mountain was not so tall as Proeth, but it was fair to the eye and perfect, a tapering cone equal to left and to right. Beyond it rose other mountains, the Kath Vrej and Kath Svejur, fading away into distance, the ramparts of frosty Hjemur. But Ivrel was unique among all mountains.

  The little snow there was atop it capped merely the summit: most of its slopes were dark, or green with forests.

  And at its base, unseen in the distance that made Ivrel itself seem to drift at the edge of the sky, lay Irien.

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  Morgaine touched heels to Siptah, startled the horse into motion, and they rode on, downslope and up again, and she spoke never a word. She gave no sign of stopping even while stars brightened in the sky and the moon came up.

  Ivrel loomed nearer. Its white cone shone in the moonlight like a vision.

  "Lady." Vanye leaned from his saddle at last, caught the reins of the gray.

  "Liyo, forbear. Irien is no place to ride at night. Let us stop."

  She yielded then. It surprised him. She chose a place and dismounted, and took her gear from Siptah. Then she sank down and wrapped herself in her cloak, caring for nothing else. Vanye hurried about trying to make a comfortable camp for her. These things he was anxious to do: her dejection weighed upon his own soul, and he could not be comfortable with her.

  It was of no avail. She warmed herself at the fire, and stared into the embers, without appetite for the meal he cooked for her, but she picked at
it dutifully, and finished it.

  He looked up at the mountain that hung over them, and felt its menace himself. This was cursed ground. There was no sane man of Andur-Kursh would camp where they had camped, so near to Irien and to Ivrel.

  "Vanye," she said suddenly, "do you fear this place?"

  "I do not like it," he answered. "—Yes, I fear it."

  "I laid on you at Claiming to ruin Hjemur if I cannot. Have you any knowledge where Hjemur's hold lies?"

  He lifted a hand, vaguely toward the notch at Ivrel's base. "There, through that pass."

  "There is a road there, that would lead you there. There is no other, at least there was not."

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  "Do you plan," he asked, "that I shall have to do this thing?"

  "No," she said. "But that may well be."

  Thereafter she gathered up her cloak and settled herself for the first watch, and Vanye sought his own rest.

  It seemed only a moment until she leaned over him, touching his shoulder, quietly bidding him take his turn: he had been tired, and had slept soundly.

  The stars had turned about in their nightly course.

  "There have been small prowlers," she said, "some of unpleasant aspect, but no real harm. I have let the fire die, of purpose."

  He indicated his understanding, and saw with relief that she sought her furs again like one who was glad to sleep. He put himself by the dying fire, knees drawn up and arms propped on his sheathed sword, dreaming into the embers and listening to the peaceful sounds of the horses, whose sense made them better sentinels than men.