There was sinister power about it that was far more lingering than the ugliness of Morgaine's older— lesser— weapons. His arm still hurt from wielding it.
In the hours' passing he tried at last just to keep the bay moving, stopping dead only when he must; he knew that the animal was going to fade long before he could make Baien-ei and Morgaine's camp. There were villages: the Myya could have remounts; they would run him to the bay's death. His insides hurt from the constant jolting, already bruised from the beating he had had of them. He began to have the taste of blood in his mouth and he did not know if this was from his bruised jaw or from somewhere inside.
And when he looked back of a sudden the Myya were no longer with him.
There was no hope left but to go off the main road, to try to confuse pursuit and hope that he could fight through ambush at the end, at Baien-ei. The next time that he saw the chance of another lane, one already well marred with tracks since the melting of the snow, he took that road and coaxed the poor horse to what pace he could maintain.
He knew the road. A little village lay a distance past the second winding, the hamlet of San-morij, a clan that possessed a score of smaller villages hereabouts— common and unpretentious as the earth they held, kindly folk, but fierce to enemies. There was a farmhouse that he well remembered, that of the old chief armorer of Ra-morij, San Romen; he owed a great debt to that old tutor of his, who alone of men in Ra-morij had shown some sympathy for a lord's bastard, who had soothed his hurts and treated the hidden wounds with drafts of rough affection.
It was a debt that deserved better payment than he was about to give; but desperation smothered any impulses to honor. He knew where the stable was, around at the back of the little house, a place where he and Erij had watered their mounts once upon a better time. He left the bay tied to a branch by the side of the road, and took Changeling upon his shoulder, and slipped down the ditch by the roadside until he was within sight of the stable.
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Then he ran across the yard, skidded into the shadows and flung open the door, already hearing the livestock astir: the men of Romen's house would be waking, seeking arms at any moment, and running out to see what was among them. He chose the likeliest pony he could in the dark, already haltered in its stall: he put a length of rope in the halter ring, the only thing there was to hand, flung open the stall door and backed the pony out.
Running footsteps pelted up to the door. He expected its opening, swung up to the pony's bare back with the halter rope for a rein, and as the door was flung open, he rammed his heels into the pony's flanks and the frightened animal bolted out into the yard— an honest horse and unused to such treatment. It ran for the road, scrambled up the side of the ditch, and he wrapped his legs about its fat ribs and clung, unshakable. He wrenched its head over in the direction he wanted it to go, and when he reached the crossroads over by San-hei, he turned there, heading for Baien-ei by a slightly longer road, but a lonelier one.
* * *
There was a rider on the road ahead, sai-uyo, Vanye thought, uyo of the lesser clans, but uyo, and armored: he rode like a warrior. There was no hope that the little beast he rode could match a proper horse. There was no avoiding the meeting. Vanye rode along at leisure, legs dangling, like any herder-boy returning at evening. Only upon the heights the warning-fires still gleamed, and the roads were watched; and he for his part could not look to be a herdsman, for boots and breeches were of weathered leather such as was proper to an uyo, not a countryman, he carried a great sword, and his shirt of white lawn marked him for a man untimely rushed from some great hall, high-clan: dai-uyo, Nhi. This man, he thought unhappily, he might have to kill. He reached to the belt, unhooked the sheath, and gripped the sheath of Changeling in one hand and the hilt in the other, and the sai-uyo on his fine dappled charger came closer.
And perhaps he already recognized what quarry he had started, for he moved his leg and lifted his blade from its place on the saddle, and rode also with his sheathed blade in hand.
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It was one of Torin Athan's sons: he did not know the man, but the look of the sons of Athan was almost that of a clan apart: long-faced, almost mournful men, with a dour attitude at variance with most of the flamboyant men of Torin. Athan was also a prolific family: there were a score of sons, nearly all legitimate.
"Uyo," Vanye hailed him, "I have no wish to draw on you: I am Nhi Vanye, outlawed, but I have no quarrel with you."
The man— he was surely one of the breed of Athan— relaxed somewhat.
He let Vanye ride nearer, though he himself had stopped. He looked at him curiously, wondering, no doubt, what sort of madman he faced, so dressed, and upon such a homely pony. Even fleeing, a man might do better than this.
"Nhi Vanye," he said, "we had thought you were down in Erd."
"I am bound now for Baien. I borrowed this horse last night, and it is spent."
"If you look to borrow another, uyo, look to your head. You are not armored, and I have no wish to commit murder. You are Rijan's son, and killing you even outlawed as you are would not be a lucky thing for the likes of a sai-uyo.
Vanye bowed slightly in acknowledgment of that reasoning, then lifted up the sword he carried. "And this, uyo, is a blade I do not want to draw. It is a named-blade, and cursed, and I carry it for someone else, in whose service I am ilin and immune to other law. Ask in Ra-morij and they will tell you what thing you narrowly escaped."
And he drew Changeling part of the way from its sheath, so that the blade remained transparent, save only the symbols on it. The man's eyes grew wide and his face pale, and his hands stayed still upon his own blade.
"To whom are you ilin," he asked, "that you bear a thing like that? It is qujalin work."
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"Ask in Ra-morij," he said again. "But under ilin-law I have passage, since my liyo is in Morija, and you may not lawfully execute Rijan's decree on me. I beg you, get down. Strip your horse of gear and I will exchange with you: I am a desperate man, but no thief, and I will not ride your beast to the death if I have any choice about it. This pony is of San. If yours knows the way home, I will set him loose again as soon as I can find a chance."
The man considered the prospects of battle and then wisely capitulated, slid down and busily stripped off saddle and belongings.
"This horse is of Torin," he said, "and if loosed anywhere in this district can find his way; but I beg you, I am fond of him."
Vanye bowed, then gripped the dapple's mane in his hands and vaulted up, turned the animal and headed off at a gallop, for there was a bow among the sai-uyo's gear, which he reckoned would be shortly strung, and he had no wish for a red-feathered Torin arrow in his back.
And from place to place across the face of Morija, his pursuers would have found ready replacements for their mounts, fine horses, with saddles and all their equipment.
The night was falling again, coming on apace, and the signal fires glowed brighter upon the hilltops, one blaze upon each of the greater hills, from edge to edge of Morija.
And when that uyo managed to reach San-morij with the little pony—
Vanye intensely imagined the man's mortification, his fine gear borne by that shaggy little beast— then there would be two signals ablaze on the hill by San-morij and upon that by San-hei, and no doubt which fork of the road he had gone. There would be the whole of San and now the clan of Torin riding after him, and the Nhi and the Myya upon the other road, to meet him at Baien-ei.
To have stripped the man of weapons and armor which he so desperately needed would likely have meant killing him: but Changeling was not the kind of blade that left a corpse to be robbed. To have killed the man would have been well too, but he had not, would not: it was his nature not to kill 151
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unless cornered; it was the only honor he still possessed, to know there was a moral limit to what he would
do, and he would not surrender it.
It would not be paid with gratitude when Torin caught him, and least of all when they brought him to Nhi and Myya.
Now he and the whole of Ra-morij— and if messengers had sped in the wake of his pursuers, the whole of the midlands villages by now— knew where he must run. There was a little pass at Baien-ei, and hard by it a ruined fort where every lad in Morija probably went at some time or another in their farings about the countryside. The best pasturage in all of Morija was in those hills, where ran the best horses; and the ruined fort was often explored by boys that herded for their fathers; and sometimes it served as rendezvous for fugitive lovers. It had had its share of tragedies, both military and private, that heap of stones.
And Morgaine's guide was a Nhi harper with the imagination of a callow boy on a lovers' tryst, who would surely know no better than to lead her there for shelter, into a place that had but one way out.
* * *
There were men guarding the hillside. He had known there must be even before he set out toward it. Any break from Baien-ei by riders had to be through this narrow pass, and with archers placed there, that ride would be a short one. He left the dapple tethered against the chance he might have to return; the branch he used was not stout, and should mischance take him or he find what he sought, the animal would grow restless and eventually pull free, seeking his own distant home. He took the sheathed sword in hand and entered the hills afoot.
All the paths of the hills of Baien-ei could not be guarded: there were too many goat tracks, too much hillside, too many streams and folds of rock: for this reason Baien-ei had been an unreliable defense even in the purpose for which it was built. Against a massive assault, it was strong enough, but when the fein, the peasant bowman, had come into his own, and wars were 152
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no longer clashes between dai-uyin who preferred open plain and fought even wars by accepted tradition, Baien-ei had become untenable— a trap for its holders more than a refuge.
He moved silently, with great patience, and now he could see the tower again, the ruined wall that he remembered from years ago. Sometimes running, sometimes inching forward on his belly and pausing to listen, he made himself part of the shadows as he drew near the place: skills acquired in two years evading Myya, in stealing food, in hunting to keep from starvation in the snowy heights of the Alis Kaje, no less wary than the wolves, and more solitary.
He came up against the wall and his fingers sought the crevices in the stonework, affording him the means to pull himself up the old defensework at its lowest point. He slipped over the crest, dropped, landed in wet grass and slid to the bottom of the little enclosure on the slope inside. He gathered himself up slowly, shaken, feeling in every bone the misery of the long ride, the weakness of hunger. He feared as he had feared all along, that it was nothing other than a trap laid for him by Erij: Myya deviousness, not to have told him the truth. That his brother should have committed a mistake in telling him the truth and in trusting him was distressing. Erij's mistakes were few. His shoulders itched. He had the feeling that there might be an arrow centered there from some watcher's post.
He yielded to the fear, judging it sensible, and darted into shadows, rounded the corner of the building where it was tucked most securely against the hill. There was a crack in the wall there that he well remembered, wide as a door, and yet one that ought to be safest to use, sheltered as it was.
He crept along the wall to that position, caught the stablescent of horses.
Large bodies moved within.
"Liyo!" he hissed into the dark. Nothing responded. He eased his way inside, the pale glimmer of Siptah to his left, to his right, blackness.
"Do not move," came Morgaine's whisper. "Vanye, thee knows I mean it."
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He froze, utterly still. Her voice was from before him. Someone— he judged it to be Ryn— moved from behind him, put his hands at his waist and searched him cursorily for some hidden weapon before taking hold of the sword belt. He moved his head so that the strap could pass it the more easily: he was unaccountably relieved at the passing of that weight, as if he had been in the grip of something vile and were gently disentangled from it and set free.
Ryn carried it to her: he saw the shadow pass a place of dim starlight. For his own part his knees were trembling. "Let me sit," he asked of her. "I am done, liyo. I have been night and day in the saddle reaching this place."
"Sit," she said, and he dropped gratefully to his knees, would gladly have collapsed on his face and slept, but it was neither the place nor the moment for it. "Ryn," she said, "keep an eye to the approaches. I have somewhat to ask of him."
"Do not trust him," Ryn said, which stung him with rage. "The Nhi would not have made him a gift of the sword and set him free for love of you, lady."
Fury rose in him, hate of the youth, so smooth, so unscarred, so sure of matters with Morgaine. He found words strangled in his throat, and simply shook his head. But Ryn left. He heard the rustle of Morgaine's cloak as she settled kneeling a little distance from him.
"Well it was thee spoke out," she said softly. "A dozen or so have tried that way these past two days, to their grief."
"Lady." He bowed and pressed his forehead briefly to earth, pushed himself wearily upright again. "There is a large force, either on its way or here already. Erij covets Thiye's power, thinking he can have it for himself."
"You cried at me not to trust him," she said, "and that I did believe. But how do I trust you now? Was the sword gift or stolen?"
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What she said frightened him, so much as anything had power to frighten him, tired as he was: he knew how little mercy there was in her for what she did not trust, and he had no proof. "The sword itself is all that I can give you to show you," he said. "Erij drew it; it killed, and he feared to hold it. When it fell, I took it and ran— it is a powerful key, lady, to gates and doors."
She was silent for a moment. He heard the whisper of the blade drawn partway, the soft click as it slipped back to rest. "Did thee hold it, drawn?"
She asked that in such a tone as if she wished otherwise.
"Yes," he said in a faint voice. "I do not covet it, liyo, and I do not wish to carry it, not if I go weaponless." He wished to tell her of the men of Myya, what had happened: he had no name for it, and saw in his mind those lost faces. In some deeper part of him, he did not want to know what had become of them.
"It taps the Gates themselves," she said, and moved in the dark. "Ryn, do you see anything?"
"Nothing, lady,"
She settled back again, this time in the dim starlight that fell through the crack, so that he could see her face, half in shadow as it was, the light falling on it sideways. "We must move. Tonight. Does thee think otherwise, Vanye?"
"There are archers on the height out there. But I will do what you decide to do."
"Do not trust him," Ryn's voice hissed from above. "Nhi Erij hated him too well to be careless with him or the blade."
"What does thee say, Vanye?" Morgaine asked him.
"I say nothing," he answered. Of a sudden the weariness settled upon him, and it was too much to argue with a boy. His eyes stayed upon Morgaine, waiting her decision.
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"The Nhi gave me back all but Changeling, " she said, "not knowing. I suspect, that some of the things they returned were weapons: they recognized the sword as what it was, but not these others. They also gave me back your belongings, your armor and your horse, your sword and your saddle. Go and make yourself ready. All the gear is in the corner together. I do not doubt but that you are right about the archers; but we have to move: all this coming and going of yours cannot have gone entirely unmarked."
He felt his way, found the corner and the things she described, the familiar roughness of the mail that had been his other skin for years. The weight as he settled it up
on him was greater than he remembered: his hands shook upon the buckles.
He considered the prospect of the ride they would make, down that throat of a pass, and began to reckon with growing fear that there was not enough left in him to make such a ride. He had spent and spent, and there was little more left in him.
It was not likely, he thought, that they would escape from this unscathed: Myya arrows were a sound that had come to strike a response in his flesh.
He had escaped too many of them, in Erd and in Morija. The odds were in favor of the arrows.
Morgaine came upon him, sought his hand, took it and turned his wrist upward. The thing that hit was like a weapon, unexpected, and he flinched.
"Thee does not approve," she said. "But I will have it so. I have little of that to spend: unlike my other things, the sun does not renew it, and when it is gone, it is gone. But I will not lose thee, ilin. "
He rubbed at the sore place, expecting a wound, finding none, and beginning to feel something amiss with himself, the tiredness melting, his blood moving more strongly. It was qujalin, or whatever race she named as her origin, and once the thing she had done would have terrified him: once she had promised him she would not do such things with him.
I will not lose thee, ilin.
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She had lingered in this snare in Morija because of Changeling. He knew that in his heart and did not blame her. But there was in that word a small bit of concern for the ilin who served her, and that, from Morgaine, was much.
He set to work about his preparations with the determination that he would not be lost, that so long as he had a horse under him he would make it down the pass and into Baien's hills.
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