Fires of Azeroth

by C. J. Cherryh

  He pleaded his own cause; did he plead his concern for her, he thought, then that instinctive stubbornness would harden against all reason. Even so he rather more expected anger than agreement. But she nodded wearily, and further confounded him by laying a hand on his arm— a brief touch; 6

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  there were rarely such gestures between them, no intimacy… never had been.

  "We will ride the bow of the forest today," she said, "and see what game we may start, and I agree we should not overwork the horses. They deserve a little rest; their bones are showing. And you— I have seen you limping, and you work often one-armed, and still you try to take all the work from me. You would do everything if you had your way about it."

  "Is that not the way it is supposed to be?"

  "Many the time I have dealt unfairly with you; and I am sorry for that."

  He tried to laugh, passing it off, and misliked more and more this sudden sinking into melancholy. Men cursed Morgaine, in Andur and in Kursh, in Shiuan and Hiuaj and the land between. More friends' lives than enemies'

  were to the account of that fell geas that drove her. Even him she had sacrificed on occasion; and would again; and being honest, did not pretend otherwise.

  "Liyo," he said, "I understand you better than you seem to think— not always why, but at least what moves you. I am only ilin-bound, and I can argue with the one I am bound to; but the thing you serve has no mercy at all. I know that. You are mad if you think it is only my oath that keeps me with you."

  It was said; he wished then he had not said it, and rose and found work for himself tying their gear to saddles, anything to avoid her eyes.

  When she came to take Siptah's reins and set herself in the saddle, the frown was there, but it was more perplexed than angry.

  * * *

  Morgaine kept silent in their riding, which was leisurely and followed the bendings of the stream; and the weariness of his sleepless night claimed him finally, so that he bowed his head and folded his arms about him, sleeping while they rode, Kurshin-style. She took the lead, and guarded 7

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  him from branches. The sun was warm and the sighing of leaves sang a song very like the forests of Andur, as if time had bent back on itself and they rode a path they had ridden in the beginning.

  Something crashed in the brush. The horses started, and he came awake at once, reaching for his sword.

  "Deer." She pointed off through the woods, where the animal lay on its side.

  Deer it was not, but something very like unto it, oddly dappled with gold.

  He dismounted with his sword in hand, having respect for the spreading antlers, but it was stone-dead when he touched it. Other weapons had Morgaine besides Changeling, qhalur-sort also, which killed silently and at distance, without apparent wound. She swung down from the saddle, and gave him her skinning-knife, and he set to, minded strangely of another time, a creature which had been indeed a deer, and a winter storm in his homeland's mountains.

  He shook off that thought. "Had it been to me," he said, "it would have been small game and fish and precious little of that. I must have myself a bow, liyo. "

  She shrugged. In fact his pride was hurt, such of it as remained sensitive with her, that he had not done this, but she; yet it was her place to provide for him, her ilin. At times he detected hurt pride in her, that the hearth she gave him was a campfire, and the hall a canopy of branches, and food often enough scant or lacking entirely. Of all lords an ilin could have been ensnared to serve, Morgaine was beyond doubt the most powerful, and the poorest. The arms she provided him were plundered, the horse stolen before it was given, and their provisions likewise. They lived always like hedge-bandits. But tonight and for days afterward they would not have hunger to plague them, and he saw her slight hurt at the offense behind his words; with that he dismissed his vanity and vowed himself grateful for the gift.

  It was not a place for long lingering: birds' alarm, the flight of other creatures— death in the forest announced itself. He took the best and stripped that, with swift strokes of the keen blade— skill gained in 8

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  outlawry in Kursh, to hunt wolf-wary in the territories of hostile clans, to take and flee, covering his traces. So he had done, solitary, until a night he had sheltered with Morgaine kri Chya, and traded her his freedom for a place out of the wind.

  He washed his hands from the bloody work, and tied the hide bundle on the saddle, while Morgaine made shift to haul the remnant into the brush.

  He scuffed the earth about and disposed of what sign he could. Scavengers would soon muddle the rest, covering their work, and he looked about carefully, making sure, for not all their enemies were hall-bred, men of blind eyes. One there was among them who could follow the dimmest trail, and that one he feared most of all.

  That man was of clan Chya, of forested Koris in Andur, his own mother's people… and of his mother's close kin; it was at least the shape he lately wore.

  * * *

  It was an early camp, and a full-fed one. They attended to the meat which they must carry with them, drying it in the smoke of the fire and preparing it to last as long as possible. Morgaine claimed first watch, and Vanye cast himself to sleep early and wakened to his own sense of time. Morgaine had not moved to wake him, and had not intended to, he suspected, meaning to do to him what he had done to her; but she yielded her post to him without objection when he claimed it: she was not one for pointless arguments. In his watch he sat and fed the fire by tiny pieces, making sure that the drying was proceeding as it should. The strips had hardened, and he cut a piece and chewed at it lazily. Such leisure was almost forgotten in his life— to have a day's respite, two— to contemplate.

  The horses snuffed and moved in the dark. Siptah took some interest in the little Shiua mare, which would prove difficulty did she breed; but there was no present hazard of that. The sounds were ordinary and comfortable.

  A sudden snort, a moving of brush… he stiffened in every muscle, his heart speeding. Brush cracked: that was the horses.

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  He moved, ignoring bruises to rise in utter silence, and with the tip of his sword reached to touch Morgaine's outflung hand.

  Her eyes opened, fully aware in an instant; met his, which slid in the direction of the small sound he had sensed more than heard. The horses were still disturbed.

  She gathered herself, silent as he; and stood, a black shape in the embers'

  glow, with her white hair making her all too much a target. Her hand was not empty. That small black weapon which had killed the deer was aimed toward the sound, but shield it was not. She gathered up Changeling, better protection, and he gripped his sword, slipped into the darkness; Morgaine moved, but in another direction, and vanished.

  Brush stirred. The horses jerked madly at tethers of a sudden and whinnied in alarm. He slipped through a stand of saplings and something he had taken for a piece of scrub… moved: a dark spider-shape, that chilled him with its sudden life. He went further, trying to follow its movements, cautious not least because Morgaine was a-hunt the same as he.

  Another shadow: that was Morgaine. He stood still, mindful that hers was a distance-weapon, and deadly accurate; but she was not one to fire blindly or in panic. They met, and crouched still a moment. No sound disturbed the night now but the shifting of the frightened horses.

  No beast: he signed to her with his straight palm that it had gone upright, and touched her arm, indicating that they should return to the fireside.

  They went quickly, and he killed the fire while she gathered their provisions. Fear was coppery in his mouth, the apprehension of ambush possible, and the urgency of flight. Blankets were rolled, the horses saddled, the whole affair of their camp undone with silent and furtive movements. Quickly they were in the saddle and moving by dark, on a different track: no following a spy in the moonless dark, to find that he had friends.

&nbs
p; Still the memory of that figure haunted him, the eerie movement which had tricked his eye and vanished. "Its gait was strange," he said, when they were far from that place and able to talk. "As if it were unjointed."

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  What Morgaine thought of that, he could not see. "There are more than strange beasts where Gates have led," she said.

  But they saw nothing more astir in the night. Day found them far away, on a streamcourse which was perhaps different from the one of the night before, perhaps not. It bent in leisurely windings, so that branches screened this way and that in alternation, a green curtain constantly parting and closing as they rode.

  Then, late, they came upon a tree with a white cord tied about its trunk, an old and dying tree, lightning-riven.

  Vanye stopped at the evidence of man's hand hereabouts, but Morgaine tapped Siptah with her heels and they went a little further, to a place where a trail crossed their stream.

  Wheels rutted that stretch of muddy earth.

  To his dismay Morgaine turned off on that road. It was not her custom to seek out folk who could as easily be left undisturbed by their passing…

  but she seemed minded now to do so.

  "Wherever we are," she said at last, "if these are gentle people we owe them warning for what we have brought behind us. And if otherwise, then we shall look them over and see what trouble we can devise for our enemies."

  He said nothing to that. It seemed as reasonable a course as any, for two who were about to turn and pursue thousands, and those well-armed, and many horsed, and in possession of power enough to unhinge the world through which they rode.

  Conscience: Morgaine claimed none… not altogether truth, but near enough the mark. The fact was that in that blade which hung on the saddle beneath her knee, Morgaine herself had some small share of that power, and therefore it was not madness which led her toward such a road, but a certain ruthlessness.

  He went, because he must.

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  Chapter 2

  There were signs of habitation, of the hand of some manner of men, all down the road: the ruts of wheels, the cloven-hoofed prints of herded beasts, the occasional snag of white wool on a roadside branch. This is the way their herds come to water, Vanye reasoned. There must be some open land hereabouts for their grazing.

  It was late, that softest part of afternoon, when they came upon the center of it all.

  It was a village which might, save for its curving roofs, have occupied some forest edge in Andur; and a glamour of forest sunlight lay over it, shaded as its roofs were by old trees, a goldgreen warmth that hazed the old timbers and the thatched roofs. It was almost one with the forest itself, save for the fanciful carving of the timbers under the eaves, which bore faded colors. It was a cozy huddle of some thirty buildings, with no walls for defense… cattle pens and a cart or two, a dusty commons, a large hall of thatch and timbers and carved beams, no proper lord's hold, but rustic and wide-doored and mainly windowed.

  Morgaine stopped on the road and Vanye drew in beside her. A boding of ill came on him, and of regret. "Such a place," he said, "must have no enemies."

  "It will have," said Morgaine, and moved Siptah forward.

  * * *

  Their approach brought a quiet stirring in the village, a cluster of dusty children who looked up from their play and stared, a woman who looked out a window and came out of doors drying her hands on her skirts, and two old men who came out of the hall and waited their coming. Younger men and an old woman joined that pair, with a boy of about fifteen and a workman in a leather apron. More elders gathered. Solemnly they stood,… human folk, dark-skinned and small of stature.

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  Vanye looked nervously between the houses and among the trees that stood close behind, and across the wide fields which lay beyond in the vast clearing. He scanned the open windows and doors, the pens and the carts, seeking some ambush. There was nothing. He kept his hand on the hilt of his sword, which rode at his side; but Morgaine had her hands free and in sight… all peaceful she seemed, and gracious. He did not scruple to look suspiciously on everything.

  Morgaine reined in before the little cluster that had gathered before the hall steps. All the folk bowed together, as gracefully and solemnly as lords, and when they looked up at her, their faces held wonder, but no hint of fear.

  Ah, mistrust us, Vanye wished them. You do not know what has come among you. But nothing but awe touched those earnest faces, and the eldest of them bowed again, and addressed them.

  Then Vanye's heart froze in him, for it was the qhalur tongue that these Men spoke.

  Arrhthein, they hailed Morgaine, which was my lady; little by little as they rode, Morgaine had insisted to teach him, until he knew words of courtesies and threat and necessities. Not qhal in any case, these small dark folk, so courteous of manner… but the Old Ones were clearly reverenced here, and therefore they welcomed Morgaine, taking her for qhal, which she was to the eye.

  He reasoned away his shock: there was a time his Kurshin soul would have shuddered to hear that language on human lips, but now it passed his own. The speech was current, Morgaine had persuaded him, wherever qhal had been, in whatever lands Gates led to, and it had lent many words to his own language— which disturbed him to realize. That these folk spoke it nearly pure… that amazed him. Khemeis, they addressed him, which sounded like kheman: accompany… Companion, perhaps, for my lord he was not, not where qhal were honored.

  "Peace," he bade them softly in that language, the appropriate greeting; and "How may we please you and your lady?" they asked in all courtesy, but he could not answer, only understand.

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  Morgaine spoke with them, and they with her; after a moment she looked across at him. "Dismount," she said in the qhalur tongue. "Here are friendly people." But that was surely for show and for courtesy; he dismounted as she ordered him, but he did not let down his guard or intend to leave her back unguarded. He stood with arms folded, where he could both see those to whom she spoke and keep a furtive watch on the others who began to join the crowd— too many people and too close for his liking, although none of them seemed unfriendly.

  Some of what was said he followed; Morgaine's teaching with him had encompassed enough that he knew they were being welcomed and offered food. The accent was a little different than Morgaine's, but no worse than the shift from An-durin to Kurshin in his mother tongue.

  "They offer us hospitality," Morgaine said, "and I am minded to take it, at least for tonight. There is no immediate threat here that I can see."

  "As you will, liyo. "

  She gestured toward a handsome lad of about ten. "He is Sin, the elder Bythein's grandnephew. He is offered to care for the horses, but I had rather you did that and simply let him help you."

  She meant to go among them alone, then. He was not pleased at that prospect, but she had done worse things, and, armed, she was of the two of them the more dangerous, a fact which most misjudged. He took Changeling from her saddle and gave it to her, and gathered up the reins of both horses.

  "This way, khemeis, " the boy bade him; and while Morgaine went into the hall with the elders, the boy walked with him toward the pens, trying to match his man's strides and gawking at him like any village lad unused to arms and strangers… perhaps amazed also at his lighter complexion and his height, which must seem considerable to these small folk. No man in the village reached more than his shoulder, and few that much. Perhaps, he thought, they reckoned him halfling qhal, no honor to him, but he did not mean to dispute it with them.

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  The boy Sin chattered at him busily when he reached the pens and began to unsadddle the horses, but it was conversation all in vain with him.

  Finally the realization seemed to dawn upon Sin, who asked him yet another question.

  "I am sorry; I
do not understand," he answered, and the boy squinted up at him, stroking the mare's neck under her mane.

  "Khemeis?" the boy asked of him.

  He could not explain. I am a stranger here, he could say; or I am of Andur-Kursh; or other words, which he did not intend to have known. It seemed wisest to leave all such accountings to Morgaine, who could listen to these people and choose what to reveal and what to conceal and argue out their misconceptions.

  "Friend," he said, for he could say that too, and Sin's face lighted and a grin spread across it.

  "Yes," Sin said, and fell to currying the bay mare with zeal. Whatever Vanye showed him, Sin was eager to do, and his thin features glowed with pleasure when Vanye smiled and tried to show satisfaction with his work… a good folk, an open-handed people, Vanye thought, and felt the safer in their lodgings. "Sin," he said, having composed his sentence carefully, "you take care for the horses. Agreed?"

  "I shall sleep here," Sin declared, and adoration burned in his dark eyes. "I shall care for them, for you and for the lady."

  "Come with me," Vanye told him, slinging their gear on his shoulder, saddlebags which held things they needed for the night, and food that might draw animals, and Morgaine's saddle kit, which was nothing to be left to the curiosity of others. He was pleased in the company of the boy, who had no shyness or lack of patience in speaking with him. He set his hand on Sin's shoulder and the boy swelled visibly with importance under the eyes of the other children, who watched from a distance. They walked together back to the hall, and up the wooden steps to the inside.

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  It was a high-raftered place, the center filled with a long row of tables and benches, a place for feasts; and there was a grand fireplace, and light from the many wide windows which— like the unwalled condition of the village— betokened a place that had never taken thought for its defense.