Exiles Gate com-4

by C. J. Cherryh

  For a moment he truly could not breathe. His eyes went involuntarily to see where Chei and the others were, but they were not in earshot, even for Hesiyyn's qhalur hearing, and it was the Kurshin tongue they spoke.

  "The sword—" he said. "If we use it at this Gate of Exiles—will be very near those standing stones."

  "The sword is unstable. Like the gate. We cannot predict. There is no way to predict—what will happen."

  "Aye," he said, and wiped at the sweat which gathered on his lip, and wiped his hands on his knees.

  She scratched through the map once, twice. "Go, rest, take whatever sleep thee can. Thee will need it."

  He went back and lay down again, staring at the sky through the branches, counting leaves, that being better than other thoughts that pressed on him. He put the stone about his neck, and lay with his hand closed about the pyx to shield it, to be certain of its safety.

  And when the sun started below the hill he rose up and dressed methodically, laced up the padding tight and worked the mail shirt on: that was worst. Morgaine came to help him with it; and with the buckles beneath the arm.

  "I will saddle up," she said. "No arguments from thee. Hear?"

  "Aye," he said, though it fretted him. "Pull it tight, liyo. It can take another notch there."

  "Thee has to get on the horse."

  "I have to stay there," he said.

  To that she said nothing. She only tightened the strap.

  They mounted up while there was still a little light beyond the hills. It was Hesiyyn who rode farthest point, Hesiyyn with his brown cloak about him, his pale hair loose about his shoulders, his weapons all covered. His horse was a fine blood bay with no white markings.

  It was Hesiyyn's own reasoning that he should ride foremost, to forestall any ambushes: "It is likely the only company in which I shall ever find myself the most respectable."

  With which the qhal-lordling put his horse well out to the fore, passing out of sight around the bending of the stream, while Chei and Rhanin went a distance behind. "Come," Morgaine said, and chose her own distance from that pair—herself cloaked in black; and Vanye swept his own cloak about him when he had gotten up, and threw up the hood over the white-scarfed helm.

  Ambush was possible. Hesiyyn might betray them, signaling to some band out from Mante. Everything, henceforward, was possible—

  Even that they should come to the verge of the starlit plain unmolested—a last hillside, a trail down a steep, rocky slope, on which Hesiyyn sat waiting for them, resting his horse, spinning and spinning a curious object on the surface of the slab of rock on which he sat.

  "The lots come up three, three, and three: are you superstitious?"

  "Curse your humor," Chei said, reining back his horse from the descent.

  They changed about with the remounts, one to the three qhal, the blaze-faced bay going turn and turn with Siptah and Arrhan: and again Hesiyyn went to the lead, but not so far separated from them now.

  Down and down to the plain, a difficult slope, a long and miserable jolting. Hang on, Vanye told himself, cursing every step the bay made under him. Sweat broke out, wind-chilled on his face. He clenched the saddlehorn and thought of the red packet in his belt-pocket.

  Not yet, he thought. Not for this. To every jolt and every uneven spot: not for this, not for this—

  Across the plain, the mountains—not the peaks of a range like the Cedur Maje of his homeland, but a wall of rock which giants might have built, as if the world had broken, and that were the breaking-point, under a sky so brilliant with stars and moon it all but cast a shadow.

  "They are not preventing us this far," he said to Morgaine.

  He wished in one part of his reeling mind that the enemy would turn up, now, quickly, before they were committed to this—that somehow something would happen to send them on some other and better course.

  But there was no sign of it.

  They came down onto the plain at last, a gradual flattening of the course they rode. Vanye turned as best he could and looked back at the track they had made as they entered the grassy flat, a trail too cursed clear under the heavens. "As well blaze a trail," he muttered. If there had been the choice of skirting the hills instead of taking Chei's proposed course across the plain, it was rapidly diminishing.

  They drew their company together now, Hesiyyn riding with them as they struck out straight across.

  And the cliffs which had been clear from the hillside showed only as a rim against the horizon.

  Then was easier riding. Then he finally seized hold of his right leg by the boot-top and hauled it with difficulty over the saddlehorn, wrapped his arms about his suffering ribs and with a look at Morgaine that assured him she knew he was going to rest for a while, bowed his head, leaned back against the cantle and gave himself over to the bay's steady pace in a sickly exhaustion.

  He roused himself only when they paused to trade mounts about. "No need," Morgaine said, sliding down from Arrhan's back. "That horse is fit enough to go on carrying you, and I will take Siptah: I weigh less."

  He was grateful. He took the medicines she carried for him, washed them down with a drink from her flask, and sat there ahorse while others stretched their legs. It was not sleep, that state of numbness he achieved. It was not precisely awareness either. He knew that they mounted up again; he knew that they moved, he trusted that Morgaine watched the land around them.

  No other did he trust . . . except he reasoned if betrayal was what Chei and his men intended, it did not encompass losing their own lives, not lives so long and so dearly held; and that meant some warning to them.

  Some warning was all his liege needed. And half-asleep and miserable as he was, he continually rode between her and them: it was a well-trained horse, if rough-gaited, and Siptah, he thanked Heaven, tolerated it going close by him.

  He did truly sleep for a while. He jerked his head up with the thought that he was falling, caught his balance, and saw the cliffs no nearer.

  Or they were vaster than the eye wanted to see. His leg had gone numb. He hauled it back over, and his eyes watered as the muscles extended. Everything hurt.

  And the riding went on and on, while a few clouds drifted across the stars and passed, and a wind rose and rippled through the endless grass.

  Another change of horses. This time he did dismount, and walked a little, as far as privacy to relieve himself, discovering that he could, which did for one long misery; and saw to Arrhan's girth and the bay's.

  But facing the necessity to haul himself up again, he stood there holding the saddlehorn and trying, with several deep breaths, to gather the wind and the courage to make that pull.

  "Vanye!" Morgaine said, just as he had found it. He stopped, unnerved, with a jolt that brought tears to his eyes; and: "Chei," she said, "one of you give him a hand up."

  "My lady," Chei said. And came and offered his hands for a stirrup.

  Shame stung him. But he set his foot in Chei's linked hands and let Chei heave him up like some pregnant woman.

  "For a like favor," Chei said to him.

  He recalled it. And flinching from Chei's hand on his knee, he backed Arrhan out of his reach.

  The cliffs cut off the sky before them, against the dimming stars, and they had left a trail a child could follow, the swath of passage in tall grass. The horses caught mouthfuls now and again: there was no time to give them more than that.

  Morgaine rode the bay now; it was Siptah due the rest. And the sky above the eastern hills was showing no stars: the sun was coming.

  We are beyond recall now. That was the thought that kept gnawing at him. Wise or not, we are beyond any change of mind.

  God save us.

  By sunlight, at the lagging pace of weary horses, the rock face in front of them rose and filled all their view—a plain of dry grass, a wall of living stone, so abrupt and so tall it defied the eye's logic.

  It had one gap, shadow-blued within the yellow stone, in noon sunlight, and closing it�
��the gatehouse that Chei had named to them. Seiyyin Neith.

  Doors—the size of which a Kurshin eye refused to understand, until a hawk flew near them, a mote against their height.

  Exile's Gate.

  Chei turned the roan back a half-circle as they rode, reined in alongside and lifted a hand toward it. "There," he said, "there, you see what we propose to assault. That is merely the nethermost skirt of Mante." He leaned on his saddlebow and gave a twitch of his shoulders, a shiver. "A man forgets it, whose eyes are used to Morund's size. And the boy, my friends, … is terrified."

  He gave a flick of the reins and sent his horse thundering on ahead to join his men.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Another space of riding. This time it had measure, that vision of the towering cliffs which rose steadily before them. Vanye looked up at the doors, whose valves were iron, whose surface held twelve bronze panels each, of figures far more than life-size, the actions of which he could not at first understand, until he saw the detail. They were scenes of execution, and torment.

  "Can such things open?" he wondered aloud, and his voice was less steady than he wished. He expected some sally-port: he looked for it among the panels, and saw no joint.

  "Oh, indeed," Chei said, "when Mante wishes to diminish its vassals—and its exiles. They do open."

  "Mante has a taste for excess," Morgaine said.

  "They want a man to remember," Hesiyyn said, "the difficulty of return."

  Vanye looked at Rhanin, who rode alone ahead of them, weary man riding one exhausted horse, leading another, dwarfed by the scenes of brutal cruelty looming over them.

  He felt something move in him then, toward all of these his enemies, a pang that went to the heart.

  He saw not Seiyyin Neith, of a sudden, but a steep road down from gray stone walls, and on it, beneath those walls which had seemed so high and dreadful, a grief-stricken boy in a white-scarfed helm, with exile in front of him.

  This at least they had in common. And they were brave men who did not flinch now, in the face of this thing.

  This barrier, Mante reared in the name of justice. This was the face it turned to its damned and its servants. This was what the power of the world held as honorable dealings with its own subjects—men hanged, and gutted and burned alive, and what other things, higher up the doors, he had no wish to see.

  He drew a copper-edged breath and leaned on the saddle, a shift of weight that sent a wearying, monotonous pain through his sides and his gut, a cursed, always-present misery. He was not certain there was life left in his legs. He had found a few positions that hurt less, and kept shifting between them. But the approach to this place meant different necessities, meant—Heaven knew what. If they must fight here, he could do that, he thought, as long as they stayed mounted.

  "How is thee faring?" Morgaine asked him.

  "I will manage," he said.

  She looked at him, long, as they rode. "On thy oath, Nhi Vanye."

  That shook him. He was much too close to judgment to trifle with damnation. It was unfairly she dealt with him—but she had no conscience in such matters, he had long known it.

  "Vanye, does thee leave me to guess?"

  "I will stay ahorse," he said, half the truth. "I can defend myself." But he could imagine her relying on him in some rush to cover, or doing something foolish to rescue him if he should fall. He sweated, feeling a coldness in the pit of his stomach. He had not used the qhalur medicines. He abhorred such things. More, he did not think they could deal with a numbness that had his right leg all but useless, prickling like needles all up the inside. "It is walking I am not sure of. But my head is clear."

  She said nothing then. She was thinking, he decided—thinking through things he did not know, thinking what to do, how far to believe him, and what of her plans she must now change—all these things, because he had been a fool and brought them to this pass, and now began to be a burden on her.

  Ishall not be, he would have protested. But he already was. And knew it.

  He let Arrhan fall a little back then—the horses fretted and snorted, having the scent of strangeness in the wind, the prospect of a fight—always, always, the prospect of war wherever they came to habitations of any kind. The qhal cared little what he did. And Morgaine had her eyes set on the thing in front of them.

  He slipped the red paper from its place and carefully, with fingers which trembled, managed to get one of the tiny pellets beneath a fingernail, and then, losing his resolve and his trust of the gift, dislodged it and let it roll back into the paper. He folded it up again, and put it back.

  Fool, he thought again. Coward.

  But he knew that he would take care for her. He was not sure what the stuff in the red paper cared for. And there was too much and too delicate hazard to deal with, which needed clear wits and good judgment.

  He gained leverage as he could, took his weight mostly on his arms, hands on the saddlebow, and let the pain run as it would, while he made the right leg move, and bend, and the feeling come back in tingling misery. Sweat fell from his face and spattered his hands, white-knuckled on the horn.

  He watched Chei ride up to the very doors, draw the red roan alongside that door-rim and pound with a frail human fist against that towering mass of metal, which hardly resounded to his blows.

  "I am Chei ep Kantory," he shouted, in a voice that seemed far too small. "I am Chei lord of Morund, Warden of the South! I have brought visitors to the Overlord! Open the doors!"

  They will not, Vanye thought then. It seemed too improbable that anyone inside could even hear them. He looked up dizzily toward the masonry that supported the great doors, expecting there, if they had any answer, the small black figures of archers, and arrows to come down on them like sleet. Forewarning was all the grace he sought of this place—time, for Morgaine to draw the sword, with all the risk that was, this close to the gate.

  But metal boomed and clanked and hinges groaned with a sound that hurt the ears and shied the horses: Arrhan came up on her hind legs and down again, braced in an instant's confusion. He caught his balance, steadied her, colliding with the panicked bay at lead, at Siptah's left.

  The iron doors groaned and squealed outward, opening on a shadowed hall of scale to match them, pillars greater in girth than all but the greatest trees of Shathan.

  He slipped the ring that held his sword at his back, and let it fall ready to his side.

  "Not yet," Morgaine said, as Chei and his companions started forward and rode into that hall. She began to ride after, calmly, slowly as the men in front of them.

  He touched Arrhan with his heels and curbed the mare's nervousness with a pat on her sweating neck. His hand was shaking.

  Reason enough, he thought, as he passed between the doors that towered either side of him, greater than Ra-Morij's very walls. He could not see what images were on the inside: he dared not take his eyes from where they were going, into an aisle of vast pillars wanly lit with shafts of sunlight from above.

  There was a second set of doors before them, far down that forest of stone.

  They were closed.

  Did we expect more? he asked himself, and breathed the air of the shadow that fell on them, a dank chill the worse after the noon warmth outside. He heard the clank that heralded the sealing of the doors behind them, and steadied Arrhan, who shied and danced under him. The blaze-faced bay jerked and jolted at lead, fighting it. Shod hooves clattered and echoed on pavings, under the machine-noise of iron and chain and ratchets.

  And the ribbon of daylight which lay wide about them, narrowed and vanished with the meeting and sealing of the doors at their backs.

  The horses settled, slowly, in a profound silence.

  Footsteps sounded within the forest of pillars. A qhal in black armor, his silver hair loose around his shoulders, walked out into their path, into a shaft of light.

  It was not the only footfall in the place. But the pillars hid what else moved about them.

  "My
lord Warden," Chei said, as the roan fought the rein.

  "South-warden?" Seiyyin's Warden asked. He was not young nor old. The face might have been carved of bone, the eyes of cold glass.

  "Yes, my lord," Chei answered him—youth's form and youth's face; but that was not what sat his horse facing this grim lord. "I was Qhiverin Asfelles."

  "With?"

  "Rhanin ep Eorund, once Taullyn Daras, and Hesiyyn Aeisyryn, under my orders, in the performance of my office, with persons traveling under my seal. We are escorting this lady and her companion to Mante."

  The lord Warden's eyes traveled past the others to Vanye and to Morgaine, and lingered, unreadable and cold. "These are the Outsiders."

  "They are, my lord. I urge you speak civilly to them. It was a mistake they ever came through Morund-gate, and due to their falling in with humans, and due to lies humans have told them, there have been costly misunderstandings. This lady is a warden herself, and she is not well-pleased with the things she has met on her way."

  Wise man, Vanye thought, light-headed with the pounding of his heart. Chei, get my lady through this and I will be your debtor, I swear it.

  And, O Heaven, the Warden's cold eyes shifted toward them with the least small fracture in his command of the affair.

  Not a stupid man either. Nor one incapable of shifting footing. "Where are you warden, lady?"

  Morgaine rode a little forward; Vanye moved instantly to stay beside her.

  "Where I am warden," Morgaine said, "and more than warden—is something between your Overlord and myself. But I thank you, my lord, if I am about to meet more courtesy than has been my experience on this journey. It will do a great deal to mend matters."

  For a long moment the Warden was silent. Then: "We will advise the authorities in Mante," the Warden said.