Exile's Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  Then the last thing they might know would be a sudden rending of the sky and ground, and the howl of winds fleeing into that rift, taking them with it—aware of their deaths, Heaven knew how long or how keenly.

  That thought kept him in the saddle, though it was hard to breathe. He coughed, and wiped his mouth, and saw blood smearing the dust on his hand.

  A cold feeling came on him then, a chill dizziness as if truth had been waiting for him to find it, before it sprang on him and shook him and all but took his wits away.

  O Heaven, not here, not now, not yet, not in this place.

  He spat blood, wiped his stubbled mouth, and wiped the hand on his dusty breeches. Morgaine was ahead of him. She had not seen. He measured the distance yet to go—they had come halfway, now, halfway along the aisle of stones that led to Mante, and that far again was all he might be able to do—

  —at least not slow her in this place. At least cross this plain and know that she had gotten safely to its far side, where she had a chance: to draw Changeling here was impossible, for loosed within a gate, it would take the very world asunder.

  It was too cursed late for Chei's medicines, not by the tightness in his chest, by the lack of breath; but he found the folded paper, a red haze in the dust and the darkness that threatened his vision. He pinched up what he hoped for one pellet in his fingers, but he thought was more than that—he was not sure. He almost dropped it entirely, and put the medicine into his mouth and held it through a cough that brought up more blood. He swallowed, wiped his mouth with a bright smear of scarlet across the back of his hand; and hung on and waited for the strength he hoped would come to him.

  It did come. He was aware of his heart pounding, of his vision dark-edged, of a cessation of the pain, at least—but he could not get his breath. He felt his balance going, and was aware of Morgaine looking back and reining around. The strength left in a rush of heat and cold, and he knew in one terrible moment he was leaving the saddle, the ground coming up at him—

  He hit, and twisted sideways, stunned, in a second impact, lost in dust and pain that lanced through the drug-haze, skull shaken, spine rattled, limbs twisted, pain like a dull knife driven through his side.

  Through the dust, Morgaine's dark figure, running toward him, sliding down to her knees.

  "Vanye!"

  The others had stopped. Chei—behind her, on the red roan, Rhanin and Hesiyyn like ghosts in the dust. He tried to get up, knowing it was necessary, and the pain was in abeyance for the moment. He tried to get his arm under him.

  And heard the wind howl, saw Morgaine whirl and rise and reach for Changeling's hilt as the sky tore in two above them, showing the dark beyond, her hair and cloak streaming, dust pouring skyward like water pouring over a brink.

  The world ripped. And there was only the cold and the dark between.

  *

  —He saw her hand on the hilt, that would bring the Gate in upon itself.

  "No," he cried to her, because they were still alive, and the time was not yet—

  *

  The rift came full circle, and blue swallowed up the black, leaving only a rush of wind and chill.

  Then he lay on his back on stone, and rolled onto his arm, to see Morgaine with the sword half-drawn, the blade shimmering crystal, its runes running with opal fires.

  She slammed it home again, seeing him, and he got to his knees, dazed, disentangled himself of his bow that had come awry of his shoulder and shed it. He saw Siptah and Arrhan riderless and confused, Chei and the others fighting for control of their frightened mounts—standing stones all about them, stones like a forest of such slabs, all about the walled court of blond stone in which they had suddenly found themselves.

  There was no pain. There was no ache anywhere about the bandages bound too tightly about his ribs, no hindrance in his limbs. He might have come from a morning's easy ride.

  Gate-passage. The gate had flung them here, unscathed and whole except the dust and the dirt that turned Morgaine's dark armor pale and made her face a porcelain mask.

  God in Heaven, he thought, remembering the fall, then, and the blood in his mouth; and then thought it might be blasphemous to thank Heaven for qhalur gifts. He had no idea. He only knew he could stand, and Morgaine was throwing an arm about him and embracing him, the dragon-sword in her other hand, the scarred and battered longbow in his. "We are alive," she said, and said something else urgently in a tongue he could not understand, telling him, he reckoned in his dazed state, that they were none of them dead, that they were somewhere of Skarrin's choosing—

  She held him tight. He held to her as if he were drowning, and then remembered there were enemies. He scanned round about the stones which rose in a five-fold stagger between them and the walls; and looked up, at the rim of the masonry walls against the cloudless sky.

  There was no one, no one but Chei and Rhanin and Hesiyyn, on horses exhausted and head-hanging, themselves hardly fit to climb from their saddles and stand.

  But they, themselves—and the white horse and the gray—

  "There is sorcery," Vanye murmured, misgiving of everything, most of all his memory, which insisted there should be pain, and broken bones, and not this unnatural strength, recovered flesh, that made the buckles and bandaging all too tight. He trembled, and wished he could shake everything from his head and begin again. "Mother of God, there is—you cannot tell me else—"

  She wiped the corner of his mouth, with fingers that came away, shaking, with blood and dirt. Tears marred the dusty mask of her face. She pressed her lips tight, held him by the arm and looked up and about the slow circuit of the walls, seeking who had done this to them.

  Then to Chei, in anger: "Is this—ordinary, Skarrin dropping his guests into this place? Is this the way to Mante you simply neglected to tell us?"

  "I do not know." It was bewilderment. It was utter consternation. "No. Not—for what I know."

  There was fear—in Chei's look, in Rhanin's—even in cold Hesiyyn's eyes. It was fear directed toward them both, for the healing the gates had done for them, and the horses they rode, and not for themselves.

  "None of us know," Rhanin said, a faint voice. "Never—never that I have known of—"

  "Skarrin!" Morgaine shouted to the walls and the sky.

  "He has spared us," Vanye said. "Liyo, he has spared us—"

  She turned a look on him—not the face he loved, but a qhalur mask in white dust, tear-streaked and implacable in purpose. "Do not believe it."

  On the one side, Chei and his companions, who knew something had been done with gates such as ought not to have happened, within the laws they knew—

  On the other, Morgaine—

  I know things they do not. Call it my father's legacy. And if they should know, Vanye, that secret, they would find others, that I will give no one, that are not written on the sword—that I will not permit anyone to know and live—

  She hooked Changeling to her belt. She walked a few steps and recovered his helm from the ground and threw it to him. He caught it. The wind blew at his hair, still shorn. His armor was filthy with dust and blood. Why this should be, and other things mended, he did not understand.

  He did not hope to. Nor wish to. He put the helm on, slung the bow to his shoulder, and followed her across the courtyard to the horses.

  She stopped there. From that angle, among the standing stones, an open gateway was visible in the masonry wall.

  Chapter 18

  There was no sound in the high-walled courtyard, save their own movements and those of the horses. There was nothing above them but the sky.

  And the open gateway, among the standing stones.

  Morgaine took Siptah in hand to look him over and Vanye looked over the exhausted bay and gathered up Arrhan's reins, as Chei and his two comrades led their exhausted horses toward them, slow clatter of iron on stone.

  "There is the way out," Morgaine said. "Such as our host gives us. Do you have any reckoning where we are?"


  "Neneinn," Hesiyyn said quietly. "That is where we would be, I am relatively certain of it. The citadel itself. But no one sees the inside of that, except the Overlord's own guards. And they rarely come and go in the city."

  "The Gate itself?"

  Hesiyyn looked about him, at the sky, the walls; and pointed off to the right of the open gateway. "There, by my guess. The gate is close—very close to Neneinn, at the crest of the same hill. That weapon of yours—I should hesitate to use anywhere about these premises."

  Morgaine was silent a moment, looking at Hesiyyn. The tall qhal-lord wore an unwontedly anxious expression.

  "Where is your loyalty?" she asked him.

  "Assuredly not in Neneinn," Hesiyyn answered in a faint voice. "I am under banishment. Skarrin dislikes my poetry."

  "None of us has any loyalty here," Chei said. "I assure you. Nor prospects."

  There was nothing of arrogance in them. Their courage seemed frayed, their strength flagging in the face of their own unnatural vitality—men hollow-cheeked, eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion, their horses dull-coated and ill-fed beneath the dust that coated all of them. They did not ask what had happened, or why, or, indeed, venture any question at all.

  "Then tell Skarrin nothing," Morgaine said shortly, and turned and hooked Siptah's left stirrup to the horn. She let out the girth no small bit, at which the warhorse grunted and sighed.

  Arrhan needed the same. Vanye saw to it, hung his bow from Arrhan's saddlehorn and let out first Arrhan's girth and then the straps of his own body-armor, that were tight to the point of misery; but the bandages and the padding he could not reach, and he drew a breath and strained at them, trying to stretch against what would bind his draw and his sword arm.

  Even in blackest sorcery, he thought, gathering his gear about him, there were cursedly maddening shortcomings.

  Morgaine flung the stirrup down and gathered up Siptah's reins, looking back toward Chei and the rest. "I will warn you," she said. "You may be safer here. Death—may be safer than where we go. Choose for yourselves."

  Chei looked astonished. It was young Chei's expression. The frown which followed was Gault's. Or Qhiverin's. "You jest, lady."

  "No," she said. "I do not." And led Siptah among the tall stones, toward the open gateway.

  Vanye led Arrhan after her, the blaze-faced bay following perforce, with lagging, wearied steps.

  The others came behind him, then, a clatter of iron-shod hooves on stone.

  He had as lief not have them at his back. He recollected the medicine Chei had given him, and what it had done to him when at last he had had to rely on it—

  —Chei had warned him, he recollected. To do justice to the man, Chei had warned him clearly.

  Chei had given it to him after that warning, of course—in hope, perhaps, of not having him between them and Morgaine—in any sense. And if he had used it before that, Heaven knew what would have been the outcome.

  He kept constantly between Morgaine and the qhal, now, on the winding track among the stones, pale gold of standing stones and of pavings and masonry—and of more sunlit paving visible through the gateway.

  Another trap, he thought.

  But the gateway opened out into yet another such courtyard, this one with a single standing stone in its center ... a flat, paved courtyard, the end of which a building closed, jumbled planes of wall and tower, and at the sides—

  A sheer drop: and buildings upon buildings, upon buildings and buildings, pale gold stone, red roofs, as far as the eye could see.

  He stopped in his tracks and stared—only stared, senses confounded, when he was mountain-born and used to heights and perspectives.

  But not to men and the works of men so vast they spread like a blanket about the hill and across the plain—to the verge of the cliffs that dropped away into the circular abyss of Neisyrrn Neith, and along and away till the roofs lost themselves in haze and distance.

  Morgaine had stopped. So had the others.

  "Mante," Chei said softly. So a man might speak of Heaven and Hell in one.

  The others said nothing at all.

  And Vanye could not forbear looking at it, though he tangled his fingers in Arrhan's coarse mane and feared irrationally that the sight might drive the horses mad, and bring them too near the edge, however far away they stood.

  Morgaine led Siptah further. It was the sound of the gray's steps that woke him from trance, and brought him after her, resolutely, as she walked toward the open doorway at the end of the courtyard.

  The others followed, at distance.

  This door—had little sunlight about it. This one let into the very heart of the fortress, by a long narrow aisle, shadowed by columns.

  They had seen such before, of many kinds. Such buildings were always near the World-gates. They held the machines to command and direct the forces.

  It was what they had come to find; and Morgaine would go in. He had no doubt of it. He saw her lay her hand on the sword-hilt.

  "Liyo. " He searched after the chain of the stone he wore about his neck, drew it from his collar and over his head as he led Arrhan quickly to overtake her. It was a weak thing—stronger by far than the Warden's mote or many another sending-stone in this land, he suspected, but not Changeling's match. It was useless to him, a means to sudden death, if he matched it against anything of Changeling's power.

  Or against the gate Hesiyyn swore must lie close hereabouts.

  "He knows you have a gate-weapon," he said. "Take it. It is larger than the ones they use. It may be he will mistake this for it."

  She understood him then. And refused it with a shake of her head. "The sword," she said in his language. "I cannot wield both. And no—he will not."

  "The sword is too dangerous," he whispered hoarsely, and started at a movement in the corner of his vision, in the deep shadow within the narrow aisle ahead—a qhalur man, alone, nor very old.

  Some high servant, he thought, the while his heart skipped a beat and his hand went for his sword-hilt; and then he thought otherwise, seeing the eldritch figure drifted, mirage-like, and was only an image.

  It spoke. It spoke words he could not understand, but he knew, whatever they were, that they were not meant for him, or for Chei, or any of them other than Morgaine. He heard Morgaine answer in that tongue, and saw the man's figure grow dimmer as it retreated down that aisle.

  She walked forward.

  Vanye caught at her arm, the barest touch, before she reached that threshold. She looked at him. That was all; and she turned and hit Siptah a resounding blow on the rump.

  The Baien gray sprang through the door, hooves echoing on stone, off high walls, and stopped inside, unscathed.

  She went, then, through the doorway, in a single step and a second one which cleared a path for him to follow. He did so, in a motion so quick he did not think of it: he was there, Arrhan was behind him, and he whipped the arrhendur blade from its sheath, for what it was worth against this illusion and the more substantial things it might call down on them.

  A question then, from the man of light and shadow. The voice echoed about them, rang off the walls of this long, narrow passage.

  "He does not understand you," Morgaine said.

  "He is human," the image said then. "I have read everything—in the gate-field. I know what you carry. Yes. How could I fail to remark—a thing like that forming in the patterns? I read his suffering. I intervened, against my habit, to save him. I trusted there was a pattern—if you valued him. And I was not mistaken."

  "I thank you for that," Morgaine said.

  "I wished to please you,—who come wandering the worlds. Anjhurin's daughter. It is likely that we are kin—remote as that kinship may be. How does Anjhurin fare?"

  "He is dead," Morgaine said shortly.

  "Ah." The regret seemed genuine. The image murmured something in the other language.

  "Perhaps," Morgaine said, "he was weary of living. He said as much."

  Again it spoke.


  "No," Morgaine said. And to another query: "No." And: "I travel, my lord."

  A harder voice then.

  "For my companion's sake," she said. "Speak so he can understand." And after another such: "Because he understands it and because I wish it." And again: "That may be. I would be glad of it." She lapsed for a moment into the other tongue. Then, gently: "It has been a long time, my lord, since I have spoken the language. It has been a long time—since I have had the occasion."

  "You bring me felons and rebels." The mouth of the image quirked upward slightly at the corners. "As well as this human warrior. You have turned my court upside down, lifted every rotten log and sent the vermin scurrying forth—from Morund-gate to the highest houses in Mante. What shall I do for you in return?"

  "Why, give me the three rebels in question," Morgaine said, "and the pleasure of your company, and in due time, the freedom of your gate. I am a wanderer. I seek no domain of my own."

  "Nor to share one?"

  She laughed. "We do not share a world. My father taught me that much. I will find a place. Or do you give this one up, my lord of shadows, and come wander the worlds with us."

  "With a rebel, a killer, a doggerel poet and a human lordling?"

  Skarrin laughed in his own turn. "Come ahead into my courtyards, my lady of light. Wash off the dust. Take my hospitality." The drifting face became melancholy, even wistful. "Go with you. That is a thought. That is indeed a thought. You will sit with me, my lady, and tell me where you have traveled and the things you have seen—convince me there is something different than one finds . . . everywhere. ..."

  The image faded.

  The voice drifted into silence, leaving the stillness of the tomb behind it.

  Old, Vanye thought with a chill, old—more than a Man can reckon.

  And he found himself staring into Morgaine's eyes, lost, beyond understanding what she did or what she meant to do any longer, and with the least and dreadful fear—that she had found something in common with this lord who contemned everything he ruled, who despised the qhal, who themselves used human folk for cattle—