Exile's Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  She had had to defend her companying with a human man. He had sensed that. He imagined the questions which had gone by him, and fitted her answers to them, his liege, his lover . . . defiant, in the beginning—toward a man of her own kind, who could speak with her, trade words with her in a language she had never taught him, quickly and unexpectedly draw the sort of laugh and light answer from her such as had taken him—oh, so long to win.

  "We will do as he asks," Morgaine said.

  "Aye," he said. He was too far into strange territory to say anything more. He did not even agree for loyalty or love or out of common sense. He was only lost, on ground which continually shifted and threatened to shift again. They stood in a foreign lord's elegant forecourt with three confused horses in their charge, and three men awaiting their fate outside who were, surely, no less bewildered.

  Then: a clear target, he thought, like a shock of cold water.

  How else do we come at him—except she draw him out?

  And how can she persuade him?

  "Call Chei and the rest," she bade him in the Kurshin tongue. "Quickly."

  He left Arrhan to stand and went back to the sunlight. "My lord," he said to Chei at the doorway, and lowered his voice. He was determined to observe courtesy with the man and forestall argument. "We are going ahead. We do not know into what. Be aware: the Overlord brought up the matter of your exile. My lady claimed you for her own and Skarrin gave you to her. So if you have any scruples, I think you are honorably quit of debts to him, but I do not know what favor this wins of him if things go amiss."

  Chei looked at him and gnawed at his lip. It was young Chei's expression for the instant. It was doubt; and then amusement. "I was quit of debts to him when he failed to kill me," Chei-Qhiverin said. "That was his mistake."

  Chei led his horse forward. Hesiyyn and Rhanin followed, Rhanin with his bow strung and slung over his shoulder. Vanye cleared the doorway, gathered up Arrhan's reins, and led the white mare up alongside Siptah as Morgaine began that course Skarrin chose for them.

  Ambush was in his thoughts, constantly. But Morgaine went, with Changeling slung at her hip, and walked the long court in which the horses' pacing made a forlorn and lonely sound.

  "Games," she said to the air. "I do not like games, my lord Skarrin."

  At the end a door whisked open, in that way which doors could move, in such places of gate-force—on a sunlit court.

  Vanye cut the lead next the bay's bridle and sent it ambling past them with one slap and another on its dusty rump. It came to no grief in the doorway. And they came through into afternoon sunlight, into a stable court clean and well-supplied with straw and haystack, rows of stables, with well and stone trough. The bay went straightway to the water, and Siptah and Arrhan flared their nostrils and pricked up their ears and approached the trough with keen interest.

  "Hospitality," Vanye muttered, for the first time beginning to wonder was there good will in this beckoning of doors and corridors and ghosts. "Dare we trust it?"

  "He needs no ambush," Morgaine said, and bent and washed her hands and her face, and let the water wash black, clean trails over her dusty armor. She drank from the demon-mouth that poured fresh water continually into the trough.

  He took the chance for himself, doused face and hands in cool water, wiped his hair back from his eyes, washed and drank as Chei and the others arrived.

  There was no one to threaten them. There was not a horse other than theirs in all the stable-court. There was no servant and no groom to serve them. Vanye stood, with the wind chilling the water on his face, scanning the walls around them, looking for some sign of life and seeing nothing but bare stone.

  "Ghosts," he said aloud. "And of them this Skarrin seems chief."

  "More than ghosts," Morgaine whispered in the Kurshin tongue, and caught his shoulder and leaned close to him. "We may be overheard. I do not know how many languages he may have known or where he may have traveled."

  His heart leapt in him and fell again. "Even Kursh?"

  "There are tracks among the Gates: thee knows. No knowing which path he has come to arrive here. There are a handful of the old blood, in all the worlds gates reach. They have no congress with one another. They are too proud. Each settles to a world—for a while—using a knowledge of the gates the qhal do not have—They rule. There is no likelihood that they will fail to rule. They direct affairs, they make changes at their pleasure. And inevitably they grow bored—and they move on, through time or space or both. Some are older than the calamity, older than the one before it. My father claimed to be."

  "What 'one before it,' what—"

  "—And some are born into this age—of one whose life has stretched across ages. Some are born of events which cannot be duplicated, events on which vast changes depend—Some lives, in that way, anchor time itself. So the lords assure themselves of continuance—in more than one way. Such am I—but not what my father planned. I exist. Therefore other things do not. Therefore he does not."

  "I do not understand. You have left me." He felt a shiver despite the sun. "What shall we do?"

  "I shall court this man," she hissed softly. "By any means, Vanye, any means, and thee must not object, does thee understand that?"

  "Let us take the sword, let us go through this place until we find him—" He felt cold to the heart now. "That is the only sense."

  "He will not be there. He can retreat within the gate. He can leave us here. Has thee forgotten?"

  "You cannot fight him hand to hand, liyo, in the name of Heaven, you cannot think of—"

  "I will do what I have to do. I tell thee now: do not attempt anything with this man. I beg thee. I do not want help in this. Or hindrance. Thee says thee is still ilin. Nothing have I asked of thee by that oath—in very long. This I ask. For my sake. For thine."

  "Tell me what we shall do!"

  "On thy oath. Nothing. I will do it."

  "And I tell you—if you hang my soul and my salvation on it—I will throw them away, if it comes to harm—"

  "Thee will take the sword if it comes to that. Thee will bear it. Thee will trust Chei and the rest if it comes to that. All these things—I ask thee, as thee loves me,—do. Does thee love me? Does thee understand what I ask?"

  It reached him, then, the thing that she was asking of him, and the sense of it. It shook the breath from him for a moment. It was not the sort of thing a man wanted to agree to, who loved a woman. It was harder than dying for her, to agree to leave her to die.

  "That much," he said, because anything less was betrayal, "yes, I understand. On my oath, I will." He looked up uncomfortably at their comrades, who did not understand what passed—their comrades, who expected, perhaps, betrayal prepared for themselves, in this exchange in another language.

  "We will go on," Morgaine said to them, and drew Siptah away from the water.

  "Where do we go?" Chei asked.

  "Did I promise I knew?" Morgaine answered, and led the gray horse on through the stable-court, down the empty rows.

  "It makes no sense," Hesiyyn said. "There should be servants—there should be attendants. Where are the people?"

  "Heaven knows," Chei answered him, and found no incongruity in saying so. There was an angry young man in the center of his being, as lost as he was, in this place which had dominated both their lives and ruined their separate families—and which proved, after all, only hollow and full of echoes. "People come here," he said, half to the lady, who seemed some old acquaintance of Skarrin's. "People serve the Overlord. What has become of them?"

  She offered them no answer.

  "Perhaps he is holding them elsewhere," Hesiyyn said under his breath, and with an anxious look toward Chei.

  Death, the lady had said; and in this court which should, at least, have horses, have some evidence of occupancy and life—Chei found a scattering of memory which was human and adult and frightened—

  Gault had been imprisoned here, had been hailed up from the outskirts of this fortres
s by his kidnappers, to the gate above these walls. Gault remembered. And there had been others in that dark hour, there had been servants, there had been abundant life in this court, torchlit and echoing with confused shouts as Qhiverin's friends dragged him struggling and resisting toward the hell above these walls.

  "Even the horses," Chei-Gault-Qhiverin said aloud, finding a shiver down his spine and a terrible feeling of things gone amiss in this daylit, sterile vacancy, "even the horses—No." He quickened his pace, tugging at the weary roan he led, and caught Vanye's arm. "There were people here. Now even the horses are gone. Something is direly wrong here. It is a trap. Make the lady listen."

  Vanye had rescued his arm at once. There was on his sullen face, a quick suspicion and a dark threat. The shorn hair blew across his eyes and reminded them both of things past, of miscalculations and mistakes disastrously multiplied. A muscle clenched in his jaw.

  But if there was at the moment a voice of caution and reason in their company it was this Man, Chei believed it: the boy's experience told him so and Qhiverin's instincts went to him, puzzling even himself—except it was everywhere consonant with what the boy knew: a man absolute in duty, absolute enough and sane enough to lay aside everything that did not pertain to the immediate problem.

  Trust him to listen, was the boy's advice. Nothing further.

  And Qhiverin, within himself. Boy, if the one thing, with what lies between us, then anything; and you have been a mortal fool.

  "It is for all our sakes," he said. "I swear to you, Nhi Vanye. We are walking into a trap. Every step of this is a trap. He has vacated the place. Even the horses. Even the horses. I do not know where."

  "The gate," Vanye said, looking down the little distance Chei's slighter form needed.

  "To Tejhos?" Chei asked. "—Or elsewhere?" Vanye cast a look toward Morgaine, whose face was stern and pale and set on the way before them, which led toward yet another gate in this maze.

  "Anything is possible," he said.

  A man who is winning, he had said to Morgaine again and again, will not flee.

  But the man of that face and that voice which had spoken to them—

  —Go with you, it had said.

  Convince me there is something different than one finds . . . everywhere. . . .

  Older than the calamity, Morgaine had said of Skarrin.

  And: Not of human measure, not predictable by human intentions, his own experience told him.

  Deeper and deeper into this snare Morgaine went, leading the rest of them in what haste they dared—

  Lest Skarrin strand them here, lest he go before them and seal the gate and leave them imprisoned here forevermore.

  He did not question now. He understood the things that she had attempted to tell him throughout their journey—and he had overwhelmed her arguments, delayed her with his foolishness, his well-meant advice and his hopes and, Heaven forgive, his desire of her, which had stolen her good judgment and thrown his to the winds.

  But for me, he kept thinking, the while he walked beside her: but for me she would have ridden straight to him and stayed him from this; but for me she would have gone straightway to Morund and enlisted qhalur aid and learned more at the start than ever young Chei could have taught us.

  And perhaps Chei would be alive, himself, and Gault would be Gault, and their ally.

  "Tell her," Chei hissed at him.

  "She has always understood," he said to Chei and his murderer, "better than I. Better than any of us. She gave you the chance to turn back. It is not too late to take it."

  The gate before them was open. He was not in the least surprised at that. And this one let into the building itself, into a shadowed hall which might hold more than ghosts—but he began to doubt that there need be guards or soldiery, nor any hand but Skarrin's own, which held the gate-force. He kept beside Morgaine as far as that doorway, and suddenly sent Arrhan through ahead of them, expecting no harm.

  The arrhendur mare came to none, only stopped, confused, her feet striking echoes from polished pavement, in a hall supported by columns much lest vast than those of Neisyrrn Neith, but vast for all that, shaped of green stone and black.

  A table was set there, set with pitchers and platters bearing fruit and bread and what else his eye did not trouble to see.

  Skarrin's ghost hung before them, welcomed them, smiled at them with all beneficence and no little amusement.

  "My guests," he said; then, and with less mockery: "My lady Morgaine Anjhuran, my youngest cousin—sit, take your ease. You can trust my table. Surely you know that. And you might indeed leave the horses outside my hall."

  "My lord Skarrin," Morgaine said, "forgive me. I have known so many and so bizarre things in my travels—I have found folk do things for remarkable reasons, some only because they can, some only for sport—I do not know you, my lord. So I keep my horse and my arms—and my servants. My father's friends may, for all I know, be no less mad than some others I have met on the way."

  The drifting image laughed, a soft sound, like the hissing of wind in grass. "And thus you decline my hospitality?"

  "I do not sit at table with shadows, my lord. Our mistrust is mutual—else you would not hesitate to come and meet me face to face—if you can."

  "My lady of outlaws and rebels—should I trust myself to your companions, when they think so ill of me?"

  Morgaine laughed, let fall Siptah's reins, and walked over to the table, to pull out a chair and sit down. She picked up a pitcher and poured a cup of red wine.

  Vanye let Arrhan stand alone too, and went and stood at the side of her chair as she lifted it and sipped it in courtesy to their shadowy host.

  Whereupon Skarrin laughed softly, and drifted amid their table, severed at the waist. "You are trusting."

  "No, my lord of Mante. Only interested. I knew when I heard your name from young Chei—who is host to my lord of Morund—what you might be. I took your gate-wardens' behavior for yours—to our mutual discomfiture. No one saw fit to apprise me of the truth—in which I do fault you, my lord of Mante. So much could have been saved, of affairs in the south, if I had known. Now I leave you a humankind in war and disorder—an inconvenience, at the least, for which I do apologize."

  "There are other lands. The world is wide. I weary of Mante."

  "I took this for the greatest of your cities. Are there others? Truly, this one is a wonder to see."

  "Ah, there are hundreds. Everywhere—there are cities, as unvarying as the worlds. Everywhere is boredom, my lady of light, until you came—traveling, as you say. With a human servant, no less—what is his name?"

  "Nhi Vanye i Chya. Nhi Vanye, if you please."

  "My lord," Vanye said. To say something seemed incumbent on him, when the image turned its cold eyes in his direction and the face seemed to gaze straight at him. He was in danger. He knew beyond a doubt that he was in peril of his life, only for being human, and for standing where he stood, and for more than that: it was the look a man gave a man where a woman was in question—and blood was.

  The glass-gray stare passed from him and turned slowly to the others, and back again to Morgaine.

  "Why have you come?"

  "Why should I not?" Morgaine said. "I take my father's lesson, who found one world and a succession of worlds—far too small for him. That was Anjhurin." She leaned back, posing the chair on its rearmost legs, and stared up at the image. "From all you say, you have arrived at the same place as he—you have wielded power over world and world and world—am I right? And you have found this world much the same as the last."

  "And the one before," Skarrin said. "And before that. You are young."

  "As you see me."

  "Very young," Skarrin said softly, this young man with gray, gentle eyes.

  "You knew Anjhurin," Morgaine said.

  "A very, very long time ago." The image became merely a face, drifting in the shadow, a handsome face, with Morgaine's own look, so like her among qhal it might have been a brother. "A
njhurin dead! Worlds should shake."

  "They have," Morgaine said softly. "And things change, my lord of dust and stability. You do not love your life. Come risk it with me. Come join me."

  "To what purpose?"

  "The changing of worlds, my lord, change that sweeps through space and time."

  "Even this, I have seen. I have ties in many ages, many worlds. I will survive even the next calamity. What new can you offer me?"

  "Have you risked that hope, elder cousin? It is risk makes immortality bearable—to know that personal calamity is possible, oh, very possible, and tranquility, what time it exists, is precious. Anjhurin is dead. Does that not tell you that fatality is possible? Come with me. There are worlds full of chances."

  "Full of cattle. Full of same choices and same tragedies and same small hearts and smaller minds which lead to them. Full of stale poets who think their ideas are a towering novelty in the cosmos. Full of rebels who think they can change worlds for the better and murderers who see no further than the selfish moment. Mostly, full of cattle, content with their mouthful of grass and their little herd and endless procreation of other cattle. And we are finite, calamity endlessly regenerate, disaster in a bubble. One day it will burst of sheer tedium. And the universe will never notice."

  "No," Morgaine said, and reached and took Vanye by the arm, drawing him to the table edge. "I have news to give you, my lord. Qhal reached outside. They stole his ancestors in real-space, and his cousins voyage there, not with the gates, not within them so far as they know—"

  "It will not save them."

  "No. But they are widening the bubble, my lord who sees no change. They are involving all who meet them—and all who meet their allies. Do you see, my lord of shadows? There is chance and change. His kind—humankind—have realized the trap. They have refused it. More, they have set out to prick the bubble themselves."

  There was long silence.

  "It would doom them," Skarrin said.

  "Perhaps. Their threads reach far beyond their own world, but they were not that deeply entangled."