Exile's Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

  Liar!

  And your Gault, boy—your Gault the hero was a traitor the same as Arunden. He would have sold you all for his peace. Have you never known that? He betrayed Ichandren before I did. I took him, yonder, on that hill, because I had no choice. But ah, boy, he was a scoundrel. Scoundrel and fool. What a legacy you give me.

  What a cursed great—

  Light and sound came from the room at the end of the hall, where the lady had gone, a high thin moan which no living throat could make, and a deep roaring like thunder sustained.

  "What is she doing?" Hesiyyn asked hoarsely, leaning against his wall. "Lord human—"

  "I do not know," Vanye said, biting his lip, and looked toward the door which lay open at the end, where red light flashed, and the wailing grew. "Hold our retreat open!"

  He ran. He trusted the men for what they might be worth and raced down the slick stone hall at all the speed he could manage, down the hall and through the gaping doors and into such a place as he had seen more than once in his travels—where light dyed everything the color of blood, and inhuman voices wailed and thundered and shrieked from overhead and all about.

  "Liyo!" he shouted into that overpowering racket. "Liyo!—"

  She turned, red-dyed with the light from silver hair to metal of her black armor, with the light flaring about her and behind her as the boards blinked alarm.

  "He is not dead," she cried. "Vanye, he has stored his essence inside the gate—he is still alive, for the next poor soul that ventures that gate."

  He tried to understand that. He stood there staring at her and thought it through twice and three times.

  "For us, " she shouted. "He has trapped us and I cannot dislodge him!—That is the wrongness we have felt in the gates—he has kept his pattern there continually, kept it bound to him, day and night—He will take the next living man that enters the World-gate! He will go through, he will be free, there is no way we can stop him!" She came to him and caught at his arm, turning him for the door, not running, but walking quickly, by which and by the flashing of the lights at their back and the uncomfortable prickling in the air, he knew that the gate of Mante was set on its own destruction, on some near time which—he hoped to Heaven—she had chosen. "He had a snare set that would have sealed the gate once he was free. I broke that lock easily enough. I set it to a new time, a few hours hence. I dare not leave it longer. There is too much knowledge in this place,—and the chance of someone re-opening it, except I build destruction into its pathways—that, I dare not risk."

  It was old Kurshin she spoke, awkward in the things for which the qhalur language had ready words, which conjured the inner workings of the gates and the things she had showed him, how to redirect the power like damming one stream and opening another, to flood throughout the channels and destroy the means to reactivate it.

  "I have set it to destroy the core-tap," she said in the qhalur tongue, meaning the line of power which ran from the earth's deep heart.

  And everything round about it. Such a thing, she had told him—might cause havoc with a world, involving gate-force and the power in the earth itself. I do not know what happens thereafter, she had said. No one comes through such a gate again—or any of the gates linked with it. It is no good thing for the world. And I would not willingly do it. Time itself closes in on a gate once it is shut. Ordinarily, time itself will destroy one as thoroughly in a few years without touching the core, and there is no need for such a catastrophe. And I do as little as I dare.

  He thought on the city spread about the hill of Neneinn, the countless lives, the city on the brink of a well only gate-force or cataclysm could have shaped; and his gut and his knees went to water.

  It was a death-sentence. That was the wailing, that he had never heard, the threat to life all about this world's gates—Morund and Tejhos and Mante and wherever else gates had their veins of power sunk into this world's heart.

  "How much time do we have?" he asked.

  "Three hours," she said, qhalur-reckoning. He measured it against the daylight and the sun, Kurshin-fashion, and there was ice about his heart. "I dared not give it more time," she said. "This is a qhalur city. And there is the warden down at Seiyyin Neith, if he is still there and not fled with the rest—"

  "One of his guards might solve matters for us," he said, reckoning—O Heaven, what was he become—to think cold-bloodedly where they should get a victim?

  "We cannot know it if they do. Do not speak of it to our comrades. Does thee hear?"

  He saw Chei and Hesiyyn waiting for them at the intersection of the corridors, saw their anxious faces.

  'Does thee hear?'

  "Aye," he said, clutching the remnants of his soul to him; and no likelihood that fate would offer better.

  Like the men who had surrendered; like the forty on the road; like the city spread below them, doomed with the gate, men and women and babes in cradle—

  For the sake of all the worlds, she told him. All the worlds was too large a thing for a man's heart to understand, when it was the one under his feet and the lives around him and the murder and the choices were his.

  Not tell them—not offer even the chance to choose or to fight—

  "Come," she said to Chei and Hesiyyn, gathering them up as they strode along toward the hall where they had left the horses and where Rhanin stood guard. "We are bound for the gate. Hurry. There is not that much time. I have set it to seal behind us and there will be no following after us."

  They did not question. They kept pace with weapons still in their hands, and Chei whistled to Rhanin and called to him as they came into the hall.

  "We are bound for the gate," Chei told Rhanin as the archer lowered his bow and met them there, where he had herded the horses into a corner of the hall. "Quickly. Come, man. The lady is keeping her promises."

  But from Rhanin there was no such eagerness. "My lord Chei," he said. "My lady—I have a wife—"

  O Heaven, Vanye thought.

  "—I beg your leave," Rhanin said. "Let me go bring her."

  Chei looked to Morgaine.

  "No," Morgaine said. "There is no time. That gate will seal, and there will be no more passages; and if we do not get there in time, there will be none for us."

  "How long?" Chei asked.

  "An hour," Morgaine said. "Perhaps. Skarrin has done damage I cannot correct. We have no time, man, and your lord has need of you and I do—where we go is no place for a hallbred woman. A hard trail and a long one in sun and storm and lightning; and war, man, that I can promise you. Come with your lord, and hurry about it."

  "I cannot." There was torment in Rhanin's brown eyes. "Lord Chei—I cannot leave her."

  He turned and went to the horses. Morgaine lifted the black weapon in threat. "Stop!" she cried; and: "My lady!" Chei exclaimed.

  Rhanin stopped, but he did not turn. After a few heartbeats he started walking again.

  Morgaine let fall her hand. She stood in silence as Rhanin mounted up. "Fare well," she said quietly then. "Fare well, Rhanin."

  Rhanin cut the tether of the remount he led, gave it to Hesiyyn, and saluted his lord and the rest of them, before he swung up to the saddle and rode, black shadow against the light, for the stable-court and the city below.

  "Mount up!" Morgaine bade them.

  Vanye swallowed against the knot in his throat and went first for Siptah's reins, to bring the gray horse to his liege while the others sought their own. He held her stirrup for her. He did not look in her eyes. She did not, for all he knew, try to meet his.

  She said no word at all, nor quarreled with him that he did her these courtesies.

  He must, he thought. He had no words to tell her he was with her.

  He felt the shorn hair about face and neck, and it seemed apt, of a sudden, the felon's mark, the mark of an honorless man, penance for Mante, for Rhanin and his wife, for lies and for murder yet to do.

  Honest men, Morgaine had said, must fight us. Brave men must.

  "We
have to find the way out in this warren," Morgaine said shortly. "And hope the stable court leads to some road up the hill—"

  "No need to search for it," Chei said, drawing his horse alongside in the hall. "There is a way from the stable court. Gault's memory is clear enough on that. I came up from the city—but Gault was here. Follow me."

  It was leftward Chei led, beyond the fountain. The blaze-faced bay lipped up some meager spillage of grain on the dirt by the stables nearby: "I will get him," Vanye said, distractedly—to leave the poor brave beast to Mante's fate seemed impossible to him, was, at least, one death he could prevent. He rode wide of the group, leaned from his saddle and snagged the reins that had fallen as the animal lowered his head. It did not want to come. It jolted his arm, then surrendered, of habit, perhaps, and followed.

  He overtook the others before they had gotten to the stable-gate, never having taken his eyes off them, and Morgaine acknowledged the rescue with a worried frown, a flicker of the eyes which understood him entirely, as Chei got down from his horse and pushed at the latch. "Let it free outside," she said. "It will balk at the gate. We cannot afford difficulties."

  It was true. He knew that it was. He held onto the reins as the stable-gate swung wide on a long colonnade, and Chei mounted up again. He drew the horse along with them as they rode that long course to a second gate, the latch of which was high enough for Chei to trip from horseback; and that gate opened out on a road and a barren hill, where standing stones made an aisle leading upward.

  "At least the saddle," he said, then, outside; and slid down while the whole company waited, and hastily loosed the bay's girth and tumbled the saddle off; unbuckled the bridle and threw it away, and sent the confused horse off with a hard slap on the rump. He did the same for the horse Hesiyyn led, then, and sent it off after its fellow.

  He came close to tears, then. He turned and flung himself to the saddle, and swallowed down that impulse.

  Fool, he told himself, to weep for a pair of horses, when there is so much else we do. It belongs to this world, that is all.

  And there may indeed be trouble—at the Gate.

  O God, are we right? If only I knew that we were right.

  He kept close at Morgaine's side as they struck out up the road which wound about the rocky hill, Chei and Hesiyyn close on his left.

  "A great many horses," Hesiyyn said, of the trampled ground ahead of them, of the sparse brush about them, that was broken and trodden down.

  "Everyone in Neneinn," Chei said.

  But not, Vanye thought, heart-heavy, not enough for all of Mante. There is no escape for them.

  He thought that if he turned, high as they climbed now, he could truly see a wondrous sight, a vantage over all Mante, over Neisyrrn Neith and Seiyyin Neith and perhaps the plains and the hills beyond, to all the distance a clear day would afford them.

  But the sight of him would haunt him. I do not look back, Morgaine was wont to say; and he clung to that wisdom now: once through the world on a single track, a single purpose, without touching more lives than they must.

  Too much knowledge here: he understood that. It had been unconscionable hazard to have left his own cousin near a faded gate, except there were warders to prevent him coming near it until it was dead beyond recall.

  Here—there were no warders they could trust: a corrupt gate-warden and a twisted gate, and all too many who would rush to enliven the gate and seize power for themselves—not Skarrin's measure, it was sure, but equally deadly, in the affairs of worlds and stars and suns which Morgaine understood, and which he did not.

  Now he wept over two doomed horses, and longed with all his heart for enemies.

  But none presented themselves, and the storm-sense grew in the air, making the hair prickle. Arrhan sidestepped and worked at the bit, so ready to run she hardly seemed to walk on the earth; and the rest of the horses rolled their eyes and threw their heads, snorting their dislike of the place.

  Skarrin's presence—a man warded from assassination and accidents because he had stored—whatever of him mattered, in such fashion that the ordinary traffic of the gates would deliver him a host virtually instantly, were it ever needed: different than qhalur knowledge, Morgaine had said.

  Different—root and branch.

  My father's legacy, Morgaine had said.

  And called Skarrin kinsman—whatever Skarrin's true name was.

  Or hers.

  The great Gate came slowly from the unfolding of the hill, the screening of the standing stones—a towering arch of stone, within which the blue sky shimmered like fever-vision. Hesiyyn's horse fought the bit wild-eyed, and the red roan Chei rode threw his head and fretted in distress; but Siptah went with his ears laid flat and pricked up by turns, trying to get rein to go, knowing where he was bound, what he must do, and all too anxious to make that jump, till Morgaine reined him down and patted his shoulder.

  Closer and closer then, at a careful pace. There were no enemies at hand. They were alone at the height, on this Road which led to a place where the very air had sound and substance; and smaller sounds, those of hoof and harness, lost themselves.

  "You can see the city," Hesiyyn said, looking over his shoulder.

  "Goodbye to it," Chei said and seemed lost already in the Gate's spell.

  They had reached the last of the road. After this it was the barren, rocky slope leading to the Gate itself, tracked and scarred with hundreds of feet, with the hooves of horses, the wheels of wagons; and here Morgaine drew rein.

  "Go through," she bade Chei and Hesiyyn with a wave of her arm. "I have yet something to see to from this side. I will overtake you, have no fear of it."

  Chei drew up on his reins and used his heels, for the red roan fought to turn away, and Hesiyyn circled his horse to distract it from full flight.

  "Rhanin," Chei said.

  "The gate will give no warning when it seals. There is no time! If he comes, he comes. We cannot wait for him. Go through!"

  Chei reined hard over and about again, holding the roan as it fought to get the bit. There was a frown on his face. He looked at Vanye then, full at him, and Vanye held his breath as Chei turned the horse yet again.

  And back again, hard-reining it. This time as he came about, it was a wary look, a more and more misgiving look.

  "Like the horses, is it? Send us through—first?"

  "That you go at all is my lady's gift!" Vanye shouted at him. Gate-force oppressed the air, like impending storm. Hair crackled and metal stung when the hand brushed it, as he felt after his sword-hilt. "Go through!"

  Chei's hand went to his own hilt; and in the same instant he cast a sudden and wide-eyed look toward Morgaine, toward a threat far more substantial than steel.

  "My lord," Hesiyyn said anxiously, fighting his horse steady. "My lord, likely it is safe. The lady has—"

  "—set the gate herself," Chei said; and looked her direction; and Vanye's, slowly, with a hard hand on the reins. "Is that it? Is it a trap, eh?"

  "She set no trap," Vanye said.

  "No?" There was long silence. "Then it is his you suspect. Is it not? Is it not?"

  Vanye said nothing at all. He could think of nothing to say.

  "Oh, my friend," Chei said quietly. "What are you prepared to do? Threaten us with death—to make us risk that?"

  "Death is not a risk here," Morgaine said. "It is a certainty. There, in the gate, is the only doubt. Take it."

  "Or you will kill us. What good are we then?" Again Chei turned the horse about, and drew it in with a hard hand. "How will you know? How will you ever know that it is safe?"

  "The risk is to one," Morgaine said. "That is the truth. And it will not be myself; and it will not be Vanye. I promise you that." She lifted her hand. "This need not kill."

  Chei stared at her, very long. Then he looked, slowly, toward Vanye.

  "Forgive her," Vanye said. "She has no choice."

  "Not forgive you?"

  "She has no choice. I have. And for her
sake—I cannot take it. I cannot even offer you fair fight."

  "It is not any grudge. Is it?"

  "No, my lord. Not in this. Skarrin is waiting—within the gate. We could not dislodge him. That is the truth. That is the trap. One of us—will host our enemy."

  Chei laughed—laughed, shortly and silently; and laughed a second time, reining the red horse about yet again. "He would. He would, the bastard. That was what he meant."

  "That was what he meant."

  A third laugh, shortest of all. "The boy urges me there is a logic in this. He has had his revenge. He confuses me. He urges me—we are best suited to this fight. It is his revenge on me. Or mine on him. Damn you to hell, boy! Damn you and all your choices!—Hesiyyn." He took up on the reins, turning aside. "Hesiyyn!"

  "No, my lord!" Hesiyyn cried, and rode his horse across Chei's path.

  "I will race you for it," Chei said, and cracked the rein ends down on the roan and drove with his heels. The red horse went, as Hesiyyn fought the bay about and into a run. "Let him choose!"

  The gate took them. One—and the other. Hesiyyn did not slow at all.

  Vanye shut his eyes, and rested so, a long, long moment, till he heard Morgaine ride up beside him, until living warmth brushed against him. He looked then, at the vacant gate that loomed above them, with blue sky shimmering again where dark had showed for an instant.

  "It is safe now," she said, and reached and rested her hand on his arm.

  "It was Chei and Qhiverin," he said then. He was trembling, as if the gate-cold had gotten to his bones. "Skarrin—is their enemy. And Hesiyyn's. But Chei is overmatched. Both of them—are overmatched."

  "Skarrin has had only one body," Morgaine said.

  He looked toward her then.

  "Chei was right," Morgaine said, "altogether right. They are peculiarly apt for that fight. And Skarrin is their enemy." Her fingers tightened. "We have given them such as we could. It is all the charity we have. Nhi Vanye—"

  There were tears in her voice finally. He was glad of that. Her burden was absolute, and older; and that she still could weep—gave him hope for himself, in such a time, after so many journeys.