"Better?" Morgaine asked; and Vanye, sitting with his back against a standing stone, leaned his head against that unforgiving surface and nodded with his eyes shut. He did not remember much of the ride that had brought them this far. He knew that he had been upright in the saddle, but so much of it had been that kind of pain which the mind would not believe could last so keenly, so long. All that time seemed compressed; yet he knew it was leagues beyond that place where he had almost fallen. Tejhos-gate was far behind them.
And the cessation of that force left him drained, void, as if he had been gutted.
Beside them the horses caught their breath and began to show a little interest in the grass under their feet, now they had drunk of the little creek and had their legs rubbed down. He had done that much for his horse, while Morgaine saw to the Baien gray. He was a horseman from his birth: he would have done that for the brave mare with his heart's blood, after the course she had run; and Morgaine—whatever she was—had no less care for the gray.
Now she leaned against another such stone facing him—not stones of power, mere markers along the roadside. One knee propped the sword on which she leaned, the sight of which he could hardly bear and the weight of which he remembered in his bones: not balanced like an ordinary blade, the crystal length within that sheath rune-written with the secrets of the gates—for the sake of a successor, she had told him once. She had taught him writing and ciphering more than a lord's bastard needed—for what purpose he knew, and loathed, and thought about no more than he had to.
But he could read those runes. They were burned into his soul like the light into his eyes.
"Water?" she asked him.
He drank from the flask she gave him, struggled with his left hand and his right to hold it without shaking. The pain was still there, but only a dull ache, against the memory of the living blade in his hand. He gave the flask back, drew a breath and looked about him at the rolling hills, the stones, the road pale in the starlight.
"We should have gone over to Tejhos," he murmured.
"Thee could not," she said.
It was bitter truth. He would have left her to hold the place alone, would have fallen—Heaven knew where he would have fallen, or how long the fire would run in his bones if he lay within that influence.
The drawing of the sword was a dice-throw, a power either felt in Mante, if they were wary; or was mistaken for ordinary—O Heaven— ordinaryuse of the gate, in which case Mante would do nothing, until their enemies reached it and passed it and told Mante otherwise—which they would, assuredly.
Therefore they ran. Therefore they paced themselves to last now, with all the speed they could make, while they might make it.
He had a cold lump of fear at his gut. Coward, he had heard from his brothers, and from his father, and most of Morija—You think too much, his brother had told him. He had never been like them. In all too many respects.
If a man thought—if a man let himself think—backward or forward—
"It is not the first friend the sword has taken," she said finally. "Vanye, it was not your fault."
"I know," he said, and saw in his mind the harper-lad of Ra-morij, who had thrown himself between that blade in her hand and his threatened kin—had flung himself there to be a hero, and discovered Hell in the unstoppable swing of Morgaine's hand.
"They rode to your right," she said, "against all our warnings."
The excuses she made for him were doubtless those which armored her, the only and best wisdom she had to give him. He sensed the pain it cost her to expose that. And there was nothing to say against those excuses that she did not, beneath those reasonings, know—
—except the harper had known the report of the sword: who in Morija had not?
But Bron had not known, had not guessed how far its danger extended. They had never told him.
He shut his eyes, clenched them shut, as if it could banish the terrified face that was burned across his vision; or bring back the sun, and end this terrible night where visions were all too easy. The priest, he thought, had cursed him, cursed Bron, cursed Chei.
He did not say that to Morgaine. But he feared it. Heaven had answered that creature, and he did not know why, except Heaven judged them worse—
Harness jingled, the sudden lifting of Siptah's head, the clink of slipped bit and snaffle ring that his ears knew before his eyes lifted. The stallion stood with ears pricked, gazing toward the road.
Morgaine rose instantly and moved to take the horses in hand and lead them inward of the stones for cover from the road.
He rose shakily to his feet and held the reins, soothing them, stroking one nose and the other—"Quiet, quiet," he said to them in the Kurshin tongue, and Siptah strained at his grip and shivered, one long twitch up his foreleg.
"One rider," Morgaine said, venturing a quick look from the edge of the stone.
"One man makes no sense."
"A good many have cause to follow us."
"Past the gate at Tejhos? Alone?"
She drew the black weapon. It was a dead man rode that track, and did not know it. He leaned his shoulders against the stone and looked out past it, as the stone was canted at an angle to the road.
The rider came on a dark horse. Mail glinted about him in the starlight.
Vanye's heart leapt and jolted against his ribs. For a moment he could not breathe. "Chei," he said, and reached for Morgaine's arm. "It is Chei."
"Stay here!"
He turned his head in dismay to look at her, at the weapon still in her hand. "Liyo,for the love of Heaven—"
"We do not know that it is Chei. Stay here. Wait."
He waited, leaning against the rock and breathing in shorter and shorter breaths as the faltering hoofbeats came closer.
"Liyo,"he whispered in horror, seeing her arm lift.
She fired as the rider came past them, a red fire breaking out in the meadow-grass; and the exhausted horse shied and fought for balance as the rider reined up and about, facing them.
Chei slid down, holding to the saddlehorn and clinging to the reins.
"Chei," Vanye said, and left the horses, walking out from between the stones.
"Stop," Morgaine said; and he stopped.
Chei only stood there, as if he were numb.
"Bring your horse in," Morgaine said. "Sit down."
Chei staggered toward them and led the horse as far as the first stone. "Where is my brother?" he asked. "Where did Bron go?"
It was not the question Vanye had expected. It took the breath out of him.
"Bron is dead," Morgaine said.
"Where did he go?"
"Changeling'sgate has no other side."
Chei slid down the face of the stone and leaned against it, his head resting against the rock. Vanye sank down facing him.
"Chei—I could not stop it. I did not know him—Chei?"
Chei neither moved nor lifted his head. There was only silence, long and deep, in which Morgaine at last moved and retrieved her flask from Siptah's saddle.
"Here," she said, offering it.
Chei looked up and took it as if his hands and his mind were far separate. He fumbled after the stopper and drank, and slowly, as if it were a thoroughly unfamiliar task, stopped it again and gave it back.
"I feared," Vanye said desperately, "that it was the both of you. I could not see, Chei."
"Rest," Morgaine said, and came close and stood with Changelingfolded in her arms. "So long as we rest. After that, go back to your own land."