But it was a bowl Rhanin brought, offering it to her. Rhanin came no closer, and Morgaine got quickly to her feet, Changelingin one hand, the black weapon in the other, and stopped, staring not at Rhanin, but toward him.
He stared back at her, weak as he was, and got up on his arm, feeling the shock of cold air as the blanket fell.
For a long moment she said nothing. Then: "How does thee fare this morning?"
"Much better," he said. "Much better, liyo."
"I had not meant to fall so far asleep—"
He drew a breath, such as yesterday would have cost him pain. It amazed him it did not, overmuch. Only it would be very easy, just now, to weep, and he moved, suddenly, and shoved himself up with a sudden straightening of his arm so that a twinge took his mind off it. He was dizzythen. The whole world swung round.
She came to him and swept Changeling,sheathed and crosswise, in curt dismissal of the others, who drew back a few paces. Then she knelt and spared a glance for him.
"I think the porridge is safe," he murmured, "but I would not eat it."
"Has thee?"
"Aye," he said. "It is truly wretched."
She slid the black weapon into place at her belt, touched him with that hand, brushed the hair off his unshaven cheek. She looked tired, tired and mortally worried. "We will ride at night," she said.
"Liyo,we cannot wait!"
"Now how are we arguing? I take your advice and you will none of it. We are safe here for the moment. The horses are resting. We can make up the time."
"We cannot make up two days. I can ride." He sat upright and tucked his leg up; and she put her hand onto his knee.
"Thee will lie down, thee will rest, that is what. Thee will not undo everything." She touched his ribs, where Hesiyyn had wound a tight bandage. "Broken, does thee think?"
"No. Sore." He drew a breath, testing it as he had tested it again and again: if he kept his back straight it was much better. "I will manage."
"Vanye." Her hand sought his wrist and closed on it, hard. "Do not give up. Hear me? I will tell thee a thing may comfort thee—"
She hesitated, then. That reticence did not seem to herald anything that should comfort him; and ice settled into his stomach. "What?" he asked. "What would you tell me, liyo?"
"Thee knows—how substance goes into a gate—It . . . disarranges itself . . and some similar arrangement comes together at the other side—"
"You have told me." He did not like to talk of such things. He did not like to think of them oftener than he must—especially now, facing a gate which was not behaving as it should. He wished she would go straight to the point.
"Thee will find—thy hurts—will not trouble thee the other side. Thee will not carry the scars of this beyond it. Thee will mend."
She could lie with such simplicity. Or with webs of truth. Except that it was something kept from him, that he would not like. In such things she would not meet his eyes. It was that simple.
"What are you saying?" he asked.
"I chose a time," she said. "I made a pattern, for thee as for me ... a rested pattern, a whole pattern, a pattern without flaw. Within its limits—and it has them—it will always restore it. Every gate, on every world—will recognize thee, and always restore it—restore thee,as thee was, so far as it has substance to work with. There will be no scars. Nothing to remind thee."
It made no sense for a moment. He put his hand to his ribs, wondering could it mend more than the surface.
Or what other things they had done to him.
"There will always be the weakness in the knee," she said. "That happened before the pattern was made. Would I had done it before that. But there was never the leisure it needed."
"Shathan," he said. "Azeroth-gate."
"Aye. There. The gates will abhor any deviation from that moment. They will restore that moment, so far as they can, always. The thoughts go on. The memories. But the body—will not change."
"Will not change?Ever?" A sense of panic took him. He thought that he should be grateful. He thought that it was a kind of gift.
But it was Gate-given. And every Gate-magic was flawed—
"I shall grow older—"
"Never. Not in body."
"O my God," he murmured. For a moment the dizziness was back. Mortality was, reminding him with a sharp pain in his side and a twinge in the hip.
He had always had an image of himself, older, grown to his mature strength—had begun to see it, in breadth of shoulder, strength of arm. A man looked forward to such a thing.
It would never happen. His life was stopped. He thought of the dragon, frozen in snow, in mid-reach.
"My God, my God." He crossed himself, gone cold, inside and out.
"Injuries will never take their toll of thee. Age—will have no power over thee. Thee will grow wiser. But thee will always mend in a gate-passage, always shed the days and years."
"Why such as Chei, then? Why Gault? Why Thiye, in Heaven's name?"He wanted to weep. He found himself lost again, lost at this end of his journey as at the beginning. "If it can be done like this, why did they choose to kill—?"
"Because," she said, "they are qhal. And I know things they do not. Call it my father's legacy. And if they should know, Vanye, thatsecret, they would find others, that I will give no one, that are not written on the sword—that I will not permitanyone to know and live—" Again her hand brushed his cheek. "Forgive me. I had meant to tell thee—some better time. But best thee know, now—Forgive me. I need thee too much. And the road would grow too lonely."
He took her hand, numb in shock. He pressed it. It was all he could think to do for answer.
"Rest," she said. And rose and walked away from him, stopping for a moment to look at Chei and the rest—at Rhanin, who still had the bowl in his hands, beside the others. "I will make my own breakfast," she said; but to Chei she said nothing. She only looked at him, and then walked on. Changelingstill in her left hand.
Vanye sat numb and incapable, for the moment, of moving. He trembled, and did not know whether it was outrage or grief, or why, except he had always thought she would betray him in one way, and she had found one he had never anticipated.
You might have ordered me,he raged at her in his mind. If you were going to do such a thing,liyo, God in Heaven, could you not have bidden me, could you not have laid it on my honor, given me at least the chance to go into it of my own will?
But he could not say these things. He could not quarrel with her, in front of strangers. Or now, that he was fighting for his composure.
It was his protection she had intended. It was for every good reason. It promised—O Heaven!—
He could not imagine what it promised.
It was, in any case, only the thought of a thought of himself she had stolen. And if she had thought him too foolish to choose for himself, that was so, sometimes. She was often right.
He reached beside him, in the folds of his mail shirt, and felt after a small, paper packet. He found it, and unfolded it, and saw the very tiny beads that lay on the red paper—eight of them.
He folded it up again, dragged his belt over and tucked the packet into the slit-pocket where he kept small flat things, where, lately, had been a small razor-edged blade. But Chei's men had taken that. He did not, given the circumstances of his losing it, look to have it back again.