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It would go through several color-changes, he thought, and then thought that it might not, for one reason or the other; and put all of that to the back of his mind with a swing and flourish and extension that worked the ribs as far as he thought safe for the moment. Vanity, he chided himself, taking pleasure in Hesiyyn's respectful look, and was careful to stand very still for a moment after, before he called it enough and walked back to the shade and sat down.

He went through the arrows Rhanin had collected then, and took his harness-knife—the loss of the little razor vexed him—and sighted down the shafts and saw to the fletchings, in both quivers finding only three shafts to fault and mark with a cautioning stain on their gray feathers, and one fletching that wanted repair.

Then he gathered himself up again and went and saw to the horses, running his hands over their legs, looking for strain, looking over their feet, seeing whether there was any shoe needing resetting. The bending and lifting was hard. And Morgaine was watching him: he felt her stare on his back, and gentled the gray stud with particular care, lulling him with all his skill to keep him from his rougher tricks—"So, so, lad, you have no wish to make me a liar, do you?"

The fine head turned, dark-eyed and thinking; the white-tipped tail lashed and switched with considerable force and he stamped once, thunderously. But: "Hai, hai, hai," Vanye chided him, and he surrendered the ticklish hind foot, with which, he thanked Heaven, there was no problem, nor with the others.

He did all these things. He wanted, looking to certain eventualities, to do them particularly well, and the way he always did.

"Sleep," he bade Morgaine, pausing to wash on his way back to the shade. "Sleep a while."

She looked at him with a worry she did not trouble to hide. He could bear very little of that.

"We have not that far to go," she said, "—Chei swears."

"Perhaps he has even learned to reckon distances."

Her eyes flickered, a grim amusement that went even to a grin and a fond look. "Aye. Perhaps. I do not think I will sleep. Go take what rest you can." She drew the chain of the pyx from over her head. "Here. Best you keep it now."

He closed his fist about it. It was not something he wanted to wear openly.

She sketched rapidly in the dirt at her feet. "This is where we are. Chei says. This is Mante. This is where we will ride. This hill, then skirting the plain and up again. There is a pass. A gatehouse, but not a Gate."

"We are that close."

"Under Skarrin's very eye, if there were a mistake with stone or sword. We will start at sundown. A single night to the pass, if we go direct." She let go her breath. "We will ask at his gate."

"Ask!"

"We will not come like enemies. It will be Chei's affair. He says he can pass us through. We will have the greatest difficulty beyond that. So Chei says." She sketched a pocket behind the line that represented the cliffs. "Neisyrrn Neith. Death's Gate. A well of stone, very wide. There are gate-stones within it—here, and here, and here."

He sank down on his heels and onto his knees. His breath grew short.

"Chei swears," Morgaine said, "there is—no other way in. In all their wars, in all their internal wars—no enemy can come at them, except by the highlands. And that, they rule utterly. Those lords are loyal."

"God save us." He drew breath after breath. "Liyo, —turn back. Turn back, give this more time. We can find a way—"

"Those lords are loyal, Vanye. And the south cannot stand against them. I have thought of it. I have thought of pulling back to Morund and trying to take the south—but it could not hold. This whole southern region is a sink, Mante's midden-heap—it is where they send their exiles. It is where they breed their human replacements." She went on drawing. "Herot, Sethys, Stiyesse, Itheithe, Nenais—I forget the other names. Here, here, here—this is a vast land. And I do not doubt this Skarrin set the World-gate purposely on Morund. Perpetually on Morund, in the case any intruder, any rebel, any rival—should attempt him. Here, below these cliffs, this rift in the world—lie Men; and his exiles. Here above, across all this continent—lie the qhalur lands. There is irony in this. We knew our young guide was abysmally incapable of reckoning a day's ride—"

"Or lied to us."

"—had never traveled much in all his life, except the hills, except forest trails and winding roads. Straight distances bewildered him. He lived his life in so small a place. And he did not know anything beyond it. The distance between Morund and Herot, is less than he thought. Sethys and Stiyesse abut against marsh he did not know existed. These are little places. These are holds humans once had. Qhal have moved in, those exiled, those out of favor—like Qhiverin, who became Gault. The south has no resource against the north, not if the north realized its danger. And by now, since Tejhos—Skarrin does, though Chei does swear—for what it is worth—that he did not tell Skarrin our purpose here. That is the only grace we may have, if we can believe it."

He leaned his hands on his knees and bowed his head a moment. "We should have gone to Morund, the way you wanted to. We would have learned this. We could have dealt with whatever we found there—whatever we found there. This is my fault, liyo, it is all my—"

"It was my decision. It was my judgment. Do not be so cursed free with blame. It is still my decision, and all of this may be wrong. Chei has the notion we can come close before they will take alarm."

"With our horses—"

"Or his. That roan of his is no unremarkable beast, in itself. No, they will surely know us: they will have gotten the description from their watchers afield. It is a question of keeping them uncertain what we intend." She looked at the ground in front of her and seemed lost for a moment. "Chei says if they have thrown no great number of men into the field since yesterday, they are taking a cautious path. He talked at some length of his own difficulties with his Overlord—he was high-born, was a member of a martial order that lost its influence at court: disastrously for him, though more so for others. Connections saved his life and sent him to Morund, to redeem himself, if ever he could—The arrangement by which human lords were permitted to rule in the south was collapsing, on evidence of human Gault's complicity with the rebels in Mante—that was how they lured the original Gault into their trap: and sentenced him and Qhiverin to one conjoined existence—on that point Qhiverin's friends intervened virtually to kidnap Gault from his jailers and coerce the gate-wardens to join them, to forestall enemies who would have preferred not to have Qhiverin at Morund."

"Where he served their interests well enough—" "So he has done. So he fully intended to come home, someday. Except—as thee says, possibly we could have persuaded him to go against his lord from the beginning. He says so. Certainly he is quick enough to commit treason. I do not know. At least—he has had some little credit with Skarrin for setting affairs in the south in order, if, as he says, they do not take that for too much success, and if his connections in Mante have not lost all influence. That we have arrived in the south without a force about us—that they have lost contact with him, whom they do not trust, under uncertain circumstances, after he has faithfully sent them a report from Tejhos and seemed, there, under the witness of the wardens there, to be fighting us—all of this, he thinks, might create some debate among Skarrin's advisers. The question is whether we should attempt stealth—or bewilder them further. Recall that there is one way in, that we must pass within that, that thing they call Seiyyin Neith, the Gate of Exiles, and within this league-wide pit of stone, that they call Death's-gate—they can kill us with a thought. As you did say: a man who thinks he is winning—will not flee."