C. Cherryh - Exiles Gate

"Anj—"

Morgaine spelled it. "Be precise. Be very precise, my lord. Do you understand? Your safety and his are in question."

"I—have no direct contact with the high lord. I can gain it. It will take time. I beg you—step down, rest your horses, let us offer you food and drink—"

"We will wait here."

"A drink, at least—"

"We have our own supplies, my lord. We trust your hospitality includes haste."

"My lady." The Warden looked profoundly offended, and worried. "It will be some little time. I beg you understand. Stand down and rest. Take it or no, my people will offer you what hospitality we have. Your leave, my lady."

He inclined his head and walked away into the shadows.

They were alone then, and not alone, in this chill place where the smallest move echoed, and the stamp of an iron-shod hoof rang like doom.

"We have disquieted him," Morgaine said quietly, in her most obscure Kurshin accents. "That may be good or ill. Vanye—give me the stone."

He gave it. His heart hammered against his ribs.

"Come," she said, and sent Siptah suddenly forward, down the vacant aisle, toward the sealed doors.

There were running footsteps beyond the columns behind him, a quick spurt that died away in the direction the Warden had gone.

Someone had sped to advise him.

And Morgaine veered off into shadow, the other side of a vast column three quarters of the way down the long aisle, drew in and wheeled Siptah about as Vanye arrived, as Chei and Hesiyyn and Rhanin clattered in close behind him.

"What are you doing?" Chei asked, a young voice, which rose incongruously in pitch.

Light flared, white and terrible as she opened the case of the gate-jewel. It touched columns, faces, the wild eyes of the shying horses—and damped as suddenly as she closed her hand about it, veiling it in flesh, awful as it was.

"Give it to me!" Vanye exclaimed, knowing the feel of it, imagining the pain of handling it this close to Mante. But she held it fast, letting a little of its flickering light escape to strike the stone pillar beside them.

"Watch the surrounds!" she ordered. "Chei—what is our host saying?"

There was no word for a moment, in which Vanye loosed his bow from his shoulder, set its heel in his stirrup and strung it in the strength fear lent.

"He is reporting our presence—our breach of his orders—" Chei said.

"To whom?"

"To whoever is watching—I do not know—I do not know who that would be.—He reports himself in danger. He is going to open the doors. He hopes we will leave—"

"—into their reach," Morgaine said. There was pain in her voice. "Has he sent what I bade him?"

"No—or we have not seen it—"

"Take it. Do it."

"Send what? Who are you, that he should know you—curse you, woman, have you lied to me?"

"Believe everything you heard me tell the Warden— Send the cursed message, man, send it exactly as I gave it and keep sending till we have answer, or take your chances with the lord Warden's archers! Or with that thing outside! Make your choice!"

Chei reached. For a second the stone flared bright between them, blinding, light glistening on Morgaine's pale face, on his, which grimaced as he took it, and the red roan and the gray horse shied apart, both fighting the rein.

Engines began to clank and chain to rattle at the other entrance.

A seam of daylight lanced through the hall, blinding bright. The horses sidestepped and fretted, more and more panicked, doubtful between the gate-force in the air, and the racket and that view of escape.

"It is more powerful than his," Chei said between his teeth. He used the shuttering of the lid to send, less sure in his use of it than the dimmer, rapid flickers of the Warden's sending, which came through as weak pulses in his intervals. "We are drowning his sending—Rhanin! are the warders moving?"

"No, my lord," the bowman said.

"If the gate at Mante should open," Hesiyyn said, "my lord, and you are holding that thing—"

"Send and wait for an answer," Morgaine bade Chei harshly. "Again and again—the same message. Watch around us! They have only to get one gate-jewel positioned—"

"My lady!" a voice called down the aisles. "My lady, cease! You are free to go!"

"Ignore it," Morgaine said under her breath. "I take it that the lord Warden is lying."

"He is lying," Chei said, reading the silence of the stone in the intervals. "He has never reached— Ah!"

Opal shimmer flared, rapid pulses. Chei cupped his hand about it, and the muscles of his face tensed with pain. "Skarrin," he said hoarsely. "Skarrin himself—has just discovered treachery—has bidden silence. He—knows your presence. And your name. He—tells the Warden—let us pass—not to—oppose us.—He asks who wields this st-stone, my lady."

"Answer him. Tell him it is ours. And we have come to talk with him."

It needed a moment. Chei's face stood out in taut-jawed relief in the flashes, that came brighter from the stone, brighter than the glare from the open door.

Then: "He will hear us," Chei said, hoarsely. And shut the case, letting his arm fall. "He forbids—more use of the stone."

Morgaine was silent a moment. It was an affront she was paid, by Skarrin's order. She reined close and recovered the pyx.

"He bids us," Chei said, "come to Mante."

"On his mercy," Vanye murmured. "Among the stones out there."

"It is Shein's enemies," Chei said in a ragged voice. "My enemies—in court—who killed all my Society. They have made a fatal mistake, thinking this was my doing—that you were my prisoners. They thought to kill us three—that is what they are about; and gain credit for it—like the lord Warden. Only he had to ask his masters what to do. And now his own head will be on the block. They will disavow him, or try to. They will not attack us. Not now."

"They could only lose by it," Hesiyyn said. "Either the Overlord will destroy us out there—or you have favor with him. in either case, lady, we are in Skarrin s hand, for good or ill."

"We came," Morgaine said, "knowing there was no other way in."

She turned Siptah's head toward the light, and rode in the shadow toward the doors.

Vanye put his heels to Arrhan, and sent her forward, jolting hard at the horse at lead. Cut it free, he thought, laying a hand on his Honor-blade, and then thought again—seeing the expanse before them, and the ride there was yet to make as they passed the second set of doors: distant cliffs in a glare of sun—distant and with the threat of the standing stones to dominate all this plain of patchy grass and sere dust, this well of stone open to the sky; and heat that hit like a hammer-blow after the coolth of the building.

For a moment Vanye felt the giddiness—for a moment Arrhan ran uncertainly, waiting direction, until he took the reins in and swung alongside Morgaine. Chei and the others overtook them on the left. He bore over again, to have it clear to them how close they dared come to Morgaine's side.

"Let be," Morgaine said, "let be—If Skarrin will kill us he will do so." She looked behind her, turning in the saddle. "No one is following us, that is sure. If he is in control of the gate—"

"He is always in control of the gate," Chei said in a faint voice. "There are men in Mante counting the hours of their lives now, and others hastening to desert them. That is the way one lives in Mante. That is the law in Mante."

Chei's face was pale. In Hesiyyn was no vestige of humor.

Rhanin said: "We have kin who have managed to survive in Mante. And whether they will survive this day, we do not know."

Morgaine made them no answer. Possibly she did not even hear them. She set Siptah to an even, ground-devouring run, which the most of their horses were taxed to maintain. She gazed ahead of them, where their course lay—no road to follow, except the aisle of standing stones that paced widely separated toward the cliffs—marker-stones only, carriers of the gate-force, not the deadly ones, not the ones which, at his whim, the lord of Mante might use against them.