C. Cherryh - Gate of Ivrel

“Are we prisoners,” he asked, “or are we guests?”

“I am a guest in name, at least,” she said, “but this is not a happy place for guesting.”

There was a knock at the door. Someone tried it. When it did not yield, the visitor padded off down the hall.

“Do you have any wish to linger here?” he asked.

“I feel,” she said, “rather like a mouse passing a cat: probably there is no harm and the beast looks well-fed and lazy; but it would be a mistake to scurry.”

“If the cat is truly hungry,” he said, “we delude ourselves.”

She nodded.

This time there was a deliberate knock at the door.

Vanye scrambled for his longsword, hooked it to his belt, convenient to the left hand. Morgaine moved the chair and opened the door.

It was Flis again. The girl smiled uncertainly and bowed. Vanye saw her in clearer light this time, without the haze of fever. She was not as young as he had thought. It was paint that blushed her cheek and her dress was not country and innocence: it was blowsy. She simpered and smiled past Morgaine at Vanye.

“You are wanted,” she said.

“Where?” asked Morgaine.

Flis did not want to look up into Morgaine’s eyes: addressed, she had no choice. She did so and visibly cringed: her head only reached Morgaine’s shoulders, and her halo of frizzled brown seemed dull next to Morgaine’s black and silver. “To hall, lady.” She cast a second wishing look back at Vanye, back again. “Only you, lady. They did not ask the man.”

“He is ilin to me,” she said. “What is the occasion?”

“To meet my lord,” said Flis. “It is all right,” she insisted. “I can take care for him.”

“Never mind,” said Morgaine. “He will do very well without, Flis. That will be all.”

Flis blinked: she did not seem particularly intelligent. Then she backed off and bowed and went away, beginning to run.

Morgaine turned about and looked at Vanye. “My apologies,” she said dryly. “Are you fit to go down to hall?”

He bowed assent, thoroughly embarrassed by Morgaine, and wondering whether he should be outraged. He did not want Flis. Protesting it was graceless too. He ignored her gibe and avowed that he was fit. He was not steady on his feet. He thought that it would pass.

She nodded to him and led the way out of the room.

Everything outside was much the same as she had described to him. The hall was in general disrepair, like some long abandoned fortress suddenly occupied and not yet quite liveable. There was a mustiness about the air, a queasy feeling of dirt, and effluvium of last night’s feasting, of grease and age and untended cracks, and earth and damp.

“Let us simply walk for the door,” Vanye suggested when they reached that lower floor and he knew that the lefthand way led to the outside, and their horses, and a wild, quick ride out of this place of madmen. “Liyo , let us not stay here. Let us take nothing from this place, let us go, now, quickly.”

“Thee is not fit for a chase,” she said. “Or I would, gladly. Be still. Do not offend our hosts.”

They walked unescorted down the long corridors, where sometimes were servants that looked like beggars that sometimes appeared at hold gates, asking their free days of lawful charity. It was shame to a lord to keep folk of his hall in such a state. And the hold of Leth was huge. Its stones were older than Morgaine’s ride to Irien, older by far in all its parts, and in its day it had been a grand hall, most fabled in its beauty. If she had seen it then, it was sadly otherwise now, with the tapestries in greasy rags and bare stone showing through the tattered and dirty carpets on the floors. There were corridors which they did not take, great open halls that breathed with damp and decay, closed doors that looked to have remained undisturbed for years. Rats scurried sullenly out of their path, seeking the large cracks in the masonry, staring out at them with small glittering eyes.

“How much of this place have you seen?” he asked of her.

“Enough,” she said, “to know that there is much amiss here. Nhi Vanye, whatever bloodfeuds you have with Leth, you are ilin to me. Remember it.”

“I have none with Leth,” he said. “Sensible men avoid them altogether. Madness is like yeast in this whole loaf. It breeds and rises. Guard what you say, liyo , even if you are offended.”

And of a sudden he saw the lean face of the boy leering out at them from a cross-corridor, the sister beside him, rat-eyed and smiling. Vanye blinked. They were not there. He could not be sure whether he had seen them or not.

The door to the main hall gaped ahead of them. He hastened to overtake Morgaine. There were any number of bizarre personages about, a clutch of men that looked more fit to surround some hillside campfire as bandits—they lounged at the rear of the hall; and a few high-clan uyin that he took for Leth, who lounged about the high tables in the hall. These latter were also lean and hungry and out-at-the-elbows, their trousers gaudy, but frayed at hems: to do justice to their charity and hospitality to Morgaine, they were indeed less elegant than what they had lent to her.

And there was a man that could only have been Leth Kasedre, who sat in the chair of honor at center, youngish to look upon—he could surely have been no more than thirty, and yet his babyish face was sallow, beneath a fringe of dark hair that wanted trimming; no warrior’s braid for this one, and much else that went to make up a man seemed likely wanting too. His hair hung in twining ringlets. His eyes were hunted, darting from this to that; his mouth was like that of a sick man, loose, moist at the edges. He exuded heat and chill at once, like fever.

And his clothing was splendor itself, cloth-of-gold, his narrow chest adorned with brooches and clasps and chains of gold. A jeweled Honor blade was at his belt, and a jeweled longsword, which added decoration useless and pathetic. The air about him was thick with the reek of perfumes that masked decay. As they came near him there was no doubt. It was a sickroom smell

Kasedre arose, extended a thin hand to offer place to Morgaine, who tucked up her feet and settled on the low bench courtiers had vacated for her, a place of honor; she wore Changeling high at her back and released the hook mat secured the shoulderstrap at her waist, letting strap and blade slide to her hip for comfort, sitting. She bowed gracefully; Kasedre returned the courtesy.

Vanye must perforce kneel at the Leth’s feet and touch brow to floor, respect which the Leth hardly deigned to acknowledge, intent as he was on Morgaine. Vanye crept aside to his place behind her. It was bitter: he was a warrior—had been, at least; he had been proud, though bastard, and certainly Nhi Rijan’s bastard ranked higher than this most notorious of hedge-lords. But he had seen ilinin at Ra-morij forced to such humiliation, refused Claiming, forgotten, ignored, no one reckoning what the man might have been before he became ilin and nameless. It was not worth protest now: the Leth was supremely dangerous.

“I am intrigued to have the likes of you among us,” said Leth Kasedre. “Are you truly that Morgaine of Irien?”

“I never claimed to be,” said Morgaine.

The Leth blinked, leaned back a little, licked the corners of his mouth in perplexity. “But you are, truly,” he said. “There was never the like of you in this world.”

Morgaine’s lips suddenly acquired a smile as feral as Kasedre’s could be. “I am Morgaine,” she said. “You are right.”

Kasedre let his breath go in a long sigh. He performed another obeisance that had to be answered, rare honor for a guest in hall. “How are you among us? Do you come back to ride to other wars?”