C. Cherryh - Gate of Ivrel

“We will go back to Alis Kaje,” Paren said. And he looked at her as if he thought long about the matter of the weapons. Then he bade Vanye give her his cloak, arid watched carefully while she wrapped all her gear within the cloak and laid it across her saddlebow. “Form up,” he bade his men then, and though they were surrounded by riders, he put no restraint on them.

They rode knee to knee, he and Morgaine, with men all about them; and before they had ridden far, Morgaine made to pass the cloak-wrapped arms to him. He feared to take it, knowing how the Nhi would see it; and it was instant: weapons crowded them. A man of clan San, more reckless than the others, took them from him, and Vanye looked at Morgaine in distress, knowing how she would bear that.

But she was bowed over, looking hardly able to stay in the saddle. Her hand was pressed to her leg. Threads of blood leaked through her pale fingers.

“Bargain us a refuge,” she said to him, “however you can, ilin . There is neither hearth-right nor bloodfeud I have with clan Nhi. And have them stop when it is safe. I have need to tend this.”

He looked on her pale, tense face, and knew that she was frightened. He measured her strength against the jolting ride they would have up the road into Alis Kaje, and left her, forced his way through other riders to reach Nhi Paren.

“No,” said Paren, when he had pleaded with him. It was firm. It was unshakable. He could not blame the man, in the lands where they were. “We will stop at Alis Kaje.”

He rode back to her. Somehow she did keep the saddle, white-lipped and miserable. The sleet-edged wind made her flinch at times; the horse’s motion in the long climb and descent wrung now and then a sound from her: but she held, waiting even as they found their place to halt, until he had dismounted and reached up to help her down.

He made a place for her, and begged her medicines of the one who had her belongings. Then he looked round at the grim band of men, and at Paren, who had the decency to bid them back a distance.

He treated the wound, which was deep, as best he could manage with her medicines: his soul abhorred even to touch them, but he reasoned that her substance, whatever it was, would respond best to her own methods. She tried to tell him things: he could make little sense of them. He made a bandage of linen from the kit, and at least had slowed the bleeding, making her as comfortable as he could.

When he arose, Nhi Paren came to him, looked down at her and walked back among his men, bidding them prepare to ride.

“Nhi Paren.” Vanye cursed and went after him, stood among them in the dark with men on all sides already mounting. “Nhi Paren, can you not delay at least until the morning? Is there such need to hurry now, with the mountains between us?”

“You are trouble yourselves, Nhi Vanye,” said Paren. “You and this woman. There is Hjemur under arms. No. There will be no stopping. We are going through to Ra-morij.”

“Send a messenger. There is no need to kill her in your haste.”

“We are going through, said Paren.

Vanye swore blackly, choked with anger. There was no cruelty in Nhi Paren, only Nhi obdurate stubbornness. He changed his own saddleroll to the front of his saddle, lashing it to pad it. Anger still seethed in him.

He turned to lead the horse back to Morgaine. “Bid a man help me up with her then,” he said to Paren through his teeth. “And be sure that I will recite the whole of it to Nhi Rijan. There is justice in him, at least; his honor will make him sorry for this senseless stubbornness of yours, Nhi Paren.”

“Your father is dead,” said Paren.

He stopped, aware of the horse pushing at his back, the reins in his hand. His hands moved without his mind, stopping the animal. All these things he knew, before he had to take account of Paren, before he had to believe the man.

“Who is the Nhi?” he asked.

“It is your brother,” said Paren. “Erij. We have standing orders, should you ever set foot within Morija, to take you at once to Ra-morij. And that is what we must do. It is not,” Paren said in a softer tone, “ to my taste, Nhi Vanye, but that is what we will do.”

He understood then, numb as he was. He bowed slightly, acknowledged reality; which gesture Nhi Paren received like a gentleman, and looked embarrassed and distressed, and bade men help him take Morgaine up so that he could carry her.

Morij-keep, Ra-morij, was alleged to be impregnable. It sat high upon a hillside, tiered into it, with all of a mountain at its back and its walls and gates made double before it. It had never fallen in war. It had been sometimes the possession of Yla and lately of Nhi, but that had been by marriages and by family intrigue and lastly by the ill-luck of Irien, but never by siege against the fortress itself. Rich herds of horses and of cattle grazed the lands before it; in the valley its villages nestled in relative security, for there were no wolves nor raiders, nor Koris-beasts troubling the land as they did on the outside. The keep frowned over the fair land like some great stern grandfather over a favored daughter, his head bearing a crown of crenelated walls and jagged towers.

He loved it still. Tears could still swell in his throat at the sight of this place that had been so much of misery to him. For an instant he thought of his boyhood, of spring, and of fat, whitemaned Mai, the first Mai—and both his brothers racing with him on one of those days when there was such warmth in the air that not even they could find hate for each other, when blooms were on the orchards and the whole of the great valley lay studded with pink and white clouds of trees.

Before him now there was the light of a dying winter sun upon the walls, and the clatter of armed riders about him, and Morgaine’s weight in his arms. She slept now, and his arms were numb and his back a column of fire. She knew little of the ride, exceedingly weak, though the bleeding had ceased and the wound already showed signs of healing. He thought that she might have fought against the weakness, but she did not know that things were amiss, and the men of Nhi were kindly with her. They did whatever it was possible to do for her, short of touching her or her medicines; and their fear of her seemed to have much abated.

She was very fair, and young-seeming, and capable of innocence when her gray eyes were closed. Even with women of quality men of low-clan made coarse jokes, well-meant; with women of the countryside even high-clan men were far more direct. There was none of that where Morgaine was involved—because she had lord-right, perhaps, and because there attended her an ilin who must defend her, and that, weaponless as he was, there was no honor in that; but most probably it was because she was reputed to be qujal , and men did not make light with anything qujal .

Only sometimes Nhi Paren would ask how she fared, and some of the others would ask the same, and wonder that she slept so.

And of one, Nhi Ryn, son of Paren, there were looks of awe. He was very young; his head was full of poets and of legends, and he had a skill with the harp that was beyond what most high-clan men learned. That which resided in his eyes was purely astonishment at first, and then worship, which boded ill for the welfare of his soul.

Nhi Paren had seemed to see it developing, and had sharply ordered the youth to the rear guard, far back along the line.

Now there was an end of such care of them: the horses’ hooves rang upon paving as they approached the gates. Nhi Rej had built the channeling and the paving fifty years ago, restoring the work of Yla En—no luxury, for otherwise the whole of the hill would begin to wash down with the spring rains.

The Red Gate admitted them, and red it was, bravely fluttering with the Nhi standards with their black writing. There was no sound but the snap of the flags in the wind and the clatter of hooves on stone as they entered the courtyard. One servant ran out and bowed to Nhi Paren. Orders and information passed back and forth.