Gate of Ivrel

“The woods are full of beasts of his making,” Vanye said. “Some are shy and harm no one. Others are terrible things, beyond belief. They say the Koris-wolves were made, that they were never so fierce and never man-killers before—” He had almost said, before Irien, but did not, in respect of her. “That is why we must not sleep here, lady. They are made things, and hard to kill.”

“They are not made,” she said, “but brought through. But you are right that this is no good place to rest. These beasts—some will die, like infants thrust prematurely into too chill or too warm a place: some will be harmless; but some will thrive and breed. Ivrel must be sweeping a wide field. Ah, Vanye, Thiye is an ignorant man. He is loosing things—he knows not what. Either that or he enjoys the wasteland he is creating.”

“Where do they come from, such things as that?”

“From places where such things are natural. From other tonights, and other Gates, and places where that was fair and proper. And there will be no native beasts to survive this onslaught if it is not checked. It is not man that such an attack wars on—it is nature. The whole of Andur-Kursh will find such things straying into its meadows. Come. Come.”

But he had lost his inclination to sleep, and kept the reins in his own hand. He closed his eyes as Morgaine set them on their way again, still saw the pale lizard form, large as a man, running across the open space. That was one of the witless nonsensities in Koriswood, more ugly than dangerous.

Report told of worse. Sometimes, legend said, carcasses were found near Irien, things impossible, abortions of Thiye’s art, some almost formless and baneful to the touch, and others of forms so fantastical that none would imagine what aspect the living beast had had.

His only comfort in this place was that Morgaine herself was horrified; she had that much at least of human senses in her. Then he remembered her coming to him, out of the place she called between, Washed up, she said, on this shore.

He began to have dim suspicion what she was, although he could not say it in words: that Morgaine and the pale horror had reached Andur-Kursh in the same way, only she had come by no accident, had come with purpose.

Aimed at Gates, at Thiye’s power.

Aimed at dislocating all that lay on this shore, as these unnatural things had come. Standing where the Hjemur-lord stood, she would be no less perilous. She shared nothing with Andur-Kursh, not even birth, if his fears were true, and owed them nothing. This he served.

And Liell had said she lied. One of the twain lied: that was certain. He wondered in an agony of mind how it should be if he learned of a certainty that it was Morgaine.

Something else fluttered in the dark—honest owl, or something sinister; it passed close overhead. He tautened his grip upon his nerves and patted the nervous black’s neck.

It was long until the morning, until in a clear place upon the trail they dared stop and let sleep take them by turns. Morgaine’s was the first sleep, and he paced to keep himself awake, or chose an uncomfortable place to sit, when he must sit, and at last fell to meddling with the black horse’s gear, that the horse still bore, for in such place they dared not unsaddle, only loosened the girths. It shamed him, to have stolen a second time; and he felt the keeping of more than he needed of the theft was not honorable, but all the same it was not sense to cast things away. He searched the saddlebags and kit to learn what he had possessed and, it was in the back of his thoughts, to learn something of the man Liell.

He found an object which answered the question, such that set his stomach over.

It was a medal, gold, set in the hilt of a saddle knife, the sort many a man bore beneath the skirt of his saddle; and on it was a symbol of the blockish, ugly look he had seen graven on the Stones. It was qujalin. Whenever any strange and long-ago things were found, folk called them qujalin and avoided them, or burned them, or cast them into deeps and tried to lose them. Most such were likely only forgotten oddities, Kurshin and harmless. Somehow he did not think this was such as that

He showed it to Morgaine when she wakened to take her turn at watch.

“It is an irrhn,” she said to him. “A luck-piece. It has no other significance.” But she turned it over and over in her hands, examining it.

“It is no luck,” said Vanye, “to a human man.”

“There is qujalin blood mixed in Leth,” she said, “and Liell is its tutor. Tutors have ruled there nigh a hundred years. Each of the heirs of Leth has produced a son and drowned within the year. If Kasedre is capable of siring a son, he will most probably join his ancestors, and Liell will still be tutor to the son. I wonder,” she added irrelevantly, looking at the blade, “who sired Hshi and Tlin.”

“And on what,” Vanye muttered sourly. “Keep the blade, liyo. I do not want to carry it, and perhaps it may bring luck to you.”