Gate of Ivrel

“I am not qujal,” she said.

That assertion, he reflected, might have filled him with either doubt or relief some days ago, at their meeting; now it fitted uncomfortably well with the thing he had begun to suspect of her.

“Whatever you are,” he said, “spare me the knowing of it.”

She nodded, accepting his attitude without apparent offense. She slipped the knife within her belt and rose.

A green-feathered arrow hit the ground between her feet

She reached to her back, hand to weapon, quick as the arrow itself. And as quick, Vanye seized her and pushed her, heedless of hurting: Chya warning, that arrow. If she fired, they would both be green-feathered in an instant.

“Do not,” he appealed to her, and turned, both arms wide, toward their unseen observers. “Hai, Chya! Chya! Will you put kin-slaying on your souls? We are clan-welcome with you, cousins.”

Brush rustled. He watched the fair, tall men of his own mother’s kindred slip out of the shadows, where surely a few more kept arrows trained upon their hearts; and he set himself deliberately between them and Morgaine’s own arrogance, which was like a Myya’s for persistence, and likely to be the death of her.

They did not even ask names of them, but stood there waiting for them to speak and identify themselves. Looking at the living person of one who had been minutely described in ballads a century ago, wondering perhaps if they were not mad—he could estimate what passed in their minds. They only stared at Morgaine, and she at them, furiously, in her hand a weapon that could deal death faster than their arrows.

They would kill her of course, if she could die; but she would have done considerable damage: and her ilin who was her shield would be quite dead. He had heard of a certain Myya who strayed the border and was found with three Chya arrows lodged in his heart, all touching. Clan Chya lived in a hard land. They were impressed by few threats. It was typical of them that they had not yielded and begged shelter from the encroaching beasts, as had other folk; or died, as had two others. They used Hjemur’s vile beasts for game, and harried the border of Hjemur and kept Thiye contained out of sheer Chya effrontery.

Vanye placed hands on thighs and made a respectful bow, which Morgaine did not: she did not move, and it was possible that the Chya did not know that they were in danger.

“I am Nhi Vanye i Chya,” he said, “Ilin to this lady, who is clan-welcome with Chya.”

The leader, a smallish man with the simple braid of a second– uyo, cousin-kin to the main clan, grounded his longbow and set both hands upon it, eyes upon him. “Nhi Vanye, cousin to Chya Roh. You are i Chya, that is true, but I thought it was understood that you are not clan-welcome here.”

“She is,” he said, which was the proper answer: an ilin was not held to his own law when he served his liyo: he could trespass, as safe or as threatened as she was. “She is Morgaine kri Chya, who has a clan-welcome that was never withdrawn.”

They were frightened. They had the look of men watching a dream and trying not to become enmeshed in it. But they looked from her to the gray horse Siptah and back again, and swords stayed sheathed and bows lowered.

“We will take you to Ra-koris,” said the little man. “I am Taomen, tan-uyo.”

Then Morgaine gave him a bow of courtesy, and Vanye kept his silence hereafter, as befitted a servant whose liyo had finally deigned to take matters into her own hands.

The Chya were not happy at the meeting, it was clear. Clan-welcome had not been formally withdrawn because surely it had seemed a pointless vengeance on the dead. And the young lord of Chya, Chya Roh, his own cousin, whom he had never seen, still pursued bloodfeud with him for the sake of his mother’s dishonor at the hands of Rijan. Rob would as soon put an arrow through him as would Myya Gervaine, he was sure, and probably with greater accuracy.

There was a vast clearing in the Koriswood, that the noon sun blessed with a pleasant glow; the whole of it was full of sprawling huts of brush and logs. Chya, the only clan without a hall of stone. Once there had been the old Ra-koris, a splendid hall, home of the High Kings; its ruin lay some distance from this, and it was alleged to be haunted by angry ghosts of its proud defenders, that had held last and hardest against the advance of Hjemur. The grandsons and great-grandsons of the warriors of Morgaine’s age kept only this wooden hall, their possessions few and their treasures gone, only their bows and their skill and the gain of their hunting between them and starvation. Yet none of them looked sickly, and the women and children watching them as they rode in were straight and tall, though plain: there was beauty in this people, much different from the blighted look of clan Leth.