Gate of Ivrel

Her mood had passed by the morning. She smiled, lightly enough, talked with him over breakfast about old friends—hers: of the King, Tiffwy, how his son had been, the lady who was his wife. It was that kind of thing one might hear from old people, talk of folk long dead, not shared with the young; the worse thing was that she seemed to know it, and her gray eyes grew wistful, and searched his, seeking understanding, some small appreciation of the only things she knew how to say with him.

“Tiffwy,” he said, “must have been a great man. I would like to have known him.”

“Immortality,” she said, “would be unbearable except among immortals.” And she smiled, but he saw through it.

She was silent thereafter, and seemed downcast, even while they rode. She thought much. He still did not know how to enter those moods. She was locked within herself.

It was as if he had snapped whatever thin cord bound them by that word: I would like to have known him. She had detected the pity. She would not have it of him.

By evening they could see the hills, as the forest gave way to scattered meadows. In the west rose the great mass of Alis Kaje, its peaks white with snow: Alis Kaje, the barrier behind which lay Morija. Vanye looked at it as a stranger to this side of the mountain wall, and found all the view unfamiliar to him, save great Mount Proeth, but it was a view of home.

And thereafter the land opened more to the north and they stood still upon a hillside looking out upon the great northern range.

Ivrel.

The mountain was not so tall as Proeth, but it was fair to the eye and perfect, a tapering cone equal to left and to right. Beyond it rose other mountains, the Kath Vrej and Kath Svejur, fading away into distance, the ramparts of frosty Hjemur. But Ivrel was unique among all mountains. The little snow there was atop it capped merely the summit: most of its slopes were dark, or green with forests.

And at its base, unseen in the distance that made Ivrel itself seemed to drift at the edge of the sky, lay Irien.

Morgaine touched heels to Siptah, startled the horse into motion, and they rode on, downslope and up again, and she spoke never a word. She gave no sign of stopping even while stars brightened in the sky and the moon came up.

Ivrel loomed nearer. Its white cone shone in the moonlight like a vision.

“Lady.” Vanye leaned from his saddle at last, caught the reins of the gray. “ Liyo, forbear. Irien is no place to ride at night. Let us stop.”

She yielded then. It surprised him. She chose a place and dismounted, and took her gear from Siptah. Then she sank down and wrapped herself in her cloak, caring for nothing else. Vanye hurried about trying to make a comfortable camp for her. These things he was anxious to do: her dejection weighed upon his own soul, and he could not be comfortable with her.

It was of no avail. She warmed herself at the fire, and stared into the embers, without appetite for the meal he cooked for her, but she picked at it dutifully, and finished it.

He looked up at the mountain that hung over them, and felt its menace himself. This was cursed ground. There was no sane man of Andur-Kursh would camp where they had camped, so near to Irien and to Ivrel.

“Vanye,” she said suddenly, “do you fear this place?”

“I do not like it,” he answered. “Yes, I fear it.”

“I laid on you at Claiming to ruin Hjemur if I cannot. Have you any knowledge where Hjemur’s hold lies?”

He lifted a hand, vaguely toward the notch at Ivrel’s base. “There, through that pass.”

“There is a road there, that would lead you there. There is no other, at least there was not.”

“Do you plan,” he asked, “that I shall have to do this thing?”

“No,” she said. “But that may well be.”

Thereafter she gathered up her cloak and settled herself for the first watch, and Vanye sought his own rest

It seemed only a moment until she leaned over him, touching his shoulder, quietly bidding him take his turn: he had been tired, and had slept soundly. The stars had turned about in their nightly course.

“There have been small prowlers,” she said, “some of unpleasant aspect, but no real harm. I have let the fire die, of purpose.”

He indicated his understanding, and saw with relief that she sought her furs again like one who was glad to sleep. He put himself by the dying fire, knees drawn up and arms propped on his sheathed sword, dreaming into the embers and listening to the peaceful sounds of the horses, whose sense made them better sentinels than men.

And eventually, lulled by the steady snap of the cooling embers, the whisper of wind through the trees at their side, and the slow moving of the horses, he began to struggle against his own urge to sleep.

She screamed.