Gate of Ivrel

“It is true that Morija is faring well now,” Vanye said. “But you, yourself, you cannot handle the things that Morgaine does; and she will not yield them. Seek her for an ally if you will. That is the best thing you can do for yourself and Morija.”

“Like the ten thousand at Irien that she and her allies helped?”

“She did not kill them. That much is a lie.”

“But that is what came of her help, all the same. And I would not lay Morija and Nhi open to the same kind of thing. I would not trust her. But this– this–I would trust, that she values powerfully.” Excitedly he rose from his place and from the cabinet near the table he drew out a cloth-wrapped bundle. When he took it in his hand the cloth fell away at the top and Vanye saw to his dismay the dragon-hilt of Changeling. “This is what holds her encamped at Baien-ei, her desire for this. And I would wager, brother, that you know something of it.”

“I know that she bids me keep my hands from it,” said Vanye. “Which you had better heed, Erij. She says there is danger in it and that it is a cursed blade, and I believe it.”

“I know that she values this above your life,” said Erij, “and more than all else she possessed. That was plain.” He jerked it back as Vanye tentatively extended his hand toward it. “No, brother. But I will hear your explanation what value it bears to her. And if you are my brother, you will tell me this willingly.”

“I will tell you honestly that I do not know,” he said, “and that if you are wise you will let me return this thing to her before it does harm. Of all things she possesses, this is one she herself fears.”

A second time he reached for it, beginning to be frightened for what Erij purposed with the blade: for it was a thing of power; he knew it by the way Morgaine treated it, who never let it leave her. Of a sudden Erij raised his voice in a shout. The door crashed back: the four Myya were with them.

And Erij shook the sheath from the blade one-handed, and held it naked in his hand. The blade went from translucent ice to a shimmer of opalescent fire, and all the air sang in their ears, a horrid shimmer of air at its tip that of a sudden Vanye knew.

“ No!” he cried, flung himself aside. The air roared into a darkness and a wind that sucked at them, and the Myya were gone, whipped away into some vast expanse that had opened between them and the door.

Erij flung the blade away, sent it slithering sideways across the floor, ripping ruin after it, and of a sudden Vanye caught the sheath and scrambled for the abandoned blade, caught it up in his hand as other men poured through the door. The same starry dark caught them up, and his arm went numb.

He knew then the sensation that had prompted Erij to drop the blade, gut-deep loathing for such power, and suddenly he heard his brother’s voice shout and felt a hand claw at his arm.

He ran, wiser than to turn and destroy... free down the hall and free upon the stairs downward once the uyin there saw the unworldly shimmer of the witchblade in his hand.

He knew his way. There was the outer door. He heaved back the bolt and ran for the stable court, feverishly cursed the weeping stableboy into saddling a good horse for him; and all the while from Ra-morij there was a silence. He kept himself clear from the arrow-slits of the windows, knowing that for his greatest peril, and bade the boy creep down in the shadows and open the gate for him.

Then he sprang to horse, keeping reins and sheath in one hand, holding the shimmering blade in the other, and rode. Arrows hissed about him. One plunged within the well of darkness at Changeling’s tip and was lost Another scraped his horse’s rump and stung the beast to a near stumble. But he was through. Frightened warders unbarred the gates under the menace of that blade and he was free of the outer gate, clattering down the height of the paved road and onto the soft earth of the slopes.

There was no rush to follow him. He imagined Erij cursing his men to order, trying to find some who would dare it—and that Erij himself would follow he did not doubt. He knew his brother too well to think that he would cease what he had decided to do.

And Erij would well know what road he would ride. If he were not Morij-bred, he would have no chance to evade them, to ride the shorter trails and the quick ones, but he had as fine a knowledge of the web of unmarked roads in the country as did Erij.

If was a matter of reaching Baien-ei and Morgaine, if it were possible, before the Myya and their arrows.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PURSUIT WAS behind him again. When he looked back against some patch of unmelted snow in the starlight, he could see a dark knot atop a hill or along the road; but the laboring bay kept the same distance between them.