Gate of Ivrel

Running footsteps pelted up to the door. He expected his opening, swung up to the pony’s bare back with the halter rope for a rein, and as the door was flung open, he rammed his keels into the pony’s flanks and the frightened animal bolted out into the yard—an honest horse and unused to such treatment. It ran for the road, scrambled up the side of the ditch, and he wrapped his legs about its fat ribs and clung, unshakable. He wrenched its head over in the direction he wanted it to go, and when he reached the crossroads over by San-hei, he turned there, heading for Baien-ei by a slightly longer road, but a lonelier one.

There was a rider on the road ahead, sed-uyo, Vanye thought, uyo of the lesser clans, but uyo, and armored: he rode like a warrior. There was no hope that the little beast he rode could match a proper horse. There was no avoiding the meeting. Vanye rode along at leisure, legs dangling, like any herder-boy returning at evening. Only upon the heights the warning-fires still gleamed, and the roads were watched; and he for his part could not look to be a herdsman, for boots and breeches were of weathered leather such as was proper to an uyo, not a countryman, he carried a great sword, and his shirt of white lawn marked him for a man untimely rushed from some great hall, high-clan: sai-uyo, Nhi.

This man, he thought unhappily, he might have to kill. He reached to the belt, unhooked the sheath, and gripped the sheath of Changeling in one hand and the hilt in the other, and the sai-uyo on his fine dappled charger came closer.

And perhaps he already recognized what quarry he had started, for he moved his leg and lifted his blade from its place on his saddle, and rode also with his sheathed blade in hand.

It was one of Torin Athan’s sons: he did not know the man, but the look of the sons of Athan was almost that of a clan apart: long-faced, almost mournful men, with a dour attitude at variance with most of the flamboyant men of Torin. Athan was also a prolific family: there were a score of sons, nearly all legitimate.

“ Uyo,” Vanye hailed him, “I have no wish to draw on you: I am Nhi Vanye, outlawed, but I have no quarrel with you.”

The man—he was surely one of the breed of Athan—relaxed somewhat. He let Vanye ride nearer, though he himself had stopped. He looked at him curiously, wondering, no doubt, what sort of madman he faced, so dressed, and upon such a homely pony. Even fleeing, a man might do better than this.

“Nhi Vanye,” he said, “we had thought you were down in Erd.”

“I am bound now for Baien. I borrowed this horse last night, and it is spent.”

“If you look to borrow another, uyo, look to your head. You are not armored, and I have no wish to commit murder. You are Rijan’s son, and killing you even outlawed as you are would not be a lucky thing for the likes of a sed-uyo.”

Vanye bowed slightly in acknowledgment of that reasoning, then lifted up the sword he carried. “And this, uyo, is a blade I do not want to draw. It is a named-blade, and cursed, and I carry it for someone else, in whose service I am ilin and immune to other law. Ask in Ra-morij and they will tell you what thing you narrowly escaped.”

And he drew Changeling part of the way from its sheath, so that the blade remained transparent, save only the symbols on it. The man’s eyes grew wide and his face pale, and his hands stayed still upon his own blade.

“To whom are you ilin,” he asked, “that you bear a thing like that? It is qujalin work.”

“Ask in Ra-morij,” he said again. “But under ilin–law I have passage, since my liyo is in Morija, and you may not lawfully execute Rijan’s decree on me. I beg you, get down. Strip your horse of gear and I will exchange with you: I am a desperate man, but no thief, and I will not ride your beast to the death if I have any choice about it. This pony is of San. If yours knows the way home, I will set him loose again as soon as I can find a chance.”

The man considered the prospects of battle and then wisely capitulated, slid down and busily stripped off saddle and belongings.

“This horse is of Torin,” he said, “and if loosed anywhere in this district can find his way; but I beg you, I am fond of him.”

Vanye bowed, then gripped the dapple’s mane in his hands and vaulted up, turned the animal and headed off at a gallop, for there was a bow among the sed-uyo’s gear, which he reckoned would be shortly strung, and he had no wish for a red-feathered Torin arrow in his back.

And from place to place across the face of Morija, his pursuers would have found ready replacements for their mounts, fine horses, with saddles and all their equipment.

The night was falling again, coming on apace, and the signal fires glowed brighter upon the hilltops, one blaze upon each of the greater hills, from edge to edge of Morija.