He gave a flick of the reins and sent his horse thundering on ahead to join his men.

Chapter Seventeen

Another space of riding. This time it had measure, that vision of the towering cliffs which rose steadily before them. Vanye looked up at the doors, whose valves were iron, whose surface held twelve bronze panels each, of figures far more than life-size, the actions of which he could not at first understand, until he saw the detail. They were scenes of execution, and torment.

"Can such things open?" he wondered aloud, and his voice was less steady than he wished. He expected some sally-port: he looked for it among the panels, and saw no joint.

"Oh, indeed," Chei said, "when Mante wishes to diminish its vassals—and its exiles. They do open."

"Mante has a taste for excess," Morgaine said.

"They want a man to remember," Hesiyyn said, "the difficulty of return."

Vanye looked at Rhanin, who rode alone ahead of them, weary man riding one exhausted horse, leading another, dwarfed by the scenes of brutal cruelty looming over them.

He felt something move in him then, toward all of these his enemies, a pang that went to the heart.

He saw not Seiyyin Neith, of a sudden, but a steep road down from gray stone walls, and on it, beneath those walls which had seemed so high and dreadful, a grief-stricken boy in a white-scarfed helm, with exile in front of him.

This at least they had in common. And they were brave men who did not flinch now, in the face of this thing.

Thisbarrier, Mante reared in the name of justice. This was the face it turned to its damned and its servants. This was what the power of the world held as honorable dealings with its own subjects—men hanged, and gutted and burned alive, and what other things, higher up the doors, he had no wish to see.

He drew a copper-edged breath and leaned on the saddle, a shift of weight that sent a wearying, monotonous pain through his sides and his gut, a cursed, always-present misery. He was not certain there was life left in his legs. He had found a few positions that hurt less, and kept shifting between them. But the approach to this place meant different necessities, meant—Heaven knew what. If they must fight here, he could do that, he thought, as long as they stayed mounted.

"How is thee faring?" Morgaine asked him.

"I will manage," he said.

She looked at him, long, as they rode. "On thy oath, Nhi Vanye."

That shook him. He was much too close to judgment to trifle with damnation. It was unfairly she dealt with him—but she had no conscience in such matters, he had long known it.

"Vanye, does thee leave me to guess?"

"I will stay ahorse," he said, half the truth. "I can defend myself." But he could imagine her relying on him in some rush to cover, or doing something foolish to rescue him if he should fall. He sweated, feeling a coldness in the pit of his stomach. He had not used the qhalur medicines. He abhorred such things. More, he did not think they could deal with a numbness that had his right leg all but useless, prickling like needles all up the inside. "It is walking I am not sure of. But my head is clear."

She said nothing then. She was thinking, he decided—thinking through things he did not know, thinking what to do, how far to believe him, and what of her plans she must now change—all these things, because he had been a fool and brought them to this pass, and now began to be a burden on her.

I shall not be,he would have protested. But he already was. And knew it.

He let Arrhan fall a little back then—the horses fretted and snorted, having the scent of strangeness in the wind, the prospect of a fight—always, always, the prospect of war wherever they came to habitations of any kind. The qhal cared little what he did. And Morgaine had her eyes set on the thing in front of them.

He slipped the red paper from its place and carefully, with fingers which trembled, managed to get one of the tiny pellets beneath a fingernail, and then, losing his resolve and his trust of the gift, dislodged it and let it roll back into the paper. He folded it up again, and put it back.

Fool, he thought again. Coward.

But he knew that hewould take care for her. He was not sure what the stuff in the red paper cared for. And there was too much and too delicate hazard to deal with, which needed clear wits and good judgment.

He gained leverage as he could, took his weight mostly on his arms, hands on the saddlebow, and let the pain run as it would, while he made the right leg move, and bend, and the feeling come back in tingling misery. Sweat fell from his face and spattered his hands, white-knuckled on the horn.

He watched Chei ride up to the very doors, draw the red roan alongside that door-rim and pound with a frail human fist against that towering mass of metal, which hardly resounded to his blows.

"I am Chei ep Kantory," he shouted, in a voice that seemed far too small. "I am Chei lord of Morund, Warden of the South! I have brought visitors to the Overlord! Open the doors!"

They will not,Vanye thought then. It seemed too improbable that anyone inside could even hear them. He looked up dizzily toward the masonry that supported the great doors, expecting there, if they had any answer, the small black figures of archers, and arrows to come down on them like sleet. Forewarning was all the grace he sought of this place— time,for Morgaine to draw the sword, with all the risk thatwas, this close to the gate.

But metal boomed and clanked and hinges groaned with a sound that hurt the ears and shied the horses: Arrhan came up on her hind legs and down again, braced in an instant's confusion. He caught his balance, steadied her, colliding with the panicked bay at lead, at Siptah's left.

The iron doors groaned and squealed outward, opening on a shadowed hall of scale to match them, pillars greater in girth than all but the greatest trees of Shathan.

He slipped the ring that held his sword at his back, and let it fall ready to his side.

"Not yet," Morgaine said, as Chei and his companions started forward and rode into that hall. She began to ride after, calmly, slowly as the men in front of them.

He touched Arrhan with his heels and curbed the mare's nervousness with a pat on her sweating neck. His hand was shaking.

Reason enough,he thought, as he passed between the doors that towered either side of him, greater than Ra-Morij's very walls. He could not see what images were on the inside: he dared not take his eyes from where they were going, into an aisle of vast pillars wanly lit with shafts of sunlight from above.

There was a second set of doors before them, far down that forest of stone.

They were closed.

Did we expect more?he asked himself, and breathed the air of the shadow that fell on them, a dank chill the worse after the noon warmth outside. He heard the clank that heralded the sealing of the doors behind them, and steadied Arrhan, who shied and danced under him. The blaze-faced bay jerked and jolted at lead, fighting it. Shod hooves clattered and echoed on pavings, under the machine-noise of iron and chain and ratchets.

And the ribbon of daylight which lay wide about them, narrowed and vanished with the meeting and sealing of the doors at their backs.

The horses settled, slowly, in a profound silence.

Footsteps sounded within the forest of pillars. A qhal in black armor, his silver hair loose around his shoulders, walked out into their path, into a shaft of light.

It was not the only footfall in the place. But the pillars hid what else moved about them.