"No, my lord," the bowman said.
"If the gate at Mante should open," Hesiyyn said, "my lord, and you are holding that thing—"
"Send and wait for an answer," Morgaine bade Chei harshly. "Again and again—the same message. Watch around us! They have only to get one gate-jewel positioned—"
"My lady!" a voice called down the aisles. "My lady, cease! You are free to go!"
"Ignore it," Morgaine said under her breath. "I take it that the lord Warden is lying."
"He is lying," Chei said, reading the silence of the stone in the intervals. "He has never reached— Ah!"
Opal shimmer flared, rapid pulses. Chei cupped his hand about it, and the muscles of his face tensed with pain. "Skarrin," he said hoarsely. "Skarrin himself—has just discovered treachery—has bidden silence. He—knows your presence. And your name. He—tells the Warden—let us pass—not to—oppose us.—He asks who wields this st-stone, my lady."
"Answer him. Tell him it is ours. And we have come to talk with him."
It needed a moment. Chei's face stood out in taut-jawed relief in the flashes, that came brighter from the stone, brighter than the glare from the open door.
Then: "He will hear us," Chei said, hoarsely. And shut the case, letting his arm fall. "He forbids—more use of the stone."
Morgaine was silent a moment. It was an affront she was paid, by Skarrin's order. She reined close and recovered the pyx.
"He bids us," Chei said, "come to Mante."
"On his mercy," Vanye murmured. "Among the stones out there."
"It is Shein's enemies," Chei said in a ragged voice. "Myenemies—in court—who killed all my Society. They have made a fatal mistake, thinking this was my doing—that you were my prisoners. They thought to kill us three—that is what they are about; and gain credit for it—like the lord Warden. Only he had to ask his masters what to do. And now his own head will be on the block. They will disavow him, or try to. They will not attack us. Not now."
"They could only lose by it," Hesiyyn said. "Either the Overlord will destroy us out there—or you have favor with him. in either case, lady, we are in Skarrin shand, for good or ill."
"We came," Morgaine said, "knowing there was no other way in."
She turned Siptah's head toward the light, and rode in the shadow toward the doors.
Vanye put his heels to Arrhan, and sent her forward, jolting hard at the horse at lead. Cut it free, he thought, laying a hand on his Honor-blade, and then thought again—seeing the expanse before them, and the ride there was yet to make as they passed the second set of doors: distant cliffs in a glare of sun—distant and with the threat of the standing stones to dominate all this plain of patchy grass and sere dust, this well of stone open to the sky; and heat that hit like a hammer-blow after the coolth of the building.
For a moment Vanye felt the giddiness—for a moment Arrhan ran uncertainly, waiting direction, until he took the reins in and swung alongside Morgaine. Chei and the others overtook them on the left. He bore over again, to have it clear to them how close they dared come to Morgaine's side.
"Let be," Morgaine said, "let be—If Skarrin will kill us he will do so." She looked behind her, turning in the saddle. "No one is following us, that is sure. If he is in control of the gate—"
"He is always in control of the gate," Chei said in a faint voice. "There are men in Mante counting the hours of their lives now, and others hastening to desert them. That is the way one lives in Mante. That is the lawin Mante."
Chei's face was pale. In Hesiyyn was no vestige of humor.
Rhanin said: "We have kin who have managed to survive in Mante. And whether they will survive this day, we do not know."
Morgaine made them no answer. Possibly she did not even hear them. She set Siptah to an even, ground-devouring run, which the most of their horses were taxed to maintain. She gazed ahead of them, where their course lay—no road to follow, except the aisle of standing stones that paced widely separated toward the cliffs—marker-stones only, carriers of the gate-force, not the deadly ones, not the ones which, at his whim, the lord of Mante might use against them.
Those stones stood—Vanye could see one in the distance—far taller, and over against the cliffs that formed this well of stone.
The way of exiles. Death-gate. Mante's enemies who breached Seiyyin Neith found themselves here, in a plain utterly dominated by those three stones.
So Mante's exiles rode to their dismissal from Seiyyin Neith, during all the crossing of the plain knowing that that ride was on sufferance, that they lived or died as Mante and Skarrin pleased.
Like crossing the very palm of God, he thought; and went cold at the blasphemy, while the sun heated the armor and the sweat ran on him and the pounding of the horse's gait drove knives into his gut.
The stones measured the course: a hundred fifty and two. Chei knew their number. They all knew. It was the number of lords admitted to council. They stood for silent accusers to the damned; eyeless, watched them; mouthless, cursed them—stood waiting, finally, to welcome the exile home, who wished once to see Mante, and surrender body or life, as the high lords pleased.
A man had to think of such things, somberly, as surely Hesiyyn and Rhanin thought of them; and thought of kindred and friends, who by now might know that their kinsman had made the choice to return.
And their enemies would know—as they would know the lady had gained Skarrin's ear, and quickly after, as the lord Warden sent all he dared send—that the South-warden had been taken for a playing piece in this game.
There would be those rushing to exert influence where they could, to save what they could.
Blood—would flow; might be flowing even now, of remotest and humblest connections Shein Society might have had, from the moment certain powers in Mante knew that Qhiverin Asfelles was returning. But all his dead company was avenged, as he had said—a revenge as perfect as he could have contrived, his enemies done to death by their own power to rule the doings at court.
There were the few lords who had supported Shein, whose mark Qhiverin's natural body had worn tattooed above the heart, whose sole survivor he was. But the high lords had their bodyguards and their own sources of rumors, and if they were taken by surprise, they were fools—the more so if his messengers had gotten to them from Morund-gate and Tejhos.
He had done well, he thought. Live or die—he had done well, and he aimed for the unthinkable.
But there was still within him a small bewildered voice, of a boy further and further from home and missing one who should have ridden with him—
Well, lad,he told it sorrowfully, so do I. Pyverrn should have seen this day, damn us all. He would have laughed to think of the lord Warden back there, scrambling to save his neck.
The boy did not understand what he saw, except that they rode through the region of a gate which could drink them down at any moment, at the Overlord's pleasure, and that the lady had a name that she trusted Skarrin knew.
The boy feared now, that the lady he had once followed and the man who had betrayed him—had lied to him from the beginning.
So do I fear it,he told the boy. But we have no choice, do we?
Never speak to it—the wisdom ran, advising against such accommodation.
But it did not go away. It was there. It watched everything, it wanted to learn of him—