Gate of Ivrel

“I do not know,” he said, “only that sometimes there is another side to the Witchfires and sometimes not, and that once she goes, she will be nowhere we can reach. I am sorry. It was not a thing she explained clearly. But she will not be back. Ivrel is a Gate that will close when this place dies, and after that there will be no more Witchfires, no more Thiyes, no more magics in the world.”

He looked around him at the place, for that complexity was like the living inside of some great beast, though its veins were conduits of lights and its heart and pulse glowed and faded slowly.

“If you do not want to die, Erij,” he said, “I suggest we take her advice and be as far from here as possible when it happens.”

The horses were where they had left them, patiently waiting in the gray dawn, cropping the sparse grass as if there were nothing unusual in the day. Vanye checked the girths and heaved himself up, and Erij did the same. They rode the open and faster road this time, pausing for a view of the great cube of Ra-hjemur, which looked, with its breached gate, like a creature with a mortal wound.

Then they set out together for Morija.

“There is no more lord of Hjemur,” said Vanye at last “You and Baien are all the clan-lords left of any stature at all. It is within your reach to gain the High Kingship without Hjemurn magics after all, and perhaps that will be better for human folk.”

“Baien’s lord is old,” said Erij, “and has a daughter. I do not think that he will want a war to cloud his old age and ruin his land. I will perhaps be able to make an alliance with him. And Chya Roh left no heirs. His people will be less trouble to us. Pyven’s lady is Chya, and with Chya in Koris in our hands, Pyven will submit.” Erij sounded almost cheerful, counting his prospects and reckoning lightly of a few wars.

But Vanye gazed to the road ahead, where it wound out of sight and into view again toward the south, hoping earnestly to see her, seeing her in his mind, at least, as she had ridden that evening out of Aenor-Pyven’s Gate.

“You are not listening,” Erij accused him.

“Aye,” he said, bunking and breaking the spell, and looking again toward Erij.

And ever and again after that, he saw Erij look curiously at him, and there was a growing sourness on Erij’s face, as if whatever alliance there had been to make them brothers this dawn in Ra-hjemur were fast shredding asunder. He held out little hope for his peace as he saw that sullen estimation grow more and more grim.

“There is none of the high-clan blood in Morija left, but us,” said Erij that noon, when the sun was almost warm, and they rode still knee to knee.

Oh Heaven, Vanye thought, looking out upon the sunlight and the hills with regret, now it comes; for he had long since come to the conclusion he was sure would occur to Erij: that, enemies as they were, Erij was mad to flaunt a high-clan prisoner in Morija. Without Ra-hjemur from which to rule, he had not power enough to bear a taint of dishonor—or a rival. Politics and ambitions would swarm about a bastard Chya like flies to honey. Such conclusions as Erij had no doubt reached were dishonorable, better meditated in the dark of night than in such a fair day.

“Bastard that you are,” said Erij, “you could make yourself a threat to me, if you were minded to do so. There is no lord in Chya. It comes to me, bastard brother, that you are heir to Chya, if you were to claim it, and that no lord can be claimed as ilin.”

“I have not laid any claim to Chya,” said Vanye. “I do not think I could, and I do not intend to.”

“They had rather own you than me, I do not doubt it at all,” said Erij. “And you are still the most dangerous man to me in all of Andur-Kursh, so long as you live.”

“I am not,” said Vanye, “because I regard my oath. But you do not regard your own honor enough to trust mine.”

“You did not regard your oath in Ra-hjemur.”

“You were not in danger from Morgaine. I did not have to.”

Erij gazed long at him, then reached across. “Give me your hand,” he said, and Vanye, puzzling, yielded it to his left-handed handclasp. His brother pressed it in almost friendly fashion.

“Leave,” said Erij. “If I hear of you after this I will hunt you down ... or if you come to Morija, I will set Claim on you and let you work off that year you owe me. But I do not think you will come to Morija.”

And he gestured with a nod to the road ahead.

“If she will have you—go.”

Vanye stared at him, then gripped his brother’s strong, dry hand the more tightly before he broke the clasp.

Then he set heels to the horse, dismissing from his mind every thought that he was weaponless and that Morgaine would have opened a wide lead on them during the morning.

He would gain that distance back. He would find her. He realized much later to his grief that he had not even looked back once at his brother, that he had severed that tangled tie without half the pain he thought it must have cost Erij to let him go.