The horses’ hooves echoed loudly down that passage, and the shifting perspectives of that vast aisle, lit only by the moons, provided ample cover for ambush. Vanye rode with his sword across the saddlebow, wishing that they might make faster passage through this cursed place, and knowing at the same time the unwisdom of racing blindly through the dark. The road became entirely blind at some points, as it turned and the spires cut off their view on all sides.
And thereafter the road began to climb as well as wind, in long terraced steps that led ultimately to a darkness—a starless shadow that as they neared it began to take on the detail of black stonework, that lay as a wall before them: a vast cube of a building that overtopped the spires, that diverged to form an aisle before it
“An-Abarais,” murmured Kithan. “Gateway to the Well.”
Vanye gazed at it with foreboding as they rode: for once before he had seen the like; and beside him Morgaine took Changeling into her hand. The gray horse blew nervously, side-stepping, then started forward again, taking the narrowing terraces; Vanye spurred the gelding to make him keep pace, put from his mind their two companions that trailed them.
It was no Gate, but a fortress that could master the Gates; qujal, and full of power. It was a place that Roh would not have neglected.
There was no other way through.
CHAPTER Seventeen
The road met the fortress of An-Abarais: and it vanished into a long archway, black and cheerless, with night and open sky at its other end. But the
slanted spires shaped another road, fronting the fortress; and in that crossing of ways Morgaine reined in, scanning all directions.
“Kithan,” she said, as their two companions overtook them. “You watch the road from here. Jhirun: come. Come with us.”
Jhirun cast an apprehensive look at all of them, left and right; but Morgaine was already on her way down that righthand aisle, a pale-haired ghost on a pale horse, almost lost in shadow.
Vanye reined aside and rode after, heard Jhirun clattering along behind him in haste. What Kithan would do, whether he would stay or whether he would flee to their enemies— Vanye refused to reckon: Morgaine surely tempted him, dismissed him for good or for ill; but her thoughts would be set desperately elsewhere at the moment, and she needed her ilin at her back.
He overtook her as she stopped in that dark aisle, where she had found the deep shadow of a doorway; she dismounted, pushed at that door with her left hand, bearing Changeling in her right.
It yielded easily, on silent hinges. Cold breathed forth from that darkness, wherein the moonlight from the doorway showed level, polished stone. She led Siptah forward, within the door, and Vanye bent his head and rode carefully after, shod hooves ringing irreverently in that deep silence. Jhirun followed, afoot, tugging at the reluctant mare, a third clatter of hooves on the stone. When she was still, there was no sound but the restless shift of leather and the animals’ hard breathing.
Vanye slid his sword from its sheath and carried it naked in his hand; and suddenly light glimmered from Morgaine’s hands as she began to do the same, baring Changeling’s rune-written blade. The opal shimmer grew, flared into brilliance enough to light the room, casting strange shadows of slanting spires, a circular chamber, a stairway that wound its way among the spires.
From Changeling came a pulsing sound, soft at first, then painful to the senses, that filled all the air and made the horses shy. The light brightened when Morgaine swept its tip up and leftward; and by this they both knew the way they must go, reading the seeking of the blade toward its own power.
And did they meet, unsheathed blade and living source, it would end both: whatever madness had made Changeling had made it indestructible save by Gates.
Morgaine sheathed it as quickly as might be; and the horses stood trembling after. Vanye patted the gelding’s sweating neck and slid down.
“Come,” Morgaine said, looking at him. “Jhirun—watch the horses. Cry out at once if something goes in the least amiss; put your back against solid stone and stay there. Above all else do not trust Kithan. If he comes, warn us.”