But at last the clouds were thick and the trail became hardly passable, trees crowding close and obscuring the sky with their bristling shadow. A downed tree beside the road promised them at least a drier place to rest, and wood for fire. They stopped and Vanye hacked off smaller branches and heaped them into a proper form for a damp-wood fire.
How the fire came to be, Vanye did not see: he turned his back to fetch more wood, and turned again and it was started, a tiny tongue of fire within the damp branches. It smoked untidily: wet wood; but it remained, Morgaine leaning close to encourage it, and he gingerly fed it tinder.
“There is a certain danger in this,” he advised Morgaine, looking at her closely over the little fire. “There may be men hereabouts to see the light or smell the smoke, and no men in these woods are friendly to any other. I do not care to meet what this may attract, and it is best we keep it small and not keep it the night long.”
She opened her hand and in the dim light showed him a black and shiny thing, queer and ugly. It revolted him: he could not determine why, only that it would not be made by any hand he knew, and there was a foul unloveliness about the
thing in her fair slim hand. “This is sufficient for brigands and for beasts,” she said. “And I trust you are somewhat skilled with sword and with bow. Ilinin otherwise do not long survive.”
He nodded silent acknowledgement.
“Fetch our gear,” she bade him.
He did so, clearing snow from the great tree and resting all that could be harmed by damp upon that. She began to make a meal for them of the almost frozen meat, while he doled out a bit of the remaining grain to the poor horses. They nudged him in the ribs and coaxed pitiably, wanting the rest of it: but he steeled his heart against them, grieved and out of appetite for the good venison they had. Kurshin that he was, he could not eat with his animals in want. A man was to be judged by his horses and the fitness of them; and had it been grain they themselves were eating he would gladly have given them his share and gone hungry.
He went and settled glumly by the fire, working his stiffening hand, which was affected by the cold. “We must somehow get down from this height,” he said, “by tomorrow, even if it takes us by some more dangerous road. We are out of grain but for one day. These horses cannot force drifts like these and go hungry too. We will kill them if we keep on.”
She nodded quietly. “We are on a short road,” she said.
“Lady, I do not know this way, and I have ridden the track from Morija to Koris’s border to Erd several ways.”
“It is a road I knew,” she said, and looked up at the clouding sky, the pinetops black against the veiled moon. “It was less overgrown then.”
He made a gesture against evil, unthought and reflexive. He thought then that it would anger her. Instead she glanced down briefly, as if avoiding reply.
“Where are we going?” he asked her. “Are we looking for something?”
“No,” she said. “I know where it lies.”
“Lady,” he asked of her, for she seemed about to sink into another of her silences. He made a bow, earnestly; he could not bear another day of that. “Lady, where? Where are we going?”
“To Ivrel.” And when in dread he opened his mouth to
protest that madness: “I have not told you yet,” she said, “what service I claim of thee.”
“No,” he agreed, “you have not.”
“It is this, ilin. To kill the Hjemur-lord Thiye and to destroy his citadel if I die.”
A laugh escaped him, became a sob. This was the thing she had promised the six lords she would do. Ten thousand men had died in that attempt, so that many surmised she had never been enemy to Thiye of Hjemur, but friend and servant-witch, set out to ruin the Middle Lands.