“Ah, I will go with thee,” she said. “I do not ask you to do this thing alone; but if I am lost, that is your service to me.”
“Why?” he asked abruptly. “For revenge? What wrong have I done you, lady?”
“I came to seal the Gates,” she said, “and if I should be lost, that is the means to do it. I do not think I can teach you otherwise. But take my weapons and strike at the heart of Hjemur’s hold: that would do it as well as I ever could.”
“If you wish to ruin the Gates,” he said bitterly, for he did not half believe her, “there was a beginning to be made at Aenor-Pyvvn’s fires, and you rode past it.”
“Pointless to meddle with it. They are all dangerous; but the master Gate is that you call the Witchfires: without it all the others must fade. They all once led to there: now they only exist, without depth or direction. They are the one thing that Thiye has not fully discovered how to manage. He cannot stop or use them singly. Thiye is no blood of mine, but he has had instruction. He plays with things he only half understands, although it may be,” she added, “that a hundred years have increased his wisdom.”
“I understand nothing at all,” he protested. “Set me free of this thing. It does no honor to you to ask such a thing of me. I will go with you, I swear this: I will do you ilin’s service until you have seen through what you will do, no matter how mean or how miserable things you ask of me. I swear that, even beyond my year, even to Ivrel, if that is where you are going. But do not ask me to do this thing and hang my oath as ilin on it.”
“All these things,” she said softly, “I have of the oath you have already given me.” And then her voice became almost kindly: “Vanye, I am desperate. Five of us came here and four are dead, because we did not know clearly what we faced. Not
all the old knowledge is dead here; Thiye has found teachers for himself, and perhaps he has indeed grown in knowledge: in some part I hope he has. His ignorance is as dangerous as his malice. But if I send you, I will not send you totally ignorant.”
He bowed his head. “Do not tell me these things. If you need a right arm, I am there. No more than that.”
“Well enough,” she said, “well enough for now. I will not force any knowledge on thee that does not have to be.”
And she applied knife to a twig and sharpened it to hold the strips of venison.
He slipped his helmet off, for it hurt his brow from long wearing, but he did not slip the coif: it was cold and shame still prevented him, even in her sight. He wrapped the cloak about him and undertook to cook his own food, and shared wine with her. He went over to the log after that, and stretched himself upon the higher part of it, and she upon the lower a time later. It was a peculiar sort of bed, but better by far then the cold snow below them; and he tucked himself up like a warrior on a bier, his longsword clasped upon his breast, for he did not want to let it out of his grasp on this night, and in this place. He did not even keep it in its sheath.
And late, when the fire had become very low, he became uneasy with the impression that there was something stirring besides the wind that cracked the icy branches, something large and of weight; and he strained his eyes and hearing and held his breath to see and listen to what it might be.
Suddenly he saw Morgaine’s hand seek toward her belt beneath her cloak, and he knew that she was awake.
“I will put wood upon the fire,” he said, this also for any watcher. He rolled off the log into a crouch, almost expecting a rush of something.