“I was reared Nhi,” he said. “We do not oath-break. We do not oath-break, liyo.” •
“I beg pardon,” she said, which liyo was never obliged to say to ilin, no matter how aggrieved. “I failed to understand.”
And at that moment the horses shied, exhausted as they were, heads back and nostrils flaring, whites of the eyes showing in the dim light. Something reptilian slithered on four legs, whipping serpentwise into the thicker brush. It had been large and pale, leprous in color. They could still hear it skittering away.
Vanye swore, his stomach still threatening him, his hands managing without his mind, to calm the panicked horse.
“Idiocy,” Morgaine exclaimed softly. “Thiye does not know what he is doing. Are there many such abroad?”
“The woods are full of beasts of his making,” Vanye said. “Some are shy and harm no one. Others are terrible things, beyond belief. They say the Koris-wolves were made, that they were never so fierce and never man-killers before—” He had almost said, before Irien, but did not, in respect of her. “That is why we must not sleep here, lady. They are made things, and hard to kill.”
“They are not made,” she said, “but brought through. But you are right that this is no good place to rest. These beasts— some will die, like infants thrust prematurely into too chill or too warm a place: some will be harmless; but some will thrive and breed. Ivrel must be sweeping a wide field. Ah, Vanye, Thiye is an ignorant man. He is loosing things—he knows not what. Either that or he enjoys the wasteland he is creating.”
“Where do they come from, such things as that?”
“From places where such things are natural. From other
tonights, and other Gates, and places where that was fair and proper. And there will be no native beasts to survive this onslaught if it is not checked. It is not man that such an attack wars on—it is nature. The whole of Andur-Kursh will find such things straying into its meadows. Come. Come.”
But he had lost his inclination to sleep, and kept the reins in his own hand. He closed his eyes as Morgaine set them on their way again, still saw the pale lizard form, large as a man, running across the open space. That was one of the witless nonsensities in Koriswood, more ugly than dangerous.
Reports told of worse. Sometimes, legend said, carcasses were found near Irien, things impossible, abortions of Thiye’s art, some almost formless and baneful to the touch, and others of forms so fantastical that none would imagine what aspect the living beast had had.
His only comfort in this place was that Morgaine herself was horrified; she had that much at least of human senses to her. Then he remembered her coming to him, out of the place she called between, washed up, she said, on this shore.
He began to have dim suspicion what she was, although he could not say it in words: that Morgaine and the pale horror had reached Andur-Kursh in the same way, only she had come by no accident, had come with purpose.
Aimed at Gates, at Thiye’s power.
Aimed at dislocating all that lay on this shore, as these unnatural things had come. Standing where the Hjemur-lord stood, she would be no less perilous. She shared nothing with Andur-Kursh, not even birth, if his fears were true, and owed them nothing. This he served”.
And Liell had said she lied. One of the twain lied: that was certain. He wondered in an agony of mind how it should be if he learned of a certainty that it was Morgaine.
Something else fluttered in the dark—honest owl, or something sinister; it passed close overhead. He tautened his grip upon his nerves and patted the nervous black’s neck.
It was long until the morning, until in a clear place upon the trail they dared stop and let sleep take them by turns. Mor-gaine’s was the first sleep, and he paced to keep himself awake, or chose an uncomfortable place to sit, when he must sit, and at last fell to meddling with the black horse’s gear, that the horse still bore, for in such place they dared not unsaddle,