“Morgaine!” they called at her, softly, as Chya always spoke, “Morgaine!”
And at last even her heart was touched, and she waved at them, and smiled, briefly.
Then she laid heels to Siptah, and they left the pleasant hall
behind, with all the warmth of Chya in the sunlight. The forest closed in again, chilling their hearts with its shadow, and for a very long time they both were silent.
He did not even speak to her the wish of his heart, that they turn and go back to Chya, where there was at least the hope of welcome. There was none for her. Perhaps it was that, he thought, that made her face so downcast throughout the morning.
As the day went on, he knew of a certainty that it was not the darkness of the woods that bore upon her heart. Once they heard a strange wild cry through the branches, and she looked up, such an expression on her face as one might have who had been distracted from some deep and private grief, bewildered, as if she had forgotten where she was.
That night they camped in the thick of the wood. Morgaine gathered the wood for the fire herself, making it small, for these were woods where it was not well to draw visitors. And she laughed sometimes and spoke with him, a banality he was not accustomed to in her: the laughter had no true ring, and at times she would look at him in such a way that he knew he lay near the center of her thoughts.
It filled him with unease. He could not laugh in turn; and he stared at her finally, and then suddenly bowed himself to the earth, like one asking grace.
She did not speak, only stared back at him when he had risen up, and had the look of one unmasked, looking truth back, if he could know how to read it.
Questions trembled on his lips, He could not sort out one that he dared ask, that he did not think would meet some cold rebuff or what was more likely, silence.
“Go to sleep,” she bade him then.
He bowed his head and retreated to his place, and did so, until his watch.
Her mood had passed by the morning. She smiled, lightly enough, talked with him over breakfast about old friends— hers: of the King. Tiffwy, how his son had been, of the lady who was his wife. It was that kind of thing one might hear from old people, talk of folk long dead, not shared with the young; the worse thing was that she seemed to know it, and her gray eyes grew wistful, and searched his, seeking under-
standing, some small appreciation of the only things she knew how to say with him.
“Tiffwy,” he said, “must have been a great man. I would like to have known him.”
“Immortality,” she said, “would be unbearable except among immortals.” And she smiled, but he saw through it.
She was silent thereafter, and seemed downcast, even while they rode. She thought much. He still did not know how to enter those moods. She was locked within herself.
It was as if he had snapped whatever thin cord bound them by that word: / would-like to have known him. She had detected the pity. She would not have it of him.
By evening they could see the hills, as the forest gave way to scattered meadows. In the west rose the great mass of Alis Kaje, its peaks white with snow: Alis Kaje, the barrier behind which lay Morija. Vanye looked at it as a stranger to this side of the mountain wall, and found all the view unfamiliar to him, save great Mount Proeth, but it was a view of home.
And thereafter the land opened more to the north and they stood still upon a hillside looking out upon the great northern range.
Ivrel.
The mountain was not so tall as Proeth, but it was fair to the eye and perfect, a tapering cone equal to left and to right. Beyond it rose other mountains, the Kath Vrej and Kath Svejur, fading away into distance, the ramparts of frosty Hjemur. But Ivrel was unique among all mountains. The little snow there was atop it capped merely the summit: most of its slopes were dark, or green with forests.