And at its base, unseen in the distance that made Ivrel itself seem to drift at the edge of the sky, lay Men.
Morgaine touched heels to Siptah, startled the horse into motion, and they rode on, downslope and up again, and she spoke never a word. She gave no sign of stopping even while stars brightened in the sky and the moon came up.
Ivrel loomed nearer. Its white cone shone in the moonlight like a vision.
“Lady.” Vanye leaned from his saddle at last, caught the reins of the gray. “Liyo, forbear. Irien is no place to ride at night. Let us stop.”
She yielded then. It surprised him. She chose a place and
dismounted, and took her gear from Siptah. Then she sank down and wrapped herself in her cloak, caring for nothing else. Vanye hurried about trying to make a comfortable camp for her. These things he was anxious to do: her dejection weighed upon his own soul, and he could not be comfortable with her.
It was of no avail. She warmed herself at the fire, and stared into the embers, without appetite for the meal he cooked for her, but she picked at it dutifully, and finished it.
He looked up at the mountain that hung over them, and felt its menace himself. This was cursed ground. There was no sane man of Andur-Kursh would camp where they had camped, so near to Men and to Ivrel.
“Vanye,” she said suddenly, “do you fear this place?”
“I do not like it,” he answered. “—Yes, I fear it.”
“I laid on you at Claiming to ruin Hjemur if I cannot. Have you any knowledge where Hjemur’s hold lies?”
He lifted a hand, vaguely toward the notch at Ivrel’s base. “There, through that pass.”
“There is a road there, that would lead you there. There is no other, at least there was not.”
“Do you plan,” he asked, “that I shall have to do this thing?”
“No,” she said. “But that may well be.”
Thereafter she gathered up her cloak and settled herself for the first watch, and Vanye sought his own rest.
It seemed only a moment until she leaned over him, touching his shoulder, quietly bidding him take his turn: he had been tired, and had slept soundly. The stars had turned about in their nightly course.
“There have been small prowlers,” she said, “some of unpleasant aspect, but no real harm. I have let the fire die, of purpose.”
He indicated his understanding, and saw with relief that she sought her furs again like one who was glad to sleep. He put himself by the dying fire, knees drawn up and arms propped on his sheathed sword, dreaming into the embers and listening to the peaceful sounds of the horses, whose sense made them better sentinels than men.
And eventually, lulled by the steady snap of the cooling embers, the whisper of wind through the trees at their side, and
the slow moving of the horses, he began to struggle against his own urge to sleep.
She screamed.
He came up with sword in hand, saw Morgaine struggling up to her side, and his first thought was that she had been bitten by something. He bent by her, seized her up and held her by the arms and held her, she trembling. But she thrust him back, and walked away from him, arms folded as against a chill wind; so she stood for a time.
“Liyo?” he questioned her.
“Go back to sleep,” she said. “It was a dream, an old One.”
“Liyo—”
“Thee has a place, ilin. Go to it.”
He knew better than to be wounded by the tone: it came from some deep hurt of her own; but it stung, all the same. He returned to the fireside and wrapped himself again in his cloak. It was a long time before she had gained control of herself again, and turned and sought the place she had left. He lowered his eyes to the fire, so that he need not look at her; but she would have it otherwise: she paused by him, looking down.
“Vanye,” she said, “I am sorry.”
“I am sorry too, liyo.”