“Go to sleep. I will stay awake a while.”
“I am full awake, liyo. There is no need.”
“I said a thing to you I did not mean.”
He made a half-bow, still not looking at her. “I am ilin, and it is true I have a place, with the ashes of your fire, liyo, but usually I enjoy more honor than that, and I am content.”
“Vanye.” She sank down to sit by the fire too, shivering in the wind, without her cloak. “I need you. This road would be intolerable without you.”
He was sorry for her then. There were tears in her voice; of a sudden he did not want to see the result of them. He bowed, as low as convenience would let him, and stayed so until he thought she would have caught her breath. Then he ventured to look her in the eyes.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I have named that,” she said. It was again the Morgaine he knew, well armored, gray eyes steady.
“You will not trust me.”
“Vanye, do not meddle with me. I would kill you too if i were necessary to set me at Ivrel.”
“I know it,” he said. “Liyo, I would that you had listened to me. I know you would kill yourself to reach Ivrel, and probably you will kill us both. I do not like this place. But there is no reasoning with you. I have known that from the beginning. I swear that if you would listen to me, if you would let me, I would take you safely out of Andur-Kursh, to—”
“You have already said it. There is no reasoning with me.”
“Why?” he asked of her. “Lady, this is madness, this war of yours. It was lost once. I do not want to die.”
“Neither did they,” she said, and her lips were a thin, hard line. “I heard the things they said of me in Baien, before I passed from that time to this. And I think that is the way I will be remembered. But I will go there, all the same, and that is my business. Your oath does not say that you have to agree with what I do.”
“No,” he acknowledged. But he did not think she heard him: she gazed off into the dark, toward Ivrel, toward Irien. A question weighed upon him. He did not want to hurt her, asking it; but he could not go nearer Irien without it growing heavier in him.
“What became of them?” he asked. “Why were there so few found after Irien?”
“It was the wind,” she said.
“Liyo?” Her answer chilled him, like sudden madness. But she pressed her lips together and then looked at him.
“It was the wind,” she said again. “There was a gate-field there—warping down from Ivrel—and the mist there was that morning whipped into it like smoke up a chimney, a wind … a wind the like of which you do not imagine. That was what passed Irien. Ten thousand men—sent through. Into nothing. We knew, my friends and I, we five; we knew, and I do not know whether it was more terrible for us knowing what was about to happen to us than for those that did not understand at all. There was only starry dark there. Only Void in the mists … But I lived of course. I was the only one far back enough: it was my task to circle Irien, Lrie and the men of Leth and I— and when we were on the height, it began. I could not hold my men; they thought that they could aid those below, with their king, and they rode down; they would not listen to me, you
see, because I am a woman. They thought that I was afraid, and because they were men and must not be, they went. I could not make them understand, and I could not follow them.” Her voice faltered; she steadied it. “I was too wise to go, you see. I am civilized; I knew better. And while I was being wise—it was too late. The wind came over us. For a moment one could not breathe. There was no air. And then it passed, and I coaxed poor Siptah to his feet, and I do not clearly remember what I did after, except that I rode toward Ivrel. There was a Hjemurn force in my way. I fell back and back then, and there was only the south left open. Koris held a time. Then I lost that shelter; and I retreated to Leth and sheltered there a time before I retreated again toward Aenor-Pyvvn, I meant to raise an army there; but they would not hear me. When they came to kill me, I cast myself into the Gate: I had no other refuge left. I did not know it would be so long a wait.”