“Coward,” his father’s voice shouted after him, reminding him of the unsatisfied honor of the Nhi, which demanded his
death; and now he wished earnestly to die, but it was no longer help for his personal dishonor. He was marked like a felon for hanging, like the lowest of criminals: exile had not demanded this further punishment—it was lord Nhi Rijan’s own justice, for the Nhi had also a darker nature, which was implacable and excessive in revenge.
He put on his armor, hiding the shame of his head under a leather coif and a peaked helm, and bound about the helm the white scarf of the ilin, wandering warrior, to be claimed by whatever lord chose to grant him hearth-right.
Ilinin were often criminals, or clanless, or unclaimed bastards, and some religious men doing penance for some particular sin, bound in virtual slavery according to the soul-binding law of the ilin codes, to serve for a year at their Claiming.
Not a few turned mercenary, taking pay, losing uyin rank; or, in outright dishonor, became thieves; or, if honest and honorable, starved, or were robbed and murdered, either by outlaws or by hedge-lords that took their service and then laid claim to all that they had.
The Middle Realms were not at peace: they had not been at peace since Irien and the generation before; but neither were there great wars, such as could make an ilin’s life profitable. There was only grinding poverty for midlands villages, and in Koris, the evil of Hjemur’s minions—dark sorceries and outlaw lords much worse than the outlaws of the high mountains.
And there was lord Myya Gervaine’s small land of Morij Erd which barred his way to Aenor and separated him from his only hope of safety.
It was the second winter, the cold of the high passes of the mountains, and a dead horse that finally drove him to the desperate step of trying to cross the lands of Gervaine.
A black Myya arrow had felled his gelding, poor Mai, that had been his mount since he first reached manhood; and Mai’s gear now was on a bay mare he had of the Myya—the owner being beyond need for her.
They had harried him from Luo to Ethrith-mri, and only once had he turned to fight. Hill by hill they had forced him against the mountains of the south. He ran willingly now, though he was faint with hunger and there was scant grain left
for his horse. Aenor was just across the next ridges. The Myya were no friends of the Ris in Aenor-Py vvn, and would not risk his land.
It was late that he realized the nature of the road he had begun to travel, that it was the old qujalin road and not the one he sought. Occasional paving rang under the bay mare’s hooves. Occasional stones thrust up by the roadside and he began to fear indeed that it led to the dead places, the cursed grounds. Snow fell for a time, whiting everything out—stopping pursuit (he hoped that, at least). And he spent the night in the saddle, daring only to sleep a time in the early morning, after the movings in the brush were silenced and he no longer feared wolves.
Then he rode the long day down from the Aenish side of the pass, weak and sick with hunger.
He found himself entering a valley of standing stones.
There was no longer doubt that qujalin hands had reared such monoliths. It was Morgaine’s vale: he knew it now, of the songs and of evil rumor. It was a place no man of Kursh or Andur would have traveled with a light heart at noontide, and the sun was sinking quickly toward dark, with another bank of cloud rolling in off the ridge of the mountains at his back.
He dared look up between the pillars that crowned the conical hill called Morgaine’s Tomb, and the declining sun shimmered there like a butterfly caught in a web, all torn and fluttering. It was the effect of Witchfires, like the great Witch-fire on Mount Ivrel where the Hjemur-lord ruled, proving qujalin powers were not entirely faded there or here.