And Erij left. Vanye was overcome with cold thereafter and knelt on the hearth, feeding the wood in slowly, until the blaze grew intense. The room was still. He looked into the shadows beyond the light and saw only Kandrys’ things. He had never much credited the beliefs that the unhappy dead hovered close about the living, though he served one who should have been dead a century ago; but there remained a chill about the room,
a biding discomfort that might be guilt, or fear, or some power of Kandrys’ soul that lingered here.
Eventually there was a clatter in the courtyard. He went to the slit of a window and looked out, and saw the black and Siptah saddled, saw men about them.
And, aided by two men, Morgaine was brought down and set upon her horse. She scarcely had the strength to stay the saddle, and caught the reins with an awkward gesture that showed she had almost dropped them.
Anger churned in him, that she was being turned out in such condition. Erij meant for her to die.
He forced his shoulder through the narrow opening, shouted down at her. “Liyo!” he cried, his voice carried away on the biting wind. But she looked up, her eyes scanning the high walls. “Liyo!”
She lifted her hand. She saw him. She turned to those about her, and the attitude of her body was one of anger, and theirs that of embarrassment. They turned from her, all save those that must hold the horses.
Then he grew afraid for her, that she would take arms and be killed, not knowing the case of things.
“The matter of a bargain,” he shouted down at her. “You are free on his oath, but do not trust him, liyol”
It seemed then she understood. She suddenly turned Siptah’s head and laid heels to him, putting him to a pace headed for the gate, such that he feared she would fall at the turning. The black that had been Liell’s followed, jerked along by the rein made fast to Siptah’s saddle. There was a pack on the black’s saddle—his own gear.
And one other followed, before the gate swung shut again.
Ryn the singer, harp slung to his back, spurred his pony after her. Tears sprang to Vanye’s eyes, though he could not say why; he thought afterward that it was anger, seeing her take another innocent as she had taken him to ruin.
He sank down by the fireside again, bowed his head upon his arms and tried not to think of what lay in store for him.
“Father died,” said Erij, “six months ago.” He stretched his legs out before the fire in his own clean and carpeted apartments, which had been their father’s, and looked down where Vanye sat cross-legged upon the hearthstones, unwilling guest
for the evening. The air reeked of wine. Erij manipulated cup, then pitcher, upon the table at his left hand, by gesture offered more to Vanye. He refused.
“And you killed him,” Erij added then, as if they had been discussing some distant acquaintance, “in the sense that you killed Kandrys: Father grew morbid over Kandrys. Kept the room as you see it. Everything the same. Harness down in the stable—the same. Turned his horse out. Good animal, gone wild now. Or maybe gone to the wolves, who knows? But Father made a great mound down there by the west woods, and there he buried Kandrys. Mother could not reason with him. She fell ill, what with his moods—and she died in a fall down the stairs. Or he pushed her. He was terrible when he was in one of his moods. After she died he took to sitting long hours out in the open, out on the edge of the mound. Mother was buried out there too. And that was the way he died. It rained. We rode out to bring him in perforce. And he took ill and died.”
Vanye did not look at him, only listened, finding his brother’s voice unpleasantly like that of Leth Kasedre. The manner was there, the casual cruelty. It had been terrible enough when they were children: now that a man who ruled Nhi sat playing these same games of pointless cruelty, it had a yet more unwholesome flavor.