“Listen to me. Whatever she means to do with the Witch-fires, whatever she means to do with Thiye’s power once she has possessed it—she is no friend of ours. We exchange one Thiye for another, she holding what he held, and she more un-human than ever he was. Look at what Thiye has done with it, and he at least in some part man. But she … the use of such powers is like the breath of air to her, the element in which she moves; and she is ambitious, for revenge, for power, for what
else we do not know. What were you to her against the ambition that moves her? Think on that, brother.”
“You said that she is camped near Baien-ei,” Vanye answered. “That does not sound to me like what she would do if she had utterly deserted me. She is waiting. She expects me to come if I can.”
Erij laughed, and the grin slowly died in Vanye’s cold, unhappy stare. “You are naive,” said Erij then. “What she is waiting for is not you, not so small a thing as that to her.”
“What, then, would that be?”
“Will you show me the manner of the power she uses?” Erij asked him. “I do not ask you to break oath. If she seeks the death of Thiye and the fall of Hjemur, I have no quarrel with that; but if she seeks power for herself, then has she not used you shamefully, Vanye? Is that the oath you swore to her, that you would help set her in power over your own people? If that were so, it was a shameful oath.”
“She means to break the power of Thiye,” he said, “there was nothing said of creating any other power.”
“Oh, come,” said Erij. “And having ruined him . . . what? To live in poverty, to retreat to obscurity? Or to risk being overtaken by the bloodfeuds of so many enemies? Having taken power—she will hold it. You are nothing to her; I offered her to have you back, at the exchange of her word to go south again. She refused.”
Vanye shrugged, for he had known of her that he had no importance when he ceased to serve her purposes: she had never deluded him in that.
“She simply threw you aside,” said Erij. “And what might a heart like that do once in power in Hjemur, when she needs nothing? She will grow the more cold, and the more dangerous. I had rather an enemy with tempers and honest hates. I had rather a human enemy. Thiye is old and half-mad; he muddles about with his beasts and his self-indulgence, and seldom stirs. He has never made war on us, neither he nor his ancestors. But can you see the like of Morgaine being content with things as they are for long?”
“And what would you create of it, Erij?” he asked harshly. “The like of what I have seen in Ra-morij?”
“Look about you at Morija,” said Erij. “Look at its people. It does not fare too badly. Did you see anything amiss, any-
thing in the land or the villages that would be better changed? We have our law, the blessing of church, the peace of our fields and our enemies in Chya fear us. That is my work. I am not ashamed of what I have done here.”
“It is true that Morija is faring well now,” Vanye said. “But you, yourself, you cannot handle the things that Morgaine does; and she will not yield them. Seek her for an ally if you will. That is the best thing you can do for yourself and Morija.”
“Like the ten thousand at Irien that she and her allies helped?”
“She did not kill them. That much is a lie.”
“But that is what came of her help, all the same. And I would not lay Morija and Nhi open to the same kind of thing. I would not trust her. But this—this—I would trust, that she values powerfully.” Excitedly he rose from his place and from the cabinet near the table he drew out a cloth-wrapped bundle. When he took it in his hand the cloth fell away at the top and Vanye saw to his dismay the dragon-hilt of Changeling. “This is what holds her encamped at Baien-ei, her desire for this. And I would wager, brother, that you know something of it.”