“Do not trust him,” Ryn said, which stung him with rage. “The Nhi would not have made him a gift of the sword and set him free for love of you, lady.”
Fury rose in him, hate of the youth, so smooth, so unscarred, so sure of matters with Morgaine. He found words strangled in his throat, and simply shook his head. But Ryn left. He heard the rustle of Morgaine’s cloak as she settled kneeling a little distance from him.
“Well it was thee spoke out,” she said softly. “A dozen or so have tried that way these past two days, to their grief.”
“Lady.” He bowed and pressed his forehead briefly to earth, pushed himself wearily upright again. “There is a large force, either on its way or here already. Erij covets Thiye’s power, thinking he can have it for himself.”
“You cried at me not to trust him,” she said, “and that I did believe. But how do I trust you now? Was the sword gift or stolen?”
What she said frightened him, so much as anything had power to frighten him, tired as he was: he knew how little mercy there was in her for what she did not trust, and he had no proof. “The sword itself is all that I can give you to show you,” he said. “Erij drew it; it killed, and he feared to hold it. When it fell, I took it and ran—it is a powerful key, lady, to gates and doors.”
She was silent for a moment. He heard the whisper of the blade drawn partway, the soft click as it slipped back to rest. “Did thee hold it, drawn?”
She asked that in such a tone as if she wished otherwise.
“Yes,” he said in a faint voice. “I do not covet it, liyo, and I do not wish to carry it, not if I go weaponless.” He wfshed to tell her of the men of Myya, what had happened: he had no name for it, and saw in his mind those lost faces. In some deeper part of him, he did not want to know what had become of them.
“It taps the Gates themselves,” ,she said, and moved in the dark. “Ryn, do you see anything?”
“Nothing, lady,”
She settled back again, this time in the dim starlight that fell through the crack, so that he could see her face, half in shadow
as it was, the light falling on it sideways. “We must move. Tonight. Does thee think otherwise, Vanye?”
“There are archers on the height out there. But I will do what you decide to do.”
“Do not trust him,” Ryn’s voice hissed from above. “Nhi Erij hated him too well to be careless with him or the blade.”
“What does thee say, Vanye?” Morgaine asked him.
“I say nothing,” he answered. Of a sudden the weariness settled upon him, and it was too much to argue with a boy. His eyes stayed upon Morgaine, waiting her decision.
“The Nhi gave me back all but Changeling” she said, “not knowing. I suspect, that some of the things they returned were weapons: they recognized the sword as what it was, but not these others. They also gave me back your belongings, your armor and your horse, your sword and your saddle. Go and make yourself ready. All the gear is in the corner together. I do not doubt but that you are right about the archers; but we have to move: all this coming and going of yours cannot have gone entirely unmarked.”
He felt his way, found the corner and the things she described, the familiar roughness of the mail that had been his other skin for years. The weight as he settled it upon him was greater than he remembered: his hands shook upon the buckles.
He considered the prospect of the ride they would make, down that throat of a pass, and began to reckon with growing fear that there was not enough left in him to make such a ride. He had spent and spent, and there was little more left in him.
It was not likely, he thought, that they would escape from this unscathed: Myya arrows were a sound that had come to strike a response in his flesh. He had escaped too many of them, in Erd and in Morija. The odds were in favor of the arrows.