“And what of you?”
She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “I do not know where I shall be. Another place. Or scattered, as the men were at Kath Svejur. I shall not know until I pass the Gate where I
can make it take me. That is my task, to seal Gates. I shall go until there are no more—and I shall not know that, I fear, until I step out the last one and find nothing there.”
He tried to grasp the thing she told him, could not imagine, and shivered. He did not know what to say to her, because he did not know what it meant.
“Vanye,” she said, “you have drawn Changeling. You have a proper fear of it.”
“Aye,” he acknowledged. Loathing was in his voice. Her gray eyes reckoned him up and down, and she cast a quick look over her shoulder at Roh’s distant figure.
“I will tell thee,” she said softly, “if something befall me, it could be that thee would need to know. Thee does not need to read what is written on the blade. But it is the key. Chan wrote it upon the blade for fear that all of us would die, or that it would come to another generation of us—hoping that with that, Ivrel still might be sealed. It is to be used at Ra-hjemur, if thee must: its field directed at its own source of power would effect the ruin of all the Gates here. Or cast back within the Gate itself, the true Gate, it would be the same: unsheath it and hurl it through. Either way would be sufficient.”
“What are the writings on it?”
“Enough that could give any able to read them more knowledge of Gates than I would wish to have known. That is why I carry it so close. It is indestructible save by Gates. I dare not leave it. I dare not destroy it. Chan was mad to have made such a thing. It was too great a chance. We all warned him that qujalin knowledge was not for us to use. But it is made, and it cannot be unmade.”
“Save by the Witchfires themselves.”
“Save by that.”
And after they had ridden a distance: “Vanye. Thee is a brave man. I owe it to thee to tell thee plainly: if thee uses Changeling, as I have told thee to do, thee will die.”
The cold seeped inward, self-knowledge. “I am not a brave man, liyo.”
“I think otherwise. Can thee hold the oath?”
He gathered the threads of his thoughts, scattered and snarled for a moment with the knowledge she had given him. He was strangely calm then, what he had known from the beginning settling into place as it ought to be.
“I will hold to it,” he said.
He is coming,” said Vanye with relief. Snow crunched underfoot beyond the place where they had stopped to wait, around the bend of the trees and the hillside. It was dark. Snow lit by the stars was all about them, bright save in the shadow of the pines. They had lost sight of Roh for a time. “Let me ride back to him.”
“Hold where you are,” she said. “If it is Roh, he will arrive all the same.”
And eventually, a mere shadow among the barred shadows of the pines on the lower slope, there trudged Roh, stumbling with weariness.
“Ride down to him,” said Morgaine then, the only grace she had shown the bowman for his efforts.
Vanye did so gladly, met Roh halfway down the hill and drew his horse to a halt, offering stirrup and hand.
Roh’s face was drawn, his lips parted and the frosted air coming in great raw gasps. For a moment Vanye did not think that Roh would accept any kindness of him now: there was anger there. But he dismounted and helped his cousin up, and rose into the saddle after. Roh slumped against him. He urged the horse uphill at a walk, for the air grew thin here, and hurt the lungs.
“This is a proper place for a camp,” said Morgaine when they joined her. “It is defensible.” She indicated a place of rocks and brush, and it was true: however acquired, Morgaine had an eye to such things.