Liell was qujal and knew the ancient science. Perhaps he could even read the runes of Changeling, and then Thiye, whom Morgaine had called ignorant, a meddler in sciences, ‘ would have a rival he could not withstand.
They came among trees again, pines, rough brush, sometime outcroppings of black rock. And the trees began to be twisted and stunted things, writhing out of all true shape for their kind. Bare limbs held tufts of sickly needles, bare trunks described horrid, frozen evolutions.
And in the snow they saw a dead dragon.
At least so it seemed to be—an object leathery and twisted, and the horses shied from it. It was monstrous, frozen in its death throes so that it was yet less lovely. One membraneous wing was half unfolded, stiff and stark. The other side was bare bone, taken by other beasts.
The Lethen described a wide path about that corpse. Vanye stared back at the thing as they passed and the bile rose in his throat.
Other things they saw dead too. Most were small. One resembled a man, but the wolves had had it.
The light faded in this place of evil. They moved among the twisted pines in twilight, and went carefully. Men had bows ready, eyes constantly scanning the forest.
Then the trees thinned out, quite abruptly. Upon the great shoulder of the mountain was a lesser rise, and upon that were broken pillars, fair-colored, rune-graven, out of place among the black rocks of Ivrel’s cone.
And the Gate.
It was vast, unlike that of Aenor-Pyvvn or Leth at Domen:
metal uncorroded by the years, casting a web of shimmer that had depth, stars winking in a black arch against the twilit white side of Ivrel. The air here worked at the nerves. The horses fought to shy off—men that rode dismounted, and prepared to wait.
Morgaine was helped down first, her ankles freed, and she was made fast against one of the few twisted pines that grew this near the Gate. Next Roh was similarly treated, though he strove to fight them. Finally Vanye was lifted down, and he thought that they would do the same with him, but instead Liell ordered him brought forward in the line.
He kicked a man, threw him to the ground writhing in pain, and a Lethen hit him, kicked him down and laid a quirt to him: Vanye tucked down against the blows, unhurt by reason of the mail, save where the quirt hit neck or hands.
And of a sudden Liell was by him, cursing the man, other Lethen hauling Vanye up, and the man that had struck him cringed away.
“No hand on him!” Liell said. “No harm to him. I will kill the man that puts a mark on him.” And carefully he unlaced the cloak from Vanye, and gave it to a man, walked all about him, full circle. Then he made to lay hands on him and Vanye flinched back, constrained to bear it in patience while Liell gently probed bones, as if to see whether they were sound or no. In bitter humor he cherished the ache in his skull, the worse pain in his legs and joints where the ride bound to the saddle had bruised him—his only revenge on Liell. It was a sorry, sad thing, he thought of a sudden, that he had been taken so easily, and it was no comfort at all that Roh was about to pay dearly for his idiocy.
And by that time, there would be nothing left of Nhi Vanye, though his body would continue to move and live, housing for Liell-Zri, which would take revenge upon Roh, upon Morgaine.
That image struck him as Liell began to climb that last distance, and they began to force him up the long barren slope. It took from him what courage he had left, such that he would have fallen if not for the men on either side of him. He stumbled on the loose rocks, Liell striding surefootedly beside him, up in that clear place where air cut at the lungs like the edge of ice. There was only the Gate above them, and the stars within, and wind that gently sucked at them, aiming into that gulf.