“Bastard, I have chased you from Irn-Svejur. The others had no stomach for Hjemur’s territory and Morgaine’s weapons, but I swore to them that I would go where I had to go to bring back your head. I would bring back the whole of you alive, but one-handed as I am, I know I cannot manage that. For Nhi and for Myya, for San and Torin—most especially for Nhi and its dead, I will do this thing, and then find how to put this gift you have given me to best use. I have no enemies I need fear so long as I wield that. If it would bring you safely to Ra-hjemur, then it could bring me there too.”
“Go with me there, then.”
“I offered you the chance of sharing power once, bastard, and I meant it; but you loved the witch more than you loved Morija, enough to kill Nhi for her.”
“Erij, you know at least that I will not break an oath. Help me—to Ra-hjemur. Now. Before our enemy takes it. Let me have my revenge on Thiye—for Morgaine; on the qujal too if I
can. I am speaking sense, Erij. Listen to me. There are weapons in Ra-hjemur, surely—and if our enemy lays hands on them, even holding Changeling might not be enough to take the citadel. Do this. Come with me. That is my oath to her—to deal with Thiye. After that, anything that is between us will be between us, and I will not cry foul at anything.”
Erij’s shadowed eyes took on a narrow, reckoning look. “You were condemned to be ilin by our father’s law, for Kandrys; and you will be clean of that if I listen to you. But you have me yet to satisfy. Suppose I were to sentence you to another year.”
“I would think that was too slight a thing to satisfy you.”
“Swear,” said Erij, “by that oath you regard with her, that you will stay for Claiming by me, no treachery, no aid from her if she should somehow live. And that will not be a year that you will thank me for, Chya bastard, and it will not stop me from turning you over to the kinsmen of Paren and Bren when it is finished. But if it is worth the price to you, I will refrain from cutting your throat here and now. I will even go with you to Ra-hjemur. Is that the way you want it, bastard? Will you pay that?”
“Yes,” Vanye said without hesitating; but Erij’s blade still rested under his chin.
“And I will wager,” said Erij, “that you know the use of the sword and that you know the witch herself better than any now living. If taking Hjemur purges you of her—that being the service she named for you, and not merely a year—then let us agree, my brother, that when Hjemur falls, it is mine, and you are mine—from that moment. And you will not speak of this oath of ours—not to her, not to Thiye, not to anyone.”
He saw the trap then, which Erij wove for Morgaine, treachery suspecting treachery in everyone, and admired the cunning of the man: Myya to the heart, thinking of all possibilities save one—that neither of them would survive the taking of Hjemur.
He did not like the oath: it was woven too tightly.
“I will agree,” he said.
“And upon your soul you will not betray me,” Erij said. “You will hand me Hjemur and hand me Thiye and the witch and this qujal himself.”
“As many as live,” Vanye agreed.
“That you will not desert me or raise hand against me before then.”
“I agree.” .
“Your hand,” said Erij.
It was not right to do: by ilin-law he ought not to yield another oath, and any crossing of the two obligations was on his soul, his own fault; but Erij insisted, and he yielded up his hand and clenched his teeth as Erij drew the black across the palm. Then Erij touched it with his mouth, and Vanye likewise, spat blood into the snow. It was not Claiming, for there was no signing with it, but it was an oath and a binding one, and when Erij released him to get to his feet, he knelt clenching numbing snow in his fist as he had knelt once in a cave in Aenor-Pyvvn, shaking this time in utter misery, such that his senses threatened to leave him.