Erij slid down. Vanye did not, and Erij looked up at him, face drawn against the winter sun. “There is one clear point in all of this: you will guard my life and help me take Ra-hjemur for myself. That is the sum of matters.”
“You have taken my oath,” Vanye said, miserable at heart. “I know that that is the sum of matters.”
There was no moon, and clouds had moved in. There was that help, at least.
Ra-hjemur sat upon a low, barren hill, a citadel surely of the qujal, for it was simply a vast cube, unadorned, untowered, without protecting ring-walls or any defense evident to the eye. A stony path ran up to its gate; no grass grew upon it, but then, no grass grew anywhere on the hill.
They crouched a time by the bend of the knoll where they had left their horses, merely surveying the place. There was no stir of life.
Erij looked at him as if seeking his opinion.
“The sword can breach the door,” Vanye said. “But beware of traps, brother, and mind that I am behind you: I do not care to die by the same chance that Ryn did.”
Erij nodded understanding, then slipped from cover, seeking other shadows, Vanye quick to follow. They came not directly up the road to the gate, but up under the walls, and in their shadow, to the gate itself.
It was graven with runes upon its metal pillars, but the gate was iron and wood, like the door of many an ordinary fortress; and when Erij drew Changeling and touched its black field to the joining of the doors the air sang with the groan of metals. The doors parted their joinings, and the pillars too, and stone
rumbled, loosed from its supports. Dust choked them, and when it cleared a mass of rubble partly blocked the entry.
Erij gazed but a moment at the destruction he had wrought, then clambered over the rubble and sought the echoing inside of the place, which burned with light no fires supplied.
Vanye hurried through, asweat with dread, snatched up a sizable rock in the process, and as Erij started to look back at him, smashed it to Erij’s helmeted skull. It was not enough. Erij fell, but still retained half-senses and heaved up with the blade.
Vanye saw it coming, twisted to evade the shimmer, kicked Erij’s arm so that it wrung from him a cry of pain, and the sword fell.
He snatched it up then, gazed down on his brother, whose face was contorted with fury and fear. Erij cursed him, deliberately and with thought, such that it chilled his blood.
He took the sheath from Erij, who did not resist him; and upon an impulse to pity for Erij, he cast down Erij’s own longsword.
Arrows flew.
He heard their loosing even before he whirled and knew they had come from the stairs, but Changeling in his warding hand made an easy path to elsewhere for the arrows, and they both remained unharmed. He knew the sword’s properties, had seen Morgaine wield it, and knew its uses in ways Erij did not. Erij would as likely have taken an arrow as not.
And perhaps Erij understood that fact, or understood at the least that continuing their private dispute could be fatal to them both: Erij gathered up the longsword with but a glowering promise in his eyes, and rose, following as Vanye began to lead the way.
Killing a man from behind was an easy matter, even were he in mail; but Erij needed more hands than one: he risked everything on it.
And quickly he dismissed the threat of Erij from his mind, overwhelmed by the alien place. Breath almost failed him when he considered the size of the hall, the multitude of doors and stairs. Morgaine had sent him here ignorant, and there was nothing to do but probe every hall, every hiding place, until he either found what he was seeking or his enemies found his back.
Save that, held straight before them, Changeling gave forth a brighter glow, and when lifted, sent a coursing of impulses through the dragon-hilt, such that it seemed to live.