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balance. The lords from the north come dawn and kill a number of them —Chei had said of qhalur raids on the hillfolk. To prove whatever that proves. Who knows?

    Vanye knew. He knew it
along with the other things that a man like Chei would not, he hoped,
comprehend. That understanding of callous murder, that perspective
which allowed him to fathom qhalur motives—seemed to Vanye a gulf like
the gulf of life and death, the knowledge that everything behind them
was dust.

    What became of your cousin?
Chei had asked. But he could not answer that either: he could explain
to no one, except the likes of lord Gault, behind whose human eyes,
Chei had said, resided a qhal—

    —an old one, Vanye thought.
Or one wounded or sick to death. A qhal who had learned a single way to
overcome humankind, by the gates and the power they had to conserve a
dying mind in a body not its own.

    Qhal who use the gates, he thought suddenly, and felt a touch of ice about his heart.

    "Liyo," he said. "If qhal are using the gates here—what will prevent them going where they will?"

    "Nothing prevents them,"
Morgaine said, and looked toward him, a sharp, quick look. "Thee
understands—nothing—prevents them. It is possible they know we are
here, it is possible they are tracking us already, since we disturbed
the gate. These are not gentle folk. We have seen the proof of that. I
will tell you what I notice: that our friend yonder is not much amazed
at our horses or our gear or our companying together. Nor astonished
that we should come from the gates, the precise location of which he
does not know. Now, that he is not astonished may be that he knows
nothing of the gates, but if the qhal in this world do come and go by
that one gate, then they have considerable mastery of the other one."
She gestured about them. "There are the trees, do you see? That
twisting does not happen in one use of the gates. It is frequent that
this one gate throws out power. It is not working well. But that they
cannot mend it does not mean that they do not use it."

    It was not a comforting thought. "Then they might come behind us."

    "If what our friend
believes is true, yes. They can. And if by chance someone in Mante or
Tejhos was warding that gate when we came through, then they do know
that it was used."

    He cast a sharp look toward the man sleeping in the sun, and experienced a feeling of panic.

    It was a guide he did
not trust, a burden to slow the horses. Easiest to abandon the man,
trust to speed, remembering that the man was lame in one foot and
incapable of running.

    —There were, to be sure, the wolves.

     

    There was no pain
finally—nothing but the wind and the sun on his bare skin, and Chei lay
with his eyes shut, the light glowing red through his lids, the
delirious play of sun-warmth alternate with the cool wind—in
abandonment and safety unimaginable in all his life. He ought to feel
shame at his nakedness, but there was little left in a man who had
suffered Gault's dungeons. He ought not to be so well content, but he
had learned to put all his mind into a moment, even into the trough
between two waves of pain, and to find his comfort there, trusting that
another such respite would come—if he ignored the pain between.

    So with this day. Hell was
on either side. But the day was the best he had known since the other
side of Gyllin-brook, and if there was hell to come, perhaps—only
perhaps—it would be like the waves of pain, the first signal of a
rhythm he only now discovered in his life.

    That was how he reasoned
with himself. Perhaps he had grown mad on his hilltop, conversing with
the wolves and calling them by name. But he was very sure that his life
was better now; and that tomorrow might well be the same. He had grown
comfortable indeed if he could plan for two whole days at once.

    Beyond that he refused to
think at all. There was danger in such thoughts—danger the moment he
began to believe the earnestness in the man's eyes or the