Roh rode close to him, so that the horses jostled one another and he looked up. Roh urged one of the arrhendim'sjourneycakes on him. "You did not eat at the stop."
He had had no appetite, nor did now, but he knew the sense of Roh's concern, and took it and washed it down with water, though it lay like lead in his stomach. Small dark Vis rode up on his other side and offered another flask to him.
"Take," she said.
He drank, expecting fire by the smell of it, and it was, enough to make his eyes sting. He took several more swallows, and gave it back to Vis, whose dark eyes were young in her aging face, and kindly. "You grieve," she said. "We all understand, we that are khemeis,we that are arrhen.So we would grieve too." She pressed fee flask back into his hand. 'Take it. It is from my village. Perrin and I can get more."
He could not answer her; she nodded, understanding that too, and dropped behind. He hung the flask to his saddle, and then thought to offer some to Roh, which Roh accepted, and passed it back to him.
Night-shadow began to touch the sky. The sun burned over the dark rim of Shathan across the river, and from the east there was silence, no comforting whistles out of the dark woods, nothing.
They kept moving while there was still twilight to guide them, and bent into the forest itself, for a river barred their way, flowing into the Narn.
It was not a great river; quickly it dwindled until the trees that grew on its margin almost sufficed to span it.
And suddenly about them stealthy shadows moved, and a chittering warned them of harlim.
One waited on the riverside, like some large, ungainly bird standing at the water's shallow edge. It chirred at them as that kind would in perplexity, and backed when Merir would have approached it on horseback. Then it beckoned.
"We cannot go another such journey," Sharra protested. "Lord, youcannot."
"Slowly," said Merir, and turned the white mare in the direction that the creature would have them go: breast-high she waded, but the current was very weak, and all of them followed, up the other bank, into wilder places.
The harilwanted haste: they could not. The horses stumbled on stones, faltered going up the slopes of ravines. The trees were old here, and the place beneath them much overgrown with brush. Harilimmoved all about them, finding passage that the horses could not.
And suddenly there was a white shape before them in the dark, an arrhen,or like unto one, afoot and clothed in white, not forest green. His hair was loose, his whole aspect like and unlike one of the arrhendim,seeming more wraith than flesh in the starlight.
Lellin.
The youth lifted his hand. "Grandfather," he saluted Merir, softly. He came and took Merir's offered hand, reaching up to the saddle. Solid he was, yet there was a change on him, a sad quiet utterly unlike the youth they knew. "Ah, Grandfather, youshould not have come."
"Why should I not?" Merir answered him. The old lord looked frightened. "What madness has taken you? Why this look on you? Why did you not send the message you promised?"
"I had no means."
"Morgaine," Vanye said, forcing his horse past Sharrn's to Lellin. "Lellin-what of Morgaine?"
"Not far." Lellin turned and lifted his arm. "A stony hill, the other side-"
He used the spurs, broke free of them and bent low, caring nothing for their protest, for harilimwarnings. He would not bring Merir on her without warning. His horse stumbled under him, recovered; brush opposed, branches caught at him and snapped on his armor. He clung low to the saddle and the horse stayed on its feet, upslope and down, shying from this side and that as it sensed harilim.Pursuit was on his heels: the arrhendimhe heard them coming.
Suddenly there was a broad meadow in the starlight, and the low hill that Lellin had named hove up. He broke through a thin screen of young trees and rode for that place.
White figures appeared before him in the starlight, white robes, white hair flying in the wind, aglow like foxfire. He saw the shimmer, tried to rein over at the last instant and could not avoid it.
There was dark.
"Khemeis."
A touch fell on his shoulder. He heard a horse near sensed still the numbing oppression, of Gate-force in the air.
"Khemeis."
Lellin.Coarse grass was under his hands. He strove to push himself up. Another hand reached to help him rise. He looked into Sezar's face Sezar likewise in white such as Lellin's, neither of them armed. He cast a dazed look about him, at white-robed qhal,at the two who had once been arrhendimone of the qhalheld the reins of his horse, which stood with legs braced as if it were still dazed.
And others Merir, who dismounted and took his place among the qhalin white robes, a taint of gray among them. Roh was there at a distance, among the arrhendim,who grouped together as if in great fear.
"You are permitted," Lellin said, pointing toward the hill. "She sends for you. Go, now, quickly."
A moment he looked a second circuit of him, looking on the white figures, feeling the silence. His senses still swam. Gate-force worked at his nerves. He turned suddenly and went, overwhelmed with anxiety. One of them shadowed him, pointed the way that he should take up the hill, where a trail began among the trees which marched up its side. He did not run, but he wished to.
It was not a high hill, hardly more than a rocky upthrast amid the forest. At either side of him were trees aged and warped, twisted by wind or Gate-force, strange shapes in the starlight. He climbed that path carefully, his heart frozen in dread of the thing that he might find in this smothering silence.
The path bent, and she was there, a white figure like the others, as Lellin had been, standing among the rocks. Wind tugged at her white hair and her thin garments unarmored and unarmed she was, when never willingly would she part from Changeling.
"Liyo,"he said in half a voice, and stopped human, and feeling it mortally. He did not want to come closer and find her changed; he did not want to lose her like that.
But she came to him, and there was no difference but the clothing: the strength was there, and the recklessness. Wraith she seemed, but this wraith scrambled down from the rocks with Morgaine's energy, a hand to this side and the other to catch herself, and a hand to him at the bottom. He seized her as if she might prove illusion after all, and they flung arms about each other with the desperation of sanity returned.
She said nothing. It was long before he thought of saying anything. But then he thought of her wound, and realized how thin she was, and that he might be hurting her. He drew her aside to the rocks and gave her a place to sit, cast himself to a lower stone beside her. "You are well," he breathed.
"We saw the smoke from here. I hoped hoped that you were somehow the cause of that alarm. I sent word, such as the harilimcan bear. And I saw you coming from this hill. I could not prevent them. I shouted, but in the wind, they did not hear, or heed. Lellin Lellin found you, did he not?"
"Down near the river." His voice failed him and he rested his head against the stones at his side. "Oh Heaven, I did not know how I would find you."
"Sezar found Mai dead on the riverbank. And traces of horses about her. They searched further but there were Shiua aswarm in that area and they had to come. back. What happened?"