Like,he thought, a village discussing with its lord their state of affairs.Yet she accepted this, and listened more than she spoke, as was ever her habit.
At last the villagers took their leave, and Morgaine settled next the fire and relaxed a time. Then he came and rested on his knees before her, embarrassed by what he had to confess, that he had betrayed them to children.
She smiled when he had told her. "So. Well, I do not think it much harm. I have not been able to learn much of how qhalmay be involved in this land, but, Vanye, there are tilings here so strange I hardly see how we could avoid revealing ourselves as strangers."
"What does elarrhmean?"
"It comes from arrh,that is noble,or or,that is power,The words are akin, and it could be either, depending on the situation either or both: for when one addressed a qhal-lord in the ancient days as arrhtheis,it meant both his status as a qhaland the power he had. To Men in those days, all qhalhad to be my lord,and the power in question was that of the Gates, which were always free to them, and never to Men it has that distressing meaning too. Elarrhsomething belonging to power, or to lords. A thing of reverence or hazard. A thing which Men do not touch."
Qhalurthoughts disturbed him, the more he comprehended the qhalurtongue. Such arrogance was hateful and other things Morgaine had told him, which be had never guessed, of qhalurmaneuverings with human folk, things which hinted at the foundations of his own world, and those disturbed him utterly. There was much more, he suspected, which she dared not tell him. "What will you say to these folk," he asked, "and when-about the trouble we have brought on their land? Liyo,what do they reckon we are, and what do they think we are doing among them?"
She frowned, leaned forward, arms on knees. "I suspect that they reckon us both qhal,you perhaps halfling, but after what fashion or with what feeling I can find no delicate means to ask. Warn them? I wish to. But I would likewise know what manner of thing we shall awaken here when I do. These are gentle folk; all that I have seen and heard among them confirms that. But what defends them may not be."
It well agreed with his own opinion, that they trod a fragile place, safe in it, but perilously ignorant, and enmeshed in something that had its own ways.
"Be careful always what you say," she advised him. "When you speak in the Kurshin tongue, beware of using names they might know, whatever the language. But henceforth you and I should speak in their language constantly. You must gather what you can of it. It is a matter of our safety, Vanye."
"I am trying to do that," he said. She nodded approval, and they occupied themselves the rest of the day in walking about the village and the edge of the fields, talking together, impressing in his memory every word that could be forced there.
He had expected that Morgaine would choose to leave by the next morning, and she did not; and when that night came and he asked her would they leave on the morrow, she shrugged and in talking of something else, never answered the question. By the day after that, he did not ask, but took his ease in the village and settled into its routine, as Morgaine seemed to have done.
It was a healing quiet, as if the long nightmare that lay at their backs were illusion, and this sunny place were true and real. There was no word from Morgaine of leaving, as if by saving nothing she could wish away all hazard to them and their hosts.
But conscience worried at him, for the days they spent grew to many more than a handful. And he dreamed once, when they slept side by side-both slept, for sitting watch seemed unnecessary in the center of so friendly a place: he came awake sweating, and slept again, and wakened a second time with an outcry that sent Morgaine reaching for her weapons.
"Bad dreams in such a place as this?" she asked him. "There have been places with more reason for them."
But she looked concerned that night too, and lay staring into the fire long afterward. What the dream had been he could not clearly remember, only that there seemed something as sinister in his recollection as the creeping of a serpent on a nest, and he could not prevent it.
These folk will haunt me,he thought wretchedly. They two had no place here, and knew it; and yet selfishly lingered, out of time and place, seeking a little peace taking it as a thief might take, stealing it from its possessors. He wondered whether Morgaine harbored the same guilt or whether she had passed beyond it, being what she was, and impelled by the need to survive.
He was almost moved to argue it with her then; but a dark mood was on her, and he knew those. And when he faced her in the morning, there were folk about them; and later he put it off again, for when he faced the matter, the odds against them outside this place were something he had no haste to meet: Morgaine was gathering forces, and was not ready, and he was loath to urge her with arguments when the geasfell on her, she passed beyond reason; and he did not want to be the one to start it.
So he bided, mending harness, working at arrows for a bow which he traded of a villager who was an excellent bowyer. It was offered free, once admired, but in his embarrassment Morgaine intervened with the offer of a return gift, a gold ring of strange workmanship, which must have lain buried in her kit a very long time. He was disturbed at that, suspecting that it might have meant something to her, but she laughed and said that it was time she left it behind.
So he had the bow, and the bowyer a ring that was the envy of his companions. He practiced his archery with the young folk and with Sin, who dogged his tracks faithfully, and strove to do everything that he did.
In the pen and agraze on the grassy margin of the fields, the horses grew sleek and lazy as the village's own cattle and Morgaine, always the one who could not rest in an hour's delay, sat long hours in the sun and talked with the elders and the young herders, drawing on a bit of goatskin what became a great marvel to the villagers, who had never seen a map. Though they had the knowledge of which it grew, they had never seen their world set forth in such a perspective.
Mirrind, the village was named; and the plain beyond the forest was Azeroth; the forest was Shathan. In the center of the great circle that was Azeroth, she drew a skein of rivers, feeding a great river called the Narn; amid that circle also was written athatin,which was the Fires-or plainly said, the Gate of the World.
So peaceful Mirrind knew of the Gate, and held it in awe: Azerothen Athatin.Thus far their knowledge of the world did extend. But Morgaine did not question them on it closely. She made her map and lettered it in qhalurrunes, a fine fair band.
Vanye learned such runes as he learned the spoken language. He sat on the step of the meeting hall and traced the symbols in the dust, learning them by writing all the new words that he had learned, and trying to forget the scruples in such things that came of being Kurshin. The children of Mirrind, who thronged him when he would tend the horses or who had such zeal to fetch his arrows that he feared for their safety, quickly found this exercise tedious and deserted him.