Exile's Gate Read Online Free PDF

He
distracted her from her pursuit from time to time. And so few things
could.

    He gave her such comfort as
he could, and they were not even lovers, Heaven knew and few guessed.
They had shared a blanket in the beginning with her sword between,
lately without so much as that caution to stay them; which was
intolerable and gave him the more reason to chafe at this unwanted
guest, and the demands of his own stubborn honor.

    "I think," Vanye said quietly, "that he has no love of qhal."

    "He is human," Morgaine said with a shrug. "And we do not know who left him to die."

    I am not qhal, she was wont to insist, as long as he had known her—for in his own lost land the qhal were dreaded and damned; halfling had
been Morgaine's ultimate admission to him, when at last he won a little
of truth from her, none so many days ago as their time ran.

    Now she let the implication
of qhalur blood pass without a protestation. Perhaps she was
preoccupied; perhaps she finally believed him enough to give up the
lie—that pretense which had begun perhaps in kindness on her part and
lasted in doubt of him.

    Was that the last test, that I should ride this gate with you? But did you doubt me, liyo, that I would keep my word?

    "Go, rest," she told him, brushing the last crumbs of their dinner into the fire. "I will watch a while."

    He shifted his eyes to their guest, in the shadows. "If he has need of anything, wake me; do not go near him."

    "I have no such notion,"
she said, and slid the pan into her saddlebag, there by her side, as if
they could leave in the morning with their guest as weak as he was. But
it was only prudence. They had not survived this long by leaving gear
behind, if attack came on them. "If he has need of anything in your
watch," she said, "you will wake me, the same."

    "He is one man," Vanye said with a little indignation, and she frowned at him.

    "Wake me," she said, being unreasonable on the matter.

    So this land had frightened her too. And she grew irrational in little things.

    "Aye," he said, and shrugged. It was little enough concession.

    He loosened his armor, and
wrapped himself in his cloak, wrinkling his nose from the stink the
cloth had taken on from its little contact with the man, and thinking
that he might never have it clean again.

    In the morning, in the
daylight, after sleep, he thought, the man might be reasonable—Heaven
help them, they had no means to deal with a madman.

    He must see what could be done to salvage the man's gear—as long as they were not traveling.

    But for his part he was
very weary, and his bones ached. So with his liege, he thought; but she
had thinking to do, and he had none—it was Morgaine chose their way,
Morgaine who decided matters, it was Morgaine who told him what he
should do, and therefore he did not worry about that—only about the
little matters—the horses, the gear, and how they should do what
Morgaine had set them to do. And he was content enough with that
arrangement.

    Morgaine threw her own
blanket over him as he lay there, a little settling of added warmth, in
the which, his head pillowed on Arrhan's saddle, he relaxed. She patted
his ankle as she let down the blanket, a gentle good night, a comfort
at which he sighed, and thought after that, staring into the dark—for
she had a way of doing that to him—that perhaps that gesture of hers
had been intended for more than that, that if not for the damnable
matter of their uninvited guest, if not for this world that threatened
them and set them to sleeping turn and turn about, in their armor, that
cursed, familiar burden which seemed to settle on heart and soul, with
all its habits of fear—

    So close they had been to being lovers. So very close.

    He sighed again, but not
for the same reason, and tried with all his mind to go quickly to
sleep, with that good sense he had learned on this trail—that unbroken
sleep was precious as food and water, and very often harder come by.

    A hard lump pressed