The Complete Morgaine Read Online Free PDF Page B

the deer, and already he felt a twitching at the back of his shoulders as if she sought his life. He would not be able to outrace that: other weapons, perhaps, but not the thing that had slain the deer and left no wound.
    â€œIt is lawful,” she said, “what I ask.”
    â€œWith you,” he objected, “that year is likely to be the last of my life. And after that, I would be a marked man in Andur-Kursh.”
    â€œI will admit that is true. My own life is likely to be no longer. I have no pity to spare for thee.”
    She held out her hand for his. He yielded it, and she drew the ivory-hilted Honor blade from her belt and cut deeply, but not wide: the dark blood welled up slowly in the cold. She set her mouth to the wound, and then he did the same, the salt hot taste of his own blood knotting his stomach in revulsion. Then she went inside, and brought ash to stop it with, smearing it with the clan-glyph of the Chya, writ in his blood and her hearth-ash across his hand, the ancient custom of Claiming.
    Then he bowed to his forehead in the burning snow, and the ice numbed the fire in his hand and made it cease throbbing. She had certain responsibilities for him now: to see that he did not starve, neither he nor his horse, though certain of the hedge-lords were scant of that obligation, and kept the miserable
ilinin
they claimed lean and hungry and their horses in little better state when the
ilinin
were in hall.
    Morgaine was of poorer estate: she had no hall to shelter either of them, and the clan she signed him—his own birth-clan—would as lief kill him as not. For his part, he must simply follow orders: no other law bound him now. He could even be ordered against homeland or blood kin, though it was no credit to the lord’s honor if an
ilin
were so cruelly used. He must fight her enemies, tend her hearth—whatever things she required of him until a year had passed from the day of his oath.
    Or she might simply name him a task to accomplish, and he would be bound to that task even beyond his year’s time, until it was done. And that also was exceedingly cruel, but it was according to the law.
    â€œWhat service?” he asked of her. “Will you let me guide you from here southward?”
    â€œWe go north,” she said.
    â€œLady, it is suicide,” he cried. “For you and for me.”
    â€œWe go north,” she said. “Come, I will bind up the hand.”
    â€œNo,” he said. He clutched snow in his fist, stopping the bleeding, and held the injured hand against him. “I want no medicines of yours. I will keep my oath. Let me tend to myself.”
    â€œI will not insist,” she said.
    Another thought, more terrible, occurred to him. He bowed in request another time, delaying her return to the cave.
    â€œWhat else?” she asked him.
    â€œIf I die you are supposed to give me honorable burial. I do not want that.”
    â€œWhat—not to be buried?”
    â€œNot by
qujalin
rites. No, I had rather the birds and the wolves than that.”
    She shrugged, as if that did not at all offend her. “Birds and wolves will likely care for both of us before all is done,” she said. “I am glad thee sees the matter that way. I probably should have no time for amenities. Care for thyself and gather thy gear and mine. We are leaving this place.”
    â€œWhere are we bound?”
    â€œWhere I will to go.”
    He bowed acceptance with a heavy heart, knowing of increasing certainty that he could not reason with her. She meant to die. It was cruel to have laid claim to an
ilin
under that circumstance, but that was the way of his oath. If a man survived his year, he was purged of crimes and disgrace. Heaven would have extracted due penance for his sins.
    Many did not survive. It was presumed Heaven had exacted punishment. They were counted honorable suicides.
    He bound up his hand with the cleanly remedies that he knew, though it