Fires of Azeroth Read online

  Fires of Azeroth

  The Morgaine Saga #3

  C. J. Cherryh

  DAW Books, Inc.

  Donald A. Wollheim, Founder

  375 Hudson Street,

  New York, NY 10014

  Elizabeth R. Wollheim

  Sheila E. Gilbert

  Publishers

  www.dawbooks.com

  in cooperation with

  SEATTLE BOOK COMPANY

  www.seattlebook.com

  Produced by

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  Fires of Azeroth

  The Finest in

  DAW Science Fiction

  from C. J. CHERRYH:

  THE ALLIANCE-UNION UNIVERSE

  The Company Wars

  DOWNBELOW STATION

  The Era of Rapprochement

  SERPENT'S REACH

  FORTY THOUSAND IN GEHENNA

  MERCHANTER'S LUCK

  The Chanur Novels

  THE PRIDE OF CHANUR

  CHANUR'S VENTURE

  THE KIF STRIKE BACK

  CHANUR'S HOMECOMING

  CHANUR'S LEGACY

  The Mri Wars

  THE FADED SUN: KESRITH

  THE FADED SUN: SHON'JIR

  THE FADED SUN: KUTATH

  Merovingen Nights (Mri Wars period)

  ANGEL WITH THE SWORD

  The Age of Exploration

  CUCKOO'S EGG

  VOYAGER IN NIGHT

  PORT ETERNITY

  The Hanan Rebellion

  BROTHERS OF EARTH

  HUNTER OF WORLDS

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  Fires of Azeroth

  THE MORGAINE CYCLE

  GATE OF IVREL (#1)

  WELL OF SHIUAN (#2)

  FIRES OF AZEROTH (#3)

  EXILE'S GATE (#4)

  THE EALDWOOD FANTASY NOVELS

  THE DREAMSTONE

  THE TREE OF SWORDS AND JEWELS

  OTHER CHERRYH NOVELS

  HESTIA

  WAVE WITHOUT A SHORE

  THE FOREIGNER UNIVERSE

  FOREIGNER

  INVADER

  INHERITOR

  PRECURSOR

  DEFENDER*

  EXPLORER*

  *Forthcoming

  iii

  Fires of Azeroth

  Copyright © 1979 by C. J. Cherryh.

  All Rights Reserved.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 341.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Microsoft LIT edition ISBN: 0-7420-9116-3

  Adobe PDF edition ISBN: 0-7420-9118-X

  Palm PDB edition ISBN: 0-7420-9222-4

  MobiPocket edition ISBN: 0-7420-9117-1

  Ebook editions produced by

  SEATTLE BOOK COMPANY

  Ebook conversion and distribution powered by

  www.RosettaMachine.com

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  iv

  Fires of Azeroth

  Electronic format made

  available by arrangement with

  DAW Books, Inc.

  www.dawbooks.com

  Elizabeth R. Wollheim

  Sheila E. Gilbert

  Publishers

  Palm Digital Media

  www.palm.com/ebooks

  v

  Fires of Azeroth

  To Audrey, who is Kurshin at heart… and to Brad, who asked the right questions.

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  "Records are pointless. There is a strange conceit in making them when we are the last— but a race should leave something. The world is going…

  and the end of the world comes, not for us, perhaps, but soon. And we have always loved monuments.

  "Know that it was Morgaine kri Chya who wrought this ruin. Morgen-Angharan, Men named her: the White Queen, she of the white gull feather, who was the death that came on us. It was Morgaine who extinguished the last brightness in the north, who cast Ohtij-in down to ruin, and stripped the land of inhabitants.

  "Even before this present age she was the curse of our land, for she led the Men of the Darkness, a thousand years before us; her they followed here, to their own ruin; and the Man who rides with her and the Man who rides before her are of the same face and likeness— for now and then are alike with her.

  "We dream dreams, my queen and I, each after our own fashion. All else went with Morgaine."

  —A stone, on a barren isle of Shiuan.

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  Fires of Azeroth

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

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  Fires of Azeroth

  Chapter 1

  The plain gave way to forest, and the forest closed about, but there was no stopping, not until the green shadow thickened and the setting of the sun brought a chill to the air.

  Then Vanye ceased for a time to look behind him, and breathed easier for his safety… his and his liege's. They rode further until the light failed indeed, and then Morgaine reined gray Siptah to a halt, in a clear space beside a brook, under an arch of old trees. It was a quiet place and pleasant, were it not for the fear which pursued them.

  "We shall find no better," Vanye said, and Morgaine nodded, wearily slid down.

  "I shall tend Siptah," she said as he dismounted. It was his place, to tend the horses, to make the fire, to do whatever task wanted doing for Morgaine's comfort. That was the nature of an ilin, who was Claimed to the service of a liege. But they had ridden hard for more than this day, and his wounds troubled him, so that he was glad of her offer. He stripped his own bay mare down to halter and tether, and rubbed her down and cared for her well, for she had done much even to last such a course as they had run these last days. The mare was in no wise a match for Morgaine's gray stud, but she had heart, and she was a gift besides. Lost, the girl who had given her to him; and he did not forget that gift, nor ever would. For that cause he took special care of the little Shiua bay— but also because he was Kurshin, of a land where children learned the saddle before their feet were steady on the earth, and it sat ill with him to use a horse as he had had to use this one.

  He finished, and gathered an armload of wood, no hard task in this dense forest. He brought it to Morgaine, who had already started a small fire in tinder— and that was no hard task for her, by means which he preferred not to handle. They were not alike, she and he: armed alike, in the fashion of Andur-Kursh— leather and mail, his brown, hers black; his mail made of wide rings and hers of links finely meshed and shining like silver, the like of which no common armorer could fashion; but he was of honest human stock, and most avowed that Morgaine was not. His eyes and hair 1

  Fires of Azeroth

  were brown as the earth of Andur-Kursh; her eyes were pale gray and her hair was like morning frost… qhal-fair, fair as the ancient enemies of mankind, as the evil which followed them— though she denied that she was of that blood, he had his own opinions of it: it was only sure that she had no loyalty to that kind.

  He carefully fed the fire she had begun, and worried about enemies the while he did so, mistrusting this land, to which they were strangers. But it was a little fire, and the forest screened the
m. Warmth was a comfort they had lacked in their journeyings of recent days; they were due some ease, having reached this place.

  By that light, they shared the little food which remained to them… less concerned for their diminishing supplies than they might have been, for there was the likelihood of game hereabouts. They saved back only enough of the stale bread for the morrow, and then, for he had done most of his sleeping in the saddle— he would gladly have cast himself down to sleep, well-fed as he was, or have stood watch while Morgaine did so.

  But Morgaine took that sword she bore, and eased it somewhat from sheath… and that purged all the sleep from him.

  Changeling was its name, an evil name for a viler thing. He did not like to be near it, sheathed or drawn, but it was a part of her, and he had no choice. A sword it seemed, dragon-hilted, of the elaborate style that had been fashioned in Koris of Andur a hundred years before his birth… but the blade was edged crystal. Opal colors swirled softly in the lines of the runes which were finely etched upon it. It was not good to look at these colors, which blurred the senses. Whether it was safe to touch the blade when its power was thus damped by the sheath, he did not know nor ever care to learn— but Morgaine was never casual with it, and she was not now. She rose before she drew it fully.

  It slipped the rest of the way from its sheath. Opal colors flared, throwing strange shadows about them, white light. Darkness shaped a well at the sword's tip, and into that it was even less wholesome to look. Winds howled into it, and what that darkness touched, it took. Changeling drew its power from Gates, and was itself a Gate, though none that anyone would choose to travel.

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  It forever sought its source, and glowed most brightly when aimed Gate-ward. Morgaine searched with it, and turned it full circle, while the trees sighed and the howling wind grew, the light bathing her hands and face and hair. An imprudent insect found oblivion there. A few leaves were torn from trees and whipped into that well of darkness and vanished. The blade flickered slightly east and west, lending hope; but it glowed most brightly southward, as it had constantly done, a pulsing light that hurt the eyes. Morgaine held it steadily toward that point and cursed.

  "It does not change," she lamented. "It does not change."

  "Please, liyo, put it away. It gives no better answer, and does us no good."

  She did so. The wind died, the balefire winked out, and she folded the sheathed sword in her arms and settled again, bleakness on her face.

  "Southward is our answer. It must be."

  "Sleep," he urged her, for she had a frail and transparent look. " Liyo, my bones ache and I swear I shall not rest until you have slept. If you have no mercy on yourself, have some for me. Sleep."

  She wiped a trembling hand across her eyes and nodded, and lay down where she was on her face, caring not even for preparing a pallet on which to rest. But he rose up quietly and took their blankets, laid one beside her and pushed her over onto it, then threw the other over her. She nestled into that with a murmur of thanks, and stirred a last time as he put her folded cloak under her head. Then she slept the sleep of the dead, with Changeling against her like a lover: she released it not even in sleep, that evil thing which she served.

  * * *

  They were, he reflected, effectively lost. Four days past, they had crossed a void the mind refused to remember, the between of Gates. That way was sealed. They were cut off from where they had been, and did not know in what land they now were, or what men held it— only that it was a place where Gates led, and that those Gates must be passed, destroyed, sealed.

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  Such was the war they fought, against the ancient magics, the qhal-born powers. Their journey was obsession with Morgaine, and necessity with him, who served her… not his concern, the reason she felt bound to such a course; his reason was his oath, which he had sworn to her in Andur-Kursh, and beyond which he had stayed. She sought now the Master Gate of this world, which was that which must be sealed; and had found it, for Changeling did not lie. It was the selfsame Gate by which they had entered this land, by which their enemies had entered, behind them. They had fled that place for their lives… by bitter irony, had fled that which they had come to this world to find, and now it was the possession of their enemies.

  "It is only that we are still within the influence of the Gate we have just left," Morgaine had reasoned in the beginning of their flight northward, when the sword had first warned them. But as the distance widened between them and that power, still the sword gave the same disturbing answer, until there remained little doubt what the truth was. Morgaine had muttered things about horizons and the curving of the land, and other possibilities which he by no means comprehended; but at last she shook her head and became fixed upon the worst of her fears. It was impossible for them to have done other than flee. He tried to persuade of her that; their enemies would surely have overwhelmed them. But that knowledge was no comfort to her despair.

  "I shall know for certain," she had said, "if the strength of the sending does not diminish by this evening. The sword can find lesser Gates, and it is possible still that we are on the wrong side of the world or too far removed from any other. But lesser Gates do not glow so brightly. If I see it tonight as bright as last, then we shall know beyond doubt what we have done."

  And thus they knew.

  Vanye eased himself of some of the buckles of his armor. There was not a bone of his body which did not separately ache, but he had a cloak and a fire this night, and cover to hide him from enemies, which was better than he had known of late. He wrapped his cloak about him and set his back against an aged tree. His sword he laid naked across his knees. Lastly he removed his helm, which was wrapped about with the white scarf of the 4

  Fires of Azeroth

  ilin, and set it aside, shaking free his hair and enjoying the absence of that weight. The woods were quiet about them. The water rippled over stones; the leaves sighed; the horses moved quietly at tether, cropping the little grass that grew where the trees were not. The Shiua mare was stablebred, with no sense of enemies, useless on watch; but Siptah was a sentinel as reliable as any man, war-trained and wary of strangers, and he trusted to the gray horse as to a comrade in his watch, which made all the world less lonely. Food in his belly and warmth against the night, a stream when he should thirst and surely game plentiful for the hunting. A moon was up, a smallish one and unthreatening, and the trees sighed very like those of Andur's lost forests— it was a healing thing, when there was no way home, to find something so much like it. He would have been at peace, had Changeling pointed some other way.

  * * *

  Dawn came softly and subtly, with singing of birds and the sometime stirring of the horses. Vanye still sat, propping his head on his arm and forcing his blurred eyes to stay open, and scanned the forest in the soft light of day. All at once Morgaine moved, reached for weapons, then blinked at him in dismay, leaning on her elbow. "What befell? Thee fell asleep on watch?"

  He shook his head, shrugged off the prospect of her anger, which he had already reckoned on. "I decided not to wake you. You looked overtired."

  "Is it a favor to me if you fall out of the saddle today?"

  He smiled and shook his head yet again, inwardly braced against the sting of her temper, which could be hurtful. She hated to be cared for, and she was too often inclined to drive herself when she might have rested, to prove the point. It should of course be otherwise between them, ilin and liyo, servant and liege lady… but she refused to learn to rely on anyone…

  expecting I shall die, he thought, with a troubling touch of ill-omen, as others have who have served her; she waits on that.

  "Shall I saddle the horses, liyo? "

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  She sat up, shrugged the blanket about her in the morning chill and stared at the ground, resting her hands at her temples. "I have need to think. We must go back somehow. I ha
ve need to think."

  "Best you do that rested, then."

  Her eyes flicked to his, and at once he regretted pricking at her— a perversity in him, who was fretted by her habits. He knew that temper surely followed, along with a sharp reminder of his place. He was prepared to bear that, as he had a hundred times and more, intended and unintended, and he simply wished it said and done. "It likely is," she said quietly, and that confounded him. "Aye, saddle the horses."

  He rose and did so, troubled at heart. His own moving was painful; he limped, and there was a constant stitch in his side, a cracked rib, he thought. Doubtless she hurt too, and that was expected; bodies mended; sleep restored strength… but most of all he was concerned about the sudden quiet in her, this despair and yielding. They had been travelling altogether too long, at a pace which wore them to nerve and bone; no rest, never rest, world and world and world. They survived the hurts; but there were things of the soul too, overmuch of death and war, and horror which still dogged them, hunting them— to which now they had to return. Of a sudden he longed for her anger, for something he understood.

  "Liyo," he said when he had finished with the horses and she knelt burying the fire, covering all trace of it. He dropped down, put himself on both knees, being ilin. "Liyo, it comes to me that if our enemies are sitting where we must return, then sit they will, at least for a time; they fared no better in that passage than we. For us— liyo, I beg you know that I will go on as long as seems good to you, I will do everything that you ask— but I am tired, and I have wounds on me that have not healed, and it seems to me that a little rest, a few days to freshen the horses and to find game and renew our supplies— is it not good sense to rest a little?"