The Complete Morgaine

by C. J. Cherryh

  The strangeness of the land was wearing at them both, he decided; they were tired, and nerves were tautly strung. He felt in his own body the ache, the weight of mail that settled with malevolent cunning into the hollows of a man’s body, that galled flesh raw where there was the least fold in garments beneath. Therein lay reason enough of tempers; and she feared—feared Roh, feared ambush, feared things, he suspected uneasily, the like of which he did not imagine.

  “Aye,” he murmured at last, settling more easily into the saddle. “We are both tired, liyo. That is all.”

  She seemed content with that.

  • • •

  And for many long hours they passed through land that was low and all the same, alternate tracts of cheerless, unhealthy forest and barren marsh, where the road was passable and in most places well above the water. Qujal-made, this road, Vanye reckoned to himself—wrought by ancient magics—qujalin works lasted, strange, immune to the ages that ate away at the works of men, some seeming ageless, while others crumbled away suddenly as if they had become infected with mortality. There was a time not so long ago when he would have sought any other road than this, that led them so well in the direction Morgaine sought: qujalin roads surely led to qujalin places—and surely such was this called Abarais, in Shiuan, which Morgaine sought.

  And better, far better, could they ride that way alone, unseen, unmarked by men. He felt Jhirun’s weight against his back, balancing his own, she seemed to sleep for brief periods. It was a warm and altogether unaccustomed sensation, the nearness of another being: ilin, outlaw, bastard motherless from birth, he could recall few moments that any had laid hands on him save in anger. He found it disturbing now, this so harmless burden against him, that weighed against him, and against his mind.

  He watched Morgaine, who glanced constantly to this side and that as they rode, searching every shadow; and it came to him what kept his mind so ill at ease; that Morgaine, arrogant as she was, seemed afraid—that she, who had no sane regard for her life or his, was greatly afraid, and that somewhere in that fear rested the child that rode sleeping at his back.

  • • •

  The forest closed in upon the road in the late afternoon and did not yield them up again, a way that grew more and more darksome, where it seemed that evening came premature. The trees here lived, growing in interlaced confusion, thrusting roots out into the channels, reaching branches overhead, powerless against the closely fitted megaliths that were the body of the road. Brush crowded over the margins, making it impossible for two horses to go abreast.

  Morgaine, her horse unencumbered, led in this narrow way, a shadow among shadows, riding a pale horse. That pale hair of hers was an enemy banner for any hereabouts who did not love qujal; and they rode blindly, unable to see beyond this tangle of brush that had found root, where seeds and earth piled up against the enduring stones. Cover your hair, Vanye wished to tell her, but he felt still that mood in her, that unreason that he did not want to meet yet another time. This forest was not a time or place for quarrels.

  Clouds again began to veil the sky, and that veil grew constantly darker, plunging the forest into a halflight that destroyed all perspective, that made of the aisles of trees deep caverns hung with moss, and of the roadway a trail without beginning or end.

  “I am afraid,” Jhirun protested suddenly, the only word she had volunteered all day long. Her fingers clutched Vanye’s shoulder-belt as if pleading for his intercession. “The sky is clouding. This is a bad place to be in a storm.”

  “What is your counsel?” Morgaine asked her.

  “Go back. There is known road behind us. Please, lady, let us ride back to higher ground as quickly as we can.”

  “High ground is too far back.”

  “We do not know whether the road even goes on,” Jhirun urged, desperation in her voice. She wrenched at Vanye’s sleeve. “Please.”

  “And leave ourselves,” said Morgaine, “on this side of a flood and Roh safely on the other.”

  “Roh may drown,” Vanye said, set ill at ease by the suspicion that the girl was reasoning more clearly than his liege at the moment. “And if he drowns, all we need do is survive and proceed at leisure. Liyo, I think in this the girl is giving us good advice. Let us turn back, now.”

  Morgaine gave him not even the grace of an answer, only laid heels to Siptah and put the gray stud to a quicker pace, that in level places became almost a run.

  “Hold on,” Vanye bade Jhirun, grim anger in his heart. Her arms went about him, locked tightly as the gelding took a broken stretch of the road and picked up the clear paving again, dragging the exhausted pony after them. A misstep, a pool deeper than it looked—he feared the reckless pace that Morgaine chose, and feared equally the prospect of being caught in this lowest and darkest part of the land when the storm came down. There was no promise of higher ground as they went further and further, only of worse, and Morgaine, blindly insistent on the decision she had made, led them into it.

  The clouds gathered yet more darkly and wind ruffled the water of the pools. Once something large and dark slid into the water as Siptah leaped it—vanishing beneath the murky surface. Birds started from cover with a clap of wings and raucous cries, startling the horses, but they did not slack their pace more than an instant.

  The road parted in a muddy bank, a place riven as if stone had pulled from stone, a channel flowing between, and Siptah took that plunge, hooves sliding in the mud, hindquarters bunching as he drove for the other rise. Vanye sent the gelding in his wake, and the pony went down on the slide. The gelding recovered from the impact with a wrench that wrung a cry from Jhirun, and stood still on the upslope, trembling—but the pony lacked the strength or the inclination to rise. Vanye slid off and took the pony’s halter, hauled against it with his full weight and brought the animal to its feet, but it simply stood there and stared at him with ears down and coat standing in points of mud, its eyes wells of misery.

  He slipped the halter from it. “No,” Jhirun protested, but he pushed its head around and slapped it on its muddy rump, sending it wandering, dazed, back down the bank. He had dim hope for the animal, but more than he held for their own fortunes.

  He looped the empty rope and halter to the saddle, then took the reins and led his own horse up the opposing slope. Morgaine was no longer in sight when he reached the crest.

  He swore, rose the awkward way into the saddle, passing his leg in front, avoiding even so much as a backward glance at Jhirun. She held to him as he spurred the exhausted animal; he felt her sobbing against his back, whether for grief over the pony or for terror for herself, he was not sure. Upon his face now he felt the first drops of rain, and panic rose in him, the bitter surety of disaster shaping about them.

  A moment more brought Morgaine in view—she refused to hold back now, he thought, because she also had begun to realize that there was no safety, and she sought desperately to bring them through this place, to find an end of it as there had been an end of all other such forested entanglements.

  The pattering fall of rain among the leaves began in earnest, scarring the smooth faces of the pools and chilling the air abruptly.

  • • •

  Soon enough there was no more running. The stone causeway began to be awash in the low places, and the horses picked their way through overgrowth. The rain slanted down, borne on strong wind, blinding, making the horses shy.

  The gelding stumbled on a root, recovered with an effort that Vanye felt in his own muscles, a failing shudder. He flung his leg over the horn and slid down, beginning to lead the horse, finding its way with his own feet, lest it cripple itself. Ahead of him Siptah walked, slowly now.

  “Liyo,” he shouted over the roar of the water, that swallowed all lesser sounds. “Let me to the fore.”

  She heard him and reined back, letting him lead the gelding past. He saw her face when he looked back, haggard and drawn a
nd miserable with weariness—remembered how little she had slept. Now she surely realized that she had chosen amiss in her stubbornness, that she should have heeded Jhirun, who knew this land; but she did not offer even yet to direct them back. Jhirun offered nothing, no word, no objection; she only clung to the saddle, her hair streaming with water, her shawl a soaking rag about her shoulders. She did not even lift her head.

  Vanye turned his face into the wind and the rain and led, his feet rapidly numb in the cold water, his boots soaked through. Mud held his feet and wrenched at his joints, and he fought it, moving as rapidly as he could, gasping with exhaustion.

  Night was settling about them. The road was lost in twilight. Before them were only hummocks of earth that supported a tree apiece, and the channels between had become torrents. Only an occasional upthrust of rock or the absence of the largest trees in a given line betrayed the presence of the road that underlay the flood.

  A vast stele heaved up beside the road, vine-covered and obscured by a tree that had forced it over at an angle and then died, a skeletal ruin. On most such stones the persistent rains had worn away the carvings, but this was harder stone. Here Morgaine paused, leaned in her saddle to seize and pull aside the dead vines, reading the ancient glyphs as if by them she hoped to find their way.

  “Arrhn,” she said. “Here stood a place called Arrhn. There is nothing else.”

  “Aren,” said Jhirun suddenly. “Aren is the marshlanders’ hold.”

  “Where?” Vanye asked. “Where would it lie?”

  “I do not know,” Jhirun insisted. “But, lady—lady, if it is near—they will shelter us. They must. They will not turn you away. They would not.”

  “Reasonably,” said Morgaine, “if it was qujalin, it would have some connection with the road.”

  Of sound for the moment there was the singing of the wind that tossed the branches, and the mind-numbing roar of the waters that rushed and bubbled about them, elements that had their own argument, that persuaded that even strange shelter was a way to survive.

  She set Siptah moving again, and Vanye struggled to keep the lead, the breath tearing in his lungs. He waded up to his knees in some places, and felt the force of the water in his shaking muscles.

  “Ride,” Morgaine called at him. “Change with me; I will walk a while.”

  “You could not,” he looked back to shout at her—saw her tired face touched with anguish. “Liyo,” he added, while he had the advantage of her, “I think that you might have used better sense if I were not with you. Only so much can I do.” He shook the water from his eyes and swept off the helm that was only added weight, that made his shoulders ache. “Take it for me,” he asked of her. The armor too he would have shed if he could have taken the time, but there was none to spare. She took the helm and hung it to her saddlebow by its inside thong.

  “You are right,” she said, giving him that consolation.

  He drew a deep breath and kept moving, laced his fingers in the gelding’s cheekstrap and felt his way through the swirling dark waters in a darkness that was almost complete. He walked over his knees now, in a current that almost swept him off his feet. He had feared for the horses’ fragile legs. Now he feared for his own. At one moment he went into a hole up to his waist, and thought with increasing panic that he had not much more strength for guiding them: the way ahead looked no better, dark water boiling among the trees.

  Something splashed amid the roar of water as he delayed, staring at that prospect before them; he looked back and saw Morgaine waist-deep in the flood, struggling with the current and leading Siptah to reach his side. He cursed tearfully, fought his way to meet her and bid her use good sense, but she caught his arm instantly as he began to object, and drew his attention away to the left, pointing through the murk of night and storm.

  The lightning showed a dark mass in that direction, a hill, a heap of stones, massive and dark and crowned with trees, a height that well overtopped any further rise of the waters.

  “Aye,” he said hoarsely, hope leaping up in him; but he trusted nothing absolutely in this land, and he shook at Jhirun’s leg to rouse her and point out the same to her. She stared over his head where he pointed, her eyes shadowed and her face white in the lightning.

  “What is that place?” he shouted at her. “What would it be?”

  “Aren,” she answered, her voice breaking. “It looks to be Aren.”

  But Morgaine had not delayed. Vanye turned his head and saw her already moving in that direction, their sounds masked from each other by the rush of water—she wading and leading Siptah in that flood. He wiped his eyes and struggled to overtake her, dreading no longer alien ruins or devils or whatever folk might live in this marsh. It was the water he feared, that ripped at his body and strained his knees. It boiled up about them, making a froth on the side facing the current, waist-deep, chest-deep. He saw the course that Morgaine was seeking, indirectly, to go from high point to high point where the trees were; he drew even with her, shook the blinding drops from his eyes and tried to take the reins from Morgaine’s hand.

  “Go on,” he shouted at her, overwhelmed with fear for her. Her lighter weight was more vulnerable to the current that tore at them, her strength perilously burdened by the armor she wore. But she refused vehemently, and he realized then that he was asking something impossible of her: she was too light to dare let go; she clung to the saddle on the other side, Siptah laboring in the strong current. Vanye himself fought the current almost shoulder-deep of a sudden, and the horses began to swim, great desperate efforts of their tired bodies.

  “Lord!” Jhirun screamed.

  He turned his head to look back at her, turned again in the direction of her gaze to see a great mass coming down on them in the lightning-lit waters, a tree uprooted and coming down the current end toward them.

  “Liyo!” he cried warning.

  It hit, full into the gelding’s side, drove against his armor and tore him from the reins, driving him against the gray. Siptah swung under the impact, spilling him under, drove at him with threshing hooves. Roots speared at him, tangled and snagged at his armor. He fought upward against them, had purchase on the jagged mass itself. It rolled with him, spilling him under again, pulling him down with it.

  There was a moment of cold, of dark, an impact.

  He embraced the obstacle, the tree stabbing at his back with all the force of the current, roots snapping against his armored back. He felt stone against his face. He could breathe for a moment, inhaling air and foaming water. Then the tree tore past, ripping at him, and he slipped, pinned by the force of the current against the rock, breathing the froth boiling about his head. His fingers gripped the rock again, and he hauled himself a painful degree upward and gasped a mouthful of air, saw other stones in the near-dark, the bank close at hand, promising safety.

  In desperation he loosed his hold, helpless to swim at the best of times, fighting without skill and weighted by armor and exhaustion. At once he knew it had been a mistake. He could not make it so far against the current. The rush of water dragged him down and whirled him like a leaf around the bend—belly-on to the rock, breath driven from him, skull battered by a second impact as he slipped into yet another stone, numb legs tucked, realizing dully that they were bent because he was aground. He moved, heavy with water and without strength in his limbs, drove again through shallow water and a maze of reeds to sprawl at the bank, to crawl ashore among the stones. For a moment he was numb, the force of the pelting rain painful against his back even through the armor.

  There was a time of dark, and at last the rain seemed less violent. He moved, rolled over and stared up, with a sudden clutch of fear as he recognized the cursed stones in the lightning—Standing Stones, qujalin ruins that had intercepted his body and saved his life. The monoliths leaned over him like a gathering of giants in the dark and the rain.

  “Liyo!” he shouted into th
e roar of waters and the wind. “Morgaine!”

  There was no answer.

  Chapter 6

  The dawn was beginning, the murky clouds picking up indirect light. Vanye splashed across a shallow channel, came up against the bank and rested against a log that had fallen into the water. It might be the same from which he had started this circle of his search, or different. He no longer knew. In the light things began to take on different shapes.

  There was only the persistent roar of the flood, the patter of gentle rain on the leaves, always the water, numbing the senses.

  “Morgaine!” he cried. How many times he had called, what ground he had covered, he did not remember. He had searched the night long, through ruins and from one islet to another, between moments that he had to sink down and rest. His voice was all but gone. His armor pressed on his shoulders with agonizing weight, and now it would have been far, far easier for his knees to bend, letting him sink down into the cold and the mud and the waters that were likely to have him in the end.

  But he would not give way without knowing what had become of his liege. Other trusts in his life he had failed, to kinsmen, to friends, and some of those were dead, but they had had others on whom to rely—Morgaine had no other, none at all.

  He leaned forward, elbows tucked against his belly and the log, dragged his feet one and then the other from the mud that pulled at tendons and muscles and claimed him whenever he rested at all. The rotting trunk became his bridge to higher ground. He climbed it to the bank, used brush for a handhold and struggled to the crest of the hill. Dark gathered about him, his pulse loud in his ears, pressure in his temples. He walked. All that he knew at times was touch, the rough wetness of bark, the stinging slap of leaves and branches he could not see to avoid, the slickness of wet leaves beneath his fingers as he fought his way up yet another rise.