Wall of Shiuan com-2

by C. J. Cherryh

  “I thought,” he said, “that you would have left, or that you were lost.”

  “I had my own difficulties,” she said; and with anguish she slammed her fist against her leg. “Would you could have found a chance to kill him.”

  The accusation shot home. “When the rain stops—” he offered in his guilt.

  “This is the Suvoj,” she said fiercely, “by the name that I have heard, and that is not river-flood: it is the sea, the tide. After Hnoth, after the moons—”

  She drew breath. Vanye became aware of the malefic force of the vast light that hung above the lightning, that lent the boiling clouds strange definition. And when next the flashes showed him Morgaine clearly, she had turned her head and was gazing at the flood with an expression like a hunting wolf. “Perhaps,” she said, “perhaps there are barriers that will hold him, even past the Suvoj.”

  “It may be, liyo,” he said. “I do not know.”

  “If not, we will learn it in a few days.” Her shoulders fell, a sigh of exhaustion; she bowed her head and threw it back, scattering rain from her hair. She drew Siptah full about.

  And perhaps the lightning showed him clearly for the first time, for her face took on a sudden look of concern. “Vanye?” she asked, reaching for him. Her voice reached him thinly, distantly.

  “I can ride,” he said, although for very little he would have denied it. The prospect of another such mad course was almost more then he could bear; the pain in his ribs rode every breath. But the gentleness fed strength into him. He began to shiver, feeling the cold, where before he had had the warmth of movement. She unclasped the cloak from about her throat and flung it about his shoulders. He put up his hand to refuse it.

  “Put it on,” she said. “Do not be stubborn.” And gratefully he gathered it about him, taking warmth from the horse and from the cloak that she had worn. It made him shiver the more for a moment, his body beginning to fight the cold. She took a flask from her saddle and handed it across to him; he drank a mouthful of that foul local brew that stung his cut lip and almost made him gag, but it eased his throat after it had burned its way down, and the taste faded.

  “Keep it,” she said when he offered to return it.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back,” she said, “to Ohtij-in.”

  “No,” he objected, the reflex of fear; it leapt out in his voice, and made her look at him strangely for a moment, in shame he jerked the gelding’s head about toward Ohtij-in, started him moving, Siptah falling in beside at a gentle walk. He said nothing, wished not even to look at her, but pressed his hand to his bruised ribs beneath the cloak and tried to ignore the panic that lay like ice in his belly—Roh safely sped toward Abarais, and themselves, themselves returning into the grasp of Ohtij-in, within the reach of treachery.

  And then, a second impulse of shame for himself, he remembered the Hiua girl whom he had abandoned there without a thought toward her. It was his oath, and that was as it must be, but he was ashamed not even to have thought of her.

  “Jhirun,” he said, “was with me, a prisoner too.”

  “Forget her. What passed with Roh?”

  The question stung; guilt commingled with dread in him. He looked ahead, between the gelding’s ears. “Lord Hetharu of Ohtij-in,” he said, “went with Roh northward, to reach Abarais before the weather turned. I walked into this place, thinking to claim shelter. It is not Andur-Kursh. I have not managed well, liyo. I am sorry.”

  “Which first—Roh’s leaving or your coming?”

  He had deliberately obscured that in his telling; her harsh question cut to the center of the matter. “My coming,” he said. “ Liyo–”

  “He let you live.”

  He did look at her, tried to compose his face, though all his blood seemed gathered in his belly. “Did I seem to be comfortable there? What do you think that I could have done? I had no chance at him.” The words came, and immediately he wished he had said nothing, for there was suddenly a lie between them.

  And more than that: for he saw suspicion in her look, a quiet and horrid mistrust. In the long silence that followed, their horses side by side, he wished that she would rebuke him, quarrel, remind him how little caution he had used and what duty he owed her, anything against which he could argue. She said nothing.

  “What would you?” he cried finally, against that silence. “That you had come later?”

  “No,” she said in a voice strangely subdued.

  “It was not for me,” he surmised suddenly. “It was Roh you wanted.”

  “I did not,” she said very quietly, “know where you were. Only that Roh had sheltered in Ohtij-in: that I did hear. Other word did not reach me.”

  She fell silent again, and in the long time that they rode in the rain he clutched her warm cloak about him and reckoned that she had only given him the truth that he had insisted on knowing—more honest with him than he had been with her. Roh had named her liar, and she did not lie, even when a small untruth would have been kinder; he held that thought for comfort, scant though it was.

  “ Liyo,” he asked finally, “where were you? I tried to find you.”

  “At Aren,” she replied, and he cursed himself bitterly. “They are rough folk,” she said. “Easily impressed. They feared me, and that was convenient. I waited there for you. They said that there was no sign of you.”

  “Then they were blind,” he said bitterly. “I held to the road; I never left it. I thought only that you would leave me and keep going, and trust me to follow.”

  “They knew it, then,” she said, a frown settling on her face. “They did know.”

  “It may be,” he said, “that they feared you too much.” She swore in her own tongue, at least that was the tone of it, and shook her head, and what bided in her face then, lightning-lit, was not good to see.

  “Jhirun and I together,” he said, “walked the road; and it brought us to Ohtij-in, out of food, out of any hope. I did not know what I would find; Roh was the last that I expected. Liyo, it is a qujal–ruled hold, and there are records there, in which Roh spent his time.”

  The oath hissed between her teeth. She opened her lips to say something; and then, for they were rounding the turn of a hill, from the distance came a sound carried on the wind, the sound of distress, of riot; and she stopped, gazing at a sullen glow among the hills.

  “Ohtij-in,” she said, and set heels to Siptah, flying down the road. The gelding dipped his head and hurled himself after; Vanye bent, ignoring the pain of his side, and rode, round the remembered bendings of the road, turn after turn as the shouting came nearer.

  And suddenly the height of Ohtij-in hove into view, where the inner court blazed with light and roiling smoke through the riven gates, where black, diminutive figures struggled amid the fires.

  Shadow-shapes huddled beside the road, that became women and ragged children, bundles and baggage. The gray horse thundered near them, sent the wretched folk shrieking aside, and the black plunged after.

  Into the chaos of the inner court they rode, where fire had ravaged the shelters, rolling clouds of bitter smoke up into the rainy sky, where dead animals lay and many a corpse besides, among them both dark-haired and white, both men and halflings. At the keep gate, against the wall, a remnant of the guard was embattled with the peasants, and heaped up dead there thicker than anywhere else.

  Men scattered from the hooves of the gray horse, shrieks and screams as the witch-sword left its sheath and flared into opal light more terrible than the fires, with that darkness howling at its tip. A weapon flew; the darkness drank it, and it vanished.

  And the guard who had cast it fled, dying on the spears of the ragged attackers. It was the last resistance. The others threw down their arms and were cast to their faces by their captors, down in the mire and blood of the yard.

  “Morgen!” the ragged army hailed her, raising their weapons. “Angharan! Angharan!” Vanye sat the gelding beside her as folk crowded round them with awed hysteria i
n their faces, he and his nervous horse touched by scores of trembling hands as they touched Siptah, rashly coming too near the unsheathed blade; shying from it, they massed the more closely about him, her companion. He endured it, realizing that he had been absorbed into the fabric of legends that surrounded Morgaine kri Chya—that he himself had become a thing to frighten children and cause honest men to shudder—that they had condemned him to all he had suffered, refusing to tell to his liege what they surely had known; and that those of Ohtij-in would lately have killed him.

  He did not strike, though he trembled with the urge to do so. He still feared them, who for the hour hailed him and surrounded him with their insane adoration.

  “Angharan!” they shouted. “Morgaine! Morgaine! Morgaine!”

  Morgaine carefully sheathed Changeling, extinguishing its fire, and slid to the ground amid that press, men pushing at each other to make way for her. “Take the horses,” she bade a man who approached her with less fear than the others, and then she turned her attention to the keep. There was silence made in the courtyard at last, an exhausted hush. She walked through their midst to the steps of the keep, Changeling crosswise in her hands, that it could be drawn in an instant. There she stood, visible to them all, and ragged and bloody men came and paid her shy, awkward courtesies.

  Vanye dismounted, took up her saddle kit, that she would never leave behind her, and fended off those that offered help, no difficult matter. Men fled his displeasure, terrified.

  Morgaine stayed for him, her foot on the next step until he had begun to ascend them, then passed inside. Vanye slung the saddlebag over his shoulder and walked after, up the steps and into the open gateway, past the staring dead face of the gatekeeper, who lay sprawled in the shadows inside.

  Men took up torches, leading their way. Vanye shuddered at what he saw in the spiral halls, the dead both male and female, both qujal and guiltless human servants, the ravaged treasures of Ohtij-in that littered the halls. He kept walking, up the spiralling core that would figure thereafter in his nightmares, limping after Morgaine, who walked sword in hand.

  She will finish it, Roh had prophesied of her, end all hope for them. That is what she has come to do.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the lord’s hall too there was chaos, bodies lying where they had fallen. Even the white dog was dead by the hearth, in a pool of blood that stained the carpets and the stones, and flowed to mingle with that of its master and mistress. A knot of servants huddled in the corner for protection, kneeling.

  And in the other corner men were gathered, rough and ragged folk, who held prisoner three of the house guard, white-haired halflings, stripped of their masking helms, bound, and surrounded by peasant weapons.

  Vanye stopped, seeing that, and the sudden warmth of the fire hit him, making breath difficult; he caught for balance against the door frame as Morgaine strode within the room and looked about.

  “Get the dead out of the hold,” she said to the ragged men who awaited her orders. “Dispose of them. Is their lord among them?”

  The eldest man made a helpless gesture. “No knowing,” he said, in an accent difficult to penetrate.

  “ Liyo,” Vanye offered, from the doorway, “a man named Kithan is in charge of Ohtij-in, Hetharu’s brother. I know him by sight.”

  “Stay by me,” she ordered curtly; and to the others: “Make search for him. Save all writings, wherever found, and bring them to me.”

  “Aye,” said one of that company at whom she looked.

  “What of the rest?” asked the eldest, a stooped and fragile man. “What of the other things? Be there else, lady?”

  Morgaine frowned and looked about her, a warlike and evil figure amid their poor leather and rags; she looked on prisoners, on dead men, at the small rough-clad folk who depended on her for orders in this tumult, and shrugged. “What matter to me?” she asked. “What you do here is your own affair, only so it does not cross me. A guard at our door, servants to attend us—” Her eyes swept to the comer where the house servants cowered, marked men in brown livery who had served the qujal. “Those three will suffice. And Haz, give me three of your sons for guards at my quarters, and no more will I ask of you tonight.”

  “Aye,” said the old man, bowed in awkward imitation of a lord’s courtesy; he gestured to certain of the young men—small folk, all of them, who approached Morgaine with lowered eyes, the tallest of them only as high as her shoulder, but broad, powerful young men, for all that.

  Marshlanders, Vanye reckoned them: men of Aren. They spoke among themselves in a language he could not comprehend: men, but not of any kind that his land had known, small and furtive and, he suddenly suspected, without any law common to men that he knew. They were many, swarming the corridors, wreaking havoc; they had failed deliberately to find him for Morgaine—and yet she came back among them as if she utterly trusted them. He became conscious that he was not armed, that he, who guarded her back, had no weapon, and their lives were in the hands of these small, elusive men, who could speak secrets among themselves.

  A body brushed past, taller than the others, black-robed; Vanye recoiled in surprise, then recognized the priest, who was making for Morgaine. In panic he moved and seized the priest, jerked at the robes, thrust him sprawling to the floor.

  Morgaine looked down on the balding, white-haired priest, whose lean face was rigid with terror, who shook and trembled in Vanye’s grip. In a sudden access of panic as Morgaine stepped closer, the priest sought to rise, perhaps to run, but Vanye held him firmly.

  “Banish him to the court,” Vanye said, remembering how this same priest had lured him into Ohtij-in, promising safety; how this priest had stood at Bydarra’s elbow. “Let him try his fortunes out there, among men.”

  “What is your name?” Morgaine asked of the priest.

  “Ginun,” the slight halfling breathed. He twisted to look up at Vanye, dark-eyed, an aging man—and perhaps more man than qujal. Fear trembled on his lips. “Great lord, many would have helped you, many, many—I would have helped you. Our lords were mistaken.”

  “Where were you?” Vanye asked, bitterness so choking him he could hardly speak; he thrust the man free. “You knew your lord, you knew what would happen when you led me to him.”

  ‘Take us with you,” Ginun wept. “Take us with you. Do not leave us behind.”

  “Where,” asked Morgaine in a chill voice, “do you suppose that we will go from here?”

  “Through the Wells—to that other land.”

  The hope in the priest’s eyes was terrible to see as he looked from one to the other of them, chin trembling, eyes suffused with tears. He lifted his hand to touch Morgaine, lost courage and touched Vanye’s hand instead, a finger-touch, no more. “Please,” he asked of them.

  “Who has told you this thing?” Morgaine asked. “Who?”

  “We have waited,” the priest whispered hoarsely. “We have tended the Wells and we have waited. Take us through. Take us with you.”

  Morgaine turned her face away, not willing more to talk with him. The priest’s shoulders fell and he began to shake with sobs; at Vanye’s touch he looked up, his face that of a man under death sentence. “We have served the khal,” he protested, as if that should win favor of the conqueror of Ohtij-in. “We have waited, we have waited. Lord, speak to her. Lord, we would have helped you.”

  “Go away,” said Vanye, drawing him to his feet. Unease moved in his heart when he looked on this priest who served devils, whose prayers were to the works of qujal. The priest drew back from his hands, still staring at him, still pleading with his eyes. “She has nothing to do with you and your kind,” Vanye told the priest. “Nor do I.”

  “The Barrow-kings knew her,” the priest whispered, his eyes darting past him and back again. He clutched convulsively at the amulets that hung among his robes. “The lord Roh came with the truth. It was the truth.”

  And the priest fled for the door, but Vanye seized him, hauled him about, others in the roo
m giving back from him. The priest struggled vainly, frail, desperate man. “ Liyo,” Vanye said in a quiet voice, fearful of those listening about them; prepared to strike the priest silent upon the instant. “ Liyo, do not let him go. This priest will do you harm if he can. I beg you listen to me.”

  Morgaine looked on him, and on the priest. “Brave priest,” she said in a voice still and clear, in the hush that had fallen in the room. “Fwar!”

  A man came from the corner where the house guards were held, a taller man than most, near Morgaine’s height. Square-faced he was, with a healing slash that ran from right cheek to left chin, across both lips. Vanye knew him at once, him that had ridden the gelding into the courtyard—the face that had glared sullenly up at him. Such a look he received now; the man seemed to have no other manner.

  “Aye, lady?” Fwar said. His accent was plainer than that of the others, and he bore himself boldly, standing straight.

  “Have your kinsmen together,” Morgaine said, “and find the khal that survive. I want no killing of them, Fwar. I want them set in one room, under guard. And you know by now that I mean what I say.”

  “Aye,” Fwar answered, and frowned. The face might have been ordinary once. No more; it was a mask in which one most saw the eyes, and they were hot and violent. “For some we are too late.”

  “I care not who is to blame,” Morgaine said. “I hold you, alone, accountable to me.”

  Fwar hesitated, then bowed, started to leave.

  “And, Fwar—”

  “Lady?”

  “Ohtij-in is a human hold now. I have kept my word. Whoever steals and plunders now—steals from you.”

  This thought went visibly through Fwar’s reckoning, and other men in the room stood attentive and sobered.

  “Aye,” Fwar said.

  “Lady,” said another, in a voice heavy with accent, “what of the stores of grain? Are we to distribute—?”

  “Is not Haz your priest?” she asked. “Let your priest divide the stores. It is your grain, your people. Ask me no further on such matters. Nothing here concerns me. Leave me.”