Wall of Shiuan com-2

by C. J. Cherryh

  There was silence, dismay.

  One of the marshlanders pushed at the qujalin guards, directing them to the door. In their wake went others, Fwar, Haz; there were left only Haz’s three sons, claimed as guards, and the weeping priest, Ginun, and the three servants, who knelt cowering in the far corner.

  “Show me,” said Morgaine to the servants, “where are the best lodgings with a solid door and some secure room nearby where we can lodge this priest for his own protection.”

  She spoke softly with them. One moved, and the others gathered courage, kneeling facing her, eyes downcast “There,” said the oldest of them, himself no more than a youth, and pointed toward the door that led inward, away from the central corridor.

  There was a small, windowless storeroom opposite a lordly hall. Here Morgaine bade the priest disposed, with a bar across that door, and that chained, and the door visible by those who would guard their own quarters. It was Vanye’s to put the priest inside, and he did so, not ungently.

  He hated the look of the priest’s eyes as he was set within that dark place, forbidden a light lest he do himself and others harm with it. The priest’s terror fingered at nightmares of his own, and he hesitated at closing the door.

  Priest of devils, who would have worshipped at Morgaine’s feet, an uncleanness that attached itself to them, saying things it was not good to hear, Vanye loathed the man, but that a man should fear the dark, and being shut within, alone—this he understood.

  “Keep still,” he warned Ginun last, the guards out of hearing. “You are safer here, and you will be safe so long as you do keep still.”

  The priest was still staring at him when he closed the door, his thin face white and terrified in the shadow. Vanye dropped the bar and locked the chain through it—made haste to turn his back on it, as on a private nightmare, remembering the roof of the tower of his prison—Roh’s words, stored up in this priest, waiting to break forth. He thought in agony that he should see to it that the priest never spoke—that he, ilin, should take that foulness on his own soul and never tell Morgaine, never burden her honor with knowing it.

  He was not such a man; he could not do it. And he did not know whether this in him was virtue or cowardice.

  The sons of Haz had taken up their posts at the door. Morgaine awaited him in the hall beyond. He went to her, into the chambers that had been some great lord’s, and dropped the saddlebags that he had carried onto the stones of the hearth, staring about him.

  More bodies awaited them: tapestries rent, bodies of men-at-arms and the one-time lords lying amid shattered crystal and overturned chairs. Vanye knew them. One was the body of an old woman; another was that of one of the elder lords, he that had made most grudging obeisance to Hetharu.

  “See to it,” Morgaine said sharply to the servants. “Remove them.”

  And while this was being attended, she righted a heavy chair and put it near the fire that still blazed in the hearth for its former owners, extended her legs to it, booted ankles crossed, paying no attention to the grisly task that went on among the servants. Changeling she set point against the floor and leaning by her side, and gave a long sigh.

  Vanye averted his eyes from what passed in the room. Too much, too many of such pathetic dead: he had been of the warriors, but of a land where men fought men who chose to fight, who went armed, in notice of such intention. He did not want to remember the things that he had seen in Ohtij-in, alone or in her company.

  And somewhere in Ohtij-in was Myya Jhirun, lost in this chaos, hidden or dead or the possession of some rough-handed marshlander. He thought of that, sick at heart, weighed his own exhaustion, the hazard of the mob outside, who spoke a language he could not understand, but he was obliged. For other wretched folk within the hold, for other women as unfortunate, he had no power to stop what happened—only for Jhirun, who had done him kindness, who had believed him when he said he would take her from Ohtij-in.

  “ Liyo,” he said, and dropped to his knees at the fireside, by Morgaine. His voice shook, reaction to things already past, but he had no shame for that; they were both tired. “ Liyo, Jhirun is here somewhere. By your leave I am going to go and do what I can to find her. I owe her.”

  “No.”

  “ Liyo–”

  She stared into the fire, her tanned face set, her white hair still wet from the rain outside. “Thee will go out in the courtyard and some Shiua will put a knife in thy back. No. Enough.”

  He thrust himself to his feet, vexed by her protection of him, exhausted beyond willingness to debate his feelings with her. He started for the door, reckoning that she had expressed her objection and that was the sum of it. He was going, nonetheless. He had seen to her welfare, and she knew it.

  “ Ilin,” her voice rang out after him. “I gave thee an order.”

  He stopped, looked at her: it was a stranger’s voice, cold and foreign to him. She was surrounded by men he did not know, by intentions he no longer understood. He stared at her, a tightness closing about his heart. It was as if she, like the land, had changed.

  “I do not need to reason with you,” she said.

  “Someone,” he said, “should reason with you.”

  There was long silence. She sat and stared at him while he felt the cold grow in her.

  “I will have your belongings searched for,” she said, “and you may take the horse, and the Hiua girl, if she is still alive, and you may go where you will after that.”

  She meant it. Outrage trembled through him. Almost, almost he spun on his heel and defied her—but there was not even anger in her voice, nothing against which he could argue later, no hope that it was unthought or unmeant. There was only utter weariness, a hollowness that was beyond reaching, and if he left, there would be none to reach her, none.

  “I do not know,” he said, “to what I have taken oath. I do not recognize you.”

  Her eyes remained focused somewhere past him, as if she had already dismissed him.

  “You cannot send me away,” he cried at her, and his hoarse voice broke, robbing him of dignity.

  “No,” she agreed without looking at him. “But while you stay, you do not dispute my orders.”

  He let go a shaking breath, and came to where she sat, knelt down on the hearthstones and ripped off the cloak she had lent him, laid it aside and stared elsewhere himself until he thought that he could speak without losing his self-control.

  She needed him. He convinced himself that this was still true; and her need was desperate and unfair in its extent and therefore she would not order him to stay, not on her terms. Jhirun, he thought, would be on his conscience so long as he lived; but Morgaine—Morgaine he could not leave.

  “May I,” he asked finally, quietly, “send one of the servants to see if he can find her?”

  “No.”

  He gave a desperate breath of a laugh, hoping that it was an unthought reaction in her, that she would relent in an instant, but laugh and hope died together when he looked at her directly and saw the coldness still in her face. “I do not understand,” he said. “I do not understand.”

  “When you took oath to me,” she said in a thin, hushed voice, “one grace you asked of me that I have always granted so far as I could: to remain untouched by the things I use and the things I do. Will you not grant that same grace to this girl?”

  “You do not understand. Liyo, she was a prisoner; they took her elsewhere. She may be hurt. The women out there—they are a prey to the marshlanders and the mob in the court. Whatever else, you are a woman. Can you not find the means to help her?”

  “She may be hurt. If you would heal her, leave my service and see to it. If not, have mercy on her and leave her alone.” She lapsed into silence for a moment, and her gray eyes roamed the room, with its torn tapestries and shattered treasures. From the courtyard there was still shouting and screaming, and her glance wandered to the windows before she looked back to him. “I have done what I had to do,” she said in an absent, deathly voice.
“I have loosed the Barrows and the marshlands on Shiuan because it was a means to reach this land most expediently, with force to survive. I do not lead them. I only came among them. I take shelter here only until it is possible to move on. I do not look at what I leave behind me.”

  He listened, and something inside him shuddered, not at the words, which deserved it, but at the tone of them. She was lying; he hoped with all his heart that in this one thing he understood her, or he understood nothing at all. And to rise now, to walk out that door and leave her, took something he did not possess. In this, too, he did not know whether it was courage or cowardice.

  “I will stay,” he said.

  She stared at him, saying nothing. He grew afraid, so strange and troubled her look was. There were shadows beneath her eyes. He reckoned that she had not slept well, had rested little in recent days, with no companion to guard her sleep among strangers, with no one to fill the silence with which she surrounded herself, implacable in her purpose and disinterested in others’ desires.

  “I will make discreet inquiry,” she said at last. “It may be that I can do something to have her found without finding her... only so you know clearly what the conditions are.”

  He heard the brittleness in her voice, knew what it masked, and bowed, in shaken gratitude, touched his brow to the hearthstones, sat up again.

  “There is surely a bed to be had,” she said, “and an hour or more before I shall be inclined to need it.”

  He looked beyond her, to the open arch of the shadowed next room, where the servants had begun stirring about, the removal of the former owners completed. There was a light somewhere within, the opening and closing of cabinets, the rustle of fabrics. A warm bed: he longed toward it, exhausted—luxury that he seldom knew, and far different from the things he had expected at the end of this ugly day.

  It was far different, he thought, from what many others knew this night: Jhirun, if she still lived, Kithan, bereft of power, Roh—fled into the storm and the flood this night, in his private nightmare that centered upon Morgaine—Roh, with Abarais before him and the chance of defeating them.

  But Morgaine gazed down on him now with a face that at last he knew, tired, inexpressibly tired, and sane.

  “You take first rest,” he said. “I shall sit by the fire and keep an eye on the servants.”

  She regarded him from half-lidded eyes, shook her head. “Go as I told you,” she said. “I have eased your conscience, so far as I can. Go on. You have given me matters to attend yet; now let me attend them.”

  He gathered himself up, almost fell in doing it, his feet asleep, and he steadied himself against the mantel, looked at her apologetically. Her gaze, troubled and thoughtful, gave him benediction; and he bowed his head in gratitude.

  Nightmares surrounded her at times. There was one proceeding in the courtyard and elsewhere in the hold this night Stop it, he wanted to plead with her. Take command of them and stop it. You can do it, and will not.

  She had led an army once; ten thousand men had followed her before his age, and had been swept away into oblivion, lost Clans and kingdoms had perished, dynasties ended, Andur-Kursh plunged into a hundred years of poverty and ruin.

  So clan Yla had perished in her service, to the last man, lost in the void of Gates; so passed much of Chya, and many a man of Nhi and Myya and Ris. Horrid suspicion nagged at him.

  He looked back at her, where she sat, a lonely figure before the fire. He opened his mouth to speak to her, to go back and tell her what things he had begun to fear of this land, to hear her say that they were not so.

  There were the servants, who would overhear and repeat things elsewhere. He dared not speak, not before them. He turned away toward the other room.

  There was the softness of a down mattress, the comfort of fabrics smooth and soft; of cleanliness, that most of all.

  She would call him, he reckoned, in only a little while; there was not that much of the night remaining. He slept mostly dressed, in clean clothing that he had discovered in a chest, the former lord as tall as he and no whit slighter, save in the length of arm and breadth of shoulder. The fine cloth rested easily on his hurts; it was good to feel it, to have stripped away the stubble of days without a razor, and to rest with his hair damp from a thorough scrubbing... in a place warm and soft, fragrant with a woman’s care, be she servant or murdered qujalin lady.

  He wrested his mind from such morbid thoughts, determined not to remember where he was, or what things he had seen outside. He was safe. Morgaine watched his sleep, as he would watch hers in turn. He cast himself into trusting oblivion, determined that nothing would rob him of this rest that he had won.

  Small sounds disturbed him now and then; once the opening of the outer door alarmed him, until he heard Morgaine’s soft voice speaking calmly with someone, and that door then close, and her light tread safely in the room next his. Once he heard her in the room with him, searching the closets and chests, and knew that soon enough she would call him to his watch; he headed himself back into a few treasured moments of sleep. He heard the splash of water in the bath, the room mostly dark save for a single lamp there and the fireplace in the next room; grateful for the small remaining time, pleased to know she also took the leisure for such comforts as he had enjoyed, he shut his eyes again.

  And the rustle of cloth woke him, the sight of a woman, qujal, in a white gown, ghost-pale in the darkness. He did not know her for an instant, and his heart crashed against his ribs in panic, thinking murder, and of the dead. But Morgaine drew back the coverlet on her side of the great bed, and he, with some embarrassment, prepared to quit the other before she must bid him do so.

  “Go back to sleep,” she said, confounding him. “The servants are out and the door is bolted on our side. There is no need for either of us to stay awake, unless thee is overnice. I am not.”

  And in her hand was Changeling, that always slept with her; she laid it atop the coverlet, a thing fell and dangerous, in the valley that would be between them. Vanye rested very still, felt the mattress give as she settled beside him and drew the covers over her, heard the gentle sigh of her breath.

  And felt the weight of Changeling, that rested between.

  He held no more urge to sleep, his heart still beating rapidly. It was that she had startled him, he told himself at first—he found it disturbing that for that single instant he had not known her—frost-fair, frost-fair, an old ballad sang of her, and like frost, burning to the touch. It was kindness that she had not displaced him to the hearthside; it was like her that she was considerate in small things. Perhaps she would not have rested, having sent him to a pallet on the hard stone. Perhaps it was amends for the harsh words she had used earlier.

  But it was not the same as campfires they had shared, when they had shared warmth, both armored, companions in the dark, one always waking in dread of ambush. He listened to her breathing, felt the small movements that she made, and tried to distract his mind to other thoughts, staring at the dark rafters. He cursed silently, half a pious prayer, wondering how she would understand it if he did withdraw to the hearthside.

  Woman that she was, she might not have thought overmuch of the gesture; perhaps she did not understand.

  Or perhaps, he thought in misery, she wished him inclined to defy that barrier, and tormented him deliberately.

  She had asked him why he came with her. Your charity, he had told her lightly, was always more generous than my brother’s. The remark had stung her; he wished to this day that he had asked why, that he understood why it had angered her, or why in all that bitter day it had seemed to set her at odds with him.

  He was human; he was not sure that she was. He had been a godfearing man; and he was not sure what she was. Logic did not avail, thus close to her. All Roh’s arguments collapsed, thus close to her; and he knew clearly what had drawn him this side of Gates, although he still shuddered to look into her gray and alien eyes, or to lie thus close to her; the shudder melded into quite anoth
er feeling, and he was horrified at himself, who could be moved by her, his liege, and thousandfold murderer, and qujal, at least to the eye.

  He was lost, he thought, and possessed only this resolve, that he tried to remember that he was Kurshin, and Nhi, and that she was cursed in his land. Half that men told of her were lies; but much that was as terrible he had seen himself.

  And that logic likewise was powerless.

  He knew finally that it was neither reason nor virtue that stood in his way, but that did he once attempt that cold barrier between, she might lose all trust for him. Ilin, she had said once, hurtfully, thee has a place– Ilin, she had said this night, I have given thee an order,

  Pride forbade. He could not be treated thus; he dreaded to think what torment he could create for them, she trying to deal with him as a man, he trying to be both man and servant. She had a companion older than he, a demanding thing, and evil, that lay as a weight against his side; no other could be closer than that.

  And if she had regard for him, he thought, she surely sensed the misery that she could cause him, and kept him at a distance, until this night, that she, over-practical, over-kindly, omitted to send him to his place.

  He wondered for whose sake she had placed the sword between, for her peace of mind or for his.

  Chapter Twelve

  Something fell, a weight upon the floor.

  Vanye wakened, flung an arm wide, to the realization that Morgaine’s place beside him was vacant and cold. White daylight shone in the next room.

  He sprang up, still half-blind, fighting clear of the sheets, and stumbled to the doorway. He blinked at Morgaine, who was dressed in her accustomed black armor and standing by the open outer door. A mass of gear—armor—rested on the hearthside; it had not been there the night before. Books and charts were heaped on the floor in a flood of daylight from the window, most of them open and in disorder. Servants were even then bringing in food, dishes steaming and savory, setting gold plates and cups on the long table.