Wall of Shiuan com-2

by C. J. Cherryh

  And just outside the door, in conversation with Morgaine, stood a different set of guards: taller, slimmer men than the run of marshlanders. She was speaking with them quietly, giving orders or receiving reports.

  Vanye ran a hand through his hair, let go his breath, deciding that there was nothing amiss. He ached; his lacerated wrists hurt to bend after a night’s rest, and his feet—he looked down, grimacing at the ugly sores. He limped back into the bedroom and sought a fresh shirt from the supply in the wardrobe, and found a pair of boots that he had set aside the night before, likewise from the wardrobe. He sat in the shadow, on the bed, working the overly tight boots onto his sore feet, and listened to Morgaine’s voice in the next room, and those of the men with whom she spoke. He did not make sense of it; the distance was too great and their accent was difficult for him. It seemed awkward to go into the other room, breaking in upon her business. He waited until he had heard Morgaine dismiss them, and heard the servants finish their arranging of breakfast and leave. Only then he arose and ventured out to see what matters were between them in cold daylight.

  “Sit,” she offered him, bidding him to the table; and with a downcast expression and a shrug: “It is noon; it is still raining occasionally, and the scouts report that there is no abating of the flood at the crossing. They give some hope that matters will improve tonight, or perhaps tomorrow. This they have from the Shiua themselves.”

  Vanye began to take the chair that she offered, but when he drew it back to sit down, he saw the stain on the carpet and stopped. She looked at him. He pushed the chair in again, then walked round the table and took the opposite one, not looking down, trying to forget the memory of the night. Quietly he moved his plate across the narrow table.

  She was seated. He helped himself after her, spooned food onto gold plates and sipped at the hot and unfamiliar drink that eased his sore throat. He ate without a word, finding it wildly incongruous to be sharing table with Morgaine, stranger than to have shared a bed. He felt it improper to sit at table in her presence: to do so belonged to another life, when he had been a lord’s son, and knew hall manners and not the ashes of the hearthside or the campfire of an outlaw.

  She also maintained silence. She was not given to much conversation, but there was too much strangeness about them in Ohtij-in that he could find that silence comfortable.

  “They do not seem to have fed you well,” she remarked, when he had disposed of a third helping, and she had only then finished her first plate.

  “No,” he said, “they did not.”

  “You slept more soundly than ever I have seen you.”

  “You might have waked me,” he said, “when you wakened.”

  “You seemed to need the rest.”

  He shrugged. “I am grateful,” he said.

  “I understand that your lodging here was not altogether comfortable.”

  “No,” he agreed, and took up his cup, pushing the plate away. He was uneasy in this strange humor of hers, that discussed him with such persistence.

  “I understand,” Morgaine said, “that you killed two men—one of them the lord of Ohtij-in.”

  He set the cup down in startlement, held it in his fingers and turned it, swirling the amber liquid inside, his heart beating as if he had been running. “No,” he said. “That is not so. One man I killed, yes. But the lord Bydarra—Hetharu murdered him: his own son—murdered him, alone in that room with me; and I would have been hanged for it last night, that at the least. The other son, Kithan—he may know the truth or not; I am not sure. But it was very neatly done liyo. There is none but Hetharu and myself that know for certain what happened in that room.”

  She pushed her chair back, turning it so that she faced him at the corner of the table; and she leaned back, regarding him with a frowning speculation that made him the more uncomfortable. “Then,” she said, “Hetharu left in Roh’s company, and took with him the main strength of Ohtij-in. Why? Why such a force?”

  “I do not know.”

  “This time must have been terrible for you.”

  “Yes,” he said at last, because she left a silence to be filled.

  “I did not find Jhirun Ela’s-daughter. But while I searched for her, Vanye, I heard a strange thing.”

  He thought that the color must long since have fled his face. He took a drink to ease the tightness in his throat “Ask,” he said.

  “It is said,” she continued, “that she, like yourself, was under Roh’s personal protection. That his orders kept you both in fair comfort and safety until Bydarra was murdered.”

  He set the cup down again and looked at her, remembering that any suspicion for her was sufficient motive to kill. But she sat at breakfast with, him, sharing food and drink, while she had known these things perhaps as early as last night, before she lay down to sleep beside him.

  “If you thought that you could not trust me,” he said, “you would be rid of me at once. You would not have waited.”

  “Is thee going to answer, Vanye? Or is thee going to go on evading me? Thee has omitted many things in the telling. On thy oath—on thy oath, Nhi Vanye, no more of it.”

  “He—Roh—found welcome here, at least with one faction of the house. He saw to it that I was safe, yes; but not so comfortable, not so comfortable as you imagine, liyo. And later—when Hetharu seized power—then, too—Roh intervened.”

  “Do you know why?”

  He shook his head and said nothing. Suppositions led in many directions that he did not want to explore with her.

  “Did you speak with him directly?”

  “Yes.” There was long silence. He felt out of place even to be sitting in a chair, staring at her eye to eye, when that was not the situation between them and never had been.

  “Then thee has some idea.”

  “He said—it was for kinship’s sake.”

  She said nothing.

  “He said,” he continued with difficulty, “that if you—if you were lost, then—I think he would have sought a Claiming... ”

  “Did you suggest it?” she asked; and perhaps the revulsion showed on his face, for her look softened at once to pity. “No,” she judged. “No, thee would not.” And for a moment she gazed on him with fearsome intentness, as if she prepared something from which she had long refrained. “Thee is ignorant,” she said, “and in that ignorance, valuable to him.”

  “I would not help him against you.”

  “You are without defense. You are ignorant, and without defense.”

  Heat rose to his face, anger. “Doubtless,” he said.

  “I could remedy that, Vanye. Become what I am, accept what I serve, bear what I bear.”

  The heat fled, leaving chill behind. “No,” he said. “No.”

  “Vanye—for your own sake, listen to me.”

  Hope was in her eyes, utterly intense: never before had she pleaded with him for anything. He had come with her: perhaps then she had begun to hope for this thing that she had never won of him. He remembered then what he had for a time forgotten, the difference there was between Morgaine and what possessed Chya Roh: that Morgaine, having the right to order, had always refrained.

  It was the thing she wanted most, that alone might give her some measure of peace; and she refrained.

  “ Liyo,” he whispered, “I would do anything, anything you set me to do. Ask me things that I can do.”

  “Except this,” she concluded, in a tone that pierced his heart.

  “ Liyo–anything else.”

  She lowered her eyes, like a curtain drawn finally between them, lifted them again. There was no bitterness, only a deep sorrow.

  “Be honest with me,” he said, stung. “You nearly died in the flood. You nearly died, with whatever you seek to do left undone; and this preys on your mind. It is not for my sake that you want this. It is for yourself.”

  Again the lowering of the eyes; and she looked up again. “Yes,” she said, without a trace of shame. “But know too, Vanye, that my enemies wi
ll never leave you in peace. Ignorance cannot save you from that. So long as you are accessible to them, you will never be safe.”

  “It is what you said: that one grace you always gave me, that you never burdened me with your qujalin arts; and for that, for that I gave you more than ever my oath demanded of me. Do you want everything now? You can order. I am only ilin. Order, and I will do what you say.”

  There was warfare in the depths of her eyes, yea and nay equally balanced, desperately poised. “O Vanye,” she said softly, “thee is asking me for virtue, which thee well knows I lack.”

  “Then order,” he said.

  She frowned darkly, and stared elsewhere.

  “I tried,” he said in that long silence, “to reach Abarais, to wait for you. And if I could have used Roh to set me there—I would have gone with him—to stop him.”

  “With what?” she asked, a derisive laugh; but she turned toward him again, and even yet her look pleaded with him. “If I were lost, what could you have done?”

  He shrugged, searched up the most terrible thing that he could envision. “Casting Changeling within a Gate: that would suffice, would it not?”

  “If you could set hands on it. And that would destroy you; and destroy only one Gate.” She took Changeling from her side and laid it across the arms of her chair. “It was made for other use.”

  “Let be,” he asked of her, for she eased the blade fractionally from its sheath. He edged back, for he trusted her mind, but not that witch-blade; and it was not her habit to draw it ever unless she must. She stopped; it lay half-exposed, no metal, but very like a shard of crystal, its magics restrained until it should be wholly unsheathed.

  She held it so, the blade’s face toward him, while opal fires swirled softly in the qujalin runes on its surface. “For anyone who can read this,” she said, “here is the making and unmaking of Gates. And I think thee begins to know what this is worth, and what there is to fear should Roh take it. To bring this within his reach would be the most dangerous thing you could do.”

  “Put it away,” he asked of her.

  “Vanye: to read the runes—would thee learn simply that? Only that much—simply to read the qujalin tongue and speak it. Is that too much to ask?”

  “Do you ask it for yourself?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He averted his eyes from it, and nodded consent.

  “It is necessary,” she said. “Vanye, I will show you; and take up Changeling if ever I am lost. Knowing what you will know, the sword will teach you after—until you have no choice, as I have none.” And after a moment: “If I am lost. I do not mean that it should happen.”

  “I will do this,” he answered, and thereafter sat a cold hardness in him, like a stone where his heart had been. It was the end of what he had begun when he had followed her; he realized that he had always known it.

  She rammed the dragon sword back into its sheath and took it in the curve of her arm—nodded toward the fireside, where armor lay, bundled in a cloak. “Yours,” she said. “Some of the servants worked through the night on it. Go dress. I do not trust this place. We will settle the other matter later. We will talk of it.”

  “Aye,” he agreed, glad of that priority in things, for as she was, she might win yet more of him, piece by piece: perhaps she knew it.

  And there was an ease in her manner that had not been there in many a day, something that had settled at peace with her. He was glad for that at least. He took it for enough; and arose from the table and went to the fireside—heard her rise and knew her standing near him as he knelt and unfolded the cloak that wrapped his recovered belongings.

  His armor, familiar helm that had been in her keeping: he was surprised and pleased that she had kept it as if sentiment had moved her, as if she had hoped to find him again. There was his mail, cleaned and saved from rust, leather replaced: he received that back with great relief, for it was all he owned in the world save the black horse and his saddle. He gathered it up, knowing the weight of it as he knew that of his own body.

  And out of it fell a bone-handled dagger: Roh’s—an ill dream recurring. It lay on the stones, accusing him. For one terrible instant he wondered how much in truth she knew of what had passed.

  “Next time,” she said from behind him, “resolve to use it.”

  His hand went to his brow, to bless himself in dismay; he hesitated, then sketchily completed the gesture, and was the more disquieted afterward. He gathered up the bundle, dagger and all, and carried it into the other room where he might have privacy, where he might both dress and breathe in peace.

  He would die in this forsaken land the other side of Gates, he thought, jerking with trembling fingers at the laces of his clothing; that much had been certain from the beginning—but that became less terrible than what prospect opened before him, that little by little he would lose himself, that she would have all. Murder had sent him to her, brother-killing; ilin–service was just condemnation. But he reckoned himself, what he had been, and what he had become; and the man that he was now was no longer capable of the crime that he had done. It was not just, what lay before him.

  He set himself into his armor, leather and metal links in which he had lived the most part of his youth; and though it was newly fitted and most of the leather replaced, it settled about his body familiar as his own skin, a weight that surrounded him with safety, with habits that had kept him alive where his living had not been likely. It no longer seemed protection.

  Until you have no choice, Morgaine had warned him, as I have none.

  He slipped Roh’s dagger into the sheath at his belt, a weight that settled on his heart likewise: this time it was with full intent to use it.

  A shadow fell across the door. He looked up. Morgaine came with yet another gift for him, a longsword in its sheath.

  He turned and took it from her offering hands—bowed and touched it to his brow as a man should when accepting such a gift from his liege. It was qujalin, he did not doubt it: qujalin more than Changeling itself, which at least had been made by men. But with it in his hands, for the first time in their journey through this land, he felt a stir of pride, the sense that he had skill that was of some value to her. He drew the blade half from the sheath, and saw that it was a good double-edged blade, clean of qujalin runes. The length was a little more than that of a Kurshin longsword, and the blade was a little thinner; but it was a weapon he knew how to use.

  “I thank you,” he said.

  “Stay armed. I want none of these folk drawing for your naked back; and it would be the back, with them. They are wolves, allies of chance and mutual profit.”

  He hooked it to his belt, pulled the ring on his shoulder belt and hooked that, settling it to a more comfortable position at his shoulder. Her words touched at something in him, a sudden, unbearable foreboding, that even she would say what she had said. He looked up at her. “ Liyo,” he said in a low voice. “Let us go. Let us two, together... leave this place. Forget these men; be rid of them. Let us be out of here.”

  She nodded back toward the other room. “It is still misting rain out. We will go, tonight, when there is a chance the flood will ebb.”

  “Now,” he insisted, and when he saw her hesitate: “ Liyo, what you asked, I gave; give me this. I will go, now, I will find us a packhorse and some manner of tent for our comfort... Better the cold and the rain than this place over our heads tonight.”

  She looked tempted, urgently tempted, struggling with reason. He knew the restlessness that chafed at her, pent here, behind rock and risen water. And for once he felt that urge himself, an instinct overwhelming, a dark that pressed at their heels.

  She gestured again toward the room beyond. “The books... I have only begun to make sense of them... ”

  “Do not trust these men.” Of a sudden all things settled together in his mind, taking form; and some were in those books; and more were pent in the shape of a priest, locked in the dark down the hall. She could be harmed by these things,
these men. The human tide that lapped about the walls of Ohtij-in threatened her, no less than the qujal–lords.

  “Go,” she bade him suddenly. “Go. See to it. Quietly.”

  He snatched up his cloak, caught up his helm, and then paused, looking back at her.

  Still he was uneasy—parted from her in this place; but he forebore to warn her more of these men, of opening the door to them: it was not his place to order her. He drew up the coif and settled his helm on, and did not stay to put on the cloak. He passed the door, between the new guards, and looked at those three with sullen misgivings—looked too down the hall, where the priest Ginun was imprisoned, without drink or food yet provided.

  That too wanted tending. He dared not have the guards wait on that man, a priest of their own folk, treated thus. Something had to be done with the priest; he knew not what.

  In haste he slung the heavy cloak about him and fastened it as he passed the door out of the corridor, uneasy as he walked these rooms that were familiar to him under other circumstances—as he passed marshlanders, who turned and stared at him and made a sign he did not know. He entered the spiral at the core of the keep, passed others, feeling their stares at his back as he walked that downward corridor. Even armed, he did not feel safe or free here. Torches lit the place, a bracket at every doorway, profligate waste of them; and the smallish men of Aren came and went freely up and down the ramp, no few of them drunken, decked in finery incongruous among their peasant clothes. Here and there passed other men, tall and grim of manner, who did not mix with the marshlanders: Fwar’s kindred, a hard-eyed lot; something wrathful abode in them, that touched at familiarity.

  The Barrows and the marshlands, Morgaine had said, naming them that followed her; Barrow-folk, Vanye realized suddenly.

  Myya.

  Jhirun’s kinsmen.

  He hastened his pace, descending the core, the terror that breathed thickly in the air of this place now possessing a name.

  The courtyard was quieter than the keep, a dazed quiet, the misting rain glistening on the paving stones, a few folk that might be Shiua or marshlanders moving about wrapped in cloaks and shawls. There was a woman with two children at her skirts: it struck him strangely that nowhere had there been children among the qujal, none that he had seen; and he did not know why.