Well of Shiuan

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Liyo!” he shouted into the 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.

  He thought himself in Morija once more, Myya archers on his trail; or something pursued him. He could not remember where this place was, why he was so cruelly tried, whether he pursued or was pursued; it was like a thousand other nightmares of his life.

  And then he would remember, when the ghosts flitted mockingly through his memory, so that it was impossible to sort out image from reality. He knew that he was beyond Gates, and that he was lost.

  That Morgaine was dead occurred to him; he rejected the possibility not with logic, but with belief. Men died, armies perished, but Morgaine survived, survived when others could not, when she herself wished otherwise; she might be lost, might be hurt, might be stranded alone and afoot in this land: these images tormented him. Anything else was impossible.

  She would have guarded herself first when the mass came down upon them, would have done that while he tried to guard her, the girl Jhirun forgotten. Siptah had been between Morgaine and the impact, and so had the gelding. She would-his mind began at last to function more clearly on this track now that he had convinced himself of a means by which she might have lived-she would instinctively have let him go down, sought the bank at once, for she carried Changeling, and therefore she would have fought to live. Such were the reflexes by which she lived. For her there was one law: to seek the Gates at whatever cost. Panic would direct her simply to live, all else forgotten.

  And perhaps when that panic passed, she might have delayed to seek him, as long as she thought it likely he might have survived. But she knew also that he did not swim, and she would not search forever. He pictured her shedding a tear or two-he flattered himself by that-and when morning came and there was no sign of bun, then she would take her bearings anew and heed the geas that drew her.

  And that would set her face northward, toward the Master Gate, and a leavetaking from this sad, drowning earth.

  Suddenly he realized that she would have trusted him to understand her obligations, to trust that she would do the rational, the necessary thing-and make for the one landmark in all this quaking marsh as soon as possible: the one place where all travelers met.

  The qujalin road. She would be there, confident that her ilin would be there, would follow if he could, knowing what she would do.

  He cursed himself: his driving fear was suddenly that she would have found the road before him, that in the night and the storm she would have gone on-that she might have saved one of the horses, while he was afoot, incapable of overtaking a rider.

  He reckoned by the flow of the current which way the road must lie, and walked, tearing his way through the brush on as straight a course as his strength could make him.

  He came upon the first stones at midmorning, and everything lay smooth as an unwritten page, no marks at all on the new sheet of mud laid by the flood, only the crooked trail of a serpent and the track of a lizard.

  He cast about with all his skill to find any smallest remnant of a track left during the ebb of the flood, and found nothing. Exhausted, he leaned against a low branch and wiped thickly mudded hands on his sodden breeches, trying to think clearly. There was such desperation welling up in him now, his best hope disappointed, that he could have cried his anger and grief aloud to the listening woods. But now that he thought it unlikely that she was nearby to hear, he could not even find the courage to call her name aloud, knowing that there would be silence.

  She was moving ahead of him, joining the road further on; or she was yet to come. The other possibility occurred this time with frightening force. He thrust it quickly from his mind.

  His one hope, that answered either eventuality, was to be at the place she sought, to reach Abarais as quickly as human strength could carry him and pray-if prayers were heard in this Hell, and for Morgaine-that she would either stay for him or overtake him. He would wait, if he reached Abarais, holding the Gate for her, against men, against Roh, against whatever threat, until she came or until he died.

  He gathered himself, fought dizziness as he did at each sudden move, coughed and felt a binding pain in his chest. His throat was raw. Fever burned in him. He had been ill on the run before, and then, with his kinsmen on his trail, it had been possible to sweat the fever out, to keep moving, relying on the horse’s strength to carry him.

  This time it was his own shaking limbs that must bear him, and the waters and the inhabitants of them waited for his fall below that dark surface.

  He walked a staggering course down the road, seeking some sign on the earth-and then he realized that he should leave one of his own, lest she take his track for Roh’s, and hang back. He tore a branch from a tree, snapped it and drove its two ends into the mud, a slanting sign that any who had ranged Andur-Kursh could read like the written word: Follow! And by it he wrote in the mud the name-glyph of clan Nhi.

  It would last until the waters rose again, which in this cursed land gave the life of the message to be short indeed; and with this in ‘mind, he carried a stone from the paving of the buried road and cut a mark now and again upon a tree by the road.

  Every caution he had learned in two years of outlawry, fleeing clan Myya, cried out that he guided none but enemies at his back. Men lived in this land, and they were furtive and fearful and would not show themselves; and therefore there were things in this land that men should rightly fear.

  Nevertheless he held the center of the road, fearing more being missed than being found.

  And came the time that he ran out of strength, and what had been a tightness in his chest swelled and took his breath away. He sank down in his tracks and drew breath carefully, feeling after ribs that might well be cracked; and at times the haze came over his mind again. He found a time when he had not been aware what passed about him, and some moments later he was afoot and walking with no memory of how he had risen or how far he had come.

  There were many such gaps after that, periods when he did not know where he was going, but his body continued, obedient to necessity and guided by the road.

  At last he was faced with a gap in the road where a channel had cut through; he stared at it, and simply sank down on the slop
e at water’s edge, reckoning how likely he was to drown attempting it And strength left him, the exhaustion of a night without sleep stretching him full-length on the muddy slope. He was cold. He ceased to care.

  A shadow fell over him, a whisper of cloth. He waked violently and struck out, seeing bare feet and a flash of brown skirt; and in the next moment a staff crashed into his arm- his head, if his arm had not been quick. He hurled himself at his attacker, mailed weight and inconsiderable flesh meeting: she went down, still trying for his face, and he backhanded the raking attack hard enough that it struck the side of her face. Jhirun. He realized it as her face came clear out of the shock of the attack.

  The blow had dazed her, much as he had restrained it at the last instant; and seeing her, who might know of Morgaine, he was overcome with fear that he had killed her. He gathered her up and shook at her in his desperation.

  “Where is she?” he asked, his voice an unrecognizable whisper; and Jhirun sobbed for breath and fought and protested again and again that she did not know.

  After a moment he came to his senses and realized the girl was beyond lying; fear was knotted in him so that he found it hard to relax his hands; he was shaking. And when he had let her go she collapsed on the muddy bank sobbing for breath.

  “I do not know, I do not know,” she kept saying through her tears. “I did not see her or the horses-nothing. I only swam and swam until I came out of the current, that is all.”

  He clutched this to him, the only hope that he could obtain, that he knew Morgaine could swim, armored though she was; and Jhirun had survived; and he had survived, who could not swim at all. He chose to hope, and stumbled to his feet, gathering up Jhirun’s abandoned staff. Then he began to seek the other side of the channel, using the staff to probe the shallowest way. It became waist-deep before it grew shallow again, and he climbed out on the other side, with the staff to help him on the slope.

  A splash sounded behind him. He turned, saw Jhirun wading the channel with her skirts a sodden flower about her. Almost the depth became too much for her, but she struggled across the current, panting and exhausted as she reached the bank and began to climb.

  “Go back,” he said harshly. “I am going on from here. Go home, wherever that is, and count yourself fortunate.”

  She struggled further up the bank. Her face, already bruised, had a fresh redness across the brow: his arm had done that. Her hair hung in spiritless tangles. She reached the crest and shook the hair back over her shoulders.

  “I am going to Shiuan,” she said, her chin trembling. “Go where you like. This is my road.”

  He looked into her tear-glazed eyes, hating her intrusion, half desiring it, for he was lost and desperate, and the silence and the rush of water were like to drive a man mad. “If Abarais lies in Shiuan,” he said, “I am going that way. But I will not wait for you.”

  “Nor for her?”

  “She will come,” he said; and was possessed by the need for haste, and turned and began to walk. The staff made walking easier on the broken pavings, and he did not give it up, caring little whether Jhirun needed it or no. She walked barefoot, limping; but the pain of his own feet, rubbed raw by watersoaked boots that were never meant for walking, was likely worse, and somewhere in the night he had wrenched his ankle. He gave her no hand to help her; he was in pain and desperate, and during the long walk he kept thinking that she had no reason whatever to wish him well. If he left her, she could find him in his sleep eventually and succeed at what she had already tried; if he slept in her presence, she could do the same without the trouble of slipping up on him; and as for binding the child to some tree and leaving her in this flood-prone land, the thought shamed him, who had been dai-uyo, whose honor forbade dealing so even with a man. At times he looked down on her, wishing her unborn; and when she looked up at him he was unnerved by the distracted look in her eyes. Mad, he thought,-her own folk have cast her out because she is mad. What other manner of girl would be out on this road alone, following after a strange man?

  And came one of those times that he lost awareness, and wakened still walking, with no memory of what had happened. Panic rose in him, exhaustion weakening his legs so that he knew he could as well have fallen senseless in the road. Jhirun herself was weaving in her steps.

  “We shall rest,” he said in the ragged voice the cold had left him. He flung his arm about her, feeling at once her resistence to him, but he paid it no heed-drew her to the roadside where the roots of a tree provided a place less chill than earth or stone. She tried to thrust free, mistaking his intention; but he shook her, and sank down, holding her tightly against him. She shivered.

  “I shall not harm you,” he said. “Be still. Rest.” And with his arm about her so that he could sense any movement, he leaned his head against a gnarled root and shut his eyes, trying to take a little sleep, still fearing he would sleep too deeply.

  She remained quiet against him, the warmth of their bodies giving a welcome relief from the chill of wet garments; and in time she relaxed across him, her head on his shoulder. He slept, and wakened with a start that frightened an outcry from her.

  “Quiet,” he bade her. “Be still.” He had tightened his arm by reflex, relaxed it again, feeling a lassitude that for the moment was healing, in which all things, even terrible ones, seemed distant. She shut her eyes; he did the same, and wakened a second time to find her staring at him, her head on his chest, a regard disturbing in its fixedness. Her body, touching his, was tense, her arm that lay across him stiff, fist clenched. He moved his hand upon her back, more of discomfort than of intent, and felt her shiver.

  ‘Is there none,” he asked her, “who knows where you are or cares what becomes of you?”

  She did not answer. He realized how the question had sounded.

  “We should have sent you back,” he said.

  “I would not have gone.”

  He believed her. The determination in that small, hoarse voice was absolute. “Why?” he asked. “You say Hiuaj is drowning; but that is supposition. On this road, you may drown for certain.”

  “My sister has already drowned,” she said. “I am not going to.” A tremor passed through her, her eyes focused somewhere beyond him. “Hnoth is coming, and the moons, and the tides, and I do not want to see it again. I do not want to be in Hiuaj when it comes.”

  Her words disturbed him: he did not understand the sense of them, but they troubled him-this terror of the moons that he likewise shuddered to see aloft. “Is Shiuan better?” he asked. “You do not know. Perhaps it is worse.”

  “No.” Her eyes met his. “Shiuan is where the gold goes, where all the grain is grown; no one starves there, or has to work, like Barrowers do.”

  He doubted this, having seen Hiuaj, but he did not think it kind to reason with her delusion, when it was likely that neither of them would live to know the truth of it. “Why do not all the Hiua leave, then?” he asked. “Why do not all your folk do what you have done, and go?”

  She frowned, her eyes clouded. “I do not think they believe it will come, not to them; or perhaps they do not think it matters, when it is the end. The whole world will die, and the waters will have everything. But she-” The glitter returned to her eyes, a question trembling on her lips; he stayed silent, waiting, fearing a question he could not answer. “She has power over the Wells.”

  “Yes,” he admitted, for surely she had surmised that already.

  “And you?”

  He shrugged uncomfortably.

  “This land,” she said, “is strange to you.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “The Barrow-kings came so. They sang that there were great mountains beyond the Wells.”

  “In my land,” he said, remembering with pain, “there were such mountains.”

  ‘Take me to that place.” Her fist unclenched upon his heart; her eyes filled with such earnestness that it hurt to see it, and she trembled against him. He moved his hand upon her shoulders, wishing that what sh
e asked were possible.

  “I am lost myself,” he said, “without Morgaine.”

  “You believe that she will come,” she said, “to Abarais, to the Well there.”

  He gave no reply, only a shrug, wishing that Jhirun knew less of them.

  “What has she come to do?” Jhirun asked it all in a breath, and he felt the tension in her body. “Why has she come?”

  She held some hope or fear he did not comprehend: he saw it in her eyes, that rested on his in such a gaze he could not break from it. She assumed that safety lay beyond the witchfires of the Gates; and perhaps for her, for all this land, it might seem to.

  “Ask Morgaine,” he said, “when we meet. As for me, I guard her back, and go where she goes; and I do not ask or answer questions of her.”

  “We call her Morgen,” said Jhirun, “and Angharan. My ancestors knew her-the Barrow-kings-they waited for her.”

  Cold passed through bun. Witch, men called Morgaine in his own homeland. She was young, while three generations of men lived and passed to dust; and all that he knew of whence she came was that she had not been born of his kindred, in his land.

  When was this? he wanted to ask, and dared not. Was she done then? She had not come alone to Andur-Kursh, but her comrades had perished there. Qujal, men called her; she avowed she was not. Legends accounted her immortal; he chose not to believe them all, nor to believe all the evil that was laid to her account and he asked her no questions.

  He had followed her, as others had, now dust. She spoke of time as an element like water or air, as if she could come and go within its flow, confounding nature.

  Panic coiled about his heart. He was not wont to let his mind travel in such directions. Morgaine had not known this land; he held that thought to him for comfort. She had needed to ask Jhirun the name and nature of the land, needing a guide.