Well of Shiuan

by C. J. Cherryh

  All that she said he absorbed in silence, cold to the heart; that even a Myya could prize a claim to qujalin blood-he did not comprehend. He swore suddenly, half a prayer, and leaned against the lintel of the fireplace, forehead against his arm, staring into the fire and tried to think what he could do for himself.

  Her hand touched his shoulder, gently, timidly; he turned his head and looked at her, finding only a frightened girl. The heat at his side became painful; he suffered it deliberately, not willing to think clearly in the directions that opened before him.

  “I am not going back,” she repeated.

  “We shall leave here,” he said, which he knew for a lie, but he thought that she wanted some promise, something on which to build her courage. He said it out of his own fear, knowing how easily she could tell the lords of Ohtij-in all that she knew: with this promise he meant to purchase her silence. “Only continue to say nothing, and we shall find a way to leave this foul place.”

  “For Abarais,” she said. Her voice, hoarse as it was, came alive. The light danced in her eyes. “For the Well, for your land, and the mountains.”

  He lied this time by keeping silent. They were the greatest lies he had ever told, he who had once been a dai-uyo of Morija, who had fought to possess honor. He felt unclean, remembering her courage in the hall, and swore to himself that she would not come to hurt for it, not that he could prevent. But the true likelihood was that she would come to hurt, and that he could do nothing.

  He was ilin, bound to a service; and this one essential truth he did not think she understood, else she would not trust her life to him. This also he did not say, and was ashamed and miserable.

  She offered him food, and a second cup of the drink, attacking the food herself with an appetite he lacked. He ate because he knew that he must, that if there was hope in strength, it must be his; he forced each mouthful down, hardly tasting it, and followed it with a heavy draught of the sour drink.

  Then he rested his back against the fireplace, his shoulders over-warm and his legs numb from the stones, and began to take account of himself, his water-soaked armor and ruined boots. He began to work at the laces at his throat, having to break some of them, then at the buckles at his side and shoulder, working sodden leather through.

  Jhirun moved to help him, tugging to free the straps, helping him as he slipped off first the leather surcoat and then the agonizing weight of the mail. Freed of it, he groaned with relief, content only to breathe for a moment. Then came the sleeveless linen haqueton, and that sodden and soiled, and bloody in patches.

  “O my lord,” Jhirun murmured in pity, and numbly he looked at himself and saw how the armor had galled his water-soaked skin, his linen shirt a soaked rag, rubbing raw sores where there had been folds. He rose, wincing, stripped it off and dropped it to the floor, shivering in the cold air.

  Among the clothes on the table he found several shirts, soft and thin, that came of no fabric he knew; he disliked the feel of the too-soft weaving, but when he drew one on, it lay easily upon his galled shoulders, and he was grateful for the touch of something clean and dry.

  Jhirun came, timidly searching among the qujalin gifts for her own sake. She found the proper stack, unfolded the brown garment uppermost, stood staring at it as if it were alive and hostile-a brown smock such as the servants wore.

  He saw, and swore-snatched it from her hands and hurled it to the floor. She looked frightened, and small and miserable in her wet garments.

  He picked up one of the shirts and a pair of breeches. “Wear these,” he said. “Yours will dry.”

  “Lord,” she said, a tremor in her voice. She hugged the offered clothing to her breast. “Please do not leave me in this place.”

  “Go dress,” he said, and looked away from her deliberately, hating the appeal and the distress of her-who looked to him, who doubtless would concede to anything to be reassured of his lies.

  Who might the more believe him if she were thus reassured.

  Unwed girls of the countryside of Andur and of Kursh were a casual matter for the uyin of the high clans-peasant girls hoping to bear an uyo’s bastard, to be kept in comfort thereafter: an obligation to the uyo, a matter of honor. But therein both parties knew the way of things. Such a thing was not founded in lies or in fear.

  “Lord,” she said, across the room.

  He turned and looked at her, who still stood in her coarse peasant skirts, the garments held against her.

  The tread of men approached the door outside, an ominous and warlike sound. Vanye heard it, and heard them pause. Jhirun started to hurry to his side.

  The bar of the door crashed back. Vanye looked about as it opened, whirling a chill draft into the room and fluttering the fire; and there in the doorway stood a man in green and brown, who leaned on a sheathed longsword-fronted him with a look of sincere bewilderment.

  “Cousin,” said Roh.

  Chapter 8

  “Roh,” Vanye answered, and heard a rustle of cloth at his left; Jhirun, who drew closer to him. He did not turn his head to see, only hoping that she would stay neutral. He himself stood in shirt and breeches; and Roh was armored. He was weaponless, and Roh carried a longsword, sheathed, in his hand.

  There had been no weapons in the room, neither knife with the food nor iron by the fire. In desperation Vanye reckoned what his own skill could avail, a weaponless swordsman against a swordsman whose primary weapon had been the bow.

  Roh leaned more heavily on the sword’s pommel and shouted over his shoulder a casual dismissal of the guards in the corridor, then stood upright, cast wide his arm in a gesture of peace.

  Vanye did not move. Roh tossed his sword and caught it midsheath in one hand; and with a mocking flourish discarded it on the table by the door. Then he came forward several paces, limping slightly, bearing that sober, slightly worried expression that was Roh’s very self.

  And his glance swept from Vanye to Jhirun, utterly puzzled.

  “Girl,” he said wonderingly, and then shook his head and walked to a chair and sat down, elbows upon the chair’s arms. He gave a silent and humorless laugh. “I thought it would be Morgaine. Where is she?”

  The plain question shot through other confusions, making sense-Roh’s presence making sense of many matters in Ohtij-in. Vanye set his face against him, grateful to understand at least one enemy, and wished Jhirun to silence.

  “She is,” Roh said, “hereabouts.”

  It was bait he was desired to take: he burned to ask what Roh knew, and yet he knew better-shifted his weight and let go his breath, realizing that he had been holding it. “You seem to have found welcome enough here,” he answered Roh coldly, “among your own kind.”

  “I have found them agreeable,” said Roh. “So might you, if you are willing to listen to reason.”

  Vanye thrust Jhirun away, toward the far corner of the room. “Get back,” he told her. “Whatever happens here, you do not want to be part of it.”

  But she did not go, only retreated from his roughness, and stood watching, rubbing her arm.

  Vanye ignored her, walked to the table where the sword lay, wondering when Roh would move to stop him; he did not. He gathered it into his hands, watching Roh the while. He drew it part of the way from the sheath, waiting still for Roh to react; Roh did not move. There was only a flicker of apprehension in his brown eyes.

  “You are a lie,” Vanye said. “An illusion.” “You do not know what I am,” Roh answered him. “Zri . . . Liell . . . Roh . . . How many names have you worn before that?”

  Liell, sardonic master of Leth, whose mocking humor and soft lies he well knew: he watched sharply for that, waited for the arrogant and incalculably ancient self to look out at him through Roh’s human eyes-for that familiar and grandiose movement of the hands, some gesture that would betray the alien resident within his cousin’s body.

  There was nothing of the like. Roh sat still, watching him, his quick eyes following each move: afraid, that was evident. Reckless:
that was like Roh, utterly.

  He drew the sword entirely. Now, he thought. Now, if ever-before conscience, before pity. His arm tensed. But Roh simply stared at him, a little flinching when he moved.

  “No!” Jhirun cried from across the room. It came near loosing his arm before he had consciously willed it; he stayed the blow-jolted to remember a courtyard in Morija, and blood, and sickness that knotted in him, robbing him suddenly of strength.

  With a curse he rammed the sword into sheath, knowing himself, as Roh had known him.

  Coward, his shorn hair marked him. He saw the narrow satisfaction in Roh’s eyes.

  “It is good to see you,” Roh said in a hollow, careful voice. “Nhi Vanye, it is good to see any kindred soul in this forsaken land. But I am sorry for your sake. I had thought that you would have used good sense and ridden home. I never thought that you would have come with her, even if she ordered it. Nhi honor: it is a compulsion. I am sorry for it. But the sight of you is very welcome.”

  “Liar,” Vanye said between his teeth; but the words, like a Chya shaft, flew accurately to the mark. He felt the wound, the desperation of exile, in which Roh-anyone who could prove that the things he remembered had ever existed-was a presence infinitely precious. The accents of home even on an enemy’s lips were beautiful.

  “There is no point in quarreling before witnesses,” said Roh.

  “There is no point in talking to you.”

  “Nhi Vanye,” said Roh softly, “come with me. Outside. I have sent the guards elsewhere. Come.” He rose from the chair, moved carefully to the door, looking back at him. “Alone.”

  Vanye hesitated. That door was what he most earnestly desired, but he knew no reason that Roh should wish him well. He tried to think what entrapment Roh needed use, and that was none at all.

  “Come,” Roh urged him.

  Vanye shrugged, went to the fireside, where his armor lay discarded-slung his swordbelt over his shoulder and hung the sword from it, ready to his hand: thus he challenged Roh.

  “As you will,” Roh said. “But it is mine; and I will ask it back eventually.”

  Jhirun came to the fireside, her eyes frightened, looking from one to the other of them: many, many things she had not said; Vanye felt the reminder in her glance.

  “I would not leave her alone,” he said to Roh.

  “She is safe,” Roh said. He looked directly at Jhirun, took her unresisting hand, and gone in him was every guardedness and ungentle tone. “Do not fear anything in Ohtij-in. I remember a kindness and return it doubled if I can, as I return other things. No harm will come to you. None.”

  She stayed still, seeming to trust nothing. Vanye delayed, fearing to leave her, fearing that might be Roh’s purpose: to separate them; and in another mind, fearing what evil he might do her by holding to her, linking her with him, when he had only enemies in Ohtij-in.

  “I do not think I have a choice,” he said to her, and did not know whether she understood. He turned his back on her, feeling her stare as he walked to the door. Roh opened it, brought him out into the dim corridor, where a cold wind hit his light clothing and set him shivering.

  There were no guards in sight, not a stir anywhere in the corridor.

  Roh closed the door and dropped the bar. “Come,” he said then, motioned to the left, toward the ascent of the spiral ramp.

  Turn after turn they climbed, Roh slightly in the lead; and Vanye found his exhaustion such that he must put a hand on the core wall to steady his step. Roh climbed, limping only slightly, and Vanye glared at his back, his hand on the sword, waiting for Roh to show sensible fear of him and glance back only once; but Roh did not. Arrogant, Vanye thought, raging in his heart; but it was very like Roh.

  At last they arrived at a level floor, and a doorway, up low steps. Roh opened that door, admitting a gust of wind that skirled violently into the tower, chilling the very bones. Outside was night, and the scent of recent rain.

  He followed Roh outside, atop the very crest of the outermost tower of Ohtij-in, where the moons’ wan light streamed through the ragged clouds: Anli and Sith were overhead, and hard behind them hurtled the fragments of the Broken Moon, while on the horizon was the vast white face of Li, pocked and scarred. The wind swept freely across the open space. Vanye hung back, in the shelter of the tower core, but Roh walked to the edge, his cloak held closely about him in the blast of the wind.

  “Come,” Roh urged him, and Vanye came, knowing himself mad even to have come this far, alone with this qujal in man’s guise. He reached the edge and looked down, dizzied at the view down the tower walls to the stones below; he caught at the solidity of the battlement with one hand and at the sword’s hilt with the other.

  If Roh meant to destroy him, he thought, there was ample means for that. He ignored Roh for an instant, cast a look at all the country round about, the glint of moonlight on black floodwaters that wove a spider’s web about the drowning hills. Through those hills lanced the road that he could not reach, subtle torment.

  Roh’s hand touched his shoulder, drawing his attention back. His other hand described the circuit of the land, the hold itself.

  “I wanted you to see this,” Roh said above the howl of wind. “I wanted you to know the compass of this place. And she will finish it, end all hope for them. That is what she has come to do.”

  He turned a hard look on Roh, leaned against the stonework, for he had begun to shiver convulsively in the wind. “It is impossible for you to persuade me,” he said, and held up his scarred hand to the moonlight “Roh or Liell, you should remember what I am, at least.”

  “You doubt me,” said Roh.

  “I doubt everything about you.”

  Roh’s face, hair torn by the wind, assumed a pained earnestness. “I knew that she would hunt me. She was always our enemy. But from you, Nhi Vanye i Chya, I hoped for better. You took shelter from me. You slept at my hearth. Is that nothing to you?”

  Vanye flexed his fingers on the corded hilt of the sword, for they were growing numb with cold. “You are supposing,” he said hoarsely, “what passed between Roh and me-what was surely common knowledge throughout Chya-and I do not doubt you had your spies. If you want me to believe you, then tell me again what Roh told me last in Ra-koris, when there was none to hear.”

  Roh hesitated. “To come back,” he said, “free of her.”

  It was truth. The unexpectedness of it numbed him. He leaned against the stonework, ceasing even to shiver, and abruptly turned his face from Roh. “And it might be that Roh counseled with others before saying that to me.”

  Roh pulled him about by the shoulder, grimacing into the wind.

  “So you could say, Vanye, for any other thing you might devise to try me. You cannot be sure, and you know it.”

  “There is one thing you cannot answer,” Vanye said. “You cannot tell me why you are here in this land. Roh would not have fled the road we took; he had no reason to-but Liell had every reason. Liell would have run for his life; and Roh had no reason to.”

  “He is here,” Roh said, a hand upon his heart. “Here. So also am I. My memories-all are Roh’s-they are both.”

  “No,” he said. “No. Morgaine said that would not happen; and I would rather take her word than yours-in any matter.”

  “I am your cousin. I could have taken your life; but I am your cousin. You have the sword. There is no witness here to say it was no fair fight-if the Shiua lords cared. You are already known for a kinslayer many times over. Use it. Or listen to me.”

  He flung off Ron’s hand, blind as a turn of his head brought his own shorn hair into his eyes. He shook it free, stalked off across the battlements, stood staring down into the squalor of that courtyard, the wind pushing at his back, fit to tear him from the edge and cast him over.

  “Nhi Vanye!” Roh called him. He turned and looked, saw Roh had followed him. He stubbornly turned his head toward the view downward, toward the paving and the poor shelters huddled against the keep walls. He f
elt the breaking of the force of the wind as Roh stepped between it and him.

  “If you are kinsman to me,” Vanye said, “free me from this place. Then I will believe your kinship.”

  “Me? And care you nothing for that child that came with you?”

  He looked back, stung, unable to argue. He affected a shrug. “Jhirun? Here is where she wanted to be, in Shiuan, in Ohtij-in. This is the land she wished for. What is she to me?”

  “I had thought better of you,” Roh said after a moment “So, surely, had she.”

  “I am ilin. Nothing else. There are human folk here, men, and so she can survive. They have.”

  “There are men,” said Roh, and pointed at the squalid court, where beasts and men shared neighboring quarters. ‘That is the lot of men in Ohtij-in. That is their life, from birth to death. Men now. Tomorrow the rest that survives in this land will live in that poverty, and the qujal-lords know it. Of their charity, of their charity, Nhi Vanye, these lords have let men shelter within their walls; of their charity they have fed them and clothed them. They owed them nothing; but they have let them live within their gates. You-you are not so charitable-you would let them die, that girl and all the rest. That is what you would do to me. The sword’s edge is kinder, cousin, than what is waiting for all this land. Murder-is kinder.”

  “I have nothing to do with what is happening to these people. I cannot help them or harm them.”

  “Can you not? The Wells are their hope, Vanye. For all that live and will live in this world, the Wells are all the hope there is. They had no skill to use them; but by them, these folk could live. I could do it. Morgaine surely could, but she will not, and you know that she will not Vanye, if that ancient power were used as it once was used, their lot would be different. Look on this, look, and remember it, cousin.”