Well of Shiuan

by C. J. Cherryh

  He looked, perforce. He did not wish to remember the sight, and the faces that had raged wildly beyond the guards’ pikes, the desperate hands that had reached through the grate. “All this is a lie,” he said. “As you are a lie.”

  “The sword’s edge,” Roh invited him, “if you believe that beyond doubt.”

  He lifted his face toward Roh, wishing to see truth, wishing something that he could hate, finding nothing to attack- only Roh, mirror-image of himself, more alike him than his own brothers.

  “Send me from here,” he challenged him who wore the shape of Roh, “if you believe that you can convince me. At least you know that I keep my sworn word. If you have a message for Morgaine herself, then give it to me and I will deliver it faithfully-if I can find her, of which I have doubts.”

  “I will not ask you where she is,” Roh said. “I know where she is going; and I know that you would not tell me more than that. But others might ask you. Others might ask you.”

  Vanye shivered, remembering the gathering in the hall, the pale lords and ladies who owed nothing to humanity. A fall to the paving below was easier than that. He stepped forward to the very edge, inwardly trying whether he had the courage.

  “Vanye,” Roh cried, compelling his attention. “Vanye, she will have little difficulty destroying these folk. They will see her, they will flock to her, trusting, because she is fair to see-and she will kill them. It has happened before. Do you think that there is compassion in her?”

  “There has been,” he said, the words hanging half soundless in his throat.

  “You know its limits,” said Roh. “You have seen that, too.”

  Vanye cursed aloud, flung himself back from the battlements and sought the door, sought warmth, fought to open it against the force of the wind. He tore it open, and Roh held it, came in after him. The torches in the hall fluttered wildly until the door slammed, Roh dropped the latch. They remained on opposite sides of the little corridor, facing one another.

  “Say to them that you could not persuade me,” Vanye said. “Perhaps your hosts will forgive you.”

  “Listen to me,” said Roh.

  Vanye unhooked the sheathed sword and cast it across the corridor; Roh caught it, mid-sheath, and looked at him in perplexity.

  “God forgive me,” Vanye said.

  “For not committing murder?” Roh said. “That is incongruous.”

  He stared at Roh, then tore his eyes from him and began to walk rapidly down the corridor, descending the ramp. There were guards below. He stopped when their weapons levelled toward him.

  Roh overtook him and set his hand on his arm. “Do not be rash. Listen to me, cousin. Messengers are going out, have already sped, despite the storm, bearing warnings of her throughout the whole countryside, to every hold and village. She will find no welcome among these folk.”

  Vanye jerked free, but Roh caught his arm again. “No,” said Roh. The guards stood waiting, helmed, faceless, weapons ready. “Will you be handled like a peasant for the hanging?” Roh whispered in his ear, “or will you walk peaceably with me?”

  Roh’s hand tightened, urged. Vanye suffered the grip upon his arm, and Roh led him through the midst of the guards, walked with him down the windings of the corridors; and they did not stop at the door of the room that confined Jhirun, but went farther, into a branching corridor, that seemed to lead back to the main tower. The guards walked at their backs, two bearing torches.

  “Jhirun,” Vanye reminded Roh, as they entered that other corridor.

  “I thought that was a matter of no concern to you.”

  “She is a chance meeting,” he said. “And no more than that. She set out looking for you, hoping better from you than she had where she was: the measure of that, you may know better than I. You were kind to her, she said.”

  “She will be safe,” said Roh. “I also keep my word.”

  Vanye frowned, glanced away. Roh said nothing further. They entered a third corridor, that came to an end in a blind wall; and in a narrow place on the right was a deeply recessed doorway. Shadows ran the walls as the guards overtook them, while Roh opened the door.

  It was a plain room, with a fire blaring in the hearth, a wooden bench by the fire, table, chairs. And Hetharu waited there, Bydarra’s dark-eyed son, seated, with a handful of others likewise seated about him-pale-haired men, although only Hetharu seemed so by nature, his long locks white and silken about his shoulders. He leaned elbows upon his knees, wanning his hands at the fire; and by the fire stood a priest, whose brittle, bleached hair described a nimbus about his balding head.

  Vanye stopped in the doorway, confused by the situation of things, so important a man, so strangely assorted the company. Roh set his hand on his shoulder and urged him gently forward. The guards took up stations inside and out as the doors were closed and the gathering became a private one. Helms were removed, revealing faces thin and pale as those of the higher lords, eyes as dark as Hetharu’s: young men, all that were gathered here, save the priest, furtive in their quiet. There was the brocaded finery of the lords, the martial plate-and-scale of the men-at-arms, the plainness of the furnishings. Guards had been posted outside as well as within the room. These things touched uneasily at Vanye’s mind, warning of something other than mere games of terror with him. The gathering breathed of something ugly, that concerned the qujal themselves, powers and alliances within their ranks.

  And he was seized into the midst of it.

  “You woo nothing of him?” Hetharu asked of Roh. Roh left Vanye’s side and took the vacant bench beside the fire, one booted foot tucked up, disposing himself comfortably and at his ease, leaving Vanye as if he were harmless.

  In peevish insolence Vanye shifted his weight suddenly, and hands reached for daggers and swords all about the room; he tautened his lips, a smile that rage made slight and mocking, and slowly, amid their indecision, moved to take his place beside Roh on the bench, near the fire’s warmth. Roh straightened slightly, both feet on the floor; and the look in Hetharu’s eyes was angry. Vanye met that stare with a stubborn frown, though within, he felt less than easy: here was, he thought, a man who would gladly resort to force, who would enjoy it.

  “My cousin,” said Roh, “is a man of his word, and reckons that word otherwise bestowed . . . although this may change. As matters stand now, he does not recognize reason, only the orders of his liege: that is the kind of man he is.”

  “A dangerous man,” said Hetharu, and his dark, startling eyes rested full on Vanye’s. “Are you dangerous, Man?”

  “I thought,” said Vanye slowly, with deliberation, “that Bydarra was lord in Ohtij-in. What is this?”

  “You see how he is,” said Roh. And on faces round about there was consternation: guilt, fear. Hetharu glowered. Vanye read the tale writ therein and liked it less and less.

  “And his liege?” asked Hetharu. “What has he to say of her?”

  “Nothing,” said Roh. And in their long silence, Vanye’s heart beat rapidly. “It is of little profit,” said Roh, “to question him on that account I will not have him harmed, my lord.”

  Vanye heard, not understanding, not believing Roh’s defense of him; but he saw in that moment that a hint of caution appeared in Hetharu’s manner-uncertainty that held him from commanding Roh.

  “You,” said Hetharu suddenly, looking at Vanye, “do you claim to have come by the Wells?”

  “Yes,” Vanye answered, for he knew that there was no denying it.

  “And can you manage them?” the priest asked, a husky, quiet voice. Vanye looked up into the priest’s face, reading desire there, not knowing how to deal with the desires that gathered thickly in this room, centered upon him and upon Roh. He did not want to die; abundantly, he did not want to die, butchered by qujal, for causes he did not understand, that had nothing to do with him.

  He did not answer.

  “You are a Man,” said the priest

  “Yes,” he said, and noticed that the priest carried a knife
at his belt, curious accoutrement for a priest; and that all the others were armed. The priest wore a chain of objects about his neck, stone and shell and bone-familiar-Vanye realized all at once where he had seen such, daily, along with a small stone cross, profaned by nearness to such things. He stared at the priest, the rage that he could maintain against armed threat ebbing coldly in the consideration of devils, and those that served them-and the state of his soul, who served Morgaine, and who companied with a human girl who wore such objects about her neck.

  Only let them keep the priest from him. He tore his gaze away from that one, lest the fear show, lest he give them a weapon.

  “Man,” said Hetharu, looking on him with that same fixed stare, “is this truly your cousin?”

  “Half of him was my cousin,” Vanye said, to confound them all.

  “You see how he tells the truth,” Roh said softly, silk-over-metal. “It does not always profit him, but he is forward with it: an honest man, my cousin

  Vanye. He confuses many people with that trait, but he is Nhi; you would not understand that, but he is Nhi, and he cannot help this over-nice devotion to honor. He tells the truth. He makes himself enemies with it. But in your honesty, cousin, tell them why your liege has come to this land. What has she come to do?”

  He saw the reason for his presence among them now, how he had been, in his cleverness, guided to this. He knew that he should have held his peace from the beginning. Now silence itself would accuse, persuasive as admission. His muscles tautened, mind numbed when he most needed it. He had no answer.

  “To seal the Wells forever,” Roh said. ‘Tell me, my honest, my honorable cousin-is that or is that not the truth?”

  Still he held his peace, searching desperately for a lie, not practiced in the art. There was none he could shape that could not be at once unravelled.

  “Deny it, then,” said Roh. “Can you do that?”

  “I deny it,” he said, reacting as Roh thrust at him what he most wanted; and even as it slipped his lips he knew he had been maneuvered.

  “Swear to it,” Roh said; and as he began to say that also: “On your oath to her,” Roh said.

  By your soul: that was the oath; and their eyes were all on him, like wolves in a circle. His lips shaped the words, knowing the effort for useless, utterly useless; on his soul too was his duty to Morgaine, that bade him try.

  But Roh set his hand on his arm, mercifully stopping him, leaving him trembling with sickness. “No,” Roh said. “Spare yourself the guilt, Vanye; you do not wear it well. You see how it is, lord Hetharu. I have shown you the truth. My cousin is an honest man. And you, my lord, will swear to me that you will set no hand on him. I bear him some affection, this cousin of mine.”

  Heat mounted steadily to Vanye’s face. There seemed no profit in protesting this baiting defense. He met Hetharu’s dark and resentful eyes. “Granted,” Hetharu said after a moment, and glanced at Roh. “He is yours. But I cannot answer for my father.”

  “No one,” said Roh, “will set hand on him.”

  Hetharu glanced down, and aside, and frowned and rose. “No one,” he echoed sullenly.

  “My lords,” said Roh, likewise rising. “A safe sleep to you.”

  There was a moment of silence, of seething anger on the part of the young lord. Surely it was not accustomed that Bydarra’s son receive his dismissal from a dark-haired guest. But fear hovered thickly in the room when Roh looked at them all in their turn: eyes averted from his, to one side and the other, pretending to find interest in the stones of the floor or the guarded door.

  Hetharu shrugged, a false insouciance. “My lords,” he said to his companions. “Priest.”

  They filed out with rustling brocade and the clash of metal, those slim fair lords with their attendant guard, half-human-until there was only Roh, who quietly closed the door, making the room again private.

  “Give me the sword again,” Vanye said, “cousin.”

  Roh regarded him warily, hand on the hilt. He shook his head and showed no inclination to come near him now. “You do not seem to understand,” Roh said. “I have secured your life, and your person, from some considerable danger. I have a certain authority here-while they fear me. It does not serve your own cause to fight against me.”

  “It is your own life you have secured,” Vanye said, and arose to stand with his back to the fire, “so that they will not try me too severely and find your kinsman is only human.”

  “That too,” said Roh. He started to open the door, and hesitated, looking back. “I wish that I could persuade you to common sense.”

  “I will go back to the room where I was,” Vanye said. “I found it more comfortable.”

  Roh grinned. “Doubtless.”

  “Do not touch her,” Vanye said. Roh’s grin faded; he faced him entirely, regarded him with an earnest look.

  “I have said,” Roh said, “that she would be safe. And she will be safer-apart from you. I think you understand this.”

  “Yes,” Vanye said after a moment

  “I would help you if you would give me the means.”

  “Good night,” Vanye said.

  Roh delayed, a frown twisting his face. He extended his hand, dropped it in a helpless gesture. “Nhi Vanye-my life will end if your liege destroys the Wells-not suddenly, but surely, all the same. So will everything in this land . . . die. But that is nothing to her. Perhaps she cannot help what she is or what she does. I suspect that she cannot. But you at least have a choice. These folk-will die, and they need not”

  “I have an oath to keep. I have no choice at all.”

  “If you had sworn to the devil,” Roh said, “would it be a pious act to keep your word?”

  Unthought, his hand moved to bless himself, and he stopped, then with deliberation completed the gesture, in this place of qujal, where priests worshipped devils. He was cold, inside.

  “Can she do as you have done?” asked Roh. “Vanye, is there any land where she has traveled where she is not cursed, and justly? Do you even know whether you serve the side of Men in this war? You have an oath; you have made yourself blind and deaf because of it; you have left kinsmen dead because of it. But to what have you sworn it? Do you wonder what was left in Andur-Kursh? You will never know what you wrought there, and perhaps that is well for your conscience. But here you can see what you do, and you will live in it. Do you think the Wells have kept these folk in misery? Do you think the Wells are the evil? It was the loss of them that ruined this land. And this is the likeness of Morgaine’s work. This is what she does, what she leaves behind her wherever she passes. There is nothing more terrible that could befall you than to stay behind where she has passed. You and I know it; we were born in the chaos she wrought in our own Andur-Kursh, Kingdoms fell and clans died under her guidance. She is disaster where she passes, Nhi Vanye. She kills. That is her function, and you cannot prevent her. To destroy is her whole purpose for being.”

  Vanye turned his face aside and gazed at the barren walls, at the single slit of a window, slatted with a wooden shutter.

  “You are determined not to listen,” said Roh. “Perhaps you are growing like her.”

  Vanye glanced back, face set in anger. “Liell,” he named Roh, the name that had been his last self, that had destroyed Roh. “Murderer of children. You offered me haven too, in Ra-leth; and I saw what a gift that was, what prosperity you brought those that came under your hand.”

  “I am not Liell any longer.”

  Vanye felt a tightness about his heart, himself caught and held by that level gaze. “Who is talking to me?” he asked in a still voice. “Who are you, qujal? Who were you?”

  “Roh.”

  Bile rose into his throat. He turned his face away. “Get out of here. Get away from me. Do me that grace at least. Let me alone.”

  “Cousin,” said Roh softly. “Have you never wondered who Morgaine was?”

  The question left silence after it, a numbness in which he could be aware of the soun
ds of the fire, the wind outside the narrow window. He found it an effort to draw breath in that silence.

  “You have wondered, then,” said Roh. “You are not entirely blind. Ask yourself why she is qujal to the eye and not to the heart. Ask whether she always tells the truth . . . and believe me, that she does not, not where it is most essential, not where it threatens the thing she seeks. Ask how much of me is Roh, and I will tell you that the essence of me is Roh; ask why you are kept safe, hostile to me as you are, and I will tell you it is because we are-truly-cousins. I feel that burden; I act upon it because I must. But ask yourself what she became, this liege of yours. My impulses are human. Ask yourself how human she is. Less than any here-whose blood is only halfling. Ask yourself what you are sworn to, Nhi Vanye.”

  “Out!” he cried, so that the door burst open and armed guards were instant with lowered weapons. But Roh lifted his hand and stopped them.

  “Give you good night,” Roh murmured, and withdrew.

  The door closed. A bolt shot into place outside.

  Vanye swore under his breath, cast himself down on the bench by the fire.

  A log crashed, glowing ruin, stirring a momentary flame that ran the length of the charred edge and died. He watched the shifting patterns in the embers, heart pounding, for it seemed to his blurring senses that the floor had shifted minutely, a fall like the Between of Gates.

  Animals bleated outside. He heard the distant murmur of troubled voices. The realization that it had been no illusion sent sweat coursing over his limbs, but the earth stayed still thereafter.

  He let go his pent breath, stared at the fire until the light and heat wearied his eyes and made him close them.

  Chapter 9

  Guards intruded in the morning, servants bringing food and water, a sudden flurry of footsteps, crashing of bolts and doors; savory smells came with the dishes that rattled in the servants’ hands.