Well of Shiuan

by C. J. Cherryh

  “For pity,” he shouted across at Morgaine, when the gelding’s bravest effort could not keep stride, burdened with a man’s weight; and the Baien gray was drenched with sweat “Liyo, the horses-enough.”

  She yielded, slowed; the horses walked again, their breath coming in great lung-tearing puffs, and Morgaine turned in the saddle to look back-not, it was likely, at the qujal, who struggled to stay with them, but dreading the appearance of others on the road behind them.

  The light grew, flung misty peaks into outline, a central body of mountains rounded and clustered together, a last refuge. There was a desolation about them that struck to the heart Vanye recalled the vast chains of his own mountains, reaching sharp ridges at the sky, stretching as far as the eye could see and the heart could imagine. Of these there was immediate beginning and end, and they had a blurred, aged quality, weathering that was of many ages, a yielding likewise toward the sea.

  Yet on the hillsides began to be signs of habitations, fields under cultivation, protected by terraces, and stonework to carry away the flooding: recent works, the hand of fanners, small fields and orchards that were flooded in many areas, but a sign that here lay the true strength of Shiuan, a still-solid wealth that had supported the glittering lords and the humanity that had crowded within then- walls.

  And on the crest of a long hill, from which it was possible to see the road in all directions, Morgaine reined in, leaned on the saddlebow a moment then dismounted. Vanye did likewise, himself aching in all his bones, and took Siptah’s reins from her nerveless hand.

  She stared past him, down the long road where the halflings were only beginning that hill. “A time to rest” she said.

  “Aye,” he agreed gladly enough, and busied himself loosening girths and slipping bits to ease the horses, tending to them while Morgaine withdrew a little to that rocky up-thrust that was the cap of the hill, where flat stones afforded a place to sit other than the damp earth.

  He finished his task, and brought the flask of Hiua liquor and a wrapped bit of food, and offered them to her, hoping against expectation to the contrary that she would accept them. She sat with Changeling unhooked and leaning against her shoulder, her right arm cradled in her lap in an attitude of evident pain; but she lifted her head and bestirred herself to take a share of what he offered, as much to avoid dispute with him, he thought, as because she had appetite for anything. He drank and ate a few mouthfuls himself; and by this time the halflings were drawing near them, with Jhirun lagging far behind.

  “Liyo,” Vanye said carefully, “we would do well to take what chance we have to rest now. We have pushed the horses almost as far as possible. We are climbing; there looks to be more of it, and there may be a time ahead that speed will serve us better than it does now.”

  She nodded, mutely accepting his argument, whether or not it coincided with her own reasons. Her eyes were void of interest in what passed about her. He heard the approach of the halflings with a private anguish, not wanting strangers near her when this mood was on her. He had seen it before, that soulless energy that seized her and kept her moving, responding only to the necessity that drove her. At the moment she was lost . . . knew him, perhaps, or confused him with men long since dust; the time was short for her, who had passed Gate and Gate and Gate in her course, and confounded then and now, who but months ago had ridden into a war in which his ancestors had died.

  A hundred years lay in that gap for him. For Jhirun… He gazed upon her distant figure with a sudden and terrible understanding. A thousand years. He could not conceive of a thousand years. A hundred were sufficient to bring a man to dust; five hundred reached into a time when nothing had stood in Morija.

  Morgaine had ridden across a century to enter his age, had gathered him to her, and together they had crossed into a place a thousand years removed from Jhirun’s beginnings, whose ancestors lay entombed in the Barrows . . . men that Morgaine might have known, young, and powerful in that age of the world.

  He had crossed such a gap, not alone of place, but of time.

  O God, his lips shaped.

  Nothing that he had known existed. Men, kinsmen, all that he had ever known was aged, decayed, gone to sifting dust. He knew then what he had done, passing the Gate. It was irrevocable. He wanted to pour out questions to Morgaine, to have them answered, to know beyond doubt what things she had never told him, for pity.

  But the qujal were with them. Horses drew up on the margin. Lord Kithan, armorless, bareheaded, swung down from his saddle and walked toward them with one of his men, while the other attended the horses.

  Vanye rose and slipped the ring that held his sword at his shoulder, setting himself between Kithan and Morgaine; and Kithan stopped-no longer the elegant lord, Kithan: his thin face was weary; his shoulders sagged. Kithan lifted a hand, gestured no wish to contend, then sank down on a flat stone some distance from Morgaine; his men likewise settled to the ground, pale heads bowed, exhausted.

  Jhirun rode in among the qujals’ horses, slid from the saddle and held to it. In a moment she made the effort to loosen the girth of her horse, then led the animal to a patch of grass, too unsure of it to let it go. She sat down, holding the reins in her lap, and stayed apart from them all, tired, seeming terrified of everything and everyone about her.

  “Let go the reins,” Vanye advised her. “The mare will likely stand, with other horses about; she has run too far to be interested in running.”

  And he held out his hand, bidding her to them; Jhirun came, and sank down on the bare ground, arms wrapped about her knees and her head bowed. Morgaine took note of her presence, a stare she might have given one of the animals, disinterested. Vanye settled his back against a rock, his own head throbbing with lack of sleep and the conviction that the earth still lurched and swayed with the motion of the horse.

  He dared not sleep. He watched the halflings from slitted eyes until the rest had at least given him space to breathe, and until thirst became an overwhelming discomfort.

  He rose, went back to his horse and took the waterflask that hung from the saddlebow, drank, keeping an eye to the qujal, who did not stir. Then he slung it over his shoulder and returned, pausing to take from Jhirun’s saddle the awkward bundle she had made of their blankets.

  He cast the bundle down where he had been sitting, to remake it properly; and he offered the flask to Morgaine, who took it gratefully, drank and passed it to Jhirun.

  One of the qujal moved; Vanye turned, band on his sword, and saw one of the house guards on his feet. The qujal came toward them, grim of face and careful in his movements; and he addressed himself to Jhirun, who had the waterflask. He held out his hand toward it, demanding, insolent.

  Jhirun hesitated, looking for direction; and Vanye sullenly nodded consent, watching as the halfling took the flask and brought it back to Kithan. The halfling lord drank sparingly, then gave it to his men, who likewise drank in their turn.

  Then the same man brought it back, offered it to Vanye’s hand. Vanye stood, jaw set in a scowl, and nodded toward Jhirun, from whom the man had taken it. He gave it back to her, looked again to Vanye with a guarded expression.

  And inclined his head-courtesy, from a qujal. Vanye stiffly returned the gesture, with no grace in it.

  The man returned to his lord. Vanye grasped the ring at his shoulder, drew it down to hook it, then settled again at Morgaine’s feet

  “Rest,” he bade her. “I will watch.”

  Morgaine wrapped herself in her cloak and leaned against the rocks, closing her eyes. Quietly Jhirun curled up to sleep; and likewise Kithan and his men, the frail qujal-lord pillowing his head on his arms, and in all likelihood suffering somewhat from the wind, in his thin hall garments.

  It grew still, in all the world only the occasional sound of the horses, and the wind that sighed through the leaves. Vanye gathered himself to his feet and stood with his back against a massive rock, so that he might not yield to sleep unknowing. Once he did catch himself with his eyes clos
ed, and paced, his knees weak with exhaustion, so long as he could bear it: he was, Kurshin-fashion, able to sleep in the saddle, far better than Morgaine.

  But there was a limit. “Liyo,” he said after a time, in desperation, and she wakened. “We might move on,” he said; and she gazed at him, who was unsteady with weariness, and shook her head. “Rest,” she said, and he cast himself down on the cold earth, the world still seeming to move with the endless motion of the horse. It was not long that he needed, only a time to let the misery leave his back and arm, and the throbbing leave his skull.

  Someone moved. Vanye wakened with the sun on him, found the qujal awake and the day declined to afternoon. Morgaine sat as she had been, with Changeling cradled against her shoulder. When he looked up at her, there was a clarity to her gray eyes that had been lacking before, a clear and quiet sense that comforted him.

  “We will be moving,” Morgaine said, and Jhirun stirred from her sleep, holding her head in her hands. Morgaine passed him the flask; he sipped at it enough to clear his mouth, and swallowed with a grimace, gave it back to her.

  “Draw breath,” she bade him, when he would have risen at once to see to the horses. Such patience was unlike her. He saw the look of concentration in her gaze, that rested elsewhere, and followed it to the halflings.

  He watched Kithan, who with trembling hands had taken an embroidered handkerchief from his pocket, and extracted from it a small white object that he placed in his mouth.

  For a moment Kithan leaned forward, head in hands, white hair falling to hide his face; then with a movement more graceful, he flung his head back and restored his handkerchief to its place within his garment

  “Akil,” Morgaine murmured privately.

  “Liyo?”

  “A vice evidently not confined to the marshlands. Another matter of trade, I do suppose ... the marshlands’ further revenge on Ohtij-in. He should be placid and communicative for hours.”

  Vanye watched the halfling lord, whose manner soon began to take on that languid abstraction he had seen in hall, that haze-eyed distance from the world. Here was Bydarra’s true, his qujalin son, the heir that surely the old lord would have preferred above Hetharu; but Kithan had arranged otherwise, a silent abdication, not alone from the defense he might have been to his father and his house, but from all else that surrounded him. Vanye regarded the man with disgust.

  But neither, he thought suddenly, had Kithan resorted to it last night, when a mob had murdered his people before his eyes; not then nor, he much suspected, despite what he had seen in that cell-had Kithan taken to it the hour that Bydarra was murdered, when he had been compelled to pay homage to his brother, stumbling when he tried to rise: his recovery after Hetharu’s departure from Ohtij-in had been instant, as if it were a different man.

  The akil was real enough; but it was also a convenient pose, a means of camouflage and survival: Vanye well understood the intrigues of a divided house. It might have begun in boredom, in the jaded tastes and narrow limits of Ohtij-in; or otherwise.

  I dreamed, Jhirun had wept, who looked further than the day, and could not bear what she saw. She had fled to Shiuan in hope; for the Shiua lord, there was nowhere to flee.

  Vanye stared at him, trying to penetrate that calm that insulated him, trying to reckon how much was the man and how much the akil-and which it was that had stood within his cell that night in Ohtij-in, coldly planning his murder only to spite Hetharu, by means doubtless lingering and painful.

  And Morgaine took them, Kithan and his men, who had no reason to wish her well: she delayed for them, while the halfling lord retreated into his dreams: he chafed at this, vexed even in their company.

  “This road,” Morgaine said suddenly, addressing Kithan, “goes most directly to Abarais.”

  Kithan agreed with a languorous nod of his head.

  “There is none other,” said Morgaine, “unmapped in your books.”

  “None horses might use,” said Kithan. “The mountains are twisted, full of stonefalls and the like; and of lakes; of chasms. There is only this way, save for men afoot, and no quicker than we go. You do not have to worry for the rabble behind us, but,” he added with a heavy-lidded smile of amusement, “you have the true lord of Ohtij-in ahead of you, with the most part of our strength, a-horse and armed, a mark less easy than I was in Ohtij-in. And they may afford you some little inconvenience.”

  ‘To be sure,” said Morgaine.

  Kithan smiled, resting his elbows on the shelf of rock at his back; his pale eyes fixed upon her with that accustomed distance, unreachable. The men that were with him were alike as brothers, pale hair drawn back at the nape, the same profile, men dark-eyed, alike in armor, alike in attitude, one to his right, one to his left

  “Why are you with us?” Vanye asked. “Misplaced trust?”

  Kithan’s composure suffered the least disturbance; a frown passed over his face. His eyes fixed on Vanye’s with obscure challenge, and a languid pale hand, cuffed in delicate lace, gestured toward his heart. “On your pleasure, Barrows-lord.”

  “You are mistaken,” Vanye said.

  “Why,” asked Morgaine very softly, “are you with us, my lord Kithan, once of Ohtij-in?”

  Kithan tossed his head back and gave a silent and mirthless laugh, moved his wrist in the direction of the Suvoj. “We have little choice, do we not?”

  “And when we do meet with Roh and with Hetharu’s forces, you will be at our backs.”

  Kithan frowned. “But I am your man, Morgaine-Angharan.” He extended his long legs, crossed, before him, easy as a man in his own hall. “I am your most devoted servant.”

  “Indeed,” said Morgaine.

  “Doubtless,” said Kithan, regarding her with that same distant smile, “you will serve me as you served those who followed you to Ohtij-in.”

  “It is more than possible,” said Morgaine.

  “They were your own,” Kithan exclaimed with sudden, plaintive force, as if he pleaded something; and Jhirun, flinching, edged against the rocks at Vanye’s side.

  “They may have been once,” Morgaine said. “But those that I knew are long buried. Their children are not mine.”

  Kithan’s face recovered its placidity; laughter returned to his half-lidded eyes. “But they followed you,” he said. “I find that ironical. They knew you, knew what you had done to their ancestors, and still they followed you, because they thought you would make an exception of them; and you served them exactly as you are. Even the Aren-folk, who hate you, and tie up white feathers at their doorways-” He smiled widely and laughed, a mere breath. “A reality. A fixed point in all this reasonless universe. I am khal. I have never found a point on which to stand or a shrine at which to worship-til now. You are Angharan; you come to destroy the Wells and all that exists. You are the only rational being in the world. So I also follow you, Morgaine-Angharan. I am your faithful worshipper.”

  Vanye thrust himself to his feet, hand to his belt, loathing the qujal’s insolence, his mockery, his elaborate fancies: Morgaine should not have to suffer this, and did, for it was not her habit to avenge herself for words, or for other wrongs.

  “At your pleasure,” he said to Kithan.

  Kithan, weaponless, indicated so with an outward gesture, a slight hardness to his eyes.

  “Let be,” Morgaine said. “Prepare the horses. Let us be moving, Vanye.”

  “I might cut their reins and their girths for them,” said Vanye, scowling at the halfling lord and his two men, reckoning them, several, a moderately fair contest. “They could test their horsemanship with that, and we would not have to give them further patience.”

  Morgaine hesitated, regarding Kithan. “Let him be,” she said. “His courage comes from the akil. It will pass.”

  The insouciance of Kithan seemed stung by that. He frowned, and leaned against the lock staring at her, no longer capable of distance.

  “Prepare the horses,” she said. “If he can hold our pace, well; and if not-the Hiua w
ill remember that he companied with me.”

  There was unease in the guards’ faces, a flicker of the same in Kithan’s; and then, with a bow, a taut smile: “Arrhthein,” he said to her. “Sharron a thrissn nthinn.”

  “Arrhtheis,” Morgaine echoed softly, and Kithan settled back with an estimating look in his eyes, as if something had passed between them of irony and bitter humor.

  It was the language of the Stones. I am not qujal, Morgaine had insisted to him once, which he believed, which he still insisted on believing.

  But when he had gone, at Morgaine’s impatient gesture, to attend the horses, he looked back at them, his pale-haired liege and the pale-haired qujal together, tall and slender, in all points similar; a chill ran through him.

  Jhirun, human-dark, a wraith in brown, scrambled up and quitted that company and ran to him, as he gathered up the reins of her mare and brought it to the roadside. He threw down there the bundle she had made of their supplies and began rerolling the blankets, on his knees at the side of the stone road. She knelt down with him and began with feverish earnestness to help him, in this and when be began to tie the separate rolls to their three saddles, redistributing supplies and tightening harness.

  Her mare’s girth too he attended, seeing that it was well done, on which her life depended. She waited, hovering at his side.

  “Please,” she said at last, touching at his elbow. “Let me ride with you; let me stay with you.”

  “I cannot promise that.” He avoided her eyes, and brushed past her to attend the matter of his own horse. “If the mare cannot hold our pace, still she is steady and she will manage to keep you ahead of the Hiua. I have other obligations. I cannot think of anything else just now.”

  “These men - lord, I am afraid of them. They-”

  She did not finish. It ended in tears. He looked at her and remembered her the night that Kithan had visited his cell, small and wretched as she bad been in the hands of the guards, men half-masked and anonymous in their demon-helms. Her they had seized, and not him.