Well of Shiuan

by C. J. Cherryh

  The image and the voice faded together. Vanye stood stricken for a moment; and then he dared look at Morgaine, to find question in the look that she returned him-a deadly mistrust.

  “I shall not go,” he insisted. “There was nothing agreed between us, liyo-ever. On my life, I would not go to him.”

  Her hand, that had slipped to the weapon at the back of her belt, returned to her side; and of a sudden she reached out and took his arm, drew him to the counter and set his hand there, atop the cold lights.

  “I shall show you,” she told him. “I shall show you; and on your life, ilin, on your soul, do you not forget it.”

  Her fingers moved, instructing his; he banished to a far refuge in him his threatened soul, that shuddered at the touch of these cold things. She bade him thus and thus and thus, a patterned touch on the colors, upon one and the other and the next; he forced it into his memory, branded it there, knowing the purpose of what he was given, little as it might avail here, with Roh’s touch to seal the power against their tampering.

  Again and again she bade him repeat for her the things that she had taught; mindlessly Roh’s ghost overhung them, repeating things that mocked them, endlessly, blind, void of sense. Vanye’s hands shook when that began again, but he did not falter in the pattern. Sweat prickled on him in his concentration; yet more times she bade him do what she had shown him.

  He finished yet again, and looked at her, pleading with his look that it be enough, that they quit this place. She gazed at him, face and hair dyed with the bloody light, as if searching him for any fault; and above her yet again Roh’s face began to mouth its words into the throbbing air.

  And suddenly she nodded that it was enough, and turned toward that door by which they had come.

  They walked the long aisle of the room. Vanye’s nerves screamed at him to take flight, to run; but she did not, and he would not. His nape prickled as Roh’s voice pursued them; he knew that did he torn and look there would be Roh’s face hovering in the air-urging at him with reasonings that no longer had allure: better to sit helpless while the seas rose, than to surrender to that, which had lied to him from the beginning, which for a time had made him believe that a kinsman lived in this forsaken Hell, in this endless exile.

  The darkness of the stairway lay before them; Morgaine shut the door and sealed it, shook him from his bewilderment to show him how it was done. He nodded blank, heartless understanding, his senses still filled with the sound and the light, and the terror of knowing what she had fed into his mind.

  He held what men and qujal had murdered to possess; and he did not want it, with all his heart he did not. He put out his hand to the wall, still blind, save for the beam that Morgaine carried; he felt rough stone under his fingertips, felt the steps under his feet; and still his mind was dazed with what he had seen and felt. He wished it all undone; and he knew that it was too late, that he had been Claimed in a way that had no release, no freedom.

  Down and down the curving stair they went, until he could hear the stamp and blowing of the horses-friendly, familiar sound, native to the man who had ascended the stairs; it was as if a different man had come down, who could not for a moment realize that the things he knew outside that terrible room could still exist, untouched, unshaken by what had shaken him.

  Morgaine put out the light she bore as they stepped off the last step, and Jhirun came to them, full of whispered questions-her tearful voice and frightened manner reminding him that she also had endured the terror of this place-and knew nothing of what it held. He envied her that ignorance-touched her hand as she gave the reins of his horse to him.

  “Go back,” he told her. “Myya Jhirun, ride back the way we came and hide somewhere.”

  “No,” said Morgaine suddenly.

  He looked toward her, startled, dismayed; he could not read her face in the darkness.

  “Come outside,” she said; and she led Siptah through the doorway, waiting for them in the moonlight. Vanye did not look at Jhirun, having no answers for her; he led the gelding out, and heard Jhirun behind him.

  “Jhirun,” said Morgaine, “go watch the road with Kithan.”

  Jhirun looked from one to the other of them, but ventured no word in objection: she started away, leading her horse down the long aisle of slanting spires to the place where Kithan sat, a shadow among shadows.

  “Vanye,” said Morgaine softly, “would thee go to him? Would thee take what he offers?”

  “No,” he protested upon the instant. “No, upon my oath, I would not.”

  “Do not swear too quickly,” she said; and when he would have disputed her: “Listen to me: this one order-go to him, surrender-go with him.”

  He could not answer for a moment; the words were dammed in his throat, refusing utterance.

  “My order,” she said.

  “This is a deception of yours,” he said, indignant that she did not take him into her trust, that she thus played games with him. “You are full of them. I do not think that I deserve it, liyo.”

  “Vanye-if I cannot get through, one of us must. I am well known; I am disaster to you. But you-go with him, swear to his service; learn what he can teach you that I have not. And kill him, and go on as I would do.”

  “Liyo,” he protested. A shiver set into his limbs; he wound his cold fingers into the black horse’s mane, for all that he had trusted dropped away beneath him, as the mountains had vanished that morning beyond the Gate, leaving an about him naked and ugly.

  “You are Ilin,” she said. “And you take no guilt for it”

  ‘To take bread and warmth and then kill a man?”

  “Did I ever promise thee I had honor? It was otherwise, I think.”

  “Oath-breaking... Liyo, even to him-”

  “One of us,” she said between her teeth, “one of us must get through. Remain sworn to me in your mind, but let your mouth say whatever it must. Live. He will not suspect you; he will come to trust you. And this is the service I set on you: kill him, and carry out what I have shown you, without end-without end. Win. Will you do this for me?”

  “Aye,” he said at last; and in his bitterness: “I must”

  Take Kithan and Jhirun; make some tale that Ron will believe, how Ohtij-in has fallen, of your release by Kithan- omitting my part in it. Let him believe you desperate. Bow at his feet and beg shelter of him. Do whatever you must but stay alive, and pass the Gate, and carry out my orders-to the end of your life, Nhi Vanye, and beyond if thee can contrive it.”

  For a long moment he said nothing; he would have wept if he had tried to speak, and in his anger he did not want that further shame. Then he saw a trail of moisture shine on her cheek, and it shook him more than all else that she had said.

  “Be rid of the Honor-blade,” she said. “It will raise a question with him you cannot answer.”

  He drew it and gave it to her. “Avert,” he murmured, the word almost catching in his throat; she echoed the wish, and slipped it through her belt.

  “Beware your companions,” she said.

  “Aye,” he answered.

  “Go. Make haste.”

  He would have bowed himself at her feet, an Ilin taking final, unwilling leave; but she prevented him with a hand on his arm. The touch numbed: for a moment he hesitated with a thing spilling over in him that wanted saying, and she, all unexpected, leaned forward and touched her lips to his, a light touch, quickly gone. It robbed him of speech; the moment passed, and she turned to take up the reins of her horse. What he would have said seemed suddenly a plea for himself, and she would not hear it; there would be dispute, and that was not the parting he wanted.

  He hurled himself into the saddle, and she did likewise, and rode with him as far as the crossing of the road and the aisle, the arch that led through into

  Abarais, where Jhirun and Kithan awaited them.

  “We are going on,” he said to them, the words strange and ugly to him, “we three.”

  They looked puzzled, dismayed. They said
nothing, asked nothing; perhaps the look of the two of them, ilin and liyo, made a barrier against them. He turned his horse into the passage, into the dark, and they went with him. Suddenly he looked back, in dread that Morgaine would already be gone.

  She was not. She was a shadow, she and Siptah, against the light behind them, waiting.

  Fwar and his kind, whatever remained of them, would be coming. Suddenly he realized the set of her mind: the Barrows-folk, that she once had led-ages hence. There was a bond between them, an ill dream that was recent in her mind, a geas apart from Changeling. He remembered her at the Suvoj, sweeping man after man away into oblivion-and the thing that he had seen in her eyes.

  They were your own, Kithan had protested, even a qujal appalled at what she had done. They followed her; she waited for them this time, as time after time he had feared she might turn and face them, her peculiar nightmare, that would not let her go.

  She waited, while the Gate prepared to seal. Here she stopped running; and laid all her burden upon him. Tears blurred his eyes; he thought wildly of riding back, refusing what she had set him to do.

  And that she would not forgive.

  They exited the passage into the light of rising Li, saw the valley of Abarais before them, the jagged spires of ruins, and in the far distance-campfires scattered like stars across the mountains: the host of all Shiuan.

  He looked back; he could not see Morgaine any longer.

  He rammed the spurs into the gelding’s flanks and led his companions toward the fires.

  Chapter 18

  The vast disc of Li inclined toward the horizon. There was a stain of cloud at that limit of the sky, and wisps of cloud drifted across the moon-track overhead.

  The sinking moon yet gave them light enough for quick traveling-light enough too for their enemies. They were exposed, in constant view from the cliffs that towered on either side of the road, above the ruins. Ambush was a constant possibility: Vanye feared it with a distant fear, not for himself, but for the orders he had been given-the only thing he had left, he thought, that was worth concern. That at some moment a shaft aimed from those cliffs should come bursting leather and mail links and bone-the pain would be the less for it, and quickly done, unlike the other, that was forever.

  Until you have no choice, her words echoed back to him, a persistent misery, a fact that would not be denied. Until you have no choice-as I have none.

  Once Jhirun spoke to him; he did not know what she had said, nor care-only stared at her, and she fell silent; and Kithan likewise stared at him, pale eyes sober and present, purged of the akil that had clouded them.

  And the watchfires grew nearer, spreading before them like a field of stars, red and angry constellations across their way, that began to dim at last like those in the heavens, with the first edge of day showing.

  There is nothing left,” Vanye told his companions, realizing that their time grew short, “only to surrender to my cousin and hope for his forbearance.”

  They were silent, Jhirun next to him and Kithan beyond. Their faces held that same restrained fear that had possessed them since they had been hastened, without explanation, from An-Abarais. They still did not ask, nor demand assurances of him. Perhaps they already knew he had none to give.

  “At An-Abarais,” he continued while they rode, walking the horses, “we learned that there was no choice. My liege has released me.” He suppressed the tremor that would come to his voice, set the muscles of his jaw and continued, beginning to weave the lie that he would use for Roh. “There is more kindness in her than is apparent-for my sake, if not for yours. She knows the case of things, that Roh might accept me, but never her. You are nothing to her; she simply does not care. But Roh hates her above all other enemies; and the less he knows of what truly passed at Ohtij-in, the more readily he will take me-and you. If he knows that I have come directly from her, and you likewise from her company-he will surely kill me; and for me, he has some affection. I leave it to you how much he would hesitate in your case.”

  Still they said nothing, but the apprehension was no less in their eyes.

  “Say that Ohtij-in fell in the quake,” he asked of them, “and say that the marshlanders attacked when Aren fell-say whatever you like of the truth; but do not let him know that we entered An-Abarais. Only she could have passed its doors and learned what she learned. Forget altogether that she was with us, or I shall die; and I do not think that I will be alone in that.”

  Of Jhirun he was sure; there was a debt between them. But there was one of a different nature between himself and Kithan: it was the qujal that he feared, and the qujal that he most needed to confirm his lie as truth.

  And Kithan knew it: those unhuman eyes took on a consciousness of power, and a smug amusement.

  “And if it is not Roh who gives the orders,” Kithan said, “if it is Hetharu, what shall I say, Man?”

  “I do not know,” Vanye said. “But a father-slayer will hardly stick at brother-killing; and he will share nothing with you . . . not unless he loves you well. Do you think that is so, Kithan Bydarra’son?”

  Kithan considered it, and the smugness faded rapidly.

  “How well,” Kithan asked, scowling, “does your cousin love you?”

  “I will serve him,” Vanye answered, finding the words strange to his lips. “I am an ilin now without a master; and we are of Andur-Kursh, he and I ... you do not understand, but it means that Roh will take me with him, and I will serve him as his right hand; and that is something he cannot find elsewhere. I need you, my lord Kithan, and you know it; I need you to set myself at Roh’s side, and you know that you can destroy me with an ill-placed word. But likewise you need me-else you will have to deal with Hetharu; and you know that I bear Hetharu a grudge. You do not love him. Stand by me; and I will give you Hetharu, even if it takes time.”

  Kithan considered, his lips a thin line. “Aye,” he said, “I do follow your reasoning. But, Nhi Vanye, there are two men of mine that may undo it all.”

  Vanye recalled that, the house guards that had fled, that added a fresh weight of apprehension to his mind; he shrugged. “We cannot amend that. It is a large camp. If I were in the place of such men, I would not rush to authority and boast that I had deserted my lord.”

  “Are you not doing so now?” Kithan asked.

  Heat flamed in his face. “Yes,” he admitted hoarsely. “By her leave; but those are details Roh need not know . . . only that Ohtij-in has fallen, and that we are escaped from it.”

  Kithan considered that a moment “I will help you,” he said. “Perhaps my word can bring you to your cousin. Seeing Hetharu discomfited will be pleasure enough to reward me.”

  Vanye stared at him, weighing the truth behind that cynical gaze, and looked questioningly also at Jhirun, past whom they had been talking. She looked afraid in that reckoning, as if she, a peasant, knew her worth in the affairs of lords who strove for power.

  “Jhirun?” he questioned her.

  “I want to live,” she said. He looked into the fierceness of that determination and doubted, suddenly; perhaps she saw it, for her lips tightened. “I will stay with you,” she said then.

  Tears shone in her eyes, of pain or fear or what other cause he did not know, nor spare further thought to wonder. He had no care for either of them, Myya nor halfling lord, only so they did not ruin him. His mind was already racing apace, to the encamped thousands that lay ahead, beginning to plot what approach they might make so that none would slay them out of hand.

  Whatever their need for haste, it could be measured by the fact that none of the horde that followed Rob had yet begun to move: the watchfires still glowed in the murky beginnings of dawn. It was best, he thought, to ride in slowly, as many a party must have done, come to join the movement that flowed toward the Well: anxiously he measured the rising light against the distance to the far edge of the fires, and liked not the reckoning. They could not make it all before the light showed them for the ill-assorted companions they w
ere. But there was no other course that promised better.

  Soon they rode out of the ruin altogether, and among the stumps of young trees, saplings that had been hewn off the beginning slope of the mountain-for shelters, or to feed the fires of the camp. And soon enough they rode within scent of cookfires, and the sound of voices.

  Sentries started from their posts, seizing up spears and advancing on them. Vanye kept riding at a steady pace, the others with him; and when they had come close in the dim light, the sentries-dark-haired Men-stood confused by the sight of them and backed away, making no challenge. Perhaps it was the presence of Kithan, Vanye thought, resisting the temptation to look back; or perhaps-the thought came to him with peculiar irony-it was himself, cousin to Roh, similar in arms and even in mount, for the two horses, Roh’s mare and his gelding, were of the same hold and breeding.

  They entered the camp, that sprawled in disorder on either side of the paved road. At a leisurely pace they rode past the wretched Shiua, who huddled drowsing by their fires, or looked up and stared with furtive curiosity at what passed them in the dawning.

  “We must find the Well,” Vanye observed softly; “I trust that is where we will find Roh.”

  “Road’s-end,” answered Kithan, and nodded toward the way ahead, that began to wind up to the shoulder of the mountains. “The Old Ones built high.”

  Somewhere a horn sounded, thin and far, a lonely sound off the mountain-slopes. Over and over it sounded, sending the echoes tumbling off the valley walls; and about them the camp began to stir. Voices began to be heard, strained with excitement; fires began to be extinguished, sending up plumes of smoke.

  Jhirun looked from one side to the other in apprehension. “They are beginning to move,” she said. “Lord, surely the Well is open, and they are beginning to move.”