It was true: everywhere men were stripping shelters and gathering their meager belongings; children were crying and animals were bawling in alarm and disturbance. In moments, those lightest burdened had begun to seek the road, pouring out onto that way that led them to the Well.
Roh’s gift, Vanye thought, his heart pained for the treason he felt, his human soul torn by the sight of the overburdened folk about him, that edged from the path of their horses. Morgaine would have doomed them; but they were going to live.
He came, to bow at Roh’s feet-and one day to kill him; and by that, to betray these folk: he saw himself, an evil presence gently threading his way among them, whose faces were set in a delirious and desperate hope.
He served Morgaine.
There was at least a time you chose for yourself, she had said.
Thee will not appoint thyself my conscience, Nhi Vanye. Thee is not qualified.
He began to know.
With a grimace of pain he laid spurs and the reins’ ends to the black gelding, startling Shiua peasants from his path, frightened folk yielding to him and his two companions, that held close behind him. Faces tore away in the dim light before him, stark with fear and dismay.
The road wound steeply upward. An archway rose athwart it, massive and strange. They passed beneath, passed through the vanguard of the human masses that toiled up the heights, and suddenly rode upon forces of qujal, demon-helmed and bristling with lances, whose women rode with them, pale-haired ladies in glittering cloaks, and, very few among them, a cluster of pale, grave-eyed children, who stared at the intrusion with the sober mien of their elders.
A band of qujal amid that mass reined themselves across the road, where its turning made passage difficult, with a dizzying plunge into depths on the right hand. Authority was among them, bare-headed, white hair streaming in the wind; and his men ranged themselves before him.
Vanye reined back and reached for his sword. “No,” Kithan said at once. “They are Sotharra. They will not stop us.”
Uneasily Vanye conceded the approach to Kithan, rode at his shoulder and with Jhirun at his own rein hand, as they drew to a slow halt before the halflings, with levelled pikes all about them.
Little Kithan had to say to them: a handful of words, of which one was Ohtij-in and another was Roh and another was Kithan’s own name; and the Sotharra lord straightened in his saddle, and reined aside, the pikes of his men-at-arms flourishing up and away.
But when they had ridden through, the Sotharra rode behind them at their pace; and Vanye ill-liked it, though it gave them passage through the other masses of halflings that rode the winding ascent Hereafter was no retreat: he was committed to the hands of qujal, to trust Kithan, who could say what he wished to them.
And if Roh had already passed, and if it were Hetharu who must approve his passage: Vanye drove that thought from his mind.
A turning of the road brought them suddenly into sight of a round hill, ringed about by throngs of halfling folk: the horses slowed of their own accord, snorting, walking skittishly, weary as they were.
It grew upon the senses, that oppression that Vanye knew of Gates, that nerve-prickling unease that made the skin feel raw and the senses over-weighted. It was almost sound, and not. It was almost touch, and not.
He saw the place to which they went, in a day that yet had a murkiness in its pastel clouds: there were tents; there were horses; and the road came to an end in a place shadowed by slanted spires.
And the Well.
It was a circle of Standing Stones, like that of Hiuaj: not a single Gate, but a gathering of them, and they were alive. Opal colors streamed within them, like illusion in the daylight, a constant interplay of powers that filled the air with uneasiness; but one Gate held the azure blue of sky, that was terrible with depth, that made the eyes ache with beholding it.
Kithan swore.
“They are real,” the qujal said. “They are real.”
Vanye forced the reluctant gelding to a steady walk, shouldered into Jhirun’s mare by a sudden rebellion of the horse, and saw Jhirun’s eyes, dazed, still fixed upon the horror of the Gates; her hand was at her throat, where bits of metal and a white feather and a stone cross offered her what belief she knew. He spoke her name, sharply, and she tore her gaze from the hillside and kept by his side.
The camp at the base of the hill was already astir. Shouts attended their arrival, voices thin and lost in that heaviness of the air. Men fair-haired and armored gathered to stare at them: “Kithan Roktija” Vanye heard whispered: he unhooked his sword and rode with it across the saddle as they rode slowly past pale, gray-eyed faces, forcing a way until the press grew too thick to do so without violence.
Kithan asked a question of them. It received quick answer; and Kithan raised his eyes toward the edge of the hill and reined in that direction. Vanye stayed beside him, Jhirun’s mare at his flank as the hedge of weapons slowly parted, letting them pass. He heard his own name spoken, and Bydarra’s; he saw the sullen, wondering faces, the hateful looks, the hands that gripped weapons: Bydarra’s accused murderer-he kept his face impassive and kept the horse moving steadily in Kithan’s wake.
Riders came through the crowd, demon-helmed and armored, spreading out, shouldering the crowd aside, spreading out athwart their path. An order was shouted: and among them, central amid a hedge of pikemen, rode an all-too-familiar figure, silver-haired, with the beauty of the qujal and the eyes of a man.
Hetharu.
Vanye shouted, ripped the sword free and spurred for him, into a shielding wall of pikes that shied his horse back, wounded. One of the pikemen fell; Vanye slashed at another, reined back and back, and whirled on those threatening his flank. He broke free; Hetharu’s folk scattered back, forgetful of dignity, scale-armored house guards massing in a protective arc before their lord.
Vanye drew breath, flexed his hand on the sword, measured the weakest man-and heard other riders come in on his flank. Jhirun cried out; he reined back, risked a glance in that quarter, beyond Jhirun, beyond Kithan-and saw him he hoped desperately to see.
Roh. Bow slung across his shoulders, sword across his saddlebow, Roh had reined to a halt. Ohtija and Sotharra gave back from him, and slowly he rode the black mare into what had become a vacant space.
Vanye sat the sweating gelding, tight-reining him, who turned fretfully this way and that, hurt, and trembling when he stood still.
Another rider moved in; he cast a panicked glance in that direction: Hetharu, who sat his horse sword in hand.
“Where,” Roh asked him, drawing his attention back, “is Morgaine?”
Vanye shrugged, a listless gesture, though he felt the tension in every muscle.
“Come down from your horse,” said Roh.
He wiped the length of the sword on the gelding’s black mane, then climbed down, sword still in hand, and gave the reins of the horse to Jhirun. He sheathed the sword then, and waited.
Roh watched him from horseback; and when he had put away the weapon, Roh likewise dismounted and tossed the reins to a companion, hung his sword at his hip and walked forward until they could speak without raising voices.
“Where is she?” Roh asked again.
“I do not know,” Vanye said. “I have come for shelter, like these others.”
“Ohtij-in is gone,” Kithan said suddenly from behind him. “The quake took it, and all inside. The marshlands are on the move; and some of us they hanged. The man Vanye and the Barrows-girl were with me on the road, else I might have died; my own men deserted me.”
There was silence. There should have been shock, outcry-some emotion on the faces of the Ohtija qujal who surrounded them.
“Arrest,” Hetharu’s voice said suddenly; riders moved up, and Vanye turned in alarm.
Two helmless men were beside Hetharu: scale-armored, white-haired, and alike as brothers-shameless in their change of lords.
“Yours,” Kithan murmured, and managed an ironical bow. The accustomed drugged dist
ance crept into his voice.
“To protect my brother,” Hetharu answered softly, “from his own nature-which is well-known and transparent. You are quite sober, Kithan.”
“The news,” said Roh, from the other side, “outran you, Nhi Vanye. Now tell me the truth. Where is she?”
He turned and faced Roh, for one terrible moment bereft of all subtleties: he could think of nothing.
“My lord Hetharu,” Roh said. “The camp is on the move. Uncomfortable as it is, I think it time to move your forces into position; and yours as well, my lords of Sotharra and Domen, Marom and Arisith. We will make an orderly passage.”
There was a stir within the ranks; orders were passed, and a great part of the gathering began to withdraw-the Sotharra, who were prepared already to move, began to ascend the hill.
But Hetharu did not, not he nor his men.
Roh looked up at him, and at the men that delayed about them. “My lord Hetharu,” Roh said, “lord Kithan will go with you, if you have use for him.”
Hetharu gave an order. The two house guards rode forward and set themselves on either side of Kithan, whose pale face was set in helpless rage.
“Vanye,” Roh said.
Vanye looked at him.
“Once again,” Roh said, “I ask you.”
“I have been dismissed,” Vanye said slowly, the words difficult to speak. “I ask fire and shelter, Chya Roh i Chya.”
“On your oath?”
“Yes,” he said. His voice trembled. He knelt down, reminding himself that this must be, that his liege’s direct order absolved him of the lie and the shame; but it was bitter to do so in the sight of both allies and enemies. He bowed himself to the earth, forehead against the trampled grass. He heard the voices, numb in the Well-cursed air, and was glad in this moment that he could not understand their words of him.
Roh did not bid him rise. Vanye sat back after a moment, staring at the ground, shame burning his face, both for the humiliation and for the lie.
“She has sent you,” Roh said, “to kill me.”
He looked up.
“I think she has made a mistake,” said Roh. “Cousin, I will give you the sheltering you ask, taking your word that you have been dismissed from your service to her. By this evening’s fire, elsewhere-a Claiming. I think you are too much Nhi to forswear yourself. But she would not understand that. There is no pity in her, Nhi Vanye.”
Vanye came to his feet, a sudden move: blades rasped loose all about him, but he kept his hand from his.
“I will go with you,” he said to Roh.
“Not at my back,” Roh said. “Not this side of the Wells. Not unsworn.” He took back the reins of the black mare, and rose into the saddle-cast a look toward the hill, where row on row of Sotharran forces had marshalled themselves, toward which the first frightened lines of human folk labored.
The lines moved with feverish speed behind: those entering that oppressive air hesitated, pushed forward by the press behind; horses shied, of those forces holding the hill, and had to be restrained.
And of a sudden a tumult arose, downtrail, beyond the curve of the mountainside. Voices shrieked, thin and distant. Animals bawled in panic.
Roh reined about toward that sound, the least suspicion of something amiss crossing his face as he gazed toward that curving of the hill: the shouting continued, and somewhere high atop the mountain a horn blew, echoing.
Vanye stood still, in his heart a wild, sudden hope-the thing that Roh likewise suspected: he knew it, he knew, and suddenly in the depth of him he cursed in anguish for what Morgaine had done to him, casting him into this, face to face with Roh.
Vanye whirled, sprang for his horse and ripped the reins from Jhirun’s offering hand as the qujal closed on him; a rake of his spurs shied the gelding up, buying him time to draw. A pike-thrust hit his mailed side, half-throwing him; he hung on with his knees, and the sweep of his sword sent the pikeman screaming backward, that man and another and another.
“No!” Roh’s voice shouted thinly in his roaring ears; he found himself in ground free of enemies, a breathing space. He backed the gelding, amazed to see part of the force break away: Roh, and his own guard, and all of fifty of the Ohtija, plunging toward the hill, and the Sotharra, and the screaming hordes of men that surged toward the Wells, lines confounded by panicked beasts that scattered, laboring carts, and a horde that pressed them behind. The Sotharra ranks bowed, began to break. Into that chaos Roh and his companions rode.
And the Ohtija that remained surged forward. Vanye spurred into the impact, wove under one pike-thrust, and suddenly saw a man he had not struck topple from the saddle with blood starting from his face. A second fell, and another to his blade; and a second time the Ohtija, facing more than a peasant rabble, fell back in confusion. Air rushed; Vanye blinked, dazed, saw a stone take another of the Ohtija-the house guard that had betrayed Kithan.
Jhirun.
He reined back and back, almost to the cover of the tumbled stones of the hillside; and yet another stone left Jhirun’s sling, toppling another man from the saddle and sending the animal shying into others, hastening the Ohtija into retreat, leaving their dead behind them.
Jhirun and Kithan: out of the tail of his eye he saw the hauling still with him, leaking blood from fingers pressed to his sleeve. Jhirun, barefoot and herself with a scrape across the cheek, swung down from her little mare and quickly gathered a handful of stones.
But the Ohtija were not returning. They had headed up, across the slope, where the ranks of the Sotharra had collapsed into utter disorder.
Men, human-folk, poured in increasing numbers up the slope, this way and that, fleeing in terror.
And came others, small men and different, and armed, adding terror to the rout: pitiless they were in their desperation, making no distinction of halfling or human.
“Marshlanders,” Jhirun cried in dismay.
The horde swept between them and the Well.
“Up!” Vanye cried at Jhirun, and delayed only the instant, spurred the exhausted gelding toward that slope, beyond thinking whether Jhirun or Kithan understood. Marshlanders recognized him, and cried out in a frenzy, a few attacking, most scattering from the black horse’s hooves. Who stood in his way, he overrode, wielded his sword where he must, his arm aching with the effort; he felt the horse falter, and spurred it the harder.
And across the slope he saw her, a flash of Siptah’s pale body in a gap she cut through the press: enemies scattered from her path and hapless folk fled screaming, or fell cowering to the ground. Red fire took any that chose to stand.
“Liyo!” he shouted, hewed with his sword a man that thrust for him, broke into the clear and headed across the slope on a converging line with her. She saw him; he drove the spurs in mercilessly, and they two swung into a single line, black horse and gray, side by side as they took the slope toward the Wells, enemies breaking from their path in a wide swath.
But at the first of the Ohtija lines, there riders massed, and moved to stop them. Morgaine’s fire took some, but the ranks filled, and others swept across the flank of the hill. Arrows flew.
Morgaine turned, swept fire in that direction.
And the Ohtija broke and scattered, all but a handful. Together they rode into that determined mass, toppled three from their saddles. Siptah found a space to run and leaped forward; and Vanye spurred the gelding after.
Suddenly the horse twisted under him, screaming pain-a rush of earth upward and the sure, slow knowledge that he was horseless, lost-before the impact crumpled him upon shoulder and head and flung him stunned against a pile of stones.
Vanye fought to move, to bring himself to his feet, and the first thing that he saw was the black gelding, dying, a broken shaft in its chest. He staggered to his feet leaning against the rocks and bent for his fallen sword, and gazed upslope, blinking clear the sight of opal fires and Siptah’s distant shape, Morgaine at the hill’s crest.
Enemies were about her. Red laced the opa
l shimmerings, and the air was numb with the presence of the Gates above them.
And riders came sweeping in toward her, a half a hundred horse crossing that slope. Vanye cursed aloud and thrust himself out from the rocks, trying to climb the slope afoot; pain stabbed up his leg, laming him.
She would not stay for him, could not. He used the sword to aid him and kept climbing.
A horseman rushed up on him from behind; he whirled, seized a pike-thrust between arm and body and wrenched, pulled the hauling off, asprawl with him; the horse rushed on, shying from them. Vanye struck with the longsword’s pommel, dazed the halfling and staggered free, struggling only to climb, half-deaf to the rider that thundered up behind him.
He saw Morgaine turning back, giving up ground won, casting herself back among enemies. “No!” he shouted, trying to wave her off; the exhausted gray could not carry them, double weight in flight. He saw what Morgaine, intent on reaching him, could not see: the massing of a unit of horse on her flank.
A bay horse rushed past him, a flash of bare legs as he turned, lifting the sword: Jhirun reined in hard and slid down. “Lord!” she cried, thrusting the reins into his hand, and, “Go!” she shouted at him, her voice breaking.
He flung himself for the saddle, felt the surge of the horse as life itself; but he delayed, taut-reined, offered his bloody hand to her.
She stumbled back, hand behind her, the shying horse putting paces between them as she backed away on the corpse-littered slope.
“Go!” she screamed furiously, and cursed him.
Dazed, he reined back; and then he looked upslope, where Morgaine delayed, enemies broken before her. She shouted something at him; he could not hear it but he knew.
He spurred the mare forward, and Morgaine reined about and joined with him in the climb. Ohtija forces wavered before them, broke as horses went down under Morgaine’s fire. Peasants scattered screaming, confounding the order of cavalry.
They mounted the crest of the hill, toward an enemy that fled their path in disorder, peasants and lords together, entering into that great circle that was the Well of Abarais, where opal lights surged and drifted among the Stones, where a vast blue space yawned bottomlessly before them, drinking in men and halfling riders, seeming at once to hurtle skyward and downward, out of place in the world that beheld it, a burning blue too terrible against Shiuan’s graying skies.
Well of Shiuan Page 28