Wall of Shiuan

Socha had smiled the morning she parted from them; Jhirun recalled her wrapped in sunlight, the boat gliding from the landing as it parted into that golden light: Socha had taken such a leave, at Hnoth, when madness swelled as the waters swelled in their cha

She drew the gull amulet from between her breasts, safe to see it now in daylight, safe where no one would take it from her; and she thought of the king under the hill, and the stranger—himself driven by a nightmare as her own drove her.

The white rider, the fair rider, the woman behind him: day and white mist, as he was of the dark. In the night she had shuddered at his ravings, thinking of white feathers and of what lay against her heart, that seventh and unfavorable power—that once had prisoned him, before a Barrows-girl had come where she ought not.

The gull glittered coldly in her hand, wings spread, a thing of ancient and sinister beauty, emblem of the blankness at the edge of the world, out of which only the white gulls came, like lost souls: Morgen-Angharan, that the marshlanders cursed, that the Kings had followed to their ruin—the white Queen, who was Death. A nagging fear urged her to throw the amulet far into the marsh. Hnoth was coming, as it had come for Socha, when earth and sea and sky went mad and the dreams came, driving her where no sane person would go. But her hand closed firmly about it, possessing it, and in time she slipped it back into her bodice to stay.

She could not see what lay about her in the mist. The pony’s hooves rang sometimes on bare stone, sometimes splashed through water or trod on slick mud. The dim shapes of the hills loomed in the thick air and passed her slowly like humps of some vast serpent, submerged in the marsh, now on this side of the Road and now on the other.

Something tall and thin stood beside the roadway. The pony clopped on toward it, and Jhirun’s heart beat faster, her fingers clenched upon the rein, the while she assured herself that the pony would not so blithely approach any dangerous beast. Then it took shape clearly, one of the Standing Stones, edgewise. She knew it now, and had not realized how far she had ridden in the mist.

More and more of such stones were about her now. She well knew where she was: the ruined khalin hold of Nia’s Hill was nearby, stones which had stood before the Moon was broken. She rode now on the border of the marshlands.

The little pony walked stolidly on his way, small hooves ringing on stone and now muffled by earth; and all that she could see in the gray world were the nearest stones and the small patch of earth on which the pony trod, as if creation itself were unravelled before and behind, and only where she rode remained solid. So it might be if one rode beyond the edge of the world.

And riding over soft ground, she looked down and saw the prints of larger hooves.

The Road rose again from that point, so that earth no longer covered it, and the ancient stone surface lay bare. Three Standing Stones made a gathering of shadows in the mist just off the Road. Distantly came an echo off the Stones, slow and doubling the sound of the pony’s hooves. Jhirun little liked the place, that was old before the Barrows were reared. Her hands clenched on the pony’s short mane as well as on the rein, for he walked warily now, his head lifted and with the least uncertainty in his gait. The echoes continued; and of a sudden came the ring of metal on stone, a shod horse.

Jhirun drove her heels into the pony’s fat sides, gathering her courage, forcing the unwilling animal ahead.

The black horse took shape before her, horse and rider, awaiting her. The pony balked. Jhirun gave him her heels again and made him go, and the warrior stayed for her, a dark shadow in the fog. His face came clear; he wore a peaked helm, a white scarf about it now. She stopped the pony.

“I came to find you,” she said, and his lack of welcome was already sending uncertainties winding about her heart, a sense of something utterly changed.

“Who are you?” he asked, which totally confounded her; and when she stared at him: “Where do you come from? From that hold atop the hill?”

She began to reckon that she was in truth going mad, and pressed her chilled hands to her face and shivered, her shaggy pony standing dwarfed by that tall black horse.

With a gentle ripple of water, a ring of shod hooves on stone, a gray horse appeared out of the mist. Astride him was a woman in a white cloak, and her hair as pale as the day, as white as hoarfrost.

A woman, the warrior had breathed in his nightmare, a rider all white, the woman that follows me—

But she came to a halt beside him, white queen and dark king together, and Jhirun reined aside her pony to flee the sight of them.

The black horse overrushed her, the warrior’s hand tearing the rein from her fingers. The pony shied off from such treatment, and the short mane failed her exhausted fingers. His body twisted under her and she tumbled down his slick back, seeing blind fog about her, up or down she knew not until she fell on her back and the Dark went over her.