Wall of Shiuan

“Hnoth.”

“It floods here,” Jhirun said, hardly audible. Vanye could not see her face. He felt the touch of her fingers on the cantle of the saddle, the shift of her grip, sensed how little she liked to be questioned by Morgaine.

“Shiuan,” Vanye said. “What of that place?”

“A wide land. They grow grain there, and there are great holds.”

“Well-defended, then.”

“They are powerful lords, and rich.”

“Then it is well,” said Morgaine, “that we have you with us, is it not, Jhirun Ela’s-daughter? You do know this land after all.”

“No,” Jhirun insisted at once. “No, lady. I can only tell you the things I have heard.”

“How far does this marsh extend?”

Jhirun’s fingers touched Vanye’s back, as if seeking help. “It grows,” she said. ‘The land shrinks. I remember the Shiua coming into Hiuaj. I think now it must be days across.”

“The Shiua do not come now?”

“I am not sure the road is open,” Jhirun said. “They do not come. But marshlanders trade with them.”

Morgaine considered that, her gray eyes thoughtful and not entirely pleased. And in all their long riding she had no word save to Jhirun.

By noon they had reached a place where trees grew green at a little distance from the road. The storm had blown over, giving them only a sprinkling of rain as it went, to spend its violence elsewhere. They drew off to rest briefly, on the margin where the current had made a bank at the side of the causeway, and where the grass grew lush and green, a rare spot of beauty in the stagnant desolation about them. The watery sun struggled in vain to pierce the haze, and a small moon was almost invisible in the sky.

They let the horses graze and rest, and Morgaine parcelled out the last of their food, giving Jhirun a third share. But Jhirun took what she was given and drew away from them as far as the narrow strip of grass permitted; she sat gazing out across the marsh, preferring that dismal view, it seemed, and solitude.

And still Morgaine had spoken no word. Vanye ate, sitting cross-legged on the bank beside her, finally having decided within himself that it was not anger that kept her silent now: Morgaine was given to such periods when she was lost in her own thoughts. Something weighed upon her mind, in which he thought he was far from welcome.

“She,” Morgaine said suddenly, startling him, softly though she spoke, “was surely desperate to come this road alone. For fear of drowning, says she; Vanye, does it occur to thee to wonder why out of all the years of her life, she suddenly set out, with nothing in preparation?”

“Roh can be persuasive,” he said.

“The man is not Roh.”

“Aye,” he said, disturbed in that lapse, avoiding her eyes.

“And she speaks what we can understand, albeit the accent is thick. I would I knew whence she comes, Vanye. She surely did not have her birth from the earth and the fog yesterday noon.”

“I think,” he said, gazing off in the direction Jhirun stared, ahead, where the forest closed in again, great trees overshadowing the road, “I think her folk are surely in that hold we passed, and Heaven grant they stay there.”

“They may be looking for her.”

“And we,” he said, “may come into trouble on her account, or what is more likely—she will meet it on ours. Liyo , I ask you earnestly, send her away—now, while she is near enough home she can find her way back.”

“We are not taking her against her will.”

“I suppose that we are not,” he agreed, not happily. “But we are on a track they ca

“The horses do confine us to the roadway,” she said, “and this land has shown us one fellow-traveller, and not a breath of others. It occurs to me, Roh being ahead of us, it would be simple for folk hereabouts to choose some place of meeting to their advantage. I do think I saw a shadow move this morning, before you came down the trail.”

Cold settled about him—and self-anger; he remembered his reckless ride, how she had turned her back to him and stayed silent when he had joined her. He had taken it for rebuff. “Your sight was clearer than mine,” he said. “I was blind to it.”

“A trick of the light, perhaps. I was not sure.”

“No,” he said. “I have never known you prone to visions, liyo . I would you could have given me some sign.”

“It did not seem good then to discuss it,” she said, “nor later, with our guest at your back. Mind, she met us either by design or by chance. If by design, then she has allies—Roh himself, it may be—and if by chance, why, then, she feels herself equal to this ugly land, and she is not delicate. Mind thy back in either case; thee is too good-hearted.”

He considered this, which he knew for good sense, and he was ashamed. In all the time that they had ridden this land, he had felt himself lost, had forgotten every lesson of survival he had learned of his own land, as if any place of earth and stone could be utterly different. Blind and deaf he had ridden, like a man shaken from his senses; and little good he had been to her. She had reason for her anger.

“Back there,” he said, “this morning: I was startled, or I would not have cried out.”

“No more of it.”

“ Liyo , I take oath it was not a thing I would have done; I was surprised; I did not reckon—I could not believe that you would do murder.”

“Does that matter?” she asked. “Thee will not appoint thyself my conscience, Nhi Vanye. Thee is not qualified. And thee is not entitled.”

The horses moved, quietly grazing. Water sighed under the wind. His pulse dimmed awareness of all else; even the blood seemed dammed up in him, a beating of anger in his veins. He met her pale eyes without intending to; he did not like to look at them when she had this mood on her.

“Aye,” he said after a moment.

She said nothing. It was not her custom to argue; and this was the measure of her arrogance, that she disputed with no one, not even with him, who had given her more than his oath. Still one recourse he had with her: he bowed, head upon his hands, to the earth, and sat back, and gave her cold formality, the letter of the ilin –oath she had invoked. She hated to be answered back; and he did it so that she was left with nothing to say, and no argument.

Her frown darkened. She cast a stone into the water, and suddenly arose and gathered up Siptah’s reins, hurled herself to the saddle. She waited, anger in the set of her jaw.

He stood up and took the reins of his own gelding, the black pony still tethered to the saddle-ring; and he averted his eyes from Morgaine and rose into the saddle, reined over to Jhirun, who waited on the bank.

“Come,” he said to her, “either with me or on the pony, whichever pleases you.”

Jhirun looked up at him, her poor bruised face haggard with exhaustion, and without a word she held up her hand to be drawn up behind him. He had not thought she would choose so; he had wished that she would not, but he saw that she was nearly spent. He smothered the rage that was still hammering in him, knowing the look on his face must be enough to frighten the girl, and he was gentle in drawing her up to sit behind him. But when she put her arms about him, preparing for their climb to the roadway, he suddenly remembered Morgaine’s advice and the Honor-blade that was at his belt. He removed it to the saddle-sheath at his knee, where her hands could not reach it.

Then he turned the horse upslope, where Morgaine awaited him on the road. He expected her to ride ahead, scorning him, but she did not. She set Siptah to walking beside the gelding, knee to knee with him, though she did not look at him.

It was tacit conciliation, he suspected. He gathered this knowledge to himself for comfort, but it was far down the road before there was a word from her, when the cold shadow of the trees began to enfold them again.

“My moods,” Morgaine said suddenly. “Forget them.”

He looked at her, found nothing easy to say. He nodded, a carefully noncommittal gesture, for the words were painfully forced from her, and he did not think she wanted to discuss the matter. In truth, she owed him nothing, neither apology nor even humane treatment; that was the nature of ilin law; but that was not the way between them. Something troubled her, something heart-deep, and he wished that he could put a name to it.

The strangeness of the land was wearing at them both, he decided; they were tired, and nerves were tautly strung. He felt in his own body the ache, the weight of mail that settled with malevolent cu

“Aye,” he murmured at last, settling more easily into the saddle. “We are both tired, liyo . That is all.”

She seemed content with that.

And for many long hours they passed through land that was low and all the same, alternate tracts of cheerless, unhealthy forest and barren marsh, where the road was passable and in most places well above the water. Qujal –made, this road, Vanye reckoned to himself—wrought by ancient magics– qujalin works lasted, strange, immune to the ages that ate away at the works of men, some seeming ageless, while others crumbled away suddenly as if they had become infected with mortality. There was a time not so long ago when he would have sought any other road than this, that led them so well in the direction Morgaine sought: qujalin roads surely led to qujalin places—and surely such was this called Abarais, in Shiuan, which Morgaine sought.

And better, far better, could they ride that way alone, unseen, unmarked by men. He felt Jhirun’s weight against his back, balancing his own, she seeming to sleep for brief periods. It was a warm and altogether unaccustomed sensation, the nearness of another being: ilin , outlaw, bastard motherless from birth, he could recall few moments that any had laid hands on him save in anger. He found it disturbing now, this so harmless burden against him, that weighed against him, and against his mind.

He watched Morgaine, who glanced constantly to this side and that as they rode, searching every shadow; and it came to him what kept his mind so ill at ease: that Morgaine, arrogant as she was, seemed afraid—that she, who had no sane regard for her life or his, was greatly afraid, and that somewhere in that fear rested the child that rode sleeping at his back.