Wall of Shiuan

The forest closed in upon the road in the late afternoon and did not yield them up again, a way that grew more and more darksome, where it seemed that evening came premature. The trees here lived, growing in interlaced confusion, thrusting roots out into the cha

Morgaine, her horse unencumbered, led in this narrow way, a shadow among shadows, riding a pale horse, that pale hair of hers an enemy ba

Clouds again began to veil the sky, and that veil grew constantly darker, and plunged the forest into a halflight that destroyed all perspective, that made of the aisles of trees deep caverns hung with moss, and of the roadway a trail without begi

“I am afraid,” Jhirun protested suddenly, the only word she had volunteered all day long. Her fingers clutched Vanye’s shoulder-belt as if pleading for his intercession. “The sky is clouding. This is a bad place to be in a storm.”

“What is your counsel?” Morgaine asked her.

“Go back. There is known road behind us. Please, lady, let us ride back to higher ground as quickly as we can.”

“High ground is too far back.”

“We do not know whether the road even goes on,” Jhirun urged, desperation in her voice. She wrenched at Vanye’s sleeve. “Please.”

“And leave ourselves,” said Morgaine, “on this side of a flood and Roh safely on the other.”

“Roh may drown,” Vanye said, set ill at ease by the suspicion that the girl was reasoning more clearly than his liege at the moment. “And if he drowns, all we need do is survive and proceed at leisure. Liyo , I think in this the girl is giving us good advice. Let us turn back, now.”

Morgaine gave not even the grace of an answer, only laid heels to Siptah and put the gray stud to a quicker pace, that in level places became almost a run.

“Hold on,” Vanye bade Jhirun, grim anger in his heart. Her arms went about him, locked tightly as the gelding took a broken stretch of the road and picked up the clear paving again, dragging the exhausted pony after them. A misstep, a pool deeper than it looked—he feared the reckless pace that Morgaine chose, and feared equally the prospect of being caught in this lowest and darkest part of the land when the storm came down. There was no promise of higher ground as they went further and further, only of worse, and Morgaine, blindly insistent on the decision she had made, led them into it.

The clouds gathered yet more darkly and wind ruffled the water of the pools. Once something large and dark slid into the water as Siptah leaped it—vanished beneath the murky surface. Birds started from cover with a clap of wings and raucous cries, startling the horses, but they did not slack their pace more than an instant.

The road parted in a muddy bank, a place riven as if stone had pulled from stone, a cha

He slipped the halter from it. “No,” Jhirun protested, but he pushed its head around and slapped it on its muddy ramp, sending it wandering, dazed, back down the bank. He had dim hope for the animal, but more than he held for their own fortunes.

He looped the empty rope and halter to the saddle, then took the reins and led his own horse up the opposing slope. Morgaine was no longer in sight when he reached the crest.

He swore, rose the awkward way into the saddle, passing his leg in front, avoiding even so much as a backward glance at Jhirun. She held to him as he spurred the exhausted animal; he felt her sobbing against his back, whether for grief over the pony or for terror for herself, he was not sure. Upon his face now he felt the first drops of rain, and panic rose in him, the bitter surety of disaster shaping about them.

A moment more brought Morgaine in view—she refused to hold back now, he thought, because she also had begun to realize that there was no safety, and she sought desperately to bring them through this place, to find an end of it as there had been an end of all other such forested entanglements. The pattering fall of rain among the leaves began in earnest, scarring the smooth faces of the pools and chilling the air abruptly.

Soon enough there was no more ru

The gelding stumbled on a root, recovered with an effort that Vanye felt in his own muscles, a failing shudder. He flung his leg over the horn and slid down, begi

“ Liyo ,” he shouted over the roar of the water, that swallowed all lesser sounds. “Let me to the fore.”

She heard him and reined back, letting him lead the gelding past. He saw her face when he looked back, haggard and drawn and miserable with weariness—remembered how little she had slept. Now she surely realized that she had chosen amiss in her stubbor

Vanye turned his face into the wind and the rain and led, his feet rapidly numb in the cold water, his boots soaked through. Mud held his feet and wrenched at his joints, and he fought it, moving as rapidly as he could, gasping with exhaustion.

Night was settling about them. The road was lost in twilight. Before them were only hummocks of earth that supported a tree apiece, and the cha

A vast stele heaved up beside the road, vine-covered and obscured by a tree that had forced it over at an angle and then died, a skeletal ruin. On most such stones the persistent rains had worn away the carvings, but this was harder stone. Here Morgaine paused, leaned in her saddle to seize and pull aside the dead vines, reading the ancient glyphs as if by them she hoped to find, their way.

“Arrhn,” she said. “Here stood a place called Arrhn. There is nothing else.”

“Aren,” said Jhirun suddenly. “Aren is the marshlanders’ hold.”

“Where?” Vanye asked. “Where would it lie?”

“I do not know,” Jhirun insisted. “But, lady—lady, if it is near—they will shelter us. They must. They will not turn you away. They would not.”

“Reasonably,” said Morgaine, “if it was qujalin , it would have some co

Of sound for the moment there was the singing of the wind that tossed the branches, and the mind-numbing roar of the waters that rushed and bubbled about them: elements that had their own argument, that persuaded that even strange shelter was a way to survive.

She set Siptah moving again, and Vanye struggled to keep the lead, the breath tearing in his lungs. He waded up to his knees in some places, and felt the force of the water in his shaking muscles.

“Ride,” Morgaine called at him. “Change with me; I will walk a while.”

“You could not,” he looked back to shout at her—saw her tired face touched with anguish. “ Liyo ,” he added, while he had the advantage of her, “I think that you might have used better sense if I were not with you. Only so much can I do.” He shook the water from his eyes and swept off the helm that was only added weight, that made his shoulders ache. “Take it for me,” he asked of her. The armor too he would have shed if he could have taken the time, but there was none to spare. She took the helm and hung it to her saddlebow by its inside thong.

“You are right,” she said, giving him that consolation.

He drew a deep breath and kept moving, laced his fingers in the gelding’s cheekstrap and felt his way through the swirling dark waters in a darkness that was almost complete. He walked over his knees now, in a current that almost swept him off his feet. He had feared for the horses’ fragile legs. Now he feared for his own. At one moment he went into a hole up to his waist, and thought with increasing panic that he had not much more strength for guiding them: the way ahead looked no better, dark water boiling among the trees.

Something splashed amid the roar of water as he delayed, staring at that prospect before them; he looked back and saw Morgaine waist-deep in the flood, struggling with the current and leading Siptah to reach his side. He cursed tearfully, fought his way to meet her and bid her use good sense, but she caught his arm instantly as he began to object, and drew his attention away to the left, pointing through the murk of night and storm.

The lightning showed a dark mass in that direction, a hill, a heap of stones, massive and dark and crowned with trees, a height that well overtopped any further rise of the waters.

“Aye,” he said hoarsely, hope leaping up in him; but he trusted nothing absolutely in this land, and he shook at Jhirun’s leg to rouse her and point out the same to her. She stared over his head where he pointed, her eyes shadowed and her face white in the lightning.

“What is that place?” he shouted at her. “What would it be?”

“Aren,” she answered, her voice breaking. “It looks to be Aren.”

But Morgaine had not delayed. Vanye turned his head and saw her already moving in that direction, their sounds masked from each other by the rush of water—she wading and leading Siptah in that flood. He wiped his eyes and struggled to overtake her, dreading no longer alien ruins or devils or whatever folk might live in this marsh. It was the water he feared, that ripped at his body and strained his knees. It boiled up about them, making a froth on the side facing the current, waist-deep, chest-deep. He saw the course that Morgaine was seeking, indirectly, to go from high point to high point where the trees were; he drew even with her, shook the blinding drops from his eyes and tried to take the reins from Morgaine’s hand.