Wall of Shiuan

The servants fled; the guards withdrew, closing the door. The bolt went home.

He was trembling, raging at what he knew not: Roh, the lords of this place—at himself, who had walked willingly into it He stood now and stared at the door, knowing that no force would avail against it, and that no shouting would bring him freedom. He limped over to the table and sat down on the end of the bench, reckoning coldly, remembering every door, every turning, every detail of the hold inside and out. And somewhere within Ohtij-in—he tried to remember that room too—was Jhirun, whom he could not help.

He drank of what the servants had left—sparingly, reckoning that if his hosts were unwilling to give him firewood to keep him warm they would likely bring him nothing else for the day; he ate, likewise sparingly, and turned constantly in his mind the image he could shape of the hold, its corridors, its gates, the number of the men who guarded it, coming again and again to the same conclusion: that he could not pass so many barriers and remain a fugitive across a land that he did not know, afoot, knowing no landmark but the road—on which his enemies could swiftly find him.

Only Roh came and went where he would.

Roh might set him upon that road. There would be a cost for that freedom. The food went tasteless in his mouth the while he considered what it might cost him, to be set at Abarais, to obtain Roh’s trust.

To destroy Roh: this was the thing she had set him last to do, a matter as simple as his given word, from which there was no release and no appeal, be it an act honorable or dishonorable: honor was not in question between ilin and liyo .

It was not necessary to wonder what would befall him thereafter; it did not matter thereafter to what he had sworn—it was a weight no longer on his conscience, a last discharge of obligations.

He became strangely comfortable then, knowing the limits of his existence, knowing that it was not necessary any longer to struggle against Roh’s reasoning. He had, for the first time in his life, accounted for all possibilities and understood all that was necessary to understand.

None came near the room. The long day passed. Vanye went earliest to the window, that he thought a mercy of his jailers, narrow though it was, a kindness to allow him access to the sky—until he eased back the wooden slat that covered it. There was nothing beyond but a stone wall that he could almost touch with outstretched arm; and when he leaned against the sill and tried to see downward, there was a ledge below. On the left was a buttress of the tower, that cut off his view; on the right was another wall, likewise near enough to touch.

He left the window unshuttered, despite the blindness of it and despite the occasional chill draft. So long accustomed to the sky above him, he found the closeness of walls unbearable. He watched the daylight grow until the sun shone straight down the shaft, and watched it fade into shadow again as the sun declined in the sky. He listened to the wailing of children, the sounds of livestock, the squealing of wheels, as if the gates of Ohtij-in were open and some ma

A shadow began to fall, more swiftly than the decline of the day; thunder rumbled. Drops of rain spattered the tiny area of ledge visible beneath the window—drops that ceased, began again, pattering with increasing force as the sprinkling became a shower.

And the last of the wood burned out, despite his careful hoarding of the last small logs and pieces. The room chilled. Outside, the rain whispered steadily down the shaft.

Metal clattered up the hall, the sound of armed men. It was not the first time in the day: occasionally there had come sounds from within the tower, distant and meaning nothing. Vanye only stirred when he realized they were growing nearer—rose to his feet in the almost-darkness, hoping for such petty and precious things as firewood and food and drink, and fearing that their business might be something else.

Let it be Roh, be thought, trembling with anxiety, the anticipation of all things at an end, only so the chance presented itself.

The bolt went back. He blinked in the flare of torches that filled the opening door, that made shadows of the guards and the men until they were within the room: light glittered on brocade, gleamed on bronze helms and on pale hair.

Bydarra, he recognized the elder man; and with him, Hetharu. The combination jolted against the memory of the night—of furtive meetings within this prison of his, of young lordlings and secrecies.

Vanye stood still by the fireplace, while the guards set their torches in place of the stubs in the brackets. The room outside those interlocked circles of light was dark by comparison, the rainy daylight a faint glow in the recess, less bright than the torches. The character of the room seemed changed, a place unfamiliar, where qujal intervened, contrary to all his own intentions. He looked at the guards that waited in the doorway, the light limning demon-faces and outlandish scale. He looked on them with a slowly growing terror, the consciousness of things outside the compass of himself and Roh.

“Nhi Vanye,” Bydarra hailed him, not ungently.

“Lord Bydarra,” he answered. He bowed his head slightly, responding to the soft courtesy, though the guards about them denied that any courtesy was meant, though Hetharu’s thin, wolfish face beside his father’s held nothing of good will. Vanye looked up again, met the old lord’s pale eyes directly. “I had thought that you would have sent for me to come to you.”

Bydarra smiled tautly, and answered nothing to that insolence. Of a sudden there was about this gathering too the hint of secrecies, the lord of Ohtij-in intriguing within his own hold, not wishing a prisoner moved about the halls with what noise and notice would attend such moving. Bydarra asked no questions, proposed nothing immediate, only waited on his prisoner, with what purpose Vanye felt hovering shapeless and ominous among the lords of Ohtij-in.

And in that realization came a horrid suspicion of hope: that of ruining Roh, there was a chance here present. It was not the act of a warrior: he felt shame for it, but he did not think that he could reject whatever means offered itself. He made himself numb to what he did.

“Have you come,” Vanye asked of the qujal , “to learn of me what things Roh would not tell you?”

“And what might those things be?” Bydarra asked softly.

“That you ca

Again Bydarra smiled, this time with more satisfaction. His features were an aged mirror of Hetharu’s, who was close beside him—a face lean and fine-boned, but Bydarra’s eyes were pale: Morgaine’s features, he thought with an inward shudder, horrified to see that familiar face reflected in her enemies. No pure qujal had been left in Andur-Kursh. He saw one for the first time, and thought, unwillingly, of Morgaine.

Ask yourself, Roh had said, taunting him, what you are sworn to.

“Go,” Bydarra bade the guards, and they went, closing the door; but Hetharu stayed, at which Bydarra frowned.

“Dutiful,” Bydarra murmured at him distastefully; and he looked at Vanye with a mocking twist of his fine lips. “My son,” he said with a nod at Hetharu. “A man of indiscriminate taste and energetic ambitions. A man of sudden and sweeping ambitions.”

Vanye glanced beyond Bydarra’s shoulder, at Hetharu’s still face, sensing the pride of this man, who stood at his father’s shoulder and heard himself insulted to a prisoner. For an irrational instant Vanye felt a deep impulse of sympathy toward Hetharu—himself bastard, half-blood, spurned by his own father. Then a suspicion came to him that it was not casual, that Bydarra knew that he had reason to distrust this son, that Bydarra had reason to come to a prisoner’s cell and ask questions.

And Hetharu had urgent reason to cling close to his father’s side, lest the old lord learn of meetings and movements that occurred in the night within the walls of Ohtij-in. Vanye met Hetharu’s eyes without intending it, and Hetharu returned his gaze, his dark and human eyes promising violence, seething with ill will.

“Roh urges us,” said Bydarra, “to treat you gently. Yet he calls you his enemy.”

“I am his cousin,” Vanye countered quietly, falling back upon Roh’s own stated reasoning.

“Roh,” said Bydarra, “makes vast and impossible promises—of limitless arrogance. One would think that he could reshape the Moon and turn back the waters. So suddenly arrived, so strangely earnest in his concern for us—he styles himself like the ancient Kings of Men, and claims to have power over the Wells. He seeks our records, pores over maps and old accounts of only curious interest. And what would you, Nhi Vanye i Chya? Will you likewise bid for the good will of Ohtij-in? What shall we offer you for your good pleasure if you will save us all? Worship, as a god?”

The sting of sarcasm fell on numbness, a chill, to think of Roh, a Chya bowman, a lord of forested Koris, searching musty qujalin records, through runic writings that Men did not read—save only Morgaine. “Roh,” Vanye said, “lies to you. He does not know everything; but you are teaching it to him. Keep him from those books.”

Bydarra’s silvery brow arched, as if he found the answer different from his expectation. He shot a look at Hetharu, and walked a distance to the far recess of the room, by the window slit, where wan daylight painted his hair and robes with an edge of white. He looked out that viewless window for a moment as if he pondered something that did not need sight, and then looked back, and slowly returned to the circle of torchlight.

“We,” said Bydarra, “we are the heirs of the true khal . Mixed-blood we all are, but we are their heirs, nonetheless. And none of us has the skill. It is not in those books. The maps are no longer valid. The land is gone. There is nothing to be had there.”

“Hope,” said Vanye, “that that is so.”

“You are human,” Bydarra said contemptuously.

“Yes.”

“Those books,” Bydarra said, “contain nothing. The Old Ones were flesh and bone, and if men will worship them, that is their choice. Priests—” The old lord made a shrug of contempt, nodding toward the wall, by implication toward the court that lay below. “Parasites. The lowest of our halfling blood. They venerate a lie, mumbling nonsense, believing that they once ruled the Wells, that they are doing some special service by tending them. Even the oldest records do not go back into the time of the Wells. The books are worthless. The Hiua kings were a plague the Wells spilled forth, and they tampered with the forces of them, they hurled sacrifices into them, but they had no more power than the Shiua priests. They never ruled the Wells. They were only brought here. Then the sea began to take Hiuaj. And lately—there is Roh; there is yourself. You claim that you have arrived by the Wells. Is that so?”