Wall of Shiuan

“Which first—Roh’s leaving or your coming?”

He had deliberately obscured that in his telling; her harsh question cut to the center of the matter. “My coming,” he said. “ Liyo –”

“He let you live.”

He did look at her, tried to compose his face, though all his blood seemed gathered in his belly. “Did I seem to be comfortable there? What do you think that I could have done? I had no chance at him.” The words came, and immediately he wished he had said nothing, for there was suddenly a lie between them.

And more than that: for he saw suspicion in her look, a quiet and horrid mistrust. In the long silence that followed, their horses side by side, he wished that she would rebuke him, quarrel, remind him how little caution he had used and what duty he owed her, anything against which he could argue. She said nothing.

“What would you?” he cried finally, against that silence. “That you had come later?”

“No,” she said in a voice strangely subdued.

“It was not for me,” he surmised suddenly. “It was Roh you wanted.”

“I did not,” she said very quietly, “know where you were. Only that Roh had sheltered in Ohtij-in: that I did hear. Other word did not reach me.”

She fell silent again, and in the long time that they rode in the rain he clutched her warm cloak about him and reckoned that she had only given him the truth that he had insisted on knowing—more honest with him than he had been with her. Roh had named her liar, and she did not lie, even when a small untruth would have been kinder; he held that thought for comfort, scant though it was.

“ Liyo ,” he asked finally, “where were you? I tried to find you.”

“At Aren,” she replied, and he cursed himself bitterly. “They are rough folk,” she said. “Easily impressed. They feared me, and that was convenient. I waited there for you. They said that there was no sign of you.”

“Then they were blind,” he said bitterly. “I held to the road; I never left it. I thought only that you would leave me and keep going, and trust me to follow.”

“They knew it, then,” she said, a frown settling on her face. “They did know.”

“It may be,” he said, “that they feared you too much.” She swore in her own tongue, at least that was the tone of it, and shook her head, and what bided in her face then, lightning-lit, was not good to see.

“Jhirun and I together,” he said, “walked the road; and it brought us to Ohtij-in, out of food, out of any hope. I did not know what I would find; Roh was the last that I expected. Liyo , it is a qujal –ruled hold, and there are records there, in which Roh spent his time.”

The oath hissed between her teeth. She opened her lips to say something; and then, for they were rounding the turn of a hill, from the distance came a sound carried on the wind, the sound of distress, of riot; and she stopped, gazing at a sullen glow among the hills.

“Ohtij-in,” she said, and set heels to Siptah, flying down the road. The gelding dipped his head and hurled himself after; Vanye bent, ignoring the pain of his side, and rode, round the remembered bendings of the road, turn after turn as the shouting came nearer.

And suddenly the height of Ohtij-in hove into view, where the i

Shadow-shapes huddled beside the road, that became women and ragged children, bundles and baggage. The gray horse thundered near them, sent the wretched folk shrieking aside, and the black plunged after.

Into the chaos of the i

Men scattered from the hooves of the gray horse, shrieks and screams as the witch-sword left its sheath and flared into opal light more terrible than the fires, with that darkness howling at its tip. A weapon flew; the darkness drank it, and it vanished.

And the guard who had cast it fled, dying on the spears of the ragged attackers. It was the last resistance. The others threw down their arms and were cast to their faces by their captors, down in the mire and blood of the yard.

“Morgen!” the ragged army hailed her, raising their weapons. “Angharan! Angharan!” Vanye sat the gelding beside her as folk crowded round them with awed hysteria in their faces, he and his nervous horse touched by scores of trembling hands as they touched Siptah, rashly coming too near the unsheathed blade; shying from it, they massed the more closely about him, her companion. He endured it, realizing that he had been absorbed into the fabric of legends that surrounded Morgaine kri Chya—that he himself had become a thing to frighten children and cause honest men to shudder—that they had condemned him to all he had suffered, refusing to tell to his liege what they surely had known; and that those of Ohtij-in would lately have killed him.

He did not strike, though he trembled with the urge to do so. He still feared them, who for the hour hailed him and surrounded him with their insane adoration.

“Angharan!” they shouted. “Morgaine! Morgaine! Morgaine!”

Morgaine carefully sheathed Changeling, extinguishing its fire, and slid to the ground amid that press, men pushing at each other to make way for her. “Take the horses,” she bade a man who approached her with less fear than the others, and then she turned her attention to the keep. There was silence made in the courtyard at last, an exhausted hush. She walked through their midst to the steps of the keep, Changeling crosswise in her hands, that it could be drawn in an instant. There she stood, visible to them all, and ragged and bloody men came and paid her shy, awkward courtesies.

Vanye dismounted, took up her saddle kit, that she would never leave behind her, and fended off those that offered help, no difficult matter. Men fled his displeasure, terrified.

Morgaine stayed for him, her foot on the next step until he had begun to ascend them, then passed inside. Vanye slung the saddlebag over his shoulder and walked after, up the steps and into the open gateway, past the staring dead face of the gatekeeper, who lay sprawled in the shadows inside.

Men took up torches, leading their way. Vanye shuddered at what he saw in the spiral halls, the dead both male and female, both qujal and guiltless human servants, the ravaged treasures of Ohtij-in that littered the halls. He kept walking, up the spiralling core that would figure thereafter in his nightmares, limping after Morgaine, who walked sword in hand.

She will finish it, Roh had prophesied of her, end all hope for them. That is what she has come to do.

Chapter Eleven

In the lord’s hall too there was chaos, bodies lying where they had fallen. Even the white dog was dead by the hearth, in a pool of blood that stained the carpets and the stones, and flowed to mingle with that of its master and mistress. A knot of servants huddled in the corner for protection, kneeling.

And in the other corner men were gathered, rough and ragged folk, who held prisoner three of the house guard, white-haired halflings, stripped of their masking helms, bound, and surrounded by peasant weapons.

Vanye stopped, seeing that, and the sudden warmth of the fire hit him, making breath difficult; he caught for balance against the door frame as Morgaine strode within the room and looked about.

“Get the dead out of the hold,” she said to the ragged men who awaited her orders. “Dispose of them. Is their lord among them?”

The eldest man made a helpless gesture. “No knowing,” he said, in an accent difficult to penetrate.

“ Liyo ,” Vanye offered, from the doorway, “a man named Kithan is in charge of Ohtij-in, Hetharu’s brother. I know him by sight.”

“Stay by me,” she ordered curtly; and to the others: “Make search for him. Save all writings, wherever found, and bring them to me.”

“Aye,” said one of that company at whom she looked.

“What of the rest?” asked the eldest, a stooped and fragile man. “What of the other things? Be there else, lady?”

Morgaine frowned and looked about her, a warlike and evil figure amid their poor leather and rags; she looked on prisoners, on dead men, at the small rough-clad folk who depended on her for orders in this tumult, and shrugged. “What matter to me?” she asked. “What you do here is your own affair, only so it does not cross me. A guard at our door, servants to attend us—” Her eyes swept to the comer where the house servants cowered, marked men in brown livery who had served the qujal . “Those three will suffice. And Haz, give me three of your sons for guards at my quarters, and no more will I ask of you tonight.”

“Aye,” said the old man, bowed in awkward imitation of a lord’s courtesy; he gestured to certain of the young men—small folk, all of them, who approached Morgaine with lowered eyes, the tallest of them only as high as her shoulder, but broad, powerful young men, for all that.

Marshlanders, Vanye reckoned them: men of Aren. They spoke among themselves in a language he could not comprehend: men, but not of any kind that his land had known, small and furtive and, he suddenly suspected, without any law common to men that he knew. They were many, swarming the corridors, wreaking havoc; they had failed deliberately to find him for Morgaine—and yet she came back among them as if she utterly trusted them. He became conscious that he was not armed, that he, who guarded her back, had no weapon, and their lives were in the hands of these small, elusive men, who could speak secrets among themselves.

A body brushed past, taller than the others, black-robed; Vanye recoiled in surprise, then recognized the priest, who was making for Morgaine. In panic he moved and seized the priest, jerked at the robes, thrust him sprawling to the floor.

Morgaine looked down on the balding, white-haired priest, whose lean face was rigid with terror, who shook and trembled in Vanye’s grip. In a sudden access of panic as Morgaine stepped closer, the priest sought to rise, perhaps to run, but Vanye held him firmly.

“Banish him to the court,” Vanye said, remembering how this same priest had lured him into Ohtij-in, promising safety; how this priest had stood at Bydarra’s elbow. “Let him try his fortunes out there, among men.”