Wall of Shiuan

“What is your name?” Morgaine asked of the priest.

“Ginun,” the slight halfling breathed. He twisted to look up at Vanye, dark-eyed, an aging man—and perhaps more man than qujal . Fear trembled on his lips. “Great lord, many would have helped you, many, many—I would have helped you. Our lords were mistaken.”

“Where were you?” Vanye asked, bitterness so choking him he could hardly speak; he thrust the man free. “You knew your lord, you knew what would happen when you led me to him.”

‘Take us with you,” Ginun wept. “Take us with you. Do not leave us behind.”

“Where,” asked Morgaine in a chill voice, “do you suppose that we will go from here?”

“Through the Wells—to that other land.”

The hope in the priest’s eyes was terrible to see as he looked from one to the other of them, chin trembling, eyes suffused with tears. He lifted his hand to touch Morgaine, lost courage and touched Vanye’s hand instead, a finger-touch, no more. “Please,” he asked of them.

“Who has told you this thing?” Morgaine asked. “Who?”

“We have waited,” the priest whispered hoarsely. “We have tended the Wells and we have waited. Take us through. Take us with you.”

Morgaine turned her face away, not willing more to talk with him. The priest’s shoulders fell and he began to shake with sobs; at Vanye’s touch he looked up, his face that of a man under death sentence. “We have served the khal ,” he protested, as if that should win favor of the conqueror of Ohtij-in. “We have waited, we have waited. Lord, speak to her. Lord, we would have helped you.”

“Go away,” said Vanye, drawing him to his feet. Unease moved in his heart when he looked on this priest who served devils, whose prayers were to the works of qujal . The priest drew back from his hands, still staring at him, still pleading with his eyes. “She has nothing to do with you and your kind,” Vanye told the priest. “Nor do I.”

“The Barrow-kings knew her,” the priest whispered, his eyes darting past him and back again. He clutched convulsively at the amulets that hung among his robes. “The lord Roh came with the truth. It was the truth.”

And the priest fled for the door, but Vanye seized him, hauled him about, others in the room giving back from him. The priest struggled vainly, frail, desperate man. “ Liyo ,” Vanye said in a quiet voice, fearful of those listening about them; prepared to strike the priest silent upon the instant. “ Liyo , do not let him go. This priest will do you harm if he can. I beg you listen to me.”

Morgaine looked on him, and on the priest. “Brave priest,” she said in a voice still and clear, in the hush that had fallen in the room. “Fwar!”

A man came from the corner where the house guards were held, a taller man than most, near Morgaine’s height. Square-faced he was, with a healing slash that ran from right cheek to left chin, across both lips. Vanye knew him at once, him that had ridden the gelding into the courtyard—the face that had glared sullenly up at him. Such a look he received now; the man seemed to have no other ma

“Aye, lady?” Fwar said. His accent was plainer than that of the others, and he bore himself boldly, standing straight.

“Have your kinsmen together,” Morgaine said, “and find the khal that survive. I want no killing of them, Fwar. I want them set in one room, under guard. And you know by now that I mean what I say.”

“Aye,” Fwar answered, and frowned. The face might have been ordinary once. No more; it was a mask in which one most saw the eyes, and they were hot and violent. “For some we are too late.”

“I care not who is to blame,” Morgaine said. “I hold you, alone, accountable to me.”

Fwar hesitated, then bowed, started to leave.

“And, Fwar—”

“Lady?”

“Ohtij-in is a human hold now. I have kept my word. Whoever steals and plunders now—steals from you.”

This thought went visibly through Fwar’s reckoning, and other men in the room stood attentive and sobered.

“Aye,” Fwar said.

“Lady,” said another, in a voice heavy with accent, “what of the stores of grain? Are we to distribute—?”

“Is not Haz your priest?” she asked. “Let your priest divide the stores. It is your grain, your people. Ask me no further on such matters. Nothing here concerns me. Leave me.”

There was silence, dismay.

One of the marshlanders pushed at the qujalin guards, directing them to the door. In their wake went others, Fwar, Haz; there were left only Haz’s three sons, claimed as guards, and the weeping priest, Ginun, and the three servants, who knelt cowering in the far corner.

“Show me,” said Morgaine to the servants, “where are the best lodgings with a solid door and some secure room nearby where we can lodge this priest for his own protection.”

She spoke softly with them. One moved, and the others gathered courage, kneeling facing her, eyes downcast “There,” said the oldest of them, himself no more than a youth, and pointed toward the door that led inward, away from the central corridor.

There was a small, windowless storeroom opposite a lordly hall. Here Morgaine bade the priest disposed, with a bar across that door, and that chained, and the door visible by those who would guard their own quarters. It was Vanye’s to put the priest inside, and he did so, not ungently.

He hated the look of the priest’s eyes as he was set within that dark place, forbidden a light lest he do himself and others harm with it. The priest’s terror fingered at nightmares of his own, and he hesitated at closing the door.

Priest of devils, who would have worshipped at Morgaine’s feet, an unclea

“Keep still,” he warned Ginun last, the guards out of hearing. “You are safer here, and you will be safe so long as you do keep still.”

The priest was still staring at him when he closed the door, his thin face white and terrified in the shadow. Vanye dropped the bar and locked the chain through it—made haste to turn his back on it, as on a private nightmare, remembering the roof of the tower of his prison—Roh’s words, stored up in this priest, waiting to break forth. He thought in agony that he should see to it that the priest never spoke—that he, ilin , should take that foulness on his own soul and never tell Morgaine, never burden her honor with knowing it.

He was not such a man; he could not do it. And he did not know whether this in him was virtue or cowardice.

The sons of Haz had taken up their posts at the door. Morgaine awaited him in the hall beyond. He went to her, into the chambers that had been some great lord’s, and dropped the saddlebags that he had carried onto the stones of the hearth, staring about him.

More bodies awaited them: tapestries rent, bodies of men-at-arms and the one-time lords lying amid shattered crystal and overturned chairs. Vanye knew them. One was the body of an old woman; another was that of one of the elder lords, he that had made most grudging obeisance to Hetharu.

“See to it,” Morgaine said sharply to the servants. “Remove them.”

And while this was being attended, she righted a heavy chair and put it near the fire that still blazed in the hearth for its former owners, extended her legs to it, booted ankles crossed, paying no attention to the grisly task that went on among the servants. Changeling she set point against the floor and leaning by her side, and gave a long sigh.

Vanye averted his eyes from what passed in the room. Too much, too many of such pathetic dead: he had been of the warriors, but of a land where men fought men who chose to fight, who went armed, in notice of such intention. He did not want to remember the things that he had seen in Ohtij-in, alone or in her company.

And somewhere in Ohtij-in was Myya Jhirun, lost in this chaos, hidden or dead or the possession of some rough-handed marshlander. He thought of that, sick at heart, weighed his own exhaustion, the hazard of the mob outside, who spoke a language he could not understand, but he was obliged. For other wretched folk within the hold, for other women as unfortunate, he had no power to stop what happened—only for Jhirun, who had done him kindness, who had believed him when he said he would take her from Ohtij-in.

“ Liyo ,” he said, and dropped to his knees at the fireside, by Morgaine. His voice shook, reaction to things already past, but he had no shame for that; they were both tired. “ Liyo , Jhirun is here somewhere. By your leave I am going to go and do what I can to find her. I owe her.”

“No.”

“ Liyo –”

She stared into the fire, her ta

He thrust himself to his feet, vexed by her protection of him, exhausted beyond willingness to debate his feelings with her. He started for the door, reckoning that she had expressed her objection and that was the sum of it. He was going, nonetheless. He had seen to her welfare, and she knew it.

“ Ilin ,” her voice rang out after him. “I gave thee an order.”

He stopped, looked at her: it was a stranger’s voice, cold and foreign to him. She was surrounded by men he did not know, by intentions he no longer understood. He stared at her, a tightness closing about his heart. It was as if she, like the land, had changed.

“I do not need to reason with you,” she said.

“Someone,” he said, “should reason with you.”

There was long silence. She sat and stared at him while he felt the cold grow in her.

“I will have your belongings searched for,” she said, “and you may take the horse, and the Hiua girl, if she is still alive, and you may go where you will after that.”

She meant it. Outrage trembled through him. Almost, almost he spun on his heel and defied her—but there was not even anger in her voice, nothing against which he could argue later, no hope that it was unthought or unmeant. There was only utter weariness, a hollowness that was beyond reaching, and if he left, there would be none to reach her, none.

“I do not know,” he said, “to what I have taken oath. I do not recognize you.”

Her eyes remained focused somewhere past him, as if she had already dismissed him.

“You ca