Wall of Shiuan

“With what?” she asked, a derisive laugh; but she turned toward him again, and even yet her look pleaded with him. “If I were lost, what could you have done?”

He shrugged, searched up the most terrible thing that he could envision. “Casting Changeling within a Gate: that would suffice, would it not?”

“If you could set hands on it. And that would destroy you; and destroy only one Gate.” She took Changeling from her side and laid it across the arms of her chair. “It was made for other use.”

“Let be,” he asked of her, for she eased the blade fractionally from its sheath. He edged back, for he trusted her mind, but not that witch-blade; and it was not her habit to draw it ever unless she must. She stopped; it lay half-exposed, no metal, but very like a shard of crystal, its magics restrained until it should be wholly unsheathed.

She held it so, the blade’s face toward him, while opal fires swirled softly in the qujalin runes on its surface. “For anyone who can read this,” she said, “here is the making and unmaking of Gates. And I think thee begins to know what this is worth, and what there is to fear should Roh take it. To bring this within his reach would be the most dangerous thing you could do.”

“Put it away,” he asked of her.

“Vanye: to read the runes—would thee learn simply that? Only that much—simply to read the qujalin tongue and speak it. Is that too much to ask?”

“Do you ask it for yourself?”

“Yes,” she said.

He averted his eyes from it, and nodded consent.

“It is necessary,” she said. “Vanye, I will show you; and take up Changeling if ever I am lost. Knowing what you will know, the sword will teach you after—until you have no choice, as I have none.” And after a moment: “If I am lost. I do not mean that it should happen.”

“I will do this,” he answered, and thereafter sat a cold hardness in him, like a stone where his heart had been. It was the end of what he had begun when he had followed her; he realized that he had always known it.

She rammed the dragon sword back into its sheath and took it in the curve of her arm—nodded toward the fireside, where armor lay, bundled in a cloak. “Yours,” she said. “Some of the servants worked through the night on it. Go dress. I do not trust this place. We will settle the other matter later. We will talk of it.”

“Aye,” he agreed, glad of that priority in things, for as she was, she might win yet more of him, piece by piece: perhaps she knew it.

And there was an ease in her ma

His armor, familiar helm that had been in her keeping: he was surprised and pleased that she had kept it as if sentiment had moved her, as if she had hoped to find him again. There was his mail, cleaned and saved from rust, leather replaced: he received that back with great relief, for it was all he owned in the world save the black horse and his saddle. He gathered it up, knowing the weight of it as he knew that of his own body.

And out of it fell a bone-handled dagger: Roh’s—an ill dream recurring. It lay on the stones, accusing him. For one terrible instant he wondered how much in truth she knew of what had passed.

“Next time,” she said from behind him, “resolve to use it.”

His hand went to his brow, to bless himself in dismay; he hesitated, then sketchily completed the gesture, and was the more disquieted afterward. He gathered up the bundle, dagger and all, and carried it into the other room where he might have privacy, where he might both dress and breathe in peace.

He would die in this forsaken land the other side of Gates, he thought, jerking with trembling fingers at the laces of his clothing; that much had been certain from the begi

He set himself into his armor, leather and metal links in which he had lived the most part of his youth; and though it was newly fitted and most of the leather replaced, it settled about his body familiar as his own skin, a weight that surrounded him with safety, with habits that had kept him alive where his living had not been likely. It no longer seemed protection.

Until you have no choice, Morgaine had warned him, as I have none.

He slipped Roh’s dagger into the sheath at his belt, a weight that settled on his heart likewise: this time it was with full intent to use it.

A shadow fell across the door. He looked up. Morgaine came with yet another gift for him, a longsword in its sheath.

He turned and took it from her offering hands—bowed and touched it to his brow as a man should when accepting such a gift from his liege. It was qujalin , he did not doubt it: qujalin more than Changeling itself, which at least had been made by men. But with it in his hands, for the first time in their journey through this land, he felt a stir of pride, the sense that he had skill that was of some value to her. He drew the blade half from the sheath, and saw that it was a good double-edged blade, clean of qujalin runes. The length was a little more than that of a Kurshin longsword, and the blade was a little thi

“I thank you,” he said.

“Stay armed. I want none of these folk drawing for your naked back; and it would be the back, with them. They are wolves, allies of chance and mutual profit.”

He hooked it to his belt, pulled the ring on his shoulder belt and hooked that, settling it to a more comfortable position at his shoulder. Her words touched at something in him, a sudden, unbearable foreboding, that even she would say what she had said. He looked up at her. “ Liyo ,” he said in a low voice. “Let us go. Let us two, together... leave this place. Forget these men; be rid of them. Let us be out of here.”

She nodded back toward the other room. “It is still misting rain out. We will go, tonight, when there is a chance the flood will ebb.”

“Now,” he insisted, and when he saw her hesitate: “ Liyo , what you asked, I gave; give me this. I will go, now, I will find us a packhorse and some ma

She looked tempted, urgently tempted, struggling with reason. He knew the restlessness that chafed at her, pent here, behind rock and risen water. And for once he felt that urge himself, an instinct overwhelming, a dark that pressed at their heels.

She gestured again toward the room beyond. “The books... I have only begun to make sense of them... ”

“Do not trust these men.” Of a sudden all things settled together in his mind, taking form; and some were in those books; and more were pent in the shape of a priest, locked in the dark down the hall. She could be harmed by these things, these men. The human tide that lapped about the walls of Ohtij-in threatened her, no less than the qujal –lords.

“Go,” she bade him suddenly. “Go. See to it. Quietly.”

He snatched up his cloak, caught up his helm, and then paused, looking back at her.

Still he was uneasy—parted from her in this place; but he forebore to warn her more of these men, of opening the door to them: it was not his place to order her. He drew up the coif and settled his helm on, and did not stay to put on the cloak. He passed the door, between the new guards, and looked at those three with sullen misgivings—looked too down the hall, where the priest Ginun was imprisoned, without drink or food yet provided.

That too wanted tending. He dared not have the guards wait on that man, a priest of their own folk, treated thus. Something had to be done with the priest; he knew not what.

In haste he slung the heavy cloak about him and fastened it as he passed the door out of the corridor, uneasy as he walked these rooms that were familiar to him under other circumstances—as he passed marshlanders, who turned and stared at him and made a sign he did not know. He entered the spiral at the core of the keep, passed others, feeling their stares at his back as he walked that downward corridor. Even armed, he did not feel safe or free here. Torches lit the place, a bracket at every doorway, profligate waste of them; and the smallish men of Aren came and went freely up and down the ramp, no few of them drunken, decked in finery incongruous among their peasant clothes. Here and there passed other men, tall and grim of ma

The Barrows and the marshlands, Morgaine had said, naming them that followed her; Barrow-folk, Vanye realized suddenly.

Myya.

Jhirun’s kinsmen.

He hastened his pace, descending the core, the terror that breathed thickly in the air of this place now possessing a name.

The courtyard was quieter than the keep, a dazed quiet, the misting rain glistening on the paving stones, a few folk that might be Shiua or marshlanders moving about wrapped in cloaks and shawls. There was a woman with two children at her skirts: it struck him strangely that nowhere had there been children among the qujal , none that he had seen; and he did not know why.

The woman, the children, the others—stopped and looked at him. He was afraid for a moment, remembering the violence that had surged across these stones; but they showed no disposition to threaten him. They only watched.

He turned toward the pens and the stables, where their horses waited. Cattle lowed in the pens to his right, beasts well cared-for, better than the Shiua. The roofs of the shelters on his left were blackened, the windows eaten by fire. Folk still lived there; they watched him from doorways, furtively.

He looked behind him when he reached the stable doors, fearful that more might have gathered at his back; the same few stood in the distance, still watching him. He dismissed them from his concern and eased open the stable door, entered into that dark place, that smelled pleasantly of hay and horses.