Well Of Shiuan Part 16

But his eyes, like hers, fixed in shock on the gate, for the barbican tower had fallen, leaving a wider gap beside the ruined gates; and pitiful folk clambered over the nibble in the falling rain, where the uppermost stones had fallen among the shelters, crushing them, crushing flesh and timbers alike under megaliths the size of two men.

Shiua saw Morgaine standing there, and there went up a cry, a wailing. They came, dazed and fearfully; and Vanye gripped his sword tightly in his fist, but he realized then that they came for pity, pleading with their gestures and their outcries. There gathered a crowd, both marshlanders and folk of the shelters, Hiua and Shiua mingled in their desolation. None reached her: she stepped off the last step and walked among them, they giving back to give her place, pressing at each other in their zeal to avoid her. Vanye went at her back, sword in hand, fearful, seeing the mob that once had threatened him now pleading desperately with them both. Hands touched him as they would not touch Morgaine, but they were pleas for help, for explanation, and he could not give it Morgaine slung her cloak about her and put up the hood as she walked across the yard, and there, in the clear of threatening stones, she turned and looked back at the keep.

Vanye looked, a quickly stolen glance, for fear of those about them, and saw that the tower that had fallen had taken one of the b.u.t.tresses too, riving it away from the keep. There was a crack in that vast tower, opening it widely to the elements and promising further ruin.

"I would give nothing for its chance of standing the hour," Morgaine said. "There will be other shocks." And for the instant she gazed about the yard, seemed herself in a state of shock. Over the babble of prayers and panicked questions rose the steady keening of men and women over their dead.

And suddenly she flung back her head and shouted to those of the Aren-folk near her: "There is no staying here. It will all collapse. Gather what you must have to live, and go, get out of here!"

Panic spread at that dismissal; she did not regard the questions others shouted at her, but seized at Vanye's sleeve. "The horses. Get our horses out before that wall goes."

"Aye," he agreed, and then realized it meant leaving her; half a step he hesitated, and saw her face with that unreasoning fixedness, saw the folk that crowded frantically about her, that in their fear would cling to her: she could not get away. He fled, steps quickening, avoiding this man and that, racing across the puddled yard to the stable, remembering Jhirun, left to her own devices, panicked horses and the damage of the quake.

The stable door was ajar. He pushed it open. Chaos awaited him inside that warm darkness, planks down where horses had panicked and broken their barriers. There was a wild-eyed bay that had had the worst of it: it bolted when he flung the stable door wide. Other horses were still in stalls.

"Jhirun," he called aloud, seeing with relief Siptah and his own horse and Jhirun's mare still safe.

No voice responded. There was a rustling of straw-many bodies in the darkness.

Fwar stepped into the light, his kinsmen emerging likewise from the shadows, from within a stall, over the bars of another: armed men, carrying knives.

Vanye spun half about, caught a quick glimpse of others behind him.

He slung the sheath from his sword and sent it at them, whirled upon the man at his left and toppled him writhing in the straw, bent under a whistling staff and took that man too: his comrade fled, wounded.

A crash attended those behind, Siptah's shrill scream. Vanye turned into a knife attack, ducked under the clumsy move and used the man's arm to guide his blade, whipped it free and came on guard again, springing back from the man that sprawled at his feet.

The others scattered, what of them survived, save Fwar, who tried to stand his ground: a shadow moved, a flash of a bare ankle-Fwar started to turn, knife in hand, and Vanye sprang for him, but the swing of harness in Jhirun's hands was quicker. Chain whipped across Fwar's head, brought him down screaming: and in blind rage he tried to scramble up again.

Vanye reversed the blade, smashed the hilt into Fwar's skull, sprawled the man face-down in the straw. Jhirun stood hard-breathing, still clenching the chain-and-leather ma.s.s in her two hands; tears streamed down her face.

"The quake," she murmured, choking, "the rains, and the quake-oh, the dreams, the dreams, my lord, I dreamed . . ."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the harness from her hands, hurting her as he did so, and seized her by the arm. "Go," he said. "Get to horse."

It was in his mind to kill Fwar: of all others that had perished, this one he would have wished to kill, but now it was murder. He cursed Jhirun's help, knowing that he could have taken this man in clean fight, that after killing kin of his, this was the wrong man to leave alive.

Jhirun came back to his side, leading the bay mare. "Kill him," she insisted, her voice trembling.

"This is kin of yours," he said angrily-minded as the words left his mouth that she had once said something of the same to him. "Go!" he shouted at her, and jerked her horse's head about, pushed her up as she set foot in the stirrup. When she landed astride he struck the mare on the rump and sent it hence.

Then he flung open the stalls of Siptah and his own horse, dragged at their reins and led the horses down the aisle, past the dies. His sword sheath lay atop the straw; he s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and kept moving, paused only in the light of the door way to settle his sword at his side and mount up.

The gelding surged forward: he fought to control the vile-tempered animal with the Baien stud in tow; and overtook Jhirun, who was having difficulty with the little mare in the press of the yard. Vanye shouted, cursing, spurred brutally, and the crowd parted in terror as the three horses broke through. About them, folk already streamed toward the shattered gates, their backs laden with packs, some leading animals or pulling carts. Women carried children, older children carried younger; and men struggled under unwieldy burdens that would never permit them long flight And from the keep itself folk came streaming out, bearing gold and all such things as were useless hereafter-men who had come to possess the treasures of Ohtij-in and stubbornly clung to them in its fall.

Morgaine stood safely by the ruin of the tower, a stationary figure amid the chaos, waiting, with solid stone at her back and Changeling, sheathed, in her two hands.

She saw them: and suddenly her face set in anger, such that Vanye felt the force of it to the depth of him; but when he rode to her side, ready to swear that Jhirun's presence was no planning of his, she said not a word, only caught Siptah's reins from his hand and set her foot into the stirrup, settling herself into the saddle and at once checking the gray's forward motion. A cry went up from the crowd. A loose cow darted this way and that in bovine panic through the crowd, and the horses shied and stamped.

"Give me time," Vanye shouted at Morgaine, "to go back and free the horses in the stalls."

And of a sudden the earth heaved again, a little shudder, and a portion of the keep wall slid into ruin, another tower toppling, with terrible carnage. The horses plunged, fighting restraint. The wails of frightened people rose above the sound that faded.

From the shaken keep poured other fugitives, the qujal folk, and the black robes of a priest among them-pale folk and conspicuous in the crowd, dazed, ill-clothed for the cold, save for a few house guards in their armor.

"No," Morgaine answered Vanye's appeal to her. "No. There is no lingering here. Let us go."

He did not dispute it, not with the threat of further ruin about them: his Kurshin soul agonized over the trapped horses, and over another ugliness that he had left, half-finished. The collapse of the keep would end it, he thought, burying the dead and the living, ending a thing that should have ended long ago, however the Myya had come through into this land: he took it upon his own conscience, never to tell Morgaine what was pointless to know, never to regret those several lives, that had betrayed her and tried to murder him.

The horses moved, Morgaine riding in the lead, seeking their way through the slow-moving crowd more gently than the war-trained gray would have it Vanye kept close at Morgaine's back, watching the crowd, and once, that a sound first drew his attention in that direction, looking at Jhirun, who rode knee to knee with him. He met her eyes, shadowed and fierce, minding him how she had lately urged him to murder-this the frightened child that he had taken back with them, Myya, and living, when he would gladly have known the last of her kind dead.

With all his heart he would have ridden from her now, and with Morgaine have sought some other, unknown way from Ohtij-in; but there was none other, and the Suvoj barred their way within a few leagues. There was no haste, no need of hurrying, only sufficient to clear the walls, where yet a few desperate folk still searched for bodies beneath the ma.s.sive stones, beyond help and hope.

A line of march stretched out northward from Ohtij-in; and this they joined, moving more quickly than the miserable souls that walked.

And when they were well out on the road came another rumble and shudder of the earth. Vanye turned in his saddle and others turned and looked, seeing the third tower fallen: and even as he gazed, the center of Ohtij-in sank down into ruin. The sound of it reached them a moment later, growing and dying. Jhirun cried out softly, and a wail arose from the people, a sound terrible and desolate.

"It has gone," Vanye said, sickened to the heart to think of the lives that surely were extinguished there, an unconscious enemy, and the wretched, the innocent, who would not leave off their searching.

Morgaine alone had not turned to see, but rode with her face set toward the north. "Doubtless," she said after they had ridden some distance further, "the breach at the gate removed stability for the barbican tower; and the fall of the barbican prepared the fall of the next, and so it began-else it might have gone on standing."

Her doing, who had breached the gate. Vanye heard the hollowness in her voice, and understood what misery lay beneath it. I do not look, she had said, at what I leave behind me.

He wished that he had not looked either.

The rain whispered down into the gra.s.s on the hills and into the puddles on the road, and a stream ran the course between the hills, frothing and racing over brush and obstacles. Now and again they rode past a man with his family that had wearied and sat down on the slope to rest. Sometimes they pa.s.sed abandoned bundles of goods, where some man had cast them down, unable to carry them farther. And once there was an old man lying by the roadside. Vanye dismounted to see to him, but he was dead.

Jhirun hugged her shawl about her and wept. Morgaine shrugged helplessly, nodded for him to get back to horse and forget the matter.

"Doubtless others will die," she said, and that was all-no tears, no remorse.

He climbed back into the saddle and they kept moving.

Overhead the clouds had begun to show ragged rents, and one of the moons shone through in daylight, wan and white, a piece of the Broken Moon, that pa.s.sed more quickly than the others; the vast terror that was Li had yet to come.

The hills cut them off from view of what lay behind, gray-green hills that opened constantly before them and closed behind; and gradually their steady pace brought them to the head of the long line of weary folk. They rode slowly there, for there was nowhere to go but where the column went, and no profit in opening a wide lead.

They were first to reach the hillside that overlooked the lately flooded plain, the rift of the Suvoj, where still great pools showed pewter faces to the clouded sky, small lakes, rocks that upthrust strange shapes, stone more solid than the water had yet availed to wear away; it was a bleak and dead place, stretching far to the other hills, but the road went through it until the river, and there the stones made only a ripple under the surface of the flood.

A stench went up from the rotting land, the smell of the sea mingled with dying things. Vanye swore in disgust when the wind carried it to them, and when he looked toward the horizon he saw that the hills ended and melted into gray, that was the edge of the world.

The tide comes in here," murmured Jhirun. "It overcomes the river, as it does the Aj."

"And goes out again," said Morgaine, "tonight."

"It may be," said Jhirun, "it may be. Already it is on the ebb."

The noise of others intruded on them, the advance of the column that came blindly in their wake. Morgaine glanced over her shoulder, reined Siptah about, yet holding him.

"This hill is ours," she said fiercely. "And company will not be comfortable for us. Vanye-come, let us stop them."

She led Siptah forward, toward the van of the column, that were strong men, Aren-folk, who had fled early and marched most strongly: and Vanye slung his sword across the saddlebow and kept pace with her, a shadow by her side as she gave orders, directed sullen, confused men to one side and the other of the road, bidding them set up shelters and make a camp.

Two of the Barrows-men were there, grim, tall men: Vanye noticed them standing together and cast them a second, anxious look, wondering had they been two of the number with Fwar-or whether they were innocent of that ambush and did not yet know the bloodfeud that was between them. They gave no evidence of it.

But there was yet another matter astir among them, sullen looks toward the hill where Jhirun waited, standing by the bay mare, her shawl clutched about her in the cold, damp wind.

"She is ours," one of the two Barrowers said to Morgaine.

Morgaine said nothing, only looked at him from the height of Siptah's back, and that man fell silent.

Only Vanye, who rode at her back, heard the murmuring that followed when Morgaine turned away; and it was ugly. He turned his horse again and faced them, the two Barrows-men, and a handful of marshlanders.

"Say it louder," he challenged them.

"The girl is fey," said one of the marshlanders. "Ela's-daughter. She cursed Chadrih, and it fell. The quake and the flood took it."

"And Barrows-hold," said one of the Barrows-men. "Now Ohtij-in."

"She brought the enemy into Barrows-hold," said the other of the Barrowers. "She is fey. She cursed the hold, killed all that were in it, the old, the women and the children, her own sister. Give her to us."

Vanye hesitated, the gelding restless under him, misgivings gathering in him, remembering the dream upon the road, the mad-eyed vagaries, the tense body pressed against his.

Oh, the dreams, the dreams, my lord, I dreamed....

He jerked the gelding's head about, spurred him past their reaching hands, sought Morgaine, who moved alone among the crowds, giving orders. He joined her, saying nothing; she asked nothing.

A camp began to take shape, makeshift huddles of st.i.tched skins and brush and sodden blankets tied between trees or supported on hewn saplings. Some had brought fire, and one borrowed to the next, wet wood smoking and hissing in the mist, but sufficient to stay alight.

The column was still straggling in at dusk, rinding a camp, finding their places in it, seeking relatives.

Morgaine turned back to the hill that she had chosen, where she had permitted no intrusion; and there Jhirun waited, shivering, with wood she had gathered for a fire. Vanye dismounted, already searching out with his eye this and that tree that might be cut for shelter. But Morgaine slid down from Siptah's back and stared balefully at the flood that raged between them and the other side, dark waters streaked with white in the dusk.

"It is lower," she said, pointing to the place where the road made a white-frothing ridge in the flood. "We might try it after we have rested a bit."

The thought chilled him. "The horses cannot force that. Wait. Wait. It cannot be much longer."

She stood looking at it still, as if she would disregard all his advice, staring toward that far bank, where mountains rose, where was Roh, and Abarais, and a halfling army.

The flood would not be sufficient to have delayed Roh this long; Vanye reckoned that for himself, and did not torment her with asking or saying it. She was desperate, exhausted; she had spent herself in answering questions among the frightened folk behind them, in providing advice, in settling disputes for s.p.a.ce and wood. She had distracted herself with these things, gentle when he sensed in her a dark and furious violence, that loathed the clinging, terrified appeals to her, the faces that looked to her with desperate hope.

'Take us with you," they wept, surrounding her.

"Where is my child?" a mother kept asking her, clinging to the rein until the nervous, war-trained gray came near to breaking control.

"I do not know," she had said. But it had not stopped the questions.

"Will my daughter be there?" asked a father, and she had looked at him, distracted, and murmured yes, and spurred the gray roughly through the press.

Now she stood holding her cloak about her against the chill and staring at the river as at a living enemy. Vanye watched her, not moving, dreading that mood of hers that slipped nearer and nearer to irrationality.

"We camp," she said after a time.

Chapter Fourteen.

There was one mercy shown them that evening. The rain stopped. The sky tore to rags and cleared, though it remained damp everywhere, and the smoke of hundreds of fires rolled up and hung like an ugly mist over the camp. Scarred Li rose, vast and horrid, companionless now. The other moons had fled; and Anli and demon Sith lagged behind.

They rested, filled with food that Morgaine had put in her saddlebags. They sat in a shelter of saplings and brush, with a good fire before them; and Jhirun sat beside them, eating her share of the provisions with such evident hunger that Morgaine tapped her on the arm and put another bit of bread into her lap, charity that amazed Jhirun and Vanye alike.

"I have not lacked," Morgaine said with a shrug-for it must come from someone's share.

"She hid in the stable," Vanye said quietly, for Morgaine had never asked: and that lack of questions worried at him, implying anger, a mood in which Morgaine herself was unwilling to discuss the matter. "That was why your searchers could not find her."

Morgaine only looked at him, with that impenetrable stare, so that he wondered for a moment had there been searchers at all, or only inquiry.

But Morgaine had promised him; he thrust the doubt from his mind, effort though it needed.

"Jhirun," Morgaine said suddenly. Jhirun swallowed a bit of bread as if it had gone dry, and only slightly turned her head, responding to her. "Jhirun, there are kinsmen of yours here."

Jhirun nodded, and her eyes slid uneasily toward Morgaine, wary and desperate.

"They came to Aren," Morgaine said, "hunting you. And you are known there. There are some Aren-folk who know your name and say that you are baffling yourself, and in some fashion they blame you for some words you spoke against their village."

"Lord," Jhirun said in a thin voice, and edged against Vanye, as if he could prevent such questions. He sat stiffly, uncomfortable in the touch of her.

"A quake," said Morgaine, "struck Hiuaj after we three parted company. There was heavy damage at Aren, where I was; and the Barrows-folk came then. They said there was nothing left of Barrows-hold."

Jhirun shivered.

"I know," said Morgaine, "that you cannot seek safety among your own kinsmen ... or with the Aren-folk. Better that you had remained lost, Jhirun Ela's-daughter. They have asked me for you, and I have refused; but that is for now. Vanye knows-he will tell you-that I am not generous. I am not at all generous. And there will come a time when we cannot shelter you. I do not care what quarrel drove you out of Barrows-hold in the first place; it does not concern me. I do not think that you are dangerous; but your enemies are. And for that reason you are not welcome with us. You have a horse. You have half our food, if you wish it; Vanye and I can manage. And you would be wise to take that offer and try some other route through these hills, be it to hide and live in some cave for the rest of your days. Go. Seek some place after the Ohtija have dispersed. Go into those mountains and look for some place that has no knowledge of you. That is my advice to you."

Jhirun's hand crept to Vanye's arm. "Lord," she said faintly, plaintively.

'There was a time," Vanye said, hardly above a breath, "when Jhirun did not say what she might have said, when she did not say all that she knew of you, and stayed by me when it was not convenient. And I will admit to you that I gave her a promise ... I know-that I had no right to give any promise, and she should not have believed me, but she did not know that. I have told her that she should not have believed me; but would it be so wrong, liyo, to let her go where we go? I do not know what other hope she has."

Morgaine stared at him fixedly, and for a long, interminably long moment, said nothing. "Thee says correctly," she breathed at last. "Thee had no right."

"All the same," he said, very quietly, "I ask it, because I told her that I would take her to safety."

Morgaine turned that gaze on Jhirun. "Run away," she said. "I give you a better gift than he gave. But on his word, stay, if you have not the sense to take it. Unlike Vanye, I bind myself to nothing. Come with us as long as you can, and for as long as it pleases me."

"Thank you," Jhirun said almost soundlessly, and Vanye pressed her arm, disengaging it from his. "Go aside," he said to her. "Rest. Let matters alone now."