Well Of Shiuan Part 17

Jhirun drew away from them, stood up, left the shelter for the brush, beyond the firelight. They were alone. Across the camp sounded the wail of an infant, the lowing of an animal, the sounds that had been constant all the evening.

"I am sorry," Vanye said, bowed himself to the ground, expected even then her anger, or worse, her silence.

"I was not there," Morgaine said quietly. "I take your word for what you did, and why. I will try. She will stay our pace or she will not; I cannot help her. That-" She gestured with a glance toward the camp. "That also has its desires, that are Jhirun's."

"They believe," he said, "that there is a way out for them. That it lies through the Wells. That they will find a land on the other side."

She said nothing to that.

"Liyo-" he said carefully, "you could do that-you could give them what they believe-could you not?"

A tumult had arisen, as others had arisen throughout the evening, on the far side of the camp, distant shouts carrying to them: disputes, dissents, among terrified people.

Morgaine set her face and shook her head abruptly. "I could, yes, but I will not."

"You know why they have followed you. You know that."

"I care nothing for their beliefs. I will not."

He thought of the falling towers of Ohtij-in: only a hand's breadth closer to the sea. Jhirun had laughed, attempting humor. Somewhere the child was still crying. Among the rabble there were the innocent, the harmless.

"Their land," he said, "is dying. It will come in the lifetime of some that are now alive. And to open the Gates for them-would that not-?"

"Their time is finished, that is all. It comes to all worlds."

"In Heaven's good name, liyo,-"

"Vanye. Where should we take them?"

He shook his head helplessly. "Are we not to leave this land?"

"There are no sureties beyond any Gate."

"But if there is no other hope for them-"

Morgaine set Changeling across her knees. The dragon eyes of the hilt winked gold in the firelight, and she traced the scales with her fingers. 'Two months ago, Vanye, where were you?"

He blinked, mind thrust back across Gates, across mountains: a road to Aenor, a winter storm. "I was an outlaw," he said, uncertain what he was bidden remember, "and the Myya were close on my trail."

"And four?"

"The same." He laughed uneasily. "My life was much of the same, just then."

"I was in Koris," she said. "Think of it."

Laughter perished in him, in a dizzying gap of a hundred years. Irien: ma.s.sacre-ancestors of his had served Morgaine's cause in Koris, and they were dust. "But it was a hundred years, all the same," he said. "You slept; however you remember it, it was still a hundred years, and what you remember cannot change that."

"No. Gates are outside time. Nothing is fixed. And in this land-once-an unused Gate was flung wide open, uncontrolled, and poured men through into a land that was not theirs. That was not theirs, Vanye. And they took that land . . . men that speak a common tongue with Andur-Kursh; that remember me."

He sat very still, the pulse beating in his temples until he was aware of little else. "I knew," he said at last, "that it might be; that Jhirun and her kindred are Myya."

"You did not tell me this."

"I did not know how. I did not know how to put it together; I thought how things would stray the Gate into Andur-Kursh, lost-to die there; and could not men-"

"Who remember me, Vanye."

He could not answer; he saw her fold her arms about her knees, hands locked, and bow her head, heard her murmur something in that tongue that was hers, shaking her head in despair.

"It was a thousand years," he objected.

"There is no time between Gates," she answered him with an angry frown; and saw his puzzlement, his shake of the head, and relented. "It makes no difference. They have had their time, both those that were born to this land and those that invaded it. It is gone. For all of them, it is gone."

Vanye frowned, found a stick in his hands, and broke it, once, twice, a third time, measured cracks. He cast the bits into the fire. "They will starve before they drown. The mountains will give them ground whereon to stand, but the stones will not feed them. Would it be wrong, liyo, would it be wrong-once, to help them?"

"As once before it happened here? Whose land shall I give them, Vanye?"

He did not have an answer. He drew a breath and in it was the stench of the rotting land. Down in the camp the tumult had never ceased. Shrieks suddenly pierced the heavier sounds, seeming closer.

Morgaine looked in that direction and frowned. "Jhirun has been gone overlong."

His thoughts leaped in the same direction. "She would have had more sense," he said, gathering himself to his feet; but in his mind was the girl's distraught mood, Morgaine's words to her, his dismissal of her. The horses grazed, the bay mare with them, still saddled, although the girths were loosened.

Morgaine arose, touched his arm. "Stay. If she has gone, well sped; she survives too well to fear she would have gone that way."

The shouting drew nearer: there was the sound of horses on the road, of wild voices attending. Vanye swore, and started of a sudden for their own horses. There was no time left: riders were coming up their very hill, horses struggling on the wet slope.

And Jhirun raced into the firelight, a wild flash of limbs and ragged skirts. The riders came up after, white-haired lord and two white-haired house guards.

Jhirun raced for the shelter, as Vanye slipped the ring of his longsword and took it in hand: but Morgaine was before him. Red fire leaped from her hand, touching smoke in the drenched gra.s.s. Horses shied: Kithan-first of the three- flung up his arm against the sight and reined back, stopping his men. And at that distance he faced Morgaine. He shouted a word in his own tongue at her, in an ugly voice, and then in a shriek of desperation: "Stop them, stop them!" "From what," she asked, "Kithan?" "They have murdered us," the qujal cried, his voice shaking. "The others-stop them; you have the power to stop them if you will."

There was ugly murmuring in the camp; they could hear it even here: it grew nearer-men, coming toward the slope.

"Get the horses," Morgaine said.

Two lights appeared behind the screen of young trees, lights that moved; and a dark ma.s.s moved behind them. The halflings turned to look, terror in their faces. Vanye spun about, encountered Jhirun, seized her and thrust her again toward the shelter. "Pick up everything!" he shouted into her dazed face.

She moved, seized up blankets, everything that lay scattered, while he ran for the horses, adjusted harness, that of their own horses and Jhirun's bay mare as well. The stubborn gelding shied as he started to mount: he seized the saddle-horn and swung up in a maneuver he had hardly used since he was a boy, armored as he was: and he saw to his horror that Morgaine had made herself a shield for the three qujal, they at her back, the mob advancing not rapidly, but with mindless force.

He grasped Siptah's reins, leaning from the saddle, and spurred forward, through the qujal, reined in with Siptah just behind Morgaine.

She stood still, with him at her back; and faced the oncoming men afoot. Vanye stared at what came, panic surging in him, memory of the courtyard-of a beast without reason in it.

And in the torchlight at the head of them he saw Barrows-folk, and Fwar . . . Fwar, his scarred face no better for a dark slash across it They came with knives and with staves; and with them, panting in his haste, came the priest Ginun.

"Liyo!" Vanye said, with all the force in him. "To horse!"

She moved, nothing questioning, turned and sprang to the saddle in a single move. He kept his eye on Fwar in that instant, and saw murder there. In the next moment Morgaine had swung Siptah around to face them, curbing him hard, so that he shied up a little. She unhooked Changeling, held it across the saddlebow.

"Halflings!" someone shouted, like a curse; but from other quarters within the mob there were outcries of terror.

Morgaine rode Siptah a little distance across the face of the crowd, and paced him back again, a gesture of arrogance; and still they feared her, and gave back, keeping the line she drew.

"Fwar!" she cried aloud. "Fwar! What is it you want?"

"Him!" cried Fwar, a beast-shout of rage. "Him, who killed Ger and Awan and Efwy."

"You led us here," shouted one of the sons of Haz. "You have no intention of helping us. It was a lie. You will ruin the Wells and ruin us. If this is not so, tell us."

And there arose a bawling of fear from the crowd, a voice as from one throat, frightening in its intensity. They began to press forward.

A rider broke through the qujal from the rear: Vanye jerked his head about, saw Jhirun, a great untidy bundle on the saddle before her, saw the dark arm of the mob that had broken through the woods attempting to encircle them; Jhirun cried warning of it.

In blind instinct Vanye whirled in the other direction-saw a knife leave Fwar's hand. He flung up his arm: it hit the leather and fell in the mud, under his horse's hooves. Jhirun's cry of warning still rang in his ears.

The mob surged forward and Morgaine retreated. Vanye ripped out his sword, and fire burned from Morgaine's hand, felling one of the Barrowers. The front rank wavered with an outcry of horror.

"Angharan!" someone cried; and some tried to flee, abandoning their weapons and their courage; but weapons were hurled from another quarter, stones. Siptah shied and screamed shrilly.

"Lord!" Jhirun cried; Vanye reined about as Shiua came at them, seeking to attack the horses. The gelding shied back, and Vanye laid about him with desperate blows, the qujal striking what barehanded blows they could.

Vanye did not turn to see what had befallen his liege; he had enemies of hers enough before him. He wielded the longsword with frenzied strength, spurred the gelding recklessly into the attackers and scattered their undisciplined ranks, only then daring turn, hearing screams behind him.

Bodies lay thickly on the slope; fires burned here and there in the brush; the mob broke in flight, scattering down the hillside in advance of Siptah's charge.

And Morgaine did not cease: Vanye spurred the gelding and followed her, blind to tactic and strategy save the realization that she wanted the road, wanted the hill clear of them.

Folk screamed and scattered before them, and Vanye felt the gelding avoid a body that bad fallen before him, then recover and stretch out running as they gained the level ground, the qujalin road. Morgaine turned, heading out for the causeway across the Suvoj, scattering screaming enemies that had turned the wrong way.

On either side stretched flooded land, a vast expanse of shallow water, and the road ran as a narrow thread across it, toward the flooded crossing, where water swirled darkly over the stones. Here, well out upon that roadway, Morgaine stopped, and he with her, reining about as four riders came after them to the same desperate refuge-three terrified qujal and a Barrows-girl, this all their strength, and the roar of the Suvoj at their backs.

On the hillside that they had left, the Hiua regrouped, gathering their forces and their courage, and there was much of shouting and crying. Torches were waved. The glow of fire lit the center of their rallying place, and on that hillside was a tree, from which dangled objects-the aspect of which filled Vanye with apprehension.

"They have hanged them!" Kithan cried in anguish.

But neither Kithan nor his two men ventured forward against those odds. His people, Vanye understood, reckoning the number of dangling corpses against his memory of the band of qujal that had fled crumbling Ohtij-in, a pitiable group, among them women and old ones. Qujal they might be, but bile rose in his throat as he gazed on that sight.

And of a sudden came a shout from that gathering by the tree, and the wave of a torch, exhorting a new attack against them.

"Get back," Morgaine bade their companions; and the rush came, a dark surge of bodies pouring out onto the causeway. Changeling came free of its sheath, opal color flickering up and down its blade, that ominous darkness howling at its tip, and the first attacker mad enough to fling himself at Morgaine entered that dark and whirled shrieking away within it, sucked into that oblivion.

The mob did not retreat. Others swept against them, wild-eyed and howling their desperation. Vanye laid about him with his sword, reining tightly to keep the gelding from being pushed over the brink.

And suddenly those men that attacked him were alone. Morgaine spurred Siptah into that oncoming horde, swept the terrible blade in an arc that became vacant of enemies and corpses, a crescent that widened.

With a shout she rode farther, driving them in retreat before her, taking any man that delayed, the blade flickering with the cold opal fire, slow and leisurely as it took man after man into that void, dealing no wound, sparing none.

"Liyo!" Vanye cried, and spurred after her, shouldering a screaming marshlander over the brink. "Liyo!" He rode to land's edge; and there perhaps his voice first reached her. She reined about, and he saw the arc of the sword, the sudden eclipse of the light as it swung toward him. He reined over, hard, and the gelding slid on the wet stones, skidding. He recovered. The horse trembled and fretted under him, Morgaine's wild face staring at him in the balefire of Changeling.

"Put it up," he urged her in what of a voice remained to him. "No more. No more."

"Get back."

"No!" he cried at her. But she would not listen to him: she turned Siptah's head toward the people that gathered on the hillside, and spurred forward onto the muddy earth. Women and children cried out and ran, and men held their ground desperately, but she came no farther, circling back and forth, back and forth.

"Liyo!" Vanye screamed at her; and when she would not come, he rode forward, carefully, reining in a few paces behind, where he was safe from her as well as from the enemy.

She stopped, sat her horse facing the great empty s.p.a.ce that she had made between the causeway and their attackers. There was, after that confusion and madness, a terrible silence made. And she kept the sword unsheathed, waiting, while time pa.s.sed and the silence continued.

A voice broke the stillness, distant and its owner well hidden in the darkness. There were curses spoken against her, who had deceived them; there were viler things shouted. She did not move, nor seem provoked, although at some of the words Vanye trembled with rage and wished the man within reach. Almost he answered back himself; but something there was about Morgaine's silence and waiting against which such words, either attacking or defending, were empty. He had held Changeling: he knew the agony that grew in one's arm after long wielding of it, the drain upon one's very soul. She did not move, and the voice grew still.

And at last Vanye gathered his resolve and toed the gelding forward. "Liyo," he said, so that she would know that it was he. She did not protest his approach now; nor did she turn her head from the darkness she was watching.

"It is enough," he urged her quietly. "Liyo-put it away."

She gave no answer, nor moved for a time. Then she lifted Changeling so that the darkness at its tip aimed toward the huddle of tents and shelters, and that one great tree, whereon corpses dangled and twisted above a dying fire.

And then she lowered her arm, as if the weight of the sword suddenly grew too much. 'Take it," she said hoa.r.s.ely.

He eased close to her, stretched out both his hands and gently disengaged her rigid fingers from the dragon grip, taking it into his own hand. The evil of it ran through his bones and into his brain, so that his eyes blurred and his senses wavered.

She did not offer him the sheath, which was all that might damp its fires and render it harmless. She did not speak.

"Go back," he said. "I will watch them now."

But she did not answer or offer to move. She sat, straight and silent, beside him-believing, he was sure, that did it come to using the sword he had less willingness than she; lives and nations were on her conscience. His crimes were on a human scale.

And they sat then- horses side by side, the two of them, until he found the sword making his arm ache, until the pain of it was hard to bear. He counted only his breaths, and watched the slow pa.s.sage of Li's descent; and the horses grew weary and restless under them.

From the camp there was no stirring.

"Give it back," Morgaine said at last; he did so, terrified in the pa.s.sing of it, the least touch of it fatal. But her hand was strong and sure as she received it.

He looked behind him, at the rift of the Suvoj, where the others waited. "The waters are lower," he said. And after a moment: "The Hiua will not dare come. They have given up. Put it away."

"Go," she said; and harshly: "Go back!"

He drew his horse's head about and rode back to the others, the qujal at one side of the roadway, Jhirun at the other, holding the mare's reins as she sat on the stone edge.

And the girl gathered herself up as she saw him coming, staggered with exhaustion as she went forward to meet him. "Lord," she said, holding the gelding's reins to claim his attention, "lord, the halflings say we might perhaps cross. They are talking of trying it." There was a wild, desperate grief in her face, like something graven there, incapable of changing. "Lord-will she let us go?"

"Go, now," he bade her on his own, for there was no reasoning with Morgaine; and as he sat watching them mount up and begin to take their horses out onto that dangerous pa.s.sage, he was dismayed at his own callousness, that he could send men and a woman ahead to probe the way for his liege-in his place, because she valued him and not them.

Such he began to be, obedient to Morgaine. He made his heart cold, though his throat was tight with shame for himself, watching those four lone figures struggling across that dangerous flooded stonework.

And when he saw that they were well past the halfway point and still able to proceed, he turned and rode back to Morgaine's side.

"Now," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Now, liyo. We can cross."