Wall of Shiuan

“The time of Gates is not world-time.” She hurled a bit of bark into the flames, dusted her hands. “Go, go, we have time now that one of us could be sleeping, and we are wasting it. Go to sleep.”

“She?” he asked, with a nod toward Jhirun.

“I will speak with her.”

“You rest,” he urged her after a moment, inwardly braced against some irrational anger. Morgaine was distraught this night, exhausted—they both were. Her slim hands were tightly laced about her knee, clenched until the strain was evident. Tired as he was, he sensed something greatly amiss. “ Liyo, let me have first watch.”

She sighed, as if at that offer all the weariness came over her at once, the weight of mail that could make a strong man’s bones ache, days of riding that wore even upon him, Kurshin and born to the saddle. She bowed her head upon her knee, then flung it back and straightened her shoulders. “Aye,” she said hoarsely, “aye, that I will agree to gladly enough.”

She gathered herself to her feet, Changeling in her hand; but to his amazement she offered it to him, sheathed and crosswise.

It never left her, never. By night she slept with that evil thing; she never walked from where it lay, not more than a room’s width before she turned and took it up again. When she rode, it was either under her knee on the gray horse’s saddle, or across her shoulders on her sword belt.

He did not want even to touch it, but he took it and gathered it to him carefully; and she left him so, beside the fire. Perhaps, he thought, she was concerned that the warrior who guarded her sleep not do so unarmed; perhaps she had some subtler purpose, reminding him what governed her own choices. He considered this, watching her settle to sleep in that corner of the ruin where the stones still made an arch. She had their saddles for pillow and windbreak, the coarse saddle-blankets, unfolded, for a covering: he had lost his own cloak the same way he had lost his sword, else it would have been his cloak that was lent their injured prisoner, not hers. The consciousness of this vexed him. He had come to her with nothing that would have made their way easier, and borrowed upon what she had.

Yet Morgaine trusted him. He knew how hard it was for her to allow another hand on Changeling, which was obsession with her; she need not have lent it, and did; and he did not know why. He was all too aware, in the long silence after she seemed to have fallen asleep, how clear a target the fire made him.

Roh, if his hands retained any of their former skill, was a bowman of the Korish forests; and a Chya bowman was a shadow, a flitting ghost where there was cover. Likely too the girl Jhirun had kinsmen hereabouts seeking her, if Roh himself did not. And perhaps—Vanye’s shoulders prickled at the thought—Morgaine set a trap by means of that bright fire, disregarding his life and hers; she was capable of doing so, lending him her chiefest weapon to ease her conscience, knowing that this, at least, he could use.

He rested the sword between his knees, the dragon-hilt against his heart, daring not so much as to lie down to ease the torment of the mail on his shoulders, for he was unbearably tired, and his eyes were heavy. He listened to the faint sounds of the horses grazing in the dark, reassured constantly by their soft stirrings. Nightsounds had begun, sounds much like home: the creak of frogs, the occasional splash of water as some denizen of the marsh hunted.

And there was the matter of Jhirun, that Morgaine had set upon him.

He tucked a chill hand to his belt, felt the rough surface of the Honor-blade’s hilt, wondering how Roh fared, wondering whether he were equally lost, equally afraid. The crackling of the fire at his side brought back other memories, of another fireside, of Ra-koris on a winter’s evening, of a refuge once offered him, when no other refuge existed: Roh, who had been willing to acknowledge kinship with an outlawed kin.

He had been moved to love Roh once, Roh alone of all his kinsmen; an honest man and brave, Chya Roh i Chya. But the man he had known in Ra-koris was dead, and what possessed Roh’s shape now was qujal, ancient and deadly hostile.

The Honor-blade was not for enemies, but the last resort of honor; Roh would have chosen that way, if he had had the chance. He had not. Within Gates, souls could be torn from bodies and man and man confounded, the living with the dying. Such was the evil that had taken Chya Roh; Roh was truly dead, and what survived in him wanted killing, for Roh’s sake.

Vanye drew the blade partly from its sheath, touched that razor edge with gentle fingers, a tightness in his throat, wondering how, of all possessions that Roh might have lost, it had been this, that no warrior would choose to abandon.

She has found you, the girl had said, mistaking them in their kinsmen’s resemblance. Are you not afraid?

It occurred to him that Roh himself had feared Morgaine, loathed her, who had destroyed his ancestors and the power that had been Koris.