Wall of Shiuan

He walked a staggering course down the road, seeking some sign on the earth—and then he realized that he should leave one of his own, lest she take his track for Roh’s, and hang back. He tore a branch from a tree, snapped it and drove its two ends into the mud, a slanting sign that any who had ranged Andur-Kursh could read like the written word: Follow! And by it he wrote in the mud the name-glyph of clan Nhi.

It would last until the waters rose again, which in this cursed land gave the life of the message to be short indeed; and with this in mind, he carried a stone from the paving of the buried road and cut a mark now and again upon a tree by the road.

Every caution he had learned in two years of outlawry, fleeing clan Myya, cried out that he guided none but enemies at his back. Men lived in this land, and they were furtive and fearful and would not show themselves; and therefore there were things in this land that men should rightly fear.

Nevertheless he held the center of the road, fearing more being missed than being found.

And came the time that he ran out of strength, and what had been a tightness in his chest swelled and took his breath away. He sank down in his tracks and drew breath carefully, feeling after ribs that might well be cracked; and at times the haze came over his mind again. He found a time when he had not been aware what passed about him, and some moments later he was afoot and walking with no memory of how he had risen or how far he had come.

There were many such gaps after that, periods when he did not know where he was going, but his body continued, obedient to necessity and guided by the road.

At last he was faced with a gap in the road where a channel had cut through; he stared at it, and simply sank down on the slope at water’s edge, reckoning how likely he was to drown attempting it. And strength left him, the exhaustion of a night without sleep stretching him full-length on the muddy slope. He was cold. He ceased to care.

A shadow fell over him, a whisper of cloth. He waked violently and struck out, seeing bare feet and a flash of brown skirt; and in the next moment a staff crashed into his arm—his head, if his arm had not been quick. He hurled himself at his attacker, mailed weight and inconsiderable flesh meeting: she went down, still trying for his face, and he backhanded the raking attack hard enough that it struck the side of her face. Jhirun. He realized it as her face came clear out of the shock of the attack.

The blow had dazed her, much as he had restrained it at the last instant; and seeing her, who might know of Morgaine, he was overcome with fear that he had killed her. He gathered her up and shook at her in his desperation.

“Where is she?” he asked, his voice an unrecognizable whisper; and Jhirun sobbed for breath and fought and protested again and again that she did not know.

After a moment he came to his senses and realized the girl was beyond lying; fear was knotted in him so that he found it hard to relax his hands; he was shaking. And when he had let her go she collapsed on the muddy bank sobbing for breath.

“I do not know, I do not know,” she kept saying through her tears. “I did not see her or the horses—nothing. I only swam and swam until I came out of the current, that is all.”

He clutched this to him, the only hope that he could obtain, that he knew Morgaine could swim, armored though she was; and Jhirun had survived; and he had survived, who could not swim at all. He chose to hope, and stumbled to his feet, gathering up Jhirun’s abandoned staff. Then he began to seek the other side of the channel, using the staff to probe the shallowest way. It became waist-deep before it grew shallow again, and he climbed out on the other side, with the staff to help him on the slope.

A splash sounded behind him. He turned, saw Jhirun wading the channel with her skirts a sodden flower about her. Almost the depth became too much for her, but she struggled across the current, panting and exhausted as she reached the bank and began to climb.

“Go back,” he said harshly. “I am going on from here. Go home, wherever that is, and count yourself fortunate.”

She struggled further up the bank. Her face, already bruised, had a fresh redness across the brow: his arm had done that. Her hair hung in spiritless tangles. She reached the crest and shook the hair back over her shoulders.

“I am going to Shiuan,” she said, her chin trembling. “Go where you like. This is my road.”

He looked into her tear-glazed eyes, hating her intrusion, half desiring it, for he was lost and desperate, and the silence and the rush of water were like to drive a man mad. “If Abarais lies in Shiuan,” he said, “I am going that way. But I will not wait for you.”

“Nor for her?”