Wall of Shiuan

Bydarra, he recognized the elder man; and with him, Hetharu. The combination jolted against the memory of the night—of furtive meetings within this prison of his, of young lordlings and secrecies.

Vanye stood still by the fireplace, while the guards set their torches in place of the stubs in the brackets. The room outside those interlocked circles of light was dark by comparison, the rainy daylight a faint glow in the recess, less bright than the torches. The character of the room seemed changed, a place unfamiliar, where qujal intervened, contrary to all his own intentions. He looked at the guards that waited in the doorway, the light limning demon-faces and outlandish scale. He looked on them with a slowly growing terror, the consciousness of things outside the compass of himself and Roh.

“Nhi Vanye,” Bydarra hailed him, not ungently.

“Lord Bydarra,” he answered. He bowed his head slightly, responding to the soft courtesy, though the guards about them denied that any courtesy was meant, though Hetharu’s thin, wolfish face beside his father’s held nothing of good will. Vanye looked up again, met the old lord’s pale eyes directly. “I had thought that you would have sent for me to come to you.”

Bydarra smiled tautly, and answered nothing to that insolence. Of a sudden there was about this gathering too the hint of secrecies, the lord of Ohtij-in intriguing within his own hold, not wishing a prisoner moved about the halls with what noise and notice would attend such moving. Bydarra asked no questions, proposed nothing immediate, only waited on his prisoner, with what purpose Vanye felt hovering shapeless and ominous among the lords of Ohtij-in.

And in that realization came a horrid suspicion of hope: that of ruining Roh, there was a chance here present. It was not the act of a warrior: he felt shame for it, but he did not think that he could reject whatever means offered itself. He made himself numb to what he did.

“Have you come,” Vanye asked of the qujal, “to learn of me what things Roh would not tell you?”

“And what might those things be?” Bydarra asked softly.

“That you cannot trust him.”

Again Bydarra smiled, this time with more satisfaction. His features were an aged mirror of Hetharu’s, who was close beside him—a face lean and fine-boned, but Bydarra’s eyes were pale: Morgaine’s features, he thought with an inward shudder, horrified to see that familiar face reflected in her enemies. No pure qujal had been left in Andur-Kursh. He saw one for the first time, and thought, unwillingly, of Morgaine.

Ask yourself, Roh had said, taunting him, what you are sworn to.

“Go,” Bydarra bade the guards, and they went, closing the door; but Hetharu stayed, at which Bydarra frowned.

“Dutiful,” Bydarra murmured at him distastefully; and he looked at Vanye with a mocking twist of his fine lips. “My son,” he said with a nod at Hetharu. “A man of indiscriminate taste and energetic ambitions. A man of sudden and sweeping ambitions.”

Vanye glanced beyond Bydarra’s shoulder, at Hetharu’s still face, sensing the pride of this man, who stood at his father’s shoulder and heard himself insulted to a prisoner. For an irrational instant Vanye felt a deep impulse of sympathy toward Hetharu—himself bastard, half-blood, spurned by his own father. Then a suspicion came to him that it was not casual, that Bydarra knew that he had reason to distrust this son, that Bydarra had reason to come to a prisoner’s cell and ask questions.

And Hetharu had urgent reason to cling close to his father’s side, lest the old lord learn of meetings and movements that occurred in the night within the walls of Ohtij-in. Vanye met Hetharu’s eyes without intending it, and Hetharu returned his gaze, his dark and human eyes promising violence, seething with ill will.

“Roh urges us,” said Bydarra, “to treat you gently. Yet he calls you his enemy.”

“I am his cousin,” Vanye countered quietly, falling back upon Roh’s own stated reasoning.

“Roh,” said Bydarra, “makes vast and impossible promises—of limitless arrogance. One would think that he could reshape the Moon and turn back the waters. So suddenly arrived, so strangely earnest in his concern for us—he styles himself like the ancient Kings of Men, and claims to have power over the Wells. He seeks our records, pores over maps and old accounts of only curious interest. And what would you, Nhi Vanye i Chya? Will you likewise bid for the good will of Ohtij-in? What shall we offer you for your good pleasure if you will save us all? Worship, as a god?”

The sting of sarcasm fell on numbness, a chill, to think of Roh, a Chya bowman, a lord of forested Koris, searching musty qujalin records, through runic writings that Men did not read—save only Morgaine. “Roh,” Vanye said, “lies to you. He does not know everything; but you are teaching it to him. Keep him from those books.”