Wall of Shiuan

The horses spent their first wind, and slowed: Vanye was aware when Changeling winked out, going into sheath—and Morgaine asked things to which he gave unclear answer, not knowing the land or the tides. She laid heels to Siptah and the gray leaned into renewed effort, the gelding following. Vanye used his heels mercilessly when the animal began to flag, fearful of being left behind, knowing that Morgaine would not stop. They rounded blind turns, downslope and up again, through shallow water and over higher ground.

And as they mounted a crest where the hills opened up, a wide valley spread before them, black waters as far as the eye could see, froth roaring and crashing about the rocks and the stonework, swallowing up the road.

Morgaine reined in with a curse, and Vanye let the gelding stop, both horses standing with sides heaving. It was over, lost. Vanye bowed upon the saddlehorn with the rain beating at his thinly clad back, until the pain of his side ebbed and he could straighten.

“Send he drowns,” Morgaine said, and her voice trembled.

“Aye,” he answered without passion, coughed and leaned again over the saddle until the spasm had left him.

Siptah’s warmth shifted against his leg, and he felt Morgaine’s touch on his shoulder. He lifted his head. The lightning showed her face to him, frozen in a look of concern, the rain like jewels on her brow.

“I thought,” he said, “that you would have left, or that you were lost.”

“I had my own difficulties,” she said; and with anguish she slammed her fist against her leg. “Would you could have found a chance to kill him.”

The accusation shot home. “When the rain stops—” he offered in his guilt.

“This is the Suvoj,” she said fiercely, “by the name that I have heard, and that is not river-flood: it is the sea, the tide. After Hnoth, after the moons—”

She drew breath. Vanye became aware of the malefic force of the vast light that hung above the lightning, that lent the boiling clouds strange definition. And when next the flashes showed him Morgaine clearly, she had turned her head and was gazing at the flood with an expression like a hunting wolf. “Perhaps,” she said, “perhaps there are barriers that will hold him, even past the Suvoj.”

“It may be, liyo,” he said. “I do not know.”

“If not, we will learn it in a few days.” Her shoulders fell, a sigh of exhaustion; she bowed her head and threw it back, scattering rain from her hair. She drew Siptah full about.

And perhaps the lightning showed him clearly for the first time, for her face took on a sudden look of concern. “Vanye?” she asked, reaching for him. Her voice reached him thinly, distantly.

“I can ride,” he said, although for very little he would have denied it. The prospect of another such mad course was almost more then he could bear; the pain in his ribs rode every breath. But the gentleness fed strength into him. He began to shiver, feeling the cold, where before he had had the warmth of movement. She unclasped the cloak from about her throat and flung it about his shoulders. He put up his hand to refuse it.

“Put it on,” she said. “Do not be stubborn.” And gratefully he gathered it about him, taking warmth from the horse and from the cloak that she had worn. It made him shiver the more for a moment, his body beginning to fight the cold. She took a flask from her saddle and handed it across to him; he drank a mouthful of that foul local brew that stung his cut lip and almost made him gag, but it eased his throat after it had burned its way down, and the taste faded.

“Keep it,” she said when he offered to return it.

“Where are we going?”

“Back,” she said, “to Ohtij-in.”

“No,” he objected, the reflex of fear; it leapt out in his voice, and made her look at him strangely for a moment, in shame he jerked the gelding’s head about toward Ohtij-in, started him moving, Siptah falling in beside at a gentle walk. He said nothing, wished not even to look at her, but pressed his hand to his bruised ribs beneath the cloak and tried to ignore the panic that lay like ice in his belly—Roh safely sped toward Abarais, and themselves, themselves returning into the grasp of Ohtij-in, within the reach of treachery.

And then, a second impulse of shame for himself, he remembered the Hiua girl whom he had abandoned there without a thought toward her. It was his oath, and that was as it must be, but he was ashamed not even to have thought of her.

“Jhirun,” he said, “was with me, a prisoner too.”

“Forget her. What passed with Roh?”

The question stung; guilt commingled with dread in him. He looked ahead, between the gelding’s ears. “Lord Hetharu of Ohtij-in,” he said, “went with Roh northward, to reach Abarais before the weather turned. I walked into this place, thinking to claim shelter. It is not Andur-Kursh. I have not managed well, liyo. I am sorry.”

“Which first—Roh’s leaving or your coming?”

He had deliberately obscured that in his telling; her harsh question cut to the center of the matter. “My coming,” he said. “ Liyo–”

“He let you live.”