Well of Shiuan (15 page)

"Shiuan," breathed Jhirun; and her hand tightened on his arm. "We have come through; we have reached Shiuan."

Vanye answered nothing, for at once he thought of Morgaine, and that destroyed any joy he had in his own survival. He thought of Morgaine, and reckoned with a last stubborn hope that the flooding had not been impassable or without warning: some little chance yet remained. But Jhirun's happiness was good to see; he answered the pressure of her hand with a touch of his own.

The hills began to enfold them closely as they walked, while the day waned. The road clung to the side of one and then the other, and never again sank below the water. Beside it, water poured, and spilled down ridges and between hills in its haste to reach the marsh.

Vanye stopped, for something strange topped the highest hill in their sight: a hulk that itself took shape out of the rain—gray towers, a little lighter than the clouds that boiled above them in the storm-drowned twilight.

"It is Ohtij-in," Jhirun shouted up at him through the roar of the rain. "It is Ohtij-in, the first of the holds of Shiuan."

Joy filled her voice at the sight of that grim place; she started forward, but he stood fast, and she stopped, holding her shawl about her, beginning to shiver in the chill that came rapidly when they stopped moving.

"They are well-fortified," he said, "and perhaps—perhaps we should pass them by in the night."

"No," she argued. "No." There were tears in her voice. He would gladly have dismissed her, bidden her do as it pleased her; and almost he did so, reckoning that for her it might be safety enough.

Then he remembered how much she knew of Morgaine, and where Morgaine might be sought; of him, too, and where he was bound.

"I would not trust it," he said to her.

"Marshlands and Ohtij-in trade," she pleaded with him, shaking as she hugged her shawl about her, drenched as it was. ''We are safe here, we are safe; o lord, they must give us food and shelter or we will die of this cold. This is a safe place. They will give us food."

Her light clothing clung to her skin. She was suffering cruelly, while he had the several layers of his armor, burden though it was; their bellies were empty, racked sometimes with cramps; his own legs were weak with exhaustion, and she could scarcely walk. It was reason that she offered him, she who knew this land and its people; and in his exhaustion he began to mistrust his own instincts, the beast-panic that urged him to avoid this place, all places that might hem him in. He knew outlawry, the desperate flights and sometime luck that had let him live—supplied with weapons, with a horse, with knowledge of the land equal to that of his enemies. There had been game to hunt, and customs that he knew. Here he knew not what lay down the road, was lost apart from that track, vulnerable on it; and any enemies in this land could find him easily.

He yielded to the tug of her hand. They walked nearer, and he could see that the whole of the place called Ohtij-in was one hold, a barrel within a great wall that followed the shape of the hill on which it sat. Many towers rose about the central keep, part of the wall, each crazily buttressed, as if each support had been an affair of ingenuity and desperation never amended by later effort. Brush grew up about the walls; black trees that supported leaves only at the extremities of their branches, already inclined southward, inclined still further in the force of the storm wind, reaching fingers toward the lichen-blotched walls. The whole place seemed time-worn, a place without sharp edges, where decay was far advanced, dreaming away to death.

He rubbed at his eyes in the rain and tried to focus on it.

"Come," Jhirun was urging him, her teeth chattering with cold.

Perhaps, he thought confusedly, Morgaine would pass this way; she must; there was no other.

Jhirun drew at his arm and he went; he saw, as they left the road on the short spur that led toward the hill, that there was a solid wooden gate in the arch facing them, younger by far than the stones that framed it, the first thing in all this waste that looked new and strong.

Best, he thought, to assume confidence in his bearing, to approach as innocent folk that feared nothing and brought no threat with them.

"Hai!" he shouted up at the frowning walls, trying to out-shout the wind, and he found his voice a weary and strangled sound that lacked all the confidence he attempted. "Hai! Open your gates!"

A light soon winked in the tower nearest the gate; a shuttered window opened to see them in that almost-dankness, and a bell began to ring, high-pitched and urgent. From that open shutter it was certain that they suffered the scrutiny of more than one observer, a series of black shapes that appeared there and vanished.

Then the shutter was closed again, and there was silence from the bell, no sound but the rush of water that sluiced off the walls and gathered on the stone paving before the gate. Jhirun shivered miserably.

Came the creak of a door yielding; the sally-port beside the main gate opened, veiled in the rain, and one man put his head forth to look at them. Black

robed he was, with a cloak about him so that only his face and hands were visible. Timidly he crept forward, opening the gate wider, holding his rain-spattered cloak about him and standing where a backward step would put him within reach of the gateway. "Come," he said. "Come closer."

CHAPTER Seven

"A priest," said Jhirun. "A Shiua priest."

Vanye let go a careful breath, relieved. The black robes were of no order that he knew, not in his homeland, where vesper and matin bells were a familiar and beloved sound; but a priest, indeed, and in all this gray and dying land there was no sight so welcome, the assurance that even here were human and godly men. He was still cautious in coming forward as they were summoned, for there were likely archers in the shadows atop the wall, bows drawn and arrows well-aimed. So would many a border hold in Kursh and Andur receive night-coming travellers, using the sally port for fear of a concealed force, keeping the archers ready if things went amiss.

But throughout all Andur-Kursh, even in the hardest years, there was hospitality, there was hearth-law, and halls were obliged to afford charity to wayfarers, a night's shelter, be it in hall, be it in a lowly guest-house without the walls. Vanye kept his hands in sight, and stopped and stood to be seen clearly by the priest, who gazed at them both in wonder, face white and astonished within the cowl, a white spot in the descending night.

"Father," said Vanye, his voice almost failing him in his hoarseness and his anxiety, "Father, there is a woman, on a gray horse or a black or, it might be, afoot. You have not seen her?"

"None such," said the priest. "None. But if any other traveler passes Ohtij-in, we will know it. Come in, come in and be welcome."

Jhirun stepped forward; Vanye felt an instant's mistrust and then ascribed it to exhaustion and the strangeness of the place. It was too late. If he would run, they could hunt him down easily; and if they would not, then here was shelter and food and he was mad to reject it. He hesitated, Jhirun tugging at his hand, and then he came, by the sally port, into a space between two walls, where torches flared and rain steamed on their copper shieldings.

A second priest closed the sally port and barred it; and Vanye scanned with renewed misgivings the strength of the gates, both inner and outer: a double wall defended this approach to Ohtij-in. The second priest pulled a cord, ringing the bell, and ponderously the inner gates swung open, upon torchlight, rain, and armed men.

There was no flourish of weapons, no rush at them, only an over-sufficient escort—pikemen standing beneath the windblown glare of torches, light gleaming wetly on bronze half-face helms that bore on the brow the likeness of grotesque faces—on armor that was long-skirted scale and plate, with intricate embellishment—on pikes with elaborate and cruel barbs.

It was a force far stronger than any hold at peace would keep under arms on a rainy night. The sense of something utterly amiss wound coldly through Vanye's belly: the terror of the strange armor, the excessive preparation for defense in an unpeopled land. Even Jhirun seemed to have lost all her trust in the place, and kept close to his side.

A priest tugged at the staff he yet held; he tightened his grip on it, trying to make sense of such a welcome, to know whether there might be more profit in resisting or in appealing to their lord. He let the staff go, thinking as he did so that it was small defense in any case.

Weapons were turned, and their escort opened ranks to receive them into their midst The priests stayed by them, the pikemen on all sides; and beyond them, even in the rain, stood a horde of silent men and women, folk wrapped in ragged cloaks. A moment of peace lasted, then an outcry began among them, a wild shriek from one that rushed forward; others moved, and cries filled the courtyard. Hands reached through the protective screen of pikes to touch them. Jhirun cried out and Vanye held her tightly, glad now to go where the grotesquely armored guards bade them; he stared at mad eyes and open mouths that shouted words that he could not understand, and felt their hands on his back, his shoulders. A pikeshaft slammed out into hysterical faces, bringing blood: their own people they treated so. Vanye gazed at that act in horror, and cursed himself for ever having come toward this place.

It was to the keep that they were being taken, that vast central barrel that supported all the rest of the structure. Above the wild faces and reaching hands Vanye saw those lichen-covered walls; and against them was a miserable tangle of buildings huddled under the crazy buttresses. The cobbled yard was buckled and cracked, splits filled with water, and rain-scarred puddles filled the aisle between the rough shelters that leaned against wall and towers. Next to the keep also were pent livestock, cattle and goats; and soil from those pens and the stables joined the corruption that flowed through the courtyard and through the shelters. Against the comer of the steps as they drew near the keep was a sodden mass of fur, dead rat or some other vermin lying drowned, an ugliness flushed out by the rains.

Men lived in such wretchedness. No lord of repute in Andur-Kursh would have kept his people so—would have even permitted such squalor, not even under conditions of war. Madness reigned in this place, and misery; and the guards used their weapons more than once as they cleared the steps.

A gate, barred and chained and guarded within, confronted them; a gatekeeper unlocked and ran back the chain to admit them all. Surely, Vanye thought, a lord must needs live behind chains and bars, who dwelled amid such misery of his people; and it promised no mercy for strangers, when a man had none for his own folk. Vanye wished now never to have seen this place; but the bars gaped for them, swallowed them up and clanged shut again. Jhirun looked back; so did he, seeing the keeper replacing the chain and lock at once, while the mob pressed at the gate, hands beginning to reach through the bars, voices shouting at them.

The inner doors opened to admit them, thundered shut after. They faced a spiral ramp, and with the priest and four of the escort bearing torches from the doorway, they began their ascent. The ramp led slowly about a central core with doors on this side and that, and echoes rang hollowly from the heights above. The whole of the place had a dank and musty smell, a quality of wet stone and age and standing water. The corridor floor was uneven, split in not a few places, with cracks in the walls repaired with insets of mortared rubble. The guards kept close about them the while, two torchbearers behind and three before, shadows running the walls in chaos. Behind them was the fading sound of voices from the gate; and softly, softly as they climbed, began to come the strains of music, strange and wild.

The musics grew clearer, uncanny accompaniment to the iron tread of armed men about them; and the air grew warmer, closer, tainted with sweet incense. Jhirun was breathing as if she had been running, and Vanye also felt the dizziness of exhaustion and hunger and sudden heat; he lost awareness of what passed about him, and cleared his senses only slowly as the guards shifted about and encountered others, as soft voices spoke, and doors opened in sequence before, them.

The music died, wailing: golden, glittering figures of men and women paused in mid-movement, tall and slim and silver-haired.

Qujal.

Jhirun's touch held him, else he would have hurled himself at guards and doors and died; her presence, frightened, at his side, kept him still as the foremost of the tall, pale men walked toward him, surveyed him casually with calm, gray eyes.

An order was given, a language he did not know; the guards laid hand on his arms and turned him to the left, where was another door; and certain of the other pale lords left their places and came, quietly, as they were withdrawn from that bright hall and into an adjoining room.

It was a smaller hall, with a fire blazing in the fireplace, a white dog lying at the hearth. The dog sprang up and began to bark frantically, sending mad echoes rolling through the halls, drowning the music that had begun again next door, until one of the guards whipped her yelping into silence. Vanye stared at the act, jarred by that mistreatment of a beast, and looked about him, at wealth, luxury, carved woods, carpets, bronze lamps—and the qujal-lords gathered by the door, resplendent in brocades and jewels, talking together in soft, astonished accents.

Three moved to the fore, to seat themselves at the chairs of the long table: an old man, in green and silver, he it was who had come first to look at them—and because he was first and because of his years, Vanye reckoned him for lord in the hall. At his right sat a youth in black and silver; at his left, another youth in blue and green of fantastical design, whose eyes were vague and strange, and rested in distant speculation on Vanye's when he looked him in the face. Vanye flinched from that one, and felt Jhirun step back. His impulse even now was to run, deserting her, though guards and chains and double gates lay between him and freedom: nothing that could befall Jhirun in this place seemed half so terrible as the chance that they would realize what he was, and how he had come.