Well of Shiuan (23 page)

"Morgen!" the ragged army hailed her, raising their weapons. "Angharan! Angharan!" Vanye sat the gelding beside her as folk crowded round them with awed hysteria in their faces, he and his nervous horse touched by scores of trembling hands as they touched Siptah, rashly coming too near the unsheathed blade; shying from it, they massed the more closely about him, her companion. He endured it, realizing that he had been absorbed into the fabric of legends that surrounded Morgaine kri Chya—that he himself had become a thing to frighten children and cause honest men to shudder—that they had condemned him to all he had suffered, refusing to tell to his liege what they surely had known; and that those of Ohtij-in would lately have killed him.

He did not strike, though he trembled with the urge to do so. He still feared them, who for the hour hailed him and surrounded him with their insane adoration.

"Angharan!" they shouted. "Morgaine! Morgaine! Morgaine!"

Morgaine carefully sheathed Changeling, extinguishing its fire, and slid to the ground amid that press, men pushing at each other to make way for her. "Take the horses," she bade a man who approached her with less fear than the others, and then she turned her attention to the keep. There was silence made in the courtyard at last, an exhausted hush. She walked through their midst to the steps of the keep, Changeling crosswise in her hands, that it could be drawn in an instant. There she stood, visible to them all, and ragged and bloody men came and paid her shy, awkward courtesies.

Vanye dismounted, took up her saddle kit, that she would never leave behind her, and fended off those that offered help, no difficult matter. Men fled his displeasure, terrified.

Morgaine stayed for him, her foot on the next step until he had begun to ascend them, then passed inside. Vanye slung the saddlebag over his shoulder and walked after, up the steps and into the open gateway, past the staring dead face of the gatekeeper, who lay sprawled in the shadows inside.

Men took up torches, leading their way. Vanye shuddered at what he saw in the spiral halls, the dead both male and female, both qujal and guiltless

human servants, the ravaged treasures of Ohtij-in that littered the halls. He kept walking, up the spiralling core that would figure thereafter in his nightmares, limping after Morgaine, who walked sword in hand.

She will finish it, Roh had prophesied of her, end all hope for them. That is what she has come to do.

CHAPTER Eleven

In the lord's hall too there was chaos, bodies lying where they had fallen. Even the white dog was dead by the hearth, in a pool of blood that stained the carpets and the stones, and flowed to mingle with that of its master and mistress. A knot of servants huddled in the corner for protection, kneeling.

And in the other corner men were gathered, rough and ragged folk, who held prisoner three of the house guard, white-haired halflings, stripped of their masking helms, bound, and surrounded by peasant weapons.

Vanye stopped, seeing that, and the sudden warmth of the fire hit him, making breath difficult; he caught for balance against the door frame as Morgaine strode within the room and looked about

"Get the dead out of the hold," she said to the ragged men who awaited her orders. "Dispose of them. Is their lord among them?"

The eldest man made a helpless gesture. "No knowing," he said, in an accent difficult to penetrate.

“Liyo," Vanye offered, from the doorway, "a man named Kithan is in charge of Ohtij-in, Hetharu's brother. I know him by sight."

"Stay by me," she ordered curtly; and to the others: "Make search for him. Save all writings, wherever found, and bring them to me."

"Aye," said one of that company at whom she looked.

"What of the rest?" asked the eldest, a stooped and fragile man. "What of the other things? Be there else, lady?"

Morgaine frowned and looked about her, a warlike and evil figure amid their poor leather and rags; she looked on prisoners, on dead men, at the small rough-clad folk who depended on her for orders in this tumult, and shrugged. "What matter to me?" she asked. "What you do here is your own affair, only so it does not cross me. A guard at our door, servants to attend us—" Her eyes swept to the comer where the house servants cowered, marked men in brown livery who had served the qujal. "Those three will suffice. And Haz, give me three of your sons for guards at my quarters, and no more will I ask of you tonight."

"Aye," said the old man, bowed in awkward imitation of a lord's courtesy; he gestured to certain of the young men— small folk, all of them, who approached Morgaine with lowered eyes, the tallest of them only as high as her shoulder, but broad, powerful young men, for all that

Marshlanders, Vanye reckoned them: men of Aren. They spoke among themselves in a language he could not comprehend: men, but not of any kind that his land had known, small and furtive and, he suddenly suspected, without any law common to men that he knew. They were many, swarming the corridors, wreaking havoc; they had failed deliberately to find him for Morgaine—and yet she came back among them as if she utterly trusted them. He became conscious that he was not armed, that he, who guarded her back, had no weapon, and their lives were in the hands of these small, elusive men, who could speak secrets among themselves.

A body brushed past, taller than the others, black-robed; Vanye recoiled in surprise, then recognized the priest, who was making for Morgaine. In panic he moved and seized the priest, jerked at the robes, thrust him sprawling to the floor.

Morgaine looked down on the balding, white-haired priest, whose lean face was rigid with terror, who shook and trembled in Vanye's grip. In a sudden access of panic as Morgaine stepped closer, the priest sought to rise, perhaps to run, but Vanye held him firmly.

"Banish him to the court," Vanye said, remembering how this same priest had lured him into Ohtij-in, promising safety; how this priest had stood at Bydarra's elbow. "Let him try his fortunes out there, among men."

"What is your name?" Morgaine asked of the priest.

"Ginun," the slight halfling breathed. He twisted to look up at Vanye, dark-eyed, an aging man—and perhaps more man than qujal. Fear trembled on his lips. "Great lord, many would have helped you, many, many—I would have helped you. Our lords were mistaken."

"Where were you?" Vanye asked, bitterness so choking him he could hardly speak; he thrust the man free. "You knew your lord, you knew what would happen when you led me to him."

'Take us with you," Ginun wept. "Take us with you. Do not leave us behind."

"Where," asked Morgaine in a chill voice, "do you suppose that we will go from here?"

"Through the Wells—to that other land."

The hope in the priest's eyes was terrible to see as he looked from one to the other of them, chin trembling, eyes suffused with tears. He lifted his hand to touch Morgaine, lost courage and touched Vanye's hand instead, a finger-touch, no more. "Please," he asked of them.

"Who has told you this thing?" Morgaine asked. "Who?"

"We have waited," the priest whispered hoarsely. "We have tended the Wells and we have waited. Take us through. Take us with you."

Morgaine turned her face away, not willing more to talk with him. The priest's shoulders fell and he began to shake with sobs; at Vanye's touch he looked up, his face that of a man under death sentence. "We have served the khal," he protested, as if that should win favor of the conqueror of Obtij-in. "We have waited, we have waited. Lord, speak to her. Lord, we would have helped you."

"Go away," said Vanye, drawing him to his feet. Unease moved in his heart when he looked on this priest who served devils, whose prayers were to the works of qujal. The priest drew back from his hands, still staring at him, still pleading with his eyes. "She has nothing to do with you and your kind," Vanye told the priest. "Nor do I."

"The Barrow-kings knew her," the priest whispered, his eyes darting past him and back again. He clutched convulsively at the amulets that hung among his robes. "The lord Roh came with the truth. It was the truth."

And the priest fled for the door, but Vanye seized him, hauled him about, others in the room giving back from him. The priest struggled vainly, frail, desperate man. "Liyo," Vanye said in a quiet voice, fearful of those listening about them; prepared to strike the priest silent upon the instant. "Liyo, do not let him go. This priest will do you harm if he can. I beg you listen to me."

Morgaine looked on him, and on the priest. "Brave priest," she said in a voice still and clear, in the hush that had fallen in the room. "Fwar!"

A man came from the corner where the house guards were held, a taller man than most, near Morgaine's height. Square-faced he was, with a healing

slash that ran from right cheek to left chin, across both lips. Vanye knew him at once, him that had ridden the gelding into the courtyard—the face that had glared sullenly up at him. Such a look he received now; the man seemed to have no other manner.

"Aye, lady?" Fwar said. His accent was plainer than that of the others, and he bore himself boldly, standing straight.

"Have your kinsmen together," Morgaine said, "and find the khal that survive. I want no killing of them, Fwar. I want them set in one room, under guard. And you know by now that I mean what I say."

"Aye," Fwar answered, and frowned. The face might have been ordinary once. No more; it was a mask in which one most saw the eyes, and they were hot and violent. "For some we are too late."

"I care not who is to blame," Morgaine said. "I hold you, alone, accountable to me."

Fwar hesitated, then bowed, started to leave.

"And, Fwar—"

"Lady?"

"Ohtij-in is a human hold now. I have kept my word. Whoever steals and plunders now—steals from you."

This thought went visibly through Fwar's reckoning, and other men in the room stood attentive and sobered.

"Aye," Fwar said.

"Lady," said another, in a voice heavy with accent, "what of the stores of grain? Are we to distribute—?"

"Is not Haz your priest?" she asked. "Let your priest divide the stores. It is your grain, your people. Ask me no further on such matters. Nothing here concerns me. Leave me."

There was silence, dismay.

One of the marshlanders pushed at the qujalin guards, directing them to the door. In their wake went others, Fwar, Haz; there were left only Haz's three sons, claimed as guards, and the weeping priest, Ginun, and the three servants, who knelt cowering in the far corner.

"Show me," said Morgaine to the servants, "where are the best lodgings with a solid door and some secure room nearby where we can lodge this priest for his own protection."

She spoke softly with them. One moved, and the others gathered courage, kneeling facing her, eyes downcast "There," said the oldest of them, himself no more than a youth, and pointed toward the door that led inward, away from the central corridor.

There was a small, windowless storeroom opposite a lordly hall. Here Morgaine bade the priest disposed, with a bar across that door, and that chained, and the door visible by those who would guard their own quarters. It was Vanye's to put the priest inside, and he did so, not ungently.

He hated the look of the priest's eyes as he was set within that dark place, forbidden a light lest he do himself and others harm with it. The priest's terror fingered at nightmares of his own, and he hesitated at closing the door.

Priest of devils, who would have worshipped at Morgaine's feet, an uncleanness that attached itself to them, saying things it was not good to hear, Vanye loathed the man, but that a man should fear the dark, and being shut within, alone—this he understood.

"Keep still," he warned Ginun last, the guards out of hearing. "You are safer here, and you will be safe so long as you do keep still."

The priest was still staring at him when he closed the door, his thin face white and terrified in the shadow. Vanye dropped the bar and locked the chain through it—made haste to turn his back on it, as on a private nightmare, remembering the roof of the tower of his prison—Roh's words, stored up in this priest, waiting to break forth. He thought in agony that he should see to it that the priest never spoke—that he, ilin, should take that foulness on his own soul and never tell Morgaine, never burden her honor with knowing it.

He was not such a man; he could not do it. And he did not know whether this in him was virtue or cowardice.

The sons of Haz had taken up their posts at the door. Morgaine awaited him in the hall beyond. He went to her, into the chambers that had been some great lord's, and dropped the saddlebags that he had carried onto the stones of the hearth, staring about him.

More bodies awaited them: tapestries rent, bodies of men-at-arms and the one-time lords lying amid shattered crystal and overturned chairs. Vanye knew them. One was the body of an old woman; another was that of one of the elder lords, he that had made most grudging obeisance to Hetharu.

"See to it," Morgaine said sharply to the servants. "Remove them."

And while this was being attended, she righted a heavy chair and put it near the fire that still blazed in the hearth for its former owners, extended her legs to it, booted ankles crossed, paying no attention to the grisly task that went on among the servants. Changeling she set point against the floor and leaning by her side, and gave a long sigh.