Morgaine hesitated, regarding Kithan. “Let him be,” she said. “His courage comes from the akil. It will pass.”
The insouciance of Kithan seemed stung by that. He frowned, and leaned against the rock staring at her, no longer capable of distance.
“Prepare the horses,” she said. “If he can hold our pace, well; and if not—the Hiua will remember that he companied with me.”
There was unease in the guards’ faces, a flicker of the same in Kithan’s; and then, with a bow, a taut smile: “Arrhthein,” he said to her. “Sharron a thrissn nthinn.”
“Arrhtheis,” Morgaine echoed softly, and Kithan settled back with an estimating look in his eyes, as if something had passed between them of irony and bitter humor.
It was the language of the Stones. I am not qujal, Morgaine had insisted to him once, which he believed, which he still insisted on believing.
But when he had gone, at Morgaine’s impatient gesture, to attend the horses, he looked back at them, his pale-haired liege and the pale-haired qujal together, tall and slender, in all points similar; a chill ran through him.
Jhirun, human-dark, a wraith in brown, scrambled up and quitted that company and ran to him, as he gathered up the reins of her mare and brought it to the roadside. He threw down there the bundles she had made of their supplies and began rerolling the blankets, on his knees at the side of the stone road. She knelt down with him and began with feverish earnestness to help him, in this and when he began to tie the separate rolls to their three saddles, redistributing supplies and tightening harness.
Her mare’s girth too he attended, seeing that it was well done, on which her life depended: She waited, hovering at his side.
“Please,” she said at last, touching at his elbow. “Let me ride with you; let me stay with you.”
“I cannot promise that.” He avoided her eyes, and brushed past her to attend the matter of his own horse. “If the mare cannot hold our pace, still she is steady and she will manage to keep you ahead of the Hiua. I have other obligations. I cannot think of anything else just now.”
“These men—lord, I am afraid of them. They—”
She did not finish. It ended in tears. He looked at her and remembered her the night that Kithan had visited his cell, small and wretched as she had been in the hands of the guards, men half-masked and anonymous in their demon-helms. Her they had seized, and not him.
“Do you know these men?” he asked of her harshly.
She did not answer, only stared at him helplessly with the flush of shame staining her cheeks; and he looked askance at Kithan’s man, who was likewise caring for his lord’s horse. Privately he thought of what justice Kursh reserved for such as they: her ancestors had been, though she had forgotten it, tan-uyin, and honorable, and proud.
He was not free to take up her quarrel. He had a service.
He set his hand on hers; it was small, but rough, a peasant’s hand, that knew hard labor. “Your ancestors,” he said, “were high-born men. My father’s wife was Myya, who gave him his legitimate sons. They are a hard-minded clan, the Myya; they ‘my lord’ only those that they respect.”
Her hand, leaving his, went to her breast, where he remembered a small gold amulet that once he had returned to her. The pain her eyes had held departed, leaving something clear and far from fragile.
“The mare,” he said, “will not run that far behind, Myya Jhirun.”
She left him. He watched her, at the roadside, bend and gather a handful of smooth stones, and drop them, as she straightened, into her bodice. Then she gathered up the mare’s reins and set herself into the saddle.
And suddenly he saw something beyond her, at the bottom of the long hill, a dark mass on the road beyond the knoll that rose like a barrow-mound at the turning.
“Liyo,” he called out, appalled at the desperate endurance of those that followed them, afoot. Not for revenge: for revenge they surely could not follow so far or so determinedly . . . but for hope, a last hope, that rested not with Morgaine, but with Roh.
There were Shiua and the priest, who knew what Roh had promised in Ohtij-in; and there was Fwar: for Fwar, it would be revenge.
Morgaine stood at his side, looked down the road. “They cannot keep our pace,” she said.
“They need not,” said Kithan; and gone now was the slurring of his speech; fear glittered through the haze of his eyes. “There are forces between us and Abarais, my lady Morgaine, and one of them is my brother’s. Hetharu will have ridden over whatever opposition he meets: he is not loved by the mountain lords. But so much the more will forces be on the move in this land. Your enemy has sent couriers abroad: folk here will know you; they will be waiting for you; and being mad, they are, of course, interested in living. We may find our way quite difficult.”
Morgaine gave him a baleful look, took Changeling from her shoulder and hooked it to her saddle before she set foot in the stirrup. Vanye mounted, and drew close to her, thinking no longer of what followed them or of Myya Jhirun i Myya; it was Morgaine he protected, and if that should entail turning on three of their companions, he would be nothing loath.
• • •
The land opened before them, rich with crops and dark earth; and closed again and opened, small pockets of cultivated earth hardly wider than a field or two between opposing heights, and occasionally a small marsh and a reed-rimmed lake.
Crags rose towering on all sides of them, a limit to the sky that in other days Vanye would have found comfortable, a view much like home; but it was not his land, and nowhere was there indication what might lie ahead. He looked into the deep places of the weathered rocks, the recesses that were often overgrown with trees and man-tall weeds, and knew that in one thing at least Kithan had told the truth: that there was no passage for a horseman off this road; and if there were trails in the hills, as surely there were, even a runner must needs be born to this land to make much speed.
They did not press the horses, that like themselves had gone without sleep and rest; Kithan rode with them, his two men trailing, and last rode Jhirun, whose bay mare was content to lag by several lengths.
And at dusk, as they came through one of the many narrows, there appeared stones by the road, set by men; and against the forested cliffs beyond was a stone village, a sprawling and untidy huddle next the road.
“Whose?” Morgaine asked of Kithan. “It was not on the maps.”
Kithan shrugged. “There are many such. The land hereabouts is Sotharra land; but I do not know the name of the village. There will be others. They are human places.”
Vanye looked incredulously at the halfling lord, and judged that it was likely the truth, that a lord of Shiuan did not trouble to learn the names of the villages that lay within reach of his own land.
Morgaine swore, and came to a slow stop on the road, where they were last screened by the trees and the rocks. A spring flowed at the roadside, next the trees. She let Siptah drink, and herself dismounted and knelt upcurrent, drinking from her hand. The qujal followed her example, even Kithan drinking from the stream like any peasant; and Jhirun overtook them and cast herself down from her mare to the cool bank.
“We shall rest a moment,” Morgaine said. “Vanye—”
He nodded, stepped down from the saddle, and filled their waterflasks the while Morgaine watched his back.
And constantly, while they let the horses breathe and took a little of their small supply of food, Morgaine’s eye was on their companions or his was, while the dusk settled and became night.
Jhirun held close, by Morgaine’s side or his. She sat quietly, for the most part, and braided her long hair in a single plait down the back, tied it with a bit of yarn from her fringed skirt. And there was something different in her bearing, a set to her jaw, a directness to her eyes that had not been there before.
She set herself with them as if she belonged: Vanye met
her eye, remembered how she had intervened in Fwar’s ambush in the stable, and reckoned that were he an enemy of Myya Jhirun i Myya, he would well guard his back. A warrior of clan Myya, restrained by codes and honor, was still a bad enemy. Jhirun, he remembered, knew nothing of such restraints.
It was at the men of Kithan that she stared in the darkness, and they would not look toward her.
And when they remounted, Jhirun rode insolently across the path of Kithan and his men, turned and glared at Kithan himself.
The qujal-lord brought up short, and seemed not offended, but perplexed at such arrogance in a Hiua peasant. Then, with elaborate irony, he reined his horse aside to give her place.
“We are going through,” said Morgaine; “and from now on I do not trust we will be able to rest for more than a few moments at any stopping. We are near Sotharrn, it seems; and we are, from Sotharrn, within reach of Abarais.”
“By tomorrow, liyo?” Vanye asked.
“By tomorrow night,” she said, “or not at all.”
Chapter 16
The village sprawled at the left of the road, silent in the dark, beneath a forested upthrust of rock that shadowed it from Anli’s wan light: a motley gathering of stone houses, surrounded by a wall as high as a rider’s head.
The horses’ hooves rang unevenly off the walls as they rode by. There was no stirring within, no light, no opening of the shuttered windows that overtopped the wall, no sound even of livestock. The gate was shut, a white object affixed to its center.
It was the wing of a white bird, nailed there, the boards smeared blackly with the blood.
Jhirun touched the necklace that she wore and murmured something in a low voice. Vanye crossed himself fervently and scanned the shuttered windows and overshadowing crags for any sign of the folk that lived there.
“You are expected,” Kithan said, “as I warned you.”
Vanye glanced at him, and at Morgaine—met her eyes and saw the shadow there, as it had been at the bridge.
And she shivered, a quick and strange gesture, full of weariness, and set Siptah to a quicker pace, to leave the village behind them.
The pass closed about them, a place where rock had tumbled to the very edge of the road, boulders man-large. Vanye gazed up at the dark heights, and with a shiver of his own, used the spurs. They came through the throat of that place at a pace that set the echoes flying, and there was no fall of stones, no stir of life from the cliffs.
But when, halfway across the next small valley, he turned and looked back, he saw a red glow of fire atop those cliffs.
“Liyo,” he said.
Morgaine looked, and said nothing. The Baien gray had struck that pace that, on level ground, he could hold for some space; and the gelding could match him stride for stride, but not forever.
The alarm was given: henceforth there was no stopping. What Roh had not known was spread now throughout the countryside.
Soon enough there was another, answering fire among the hills to their left.
• • •
The towers appeared unexpectedly in the morning light, half-hidden in forested crags: walls many-turreted and more regular than those of Ohtij-in, but surely as old. They dominated the widest of the valleys that they had seen; and cultivated fields lay round about.
Morgaine reined back briefly, scanning that hold, that guarded the pass before them.
And far behind them, horses unable to stay their pace, rode the three qujal, and last of all, Jhirun.
Vanye unhooked his sword and secured the sheath, marking the smoke that hung above those walls. He laid the naked blade across the saddlebow. Morgaine took Changeling from its place beneath her knee, and laid it, still sheathed, across her own.
“Liyo,” Vanye said softly. “When you will.”
“Carefully,” she said.
She let Siptah go; and the gelding matched pace with him, at an easy gait, toward the towers and the pass.
Smoke rose there steadily, as it had from many a point about the valleys, fire after fire passing the alarm.
But it was not, as the others had been, white brush-smoke; it spread darkly on the sky, and as they rode near enough to see the walls distinctly, they could see in that stain upon the heavens the wheeling flight of birds, that hovered above the hold.
• • •
The gates stood agape, battered from their hinges: they could see that clearly from the main road. A dead horse lay in the ravine beside the spur of road that diverged toward those gates; birds flapped up from it, disturbed in their feeding.
And curiously, across that empty gateway were cords, knotted with bits of white feather.
Morgaine reined in—suddenly turned off toward that gate; and Vanye protested, but no word did she speak, only rode warily, slowly toward that gateway, and he made haste to overtake her, falling in at her side the while she approached that strange barrier. The only sound was the ring of hooves on stone and the hollow echo off the walls—that, and the wind, that blew strongly at the cords.
Ruin lay inside. A cloud of black birds, startled, fluttered up from the stripped carcass of an ox that lay amid the court. On the steps of the keep sprawled a dead man; another lay in the shadow of the wall, prey to the birds. He had been qujal. His white hair proclaimed it.
And some three, hanged, twisted slowly on the fire-blackened tree that had grown in the center of the courtyard.
Morgaine reached for the lesser of her weapons, and fire parted the strands of the feathered cords. She urged Siptah slowly forward. The walls echoed to the sound of the horses and to the alarmed flutter of the carrion birds. Smoke still boiled up from the smoldering core of the central keep, from the wreckage of human shelters that had clustered about it.
Riders clattered up the stones outside. Morgaine wheeled Siptah about as Kithan’s party came within the gates and reined to a dazed halt.
Kithan looked slowly about him, his thin face set in horror; there was horror too in the face of Jhirun, who arrived last within the gateway, her mare stepping skittishly past the blowing strands of cords and feathers. Jhirun held tightly to the charms about her neck and stopped just inside the gates.
“Let us leave this place,” Vanye said; and Morgaine took up the reins, about to heed him.
But Kithan suddenly hailed the place, a loud cry that echoed in the emptiness; and again he called, and finally turned his horse full circle to survey all the ruined keep, the dead that hung from the tree and that lay within the yard, while the two men with him looked about them too, their faces white and drawn.
“Sotharrn,” Kithan exclaimed in anguish. “There were better than seven hundred of our folk here, besides the Shiua.” He gestured at the fluttering cords. “Shiua belief. Those are for fear of you.”
“Would Hetharu have gathered forces here,” Morgaine asked him, “or lost them? Was this riot, or was it war?”
“He follows Roh,” Kithan said. “And Roh has promised him his heart’s desires—as he doubtless would promise others, halfling and human.” He gazed about him at the shelters that had housed men, that were empty now, as—Vanye realized suddenly—the village in the night had lain silent, as the valleys and hills between had been vacant, with only the alarm fires to break the peace.
And of a sudden one of the guards reined about, and spurred through the gates. The other hesitated, his pale face a mask of anguish and indecision.
Then he too rode, whipping his tired horse in his frenzy, and vanished from sight, deserting his lord, seeking safety elsewhere.
“No!” cried Morgaine, checking Vanye’s impulse to pursue them; and when he reined back: “No. There are already the fires: they are enough to have warned our enemies. Let them go.” And to Kithan, who sat his horse staring after his departed men: “Do you wish to follow them?”
“Shiuan is finished,” Kithan said in a trembling voice, and looked b
ack at her. “If Sotharrn has fallen, then no other hold will stand long against Hetharu, against Chya Roh, against the rabble that they have stirred to arms. What you will do—do. Or let me stay with you.”
There was no arrogance left him. His voice broke, and he bowed his head, leaning against the saddlebow. When he lifted his face again, the look of tears was in his eyes.
Morgaine regarded him long and narrowly.
Then without a word she rode past him, for the gate where the feathered cords fluttered uselessly in the wind. Vanye delayed, letting Jhirun turn, letting Kithan go before him. Constantly he felt a prickling between his own shoulders, a consciousness that there might well be watchers somewhere within the ruins—for someone had strung the cords and tried to seal the gate from harm, someone frightened, and human.
No attack came, nothing but the panic flight of birds, a whispering of wind through the ruins. They passed the gate on the downward road, riding slowly, listening.
And Vanye watched the qujal-lord, who rode before him, pale head bowed, yielding to the motion of the horse. Without choices, Kithan—without skill to survive in the wilderness that Shiuan had become, helpless without his servants to attend him and his peasants to feed him . . . and now without refuge to shelter him.
Better the sword’s edge, Vanye thought, echoing something that Roh had said to him, and then dismayed to remember who had said it, and that it had been true.
At the road’s joining, Morgaine increased the pace. “Move!” Vanye shouted at the halfling, spurring forward, and struck Kithan’s horse with the flat of his blade, startling it into a brief burst of speed. They turned northward onto the main road, slowing again as they came beyond arrowflight of the walls.
On sudden impulse Vanye looked back, saw on the walls of Sotharrn a brown, bent figure, and another and another—ragged, furtive watchers that vanished the instant they realized they had been seen.