Wall of Shiuan

on the other side, with the staff to help him on the slope.

A splash sounded behind him. He turned, saw Jhirun wading the channel with her skirts a sodden flower about her. Almost the depth became too much for her, but she struggled across the current, panting and exhausted as she reached the bank and began to climb.

“Go back,” he said harshly. “I am going on from here. Go home, wherever that is, and count yourself fortunate.”

She struggled further up the bank. Her face, already bruised, had a fresh redness across the brow: his arm had done that. Her hair hung in spiritless tangles. She reached the crest and shook the hair back over her shoulders.

“I am going to Shiuan,” she said, her chin trembling. “Go where you like. This is my road.”

He looked into her tear-glazed eyes, hating her intrusion, half desiring it, for he was lost and desperate, and the silence and the rush of water were like to drive a man mad. “If Abarais lies in Shiuan,” he said, “I am going that way. But I will not wait for you.”

“Nor for her?”

“She will come,” he said; and was possessed by the need for haste, and turned and began to walk. The staff made walking easier on the broken pavings, and he did not give it up, caring little whether Jhirun needed it or no. She walked barefoot, limping; but the pain of his own feet, rubbed raw by watersoaked boots that were never meant for walking, was likely worse, and somewhere in the night he had wrenched his ankle. He gave her no hand to help her; he was in pain and desperate, and during the long walk he kept thinking that she had no reason whatever to wish him well. If he left her, she could find him in his sleep eventually and succeed at what she had already tried; if he slept in her presence, she could do the same without the trouble of slipping up on him; and as for binding the child to some tree and leaving her in this flood-prone land, the thought shamed him, who had been dai-uyo, whose honor forbade dealing so even with a man. At times he looked down on her, wishing her unborn; and when she looked up at him he was unnerved by the distracted look in her eyes. Mad, he thought, her own folk have cast her out because she is mad. What other manner of girl would be out on this road alone, following after a strange man?

And came one of those times that he lost awareness, and wakened still walking, with no memory of what had happened. Panic rose in him, exhaustion weakening his legs so that he knew he could as well have fallen senseless in the road. Jhirun herself was weaving in her steps.

“We shall rest,” he said in the ragged voice the cold had left him. He flung his arm about her, feeling at once her resistence to him, but he paid it no heed—drew her to the roadside where the roots of a tree provided a place less chill than earth or stone. She tried to thrust free, mistaking his intention; but he shook her, and sank down, holding her tightly against him. She shivered.

“I shall not harm you,” he said. “Be still. Rest.” And with his arm about her so that he could sense any movement, he leaned his head against a gnarled root and shut his eyes, trying to take a little sleep, still fearing he would sleep too deeply.

She remained quiet against him, the warmth of their bodies giving a welcome relief from the chill of wet garments; and in time she relaxed across him, her head on his shoulder. He slept, and wakened with a start that frightened an outcry from her.

“Quiet,” he bade her. “Be still.” He had tightened his arm by reflex, relaxed it again, feeling a lassitude that for the moment was healing, in which all things, even terrible ones, seemed distant. She shut her eyes; he did the same, and wakened a second time to find her staring at him, her head on his chest, a regard disturbing in its fixedness. Her body, touching his, was tense, her arm that lay across him stiff, fist clenched. He moved his hand upon her back, more of discomfort than of intent, and felt her shiver.

“Is there none,” he asked her, “who knows where you are or cares what becomes of you?”

She did not answer. He realized how the question had sounded.

“We should have sent you back,” he said.

“I would not have gone.”

He believed her. The determination in that small, hoarse voice was absolute. “Why?” he asked. “You say Hiuaj is drowning; but that is supposition. On this road, you may drown for certain.”

“My sister has already drowned,” she said. “I am not going to.” A tremor passed through her, her eyes focused somewhere beyond him. “Hnoth is coming, and the moons, and the tides, and I do not want to see it again. I do not want to be in Hiuaj when it comes.”

Her words disturbed him: he did not understand the sense of them, but they troubled him—this terror of the moons that he likewise shuddered to see aloft. “Is Shiuan better?” he asked. “You do not know. Perhaps it is worse.”

“No.” Her eyes met his. “Shiuan is where the gold goes, where all the grain is grown; no one starves there, or has to work, like Barrowers do.”

He doubted this, having seen Hiuaj, but he did not think it kind to reason with her delusion, when it was likely that neither of them would live to know the truth of it. “Why do not all the Hiua leave, then?” he asked. “Why do not all your folk do what you have done, and go?”

She frowned, her eyes clouded. “I do not think they believe it will come, not to them; or perhaps they do not think it matters, when it is the end. The whole world will die, and the waters will have everything. But she—” The glitter returned to her eyes, a question trembling on her lips; he stayed silent, waiting, fearing a question he could not answer. “She has power over the Wells.”

“Yes,” he admitted, for surely she had surmised that already.

“And you?”

He shrugged uncomfortably.

“This land,” she said, “is strange to you.”

“Yes,” he said.

“The Barrow-kings came so. They sang that there were great mountains beyond the Wells.”

“In my land,” he said, remembering with pain, “there were such mountains.”

‘Take me to that place.” Her fist unclenched upon his heart; her eyes filled with such earnestness that it hurt to see it, and she trembled against him. He moved his hand upon her shoulders, wishing that what she asked were possible.

“I am lost myself,” he said, “without Morgaine.”

“You believe that she will come,” she said, “to Abarais, to the Well there.”

He gave no reply, only a shrug, wishing that Jhirun knew less of them.

“What has she come to do?” Jhirun asked it all in a breath, and he felt the tension in her body. “Why has she come?”

She held some hope or fear he did not comprehend: he saw it in her eyes, that rested on his in such a gaze he could not break from it. She assumed that safety lay beyond the witchfires of the Gates; and perhaps for her, for all this land, it might seem to.

“Ask Morgaine,” he said, “when we meet. As for me, I guard her back, and go where she goes; and I do not ask or answer questions of her.”

“We call her Morgen,” said Jhirun, “and Angharan. My ancestors knew her—the Barrow-kings—they waited for her.”

Cold passed through him. Witch, men called Morgaine in his own homeland. She was young, while three generations of men lived and passed to dust; and all that he knew of whence she came was that she had not been born of his kindred, in his land.

When was this? he wanted to ask, and dared not. Was she alone then? She had not come alone to Andur- Kursh, but her comrades had perished there. Qujal, men called her; she avowed she was not. Legends accounted her immortal; he chose not to believe them all, nor to believe all the evil that was laid to her account and he asked her no questions.

He had followed her, as others had, now dust. She spoke of time as an element like water or air, as if she could come and go within its flow, confounding nature.

Panic coiled about his heart. He was not wont to let his mind travel in such directions. Morgaine had not known this land; he held that thought to him for comfort. She had needed to ask Jhirun the name and nature of the land, needing a guide.