Wall of Shiuan

A camp began to take shape, makeshift huddles of stitched skins and brush and sodden blankets tied between trees or supported on hewn saplings. Some had brought fire, and one borrowed to the next, wet wood smoking and hissing in the mist, but sufficient to stay alight.

The column was still straggling in at dusk, finding a camp, finding their places in it, seeking relatives.

Morgaine turned back to the hill that she had chosen, where she had permitted no intrusion; and there Jhirun waited, shivering, with wood she had gathered for a fire. Vanye dismounted, already searching out with his eye this and that tree that might be cut for shelter. But Morgaine slid down from Siptah’s back and stared balefully at the flood that raged between them and the other side, dark waters streaked with white in the dusk.

“It is lower,” she said, pointing to the place where the road made a white-frothing ridge in the flood. “We might try it after we have rested a bit.”

The thought chilled him. “The horses cannot force that. Wait. Wait. It cannot be much longer.”

She stood looking at it still, as if she would disregard all his advice, staring toward that far bank, where mountains rose, where was Roh, and Abarais, and a halfling army.

The flood would not be sufficient to have delayed Roh this long; Vanye reckoned that for himself, and did not torment her with asking or saying it. She was desperate, exhausted; she had spent herself in answering questions among the frightened folk behind them, in providing advice, in settling disputes for space and wood. She had distracted herself with these things, gentle when he sensed in her a dark and furious violence, that loathed the clinging, terrified appeals to her, the faces that looked to her with desperate hope.

“Take us with you,” they wept, surrounding her.

“Where is my child?” a mother kept asking her, clinging to the rein until the nervous, war-trained gray came near to breaking control.

“I do not know,” she had said. But it had not stopped the questions.

“Will my daughter be there?” asked a father, and she had looked at him, distracted, and murmured yes, and spurred the gray roughly through the press.

Now she stood holding her cloak about her against the chill and staring at the river as at a living enemy. Vanye watched her, not moving, dreading that mood of hers that slipped nearer and nearer to irrationality.

“We camp,” she said after a time.

Chapter Fourteen

There was one mercy shown them that evening. The rain stopped. The sky tore to rags and cleared, though it remained damp everywhere, and the smoke of hundreds of fires rolled up and hung like an ugly mist over the camp. Scarred Li rose, vast and horrid, companionless now. The other moons had fled; and Anli and demon Sith lagged behind.

They rested, filled with food that Morgaine had put in her saddlebags. They sat in a shelter of saplings and brush, with a good fire before them; and Jhirun sat beside them, eating her share of the provisions with such evident hunger that Morgaine tapped her on the arm and put another bit of bread into her lap, charity that amazed Jhirun and Vanye alike.

“I have not lacked,” Morgaine said with a shrug—for it must come from someone’s share.

“She hid in the stable,” Vanye said quietly, for Morgaine had never asked: and that lack of questions worried at him, implying anger, a mood in which Morgaine herself was unwilling to discuss the matter. “That was why your searchers could not find her.”

Morgaine only looked at him, with that impenetrable stare, so that he wondered for a moment had there been searchers at all, or only inquiry.

But Morgaine had promised him; he thrust the doubt from his mind, effort though it needed.

“Jhirun,” Morgaine said suddenly. Jhirun swallowed a bit of bread as if it had gone dry, and only slightly turned her head, responding to her. “Jhirun, there are kinsmen of yours here.”

Jhirun nodded, and her eyes slid uneasily toward Morgaine, wary and desperate.

“They came to Aren,” Morgaine said, “hunting you. And you are known there. There are some Aren-folk who know your name and say that you are halfling yourself, and in some fashion they blame you for some words you spoke against their village.”

“Lord,” Jhirun said in a thin voice, and edged against Vanye, as if he could prevent such questions. He sat stiffly, uncomfortable in the touch of her.

“A quake,” said Morgaine, “struck Hiuaj after we three parted company. There was heavy damage at Aren, where I was; and the Barrows-folk came then. They said there was nothing left of Barrows-hold.”

Jhirun shivered.

“I know,” said Morgaine, “that you cannot seek safety among your own kinsmen... or with the Aren-folk. Better that you had remained lost, Jhirun Ela’s-daughter. They have asked me for you, and I have refused; but that is for now. Vanye knows—he will tell you—that I am not generous. I am not at all generous. And there will come a time when we cannot shelter you. I do not care what quarrel drove you out of Barrows-hold in the first place; it does not concern me. I do not think that you are dangerous; but your enemies are. And for that reason you are not welcome with us. You have a horse. You have half our food, if you wish it; Vanye and I can manage. And you would be wise to take that offer and try some other route through these hills, be it to hide and live in some cave for the rest of your days. Go. Seek some place after the Ohtija have dispersed. Go into those mountains and look for some place that has no knowledge of you. That is my advice to you.”

Jhirun’s hand crept to Vanye’s arm. “Lord,” she said faintly, plaintively.

“There was a time,” Vanye said, hardly above a breath, “when Jhirun did not say what she might have said, when she did not say all that she knew of you, and stayed by me when it was not convenient. And I will admit to you that I gave her a promise... I know—that I had no right to give any promise, and she should not have believed me, but she did not know that. I have told her that she should not have believed me; but would it be so wrong, liyo, to let her go where we go? I do not know what other hope she has.”

Morgaine stared at him fixedly, and for a long, interminably long moment, said nothing. “Thee says correctly,” she breathed at last. “Thee had no right.”

“All the same,” he said, very quietly, “I ask it, because I told her that I would take her to safety.”

Morgaine turned that gaze on Jhirun. “Run away,” she said. “I give you a better gift than he gave. But on his word, stay, if you have not the sense to take it. Unlike Vanye, I bind myself to nothing. Come with us as long as you can, and for as long as it pleases me.”

“Thank you,” Jhirun said almost soundlessly, and Vanye pressed her arm, disengaging it from his. “Go aside,” he said to her. “Rest. Let matters alone now.”

Jhirun drew away from them, stood up, left the shelter for the brush, beyond the firelight. They were alone. Across the camp sounded the wail of an infant, the lowing of an animal, the sounds that had been constant all the evening.

“I am sorry,” Vanye said, bowed himself to the ground, expected even then her anger, or worse, her silence.

“I was not there,” Morgaine said quietly. “I take your word for what you did, and why. I will try. She will stay our pace or she will not; I cannot help her. That—” She gestured with a glance toward the camp. “That also has its desires, that are Jhirun’s.”

“They believe,” he said, “that there is a way out for them. That it lies through the Wells. That they will find a land on the other side.”

She said nothing to that.

“ Liyo–” he said carefully, “you could do that—you could give them what they believe—could you not?”

A tumult had arisen, as others had arisen throughout the evening, on the far side of the camp, distant shouts carrying to them: disputes, dissents, among terrified people.

Morgaine set her face and shook her head abruptly. “I could, yes, but I will not.”

“You know why they have followed you. You know that.”

“I care nothing for their beliefs. I will not.”