Wall of Shiuan

“They are beasts,” Kithan exclaimed in anguish.

None disputed him.

“What shall we do,” asked Jhirun, who had remained silent most of the day, “what shall we do when we reach Abarais, if they are all gathered there?”

It was not a witless question; it was a desperate one... Jhirun, who knew less than they what must be done, and who endured all things patiently in her hope. Vanye looked at her and shook his head helplessly, foreseeing what he thought Jhirun herself began to foresee, what Morgaine had tried earnestly to warn her, weaponless as the Barrows-girl was, and without defenses.

“You also,” said Morgaine, “are still free to leave us.”

“No,” Jhirun said quietly. “Like my lord Kithan, I have nothing to hope for from what follows us; and if I cannot get through where you are going, at least—” She made a helpless gesture, as if it were too difficult a thing to speak. “Let me try,” she said then.

Morgaine considered her a moment as they rode, and finally nodded in confirmation.

The dark fell more and more heavily about them, until there was only the light of the lesser moons and the bow in the sky in which the moons traveled, a cloudy arc across the stars. From one wall of the wide valley to the other were the dark shapes of vast ruins, no longer Standing Stones, but spires, straight on their inner, roadward faces, with a curving slant on their outer. They were aligned with the road on either side, and began to set inward to enclose it.

Their way became an aisle, so that they no longer had clear view of the hills; the stone spires began to set against the very edge of the paving, like ribs along the spine of the road.

The horses’ hooves echoed loudly down that passage, and the shifting perspectives of that vast aisle, lit only by the moons, provided ample cover for ambush. Vanye rode with his sword across the saddlebow, wishing that they might make faster passage through this cursed place, and knowing at the same time the unwisdom of racing blindly through the dark. The road became entirely blind at some points, as it turned and the spires cut off their view on all sides.

And thereafter the road began to climb as well as wind, in long terraced steps that led ultimately to a darkness—a starless shadow that as they neared it began to take on the detail of black stonework, that lay as a wall before them: a vast cube of a building that overtopped the spires, that diverged to form an aisle before it.

“An-Abarais,” murmured Kithan. “Gateway to the Well.”

Vanye gazed at it with foreboding as they rode: for once before he had seen the like; and beside him Morgaine took Changeling into her hand. The gray horse blew nervously, side-stepping, then started forward again, taking the narrowing terraces; Vanye spurred the gelding to make him keep pace, put from his mind their two companions that trailed them.

It was no Gate, but a fortress that could master the Gates; qujal, and full of power. It was a place that Roh would not have neglected.

There was no other way through.

Chapter Seventeen

The road met the fortress of An-Abarais: and it vanished into a long archway, black and cheerless, with night and open sky at its other end. But the slanted spires shaped another road, fronting the fortress; and in that crossing of ways Morgaine reined in, scanning all directions.

“Kithan,” she said, as their two companions overtook them. “You watch the road from here. Jhirun: come. Come with us.”

Jhirun cast an apprehensive look at all of them, left and right; but Morgaine was already on her way down that righthand aisle, a pale-haired ghost on a pale horse, almost lost in shadow.

Vanye reined aside and rode after, heard Jhirun clattering along behind him in haste. What Kithan would do, whether he would stay or whether he would flee to their enemies—Vanye refused to reckon: Morgaine surely tempted him, dismissed him for good or for ill; but her thoughts would be set desperately elsewhere at the moment, and she needed her ilin at her back.

He overtook her as she stopped in that dark aisle, where she had found the deep shadow of a doorway; she dismounted, pushed at that door with her left hand, bearing Changeling in her right.

It yielded easily, on silent hinges. Cold breathed forth from that darkness, wherein the moonlight from the doorway showed level, polished stone. She led Siptah forward, within the door, and Vanye bent his head and rode carefully after, shod hooves ringing irreverently in that deep silence. Jhirun followed, afoot, tugging at the reluctant mare, a third clatter of hooves on the stone. When she was still, there was no sound but the restless shift of leather and the animals’ hard breathing.

Vanye slid his sword from its sheath and carried it naked in his hand; and suddenly light glimmered from Morgaine’s hands as she began to do the same, baring Changeling’s rune-written blade. The opal shimmer grew, flared into brilliance enough to light the room, casting strange shadows of slanting spires, a circular chamber, a stairway that wound its way among the spires.

From Changeling came a pulsing sound, soft at first, then painful to the senses, that filled all the air and made the horses shy. The light brightened when Morgaine swept its tip up and leftward; and by this they both knew the way they must go, reading the seeking of the blade toward its own power.

And did they meet, unsheathed blade and living source, it would end both: whatever madness had made Changeling had made it indestructible save by Gates.

Morgaine sheathed it as quickly as might be; and the horses stood trembling after. Vanye patted the gelding’s sweating neck and slid down.

“Come,” Morgaine said, looking at him. “Jhirun—watch the horses. Cry out at once if something goes in the least amiss; put your back against solid stone and stay there. Above all else do not trust Kithan. If he comes, warn us.”

“Yes,” she agreed in a thin voice; and half a breath Vanye hesitated, thinking to lend her a weapon—but she could not use it.

He turned, overtook Morgaine, emptied his mind of all else—watching her back, watching the shadows on whatever side she was not watching. Right hand and left the shadows passed them, and as soon as the darkness became absolute, a light flared in Morgaine’s hand, a harmless, cold magic, for it only guided them: little as he liked such things, he trusted the hand that held it. Nothing she might do could fright him here, in the presence of powers eldritch and qujalin: the sword of metal that he bore was a useless thing in such a place, all his arts and skills valueless—save against ambush.

A door faced them; it yielded noisily to Morgaine’s skilled touch, startling him; and light blazed suddenly in their faces, a garish burst of color, of pulsing radiance. Sound gibbered at them; he heard the echo of his own shameful outcry, rolling through the halls.

It was the heart of the Gates, the Wells, the thing that ruled them: and though be had seen the like before and knew that no mere noise or light could harm him, he could not shame away the clutch of fear at his heart, his traitor limbs that reacted to the madness that assailed them.

“Come,” Morgaine urged him: the suspicion of pity in her voice stung him; and he gripped his sword and stayed close at her heels, walking as briskly as she down that long aisle of light. Light redder than the sunset dyed her hair and her skin, glittered bloodily off mail and stained Changeling’s golden hilt: the sound that roared about them drowned their footfalls so that she and he seemed to drift soundlessly in the glow. Morgaine spared not a glance for the madness on either side of them: she belongs here, he thought, watching her—who in Andurin armor, of a manner a hundred years older than his own, paused before the center of those blazing panels. She laid hands on them with skill, called forth flurries of lights and sound that drowned all the rest and set him trembling.

Qujal, he thought, as they were.

As they would wish to be.

She looked sharply back at him, beckoned him; he came, with one backward look, for in that flood of sound anyone might steal upon them from the doorway unawares. But she touched his arm and commanded his attention upon the instant.