C. Cherryh - Wall of Shiuan

But she came to a halt beside him, white queen and dark king together, and Jhirun reined aside her pony to flee the sight of them.

The black horse overrushed her, the warrior’s hand tearing the rein from her fingers. The pony shied off from such treatment, and the short mane failed her exhausted fingers. His body twisted under her and she tumbled down his slick back, seeing blind fog about her, up or down she knew not until she fell on her back and the Dark went over her.

It was not, even within the woods, like Kursh or Andur. Water flowed softly here, a hostile whisper about the hills. The moon that glowed through the fog was too great a moon, a weight upon the sky and upon the soul; and the air was rank with decay.

Vanye was glad to return to the fire, bearing his burden of gathered branches, to kneel by that warmth that drove back the fog and overlay the stench of decay with fragrant smoke.

They had within the ruin a degree of shelter at least, although Vanye’s Kurshin soul abhorred the builders of it: ancient stones that seemed once to have been the corner of some vast hall, the remnant of an arch. The gray horse and the black had pasturage on the low hill that lay back of the ruin, and the shaggy pony was tethered apart from the two for its safety’s sake. The black animals were shadow-shapes beyond the trees, and gray Siptah seemed a wraith-horse in the fog: three shapes that moved and grazed at leisure behind a screen of moisture-beaded branches.

The girl’s brown shawl was drying on a stone by the fire. Vanye turned it to dry the other side, then began to feed branches into the fire, wood so moisture-laden it snapped and hissed furiously and gave off bitter clouds of smoke. But the fire blazed up after a moment, and Vanye rested gratefully in that warmth—took off the white-scarfed helm and pushed back the leather coif, freeing his brown hair, that was cut even with his jaw: no warrior’s braid—he had lost that right, along with his honor.

He sat, arms folded across his knees, staring at the girl who lay in Morgaine’s white cloak, in Morgaine’s care. A warm cloak, a dry bed, a saddlebag for a pillow: this was as much as they could do for the child, who responded little. He thought that the fall might have shaken her forever from her wits, for she shivered intermittently in her silence, and stared at them both with wild, mad eyes. But she seemed quieter since he had been sent out for wood—a sign, he thought, either of better or of worse.

When he was warmed through, he arose, returned quietly to Morgaine’s side, from which he had been banished. He wondered that Morgaine spent so much attention on the child—little enough good that she could do; and he expected now that she would bid him go back to the fire and stay there.

“You speak with her,” Morgaine said quietly, to his dismay; and as she gave place for him, rising, he knelt down, captured at once by the girl’s eyes—mad, soft eyes, like a wild creature’s. The girl murmured something in a plaintive tone and reached for him; he gave his hand, uneasily feeling the gentle touch of her fingers curling round his.

“She has found you,” she said, a mere breath, accented, difficult to understand. “She has found you, and are you not afraid? I thought you were enemies.”

He knew, then. He was chilled by such words, conscious of Morgaine’s presence at his back. “You have met my cousin,” he said. “His name is Chya Roh—among others.”

Her lips trembled, and she gazed at him with clearing sense in her dark eyes. “Yes,” she said at last “You are different; I see that you are.”

“Where is Roh?” Morgaine asked.

The threat in Morgaine’s voice drew the girl’s attention. She tried to move, but Vanye did not loose her hand. Her eyes turned back to him.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Who are you?”

“Nhi Vanye,” he answered in Morgaine’s silence, for he had struck her down, and she was due at least his name for it: “Nhi Vanye i Chya. Who are you?”

“Jhirun Ela’s-daughter,” she said, and added: “I am going north, to Shiuan—” as if this and herself were inseparable.

“And Roh?” Morgaine dropped to her knee and seized her by the arm. Jhirun’s hand left his. For a moment the girl stared into Morgaine’s face, her lips trembling.

“Let be,” Vanye asked of his liege. “ Liyo –let be.”

Morgaine thrust the girl’s arm free and arose, walked back to the fireside. For some little time the girl Jhirun stared in that direction, her face set in shock. “ Dai-khal ,” she murmured finally.

Dai-khal : high-clan qujal , Vanye understood that much. He followed Jhirun’s glance back to Morgaine, who sat by the fire, slim, clad in black leather, her hair a shining pallor in the firelight. Here too the Old Ones were known, and feared.

He touched the girl’s shoulder. She jerked from his fingers. “If you know where Roh is,” he said, “tell us.”

“I do not.”

He withdrew his hand, unease growing in him. Her accents were strange; he hated the place, the ruins—all this haunted land. It was a dream, in which he had entrapped himself; yet he had struck flesh when he rode against her, and she bled, and he did not doubt that he could, that it was well possible to die here, beneath this insane and lowering sky. In the first night, lost, looking about him at the world, he had prayed; increasingly he feared that it was blasphemy to do so in this land, that these barren, drowning hills were Hell, in which all lost souls recognized each other.

“When you took me for him,” he said to her, “you said you came to find me. Then he is on this road.”

She shut her eyes and turned her face away, dismissing him, weak as she was and with the sweat of shock beading her brow. He was forced to respect such courage—she a peasant and himself once a warrior of clan Nhi. For fear, for very terror in this Hell, he had ridden against her and her little pony with the force he would have used against an armed warrior; and it was only good fortune that her skull was not shattered, that she had fallen on soft earth and not on stone.

“Vanye,” said Morgaine from behind him.

He left the girl and went to the side of his liege—sat down, arms folded on his knees, next the fire’s warmth. She was frowning at him, displeased, whether at him or at something else, he was not sure. She held in her hand a small object, a gold ornament.

“She has dealt with him,” Morgaine said, thin-lipped. “He is somewhere about—with ambush laid, it may well be.”

“We cannot go on pushing the horses. Liyo , there is no knowing what we may meet.”

“She may know. Doubtless she knows.”

“She is afraid of you,” he objected softly. “ Liyo , let me try to ask her. We must rest the horses; there is time, there is time.”

“What Roh has touched,” she said, “is not trustworthy. Remember it. Here. A keepsake.”

He held out his hand, thinking she meant the ornament. A blade flashed into her hand, and to his, sending a chill to his heart, for it was an Honor-blade, one for suicide. At first he thought it hers, for it was, like hers, Koris-work. Then he realized it was not.

It was Roh’s.

“Keep it,” she said, “in place of your own.”

He took it unwillingly, slipped it into the long-empty sheath at his belt. “Avert,” he murmured, crossing himself.

“Avert,” she echoed, paying homage to beliefs he was never sure she shared, and made the pious gesture that sealed it, wishing the omen from him, the ill-luck of such a blade. “Return it to him, if you will. That pure-faced child was carrying it. Remember that when you are moved to gentility with her.”