C J Cherryh – Morgaine 02 – Well Of Shiuan

Down and down the curving stair they went, until he could hear the stamp and blowing of the horses—friendly, familiar sound, native to the man who had ascended the stairs; it was as if a different man had come down, who could not for a moment realize that the things he knew outside that terrible room could still exist, untouched, unshaken by what had shaken him.

Morgaine put out the light she bore as they stepped off the last step, and Jhirun came to them, full of whispered questions—her tearful voice and frightened manner reminding him that she also had endured the terror of this place—and knew nothing of what it held. He envied her that ignorance—touched her hand as she gave the reins of his horse to him.

“Go back,” he told her. “Myya Jhirun, ride back the way we came and hide somewhere.”

“No,” said Morgaine suddenly.

He looked toward her, startled, dismayed; he could not read her face in the darkness.

“Come outside,” she said; and she led Siptah through the doorway, waiting for them in the moonlight. Vanye did not look at Jhirun, having no answers for her; he led the gelding out, and heard Jhirun behind him.

“Jhirun,” said Morgaine, “go watch the road with Kithan.”

Jhirun looked from one to the other of them, but ventured no word in objection: she started away, leading her horse down the long aisle of slanting spires to the place where Kithan sat, a shadow among shadows.

“Vanye,” said Morgaine softly, “would thee go to him? Would thee take what he offers?”

“No,” he protested upon the instant. “No, upon my oath, I would not.”

“Do not swear too quickly,” she said; and when he would have disputed her: “Listen to me: this one order—go to him, surrender—go with him.”

He could not answer for a moment; the words were dammed in his throat, refusing utterance.

“My order,” she said.

“This is a deception of yours,” he said, indignant that she did not take him into her trust, that she thus played games with him. “You are full of them. I do not think that I deserve it, liyo.”

“Vanye—if I cannot get through, one of us must. I am well known; I am disaster to you. But you—go with him, swear to his service; learn what he can teach you that I have not. And kill him, and go on as I would do.”

“Liyo,” he protested. A shiver set into his limbs; he wound his cold fingers into the black horse’s mane, for all that he had trusted dropped away beneath him, as the mountains had vanished that morning beyond the Gate, leaving an about him naked and ugly.

“You are Ilin,” she said. “And you take no guilt for it”

‘To take bread and warmth and then kill a man?”

“Did I ever promise thee I had honor? It was otherwise, I think.”

“Oath-breaking… Liyo, even to him—”

“One of us,” she said between her teeth, “one of us must get through. Remain sworn to me in your mind, but let your mouth say whatever it must. Live. He will not suspect you; he will come to trust you. And this is the service I set on you: kill him, and carry out what I have shown you, without end—without end. Win. Will you do this for me?”

“Aye,” he said at last; and in his bitterness: “I must”

Take Kithan and Jhirun; make some tale that Ron will believe, how Ohtij-in has fallen, of your release by Kithan— omitting my part in it. Let him believe you desperate. Bow at his feet and beg shelter of him. Do whatever you must but stay alive, and pass the Gate, and carry out my orders—to the end of your life, Nhi Vanye, and beyond if thee can contrive it.”

For a long moment he said nothing; he would have wept if he had tried to speak, and in his anger he did not want that further shame. Then he saw a trail of moisture shine on her cheek, and it shook him more than all else that she had said.

“Be rid of the Honor-blade,” she said. “It will raise a question with him you cannot answer.”

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