C J Cherryh – Morgaine 02 – Well Of Shiuan

He came, to bow at Roh’s feet—and one day to kill him; and by that, to betray these folk: he saw himself, an evil presence gently threading his way among them, whose faces were set in a delirious and desperate hope.

He served Morgaine.

There was at least a time you chose for yourself, she had said.

Thee will not appoint thyself my conscience, Nhi Vanye. Thee is not qualified.

He began to know.

With a grimace of pain he laid spurs and the reins’ ends to the black gelding, startling Shiua peasants from his path, frightened folk yielding to him and his two companions, that held close behind him. Faces tore away in the dim light before him, stark with fear and dismay.

The road wound steeply upward. An archway rose athwart it, massive and strange. They passed beneath, passed through the vanguard of the human masses that toiled up the heights, and suddenly rode upon forces of qujal, demon-helmed and bristling with lances, whose women rode with them, pale-haired ladies in glittering cloaks, and, very few among them, a cluster of pale, grave-eyed children, who stared at the intrusion with the sober mien of their elders.

A band of qujal amid that mass reined themselves across the road, where its turning made passage difficult, with a dizzying plunge into depths on the right hand. Authority was among them, bare-headed, white hair streaming in the wind; and his men ranged themselves before him.

Vanye reined back and reached for his sword. “No,” Kithan said at once. “They are Sotharra. They will not stop us.”

Uneasily Vanye conceded the approach to Kithan, rode at his shoulder and with Jhirun at his own rein hand, as they drew to a slow halt before the halflings, with levelled pikes all about them.

Little Kithan had to say to them: a handful of words, of which one was Ohtij-in and another was Roh and another was Kithan’s own name; and the Sotharra lord straightened in his saddle, and reined aside, the pikes of his men-at-arms flourishing up and away.

But when they had ridden through, the Sotharra rode behind them at their pace; and Vanye ill-liked it, though it gave them passage through the other masses of halflings that rode the winding ascent Hereafter was no retreat: he was committed to the hands of qujal, to trust Kithan, who could say what he wished to them.

And if Roh had already passed, and if it were Hetharu who must approve his passage: Vanye drove that thought from his mind.

A turning of the road brought them suddenly into sight of a round hill, ringed about by throngs of halfling folk: the horses slowed of their own accord, snorting, walking skittishly, weary as they were.

It grew upon the senses, that oppression that Vanye knew of Gates, that nerve-prickling unease that made the skin feel raw and the senses over-weighted. It was almost sound, and not. It was almost touch, and not.

He saw the place to which they went, in a day that yet had a murkiness in its pastel clouds: there were tents; there were horses; and the road came to an end in a place shadowed by slanted spires.

And the Well.

It was a circle of Standing Stones, like that of Hiuaj: not a single Gate, but a gathering of them, and they were alive. Opal colors streamed within them, like illusion in the daylight, a constant interplay of powers that filled the air with uneasiness; but one Gate held the azure blue of sky, that was terrible with depth, that made the eyes ache with beholding it.

Kithan swore.

“They are real,” the qujal said. “They are real.”

Vanye forced the reluctant gelding to a steady walk, shouldered into Jhirun’s mare by a sudden rebellion of the horse, and saw Jhirun’s eyes, dazed, still fixed upon the horror of the Gates; her hand was at her throat, where bits of metal and a white feather and a stone cross offered her what belief she knew. He spoke her name, sharply, and she tore her gaze from the hillside and kept by his side.

The camp at the base of the hill was already astir. Shouts attended their arrival, voices thin and lost in that heaviness of the air. Men fair-haired and armored gathered to stare at them: “Kithan Roktija” Vanye heard whispered: he unhooked his sword and rode with it across the saddle as they rode slowly past pale, gray-eyed faces, forcing a way until the press grew too thick to do so without violence.

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