He thought himself in Morija once more, Myya archers on his trail; or something pursued him. He could not remember where this place was, why he was so cruelly tried, whether he pursued or was pursued; it was like a thousand other nightmares of his life.
And then he would remember, when the ghosts flitted mockingly through his memory, so that it was impossible to sort out image from reality. He knew that he was beyond Gates, and that he was lost.
That Morgaine was dead occurred to him; he rejected the possibility not with logic, but with belief. Men died, armies perished, but Morgaine survived, survived when others could not, when she herself wished otherwise; she might be lost, might be hurt, might be stranded alone and afoot in this land: these images tormented him. Anything else was impossible.
She would have guarded herself first when the mass came down upon them, would have done that while he tried to guard her, the girl Jhirun forgotten. Siptah had been between Morgaine and the impact, and so had the gelding. She would—his mind began at last to function more clearly on this track now that he had convinced himself of a means by which she might have lived—she would instinctively have let him go down, sought the bank at once, for she carried Changeling, and therefore she would have fought to live. Such were the reflexes by which she lived. For her there was one law: to seek the Gates at whatever cost. Panic would direct her simply to live, all else forgotten.
And perhaps when that panic passed, she might have delayed to seek him, as long as she thought it likely he might have survived. But she knew also that he did not swim, and she would not search forever. He pictured her shedding a tear or two—he flattered himself by that—and when morning came and there was no sign of bun, then she would take her bearings anew and heed the geas that drew her.
And that would set her face northward, toward the Master Gate, and a leavetaking from this sad, drowning earth.
Suddenly he realized that she would have trusted him to understand her obligations, to trust that she would do the rational, the necessary thing—and make for the one landmark in all this quaking marsh as soon as possible: the one place where all travelers met.
The qujalin road. She would be there, confident that her ilin would be there, would follow if he could, knowing what she would do.
He cursed himself: his driving fear was suddenly that she would have found the road before him, that in the night and the storm she would have gone on—that she might have saved one of the horses, while he was afoot, incapable of overtaking a rider.
He reckoned by the flow of the current which way the road must lie, and walked, tearing his way through the brush on as straight a course as his strength could make him.
He came upon the first stones at midmorning, and everything lay smooth as an unwritten page, no marks at all on the new sheet of mud laid by the flood, only the crooked trail of a serpent and the track of a lizard.
He cast about with all his skill to find any smallest remnant of a track left during the ebb of the flood, and found nothing. Exhausted, he leaned against a low branch and wiped thickly mudded hands on his sodden breeches, trying to think clearly. There was such desperation welling up in him now, his best hope disappointed, that he could have cried his anger and grief aloud to the listening woods. But now that he thought it unlikely that she was nearby to hear, he could not even find the courage to call her name aloud, knowing that there would be silence.
She was moving ahead of him, joining the road further on; or she was yet to come. The other possibility occurred this time with frightening force. He thrust it quickly from his mind.
His one hope, that answered either eventuality, was to be at the place she sought, to reach Abarais as quickly as human strength could carry him and pray—if prayers were heard in this Hell, and for Morgaine—that she would either stay for him or overtake him. He would wait, if he reached Abarais, holding the Gate for her, against men, against Roh, against whatever threat, until she came or until he died.