C J Cherryh – Morgaine 02 – Well Of Shiuan

“Quiet,” he bade her. “Be still.” He had tightened his arm by reflex, relaxed it again, feeling a lassitude that for the moment was healing, in which all things, even terrible ones, seemed distant. She shut her eyes; he did the same, and wakened a second time to find her staring at him, her head on his chest, a regard disturbing in its fixedness. Her body, touching his, was tense, her arm that lay across him stiff, fist clenched. He moved his hand upon her back, more of discomfort than of intent, and felt her shiver.

‘Is there none,” he asked her, “who knows where you are or cares what becomes of you?”

She did not answer. He realized how the question had sounded.

“We should have sent you back,” he said.

“I would not have gone.”

He believed her. The determination in that small, hoarse voice was absolute. “Why?” he asked. “You say Hiuaj is drowning; but that is supposition. On this road, you may drown for certain.”

“My sister has already drowned,” she said. “I am not going to.” A tremor passed through her, her eyes focused somewhere beyond him. “Hnoth is coming, and the moons, and the tides, and I do not want to see it again. I do not want to be in Hiuaj when it comes.”

Her words disturbed him: he did not understand the sense of them, but they troubled him—this terror of the moons that he likewise shuddered to see aloft. “Is Shiuan better?” he asked. “You do not know. Perhaps it is worse.”

“No.” Her eyes met his. “Shiuan is where the gold goes, where all the grain is grown; no one starves there, or has to work, like Barrowers do.”

He doubted this, having seen Hiuaj, but he did not think it kind to reason with her delusion, when it was likely that neither of them would live to know the truth of it. “Why do not all the Hiua leave, then?” he asked. “Why do not all your folk do what you have done, and go?”

She frowned, her eyes clouded. “I do not think they believe it will come, not to them; or perhaps they do not think it matters, when it is the end. The whole world will die, and the waters will have everything. But she—” The glitter returned to her eyes, a question trembling on her lips; he stayed silent, waiting, fearing a question he could not answer. “She has power over the Wells.”

“Yes,” he admitted, for surely she had surmised that already.

“And you?”

He shrugged uncomfortably.

“This land,” she said, “is strange to you.”

“Yes,” he said.

“The Barrow-kings came so. They sang that there were great mountains beyond the Wells.”

“In my land,” he said, remembering with pain, “there were such mountains.”

‘Take me to that place.” Her fist unclenched upon his heart; her eyes filled with such earnestness that it hurt to see it, and she trembled against him. He moved his hand upon her shoulders, wishing that what she asked were possible.

“I am lost myself,” he said, “without Morgaine.”

“You believe that she will come,” she said, “to Abarais, to the Well there.”

He gave no reply, only a shrug, wishing that Jhirun knew less of them.

“What has she come to do?” Jhirun asked it all in a breath, and he felt the tension in her body. “Why has she come?”

She held some hope or fear he did not comprehend: he saw it in her eyes, that rested on his in such a gaze he could not break from it. She assumed that safety lay beyond the witchfires of the Gates; and perhaps for her, for all this land, it might seem to.

“Ask Morgaine,” he said, “when we meet. As for me, I guard her back, and go where she goes; and I do not ask or answer questions of her.”

“We call her Morgen,” said Jhirun, “and Angharan. My ancestors knew her—the Barrow-kings—they waited for her.”

Cold passed through bun. Witch, men called Morgaine in his own homeland. She was young, while three generations of men lived and passed to dust; and all that he knew of whence she came was that she had not been born of his kindred, in his land.

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