He closed his eyes, and the cessation of pain was such that sleep came quickly, a weight that bore his mind away.
Jhirun screamed.
He jerked awake, hurling her back from him; and looked about, realizing that they were alone. Jhirun wept, and the forlorn sound of it oppressed him. He touched her, finding her shaking, and gathered her to him, his own heart still laboring.
She had dreamed, he thought; the girl had seen enough in their journey that she had substance enough for nightmares. “Go back to sleep,” he urged her, holding her as he might have held a frightened child. He settled back again, his arms tightly about her, and his mind oppressed by a dread of his own, that he was not going to find Morgaine. She had not come; she had not overtaken them; he began to think of delaying a day in this place, giving her surely enough time to overtake him.
And thereby he might kill himself and Jhirun, being out upon this flat stretch of road when next a storm came down and the water rose. For Jhirun’s sake, he thought that he should keep moving until they found safety, if safety existed anywhere in this land.
Then, without Jhirun, he could settle himself to wait, watching the road, to wait and to hope.
Morgaine was not immortal; she, like Roh, could drown. And if she were gone—the thought began to take root in him—then there was no use in his having survived at all—to become again what he had been before she claimed him.
Hunted now, it might well be, by other Myya, for Jhirun’s sake.
Morgaine had seen a forest grow; against his side breathed something as terrible.
Jhirun still wept, her body racked by long shudders, whatever had terrified her still powerful in her mind. He tried to rest, and so to comfort her by his example, but she would not relax. Her whole body was stiff.
Sleep weighed him into darkness again, and discomfort brought him back, aware first that the land was bright with moonlight and then that Jhirun was still awake, her eyes fixed, staring off across the marsh. He turned his head, and saw the risen disc of Li, vast, like a plague-ridden countenance; he did not like to look upon it.
It lit all the land, bright enough to cast a shadow.
“Can you not sleep?” he asked Jhirun.
“No,” she said, not looking at him. Her body was still tense, after so long a time. He felt the fear in her.
“Let us use the light,” he said, “and walk some more.”
She made no objection.
By noon, wisps of cloud began to roll in, that darkened and grew and spread across the sky. By afternoon there was cloud from horizon to horizon, and the tops of the occasional trees tossed in a wind that boded storm.
There were no more rests, no stopping. Jhirun’s steps dragged, and she struggled, gasping in her efforts, to hold the pace. Vanye gave her what help he could, knowing that, if she ever could not go on, he could not carry her, not on a road that stretched endlessly before them.
In his mind constantly was Morgaine; hope began to desert him utterly as the clouds darkened. And beside him, on short, painful breaths, Jhirun began nervously to talk to him, chattering hoarsely of her own hopes, of that refuge to which others of her land had fled, those that dared the road. Here lay wealth, she insisted, here lay plenty and safety from the floods. She spoke as if to gather her own courage, but her voice distracted him, gave him something to occupy him but his own despair.
And of a sudden her step lagged, and she fell silent, dragging on his arm. He stopped, cast her a glance to know what had so alarmed her, saw her staring with vague and frightened eyes at nothing in particular.
There was a sound, that suddenly shuddered through the earth. He felt it, caught at Jhirun and sprawled, the both of them nothing amid such violence. He pulled at her arms, drawing her from the water’s edge, and then it was past and quiet. They lay facing each other, Jhirun’s face pale and set in terror. Her nails were clenched into his wrists, his fingers clenched on hers, enough to bruise. He found his limbs trembling, and felt a shudder in her arms also. Tears filled her eyes. She shook her tangled hair and caught her breath. He felt the terror under which Jhirun lived her whole life, who claimed her world was dying, whose very land was as unstable as the storm-wracked heavens.