He yielded to the tug of her hand. They walked nearer, and he could see that the whole of the place called Ohtij-in was one hold, a barrel within a great wall that followed the shape of the hill on which it sat. Many towers rose about the central keep, part of the wall, each crazily buttressed, as if each support had been an affair of ingenuity and desperation never amended by later effort. Brush grew up about the walls; black trees that supported leaves only at the extremities of their branches, already inclined southward, inclined still further in the force of the storm wind, reaching fingers toward the lichen-blotched walls. The whole place seemed time-worn, a place without sharp edges, where decay was far advanced, dreaming away to death.
He rubbed at his eyes in the rain and tried to focus on it.
“Come,” Jhirun was urging him, her teeth chattering with cold.
Perhaps, he thought confusedly, Morgaine would pass this way; she must; there was no other.
Jhirun drew at his arm and he went; he saw, as they left the road on the short spur that led toward the hill, that there was a solid wooden gate in the arch facing them, younger by far than the stones that framed it, the first thing in all this waste that looked new and strong.
Best, he thought, to assume confidence in his bearing, to approach as innocent folk that feared nothing and brought no threat with them.
“Hai!” he shouted up at the frowning walls, trying to out-shout the wind, and he found his voice a weary and strangled sound that lacked all the confidence he attempted. “Hai! Open your gates!”
A light soon winked in the tower nearest the gate; a shuttered window opened to see them in that almost-dankness, and a bell began to ring, high-pitched and urgent. From that open shutter it was certain that they suffered the scrutiny of more than one observer, a series of black shapes that appeared there and vanished.
Then the shutter was closed again, and there was silence from the bell, no sound but the rush of water that sluiced off the walls and gathered on the stone paving before the gate. Jhirun shivered miserably.
Came the creak of a door yielding; the sally-port beside the main gate opened, veiled in the rain, and one man put his head forth to look at them. Black
robed he was, with a cloak about him so that only his face and hands were visible. Timidly he crept forward, opening the gate wider, holding his rain-spattered cloak about him and standing where a backward step would put him within reach of the gateway. “Come,” he said. “Come closer.”
CHAPTER Seven
“A priest,” said Jhirun. “A Shiua priest.”
Vanye let go a careful breath, relieved. The black robes were of no order that he knew, not in his homeland, where vesper and matin bells were a familiar and beloved sound; but a priest, indeed, and in all this gray and dying land there was no sight so welcome, the assurance that even here were human and godly men. He was still cautious in coming forward as they were summoned, for there were likely archers in the shadows atop the wall, bows drawn and arrows well-aimed. So would many a border hold in Kursh and Andur receive night-coming travellers, using the sally port for fear of a concealed force, keeping the archers ready if things went amiss.
But throughout all Andur-Kursh, even in the hardest years, there was hospitality, there was hearth-law, and halls were obliged to afford charity to wayfarers, a night’s shelter, be it in hall, be it in a lowly guest-house without the walls. Vanye kept his hands in sight, and stopped and stood to be seen clearly by the priest, who gazed at them both in wonder, face white and astonished within the cowl, a white spot in the descending night.
“Father,” said Vanye, his voice almost failing him in his hoarseness and his anxiety, “Father, there is a woman, on a gray horse or a black or, it might be, afoot. You have not seen her?”
“None such,” said the priest. “None. But if any other traveler passes Ohtij-in, we will know it. Come in, come in and be welcome.”