“That too,” said Roh. He started to open the door, and hesitated, looking back. “I wish that I could persuade you to common sense.”
“I will go back to the room where I was,” Vanye said. “I found it more comfortable.”
Roh grinned. “Doubtless.”
“Do not touch her,” Vanye said. Roh’s grin faded; he faced him entirely, regarded him with an earnest look.
“I have said,” Roh said, “that she would be safe. And she will be safer—apart from you. I think you understand this.”
“Yes,” Vanye said after a moment
“I would help you if you would give me the means.”
“Good night,” Vanye said.
Roh delayed, a frown twisting his face. He extended his hand, dropped it in a helpless gesture. “Nhi Vanye—my life will end if your liege destroys the Wells—not suddenly, but surely, all the same. So will everything in this land… die. But that is nothing to her. Perhaps she cannot help what she is or what she does. I suspect that she cannot. But you at least have a choice. These folk—will die, and they need not”
“I have an oath to keep. I have no choice at all.”
“If you had sworn to the devil,” Roh said, “would it be a pious act to keep your word?”
Unthought, his hand moved to bless himself, and he stopped, then with deliberation completed the gesture, in this place of qujal, where priests worshipped devils. He was cold, inside.
“Can she do as you have done?” asked Roh. “Vanye, is there any land where she has traveled where she is not cursed, and justly? Do you even know whether you serve the side of Men in this war? You have an oath; you have made yourself blind and deaf because of it; you have left kinsmen dead because of it. But to what have you sworn it? Do you wonder what was left in Andur-Kursh? You will never know what you wrought there, and perhaps that is well for your conscience. But here you can see what you do, and you will live in it. Do you think the Wells have kept these folk in misery? Do you think the Wells are the evil? It was the loss of them that ruined this land. And this is the likeness of Morgaine’s work. This is what she does, what she leaves behind her wherever she passes. There is nothing more terrible that could befall you than to stay behind where she has passed. You and I know it; we were born in the chaos she wrought in our own Andur-Kursh, Kingdoms fell and clans died under her guidance. She is disaster where she passes, Nhi Vanye. She kills. That is her function, and you cannot prevent her. To destroy is her whole purpose for being.”
Vanye turned his face aside and gazed at the barren walls, at the single slit of a window, slatted with a wooden shutter.
“You are determined not to listen,” said Roh. “Perhaps you are growing like her.”
Vanye glanced back, face set in anger. “Liell,” he named Roh, the name that had been his last self, that had destroyed Roh. “Murderer of children. You offered me haven too, in Ra-leth; and I saw what a gift that was, what prosperity you brought those that came under your hand.”
“I am not Liell any longer.”
Vanye felt a tightness about his heart, himself caught and held by that level gaze. “Who is talking to me?” he asked in a still voice. “Who are you, qujal? Who were you?”
“Roh.”
Bile rose into his throat. He turned his face away. “Get out of here. Get away from me. Do me that grace at least. Let me alone.”
“Cousin,” said Roh softly. “Have you never wondered who Morgaine was?”
The question left silence after it, a numbness in which he could be aware of the sounds of the fire, the wind outside the narrow window. He found it an effort to draw breath in that silence.
“You have wondered, then,” said Roh. “You are not entirely blind. Ask yourself why she is qujal to the eye and not to the heart. Ask whether she always tells the truth… and believe me, that she does not, not where it is most essential, not where it threatens the thing she seeks. Ask how much of me is Roh, and I will tell you that the essence of me is Roh; ask why you are kept safe, hostile to me as you are, and I will tell you it is because we are—truly—cousins. I feel that burden; I act upon it because I must. But ask yourself what she became, this liege of yours. My impulses are human. Ask yourself how human she is. Less than any here—whose blood is only halfling. Ask yourself what you are sworn to, Nhi Vanye.”