“Where were you?” Vanye asked, bitterness so choking him he could hardly speak; he thrust the man free. “You knew your lord, you knew what would happen when you led me to him.”
‘Take us with you,” Ginun wept. “Take us with you. Do not leave us behind.”
“Where,” asked Morgaine in a chill voice, “do you suppose that we will go from here?”
“Through the Wells—to that other land.”
The hope in the priest’s eyes was terrible to see as he looked from one to the other of them, chin trembling, eyes suffused with tears. He lifted his hand to touch Morgaine, lost courage and touched Vanye’s hand instead, a finger-touch, no more. “Please,” he asked of them.
“Who has told you this thing?” Morgaine asked. “Who?”
“We have waited,” the priest whispered hoarsely. “We have tended the Wells and we have waited. Take us through. Take us with you.”
Morgaine turned her face away, not willing more to talk with him. The priest’s shoulders fell and he began to shake with sobs; at Vanye’s touch he looked up, his face that of a man under death sentence. “We have served the khal,” he protested, as if that should win favor of the conqueror of Obtij-in. “We have waited, we have waited. Lord, speak to her. Lord, we would have helped you.”
“Go away,” said Vanye, drawing him to his feet. Unease moved in his heart when he looked on this priest who served devils, whose prayers were to the works of qujal. The priest drew back from his hands, still staring at him, still pleading with his eyes. “She has nothing to do with you and your kind,” Vanye told the priest. “Nor do I.”
“The Barrow-kings knew her,” the priest whispered, his eyes darting past him and back again. He clutched convulsively at the amulets that hung among his robes. “The lord Roh came with the truth. It was the truth.”
And the priest fled for the door, but Vanye seized him, hauled him about, others in the room giving back from him. The priest struggled vainly, frail, desperate man. “Liyo,” Vanye said in a quiet voice, fearful of those listening about them; prepared to strike the priest silent upon the instant. “Liyo, do not let him go. This priest will do you harm if he can. I beg you listen to me.”
Morgaine looked on him, and on the priest. “Brave priest,” she said in a voice still and clear, in the hush that had fallen in the room. “Fwar!”
A man came from the corner where the house guards were held, a taller man than most, near Morgaine’s height. Square-faced he was, with a healing
slash that ran from right cheek to left chin, across both lips. Vanye knew him at once, him that had ridden the gelding into the courtyard—the face that had glared sullenly up at him. Such a look he received now; the man seemed to have no other manner.
“Aye, lady?” Fwar said. His accent was plainer than that of the others, and he bore himself boldly, standing straight.
“Have your kinsmen together,” Morgaine said, “and find the khal that survive. I want no killing of them, Fwar. I want them set in one room, under guard. And you know by now that I mean what I say.”
“Aye,” Fwar answered, and frowned. The face might have been ordinary once. No more; it was a mask in which one most saw the eyes, and they were hot and violent. “For some we are too late.”
“I care not who is to blame,” Morgaine said. “I hold you, alone, accountable to me.”
Fwar hesitated, then bowed, started to leave.
“And, Fwar—”
“Lady?”
“Ohtij-in is a human hold now. I have kept my word. Whoever steals and plunders now—steals from you.”
This thought went visibly through Fwar’s reckoning, and other men in the room stood attentive and sobered.
“Aye,” Fwar said.
“Lady,” said another, in a voice heavy with accent, “what of the stores of grain? Are we to distribute—?”
“Is not Haz your priest?” she asked. “Let your priest divide the stores. It is your grain, your people. Ask me no further on such matters. Nothing here concerns me. Leave me.”