Free Well of Shiuan by C. J. Cherryh

wanned through, he arose, returned quietly to Morgaine's side, from which he had been banished. He wondered that Morgaine spent so much attention on the child—little enough good that she could do; and he expected now that she would bid him go back to the fire and stay there.
     
    "You speak with her," Morgaine said quietly, to his dismay; and as she gave place for him, rising, he knelt down, captured at once by the girl's eyes—mad, soft eyes, like a wild creature's. The girl murmured something in a plaintive tone and reached for him; he gave his hand, uneasily feeling the gentle touch of her fingers curling round his.
     
    "She has found you," she said, a mere breath, accented, difficult to understand. "She has found you, and are you not afraid? I thought you were enemies."
     
    He knew, then. He was chilled by such words, conscious of Morgaine's presence at his back. "You have met my cousin," he said. "His name is Chya Roh—among others."
     
    Her lips trembled, and she gazed at him with clearing sense in her dark eyes. "Yes," she said at last "You are different; I see that you are."
     
    "Where is Roh?" Morgaine asked.
     
    The threat in Morgaine's voice drew the girl's attention. She tried to move, but Vanye did not loose her hand. Her eyes turned back to him.
     
    "Who are you?" she asked. "Who are you?"
     
    "Nhi Vanye," he answered in Morgaine's silence, for he had struck her down, and she was due at least his name for it: "Nhi Vanye i Chya. Who are you?"
     
    "Jhirun Ela's-daughter," she said, and added: "I am going north, to Shiuan—"as if this and herself were inseparable.
     
    "And Roh?" Morgaine dropped to her knee and seized her by the arm. Jhirun's hand left his. For a moment the girl stared into Morgaine's face, her lips trembling.
     
    "Let be," Vanye asked of his liege. "Liyo—let be."
     
    Morgaine thrust the girl's arm free and arose, walked back to the fireside. For some little time the girl Jhirun stared in that direction, her face set in shock. "Dai-khal," she murmured finally.
     
    Dai-khal: high-clan qujal, Vanye understood that much. He followed Jhirun's glance back to Morgaine, who sat by the fire, slim, clad in black leather, her
     
    hair a shining pallor in the firelight. Here too the Old Ones were known, and feared.
     
    He touched the girl's shoulder. She jerked from his fingers. "If you know where Roh is," he said, "tell us."
     
    "I do not."
     
    He withdrew his hand, unease growing in him. Her accents were strange; he hated the place, the ruins—all this haunted land. It was a dream, in which he had entrapped himself; yet he had struck flesh when he rode against her, and she bled, and he did not doubt that he could, that it was well possible to die here, beneath this insane and lowering sky. In the first night, lost looking about him at the world, he had prayed; increasingly he feared that it was blasphemy to do so in this land, that these barren, drowning hills were Hell, in which all lost souls recognized each other.
     
    "When you took me for him," he said to her, "you said you came to find me. Then he is on this road."
     
    She shut her eyes and turned her face away, dismissing him, weak as she was and with the sweat of shock beading her brow. He was forced to respect such courage—she a peasant and himself once a warrior of clan Nhi. For fear, for very terror in this Hell, he had ridden against her and her little pony with the force he would have used against an armed warrior; and it was only good fortune that her skull was not shattered, that she had fallen on soft earth and not on stone.
     
    "Vanye," said Morgaine from behind him.
     
    He left the girl and went to the side of his liege—sat down, arms folded on his knees, next the fire's warmth. She was frowning at him, displeased, whether at him or at something else, he was not sure. She held in her hand a small object, a gold ornament
     
    "She has dealt with him," Morgaine said, thin-lipped. "He is somewhere about—with