Free Well of Shiuan by C. J. Cherryh Page B

moment of dark dreaming in which he had passed from there to here, like the fall at the edge of sleep: he steadied himself even in thinking of it.
     
    Likewise Morgaine had come, and Chya Roh before them, into a land that lay at the side of a vast river, under a sky that never appeared over Andur-Kursh.
     
    Morgaine unwrapped their supplies, and they shared food in silence. It was almost the last they had, after which they must somehow live off this bleak land. Vanye ate sparingly, wondering whether he should offer to Jhirun, or whether it was not kinder to let her rest. Most of all he doubted Morgaine would favor it, and at last he decided to let matters be. He washed down the last mouthful with a meager sip of the good wine of Baien, saving some back; and sat staring into the fire, turning over and over in his mind what they were to do with the girl Jhirun. He dreaded knowing. No good name had Morgaine among men; and some of it was deserved.
     
    "Vanye. Is thee regretting?"
     
    He looked up, saw that Morgaine had been staring at him in the ruddy light, eyes that were in daylight sea-gray, world-gray, qujal-gray. That gentle, ancient accent had power more than the wind to chill him, reminding him that she had known more Gates than one, that she had learned his tongue of men long dead; she forgot, sometimes, what age she lived in.
     
    He shrugged.
     
    "Roh," she said, "is no longer kin to you. Do not brood on it"
     
    "When I find him," he said, "I will kill him. I have sworn that."
     
    "Was it for that," she asked him finally, "that you came?"
     
    He gazed into the fire, unable to speak aloud the unease that rose in him when she began to encircle him with such questions. She was not of his blood. He had left his own land, abandoned everything to follow her. There were some things that he did not let himself reason to their logical end.
     
    She left the silence on him, a stifling weight; and he opened his hand, twice scarred across the palm with the Claiming by blood and ash. By that, he was kin to her, bound in service, without conscience, honorless save for her honor, which he served. This parting-gift his clan had bestowed on him, like the shorn hair that marked him felon and outlaw, a man fit only for hanging. Brother-slayer, bastard-born: no other liege would have wanted such a man, only Morgaine, whose name was a curse wherever she was known. It was irony that in-service, penance for murder, had left him far more blood-guilty than ever he had come to her.
     
    And Roh remained yet to deal with.
     
    "I came," he said, "because I swore it to you."
     
    She thrust at the fire with a stick, sending sparks aloft like stars on the wind. "Mad," she judged bitterly. "I set thee free, told thee plainly thee had no possible place outside Kursh, outside the law and the folk thee knows. I wish thee had believed it"
     
    He acknowledged this truth with a shrug. He knew the workings of Morgaine's mind better than any living; and he knew the Claim she had set on bun, that had nothing to do with his scarred hand; and the Claim that someone else had set on her, crueller than any oath. Her necessity lay sheathed at her side, that dragon-hilted sword that was no true sword, but a weapon all the same. It was the only bond that had ever truly claimed her, and she hated it above all other evils, qujal or human.
     
    I have no honor, she had warned him once. It is unconscionable that I should take risks with the burden I carry. I have no luxury left for virtues.
     
    Another thing she had told him that he had never doubted: I would kill you too if it were necessary.
     
    She hunted qujal, she and the named-blade Changeling. The qujal she hunted now wore the shape of Chya Roh. She sought Gates, and followed therein a compulsion more than half madness, that gave her neither peace nor happiness. He could understand this in some part: he had held Changeling in his own hands, had wielded its alien evil, and there had come such a weight on