Vanye was glad to return to the fire, bearing his burden of gathered branches, to kneel by that warmth that drove back the fog and overlay the stench of decay with fragrant smoke.
They had within the ruin a degree of shelter at least, although Vanyes Kurshin soul abhorred the builders of it: ancient stones that seemed once to have been the corner of some vast hall, the remnant of an arch. The gray horse and the black had pasturage on the low hill that lay back of the ruin, and the shaggy pony was tethered apart from the two for its safetys sake. The black animals were shadow-shapes beyond the trees, and gray Siptah seemed a wraith-horse in the fog: three shapes that moved and grazed at leisure behind a screen of moisture-beaded branches.
The girls brown shawl was drying on a stone by the fire. Vanye turned it to dry the other side, then began to feed branches into the fire, wood so moisture-laden it snapped and hissed furiously and gave off bitter clouds of smoke. But the fire blazed up after a moment, and Vanye rested gratefully in that warmthtook off the white-scarfed helm and pushed back the leather coif, freeing his brown hair, that was cut even with his jaw: no warriors braidhe had lost that right, along with his honor.
He sat, arms folded across his knees, staring at the girl who lay in Morgaines white cloak, in Morgaines care. A warm cloak, a dry bed, a saddlebag for a pillow: this was as much as they could do for the child, who responded little. He thought that the fall might have shaken her forever from her wits, for she shivered intermittently in her silence, and stared at them both with wild, mad eyes. But she seemed quieter since he had been sent out for wooda sign, he thought, either of better or of worse.
When he was warmed through, he arose, returned quietly to Morgaines side, from which he had been banished. He wondered that Morgaine spent so much attention on the childlittle 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 girls eyesmad, soft eyes, like a wild creatures. 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 Morgaines presence at his back. You have met my cousin, he said. His name is Chya Rohamong 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 Morgaines voice drew the girls 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 Morgaines 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 Elas-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. Jhiruns hand left his. For a moment the girl stared into Morgaines face, her lips trembling.
Let be, Vanye asked of his liege. Liyolet be.
Morgaine thrust the girls 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 Jhiruns 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 girls 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 ruinsall 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 courageshe 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 liegesat down, arms folded on his knees, next the fires 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 aboutwith ambush laid, it may well be.
We cannot go on pushing the horses. Liyo, there is no knowing what we may meet.
She may know. Doubtless she knows.
She is afraid of you, he objected softly. Liyo, let me try to ask her. We must rest the horses; there is time, there is time.
What Roh has touched, she said, is not trustworthy. Remember it. Here. A keepsake.
He held out his hand, thinking she meant the ornament. A blade flashed into her hand, and to his, sending a chill to his heart, for it was an Honor-blade, one for suicide. At first he thought it hers, for it was, like hers, Koris-work. Then he realized it was not.
It was Rohs.
Keep it, she said, in place of your own.
He took it unwillingly, slipped it into the long-empty sheath at his belt. Avert, he murmured, crossing himself.
Avert, she echoed, paying homage to beliefs he was never sure she shared, and made the pious gesture that sealed it, wishing the omen from him, the ill-luck of such a blade. Return it to him, if you will. That pure-faced child was carrying it. Remember that when you are moved to gentility with her.
Vanye sank down from his crouch to sit crosslegged by her, oppressed by foreboding. The unaccustomed weight of the blade at his belt was cruel mockery, unintended, surely unintended. He was weaponless; Morgaine thought of practicalitiesand of other things.
Kill him, her meaning was: it is yours to do. He had taken the blade, lacking the will to object. He had abandoned all right to object. Suddenly he felt everything tightly woven about him: Roh, a strange girl, a lost daggera net of ugly complexities.
Morgaine held out her hand a second time, dropped into his the small gold object, a bird on the wing, exquisitely wrought. He closed his hand on it, slipped it into his belt. Return that to her, he understood, and consented. She is yours to deal with.
Morgaine leaned forward and fed bits of wood into the fire, small pieces that charred rapidly into red-edged black. Firelight gleamed on the edge of silver mail at her shoulder, bathed her tanned face and pale eyes and pale hair: in one unnatural light in the gathering dark. Qujalfair she was, although she disclaimed that unhuman blood. He himself was of the distant mountains of Andur-Kursh, of a canton called Morija; but that was not her heritage. Perhaps her birthplace was here, where she had brought him. He did not ask. He smelled the salt wind and the pervading reek of decay, and knew that he was lost, as lost as ever a man could be. His beloved mountains, those walls of his world, were gone. It was as if some power had hurled down the limits of the world and shown him the ugliness beyond. The sun was pale and distant from this land, the stars had shifted in their places, and the moonsthe moons defied all reason.