Well of Shiuan (4 page)

She turned the boat onto its bottom and staggered to her feet, brushed back her sodden hair. The waters were still running high, and there was still lightning in the north—ominous, for rains came back sometimes, hurled back from the unseen mountains of Shiuan to spread again over Hiuaj.

But there was peace for the moment, satisfaction simply in having survived. Jhirun clenched her gelid hands and warmed them under her arms, and sneezed again. Something pricked her breast, and she felt after it, remembering the gull as her fingers touched warm metal. She drew it forth. The fine traceries of it glittered in the moonlight, immaculate and lovely, reminding her of the beauty that she had not been able to save. She fingered it lovingly and tucked it again into her bodice, grieving over the lost treasure, thinking of all that she had not been able to save. This one piece was hers: her cousins should not take this from her, this beautiful thing, this reward of a night of misery. She felt it lucky for her. She had a collection of such things, pictures on broken pottery, useless seal-gems, things no one wanted, but a gold piece— that she had never dared. They had their right, and she was wrong, she knew, for all the hold had good of the gold that was traded.

But not the gull, never the gull.

There would be a beating instead of a reward, if her kinsmen ever suspected how much of the gold she had failed to rescue from the flood, if ever she breathed to them the tale of the king in the golden mask, that she had let the water have. She knew that she had not done as well as she might, but—

—But, she thought, if she shaped her story so that she seemed to have saved everything there was, then for a few days nothing would be too good for Jhirun Ela's-daughter. Folk might even soften their attitudes toward her, who had been cursed for ill luck and ill-wishing things. At the least she would be due the pick of the next trading at Junai; and she would have—her imagination leaped to the finest thing she had ever desired—a fine leather cloak from Aren in the marshes, a cloak bordered in embroideries and fur, a cloak to wear in hall and about the home island, and never out in the weather, a cloak in which to pretend Barrows-hold was Ohtij-in, and in which she could play the lady. It would be a grand thing, when she must marry, to sit in finery among her aunts at the hearth, with a secret bit of gold next her heart, the memory of a king.

And there would be Fwar.

Jhirun cursed bitterly and wrenched her mind from that dream. The cloak she might well gain, but Fwar spoiled it, spoiled all her dreams. Sharing her bed, he would find the gull and take it, melt it into a ring for trade—and beat her for having concealed it. She did not want to think on it. She sneezed a third time, a quiet, stifled sneeze, for the night was lonely, and she knew that her lot would be fever if she must spend the night sitting still.

She walked, and moved her limbs as much as she could, and finally decided that she might warm herself by gathering up her gold on the hilltop and bringing it down to the boat. She climbed the hill with much slipping on the wet grass, using the tufts of it to pull herself up the steepest part, and found things safe by the Standing Stone.

She flung back her head and scanned all her surroundings under the two moons, the place where the other hill had stood and hardly a third remained. She gazed at the widespread waters dancing under the moonlight, the lightning in the south.

And Anla's Crown.

It glowed, a blaze of light like the dead-lights that hovered sometimes over the marsh. She rubbed her eyes, and gazed on it with a cold fear settling into her stomach.

Nothing was atop Anla's hill but the stones and the grass, nothing that the lightning might have set ablaze, and there was no ruddiness of living fire about it. It was ghostly, cold, a play of witchfires about the stones of the Crown.

Almost she had no courage to delay atop the hill, not even for the precious gold. She felt naked and exposed, the Standing Stone that was the sister-stone to those of Anla's Crown looming above her like some watching presence.

But she knelt and gathered up the gold that she could carry, and slid down to the skiff, loaded it aboard, went back for more, again and again. And each time that she looked toward Anla's hill the lights still hovered there.

Jiran's Hill was no longer a refuge from whatever was happening at Anla's Crown: it was altogether too close, on the verge of what strangeness passed there. She dared not wait until morning; the sun itself would seem no comfort, but a glaring eye to mark her presence here too near to Anla.

Better the danger of the currents: against the waters she had some skill, and of them she had less fear. She eased the loaded boat downslope, the long pole and the paddle laid accessible within. Carefully she let it into the edge of the current and felt the pull, judged that she might possibly manage it.

She climbed in; the current seized the skiff, whirled it like a leaf on the flood for an instant before she could bring the pole to bear and take control. She fended herself from impact with the rocks, spun dizzyingly round again, found bottom and almost lost the pole.

It did not hold. She saved the pole and shipped a little water doing it and suddenly the skiff whipped round the bend of a hill and out, toward the great rolling Aj, toward a current she could in no wise fight

There was no bottom here. She used the paddle now, desperately, went with the rush and worked to its edge, broke into the shallows again and managed to fight it into the lesser channel between Anla's height and the Barrows. She averted her eyes from the unnatural glow that hovered, that danced upon the waters—used paddle and pole alternately, knowing that she must go this way, that the channels near Anla's great rise would be shallowest, where once the ancient Road had run. The current pulled, trying to take her to the Aj, and thence to the sea, where Socha had died, lost, drowned. But here, while she held to the newly flooded margins, where the skiff whispered over reeds, the waters were almost calm.

She was going home.

Jhirun rested from time to time, drawing up on the shoulder of a Barrow, driving herself further as soon as she had drawn breath. The horror that she had seen at Anla's Crown seemed impossible now, irretrievable to the memory as the interior of the tomb, a thing of the night and the edge of realities. The fear still prickled at the nape of her neck, but more present, more urgent, was the cloud in the north, the fitful flash of lightning.

She feared the hills themselves, that became refuges for small creatures with which she did not care to share the night—rats that skittered shadow-wise over the banks as she passed, serpents that disturbed the grasses as she rested.

And the flood had opened new channels, places not at all familiar, the flooding making even known hills look different. She guided herself by the currents that she fought, by the stars that began to be obscured by clouds. She felt herself carried south, riverward, and ceased to be sure where she was.

But at last before her rose jagged shapes in the water, the ruined buildings of Chadrih. Her heart leaped with joy, for she knew the way from here beyond a doubt, through shallow channels.

The murmur of the water, the frantic song of the frogs and the other creatures of the tall grasses, made counterpoint to the movement of the boat, the slap of water against the bow, the whispers of reeds under the bottom. Jhirun gathered herself to her feet in the skiff, bravely confident now, balanced evenly on her bare feet. The pole touched the sunken stones that she remembered.

Chadrih: she remembered being nine and being thrust out of a house of Chadrih, folk making gestures to avert the evil of a Barrows-child who was known to be fey, to dream dreams. She remembered a sinful satisfaction to see that house deserted, and the windows all naked and empty. The Halmo men had stayed on last, they that had most hated and despised Barrows-folk; and they had drowned when she was twelve. The water had taken them and she could not even remember now what they had looked like.

She swayed her weight and pushed with the pole and sent the skiff down that narrow channel that had once been a cobbled street. The jagged, roofless buildings like eyeless brooding beasts shape-shifted past her. The ruins rustled with wings, the nesting birds disturbed by her passage; and the frogs kept up their mad chorus in the reeds. When she reached the edge of Chadrih she could see the first of the northern Barrows against the lightning-lit sky, and beyond it would lie Barrows Rode and home.

Hills began to pass her again on one side and the other, great conical mounds, shadows that momentarily enfolded her and gave her up again to the clouding sky. And there, just where she knew to look, she first saw the light that would be Barrows-hold tower, a flickering behind wind-tossed trees, a star-like gleam in the murk.

The water was calm here and shallow. Jhirun ventured a glance back between the hills, and could see only empty darkness. She made herself forget that, and looked forward again, keeping her eyes fixed on that friendly beacon, slipping the boat in and out among the hills.

The light flickered the harder, and suddenly the wind began to rise, whipping at her skirts and ruffling the water. There were little whisperings in the reeds and in the brush that overgrew these marshward Barrows. The storm was almost on her, and lightning danced on the black waters. Jhirun drew an aching breath and worked harder as the first heavy drops hit her, unwilling to yield and shelter miserably so close to home.

And alternate with the strokes she made she heard a rippling and splash of water, like a man striding, perhaps just the other side of the hill she was passing.

She stopped for a moment, drifting free, and the sound continued.

Perhaps a stray animal out of the marsh, storm-driven; there were wild ponies there, and occasional deer left. She let the boat glide where it would and listened to the sound, trying to judge just where it was, whether it went four-footed or two, and cold sweat prickled on her ribs.

So close, so close to home: perhaps it was one of her kinsmen, seeking home. But it moved so relentlessly, unregarding of the noise her boat had made, and no voice hailed her. She felt the hair rise on her neck as she thought of outlaws and beasts that came seldom out of the deep fens—things such as might be stirred out of lairs by flood and storm.

A cry came, thin and distorted by the air and the hills.

And then she knew it for the bleating of a silly goat; she was that near home. She felt a wild urge to laugh; some of their own livestock, surely. She hoped so. The boat had begun to move with more rapidity than she liked and she feared the noise she might make using the pole to restrain it. She had let it sup into the main current, where the water curled round the hills; she must stop it. She used the pole carefully, making a rippling despite her efforts to move noiselessly. She was fearfully conscious of the gold that glittered under the lightning, scattered at her feet—treasure to tempt any outlaw, ghost-things and unhallowed as they were. Here in the dark, not alone, she was acutely aware whence the objects had come, and aware too of the gull amulet between her breasts, that made a sharp pain at every push she made, this thing that had last lain between the fingers of a dead king.

She misjudged the channel in her preoccupation; the pole missed purchase and she drifted, helpless, balancing and waiting for the current to take her where she could find bottom again. The skiff whipped round in an eddy and slowed as it rounded the curve of an isle.

And she spun face to face with a rider, a shadowy horseman whose mount went belly-deep in the water—and that rider glittered here and there with linked mail. She thrust for bottom desperately, borne toward him. Strength deserted her hands and she could not hold. The rider loomed close at hand, the face of a young man, pale, beneath the peaked helm. His black horse shied aside, eyes rolling in the lightning flash.

She could not cry out. He reached and shouted at her, a thin voice, lost on the wind as the current pulled her on.

Then she remembered the pole in her nerveless hands and leaned on it, driving the boat to another channel, seeking a way out of this maze.

Water splashed behind her, the black horse—she felt it without looking back. She moved now with more frenzy than skill, her hair blinding her when at last she had to look and know. Through its strands she saw his shape black on the lightning-lit waters behind her.

She whipped her head round again as the skiff passed between two hills, and there, there ahead was the light of Barrows-hold tower, the safety of doors and lights and her own kinsmen ahead. She exerted all her strength and skill, put out of her mind what followed her—the black king under the hill, the king in the mask, whose bones she had let lie undisturbed. She was cold, feeling not her hands nor the balance of her feet, nor anything but her own heart crashing against her ribs and the raw edge of pain on which she breathed.

Barrows-hold filled all her vision, the slope of the landing before her. She drove for it, felt the skiff go aground on mud and reeds, then glide through. She leaped out on shore, turned to look, saw the black rider still distant; and even then she thought of the gold and the precious boat that was their livelihood. She hurled the pole to the ground and gathered up the rope and pulled and heaved the skiff aground, she skidding and sliding in the mud; a last look at the advancing rider, the water curling white about the horse's breast as it came, and she heaped pieces of gold into her skirts.

Then she turned and began to run, bare feet seeking tufts of grass to aid her climbing. Above her loomed the house, the cracks of its shuttered windows agleam with light, and the old tower lit to guide the Barrows' scattered children home. She dropped a piece of treasure, gathered it again, stumbling. Rain was falling, the wind hurling the drops into her eyes with stinging force, and thunder cracked. She heard the suck of water behind her, the heave of a large body, and looking back, she saw the black horse and the rider. Lightning glittered coldly off ring-mail, illumined a pale face. The dogs began barking frantically.