Nhi Vanye, Bydarra hailed him, not ungently.
Lord Bydarra, he answered. He bowed his head slightly, responding to the soft courtesy, though the guards about them denied that any courtesy was meant, though Hetharus thin, wolfish face beside his fathers held nothing of good will. Vanye looked up again, met the old lords pale eyes directly. I had thought that you would have sent for me to come to you.
Bydarra smiled tautly, and answered nothing to that insolence. Of a sudden there was about this gathering too the hint of secrecies, the lord of Ohtij-in intriguing within his own hold, not wishing a prisoner moved about the halls with what noise and notice would attend such moving. Bydarra asked no questions, proposed nothing immediate, only waited on his prisoner, with what purpose Vanye felt hovering shapeless and ominous among the lords of Ohtij-in.
And in that realization came a horrid suspicion of hope: that of ruining Roh, there was a chance here present. It was not the act of a warrior: he felt shame for it, but he did not think that he could reject whatever means offered itself. He made himself numb to what he did.
Have you come, Vanye asked of the qujal, to learn of me what things Roh would not tell you?
And what might those things be? Bydarra asked softly.
That you cannot trust him.
Again Bydarra smiled, this time with more satisfaction. His features were an aged mirror of Hetharus, who was close beside hima face lean and fine-boned, but Bydarras eyes were pale: Morgaines features, he thought with an inward shudder, horrified to see that familiar face reflected in her enemies. No pure qujal had been left in Andur-Kursh. He saw one for the first time, and thought, unwillingly, of Morgaine.
Ask yourself, Roh had said, taunting him, what you are sworn to.
Go, Bydarra bade the guards, and they went, closing the door; but Hetharu stayed, at which Bydarra frowned.
Dutiful, Bydarra murmured at him distastefully; and he looked at Vanye with a mocking twist of his fine lips. My son, he said with a nod at Hetharu. A man of indiscriminate taste and energetic ambitions. A man of sudden and sweeping ambitions.
Vanye glanced beyond Bydarras shoulder, at Hetharus still face, sensing the pride of this man, who stood at his fathers shoulder and heard himself insulted to a prisoner. For an irrational instant Vanye felt a deep impulse of sympathy toward Hetharuhimself bastard, half-blood, spurned by his own father. Then a suspicion came to him that it was not casual, that Bydarra knew that he had reason to distrust this son, that Bydarra had reason to come to a prisoners cell and ask questions.
And Hetharu had urgent reason to cling close to his fathers side, lest the old lord learn of meetings and movements that occurred in the night within the walls of Ohtij-in. Vanye met Hetharus eyes without intending it, and Hetharu returned his gaze, his dark and human eyes promising violence, seething with ill will.
Roh urges us, said Bydarra, to treat you gently. Yet he calls you his enemy.
I am his cousin, Vanye countered quietly, falling back upon Rohs own stated reasoning.
Roh, said Bydarra, makes vast and impossible promisesof limitless arrogance. One would think that he could reshape the Moon and turn back the waters. So suddenly arrived, so strangely earnest in his concern for ushe styles himself like the ancient Kings of Men, and claims to have power over the Wells. He seeks our records, pores over maps and old accounts of only curious interest. And what would you, Nhi Vanye i Chya? Will you likewise bid for the good will of Ohtij-in? What shall we offer you for your good pleasure if you will save us all? Worship, as a god?
The sting of sarcasm fell on numbness, a chill, to think of Roh, a Chya bowman, a lord of forested Koris, searching musty qujalin records, through runic writings that Men did not readsave only Morgaine. Roh, Vanye said, lies to you. He does not know everything; but you are teaching it to him. Keep him from those books.
Bydarras silvery brow arched, as if he found the answer different from his expectation. He shot a look at Hetharu, and walked a distance to the far recess of the room, by the window slit, where wan daylight painted his hair and robes with an edge of white. He looked out that viewless window for a moment as if he pondered something that did not need sight, and then looked back, and slowly returned to the circle of torchlight.
We, said Bydarra, we are the heirs of the true khal. Mixed-blood we all are, but we are their heirs, nonetheless. And none of us has the skill. It is not in those books. The maps are no longer valid. The land is gone. There is nothing to be had there.
Hope, said Vanye, that that is so.
You are human, Bydarra said contemptuously.
Yes.
Those books, Bydarra said, contain nothing. The Old Ones were flesh and bone, and if men will worship them, that is their choice. Priests The old lord made a shrug of contempt, nodding toward the wall, by implication toward the court that lay below. Parasites. The lowest of our halfling blood. They venerate a lie, mumbling nonsense, believing that they once ruled the Wells, that they are doing some special service by tending them. Even the oldest records do not go back into the time of the Wells. The books are worthless. The Hiua kings were a plague the Wells spilled forth, and they tampered with the forces of them, they hurled sacrifices into them, but they had no more power than the Shiua priests. They never ruled the Wells. They were only brought here. Then the sea began to take Hiuaj. And latelythere is Roh; there is yourself. You claim that you have arrived by the Wells. Is that so?
Yes, Vanye answered in a faint voice. The things that Bydarra said began to accord with too much. Once in Andur a man had questioned Morgaine; the words had long rested, in a corner of his mind, awaiting some reasoned explanation: The world went wide, she had answered that man, around the bending of the path. I went through. And suddenly he began to perceive the qujallords anxiety, the sense that in him, in Roh, things met that never should have met at all... that somewhere in Ohtij-in was a Myya girl, far, far from the mountains of Erd and Morija.
And the woman, asked Bydarra, she on the gray horse?
He said nothing.
Roh spoke of her, Bydarra said. You spoke of her; the Hiua girl confirms it. Rumor is running the courtyard: talk, careless talk, before the servants. Roh hints darkly of her intentions; the Hiua girl confounds her with Hiua legend.
Vanye shrugged lest he seem concerned, his heart beating hard against his ribs. The Hiua set herself on my trail; I think her folk had cast her out. Sometimes she talks wildly. She may be mad. I would put no great trust in what she says.
Angharan, Bydarra said. Morgen-Angharan. The seventh and unfavorable power: Hiua kings and Aren superstition are always tangled. The white queen. But of course if you are not Hiua, this would not be familiar to you.
Vanye shook his head, clenched his hand over his wrist behind his back. It is not familiar to me, he said.
What is her true name?
Again he shrugged.
Roh, said Bydarra, calls her a threat to all lifesays that she has come to destroy the Wells and ruin the land. He offers his own skill to save uswhatever that skill may prove to be. Some, Bydarra added, with a look that made Hetharu avoid his eyes sullenly, some of us are willing to fall at his feet. Not all of us are gullible.