Well of Shiuan Read online

  What she gained there she took as far as the access and piled in a bit of broken pottery, then returned to the bones of the courtiers. She worked there, gathering up tiny objects while the thunder rumbled in the distance, filling her skirt as she worked slowly around the wall among the bones, into a shadow that grew deeper and colder.

  Cold air breathed out of an unseen recess in that shadow, and she stopped with the gold in her lap, peering into that blind dark. She sensed the presence of another, deeper chamber, black and vast.

  It fretted at her, luring her. She remembered how at Ashrun’s tomb there had been a treasure chamber that yielded more wealth than any buried with king or court. Long moments she hesitated, fingering the amulets that promised her safety. Then she cursed her cowardice and convinced herself; the thunder walked above the hills, reminding her that there was only this one chance, forever.

  With a whispered invocation to Arzad, who protected from ghosts, she edged forward, kneeling, cast a seal-gem into that dark. It struck metal; and thus encouraged, she leaned forward and reached into that darkness.

  Her fingers met mouldering cloth, and she recoiled, but in doing so her hand hit metal, and things spilled in a clatter that woke the echoes and almost stopped her heart. Cascading about her knees were dusty gems and plates and cups of gold, treasure that made the objects in her lap seem mere trinkets.

  She cursed in anguish for the shortness of the time. She gathered what she could carry and returned to the tunnel to push each piece out into the daylight Drops of rain spattered the dust as she finally worked her own body out, touched her with chill as she carried the heavy objects to the boat, her steps weaving with exhaustion.

  Looking up, she saw the clouds black and boiling. The air had gone cold, and wind sighed noisily through the grasses. Once that storm broke, then the water would rise swiftly; and she had a horror of being shut in that place, water rising over the entrance, to drown her in the dark.

  But one piece she had left, a bowl filled with gold objects, itself heavy and solid.

  With feverish anxiety she lay down and crawled back into the dark, feeling her way until her eyes cleared and she walked again into the main chamber, where the king lay on his bier.

  It was useless to have spared him. She resolved suddenly to make good her theft, for the water would have all in the end, the mask as well. She went to the bier-the only place that the declining light shone, and that dimmed by clouds. A few drops of rain fell on the mask like tears, puddling the dust there, and the wind skirled violently through the double openings, tugging at her skirts, bidding her make urgent haste. But she saw again how fair he had been, and alone now, robbed, his companion ghosts all destroyed, here at the end of time. He had seen the fields wide and green, had ruled holds and villages beside which Chadrih was nothing. To have enjoyed power and never felt hunger, and to have lain down to die amidst all these good things, she thought, was a happy fate.

  But at the end he was robbed by a Barrows-girl, his descendant, whose fondest wish was to have a warm cloak and enough to eat; and once to see the green mountains of Shiuan.

  Her hand stayed a second time from the mask that him; and a curious object in his skeletal fingers caught her eye. She moved the bones aside and took it: a bird, such as she knew today over the marshes-not a lucky symbol to have been worn by a warrior, who often risked death, nor had it been part of his armor. She thought rather of some grieving woman who had laid it there, a death-gift.

  And it was strange to think that so homely a creature as a gull could be common to his age and hers, that he also had seen the birds above some more distant shore, not knowing them the heirs of all he possessed. She hesitated at it, for the white sea birds were a figure of death, that came and went beyond the world’s edge; but, Barrows-bred that she was, she carried even among the amulets a white gull feather, and reckoned it lucky, for a Barrows-girl, whose livelihood was from the dead. The figure was golden, delicate: it warmed in her hands as it had not done in centuries. She touched the fine detail of the wings-and thrust it into her bodice when she saw the dusty jewels beside the king. But they proved only seal-gems, worthless, for the symbols on them could not be polished away, and the marshlanders thought them unlucky.

  The ram struck her face, and spotted the dusty bones and washed upon the mask. Jhirun shivered in the cold wind and knew by the sound of the water rushing outside that she had waited dangerously long. Thunder crashed above the hill.

  In sudden panic she fled, gathered up what she had come to fetch, and ran to the exit, wriggled through the tunnel pushing her treasure out ahead of her, out into the dim light and the pelting rain. The water in the channel had risen, beginning to lift and pull the boat from its safety on the bank.

  Jhirun looked at that swirling, silt-laden water-dared not burden the boat more. In anguish she set aside her heavy bowl of trinkets, to wait high upon the bank. Then fearfully she loosed the mooring rope and climbed aboard, seized up the pole. The water snatched at the boat, turned it; it wanted all her skill and strength to drive it where she would, across the roaring channel to Jiran’s Hill-and there she fought it aground, poured rain-washed treasure into her skirts and struggled uphill, not to lose a trinket on that slope that poured with water. She spilled her skirt-full of gold at the foot of the Standing Stone, made trip after trip to heap up there what she had won, by a sure marker, where it would be safe.

  Then she tried to launch the skiff again toward the Barrow, the rain driving along the battered face of the waters in blowing sheets, torn by the wind. The boat almost pulled from her hands, dragging at the rope; she could not board it-and with a desperate curse, she hauled back on the rope, dragging the boat back to land, higher and higher, legs mudstreaked and scratched and her skirts a sodden weight about them. She reached a level place, sprawled backward with the rain driving down into her face, the blaze of lightnings blinding her. The boat was saved: that, at the moment, was more than gold.

  And driven at last by misery, she gathered herself and began to seek relief from the cold. There was a short paddle and an oiled-leather cover in the skiff. She wrestled the little boat completely over, heaved the bow up with her shoulder and wedged the paddle under, making a shelter, however slight She crawled within and wrapped her shivering limbs in the leather, much regretting now the meal she had not finished, the jars the flood had already claimed.

  The rain beat down on the upturned bottom of the boat with great violence, and Jhirun clenched her chattering teeth, enduring, while water crept higher up the banks of the hills, flooded the access of the tomb, covered the treasure she had been forced to abandon on that other hill.

  Of a sudden, a blink of her eyes in the gray-green light of storm, and the fore part of the Barrow began to slide into the channel, washed through, the bones and dust of the king gone sluicing down the flood to a watery rest. She clutched her amulets and muttered frantic prayers to the six favorable powers, watching the rum widen, remembering the stern, sleeping face of the mask. Tales were told how ghosts went abroad on Hnoth and Midyear’s Eve, how the kings of the sunken plain hosted drowned souls of Barrow-folk and villagers in the ghostly courts, and lights could be seen above the marsh-lights that marked their passage. She reckoned that she had killed some few ghosts by breaking the spells that held them to earth. They might go where they were doomed to go hereafter, no longer bound to their king, with storm to bear them hence.

  But about her neck she wore the joined brass links of Bajen and Sojan the twin kings, that were for prosperity; and Anla’s silver ring, for piety; the bit of shell that was for Sith the sea lord, a charm against drowning; the Dir-stone for warding off fevers; the Barrow-king’s cross, that was for safety; and the iron ring of Arzad, favorable mate to the unfavorable seventh power . . . to Morgen-Angharan of the white gull feather, a charm that Barrowers wore, though marshlanders used it only to defend their windows and doorways. By these things Jhirun knew herself protected against the evils that might be abroad on the win
ds; she clung to them and tried to take her mind from her situation.

  She waited while the day waned from murky twilight to starless night, when it became easier to take any fears to heart. The rain beat down ceaselessly, and she was still stranded, the waters too violent for the light boat.

  Somewhere across the hills, she knew, her cousins and uncles would be doing the same, sheltering on some high place, probably in greater comfort. They had gone to gather wood at the forest’s edge, and likely sat by a warm fire at the ruins on Nia’s Hill, not stirring until the rain should cease. No one would come searching for her; she was a Barrower, and should have sense enough to do precisely what she had done. They would reckon correctly that if she had drowned she was beyond help, and that if she had taken proper precautions she would not drown.

  But it was lonely, and she was afraid, with the thunder rolling overhead from pole to pole. Finally she collapsed the shelter entirely, to keep out the prying wind, wrapped in her leather covering and with the rain beating down above her with a sound to drive one mad.

  Chapter 2

  At last the rain ceased, and there was only the rush of water. Jhirun wakened from a brief sleep, numb in her feet, like to smother in the dark. She sneezed violently and heaved up the shelter of her boat and looked about, finding that the clouds had passed, leaving a clear sky and the moons Sith and Anli to light the night.

  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.