Water Witch

by Connie Willis

  “Harubiki, you’ve misunderstood her. She knows my loyalty to her is complete. She has only to order me and I will obey.” Harubiki had gone mad. Her obsessive loyalty to Sheria had made her see betrayal in him.

  Harubiki laughed. “Then die. That is her order. She did not say how to kill you. She wanted it quick, final, as it would have been if you’d slept in your own bed last night.”

  “You killed Chappa?”

  “You’d have been happier to die last night by my dagger than you will tonight by the singing snake. Agonizing, did you say? Almost frenzied into attacking anything warmblooded? I wish I had time to stay and watch, but Sheria is expecting me to attend her when she meets the Tycoon this evening.”

  “You’re lying. Sheria is not on the surface; she would not leave the Red Cave.”

  But Harubiki held his eyes with hers, shaking her head and smiling a thin, cruel smile. “Oh, no, Radi. Not one word of it is a lie. Why do you think the marines were not available to you? Because she misplanned? You underestimate her. She’ll have the marines as her own escort later today. She’ll exchange ground water for guns and ammunition, and turn the guns on the Tycoon and the other foreigners when she’s ready. Then she’ll control not only the source for turning the mbuzim herds into gembone on the hoof, but the means for exporting it as well.”

  “No,” Radi said. “I don’t believe any of this. It’s not worth it for the price of gembone trinkets; there’s nothing to gain.”

  Harubiki reached into her pocket, then knelt by him in the dirt, fingers holding a gembone-backed water message device. In the moonlight it glowed, pearly green. “It looks just like the ones your water witch ancestors fashioned, does it not, Radi? But there’s no magic to this one, no lost art. This one was made off-world; the only thing the Kalmarrans could not duplicate was the gembone; and substitutes will not work. Do you know how many oceans there are in the galaxy? And did you know that communication between worlds is more reliable than communication under their surfaces? Sheria has known for months what you with your rigid Red City ways could not have guessed. The market for gembone is as vast as all the galaxy’s oceans and richer than anything that has come before, and Sheria will control all of it.”

  “Sheria could not, would not…”

  But Harubiki stopped him from saying more by stuffing a gag into his mouth and binding it into place with his own silken sash. “And did you believe, Radi, that she loved you? That she actually wanted your hot hands on her body? Believe it to your death, if you will, but if you do, you are a complete fool. She hates you, Radi, and she never would submit to you. It’s for that reason I will not let you die easily. When you’re agonizing, when your vitals are boiling with poison, think of how she must have felt when you put your hands on her.”

  With that, she rose, turned on her heel and left, disappearing into the early evening shadows without so much as looking back.

  He still didn’t believe Harubiki, not about Sheria. If she were on the planet surface, she’d been lured or badly advised. Surely she loved him. It was Harubiki’s insane jealousy of her princess that had warped her thinking into the disturbed story she had told him. By now Sheria would know that he had not met the marines as planned. Perhaps she was coming to see why not, and to bring the marines herself.

  The song of the snake suddenly leaped across the pit, more distant now, which could very well mean that the serpent was close by. Whatever else he didn’t believe, of one thing he was certain. He believed in the presence of the singing snake.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Tycoon’s ponies moved surprisingly fast. If they had gone straight to the karst, they would have been in its tangled contours in a matter of minutes. From the gates of the compound, Deza could see the low morning fog from the sea covering it. Instead, the Tycoon took a circuitous route that swung several miles north, through a native village, and north again before turning to the bluffs that rimmed the karst. It was much narrower here and rougher, and Deza could see no reason for his choice of route, but she was grateful for the delay.

  She wasn’t sure why the Tycoon was bringing her here, and not knowing made her feel helpless. She did not underestimate his determination to get what he wanted—she was through with underestimating him—but her new awareness of his ruthlessness was not going to help her now. She examined their loaded saddles for some clue to the reason for their journey. Her own pony was carrying food for just a day and a couple of metal helmets, the kind miners used when they excavated rubble-filled sinkholes, looking for fossilized mbuzi bones. The Tycoon’s was slung with coils of rope. She could not see what was in his saddlebags, but the helmets made her guess they were stocked with carbide lanterns or magnesium pocket flares, though why he would want to descend into one of the treacherous sinkholes of the karst was more than Deza could fathom. Her father might conceivably have told him Deza’s water sense could distinguish water-filled orbs, but even he would have been hard-pressed to justify her finding an underground treasure trove of mbuzi bones, and anyway, she was quite sure her father never would have suggested the karst. He always had avoided the karst, even though it meant travelling into places with far less cover and far more danger of discovery. Only once, because of some soldiers pursuing, had her father relented to so much as skirting along the bluffs that rimmed a karst area. That time they had gone no more than half a mile before he had stopped, taken a long look at Deza who was by then feeling peculiar, felt her forehead, and then headed straight out into the arms of the soldiers. She had not felt ill, and the pressure on her cheekbones had been no worse than usual when she was surrounded by that much water, but she had felt oddly detached even when they were captured. Deza still was not completely certain how her father had managed to obtain their release; it took her days to recover her sense of reality.

  She had tried to contact her father before they got out of reach of the compound this morning, but couldn’t. She had no idea what “out of reach” meant. Telepathy, if it was telepathy, should not be bound by distances, yet she had been unable to raise her father when he was no farther away than the mbuzi pens. When the Tycoon stopped to water the ponies at the native village, she slid off her mount and while he was preoccupied at the well, tried again, mentally shouting to waken the sluggish mbuzi. Deza was glad she had put him in the slipspace. No one knew about the slipspaces except Radi, and quite possibly the Tycoon, she amended. Assume the Tycoon knows everything, she drilled herself. It’s too dangerous not to. But the Tycoon was here, so the mbuzi should be safe. And able to pick up her messages. She sent out one last call and went to sit on the edge of the well, shivering in the warm morning sun. She pulled her cloak about her.

  The Tycoon looked at her curiously, and then turned abruptly back to the ponies, as if he saw artifice in her every move. He doesn’t underestimate me either, she thought, and waited for the shock of cold fear that thought should have brought with it, but it was too much effort to keep her footing in the deep sand. She put out her hand for balance to the well’s edge and stumbled.

  The Tycoon was consulting a map. Deza wondered where he had gotten it. It was small, on thick folded paper, crossed with elaborate black grids and blue wavery lines. The Red City made that, she thought. I wonder who gave it to him? Some part of her mind told her that the map was a clue, but she could not hold the thought.—Father,—she thought again, and grasped the smooth rock edge of the well with both hands. It was cool to the touch, smooth, with water-carved ripples in the surface of the stones. She closed her eyes.

  She was climbing the rock, trying to get to the top. The rock was smooth and cool beneath her little hands, with water-carved ripples in it, and it sloped steadily upward to a thin line of light. Her father was behind her, crawling up the same cool slope of rock. The steep slope was hard to climb. Her hands and knees were numb with the chill of the rock as she crawled. She was not crying, but her father behind her kept saying, “Only a little farther, Deza. Just a few feet and then we’re free of it. Just a l
ittle farther, darling, that’s it. Don’t you want to sit in the nice sunshine, Deza? That’s it, sweetheart.” Some part of Deza that was standing in the full sunlight holding onto the edge of a well, thought, “He’s talking to me as if I were a child,” and that same part answered, “You were only three years old.” Her father’s encouraging words droned softly on. She could hear them distinctly, and at the same time catch his worry, his haste, though there was no sign of either in his quiet voice. The rock floor was rippled, as though water had flowed over it, and there was water somewhere near. Deza pulled herself up in the animal–like crawl of the very young while her father groped behind her for the few fingerholds the rock offered. Up, up, and Deza could see the sun and the jumbled landscape of the karst beyond, bright shapes against a brilliantly blue sky. But that’s impossible, Deza thought; I have never been on the karst before.

  “So your father informed me,” the Tycoon said. “But I trust that will make your powers all the sharper.”

  Deza blinked at him, trying to shake the fragments of the vision. She must have spoken aloud. Careless, Deza, she thought, and tried to feel alarm, but she couldn’t seem to muster any feeling at all, only a vague surprise at the vivid memory. It had to be a memory, didn’t it? Or was it a waking dream, brought on by her fear?

  “I’ve never been on the karst,” she said again.

  “So you said.” The Tycoon stood grimly over her. “I trust you are not thinking of using that as an excuse.”

  “No,” she said, blinking at him as if he were the blinding sunlight at the mouth of the cave. “No, but…” Her voice trailed off uncertainly. How odd. She could not remember what she was going to say. “I haven’t ever been in the karst.”

  And now when she said it, she knew it was a lie. That she and her father had stood at this very well—no, he had lifted her up and sat her on the well’s edge and scooped up drinks of sweet water for her in his hands. Deza was suddenly afraid.

  The Tycoon was watching her impatiently, as if he suspected a complicated plan to unfold. Deza stood up very straight and let go of the well’s edge.

  “I’m eager to see this karst of yours,” she said clearly, and watched his frown deepen. By concentrating very carefully she was able to walk to her pony and mount it without stumbling once. The Tycoon stood by the well, watching her. She smiled at him. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?” she said.

  The Tycoon led the horses single file away from the oasis and into a narrow defile in the bluffs. Deza’s pony followed easily, sure-footed on the loose rock. The way was lined with yellow sandstone that rose almost to cliffs on either side of them as they climbed through it, winding left to block and conceal the way they had come and to form the northern barrier of the karst.

  The defile narrowed until the flanks of the Tycoon’s pony brushed the sides, and then the way abruptly widened out to the karst plain. It was walled on three sides by bluffs, open on the fourth to the Tycoon’s compound with its empty reservoir and the distant sea. A faint, disappearing mist still clung to the ground here this late in the morning, mist that had been fog in the pre-dawn hours, an eerie and almost frightening sight on a world where there were rarely any clouds and only occasional thunderstorms in the distant highlands.

  The mist was now no more than enough to blur the jumbled boulders, dry lake beds, and threatening sinkholes of the karst. Water had formed the landscape, but not water that ever had been seen here except as the evanescent mist. The water was far below, in the complicated water table that formed the underlying life-support grid of the desert planet. Here, in the limestone and dolomite underlying the sandstone crust, the water had eroded and dissolved the ground from beneath to form domed caves, vast underground lakes, and complex passages with delicate roofs that collapsed under their own weight into treacherous sinkholes and pits. The sandy floor of the desert here was interrupted by sudden dry canyons and sharp ledges that stepped off into nothing.

  The Tycoon went slowly, glancing back fearfully at Deza from time to time, as if he thought the ground might suddenly collapse under them. As well it might, Deza thought, not feeling any particular fear or comfort from the idea of the Tycoon pitching, pony and all, into a sudden sinkhole, but only a kind of detached interest at her first view of a karst.

  Far away on the bluffs at the southern rim she caught sight of a turquoise lake, set like a gemstone in the red-gold sandstone bluff and spilling over its rim in a froth of white that fell away into the rocks below and disappeared. Otherwise there was no sign of water in the whole brown and gold landscape. Deza knew it was there, far beneath the surface, though oddly she was not feeling its pressure that much. In fact, she felt light-headed, as she did sometimes in the desert when there was no water for miles around, and yet its presence was belied by the mist and the circle of dazzling blue. Perhaps the ground water was too far separated from her by the empty limestone caverns and dark passages she knew lay beneath her feet, and the mist probably did not contain enough moisture to register on her delicate cheekbones. Even so, she should be feeling the presence of the lake.

  It was hot in the airless bowl. The high rimming bluffs seemed to catch the sun as in a lens and concentrate it there. Deza swayed a little, feeling suddenly desperately thirsty.

  “Could I have something to drink?” Deza said, and fell off her pony onto the rocks.

  “It’s very hot,” the Tycoon said. “Come into the shade.” He picked her up—gently enough—and led her into the abrupt shade of an overhanging rock, as if there were nothing disgraceful in having fallen off a perfectly tame pony going no more than a few steps each minute.

  It was suddenly dark out of the sun. Deza stood perfectly still, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the shade, and the Tycoon waited with her, still loosely holding her arm.

  “I can’t see,” she said. It was dark, darker than anything else she had ever experienced. She put her hand out in front of her face and could not see it. “It’s dark,” she said in a childlike wail. “It’s dark, Daddy.”

  And out of the darkness, far too close, so close she had to be able to see him and couldn’t, came her father’s patient voice. “Just a little farther, Deza, and then we can have a light. It’s not safe yet.” Abruptly her father found the hand that she had been holding practically up to her nose and grasped it firmly. “Would you like to have a picnic? A picnic underground? That would be nice, wouldn’t it? It’s just a little farther and then we’ll have our picnic.”

  “I can’t see,” she said stubbornly, and that other Deza, watching her, said, “Hurry, you little brat. Can’t you see they’re after you? Of course you can’t see. And they can’t see you either. That’s the whole idea.”

  Her father’s voice, unendingly patient, said, “Come along now, Deza. You know the way. Toward the water.” His words had a calming effect on the child. She did know the way. She shook free of her father’s hand and put both hands up to her chubby cheeks to feel the pressure along her cheekbones better. Then she reached for her father’s hand as confidently as if she could see it. “This way,” she said, and led him down into darkness.

  She opened her eyes. The Tycoon was bending over her, looking… she could not tell if it were fear or a kind of gloating she saw in his heavy face.

  “You went into a trance. It’s the karst, isn’t it?” he said, unable to contain his delight. “He said it would have that effect on you.” He leaned over her eagerly. “What did you see? The water? The source? Does the Maundifu still flow?”

  Deza said, “Could I sit down?”

  The Tycoon eased her back down onto the sand with her back against the steep sandstone wall and went back to the pony for a flask of water for her. He was practically running in his excitement. Deza wondered vaguely what was making him so happy. Whatever it was, it meant her life was safe for the moment and she could continue to sit here in the shade leaning against the rough sandstone and straining dry sand through her fingers like water. She pushed the Tycoon’s offered flask away wit
h one hand. He didn’t protest.

  “The Maundifu, Deza,” he said, breathing heavily. “Can you lead me to it?”

  “Certainly,” Deza said. She called silently to her father—Oh, Father, wherever you may be, you told him I could lead him to the Maundifu, so I must be able to. Whatever you say, Father dear. Onward to the wonderful Maundifu.—That same part of her mind said sternly to her, “You sound drunk,” and anxiously retraced her actions of the morning and the night before, searching for anything drugged she might have eaten or drunk. “How can I be drunk?” the rest of her responded gaily. “There’s nothing here to drink. Just sand.” She trickled some through her fingers. “There’s water in the karst, but it’s a long way down where nobody can get it. Nobody. Not even the old Tycoon.”

  “Certainly I can find the Maundifu,” she said aloud. “Wherever it might be.” She attempted to get to her feet. “Certainly. I can do anything.”

  Except get on her pony. She had to have the Tycoon help her up, giggling a little as her hands skidded off the dry leather of the saddle. He settled her roughly, and then, after another piercing look into her face that made her giggle again, he tied her hands to the saddle horn. She didn’t protest, but slumped easily forward over the horn.

  “Wake up!” that part of her mind, now almost hysterical, screamed at her. “Wake up! Radi hasn’t come, you’re heading into the center of the karst with a man who’s going to kill you if you don’t tell him where the Maundifu is. You let him tie you up, and all you can do is giggle like a drunken child. There’s something wrong with you. Wake up!”

  “Which way?” the Tycoon said, and when she only smiled sleepily at him, he gripped her tied hands in his strong one and shook them in front of her threateningly. “Tell me where the Maundifu flows or I’ll leave you here. You won’t be laughing then. Where is it?”

  “That way,” Deza said gesturing with her bound hands. She had no idea of what direction the Maundifu lay, but she had to answer him so he would leave her alone and she could go to sleep. She was really very sleepy.