The Waters Rising

by Sheri S. Tepper

  In the room at the top of the tower, Jenger thought of using the signal flags that sometimes worked when the shafts were flooded. He hadn’t signaled her yet. She didn’t even know he’d made it up the slope, much less that he’d had time to bribe the boy at the abbey and make off with anyone. It had been a bit touchy getting up here. The shaft held more water than he liked to see. No one else would use it; that was sure. Not until it had drained a good bit more. Well, then. He had to let her know and there was no wind to stretch the flags so one could tell them apart. The flags wouldn’t work. Even if there were enough wind, it was already getting dark.

  He sat down at the table and tried to write a message. The words wouldn’t come. Each time he finished he threw the thing away. He kept thinking of her eyes, the woman downstairs, her eyes. She had looked at him as though she didn’t believe he existed, as though she could not be convinced that he could be as he was. The woman’s eyes held no endless, deadly tunnel as did the duchess’s eyes. Instead there was a calm, fearless, reasoned judgment there. A cool judgment: no hatred in it, simply an assessment as to value, likelihood, possibility, reason. Those eyes knew that nothing existed without reason, and since they found no reason for his being, the eyes had decided Jenger did not exist.

  The damned Great Bear of Zol thought Jenger existed! Jenger had found a reason for Bear. Money was his reason, money to pay off his bride-price. And for Mirami, power was a reason. Mirami knew he existed. And Alicia had found a reason for him. He gave her what she liked, did the things she liked. The duchess thought she wanted power, but it was pain she really wanted. Pain and fear. People with money existed. People with power existed. People who could inflict pain existed. But the woman downstairs discounted him, disbelieved he was.

  He wrote again. “The Tingawan child and the driver have gone on to Elsmere. I have one of her servants, not the driver we met. What do you want me to do with her?”

  He went to the Dark House cage and picked out a pigeon, glanced at the window, and realized it was already fully dark. The pigeon wouldn’t fly at night. He’d have to wait until morning. If the duchess wanted the woman brought down to the Old Dark House, he’d return some of the Vulture Tower birds to the Old Dark House at the same time. The cage was too full. Too many messages had come from both the Old Dark House and Ghastain, and he hadn’t had a chance to send any of the birds back. Very few travelers cared to go to the Old Dark House, even if well paid to do so. He rolled the paper and placed it in the message tube, leaving it on the table. It would have to wait until morning.

  He was tired but he wasn’t ready to sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about the eyes of the woman in the cell. Eyes could be changed. People who did not accept reality could be forced to accept reality. Perhaps if this woman knew more about him, she would disbelieve less. He had changed people’s opinion of him in the past. He had pursued, won, delighted, then terrified, then killed or worse than killed. It was part of the game Alicia had him play, part of the game Alicia had played with him, too, only she had most often been the one to pursue, win, delight, and now and then, to terrify.

  A mirror hung on the back of the door in the room where the cages were. He looked into it, trying to see into his own eyes. He couldn’t see anything. Perhaps he couldn’t believe himself. He would have to make himself believable. First he would change the mind of the woman downstairs and then he would come back and look again. Either that or get on his horse and ride as far as he could as fast as he could, which would do no good at all. The duchess would find him, somehow.

  It was a good thing he hadn’t taken the little girl. He wouldn’t have dared touch the little girl. The duchess had said she had far worse things than rape to do to the little girl and she wanted those things to come as a lovely surprise. He had not seen her torture a child before. He was not sure he could bear it. But a woman the age of the one he’d taken prisoner shouldn’t be that surprised. Even if she were virgin, she should have heard of the things that some men had been taught to enjoy, guessed at those things. She had no right to disbelieve that he existed!

  He went back down the stairs. Back in the mining days, the old tower had been both the communication center and the punishment tower, for workers who didn’t do what they were told to do. It was called the Vulture Tower because of the carrion that had lain around it. Vultures nested near carrion, when they could. Back then there had been flag towers all up and down the slopes to exchange messages. They’d used runners, then, kids with long legs and good lungs. Before. When things were normal. When things weren’t disbelieved.

  He unlocked the cell door and opened it. The afterglow was almost gone. He could barely see the woman across the room, lying limp against the far wall, her clothing sagging. He had just a second to register that the clothing actually looked empty before something swung toward him from above, something gray that closed on both sides of his head at once, clamping tight on his head, closing on both his arms and wrapping around his body and upper legs so he couldn’t move. He barely had time to think that he was bound as she had been bound, helpless as she had been helpless, time to realize there were two huge eyes in front of him, looking at him, and between them, a beak, like a vulture’s beak, that opened, wider and wider. The top of it entered his forehead; the bottom of it came up under his chin, thrusting through into his mouth, piercing his tongue. He felt his face tear like wet canvas, felt it rip away from his skull with a terrible sound, a spongy tearing sound, forehead, eyelids, nose, cheeks, ears . . .

  He couldn’t scream because something boneless slithered down his throat and stopped his breathing. Very soon, his heart gave up the battle.

  The thing decided to dispose of Jenger. Better if nothing were found. It oozed its way down the few stairs to the tower door, through the outside door, and into the dusk, dragging the carcass behind it. From downwind came the calls of a wolf pack.

  Moving swiftly, the thing towed Jenger’s body away among the trees, some little distance from the tower. It found a cliff, a straight drop onto a little plateau, a difficult climb for a man, not too difficult for a wolf, a badger, for tiny scavengers, for vultures, crows, mice. The thing paused to chop the legs and arms into pieces with its strong beak, to crush the skull into shards with a rock held firmly in its tentacles, to rip the rib cage, spine, and pelvis into fragments and then let the remnants fall. The thing stayed where it was for a long moment, as though thinking, before emitting a cloud of fragrance or stink or mere aroma, depending upon what might attract the sensors downwind, four legged, two legged, no legged at all. The cloud dissipated, moving away on the wind toward the place where wolves had howled.

  The thing returned to the tower. There was quite a bit of blood on the floor, door frame, and door itself, some on the wall, the steps, the tower floor. The stone cistern at the side of the room was fed by a rainspout from the roof. It had rained recently. The cistern was full. The bucket sitting inside the cell was dipped and sloshed across the cell floor, dipped and sloshed across the cell wall, emptied repeatedly over the thing itself, then over the steps, the floor of the tower, the doorstep leading outside, sloshed again and again until all the blood was washed away. The thing retreated. Went away.

  In the dawn sky, wings high above located the tower and plunged toward it. Wings became fur. The fisher found Xulai sitting in the room at the top of the stairs, her arms on the table, her head on her arms, so deeply asleep she could not be wakened. A nearby plate held crumbs of bread, a bit of cheese. The cupboard the food had come from stood open in the corner. A half-empty bottle of cider stood beside an empty mug. The fisher left her and slithered through a quick reconnoiter of the entire tower and the area around it. Xulai upstairs, one horse in the stable, and several cages of pigeons in the tower were the only living things around. Fisher became winged again. From the sky he could see the man and the horse who had traveled all night to get here. Fisher, winged, cried out and dropped once more, landing on the man’s shoulder.

  When Abasio arrive
d, Xulai was still as Fisher had found her. Abasio put his arms around her and pulled her close. She was shivering but still deeply asleep. She had not been injured. There was a blanket on the bed. He looked at it, considered some of the things Precious Wind had recently told him, and rejected using it for anything at all. Instead, he fetched the blanket he had brought with him. He wrapped her in it. He opened the door to the other room widely, its mirrored back banging against the wall. He opened all the cages so the birds who homed here could feed and the birds who homed elsewhere could fly away, propping the outside door open so it couldn’t close on them. The biggest cage bore the hunched shape of a perched vulture’s wings. Vulture Tower. One cage had the house sign on it, obviously the Old Dark House. Those were the two new signs Xulai had seen at the abbey. He left the room, shutting the door behind him without seeing or being seen by the mirror on its other side.

  Blue was waiting with the other horse. Abasio would not stay a moment longer than necessary, for Xulai’s captor might have summoned others or might himself return. There might have been another horse. He might merely have gone a short distance away by foot. They left the tower and went back the way they had come, Xulai cradled in Abasio’s arms on Jenger’s horse, Blue following, almost sleepwalking. They had to circle widely not to be seen by the abbey watchmen on the walls, but by late evening, Abasio had hidden all of them in or near the wagon, where a small, virtually smokeless fire in the little clay stove made it warm and comfortable. There was room between the wagon and the back wall of the old, wrecked house for the two horses to stand or lie at ease. Abasio had spread straw in the space, and the little stove warmed this temporary stable as well.

  He looked Xulai over carefully while she slept, his touch seeming to be of no concern to her. She was not injured anywhere except for a chafing of her wrists from the shackles he had seen in the cell, shackles still closed, locked. She was not bruised except on the upper arms and around her hips where she had obviously been bound on the way to the tower. The bruises were not extensive. Her clothing, complete with hidden weaponry, told him she had been taken totally by surprise but not interfered with in any way. She had been taken, chained, but not abused, and her captor had disappeared. There was something sewn into the hem of her undershift, but it didn’t feel like a weapon. He let it alone.

  He held her as she slept, and she did not move in the circle of his arms. In the night there was another light snowfall that he knew would erase all tracks of people or things around the tower. In fact it did that, as well as the tracks of the wolves that had carried every fragment of their feast far away to other, scattered places and the tracks of the vultures and crows, the weasels, raccoons, skunks, and other small carnivores that had scavenged the site when the wolves had gone.

  When Xulai woke, late the following day, she said Jenger had bribed Derris, killed him, and taken her. She could not remember what had happened after Jenger had left her in the cell. There had been something in it about deer, or changing reality, but she couldn’t remember what it was. Abasio, looking deep into her eyes, saw something there he had not seen in her before. He had seen that same look, however, in the eyes of people and speaking beasts who had survived terrible battles and did not want to remember what had happened.

  He concluded that whatever had happened to Jenger had been done by someone else. Perhaps Xulai had seen it happen or heard it happen. People did not get that expression in their eyes if they had been horrified only in their imagination.

  Solo Winger received a message from Abasio. On the outside, it said, “Deliver to the librarian, Elder Brother Wordswell, no one else.” On the inside—Solo had become an expert at unsealing messages and resealing them—it said, “Derris was bribed by Jenger, a servant of the Duchess of Altamont, to help kidnap Xulai. Previously Jenger conspired with Bear to kidnap Xulai, but her reluctance to move into a house near the back wall delayed those plans and Jenger grew impatient. Xulai overheard some of this conspiracy but does not know Bear’s true intentions in the matter. Jenger has disappeared. Xulai has been rescued. The bird-sign of the house is the Old Dark House of Altamont. The bird-sign of the vulture is the sign of the Vulture Tower west of the abbey. These places may well be linked through old mine shafts. The bird keeper told me these were signs used only by the abbot. I question this. Whose idea was it to house the Tingawan party near the back wall, which is unguarded, where they might be easy prey?”

  Solo Winger carefully resealed the message, tucked it into a pocket, and impatiently waited until nightfall. Wordswell was known to work in the library at night. He did it, Winger thought, in order to be uninterrupted, and he was confirmed in that opinion by the old man’s brief expression of annoyance when he was interrupted.

  Winger handed over the note and moved away to let Elder Brother Wordswell read it. He did not leave; there might be an answer, after all.

  “I suppose you read this,” said Wordswell in a dry voice.

  “Why, Elder Brother . . . ,” Winger began in offended tones.

  “Don’t give me that pigeon shit, Solomon Winger. You read everything that comes through that tower.”

  “Sometimes thins ak-see-dentully come unsealed, like.”

  “The man asks a good question. Whose idea was it?”

  “A message from Old Dark House come while them ladies from Woldsgard wuz on their way here, them an that Bear an t’other fellas. A message went back ’n’ forth, two, mebbe three times, in fack.”

  “From whom?”

  “Who d’y’think from whom brought ’em to me? Who brings everthin’? Who sees everthin’ afore the abbot gets a look? Who takes everthin’ the abbot sends and reduz it? Hm?”

  “Did they start fixing up that house before or after those messages?”

  “Can’t say’s I took notice. I guess sumbuddy’d have ter ast the crew adoin’ it.”

  “I suppose you have no idea how the person who sent this message managed to get an abbey pigeon?”

  “Well, and you think I wunn’t know where’s my own birds? Course I do! He ast for three. I guv him three. He said he wannud to let the lady know how he’uz doin’. He said the old one, but I figured it wuz the young one he reely had on his mind. She’s a nice girl, and I figure she’d care ’bout how he was doin’.”

  “Misuse of abbey property . . . ,” mused the librarian.

  “Misuse, pfff. Dang good use, I figger,” said Brother Winger. “Don’ I hear you tellin’ people alla time now-lidge is pow’r? Well, now you got some now-lidge you dint have afore. And it’s bin goin on for some years.”

  “I suppose you have copies?”

  “Man c’n s’pose anythin’, ’fhe wants.”

  Wordswell actually smiled. “Come back and see me at midnight, Brother Winger.”

  Wordswell was an elder brother but not the eldest. He held in his hands what others of the elders, male and female, would consider an accusation of the abbot’s complicity in crimes of kidnapping and murder—that is, if one did not know that the prior handled virtually all the abbot’s messages and appointments. The elders did know. They would not consider the messages proof of the abbot’s complicity; they were as likely as the librarian to suspect someone else. What proof might there be? Two cages of pigeons in the abbey bird loft with certain signs. The allegation that these signs were of Altamont and of an old mining tower could be proven. A party could be sent to the old mining towers to look for evidence of that same sign; it might be found somewhere, on a bird cage, for example. Wordswell himself had authority to send someone to explore that possibility.

  But that didn’t prove the existence of this Jenger. It wouldn’t prove there had been any message sent by the abbot or received by him or by some other person in the abbot’s stead. Unless, that is, the abbot or that other person kept the messages he received, in either case in their personal quarters. There would be some difficulty searching there! Though there might be copies in the mining tower itself of messages sent and either copies or the originals of me
ssages received! Now would be an excellent time to explore that possibility, for the Dragdown Swamps still covered the slopes westward and it was unlikely there was anyone there to take notice.

  What a pity the writer of this message had not taken time to search for messages or to say that he had done so and there were none. Though if there had been none in the tower at the time of the rescue, it meant nothing. Pigeons might have arrived there after the rescue. Besides, the writer of this note had been preoccupied. He said the girl was rescued, but he didn’t say what condition she was in, injured perhaps, perhaps . . . sexually attacked. Wordswell’s face showed a moment’s fury before he purposefully smoothed it. He liked Xulai! If someone had abused her, Wordswell hoped fervently that person was dead.

  He found a particular book of maps. They had been drawn years before, when the mining of the western and northern slopes of this massive highland had been at its height. He noted the round red circles that denoted towers, the spots that indicated communication-flag poles, the round black circles that meant shaft entries, the dotted lines that meant underground tunnels, layers of them shown in different colored inks, one atop another. At the top of the slope there were three red circles. One, far south, was merely a ruin. It had been undermined and collapsed a lifetime ago. Wordswell had seen it. Another stood farther north. If the duchess were indeed involved in this abduction, the chances were that she or her agent would have used the middle tower, the one closest to the abbey. Less than a day’s ride away. The one around on the northern slope was closer to Benjobz.

  There might be a chance of finding evidence of the duchess’s complicity, though after Xulai’s brief dissertation on the career of Queen Mirami, evidence against the duchess seemed unlikely. The woman was old in villainy, well schooled, no doubt. If all that Xulai had said was true, Queen Mirami and her daughter, perhaps Prince Rancitor, also, and the Duke of Kamfels, were of a measure far beyond Wordswell’s power to comprehend. They frightened him.