The Waters Rising

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Love him, Father.”

  “Even better then, my child. Even better. Oh, so good to say that something is going well! Precious Wind, she was part of it, a good part of it. Even Blue, the horse, he’s turning out to be part of it too. And you had to be old enough to understand and strong enough to endure . . .”

  “To do what?” she cried.

  “To create a new human race,” he said. “People who can live in the sea.”

  “And all this terror, this being frightened, was planned?”

  “No. None of the horror was planned, not by us. Just as the water goes on rising, so there are forces on earth who don’t want us to survive. That much was known. We did not know who they were! Where were they? Why were they? Those things weren’t known then and aren’t really known now. To begin with we didn’t know about the duchess or her mother. We still don’t know where they got their powers or their ideas. Decades ago Prince Lok-i-xan sent someone to cross the Stony Mountains and locate the man who statistically had to be there. He turned out to be Abasio, but they had to locate him and send him in our direction. He had to come and meet you. It had to be voluntary.”

  “Voluntary,” she cried. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m absolutely positive. The only thing anyone suggested to Abasio was that he go to Woldsgard because he might find something interesting there. Precious Wind came to Woldsgard voluntarily, and Oldwife Gancer was already there, and I went away when my beloved died, and I knew you would come to Merhaven. I knew I would go with you.”

  “And Genieve?”

  He smiled sadly, shaking his head. “I haven’t spoken to Genieve. I know Genieve will stay with her children, her people. We cannot recover our youth, so why make her suffer yet again? Or that may be only my vanity speaking. She may have forgotten me long ago.”

  “No, she had not. But she did choose to stay with her people,” Xulai said in some confusion.

  “Genieve was always dutiful. And, though people always seem to value what they lose more than what they have, I think, she loved her husband very well. All in all, then, my decision was a good one. Now, take me to meet your companions, the new ones, with four legs.”

  She took a deep breath and decided to stop asking questions for a while. She had not yet half absorbed the answers she had been given.

  “I can introduce you to Blue, Father, though he is seasick, but only Precious Wind can introduce you to the wolves.”

  Alicia and her escort arrived at the Old Dark House four days after leaving Ghastain. They had ridden hard to Benjobz Inn, taken a meal and short rest there, for the horses. Men could be terrorized into staying awake, but horses could not, and flogged horses sometimes stumbled, hurting or even killing their riders. Even Alicia bowed to this necessity. From Benjobz her nearest hidden shaft was not far; the horses went back to Benjobz, the people made the trip down the shaft to the ancient rails and trams, which was fearsome but quick. The underground tram ride from east to west was downhill the whole way, ending at another shaft only one day’s ride from the Old Dark House, and there were always horses kept stabled nearby. She dismissed the men at her gate and went on into the house by herself. No one answered her call. There was no one in the house at all.

  Raging, she went to her cellar, opening the door with her code and flinging herself headlong down the stairs, not waiting for the door to close behind her, not seeing Bear, who had caught it in his huge hands and was holding it open. The men from the embassy had found Alicia’s secret route, and they had not rested at Benjobz but had come straight on.

  Two Tingawans stepped around Bear and blocked the door open for him. He had realized he was being followed some time ago and had invited the other Tingawans to stop hiding from him in the interest of time. He knew trained assassins and warriors when he met them. It was well they were trained, for the underground way had been terrible, dark, and seemingly endless.

  Now the foremost among them gave him a grim salute. “Together,” he said. “Now we take vengeance on the woman who killed Xu-i-lok and ordered the death of Xu-i-lok’s daughter.”

  Bear froze, for the moment unmoving. “Daughter?”

  “Xu-i-lok’s daughter. Xulai. The granddaughter of Lok-i-xan.”

  Still he was motionless. The granddaughter of Lok-i-xan. And he had been too stupid to see it. He had stood there on the road, on his way from Merhaven, talking with Precious Wind, naming Xulai as a mere Xakixa. Ignoring all the time, the attention, the treasure that was spent in caring for her. Calling her the daughter of a nobody. Of course they had said she was, to protect her, from people like himself! A mere Xakixa. Whom he had sold.

  He seemed to hear Precious Wind whispering to him from across the wide sea. “Oh, Great Bear of Zol! As though her parentage should have made any difference!”

  In the room below, Alicia was inspecting her devices. She had left the seeker device working to find Jenger, and now its screen sparkled with red dots, dozens, hundreds of them, spread in a great circle around the Vulture Tower, and more of them leading south, fading like a comet’s tail. How could he be spread over that wide a distance?

  The answer came to her. Wolves: they had torn him apart, eaten him, and shat him out as they traveled away; merely wolves. No need for the little capsules, the seeker mirror, the hunt. He was gone. She was momentarily angry, as momentarily amused: poor Jenger. He certainly wouldn’t have foreseen that!

  She turned to her household devices, a simple screen with lights that moved among the various rooms to show her where her servants were. It was completely dark! There were no servants anywhere in the Old Dark House. They were not anywhere in Altamont that she could find upon her map. She screamed, “Where? Where is my cook, where are my maids? My archers? Where have they gone?”

  A voice came from behind her, gratingly, slowly, mechanically. “Master said send them all away.”

  She turned. Brighter lights than usual gleamed on the huge device in the corner, the one that watched her and made little noises.

  “What master?” she demanded. “Who told you to send them away? And what right do you have to send anyone anywhere?”

  “He is my master. I do what he says do,” the machine said. The words did not come from any organic throat or mouth, she knew that. Devices could not feel. They could not be threatened, any more than horses could. She forced herself into something approaching calm. “Who told you?”

  “Old Dark Man told me.”

  “Old Dark Man is dead.”

  “No.” Hiccup hiccup. “Not dead. I make sure not dead.”

  The hiccup sound was almost laughter. In that instant, she heard a sound above and behind her, on the steps. She turned and saw Bear poised there, his face twisted in hatred, a sword in his hand. A half scream came from her throat, cut off by a shout from the machine.

  “In corner, quick! I protect, quick!”

  Without thinking she darted into the cubicle behind the pillar, bumping the shelves so that their contents rattled, rolled, fell. Her precious things! She grabbed for her possessions as the machine moved. It couldn’t move, but it did move! It thrust itself across the opening, completely blocking it, preventing Bear from coming near her. She had walls all around her, three of stone, one of metal. She heard Bear shout, heard other voices. Tingawan voices! Men’s voices! A grating sound came from the device blocking the cubicle, a creaking, as of old, unoiled hinges.

  She knelt to pick up her precious things, brushing aside the fallen capsule, crushing it beneath her knee as she moved to retrieve the lock of her father’s hair. She choked down hysterical laughter. With Jenger spread all over the Dragdown Swamps, all over the heights, she certainly didn’t need that anymore. Strange to see him spread on her map like that, everywhere, a cloud of him! She actually chuckled. A cloud of shit instead of her neat little cloud of . . . death. She turned to her father’s linen shift, brushing it off, folding it carefully. The little portrait, so handsome, so wonderful. She set it carefully on the shelf, the shift and t
he lock of her father’s hair beside it. Where was his ring? Where? She fell to her knees once more, searching the corners.

  Continuous sounds came from beyond the barrier, in the cellar, cries of pain, feet running up the stairs in panicky haste, yells of fear, rage, pain! There were people out there. Bear hadn’t been alone. After a long time, silence fell, absolute. Not a whisper, not a creak, not even the little hum of the watcher. Only a silence that stretched, stretched, went on and on for a long time. The watcher had shoved its huge bulk tight across the cubicle, like a metal wall. Only a thin slit at the top let in the light, the air. No one could get in to hurt her. Of course, she could not get out, but it would let her out when it was safe, she was sure of that. The Old Dark Man had said it would protect. The mechanism itself had said that. She sat down on the floor, leaning her forehead on her knees, moving in discomfort. The ring. Falyrion’s ducal ring. She was sitting on it.

  Carefully she wiped the dust from it, replaced it upon its cushion, put it in place upon its shelf. She was astonished at how exhausted she felt. Well, of course, she and the archers had not really slept in three days.

  More time went by. Her father, Falyrion, had always said, “Sleep when you can. Eat when you can. You may not be able to do either later on.” She had found this to be true. She took her father’s shift, pillowed her head on it, leaned back against the wall. She could smell his scent, still, after all these years.

  Later, new sounds wakened her, the heavy footfalls of someone coming down the stairs and moving about. The watching machine creaked, turned slightly, but remained against the cubicle. She dozed again until the sound of the machine woke her as it rolled away.

  She gathered her precious things and clutched them to her breast, struggling to get up and out of the cubby. She was stiff. She hurt. Her stomach hurt. She peered into the gloom. The room was almost unlighted. She could see one body on the steps. Not Bear. Someone else. No sounds, and then a voice she knew.

  “Alicia, my dear.”

  She turned. She knew that voice. She did not want to hear that voice!

  He was there, leaning slightly on the huge machine. It had opened to disclose a place inside it, a kind of cocoon, a padded, man-shaped cocoon, like a coffin . . .

  “It seems I had picked a good time to be wakened,” said the Old Dark Man. “Just in time to save my dear daughter.”

  She glared at him, lifted her hands. She held Falyrion’s things, her father’s things, in her hands. “I’m not!” she screamed. “I’m not your daughter. I told you! I’m Falyrion’s daughter. He was my father, not you, not you.”

  The enormous head turned; the huge jaw dropped enough that the thin lips of that wide, wide mouth could curve into a parody of a smile, like a horizontal slit in a melon, empty, mirthless, horrible. He did not laugh. She had never heard him laugh. His brows were like a cliff, his nose a promontory. He was monumental, ashy gray, old as time. His voice was the sound of rusty hinges, creaking doors, lids of rotten coffins.

  “Falyrion? Is that what your elder sister told you?”

  “I have no elder sister!”

  “Mirami!”

  “My mother!”

  “Oh, well, yes, both your mother and your elder sister. Both my daughter and your mother. You are the tenth or eleventh generation of creatures I have made to serve me and bear the next one in line. My first daughter was your great-great-great-how-many-greats-grandmother, and my next daughter from her was one great less, and so on until your mother, and from her, you, my daughter, will bear me my next daughter, who will be my first daughter’s so-many-greats-I-have-not-recently-counted-them-granddaughter, and on, and on, and on . . .” He made a noise: “Heh, heh, heh.”

  Was it meant as a laugh? “I don’t want you for a father,” she screamed, beyond herself, outside herself with rage. “I want him. I want him. She killed him. Your daughter, she killed him. So now she’s dead. I killed her. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t do that with you anymore, I won’t help you create someone else. You didn’t create me. He was my father. I know he was. I know he was. She said he was.”

  The voice changed, the face changed, stilled, became even more skull-like. “Mirami? Dead? Why?”

  “Because she killed him. He was mine and she killed him.”

  “I still needed her!” the huge voice howled. “She is my flesh! I need my flesh! You had no right to interfere in that way.” The Old Dark Man stood away from the machine. “Hold her,” he said.

  Quick as the strike of a snake, the machine reached long arms, like tentacles, like cables with hands at the ends, hands that took her and held her.

  “You will do whatever I tell you to do,” howled the Old Dark Man. “You have been overeager, undisciplined. In future you will do only what I tell you to do! You will be impregnated. You will give me another one of you, for later! Then you will give me flesh!”

  He came close to her, staring into her face. Horrid sickness bubbled up inside her; a flood rose in her throat. She dropped the things she was holding, her father’s things, to clutch at herself, to clutch at this sudden opening inside her, like a great thrusting flower of horrible pain, pushing up, swelling, bursting, petals going into every part of her! She writhed in the machine’s grasp and vomited, a great spew that drenched the Old Dark Man. Blood. Blood on the linen, the ribbons, blood on her precious things . . . her father’s things.

  “What is the matter with you?” the Old Dark Man said, glaring at her. “Are you ill?”

  “No!” she screamed defiantly, as honestly as she knew. “Just sickened at the thought of you.”

  The pain came again. Past the machine, on the floor, she saw the shattered fragments of a capsule. Jenger’s. It was Jenger’s. It had to be, that was the only one left. She had used the machine five times. First was Xu-i-lok. It had been long ago, not done well, but done. The woman had died, finally. All right. And the second time she hadn’t made any mistakes. The second time was Chamfray. She’d attached the capsule to a pigeon’s leg and sent it to Ghastain. Whoever took it from the pigeon and tried to open it would have squashed it, and released it, and the pigeon loft was close enough. So that one was all right. Then her archers had brought Jenger’s hairs from the tower; she’d used those to make one for Jenger. That’s the one she had left here. Then one for the abbot. The prior had sent the materials and she’d made it and returned it by pigeon inside the message tube. He was dead by now. All right. Then she had made one for Mirami. The one she’d kept material for ever since her father died. She’d done that one right, taken it to Ghastain herself. She couldn’t have mixed them up. Unless she’d mixed Marimi’s with Jenger’s before she left for Ghastain.

  If she’d done that . . . if she and Marimi were sisters, genetic sisters, maybe . . . maybe it had been close enough to kill her! No, and it wouldn’t have acted this soon, would it? It had only broken a short time ago when she saw Bear . . .

  She reached up to brush her hair from her face, remembering that night with Jenger, poor Jenger, he was gone, and she had brushed her hair away from the branch that . . . the branch that . . . did it catch her hair? Because someone was out there in the woods. No. It had been dark. Too dark. No one had seen, no one could have seen. Besides, it was too quick. The capsule had only broken a little while ago.

  No. No, the capsule broke before she fell asleep. She had been so tired that she had slept a long time. A long, long time. If the capsule had been Mirami’s, it wouldn’t kill her. Make her sick, maybe, but it wouldn’t kill her. Unless those hairs had not been Jenger’s hairs . . .

  It was the last coherent thought she had. She never heard the Old Dark Man raging through the cellars of the Old Dark House. She never heard him screaming at her, asking her what foolish, foolish thing she had done to allow her own methods to be used against her. “Mirror defense,” he cried. “Didn’t I teach you about mirror defense?”

  Later, he left the place in a rage, like a spout of black fire. Generations he had bred to hate Tingawa! Generation
s to kill those who had foiled the aims of his makers! Now it was all to start over. He would have to do it all again!

  Eyes from the forest watched the Old Dark Man go southward through the trees, a blazing black shadow, faster than anything natural could move. Eyes in the forest looked down at the Great Bear of Zol, lying dead among the leaves. Bear had been a great warrior. The thing that had defeated him was a greater warrior, but that thing was only partly human, and not the greater part.

  The emissary from Tingawa leaned down and put his hand on Bear’s body, bloodied as it was. “I am of your people,” he said. “I respect your clan. I will carry your soul to the clan of Zol in Tingawa. You are not forsworn and I will be your Xakixa.”

  He sat there for some little time, his head bowed, while the soul made up its mind to come with him. It was very confused and ashamed. The confusion often happened in battle. Men did not really expect to die. He guessed where the shame came from. Poor warrior. He had been tempted past his strength. The emissary kept his hand in place, forgiving whatever the cause had been. When the emissary knew, finally, that the soul had come to him, he arose and went into the Old Dark House. The monster he had seen would return here. The monster needed these machines, these devices. They had made the mistake of waiting for him before. They would not make that mistake again.

  The emissary had brought weapons with him to vaporize this house and all it contained; ancient devices, partly discovered, partly remade, that would make it impossible for flesh to live on this ground for a very long time. He stood looking at Alicia’s body for a long moment. The machine that had protected her had been left without instructions. It clicked and hummed as though troubled. He took a flame weapon from his clothing and burned the inside of the device, crisped it, broke the wires, the linkages, wrecked it. Whatever else he did, this must be done first, this thing must be disabled. He would not wait, not even while he and his remaining men took time to check through the monstrous house. Both the machine and the woman’s body would vaporize, along with everything else, but he would not gamble on their getting it done before the creature came back.