The Waters Rising

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “I want to know how it feels when you’re like that.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Do you have to learn to breathe underwater or is it just like breathing air when you’re born?”

  “When you, you know, do you do it in your human shape or do you have to do it . . . you know?”

  No, Xulai thought. No, no, no, I don’t know.

  “What happened to the baby when you changed?” asked Precious Wind. “Did it . . . ?

  “I DON’T KNOW!” said Xulai.

  From among those who asked the most sensible questions, they chose the two couples who seemed most devoted to one another, for, as Xulai vehemently pointed out, if they were not devoted to one another, the difficulties caused by their families and friends would separate them soon and permanently. The four swallowed the eggs. They subsequently had endless discussions with the Tingawan women concerning the rules for disposition of future sea eggs: where, to whom, how many.

  “I understand your sister’s feelings, but you may not give sea eggs to your sisters and brothers.”

  “Your cousin breeds chickens, not people. Inbreeding in this case is not a good idea.”

  “It doesn’t matter what your father said, you may not sell sea eggs. Anyone selling sea eggs or forcing someone else to do so will be sent to Tingawa and put in a cage at the shoreline, and stay there until death or drowning, whichever comes first. If it was suggested by someone else, that person will be alongside in another cage. Tell him we said so.”

  “Remind your aunt that she will be dead long before the waters rising has affected her. No sea eggs except to young people.”

  Xulai thought of having to repeat this over and over in every community they came to and despaired. Precious Wind seemed merely to get thinner and more tightly controlled with each passing day.

  Eventually, the small cavalcade left for Woldsgard: Abasio and Xulai in the wagon, the warriors and Justinian mounted on Valesgard horses, another small wagon carrying their gear. Precious Wind rode separately, ahead of them, with the wolves. She had, she said, been training them to recognize the Old Dark Man, by smell and by sight.

  “By smell?” Abasio wondered.

  “The emissary picked up a bit of the creature’s clothing from the cellar. The wolves have good noses. They’ll alert us to anything strange. If necessary, if we get into a . . . confrontation . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t want to think what might happen to her pack if, indeed, they got into a confrontation.

  Every few miles they encountered relay riders from the Eastwatch Tower of Wold, all saying the same thing. There had been no sightings on or near the road. If the information had been otherwise, the group would have retreated to Wellsport. They were not yet ready for confrontation.

  When they approached Riversmeet, however, the message changed. There had been sightings, not confirmed, near the place where the Old Dark House had once been. People with distance glasses watching both from Eastwatch Tower and from villages farther up the cliff face had seen a tall dark something moving about in the forest and along the eastern slopes of Altamont. The wagon turned toward Woldsgard, extra horses were hitched, and the pace quickened. Precious Wind took the wolves uphill, into the forest of Wold. She was carrying the thing master, the ul xaolat. She thought it better to feed the wolves with wild game than to upset the Wold farmers by killing their livestock. Once at the gard, Precious Wind would house the wolves and feed them as she had done on the ship.

  It was Abasio who first called their attention to the silence. It was summer; the weather was warm. Normally there were sounds in the forest: the young that had been born in the spring would be learning to find food and shelter and water. Some would learn to gather nuts, others to graze on grass or browse tender leaves, and all that activity was accompanied by a constant, quiet chitter-chatter of squirrels, the calls of mate to mate, the territorial songs of birds, the nighttime twitter of bats and hoot of owls, the rustle of fallen leaves or underbrush where small, furry things hunted or sought hiding places from hunters. Now, however, the forest was silent, as though every creature in it was burrowed as deeply as possible, hidden as well as possible. No creature called any attention to itself.

  “I can almost smell the thing,” Xulai murmured to Abasio, clenching her hands together to keep them from shaking. “I can imagine what it must have been like during the Big Kill. I find myself wanting to stop thinking so it can’t find me.”

  “The library helmet says people took drugs then,” said Abasio, putting his arm around her. “They took drugs so they couldn’t think, but the slaughterers found them anyhow. We have unconscious thoughts that drugs don’t stop and the creatures could find. Remember what Precious Wind told us. At the end, it didn’t kill only the people who thought wrong things, it killed anyone who wasn’t thinking the right thing.”

  Silently, he was thinking about losing Xulai. He would not. Duty or no duty, saving the race or the world, he would not. And if she was determined, then by all that was holy she would not go alone. Not the way Ollie had gone. Never again. Xulai would not go alone.

  They stopped for the night at the Queen’s Skep in Hives. They found the small town locked, as though against a plague. Justinian had to convince the innkeeper that he could safely provide for them, and later that they could open to Precious Wind, who had come to report.

  “The ul xaolat is finding game all too easily,” she said, her face twisted in revulsion. “I have never before seen hungry deer lie with their heads down, unmoving, half-starving, with browse all around them. The wolves know of the creature, as well. They can smell it. All of them turn into the wind, pointing, like trained hunting dogs. Men are dead, their families are dead, the wolves and ravens have found their bodies. We need to bring this to an end very soon.”

  “The power source for your locator?” Abasio asked. “Is it mobile?”

  “The original device was designed to store power from the wind. As I said, we’ve made one that uses human power. We can crank it or pedal it.”

  “The Edges had solar power,” said Abasio reminiscently. Also, the Edges had walls. And places dug below where monsters could not come. And they had weapons. The warriors that attacked the Old Dark House had weapons, and what good did they do?

  “We have solar and wind power in Tingawa,” she replied. “But for this, we need the power source to be totally reliable, even if clouds cover the sun or no wind blows. The locator sends out a pattern. If it finds that pattern, a signal comes back and shows up on the screen. We need to see that signal move, so we know it’s the creature, not some rag or bit of clothing or flesh it has lost or discarded.” She shook her head in frustration. “I could almost use the wolves for this! They only tell me the direction, though. Not the distance. Two men can keep the locator constantly powered all day or all night without being overtired. Four can keep it running night and day. Theoretically, we could put it in your wagon, Abasio, and keep it running as we moved, but it works more accurately if it is set up and established in one place where we can determine the fewest possible . . . things in the way.”

  “Interference,” said Abasio. “That’s what things in the way are called. Like human beings. Animals.”

  “Whatever it or they are called, we want to avoid them. So, we plan to unpack it high atop a tower at Woldsgard and use that as our locator base. We have far-talkers with us, so the people running it can keep in touch with us.”

  “So you’ll locate the thing; then what?” asked Justinian.

  “Then we’ll do something to entice it to the place we want it, when we want it,” said Precious Wind. She laughed shortly. “Meantime praying it does not find us in a place we don’t want it before we do want it.”

  “You’ll look for a pattern,” said Xulai.

  “We’ll pray for a pattern,” said Precious Wind. “A pattern lets us make a plan. If there is none, our task will be very much more difficult. And I’m not telling you anything else, because we don’t wa
nt anyone at all to know anything at all.”

  “Including me,” said Xulai to her father. I wonder if I will survive this? I really don’t want to die. I’d like to have . . . my child. I’m very curious about my child. Of course, now that the sea eggs are being distributed, I’m not so important as I was before . . . They can risk me now.

  “It seems unending,” said Justinian. “The Before Time, resurrected. The Big Kill, starting over.”

  Precious Wind put her hand on his and squeezed it. “There is only one of them left, Duke of Wold. He, it, cannot go on much longer. Mirami is gone. Alicia is gone. The Old Dark House is gone. Even if we fail, there will be an end to it.”

  “But at a terrible price for Wold,” he said.

  “And Rancitor?” asked Xulai. “If he could use flesh from Mirami or Alicia, can’t he use Rancitor? Or Hulix?”

  Precious Wind repeated monotonously, “There will be an end to it.”

  Oldwife Gancer met the wagon at the Woldsgard gate. Xulai leapt from the wagon to hug her, seeing over her shoulder that the courtyards and stables swarmed with livestock, with wagons, with farm families, all in from the farms and behind the walls for protection.

  “Oh, child, you look . . . so grown up. I keep remembering my baby. You and little Bartelmy.” She broke into tears.

  “Bartelmy?” asked Xulai. “Oldwife, what about . . .”

  “That thing got him,” she said. “They found what was left of him. That thing killed him. And it got Black Mike.” Weeping, she led Xulai and Precious Wind into the castle.

  Prince Orez came out to meet them, embracing Justinian as a long-separated brother. “I’m sure you know how things have gone,” he said, motioning to include them all. “We feared you might be attacked on the way. We’ve lost too many people. The thing takes someone every night. Here, there, no reason for it. Time enough to talk about that later. Come in, there’s food prepared. Our people will take care of the horses.”

  “One of us has a wolf pack,” said Justinian.

  “I know. We’ve received messages.”

  “How?” asked Justinian. “No pigeon can cross the sea!”

  Orez said, “Before Abasio left the abbey, he sent pigeons to Etershore and here to Woldsgard saying that Precious Wind had left a far-talking device here. She had brought it from Tingawa originally and had used it to keep in touch with Tingawa since Xulai was a child. The message told me where it was and how to use it to receive messages from Tingawa. I’ve been getting them every now and then, only a few words, but enough so I could be sure we had prepared for the wolves. There’s a little gate in the back that opens into an orchard. She can bring them in there. We’ve cleared out a storage building for their den. Whenever she’s ready, we have meat hanging for them.”

  Abasio remembered the gate, the poppleberry orchard. He went to find Precious Wind, and once they had the wolves settled they joined the others in a dining hall near the kitchens.

  Orez was saying to Justinian, “When you left, Justinian, we got here within the time you allowed for. We beat the troops from the abbey by several days. I was a bit confused when they showed up, until one of the commanders advised me his orders had come from the prior, not the abbot. The commander, a Colonel Sallis, was perfectly reasonable. I showed him the authorization; your people here verified it, and he realized his men weren’t needed here. I told him I’d send a pigeon to get him some new orders and I asked him to take his men back to Netherfields, where they’d have room to camp and probably find some supplies. They were, I’m thankful to say, out of the way and off the road before King Gahls’s men arrived.”

  “Not so easy with them, I imagine,” snarled Justinian.

  “Getting rid of the royal armor was a bit harder. I’d taken the precaution of closing the gates and having most of my men inside on the walls, with the horses well up in the hills, where they couldn’t be seen. I didn’t want them thinking Wold had been invaded but I did want them to know it was defended. Their troop commander was surprised to learn that Wold was not part of the king’s territory. He had evidently received orders through Mirami or that old adviser of hers. I told him the king’s stepson would no doubt be eager to see them in Kamfels, which was a good thing as we had no room or provisions for them here, even overnight. I’m told they camped hungry just beyond the Stoneway and took several days to get themselves over to Kamfels. The ferry couldn’t handle many of them, so most of them had to ride all the way east around Ragnibar Fjord, and the road’s only wide enough for two horses abreast.”

  “Hulix?” asked Justinian. “What’s going on there?”

  “Evidently he didn’t need them either. They soon went back to Ghastain, most of them by the long, slow northern route along the river that runs into the fjord and then up onto the highlands by the forest trails. A few of them stayed for a while, then came back this way later. The ones who passed by here told us Hulix was very ill. You know about the explosion south of us?”

  “We were told,” said Justinian. “The Old Dark House was destroyed.”

  “Shortly after that Hulix fell ill. Strangely enough, we heard the same thing happened to the king’s son, Crown Prince Rancitor. About that same time, too.”

  Justinian looked at Precious Wind, who shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s possible the same machine that . . . maintained the . . . thing also maintained . . . but that would mean . . .”

  “It would mean that the Old Dark Man was the father of Mirami’s children, or had a part in fathering or creating them,” said Xulai. “In both cases, Mirami needed a son: Hulix to inherit Kamfels, Rancitor to inherit Ghastain. Was something in the Old Dark House helping to keep them both . . . living?”

  Precious Wind looked at the scarf she held in her hands, twisting it as she thought. It had become a habit recently, this wringing of the hands, or things in hands, though not yet her mind. Better her hands than her mind! “Most organisms are self-monitoring. If our bodies need something, some kind of feedback mechanism inside us tells us we are thirsty or hungry, or need to sleep, or it adjusts the flow of this hormone or that secretion. If we suppose the Old Dark Man’s creations were not self-monitoring, if their organs or components required adjusting from time to time, those adjustments might have been triggered remotely . . .”

  “Remotely?” asked Justinian.

  “Like the far-talker,” said Abasio. “It is triggered by a device that converts sound or writing into waves and sends those waves through the atmosphere to another device that converts the waves into instructions, or a voice, or whatever.”

  Precious Wind nodded slowly. “A signal could have been sent directing some organism, or some tiny mechanism, to adjust whatever it was. If the adjustment didn’t happen, the organism might fail, eventually.”

  Xulai’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “So Mirami’s brood were not human!”

  “In talking about Mirami, we always thought in terms of human genetics,” Precious Wind confessed. “Even though we knew the Old Dark Man was not entirely flesh, I don’t think any of us thought Mirami could be partly . . . mechanical. That’s not the right word. Something more refined than mere mechanics, but still . . . not flesh.”

  “If both Hulix and Rancitor die, it solves two minor problems,” said Abasio. “Lok-i-xan will be delighted.”

  “Poor King Gahls,” Xulai murmured. “Not an heir to his name.”

  “He’s still not too old to get one,” said Hallad, Prince Orez. “Now that no one is poisoning every attempt. He may not know just how far Mirami had gone. If Hulix dies, Kamfels can be garrisoned by my men. Perhaps, once everything . . . settles down, I’ll make a visit to the court. He might be grateful, even conciliatory.”

  Justinian asked, “What about our defenses here? I left you little enough to work with, my friend. I’m afraid the years took their toll on Wold’s readiness and mine.”

  “You are looking very fit and you have some good men,” the prince said. “Perhaps both you and they needed o
nly to be reminded of that fact. We’ve brought your Men of the Mountain into Woldsgard and sent some of the old hands north to the pinnacle; we have scouts watching your borders. And I’m not leaving here, my men aren’t leaving here, until everything is settled for the foreseeable future. I understand that the future beyond that is to be strange and wonderful in ways we have never dreamed of, but we’ll have years to talk of that later . . .” He marked this in his memory, to remind Justinian of it in happier times. Or to forget it, if there were none. “As to our defenses here: we are no longer threatened by prior or queen. Only the creature threatens us and we assume it has no allies. It came here long enough to kill some of our people, but it will come alone if it comes at all. There have been no recent sightings close by.

  “Lately, it stays mostly in that area where the Old Dark House was and up the eastern slope from there. We’ve taken the advice received from Tingawa. If it attacks, the archers will shoot only flame arrows. We are told that pistols will probably not hurt it, but fire may. We have catapults that can throw bigger lumps of fiery stuff that sticks to what it hits. We also received a visit from a Tingawan armorer who came here after he and his fellows had destroyed the Old Dark House. He gave us some small cannons and showed us how to use them to fire the same kind of stuff. We’ve always stayed away from guns, big ones at any rate. Using them brings us very close to the ban on machines. However, they are easier to aim than catapults and since he left the things with us and taught us how to use them, we’ll use them if we have to. I hope we won’t need them, for your plan is to meet it some distance away.”

  “That is the plan, as I understand it,” said Justinian without expression.

  “Not that we’ve been told much,” said Abasio.

  “A secret is best kept between two people when one of them is dead,” said Hallad, staring at Precious Wind. “Such has always been my understanding.”

  “And mine,” said Precious Wind.

  Abasio felt something was very wrong with the plan. This monster was not supposed to be able to think about maintenance. And yet it could think about creating subordinate creatures that would receive signals from the maintainer? It could modify the device to do that?