by Myers, Karen
“Shush, now,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Let me see.”
He walked over and looked into the little boat. It was half-filled with water, and he saw the woman he had expected to find, not moving. Her forehead had a deep gash that didn’t bleed.
I can’t take her. She’s too young to toddle all that way. What is she, three, maybe? Four?
Yeah, but I can’t leave her, either.
He ran both his hands through his hair. Then he bent down and picked the little girl up, and hauled her up the bank a ways until he could sit down with her—she was too heavy for him to carry for long.
He held her on his lap and wrapped his arms around her while she hiccuped and clung to him.
He stared at the boat while his mind worked furiously looking for a solution. The stern of the little boat floated up and down, pivoting against the wedged prow.
Do you suppose it still floats, really? If I could hide it somehow during the day, I could launch it tonight and be out of their reach.
She could come with me that way.
The warm, damp weight in his arms drew his look. She was sleeping in exhaustion.
He made his decision. He laid her down gently and shrugged off his pack and put it next to her.
There was no way to bury the mother and, if he could have, the next flood would just have taken her away. So he searched her pockets and took her rings for her daughter, then tilted the half-submerged boat enough to let her body float free downstream.
Once she was gone, he was sickened to discover a baby underneath. His eyes watered and he blinked, then he gritted his teeth and made himself pick the boy up and tuck his blanket tightly around him. Him, too, he consigned to the impersonal mercy of the river.
The oars were gone, but there was one pack still aboard, shoved into the narrow space at the prow and soaked. It contained a man’s clothing and heavy cookware. Her husband.
He glanced over at the sole survivor, asleep like the dead up on the bank. May they all meet together again, and wait for her.
The boat itself seemed to have no serious holes in it, though part of the upper strake on one side had broken off. He could see across the river, now, as the true sunrise approached.
If I can see them, they can see this boat. But if I submerge it in the shallows and weigh it down with mud, I can dig it out tonight and empty it, and we can float away.
I’ll need to cut a long pole to steer it.
He looked up to the grove beyond the crest of the flood line, making plans. The man’s pack up the bank to the kid, first, then sink the boat and scoop mud into it. Then one pack to the trees, kid to the trees, and then the other pack.
Better get moving.
CHAPTER 15
The two wizards reined in their horses on the crest of a small rise. The terrain had become more rolling in the last three days, and there was a blur on the western horizon that Zandaril claimed was their first glimpse of the Lang Nor mountains, the Red Wall.
Penrys was trying out the small chestnut gelding in her new string. She leaned far forward over her horse’s neck and scratched the sweaty spot on his forehead that always seemed to itch.
“Isn’t there supposed to be some little, insignificant river around here someplace? Where’s it hiding?”
“About twenty more miles that way, then we’ll turn northwest and follow it another six days or so to Seguchi Norwan.” Zandaril pointed due west. “Chang took us straight across the prairie from Jonggep to cut off a big curve—that’s why we had to bring our own cattle instead of stopping at the river towns to requisition supplies. We’ll catch up to it soon. Then you’ll see.”
“So you keep saying.”
The air had turned cool, under the cloudy sky. As far as her eye could roam, the grasses were sprinkled with the last of the autumn flowers, their colors muted in the dull light.
“Where is everybody?” she asked. “Where are all the farmers and towns?”
“East,” he said. “East, where the great cities are, and the granaries near them. Out west the settlements are all along the river and its tributaries. All this, out here in the grasslands, there’s no one—the winters are very bad, snow very strong. No trees for a reason. The towns cling to the river valleys, and send their produce downstream, and wait for spring.
“Soon the herds of wild cattle will come down from the hills for their winter pasture—surprised I am they’re not here already. I expected to see them by now.”
He used his hands to sketch two long horns reaching out from his head. “We make too much noise.” He pointed down at the expedition, marching in a shallow depression to their right.
He’s right. Penrys could hear the creak of the axles and jangle of metal clearly, and she didn’t doubt that every creature within earshot had headed elsewhere.
She followed that thought with an actual probe, scanning as far as she could reach in all directions, even back along their trail. No other horses or mules besides those with the expedition, no other herds of cattle—nothing but the small animals on and below the ground, and the hawks in the air.
No people, besides their own.
Zandaril watched her, his mind touching hers lightly and monitoring the probe.
“Where are they hiding?” he asked.
“Maybe he was the only one, this Veneshjug.”
He cocked his head at her. “Do you believe that?”
“No.”
“Is he shielded from you, somehow?”
Penrys shrugged.
Chang sent scouts out daily along the line of his march, screening the surroundings for several miles, but it wouldn’t be hard for a small number of people to lurk undetected. Still, it was the more serious threat that concerned them as they approached the river towns—word was beginning to come in again about the disturbance on the border, in Neshilik.
No traffic had come down the river or by land from the west in over a month. Riders skirting the Red Wall were discouraged from getting near the Gates by patrols much larger than their own parties, and better armed. The opinion from the river towns was that these were their old enemies the Rasesni, but they’d never behaved like this before, seizing and holding their old territory instead of raiding, and they hadn’t appeared east of the Seguchi Norwan in generations. The townsmen hadn’t tried to talk to them. It was the army’s job, they said, to take them on.
Members of a few of the clans who had family in Wechinnat, in northern Neshilik, had ventured off toward the old Red Wall crossings, but none had returned. Speculation was everywhere, but nothing confirmed.
The camp had felt on edge to Penrys, these last couple of days, with the soldiers sharpening their weapons and a buzz of energy in the air. She and Zandaril spent their evenings experimenting with the Rasesni’s gear, trying to puzzle out just what sort of weapon he had deployed. Chang was impatient with their lack of progress, and so was she.
“All you have to work with are moving and binding,” she blurted out, speaking her thought and startling Zandaril.
“Ah, that again,” he said.
“Yes, again, until we figure it out.”
“You said ‘destroying’ once, too.” Zandaril pointed out.
“Well, yes, technically. All that really means is you can kill a power-stone.” She started over. “Moving is ‘push,’ binding is ‘pull,’ and destruction is ‘fizzle.’”
Zandaril laughed.
“No, it really is. Not much happens except your expensive power-stone doesn’t work anymore and everyone looks at you as if you’re an idiot.”
“What happens if you try to push and pull at the same time?” he asked.
She held her arms out in front of her, with reins loosely looped around one of them and gripped her two hands while trying to pull them apart sideways. “Like that. Lot’s of tension, no result.”
“So what happens when you let go?”
“There’s a rebound, of course…” Her voice trailed off. “Could you make something of that? Put a stro
ng move and bind together, then suddenly release them?”
“Like two horses yoked to the same thing but pulling it in opposite directions, and then it breaks,” Zandaril suggested.
“Don’t know. Not sure how you would set that up, but I wonder if that might work.”
She glanced up at the angle of the sun. “Wish we could read those books. We’ll have to go look at those illustrations again.”
“Tonight’s not the night for it,” Zandaril said. “Rain coming. Lots of it.”
Penrys put aside the remains of her beef stew next to her bedroll with distaste. Despite the early afternoon halt before the soaking rains hit, it had been impossible to keep dry. The tent’s ground cloth sported muddy puddles, her clothing was sopping wet from tending to the horses and the dash out to the cook fires to fetch dinner, and both Hing Ganau and Zandaril had vanished, Hing to an evening with his men. Penrys could imagine the scene of drink and gambling he was anticipating in someone’s crowded tent.
She didn’t know what had happened to Zandaril. After their mad dash to strip the horses and stash the horse gear under shelter, the rain had hit as they watered them at the creek which paralleled their line of march. At least it had made the evening currying moot. Between them there were seven horses to care for—Zandaril’s four and the three she’d acquired from Veneshjug. The morning routine of watering and grooming lasted about an hour, but mostly they were allowed to graze morning and night when not on the move. Any supplemental grain was added in the evening, but not on a night like this when it would be soaked, even if served in a nosebag.
She’d ridden a number of times in Ellech—hard to avoid it while Vylkar was her sponsor—but the care had been left to the grooms. It was a pleasure to her now, to feel the relief of the horse she’d been riding all day, as she brushed and combed all the itches away. She had just the one road horse, while Zandaril had two, but at the pace they were traveling they held up fine under the daily work. The pack horses were getting fat and lazy by comparison.
Zandaril was somewhere around Hing’s wagon, she could tell. Every couple of days another sack vanished into the camp kitchen as the supplies were slowly consumed by the expedition, freeing up a little more space for their evening studies. The squadron was headed for garrison at Shengen Ferry, the biggest town on the river near their destination, Hing said. Keelboats had been ascending the Seguchi for their resupply, ever since they left Jonggep.
We should get an early start on our lessons, I suppose. Too much trouble tonight. It’s a night for feeling wet and miserable, like a drowned rat.
She snorted at the self-indulgent whine in her thoughts, and shook her head. A rustle at the tent flap drew her attention, and Zandaril stepped in, careful to contain the dripping of his cape as close to the entrance as possible.
He gave her a little formal bow, which raised her eyebrows. “I’ve come with an invitation,” he said. “Tonight is a holiday, in sarq-Zannib—the kuliqa, the turning home, when we turn on our outward migration and face the winter villages again. When the day and the night are of equal length.”
He glanced up through the tent’s ceiling at the hidden sky. “You may have to trust me for that.”
Penrys grinned. This sounded interesting. “What happens on this holiday?”
“Come and see,” he said, and waved his hand to beckon her outside.
CHAPTER 16
Zandaril scrambled after Penrys up the steps and into Hing Ganau’s wagon, hauling the tailgate up behind him and pulling the cover tight to keep the persistent rain from penetrating the waterproofed canvas.
The two of them dripped at the very end of the wagon, and he held up his hand to keep her from moving. “Wait.”
He pointed at the clean woolen robe he had been saving as an overrobe for winter use, draped now over one of the bean sacks. “I will turn my head, see? And you will drop your wet clothes here where we can hang them. Once you’re dressed, and I am dressed, then we will celebrate the holiday, dry and comfortable.”
He handed her a cloth to towel her hair and turned away, listening for the squelch as her clothing hit the wagon bed. When she cleared her throat uncertainly, he turned back. As he’d expected, his robe was long on her, not quite to the ground, and large enough that the sash he’d provided held it well-wrapped against her body. The dull blue was a good color, he decided. Her hair was wet and shaggy, but no longer dripping.
She picked up her sopping clothes and wrung them out one by one over the edge of the tailgate, then hung them over the rope he’d stretched where they could drip without soaking anything else. Out of long habit, Hing had found a slight upslope to park on, so any liquid that accumulated ran out the back.
“Now you must turn your back, please,” he said.
He wore his only other robe and it was soaked, but he’d laid out his formal robes. Good to get some use of them, and suitable for the kuliqa, the turning home. Since this included breeches and undergarments, he was much better clothed than his guest once he was done, but it couldn’t be helped. He left his hair bare like Penrys, to dry—too wet for the turban.
Once he’d hung his own discarded clothing, he offered Penrys her choice of his clean socks or his too-big tent shoes of soft leather, and she chose the long woolen socks.
“Well arranged,” she commented. “And I like your robes. For ceremonial occasions, I presume?”
“I debated whether to bring them, but then, maybe I would be the only Zan where I was, and wanted to represent my nation with dignity.”
“And very fine you look,” she added, in wirqiqa-Zannib.
Zandaril broke into a broad smile. “Yes! Let us spend this evening in the language of my home, if you will. In honor of the day.” It was a relief to shed the constant struggle with Kigali-yat, like removing a blanket from his thoughts.
“Come, take the guest-seat.” He gestured toward the bean sack, covered in the red cloth of life. “I will be host, under the sky.” He waited for her to sit cross-legged on the edge of jimiz, the scholar’s rug, before he lowered himself across from her to lean on the sack with the sky cloth.
Penrys glanced curiously all around. “You brought all of this with you?”
“You must pardon me—this is but a meager setting,” he said. “We should be under the great kazr with its central sky hole or, better, under the open sky if it were clear. All the clan assembled, at least those of the taridaj, with the noise of the yathbantudin, the children newly old enough, and the smells of the cooking fires.”
He pointed at the tiny brazier placed behind him, with its curl of resinous piney smoke, and her nostrils flared to catch the scent. “This is all I could bring, for my private celebration.”
“How many people would there be?”
“As few as eighty, perhaps, or as many as two hundred.” He smiled, picturing his relatives settling into place in clusters of families and friends, the gossip quieting down as the evening began. They would all be doing this tonight, the taridaj, those on the migration, all across his nation.
“The zarawinnaj, the leader of the migration, the taridiqa, would stand, and everyone then would hush, until all you could hear would be the fires crackling, and the bells of the herd leaders. He would announce the day, as if that were needed, and recite the tahaziqa, the traditional verses.”
He leaned forward. “The young matrons, when they can, try to time their births for the winter camps, so many would be pregnant, and oh, so proudly so, with their husbands behind them trying not to swagger.”
“There would always be some new yathbantudin that year, so the zarawinnaj would call each of them to the central fire and recite both lineage and accomplishments on this, their first taridiqa.”
He remembered his first time, his fear that he might bring dishonor on his family, and his relief that he had been judged worthy. Now, of course, he realized he had almost never heard of a failure. There was always something good to say about yathbantudin, some way they could fit in and serve the need
s of the clan.
“Is this the first time you’ve missed it?” Penrys asked.
“The fourth. I was ill-prepared the first time, and it was very sad for me, not joyous like it should be.” He gestured around the little space within the wagon. “But this time I am ready. Would you like to see? Few outsiders have ever attended.”
He felt both curiosity and sincerity in the light mind-touch they maintained. “Please, show me. I would be honored.”
“Well, as I said, it begins with smells, so many of them, but perhaps you can imagine with just this.” He opened the pouch near the brazier and added a pinch of yawd-suragh to the yawd-rub already burning. He could feel the muscles of his face relax in the familiar, dusty scent, but a sneeze from Penrys recalled him to his duties.
“And then the sound of the herd bells. I brought a little one.” He pointed to a brass ram’s bell, dangling on a string from the side of one of the bows supporting the roof canvas. He leaned sideways and shook the string to let it jangle freely, then picked up a short stick bent at one end with a leather-covered striking surface to tap it lightly like a rough gong, without activating the clapper.
He pointed at an improvised stand that displayed a portion of a scroll, his own preparation, the ink painted on with a brush of his own goat’s hair, the same one that had provided the skin. “The recitation of the verse.” He cleared his throat—he had never done this with someone else listening. “If you will allow me… Close your eyes and listen.”
When she had obeyed, he intoned,
“Under the sky is the fruit of the land and its beauties.
The little gods watch us to keep us in touch with the right.
Our faces are turned to the end of the year and our duties,
To strengthen the clan and bring it again to the light.”
As he recited, he tapped the bell with the stick in the rhythm of the verse, and marked the end with a louder strike that he let die away.
