Moving Water

by Kelso, Sylvia

  The western garrisons are little more than the Lady’s whim, or the army’s nursery. When Assharral looks for trouble, it is northward, from Phaxia. My ten guardsmen livened the brothels and enriched the gambling sharps, I spent half my days in military trivia and the rest at the caravanserai, the huge colonnaded courtyard with its crumbling brick walls and monstrous old keerphar trees and babble of a dozen different dialects, where the Sathellin camp in Etalveth, when they come at all.

  Only in the last two generations have they come. No one then knew why. There were many rumors, all baseless. Wild stories of a realm beyond Hethria, a cluster of realms called the Confederacy, wilder stories of a witch dwelling in Hethria, who dammed a great river to make the desert flower and bade the Sathellin carry wares from one to the other end of the world. There were curious tales of wizards, and another sea. Everyone knows there is only Gevber, which borders Assharral and Phaxia, and keeps the islanders of Eakring Ithyrx trading instead of invading us. I heard a good many yarns in that week I haunted the caravanserai, from grooms, sweepers, peddlers, merchants. All Assharrans. No caravan was in.

  I wrote to Callissa and sent the boys toy Hethrian spears, blunted to prevent massacre. I extricated two guardsmen from the civil jail and a third from an imputed paternity suit. The caravan master took to nodding, then to offering mint-tea. He had once visited Zyphryr Coryan and felt himself the Lady’s intimate.

  On the eighth morning my humoring of his humors paid off. A sweeper met us setting out to inspect a nearby signal tower and said, touching his brow, that the master thought I might be interested. Some Sathellin were due.

  “Nomads,” I told the blank-faced fort commandant. “Homeless. Masterless. Have you never thought, what a perfect communication line for a spy?”

  His jaw dropped. He never paused to wonder what you would spy on in Kemrestan, or what value it would be at such a transit’s end. We rode out past Etalveth’s wattled sand-levees, to where the works of man sink into insignificance, and confronted the pebbly curve of sky that is the threshold of Hethria.

  The caravan was approaching from slightly north of west. At first it was only a snailing dust smear, like an infantry column in extended march. Then it became a slowly swelling red cloud. Then blurs patched the fog. Then heads stuck out at long intervals, black-turbaned heads. Then the bobbing ears of horses, donkeys, mules appeared, interminable squadrons roped in sixes and sevens to each other’s pack-saddles, with a Sathel riding at each troop’s head. They ride side-saddle, controlling their mounts with a stick tapped on quarters or neck. “Barbarians,” said the commandant, comfortably superior. “Never heard of a bit.”

  Most rode donkeys, but here and there was a horse of another breed to the heavy, shaggy clumpers laden with water-skins, fodder and firewood, along with human goods and provender. And these horses, in the days before Zem and Zam made horses a forbidden luxury, I would not have disdained myself. Most were black: fine-boned, blaze-faced, with a proud bearing and a look of tempered stamina. But at the very rear of the caravan another kind caught my eye.

  It was more like a war-horse, tall, well-boned, though so finely proportioned it did not seem heavy, with splendid shoulders and rein and a fine if placid carriage of the head. It was gray. A silver dapple-gray, like a piece of moonlight come to life.

  The rider, swathed to the eyes in blue robe and black turban, resembled all three accompanying Sathellin, except that he had no stick to control his beast. I watched him as they rode by. Then, thinking it would make a pretext for scout-work, I said, “I wonder if there’s a price on that horse.”

  The commandant laughed. “With Sathellin,” he said, “there’s a price on a sister’s virginity. Just so long as it’s high.”

  * * * * *

  I went down to the caravanserai at dusk. A pretty time, in any camp. The fires gild the dust, there is a comfortable smell of cooking and off-saddled beasts, the babble of a long day relived in talk, a romance in the mundanities of picketing. The caravan-master was delighted to sip mint-tea and school me in the scandalous habits of Sathellin, while through his door arch I watched horses, donkeys, mules being watered, and the blue-robed figures that passed with their swift, gliding walk. But nobody brought a gray horse to drink.

  Presently I disengaged to take a stroll. Some Sathellin were already haggling. In this or that room tallow lamps caught a vehement mouth, a waving finger, an eager, skeptical, impassive, wary curve of cheek, the gleam of metal or sheen of fabric, the glitter of other, more precious stuff. One buyer was sampling wine. It ran redder than heart’s blood in the glow of the lamp. But nowhere, loose or picketed, could I catch a glimpse of a gray horse.

  Having patrolled the entire court, I was forced to clumsier tactics. As the next Sathel passed I halted him and said, “When your caravan came in, there was someone riding a gray horse. Do you know where he is?”

  Though he was a mere blur in the dusk, I sensed a withdrawal, a stiffening. “Why was you wanting to know?”

  “I rather,” I said, “liked the look of the horse. I should like to see it again.”

  “Ah,” he said at last. He stopped another passerby. I caught only a quick run of words, ending in one intelligible phrase. “Thorgan Fenglos.” The Moon-faced King.

  Sometimes there is vantage in surprise. “Thorgan Fenglos,” I repeated. “Is that the man? Or the horse?”

  One Sathel twitched. The other let out a snort. Both seemed to withdraw. Then the second said under his breath, “Ah, well.” He jerked a thumb. “Down the end there. Last keerphar.”

  I had walked past. Walking back, I found a door had been masked by the tree’s wide, gnarled trunk. I ducked under the prop that upheld one huge low limb, stumbled on a hump of root, and looked up into a rectangle of deeper darkness from which came a faint silver gleam, and the sound of someone humming, as you do at a pleasant task.

  It was a man’s voice, clear, low, with a lurking gaiety. Under it ran a brisk rhythmic brushing noise. As I came up the humming broke off. The voice said, “Stand over, then.” Hooves clopped on stone, and a faint tingle coursed my neck. Whatever the context, it is impossible to mistake the tone of a military command.

  I hesitated in the keerphar shadow, oddly ill-at-ease, wishing for light. The humming ceased. The voice said with that good-humored authority, “If you don’t fancy Assharran water, madam, that’s all I can do for you.” A shape came swiftly from the doorway, straightening and checking so we stood face to face.

  He was tall, taller than I, and even in Assharral I am no dwarf. I could see only the shape of robe and turban, but two things struck me at once. His right shoulder was somehow mis-held, and he showed no surprise.

  “Yes?” he said. The lurking gaiety persisted. “Were you looking for me?”

  “If you own a gray horse,” I answered, “yes.”

  “Fengsaeva?” A low chuckle. “Oh, she owns me.”

  My wits must have been quickened by something in the air: the Sathel strangeness, the freakish search. Or some infection from him. I am not usually witty. Nor, usually, am I recklessly cordial. “Then perhaps,” I said, “she would permit you to eat with me?”

  The amusement had deepened. “Why not eat here? Then you can inspect us both at once.”

  I should have been startled. Later, I was, and not merely by the idea of dining with a horse. At the time I replied as if it were commonplace, “A pleasure. But I fear I’m not an owl.”

  With another half-chuckle he turned on his heel. “Move up, madam.” His shape vanished. There was a flash, a flare, I was still wondering how he could be so quick with flint and tinder when the door filled with lamplight, and he called, “Come in.”

  The mare’s quarters nearly filled the door. His voice said, “She won’t kick.”

  Nettled, I stepped by. A tiny traveling kettle sat on a clay brazier. Saddlecloth and saddlebags had been tossed out on the floor, a vague heap of belongings lay beyond. As any soldier would, I looked for his weapons. And could not fin
d a knife, let alone a sword.

  “I don’t carry one.” He was stooped over a saddlebag, the amusement open now. He tweaked out a cup. Left-handed, I noted as my wits rallied. The mare blew gently on my elbow, distracting, reviving me.

  “A self-invited guest,” I said, “should add something to the board. And at his host’s behest.”

  “Very good.” He turned around. I had the most curious idea it was not the offer he meant. “Then in honor of Assharral, we might pass up mint-tea for once. You’ll favor me, Captain, if you relieve that old rogue Langis of a measure of wine.” The laughter flickered. “Tell him Thorgan Fenglos asked for it.”

  I retreated, in ostensible good order. The wine-seller, in a way that had my complete sympathy, gave me the measure without a word, a demand for payment, a glance at my face. At the time it seemed quite reasonable.

  “This,” said my host, “should come after eating. Let’s begin.”

  I forget what we ate, though I have the clearest vision of the mud-walled room, the mingled smell of horse and burning tallow and traveler’s distance from his gear, the mare’s big black liquid eyes and shimmering face poised over us, the lamplight that made everything mysterious, indistinct. We ate in silence. Then he filled the cups, left-handed, as he had done everything else, poured a drop on the floor, drank, and let out a long breath.

  “From Stiriand,” he said. “Gesarre valley, I should think.”

  “You know where this wine is made?” I could not help myself.

  He nodded. For once the underlying laughter was quite gone. “Yes,” he said softly. “I know.”

  I was still deploying words when he supplanted them.

  “It comes from Everran. A kingdom west of Hethria. The mare’s not for sale, she belongs to a friend. But then, you didn’t really want to buy her, did you? And I’m Thorgan Fenglos because of this.”

  He had loosed a fold of turban to eat. Now he pulled it all off in a tangle and lifted his face to the lamp, revealing the huge scar that darkened his right cheek. It also, for the first time, showed me his eyes. They were narrow, almond-shaped, alive as sun on running water. Deep, vivid green.

  “How did I get it?” He raised his brows at my dumbstruck face. “The same way I got that.” He slapped his right arm, still swathed in the robe, and the swing told me it was limp. Paralyzed. “Hotheadedness.” His eye-corners crinkled. “Military hotheadedness. But then, you knew I was a soldier when you heard me speak.”

  Whatever my face said made him grin. “A friend of mine once did the same to me. ‘Too full of How and Why to choose a First. I’ll tell then, and save all our tongues.’ So now you’ve found what you were looking for, why were you looking for it?”

  I must have swallowed nothing at least five times. He had turned to the mare. When I did not answer, he went on easily, “The only reason I came to Assharral is . . . to see the sea.”

  “The. . . .” I croaked.

  “The sea. They always said there was another east of Hethria. I didn’t want to spoil it by looking. I wanted to see with eyes.”

  Some basic inconsistency in this eluded me. I still felt as if the entire Morhyrne had hit me in the wind.

  He went on, not quite gravely, “You’ll grow used to it. Getting answers before you speak, I mean. And now, why were you looking for me?”

  Finally I managed to assemble something resembling wits. “I have”—orders was too tactless—“an invitation from the Lady Moriana. She wishes you to . . . visit her.”

  Those eyes danced, making me perfectly sure he knew just how I had paraphrased.

  “I shall be delighted,” he said gravely, “to visit the Lady Moriana. Whoever she is. So long as she lives near the sea.”

  * * * * *

  With that same alarming clairvoyance he forestalled awkwardness by saying, “You can leave me here overnight. I won’t decamp. But I hope you don’t need to travel post-haste, because I can’t leave the mare. She’s unbroken, you see.” I did not see at all, and could find no way of saying so. “So we’ll meet,” he finished crisply, “at the town gate tomorrow morning.” And finding I had answered, “Sir,” without the slightest hesitation, I knew that if he had been a soldier, it was in the highest rank.

  I was glad we did not travel post, because in those weeks’ escort duty I rediscovered Assharral. The Kemrestani herds of long-tailed sheep and flamboyant black and white goats, I learnt through his eyes the splendor of their vivid splashes on the dun and tawny wilderness. The Darrian watermen drawing with a yoke of tall red bow-horned oxen backing to and from the well, I had never noticed their ingenuity. Nor had I appreciated the iron-miners who pump water by some kind of screw and use their spill to reshape the countryside. The Climbrian dancers, fifteen-year-old living candelabra in cloth of gold, ruby and emerald tinsel, with headdresses high as themselves, I had never plumbed the beauty in their swaying mime of Assharral’s legends, Langu the snake that ate the Ocean, Fengela the Moon-mother who stopped a flood in the River of Heaven with a net of her branching hair. The make of a Climbrian stump-jumping plough, the ram-headed Kemrestani cups, the style of a Thangar axeman’s cut, the blue-spotted Darrian cattle-dogs, he showed me it all. At first I was uneasy. But I soon understood, with the perception beyond reason, that this was not the scrutiny of a spy. It was more like that insatiable innocent curiosity of a boy on holiday.

  Finally he caught my sidelong look as he watched a pair of herd-boys wrestle a fractious calf, and grinned. “I’ve been so long in Hethria. Everything’s new.”

  I revolved openings on that topic. Then, as by Los Morryan, an image formed in my mind. A wide, barren, hard, hot, red and golden country, beautiful in its savage way, scattered with staging point farms and nomad savages. And thrusting from its heart a cluster of rock domes, bubbles of rusty vermilion against a harsh blue sky.

  “Eskan Helken. Someone else does live there, but she’s not a witch. Aedr is the proper name. Just as it is for me.”

  I concentrated hurriedly between my horse’s ears.

  “Yes, we did dam a river and run the water south into Hethria. It was a femaere’s own job.” In old Assharran it means an evil spirit. Catching my look, he grinned. “First to get her interested, then to build the thing. I was never my own engineer before. It’s a cursed sight easier to say, ‘Build me such-and-such,’ than to go out and do it yourself. That’s what kept me so long in Hethria. But it was worth it. If only to open the road for the ‘Sathellin.’ ”

  My mouth opened too. Two generations they’ve been coming. . . . It danced in my head. Yet the lamp had revealed a man of seeming early middle age, forty, no more, deep-lined face, gray in coal-black hair.

  “Don’t worry.” I could hear the smile. “Aedryx live longer than ordinary people, that’s all.”

  I should have followed that up. A mysterious, powerful—wizard—led like a pony into the heart of Assharral? It would sound Alarm to the merest ranker, let be Captain of the Guard. But I never even paused to wonder why, instead, I thought about the Sathellin.

  “No, they don’t come to spy,” he said. “Or to drain gold from Assharral. They do take some things. Seeds, new animals. Your silk. But that’s not why the road was built.”

  This time, I had to ask. “For what, then?”

  He was gazing ahead, though not at the wide lands of Kemrestan. “Roads,” he said softly, “are for carrying ideas.”

  What sort of ideas? I wondered warily.

  “Oh,” he said, “nothing dangerous.”

  This has to stop, I thought furiously. I can’t call my thoughts my own!

  “Forgive me,” he said. “It’s so simple, and saves so much time. And living with—Fengthira—I’ve grown used to it. It’s just Scarthe, you know, reading your verbal thoughts. But if it worries you,” contritely, “I won’t do it again.”

  After two or three swallows I managed to ask, “Scarthe?”

  “One of the Mind-Acts. Ruanbrarx. The aedric arts.”

  He watched a red kit
e plane across the road. You are, I told myself, Captain of the Lady’s Guard. You should be equal to this.

  “We call them rienglis,” I said. “Morglis is the other sort, with sharper wings.”

  Not at all startled, he glanced round, giving me a rare look full in his eyes, which were bright with interest, and oddly pleased. And seemed again to have a life of their own, a motion as if the very irises were awake.

  “Morglis? That’s Black-nose, to me. A southern cape.” Then he nodded at my sword-belt. “Do your smiths use tempered or laminated steel?” And next moment we were deep in military technicalities.

  More than technicalities. Presently I found myself saying, “Of course, the Guard’s mostly a parade unit. But you have to pass up the real stuff, when you’re a married man—”

  I broke off, more shaken than by anything he had done. Even to myself I had never admitted how I saw the Guard, or what had put me there. But he only nodded, with sympathy, understanding, and a strange touch of envy in his voice as he said, “Everything has its price.”

  * * * * *

  That made me wariest of all the surprises he handed me, and those began with our first bivouac. It was a post-house, whence the usual swarm of ostlers rushed at sight of the livery, to be taken aback on finding a desert Sathel in our midst. And more than taken aback when he said as he slid to earth, “Thanks, I’ll see to the mare myself.”

  I opened my mouth. Shut it. Bade my senior file-leader, “Carry on, Zyr,” and followed the mare and her rider and the inn’s protesting rank and file stableward.

  “Water,” he told them. “A loose box. Hay. Handful of oats. That’s all.” He bedded her down. Then he beckoned the head groom and said sternly, “For your own sakes, see nobody fools with her.”