Moving Water

by Kelso, Sylvia

  Terror clenched on me. Fever. Delirium. I had seen men go mad in Stirsselian, break bonds, fell orderlies, chase physicians with half a tent pole, or just run screaming out in the swamps where the demons in their minds drove them to die or drown. And this was a wizard. Burning up with the fever; we had to get to him. But if ordinary men in delirium were capable of such things, what could a wizard do?

  Sivar was still goggling. Fit for nothing else, I thought. And was undeceived.

  He said, albeit shakily, “I could get Amver—Karis—Wenver ’n Zyr—if we rushed him—”

  “No.” Mere suggestion showed me the impossibility. “He’d kill us before we were in range.” My mouth was dry. The alternative loomed, inevitable, terrible. “I’ll have to—try it myself.”

  Sivar fussed worse than Callissa would. We were still wrangling when the first scribes appeared. Furiously I said, “If you won’t go and you won’t let me go, you’ll have to come with me. If I—” I swallowed hard. “If that happens—oh, I don’t know! Come on.”

  We wobbled down the stairs, me with helmet pulled down in case of missiles, Sivar quaking at my back. Nothing happened. There was no sound. But the very air was thick with menace, choking as the miasma of a Stirsselian swamp.

  We turned the second-last corner. Faint red light dyed the walls. Then came a crash, a ricochet, a shower of pattering fragments, and as we flew back coal shards spun and tinkled about our feet.

  “Stay here.” I dug Sivar’s fingers from my surcoat. “Here, you puddinghead! I’m armed. You’re not.”

  I stepped from cover. Another shot whistled past my ear, a third thumped into my right shoulder and I stumbled back under its force. Recovering, I advanced. A rain of missiles pelted me, quite like catapult fire, except it was too fast. He has, I thought grimly, to run out of ammunition sometime.

  The arch appeared. Flattening to the wall I got my head, eyelash by eyelash, round the jamb.

  Light tore up in a huge ragged blaze, a hedge of fire across the wet stone floor. I shrank back, and in the movement understood. He had swept the straw into a ring and kindled it, walling himself behind the flame. I peeped again.

  Red tendrils leapt and lashed toward the upper dark, smoke coiled everywhere, catching my lungs, blocking my sight. Then he spoke.

  My spine turned to a rod of ice. Sivar had been right. He did not sound human. It was a snake’s voice, low, sibilant, inflectionless. But charged with more than serpent’s malignity.

  “I see you,” it said. “I know what you are.” He hissed. Fire leapt almost to the roof. “Come, then. Come and . . . meet with me.”

  When Sivar’s hand plucked my surcoat I was more than ready to heed. We shrank down the passage and the firelight pursued us, red, ravening tongues of flame. We were at the stairfoot before I reclaimed my wits.

  “It’s only straw.” I held Sivar by the collar. “It has to burn out sometime, however it’s lit.”

  Luckily Krem arrived just then. We bolstered ourselves with each other’s presence till the fire-glare began to wane, then I pulled off my surcoat and cloak. Sivar said desperately “Sir, he’ll be worse now—” But I had had time to think.

  “If he’s out of his mind,” I said, “it’s not how you mean. He’s delirious. Seeing things. More frightened than we are. If I can just make him recognize me. . . .”

  This time I did not slink, I marched straight down the tunnel into the waning fireglow, boots grating on the stone, and as I passed the arch I used the name he had given me.

  “Beryx!” I said.

  The blaze had died to embers, the coal heaps were beyond his chains’ radius, and he must have exhausted himself beyond reaching them by magic. He had been trying to hook a lump over with the stool. When I spoke he leapt in the air. Then he sprang backward. Then he seemed to freeze, limb by limb, staring at me.

  “Beryx,” I repeated.

  He started to back. I took a step. He came up against the wall, and rammed it as if to push himself clean through. A lesser man, I knew, would have been climbing it by now. I took another step.

  “Fylghjos,” he said. He must have been almost paralyzed with terror, for his voice had lost power, evil, even its natural authority. It had a note I had heard in battles, when you have broken your opponent’s will. He was still fighting, it was his nature, but it was a mere gesture, drawn from the lees of spirit in some overwhelming defeat.

  Not understanding, thinking only that he had recognized me, I said, “Yes,” and took another step.

  He said, “It was before my time.” I took another step. He shook so the chains clinked like hobble rings. “You were never one for revenge.”

  Quickly, I thought, get it over with. I came on, and he thrust out a hand. “Helve.” It was not a command. It was a last gesture of despair. “Imsar Math, Fylghjos.” His voice nearly got out of control. “It was not I who murdered you.”

  Something clicked in my head. Fylghjos. But not me. A namesake. Someone else had borne that name. My voice came out in a drill-ground bellow and I roared at him, “Beryx, will you stop being a benighted fool!”

  His head jerked back, I charged through the coals and grabbed him by the shoulders. “I’m not your poxy Fylghjos, I’m Alkir!”

  At my touch he collapsed as if his bones were gone, eyes shut, probably still sure I was a ghost and beyond resisting it. We landed in a tangled heap. Something warned me to keep hold of him, so I shook his shoulders, mere bone and scorching heat, saying wrathfully, “I’m not a ghost, you can feel me, can’t you? Open your eyes. You’re delirious, that’s all!”

  Either I pierced the delusion, or the very fear produced a spell of lucidity. He did not open his eyes. But he took hold of my arm, if take is the word when his fingers nearly bent the bones, and hung on, choking as if half-drowned.

  It did not deceive me. Anyone else would have been in full hysteria. When his breathing eased I said severely, “Now remember who we are, for all love, and don’t do that again.” Then I yelled for the others with an impatience that was the backwash of my own fear.

  “That’s Sivar,” I announced as they tiptoed up. “You nearly stove his skull in.” He winced. “And you’ve pelted me black and blue. Can’t you give yourself an order or something, so you’ll know us if this happens again?”

  He shook his head. His face was ravaged now, wasted by the fever and his own power’s extravagance. My skin shrank from the heat of him. “Not strong enough,” he said in a husk of a voice. He rubbed his face, groping for coherence. “You’ll have to blindfold me.”

  Instinctive repulsion made me hesitate. “You must,” he whispered. His eyes had glazed again. “Now. Before I . . . lose hold.” He reached out for my wrist, as if it were the one rock in a boundless, raging sea.

  Chapter V

  When Karis came down to announce nightfall, I was still there. That first relapse had proved neither of the others was capable of reaching, let alone calming him. I lost count of the times I said, “It’s all right. I’m here.” I still feel his fingers, a red-hot manacle, clamped with terror’s force as he fought whatever had invaded his mind this time. One of us only had to move to make him go rigid, then start to shake instead of merely shivering.

  The fever was still there too. We had tried cooling the braziers, fanning, drenching him, pouring water down his neck in bottlefuls, then in desperation we reefed blanket and cloak away, but he shivered so frightfully I feared it would exhaust him altogether. I had sent Amver, Sivar, Karis, Krem, Zyr, Wenver for smith’s tools, only to have them return in empty-handed bafflement. After his third attempt, Sivar paused by me, and at last asked, “Captain . . . what is it?”

  By then I was past considering the risk if he ran shy, if they all deserted me. “The Lady,” I said flatly. “That’s what it is.”

  He put his knuckles to his mouth like a frightened child. Then, like me, he swallowed hard. Then he said with false bravado, “Guess I’m already in no-man’s-land. Gimme that fan, Krem. You couldn’t raise a
breeze on a windy day.”

  I did get a message to Evis, deputizing him as commander. He came down at some stage. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you wanted to keep out of this.”

  He eyed me, crouched in the straw, Beryx twisted up against my knees with a stranglehold on my wrist as he wrestled whatever had been conjured by a strange voice. “Looks,” he said wryly, “like I’m in whether I want or not.” He took the water-bottle. “This needs filling.” And vanished up the stairs.

  Around second night watch the delirium grew patchy, leaving him conscious for five minutes at a time. In one such spell he said in that thready voice, “You’d best go home, Alkir. While you can. Math knows what’s coming next.”

  My heart sank. Then I said, “Very well.” I had purposes of my own to pursue.

  * * * * *

  A lamp burnt low in the hall. In the living room Callissa sat red-eyed over her sewing. She did not run to welcome me. Just said dully, “You’re all right. I kept some supper. . . .”

  I ate it, reflecting there was need of strength. Then I said, “Callissa . . . I want to ask a favor of you.”

  Her eyes were full of fear. I said, “We can’t get a physician. And I’m only a field-butcher. I need help.”

  She put the needle by. Her look grew almost accusatory.

  “If we weren’t allowed down there. . . .” I did not want to pursue where that thought led. “If he was meant to die, none of us could get near him. So he might live—if he were only well enough nursed.”

  She bit back words. I said, “You’re the only one I can ask.”

  Her eyes went to the door. Returned. Sounding spent and listless she said, “I suppose Rema would mind the boys. What must I bring?”

  Her entrance routed Sivar and Amver outright. Karis tried to don four garments at once, Zyr dropped the water-bottle by Beryx’s head, and Beryx himself wound his chains in a cocoon it took five minutes to undo. By then she had absorbed the impact of our sick-room, and like any woman in authority was throwing her weight around.

  “Alkir, I want those clothes off. You, fetch this honey you should have used. You, tear this sheet for poultices. You, get some more water. Phew!” She took the fan and began energetically stirring fetid air. “Come on, Alkir. Never mind the fever. The wound.”

  Detaching two blankets, I eyed his over-robe. “Cut it,” she ordered. Beneath was a buttoned, once-white shirt. “Pull that back,” my commander bade. Dragging it off his shoulders, I caught my breath. “Sit him up.” Then she also caught her breath.

  The dingy yellow of scar-tissue covered his right side from waist to armpit, almost from spine to breastbone, pitted with cavities I knew meant a surgeon seeking splinters after the main wound closed, gnarled and knotted where flesh had healed and bones knit awry. One rib in the middle could never have knit. It was severed by the biggest pit of all, a livid plum-red crater deep in swollen flesh, deep enough to plumb beyond the bone. I have had broken ribs. With such inflammation, every breath must have been agony.

  Callissa recovered first. She bent closer, reaching carefully; but not even fever, delirium and exhaustion could erase the reflexes that wound had taught. Her hand was six inches away when his midriff and belly muscles stiffened. The rib cage shrank, his face clenched. Callissa withdrew, saying, “I’ll wait till the poultice goes on.”

  We put one poultice on. Another. A third. Upstairs, night was cooling into dawn. Callissa’s face had grown sharp. When we lifted the fourth one she looked from the wound, more inflamed than ever, to his rigid face, and said, “We’re paining him for nothing. We’d best stop.”

  “Then what,” I asked rather desperately, “are we going to do?”

  My words must have touched some deep chord, for Beryx opened his eyes. Glazed, deep-sunken, colorless, they wandered over our faces. Reached Callissa’s. His muscles twitched, he tried to sit up.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am.” His voice was thick, vague, but full of open dread. “I am going. I—it was just for a moment.” He strove to get a hand under him, the wound pinched, he caught his breath. “. . . know this is a respectable house. But I don’t have plague. I’m not drunk.” His head must have spun, he tried to clasp it and prop himself and ended in a heap with a silent gasp as the wound quite winded him. In despair, he dragged the good arm over his head. The words came from under it. “Only a wound . . . promise. If you could wait . . . just a moment more.”

  Over him Callissa’s eyes met mine. My feelings must have been plain, for she ducked her head. Wondering savagely what woman had thrown him out of her “respectable house,” I took him by the shoulder and said as gently as I could, “You don’t have to go. You don’t have to go anywhere.”

  After a while he relaxed, or at least lay loose in the chains. I said rather wildly, “That’s something we can do. I’m going for that key.”

  * * * * *

  I set out up the hill, I clearly remember that. The pure light of false dawn on the first three streets, early workers going by, I saw all that. I am not precisely sure where fact and perception diverge. The fact is that the sun rose to find me, empty-handed, back at the Treasury gate.

  I tried again. I think I tried five times in all, before I gave in and went raving back downstairs, to find Beryx raving too.

  To me it is fever’s most loathsome aspect, worse than the physical indignities, because it breaks the locks of the mind and breaches the last privacy, leaving you without so much as awareness’ censorship. Beryx was no exception. He tossed and turned and cried out at the wound’s stabs and tumbled his life out before us whether we would or no.

  Some was incoherent. Some was unintelligible. Some was history. I caught names I knew, Th’Iahn, Lossian. But most centered round Everran, the dragon, his wife, and someone called Harran who had been involved with them. His wife’s name was Sellithar. Sometimes he called Callissa that, sometimes Thassal, sometimes he thought she was the innkeeper who had thrown him out sick. A woman of Everran. That was what had burnt it in. Sometimes he thought I was Harran, sometimes a certain Inyx who must have been the phalanx-commander, for Beryx had still not forgiven himself for letting the dragon massacre Inyx’s men. Sometimes he thought I was the dragon itself, and that was worst of all, for he confused Everran and Assharral and tried to bargain with me to save us from Everran’s fate.

  Three days it went on. The wound was still swelling, big as an apple now, and Callissa wadded his armpit, for if his arm brushed the swelling he would scream uncontrollably. The watchers came and went, and gradually they assumed the look I knew I must be wearing. A grim, unresigned despair.

  * * * * *

  The third night he was still tossing, muttering, shivering, as he had when we covered him, cooled him, fanned him, tried to feed him broth, to speak to him. But words and movement were little more than intention now. Callissa sat on her heels over him a long time, her haggard, sharpened face a copy of his. Then she muttered, “It can’t be worse,” and looked up at me.

  “Alkir.” Her tone scared me. I had heard commanders go into a lost battle sounding like that. “Boil water. A lot of it. Get some clean cloths. Send somebody for linseed oil and oatmeal, and find me a knife. A very sharp knife.”

  I gulped. She snapped, sharper than her face, “I’ll draw it up with hot poultices. Then cut it.” Her voice assumed the common note of repressed despair. “It won’t stop the fever. But it’s all I can do.”

  For the linseed oil and oatmeal I went myself, expecting to be turned back before I raided our own house. It felt alien, part of another life. I regained the vault to that sound most evocative of battle mornings, the whit! whit! whit! of someone whetting a knife.

  Sivar’s dagger had been selected as the thinnest. Krem was watching a big pot on the brazier while Karis tore up cloths. Callissa mixed the meal and oil, directing us in curt, brittle sentences to drag the brazier closer. “He’ll kick,” she warned. We ended with me kneeling on his wrists, Sivar, the heaviest, clutching his ankles, and the rest twi
sted somehow in between.

  Tight-lipped, Callissa took the cloths from Zyr. Plunged them in the boiling pot. Wrung them out, wrung her hands. Slapped one on Karis’ shield, turned the oil and oatmeal onto it, whipped the other atop, came swiftly across, and more swiftly pulled the steaming bundle tight over the tumor of the wound.

  Given time, no doubt he would have kicked. Luckily for us all, he fainted instead. The first time, that is. And by the last he was too spent to struggle much. With open nausea Callissa hurled away the poultice, rapped at Amver, “Knife,” and knelt at his back, frowning thunderously, hand trembling as she positioned it for the stroke.

  The blade shivered in the shaky light. Her brow came out in sweat, the frown became a grimace. I thought she had lost her nerve. But then she drew a long breath and slashed.

  It was a good cut. Horizontal, plumb from the swelling’s forward edge to end plumb with the other side, dead center across the pit, with the rib to stop it going dangerously deep. I remarked all this later. At the time all I saw was a thick yellow jet that spurted up in the firelight before Beryx’s convulsion all but threw me off his wrists.

  Callissa dropped the knife to fling her weight on his shoulders, Amver landed on his hip. When the brunt of it passed she panted, “Turn him . . . flat.”

  It would have been easier to turn him inside out. Then she made us bend him to and fro till I thought we would break his back. But every twist sent another ooze of yellow matter into the straw and made her growl with relief, so I kept quiet. And at last one particularly noisome clot vomited something black and she fairly squeaked, “That’s it!”

  Everyone but me deserted their posts. I knelt panting on Beryx’s wrists while she extricated it from the pus, gripping it in a scrap of cloth. Long as a thumb-joint, it was wickedly serrated, the blunt end jagged like a snapped arrowhead, coated in some secretion grainy as lizard-skin.

  “That’s it.” She was hushed this time. “It must be . . . the dragon-sting.”