Moving Water

by Kelso, Sylvia

  She sank onto the stool. The torch-bearer hovered. Not turning, she gave a tiny dismissive nod. Then, tacitly admitting her trust in the host, she looked about her. When her eyes returned to Beryx he held them long enough to make his message clear. Then he sat down in the straw and expectantly raised his brows.

  Leaning back, graceful as a browsing deer, she linked both hands about a knee and without warning offered her greatest challenge yet.

  “Tell me,” she said, “about this . . . Math.”

  The chain clinked as he rubbed his chin. Marshalling thought, not reconnoitering for a trap.

  “It began with a vision,” he said, “in Los Velandryxe Thira. The very Well you have. It was seen by our ancestor Th’Iahn.” His eyes crinkled. “Your line began with his grandson Lossian. Mine came six generations later. Your foremother was a mistress, mine a concubine. I can’t tell you about the vision, because that was between the Well and Th’Iahn. It doesn’t show in Phathire, and the Well itself couldn’t reproduce it. I can deduce the bones from what Th’Iahn said and did, but there have been seventeen aedric generations since. Math now is . . . like a building started to Th’Iahn’s design. A great many minds have left their mark on it.”

  “But,” I blurted, “I thought the world changed as soon as you saw—”

  I bit my tongue. He answered, unruffled, “When the first smith forged an iron sword-blade, everyone else didn’t do it next minute. But once it was forged, that smith had changed the world.”

  He turned back to the Lady. “Whatever Th’Iahn saw, he set out to end the Xaira, the separation of aedryx and men. He was a great aedr, but also a practical man, so he didn’t go off to live on locusts in Hethria and hope his idea would travel on the air. He began at the beginning. To spread an idea, you need it to travel. To cause travel, you must offer profit—or expose a need. To carry them, you need an instrument. So Th’Iahn built a road.”

  “Eh?” I forgot my place again.

  “A road from his keep to his country’s annual market. Then roads all over his lands. So trade improved, and everybody profited, and the market expanded, and they did better still. But they also, both aedryx and men”—his eyes were white-green, crystalline, thought’s combustion made visible—“came in contact with the idea.”

  Roads are for carrying ideas. I heard him saying it, in Kemrestan.

  “Pharaon Lethar—the land—was jammed with aedryx, most at loggerheads if not open war. Th’Iahn’s arch . . . enemy—rival—other half—was an aedr called Vorn. When he saw what came of Th’Iahn’s roads, he started building too. There’s a saying about that, supposed to be Delostar’s—Th’Iahn’s son. ‘When Ammath seeks, Math finds.’ So Vorn grew rich, but the idea entered his lands. There were other aedryx, especially in the north—Stiriand—who suffered from foreign marauders just as Th’Iahn did from corsair raids. When they came to the market Th’Iahn spoke about alliance, linking shields against enemies. The Stirianns listened. So did Vorn. He knew that to miss trade was crazy, but to be left outside an aedric alliance would be plain suicide. It was all coming together when Th’Iahn’s only daughter eloped with Vorn’s eldest son.”

  After a moment I whistled. But the Lady had already laughed, a crystal, cynically delighted peal.

  Unaffronted, Beryx gave a sorrowful nod.

  “Oh, yes. Th’Iahn was aedric to the marrow. Away went the alliance, into the cupboard went Math, and the feud was on.” He sighed. “There’s a great deal of history, much like any other history. Mistakes and bungles and bloody-mindedness wrecking good intentions, and insults wiped out in other people’s blood. Somewhere on the way Th’Iahn’s idea became a council of the eight aedric lines—the Tingrith. In theory it was to ward Pharaon Lethar without and within. In fact it was always disintegrating in another bout of the feud, invasions, bloodbaths, all but destruction of the aedric race. But the Ruands, the council leaders, always kept the Well, and in it they sought for Math. And some of them were very wise.”

  The Lady spoke at last. The tale’s tragedy had left her untouched. “But what is this Math?” she said.

  “Um.” He scrubbed at his hair. “Th’Iahn must have meant to end aedryx’ abuse of their powers and men’s fear and hatred of aedryx, but all he ever said was practical arguments for his alliance. That peace brought profit, and so would conserving humans’ lands. That the alliance protected its members, and to protect humans would be profitable too. His son Delostar, first council Ruand, took another step and said aedryx should unite with men—the northern invasions were at their worst in his day. Then Ruands from Stiriand decided aedryx’ power should be used for the good of both aedryx and men. Then somebody decided power should just work for good. And then they tried to riddle out how, and now Math is a chain of precepts, like Respect that-which-is, Do only what you must . . . The full saying is, The fool reasons, and does as he thinks he should. The wise man does only as he must. But the proverbs are all negative. ‘Who sees Math does not speak. Who speaks of it does not see.’—‘The Math that can be named is not the vision of Math.’—‘Math is not Velandryxe. But Velandryxe is Math.’—‘Say, Math, see Ammath.’ The best I can do is that it’s not a thing at all. It’s a way of seeing. Seeing everything.”

  “Then what use is it?”

  He looked at her under his brows.

  “Before Math,” he said evenly, “aedric law was, As I Want, I Will. And they had aedric powers. The greater the power, the greater the risk of corruption. The greater the corruption, the greater the ruin. They ruined themselves. They ruined Pharaon Lethar. Cycle after cycle of wanton cruelty, murder, brutality, wholesale destruction. And they thought it was normal. Natural.”

  I said nothing. It was so little time since I had thought nature, normality, was the state of Assharral. But the Lady arched her brows and retorted, “Isn’t it?”

  “Certainly. Without Math.”

  Her lips parted. And closed again.

  “When Th’Iahn brought Math from the Well, he changed the world. He gave aedryx—and humans—a choice. A chance to escape Ammath. Maybe they refused, maybe they misunderstood, maybe they tried and failed. But never again were they doomed to remain below the level of beasts.”

  “You cannot,” she said incisively, “choose something that cannot be defined.”

  “Oh, that’s much easier. You need only define its opposite. Ammath. Cruelty. Waste. Destruction. Pleasure in misusing power. Math says, Respect that-which-is. Because”—his eyes held hers—“that-which-is is reality. Ammath distorts it. And the greater the distortion, the greater the havoc when reality is restored.”

  She was silent.

  Very softly, he said, “It does happen, you know.”

  Elaborately, insolently, she yawned. “So we’re back at that. You want me to renounce everything for the sake of your ‘Math.’ ”

  “Not ‘my’ Math. And not for Math’s sake. For yours.”

  “And what good will it do me?”

  After a moment he said, “Turn it round. What bad will it do me if I don’t? Sooner or later, the distortion will collapse. And the later the fall, the longer and bitterer the memories of Ammath. Assharral’s a big empire. And only the wise say, ‘Vengeance is sweet. But wisdom chooses salt.’ ”

  Inexplicably, her eyes turned to me.

  Then she straightened up, that flowing water motion that was so beautiful. Rose. Strolled between the braziers. His eyes followed her, and now the admiration bordered on longing, indeed open desire.

  She turned. Watching him under her lids she said sweetly, “Why?”

  When he did not answer, she probed, “For love of ‘good’? Because you want to redeem me from my vice? So you can feel righteous and pure, having done your tiny bit for ‘Math’?”

  Suddenly he grinned. “Because I hate waste,” he said.

  “Or suffer from want.”

  “I am rather a bear, yes.”

  “More of a bore.”

  “I thought you loved your beasts in Assh
arral?”

  This time I recognized that tingle which had informed the air by Los Morryan. Just so Callissa and I had sparred in our first courtship bout.

  She stretched. A hint of tantalizing, of display. Lazily, but quite finally, she said, “Poor beast.”

  “Poor beauty.”

  She raised her brows.

  “You are beautiful.” The sparring was done. “Going to waste. Like your powers.” The pity was clear. “An aedric empress. And you twist it into Ammath.”

  “Powers?”

  “You could have them. Speech, the Sights, the Commands. Mastery of beasts, weather, fire.”

  Aghast, I thought, he’s taken her in good faith! Has he forgotten everything he ever knew of war?

  “You could have Velandryxe,” he was saying. “Wisdom. Understanding how not to act. The most important of all.” He looked at her as if in pain. “For the Four’s love, Moriana, can’t you see what a waste it is?”

  Her head tilted. Sounding half-swayed, I was sure in whole falsity, she said, “And this Well of mine? That brought the vision of Math? That changed the world?”

  I shut my eyes. Don’t, I prayed. Show her through your armory, explain your tactics, but you can’t be such a fool as that!

  He could. “The Well didn’t bring the vision,” he said. “Th’Iahn and the Well made it between them. In Wreve-lethar, the highest aedric art. To alter the Dream. Change the Universe.”

  “Why,” she asked innocently, “did he need the Well?”

  “Because it’s the focus. You can’t do Wreve-lethar without it. That’s what the Well’s really for.”

  He looked at her eagerly, sure that truth was invincible, she need only hear it to yield. Nothing is so vulnerable as good faith. And she, I thought in blinding fury, she had known it.

  Her mouth curled. “Thank you.” The triumph was almost obscene. “Now I see why you called me incompetent. But of course, I didn’t know.”

  Horror ripped across his face. He plunged to his feet. And stopped.

  She was poised for escape. His eyes were writhing flares of moss, leaf, laurel green, laced with dazzling white. But they were turned inward, upon the forge of thought.

  He put a hand to his brow. Very slowly, it dropped.

  Making it a prayer, committing all to a wholly unsure gamble, he said, “Imsar . . . Math.”

  Then he looked at her.

  “Then,” he said, quiet as fate itself, “you know it now.”

  For one instant her eyes flickered with what could have been fear. Then they swung on me.

  “My trusted captain,” she purred. “Who let a traitor walk out of this prison. Under his very nose.”

  “Who had no choice,” he cut in quick as lightning. “I’m an aedr too.”

  The meteors flared. “Who ate my bread. Took my wages. Swore my oath of fealty. And schemed to suborn my guard.”

  I flinched. Beryx’s voice slashed, “Moriana, let him alone!”

  She spun on him. “Why?”

  “Because”—and contempt appeared at last—“you’re giving a perfect demonstration of Ammath. From devilry to pettiness. You couldn’t bait a bear, so you want to skin a mouse.”

  Her skirts made a white and ruby comet in her wake. She whipped round in the arch. “It may interest you,” she hissed, “to know your smuggling failed. They caught him in Darrior. He’s dead!”

  * * * * *

  It was a long time before I dared look at Beryx, and when I did, I dared not ask the question that hovered on my lips.

  He was still watching the arch. His eyes were quenched, not merely opaque but dulled black, and there was fatigue, discouragement, a poignant sorrow in his face.

  At last he turned away. Slowly, he brought the stool in reach and sat down, shoulders bowed. Finally he looked at me and said with that courage which can admit mistakes, “It’s true.”

  I could not, did not want to reply. He gazed past me, into a distance beyond my reach.

  “They tortured him,” he murmured. The pity was strong as pain. “Poor little fop.”

  Into my mind rose a sharp, concrete image of a city gate, shreds of a body dangled on the wheel, morvallin circling for carrion above frustrated dogs. Perhaps it came from his Sight, but it was enough to sting me into speech. Pain for him, Thephor, myself, became wrath that had to be assuaged.

  I said harshly, “Why?”

  He did not fence. He answered wearily, “Math says, Keep faith even with unfaith. Could I have turned her away?”

  “You needn’t have—” The full enormity recoiled on me. “The biggest baboon who ever wrecked an army knows better than to blab like that! And to tell her about the Well—I thought you meant to help Assharral!”

  He made a little throwaway gesture. “I don’t think I can make you see.” It was fatigue, not rancor. “When Ammath seeks, Math finds. If you—”

  “To the pits with Math! I’m talking plain commonsense!”

  “You can’t. Not in this. I—Look, Alkir. She tried to kill me with that fever, and it rid me of Hawge’s sting. That I’ve carried seventy years. She sought Ammath, I found Math. Don’t you see?”

  “No—all I see is that you blindly—insanely!—took her on trust, and she rolled you up. Horse, foot and camp!”

  He straightened, summoning strength to deal with me among the rest. I should have pitied him, but I could not. “Explain that!” I said.

  He sighed. Then he said, “I had to take her on trust. Or break trust myself. I had to tell her the truth. Because lies are Ammath. If you don’t hold to good, you become evil. That’s the real defeat.”

  “So she flogs you off every field by using your beliefs against you! You’re hamstrung by the very thing you’re fighting for!”

  “Perhaps,” he said heavily. “But she does know, now, about Math.”

  “And about the Well! All about the Well!”

  “Yes. I . . . I can’t explain.” He sank his head in his hand. “Velandryxe . . . the sayings tell you, over and over, that it seems madness. The supreme wisdom looks like foolishness.”

  “The foolishness I see. The wisdom I don’t.”

  “I had to tell her about the Well. Or deny truth. And once she knew, I couldn’t wipe it out. Or fight it. And I know it looks like a disaster, so in the end I had to take a monumental risk, and hope Velandryxe will bear it out.”

  “How?”

  “Ammath has to end. And with such power as the Well—that I can’t master—perhaps the only thing that can end it is the Well itself.”

  “What? How?”

  “Math fears to act. Ammath doesn’t. Now she knows what the Well can really do, she might try something so vile that—it will be the one thing too much. That will break the Well’s power. It would fit with Velandryxe. The supreme foolishness. Admit the truth, do nothing, allow her to misuse power. So Math refrains, and Ammath acts, and Ammath too great to be destroyed overreaches and destroys itself. Just like the sting and the fever. Do you understand?”

  “No!”

  His shoulders bent. Quietly, humbly, he said, “I suppose not.”

  I looked at him sitting there, worsted in battle, blood on his hands, betrayed by his own good faith, patiently accepting recrimination and abuse and desertion, and a mountain fell on my neck. Gevos, the mare—and now a third time I had upbraided when I should have upheld, wounded when I should have salved, broken faith I should have kept.

  In bitter pain I said, “You should know better than that.”

  His head came up. The smile was almost tender. “Fylghjos,” he said, “you’re too like me. You blame yourself worse than anyone else.”

  I could not speak. He was still smiling, giving the comfort I had refused, ungrudging as if I had never wounded him.

  “Yes,” he said, “crazy, and the remotest chance, and pure blind hope. But that’s Velandryxe. Inyx—a friend of mine—used to say, ‘Lose every battle but the last.’ ” The smile became that indomitable laughter. “We’re doing pretty wel
l with the rest.”

  * * * * *

  Feeling raw, hunted and desperate, I went home to Zem and Zam’s inevitable. “When is Sir Scarface coming back?” then passed a night of fearful dreams in which the Lady flung Beryx from the Morhyrne, or I drowned him for her in Los Morryan, or Callissa chased me with a cleaver for letting him die of cold, or I tried to light the brazier and the entire vault collapsed. It seemed an uncovenanted mercy when I crept out next day to find Zyphryr Coryan apparently unaltered, quite intact. I would have sacrificed, if I still had anywhere to offer it.

  Three days passed, by which time I half-wished doom would fall and be done. Third night was my vault sentry-watch. I left after supper, to Callissa’s silent protest, but as I closed the garden gate a woman’s voice hissed, “Captain! Alkir!”

  I whipped about. A hand beckoned, the moon sparked on thillians. I backed. A mincing court accent chattered, “It’s all right, quite safe. . . .” In anguish, “Oh, come over here!”

  Hand on sword, I sidled cross-street. The moon flashed on eyes painted like targets, a grotesque pole of hair. “It’s me, Klyra. You know me. I have to talk to you!”

  Instinctively we both looked behind. She gabbled under her breath, “You’re in with him and you’ll be able to tell him, straighten it out . . . if she knew she’d—I don’t know what she’d do, you mustn’t breathe a word—”

  “Don’t babble,” I muttered. “What am I supposed to tell who?”

  “Him. The wizard.” Her hand twittered on my arm, I felt the talon-like nails. “About the Lady. These last three days she’s been impossible. . . .”

  “Come to the Treasury,” I said, “and tell him yourself.”

  Before shifting a woman I had sooner try to dislodge Phaxian skirmishers. We compromised, amid squeals and frou-frou to wake the Morhyrne, on a bench under the garden keerphar. When she finally subsided, I asked, “What is it I’m to say?”

  “The Lady.” She clutched for thoughts flyaway as her frivolous gold-mesh bag. “She’s . . . she’s been summoning all the governors. Poor Havath, he’s Nervia, he was quaking, I had to lend him smelling salts. . . . When he got in, the Lady says, ‘Do you approve my orders? Have I ever given you cause to hate me? Are you happy in your post?’ I ask you! As if you’d dare say otherwise, not that she isn’t a good mistress and I’ll not hear a word against her, but—well, you know what I mean.