Sivar said in a tight, strange tone, “Sir, these fellers are all outlanders. But my family’s back there.”
After a moment Beryx asked, “Fisherman, is he? Your brother? Would that boat make Eakring Ithyrx?”
“Probably, sir, but—that’s overseas! Foreigners!”
“That’s the only chance. Just be quiet.”
Silence marched on his heavy, protracted breaths. They eased. Sounding tireder, he said, “I’ve woken them. They don’t understand, but they’ll sail on the morning tide.”
Sivar mumbled combined protest and thanks. Amver ventured, “Sir, once we helped with the fever, we reckoned we’d all have to run if it came to the worst, but—just what happened, sir?”
A horse behind us uprooted a tussock, mouthed and jingled its bit. I heard the muffled clank as Beryx leant back on a tree.
“The Lady and I,” he began, “are having a private war, over what she’s doing to herself and to Assharral. To me it’s evil, and I’m fighting to have it stopped. Unluckily,” it came with wry amusement, “there are many weapons I won’t use. I won’t lie, I won’t withhold truth, I won’t break faith or let others suffer for me or kill innocent men for my own ends. So I keep getting thrashed because she will. The Mistress of the Wardrobe told Alkir and me some of the Lady’s private affairs. She was so furious it wasn’t enough to behead Klyra. She brought Alkir down to me, and she would have made him put his hand in the fire.”
I heard men’s grunts, Rema’s guttural squawk.
“I tried to stop her in a wizard fight, and lost. So I said, I’ll burn mine instead. I don’t like torture better than anyone else, but it hurts me worse when someone suffers in my place. Call it crazy if you like.” That mischief teased me. “It’s part of—my beliefs. If I deny it, I’ve lost the war. That paid for Klyra, but she’d seen a flaw in my guard. Yesterday we upset her again, and I was worried, so I did some scouting, aedric style. Read her thoughts. It’s just an art.” His voice grew bleak. “She had plans, sure enough. This morning, she meant to torture Alkir’s wife and sons in front of me. And now she knows I’d rather suffer than let others do it, there would have been no substitutes.”
Callissa gave a throttled sob. Zem’s arm about my leg became a tentacle. Evis began thickly, “Love of—” and snapped it off.
“So I had to run,” Beryx went on tiredly, “and take you with me. It was what we call a Must.”
Dawn whitened behind the trees to reveal they were vyxians, scaly umber monsters lancing up sheer to a cloud of foliage. So that, I thought, as cold horror squeezed my heart, is a Must.
Beryx was staring south, with a haunted, wretched look. In disbelief close to exasperation I thought, He didn’t want to go!
A honey-eater gurgled in the scrub. A saeveryr responded, chickle, churr. Callissa’s small, high, hostile voice asked the question that was paramount to us.
“Where are you going?”
His face set. The crisis had arrived.
“Phaxia,” he said. “Nowhere else is far enough.”
He let them shout themselves out. Then he said, “Yes, it’s four hundred miles, yes, we have to cross the Stirsselian swamps, yes, we’ll be slow as a baggage train, yes, you’re technically at war with Phaxia. Yes, we’re not prepared for a journey, yes, it’s a huge wrench to step out of an entire life. I know. I’ve done it before. Is there any choice?”
Slowly, among the guards, I saw grim acceptance creep over each face. Evis still looked balky. Rema’s bottom lip stuck out like a shelf, Zepha was in tears, Callissa holding her fire. Beryx looked wretched too.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a cruel sort of joke. If you were evil, you wouldn’t have helped me, if I were evil, I wouldn’t care. But you did. And I do. Some of you weren’t even directly involved. It isn’t just.” Pain stirred in his look. “Life isn’t just. I suppose that’s why we aim for justice above all, and never fully accomplish it.”
“To the pits with your philosophy!” Callissa’s control snapped. “You’ve wrecked my husband’s career, you’ve outlawed us all, you’ve hauled us out here without a fendel or a loaf or a spare stitch between us, you want us to die as foreign beggars in Phaxia, and all you can do is talk philosophy! Well, I won’t! I want my house back! I want to be safe! I want my life—like it was!” And she burst into tears.
Rema’s grievance burst too, Zepha howled in sympathy, the men shifted and looked everywhere but at us. All except Beryx. He watched her weep, as if this were one more penalty he had no right to evade.
When her sobs eased at last, he said tiredly, “There’s no answer that will satisfy you, ma’am. The best I can say is—if you go to Phaxia, you may come back. If you stay here, it’s certain death.”
Evis had made his choice. Looking stark and resolute he squared his shoulders, said, without looking, “Sir, permission to carry on,” and went past me to Beryx. “Well then, sir. Do you have any plan? Route? Tactics? Provisions? Those fetters will have to go. And our surcoats. Have you considered disguise?”
“The Lady sees through it.” Beryx was regretful. “And every Assharran will be her hands. Haven’t you ever caught a ‘rebel’? How did you know he was? She told you, of course.”
Evis deflated. Beryx grinned. “Cheer up, there’s one thing in our favor. Me.”
Evis did not look reassured. Beryx said, “We’ll keep the surcoats a while.” He gestured north. “The highway’s just over that knoll. A post-house. You and Sivar could liberate some shoeing tools. Throw your badge around, spin a tale. Valuable beast, has to be re-shod on the spot. . . . A sledge and chisel would do.”
They did. With a good deal of trouble the manacles were chewed through on a convenient stump, the left one with blows that must have jarred his burnt hand to the bone. But though white and sweating, he rose with a spring. Shook his arm, sighed, “Math! That’s good.” Scanned the horses with a cavalryman’s eye, and turned to consider Rema, planted broad, bulging and balky on a fallen log, Zepha drooping in her arm. A twinkle dawned.
“We need speed. And if we’re not built to make it on horseback. . . .”
Rema said flatly, “I’m not going. You can turn me inside out with your magic, I’ll not budge.” She patted Zepha. “Nor will she. The poor child, walking out she is, they’d be wed next new moon. . . .”
The eddy in Beryx’s eyes was the image of the weighing, planning mind. Then he said, “Yes.”
As Rema’s jaw dropped he said, “I’ll give you a Ruanbraxe. A mind-shield. It may not block the Well, but you can stay in Assharral. Not in Zyphryr Coryan, do you understand? You must go under cover. A new name, a new past, a new place. If you contact anyone you know, it will kill you both.” He forestalled her despair. “It won’t be forever, Rema.” A pledge, for a dawn he could only hope to see. “I can’t explain, but . . . it’s the best I can do.”
Then he sat on his heels between them, eyes on the ground as he drew those huge straining breaths, until the sweat patched his surcoat and his muscles shuddered as they did in the throes of the other arts.
Rema too was horrified. When he relaxed, whispering, “There,” she burst out, hostility forgotten, “Eh, sir, you’ve near killed yourself! If I’d known—I didn’t mean to—”
“I’m used to it.” He rose, forcing a smile. “Off you go. I’m sorry to bring you so far out of your way.”
After the farewells he watched them leave with anxiety, concern, veritable tenderness, and the insight burst on me like a signal flare: there is the definition. Apologizing to a cook because you cared enough to save her life and it took her out of her way, still worried when she leaves the shelter of your care. That is the reality. Math.
* * * * *
We remounted with Callissa mutely recalcitrant and Zem now on my saddle-bow. From the knoll Stirian Ven showed beneath us, its walkers’ and horsemen’s lane set between the double-paven carriageways, dotted with traffic, shivery with mirage pools, leaping into the blue northern hazes like the image of un
swerving thought.
“She’ll expect me to make for Hethria,” Beryx said. “We need speed. Traffic’s light. Come on. I can use Fengthir to handle that.”
Before the noon change of horses I had held his rein a score of times while his eyes went blank and he put forth the fearful effort needed to send carts, carriages, wagons, traveling herds, groups and solitary pedestrians or riders past as if we did not exist. If we trusted the magic by then, we still found it eerie. And none of us was reconciled to its cost.
“Sir,” Evis urged as the post-house came in view. “I know we have to change, but I can make up a story. Love of—sir, you’ll kill yourself!”
Beryx forced his back straight. Wiped his face. “Story’s no good,” he muttered. “Got to cover tracks.”
We rode in unquestioned. In the same dreamy blindness of ostlers, post-master, pay-scribe, changed our beasts. Mounted. Rode out. I led his horse away down the empty road, while he flogged himself to fulfill the last terrible demands of the art.
When it ended Evis determinedly rammed his mount in and held Beryx up until the worst was over. Though his eyes remained shut, a hint of pleasure showed in his face.
“Did it,” he murmured. “Forgotten us. The whole lot.” A workman’s pride in the conquest of a supremely difficult technical task.
As he said, “Can let go, Alkir,” Zam gathered up the bridle and announced in a small but determined voice, “Sir Scarface, you do the magic. I’ll manage the horse.” And with a tiny, tickled grin, Beryx murmured, “All right.”
By late afternoon I had had enough. Over a rise one of Morrya’s swift coastal rivers appeared, sparkling khaki and olive under its high-arched bridge, and I said belligerently, “There’s cover down there. We’ll halt.”
He did not demur. Merely whispered, with the sketch of a smile, “Headstrong as a general. And only a captain of guards.”
In the upstream shrubs and canebrakes a little glade opened on the bank. While we watered the horses Beryx, like Callissa and the twins, lay flat and immobile on the grass, but as I came over he began to sit up. I cut him off. “We’re going to forage. Don’t worry. We may not be aedryx, but no one’ll see us to forget.”
The forage was motley. Two hens, corn-cobs, a helmetful of eggs, a burst waterskin which Sivar, with astonishing resource, had knotted up for Uster to fill, with more surprising skill, from an unsuspecting she-goat. Beryx hiccupped over the story. “Milked . . . upside down!”
He eyed the hens. I said, “I’ve savaged more of these with a dagger than you’ve got arts. We’ll spit roast them—oh.”
“Oh,” he returned smugly. “At least you’ll have to let me light the fire.”
“Flint and tinder,” Evis ruminated over a drumstick. “Spoons—pot—cups—salt—mint-tea would be good.” He was his old provident self. He eyed Beryx’s bandaged hand. Few of us had yet outgrown the fascination of watching him eat with Axynbrarve, fowl fragments flicked deftly into his mouth.
“Good practice,” he informed us. “Just needs delicacy. Which I lack.” Now he followed Evis’ eye to the grubby linen, and shook his head.
“We’ll do all that in Frimmor.” He lay back, head rubbed sensuously into the grass. “How I wish I didn’t need sleep. I want to look at the sky.”
At sunset, to our unbelief, he woke fresher than we did. “You bounce back fast,” he explained, “when you’re used to Ruanbrarx.” And night travel was easier, with only the post-house people to demand his arts.
I soon grew anxious about Callissa instead. The boys were all right, dozing in our arms at the walk, bouncing grimly stoical at the trot, but she was still taciturn, the cat clutched in her arm, her face growing more pinched with every mile. Such a ride was arduous enough for fit, healthy men. For a woman, used to the house. . . .
Second watch came and went. The traffic had vanished. I had grown jaded myself. When I glanced back, Sivar was shadowing Callissa’s beast. Beryx slowed his horse on her other side, and I heard his almost humble, “Ma’am, will you let me help?”
“How can you?” Fatigue. Unflagging antipathy.
“If you let me, I can give you a Command.”
“Do something to my mind?”
“Ma’am . . . I won’t read your thoughts. I won’t—do anything you’d dislike.”
After a moment she said ungraciously, “If I must do this, I may as well save trouble for the rest.”
There was silence, while we all listened fearfully for another of his magic’s punishing variants. But Callissa just asked fretfully, “Is that all?” And he returned with a smile in his voice, “Until it finishes, and you fall apart.”
When Valinhynga rose he called a halt. Too weary for talk we followed him from the road, crawled off our horses, picketed them and collapsed.
I woke with the sun in my face and a root in my back. Having remedied both, I found myself in a green-and-gold precinct, a clump of huge old kymman trees gone wild, their low-slung branches and thick ferny foliage completely hiding us from the road. I could hear it, though, within bowshot. Grind of wheels, bellowing calves, herdsmen’s shouts. The low sun struck under the trees to catch a bit, a horse’s eye, a dewy spider web, silver on a mounded back. I lay luxuriating in rest as you do only when very tired, idly counting the kymman’s brown peanut-shaped fruit, feeling Callissa curled behind me, still asleep. The twins, I saw, somewhat startled, had burrowed into Beryx’s cloak, into his very sides, I should think. He himself was awake, and looking past me. I rolled over, at the feeling in his eyes.
All over Frimmor and Morrya lythians grow wild. Acquainted with them from childhood, I hardly noticed. Now it seemed I had never seen one before.
It was a big bush, man high, twice as wide. The thin sappy stems and glossy serrated dark-green leaves were lost against other foliage, but the blossoms were staring bright, shaggy crowns that spread from the curly upper tips to the broad daggers of the petals’ foundation, splashes of jagged vermilion, indescribably brilliant in sunlight upon a blue dawn sky.
Unplanted, I thought. Untended. Unwished for, undesired. And undeterred. I turned to Beryx, feeling for myself the joy and wonder and gratitude for earth’s off-hand magnificence that had made his eyes glisten with tears.
After a moment he spoke. Even in mindspeech it was hushed. One word, but now I knew a fraction of what it meant.
He said,
* * * * *
We breakfasted, fully if not fillingly, in somebody’s ferroth grove. The head-sized, green-and-orange-streaked fruit with their rich yellow pulp and black, loose, jelly-coated seeds, should really be eaten with a spoon, and the twins emerged daubed from head to foot, but much refreshed by the delightful task of assisting Beryx, the worst off of all, since he could not even grasp the piece he tried to bite. But hilarity faded swiftly on the march.
Evis had pressed for a wait till dark. Beryx replied, “No time.” We were in the Cessala, the unbroken thirty miles of caissyn farms that produce the spear-high purple sweet-grass whose stalks are crushed for sugar juice, and it was harvest, every farmer cutting or carting or burning off. Billows of black smoke severed Stirian Ven, the roadside fields were going up to heaven in red and yellow ranks of flame, or full of sooty harvesters who swung long hooked knives in the van of numberless pickers-up, stackers, and haystack-high bullock carts. The road itself was one long stream of them. The fires’ heat distressed us all, but for Beryx they must have been purgatory itself.
After five miles I saw a lane that offered cover and veered my horse. He snarled,
In another mile Sivar had annexed Zem. In a second Evis was holding Beryx on the horse. After another two a post-house came in sight. Evis began, “Sir, we must tell a story this time, you can’t—” and got a savaging of his own, a straightforward, brutal,
How he managed it I do not know. But he did, drawing one breath of triumph rather than torment before we were back in the flood.
That day if ever I profaned Math,
for I cursed those bullock-drivers’ simple existence, and they were innocent men. The sun climbed, reinforcing the fires, we were all awash with sweat, and still they came, one after another without so much as a breathing space as they plodded along beside their tall white teams, plenty of time to look about. Whistling, some of them, the final maddening iniquity. Blithely unaware that they were putting Beryx through a torture that would make kindness of the rack.
Around noon we found a farm track that ran into an unburnt field. This time I simply swung the troop aside and ignored his furious,
Round the first bend we halted, Amver and Dakis leaping off to catch and lower him, still impotently spluttering, into the meager shadow of his horse. The tall ranks of caissyn rustled overhead, the sun weltered in the narrow track, while we stood over him and mutely paid our dues to Math in the knowledge that this was borne for us.
For a good five minutes he simply lay there, every muscle limp, the scar staring purple in a bloodless face. Zyr clumsily wiped his forehead. Evis beat off flies. At last his eyes opened, dull black, drained dry.
Fraction by fraction, the green returned. His breathing crept up to the audible. He blinked. Then the thunder burst upon our heads.
If you ever doubted he had led an army, you would have known then. At the mere preamble every drillmaster I ever knew would have wept and confessed himself hopelessly outclassed. For range and scope and unfaltering flow of invective I never heard its equal, but it was the tone that put it far beyond a drillmaster’s scope. Sheer awful authority, descending to annihilate us in god-like wrath.
When the pulverizing finished, he had finally got his breath. Then his face changed. With ludicrous horror he exclaimed, “Oh, dear! Oh, drat! I’ve done it again!”
The contrast was too much. We held our ribs and fell about. With tears of laughter in his eyes Evis gasped, “Oh no, sir! Don’t regret it—just hope I can remember a bit!” I could feel the grin stretch my own face as I added, “No, sir, I’m grateful to be taught my place. I’ll never call myself fit to chew out a defaulter again.”
Moving Water Page 15
