Moving Water

by Kelso, Sylvia

  I heard her breathe in, wholly enraged. “And if they got caught in a snag, the lilies, a man-eater came—just what could you do?”

  “I could get them out, ma’am,” he answered softly. “Even then.”

  Leaving Phaxia had made one of those long-term rifts in a marriage which time had only just begun to heal. But from the day we left Zyphryr Coryan her coldness to Beryx had been as dogged as his consideration for her, his patient, indomitable and constantly rebuffed offers of peace. So I was startled to hear her answer. And more than startled by the raw note of jealousy.

  “No wonder they come before all the rest of us. You knew all along that they’d be sorcerers too.”

  I could not have tackled, much less resolved such a mare’s nest. He took the unspoken grievance first.

  “Ma’am, even if you weren’t their mother, weren’t Alkir’s wife, had never lifted a finger for me, I couldn’t care more for them than I do for you.”

  She said stonily, “Why?”

  “Because you are.”

  “What?”

  “Because you are reality. Living reality. A human being. And there can’t be—degrees of caring for reality. I have to feel as much for every one of you. Else I might as well not have lived.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was born a king. To safeguard anyone in my keeping was bred into me. I built my life on it. Now I’m an aedr it’s more binding still, because I have more power, and everything that is has a claim on me. So I have to do my utmost to—keep faith. I follow Math, and Math says, Respect that-which-is. All of it. If I made differences between you, I’d break faith. I—I’d destroy myself.”

  Why, I thought, does he lay himself open like this, where it can do no good? And found the answer in his own words. Keep faith with Math, or destroy yourself.

  Callissa was saying with perverse relish, “So I mean about as much to you as a tree? Or a—a dog, I suppose?”

  “Not quite, ma’am.” A shade of laughter woke. “It would take a Sky-lord to be so just, and I’m not perfect by any means. I still feel more for people than for trees. Or dogs, if the truth be told.”

  Shadows shifted on a stir of wind, dappling trodden chocolate earth, bringing the cool of afternoon. Her silence was unappeased.

  When he spoke again it was entreaty, the last resort of power shackled by its own will.

  “Ma’am, whatever I say to you I can’t make you believe. I can only say that I never intended harm to you. I’ve never wished you ill. Whatever unhappiness I’ve caused you has been greater unhappiness to me. I never have and never will hold you cheap. And however you’ve treated me, I don’t bear a grudge.” He sounded suddenly spent. “But I’m only flesh and blood. When I have doors shut in my face, it hurts.”

  Surely, I thought, breath held, she cannot shut the door on that?

  The silence seemed endless. Then she said, wretched but no longer inveterately hostile, “If only we’d never left Frimmor. . . .”

  “Ma’am. . . .” He had recovered. Respectful but indestructible, the laughter was awake.

  “If you’ll forgive me saying so, those are the most pointless words anyone ever spoke. You can’t reverse time. Not if you’re an aedr with the Well, not if you were a Sky-lord Himself. And if you could, and if you remade it from the first waking of the first idea of the creation of the world in the first of the Four’s minds, it still wouldn’t satisfy everyone. If you’d never left Frimmor. . . . If my line hadn’t interbred till one of us turned up sterile, I wouldn’t have come to Assharral, because I wouldn’t have been an aedr, because there would have been no dragon to kill. I’d have lived and died a king. In Everran. With. . . .” He broke off. I could barely hear the rest. “. . . sons of my own.”

  “But it happened,” he resumed. The grief, however mortal, had been veiled. “We can’t go backward. Wherever we are, we can only go forward. And make the best of it.”

  When Callissa did not speak, he said meekly, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ve been talking philosophy at you again.”

  She cleared her throat. She still sounded brusque, but the ground-note was different.

  “My name is Callissa,” she said. “There’s no need to call me ma’am.” I heard her scramble up. “And those boys should be out of the water. They’ve been wet far too long.”

  Chapter X

  We were still making circles round Moriana’s wretched patrols, who indeed we never saw. It was all done with the drums. Zem and Zam never tired of watching our drummer squatted between his two hollow wooden pipes with their lydwyr hide heads, polished and blackened by decades of sweat, his palms fluttering like butterflies as he beat out the signal, so soft at close quarters, carrying for miles on that soggy air. He would stop. Listen. Speak to Ygg, the headman’s son. Ygg would relay to Amver, who would ceremoniously repeat to Beryx, who for form’s sake would consult with me before returning the ritual reply, “I will use Ygg’s eyes.” And Ygg would launch us into another maze where I had to wait for sun or star-rise to orient myself.

  Our routine was already formed: breakfast and salgar at dawn, drum-talk, march and hunt, brew up. Catnap, march, bivouac, drum-talk, bed down. To the Ulven it was normal life with a spice of danger added, and soon it seemed so to us. Then Amver listened with mounting excitement to the morning report, and burst out, “Sir, they’re going back! The patrols’ve pulled out!”

  A wide grin split Ost’s muddy countenance. Karis pounded Zyr’s back. But Beryx lowered his eyes and said nothing at all.

  “Sir?” Evis prompted at last.

  “Yes,” he said. His eyes were unsmiling, midnight green. “I just wonder what she’ll try next.”

  Our fears eased when she had tried nothing by noon. Evis, however, had been speculating on his own lines. As we lay watching the barbed helmyn fronds scratch and whisper overhead, he asked suddenly, “Sir, the Lady . . . who—what is she, actually?”

  “She was born,” Beryx answered presently, “of aedric stock. A branch from the same tree as mine.” His eyes crinkled. “And across the blanket like us. Her father came east after one of the aedric collapses. A bloodbath, as usual. Nearly—eleven of your generations ago.” Evis caught his breath. “Part of that’s the Well, of course, but aedryx do live longer than men.” He spoke without apology, but without pity either. It was a fact. Reality.

  “Eleven generations.” Evis had taken it another way. A slow, vengeful anger woke in his voice. “Of enslavement for Assharral.”

  “Not all her fault,” Beryx demurred. “She was the only child of an aedr with non-existent morals and hair-raising vices. He died when a boy his pet darre was chasing in the snake-pit threw it out on him. She was left the heir. A fifteen-year-old girl with four equally villainous uncles, a brood of hell-hound cousins, and a grandmother who could put the fear of death into them all. The uncles expected her to be a puppet. If she got too uppity, one said, he’d marry her.

  They took her ten years to remove, not exactly by honest means, and by then they’d done a fair job of brutalizing Assharral. When she poisoned the last, five provinces were in flames, three in arms, and the last two were hardly models of fidelity. That’s when she discovered the Well. I think she crushed the revolt so drastically because she was new to that power. And young. And . . . afraid.”

  The silence disagreed.

  “At any rate, she made such a job of it that you’ve never risen again. That left her with the cousins, a viper’s nest of trouble and intrigue. She arranged a family banquet and made a clean sweep of them. She still had her grandmother to survive. Five years ‘regency.’ If you could call it that, with the old harpy thwarting her at every turn, and always the danger that she’d provoke another revolt.” It was near sympathy in his voice. I knew he looked from a fellow sovereign’s point of view. “In the end, the old lady pinched at her once too often. Moriana walked her over Los Morryan’s parapet.”

  When nobody spoke, he went on himself.

  “So then she was on her
own. The Well in her hands, an empire under her yoke. Unlimited power of both kinds, no knowledge of Math, a bad upbringing, a worse heredity, and some cruel experience to reinforce them. All in all, it’s a wonder she didn’t rot far worse. After all”—his eyes turned, teasing me—“Assharral has been wealthy, peaceful, orderly—and fairly safe.”

  It was Evis who supplied the rebuttal. I had never heard such savagery from him. “And bewitched.”

  “Well . . . yes.”

  Evis sat up. “I think,” he said with grim emphasis, “the Ulven are right. It’s time to end the drought.”

  Beryx was looking unhappy. “Yes. There must be an end to Ammath. But . . . you must be careful how you manage it.”

  “I know how to manage it.” Evis’ teeth showed. “We ought to make her walk over that parapet herself. But a gibbet will do. It did for my grandfather. And he was never a ‘rebel’ in his life.”

  “Yeah,” Dakis came in, the blood light kindled in his own eyes. “And there’s a few others’ll hang with her. They reported my uncle—just for keeping one cow undeclared.”

  “No,” Beryx broke in, almost desperately. “Can’t you see, if you do that, you’ve changed nothing? You’re as bad as what you destroy. You’ll just re-create Ammath.”

  Evis turned on him. “Then do we walk out with our hands up, sir, and say, ‘We forgive your sins, come and commit a few more on us’?”

  “No, of course not. But you can stop wrong and not renew it. Not load it onto your own backs.”

  “By the pits”—there was a slow blaze in Wenver’s golden eyes—“not them that come for my father’s folk—”

  “Let off scot-free?!” yelled Zyr. “Those boot-licking—”

  “Never!” shouted Karis. “Let ’em pay their debts!”

  Beryx’s dismay vanished. He shot upright and his eyes were crystal white.

  “If you do that you are more abominable than the wickedness you destroy. There is no absolution for those who go into evil having knowledge of Ammath.”

  He glared at us. It was not simple wrath. It was the threat of justice, more pitiless than the evil it will suppress. Only Evis dared to retort.

  “If you say so, sir. But whoever’s let off, there shouldn’t be any mercy for the witch.”

  The white threat vanished. His eyes danced green, his mouth turned up, he was suddenly mischief incarnate. “Oh,” he drawled, “I do have plans for her.”

  But though we waited expectantly, it seemed that was a quite private jest.

  * * * * *

  Next morning the drums reported all clear. In an almost lazy atmosphere we packed up, and the twins were helping me cart the first load to the dugouts when Zam dropped the pot. He clutched his head. Zem cried out. Then he said, “Sir Scarface!” And they both bolted for a tangle of lianas beyond the camp. In my own alarm I hurried in pursuit.

  Beyond the vines sun struck bright on a little inlet’s gloss of olive-green water and root-gnarled banks and the spiny green of helmyn fronds. Beryx must have been on reconnaissance too. He was perched on a leaning helmyn trunk, his back to me. The twins were within armslength, silent, motionless, strained forward yet not touching him. Some quality in his stillness halted me as well.

  It seemed a long time before he turned. He was white, the scar livid as a brand, with a numb blankness in his eyes. He looked at the twins as if he had never seen them before.

  Zem swallowed, Zam gulped. His eyes came past them to me.

  “Rema,” he said dully. “And the maid—Zepha, wasn’t it?”

  My mouth dried. He hid his face in his hand.

  “The Ruanbraxe . . . she couldn’t break it. So she hunted them. Family . . . informers . . . spies. . . .”

  I heard myself speak. Needlessly. “Dead?”

  His head moved. I could just hear it. “. . . tortured them. . . .”

  A helmyn frond crackled down. His fingers were crooked over his temple, white among the raven hair. I swallowed too. But what could I do or say? I knew where he would lay the guilt.

  At last, trusting he would know it was tact and not desertion, I turned away. Like a new-dealt wound, the news moved with me as I went back, told Amver to postpone departure. Braced myself, and disclosed the rest.

  When Beryx reappeared it was left to Callissa to give the only practical aid. With her own magic she had kept the fire up, the pot on the boil, and brewed tea the instant he appeared. Wordlessly she took the cup over and put it in his hand.

  He nursed it against his right palm, staring into it. A ring of Ulven had formed, taking the sense of the tragedy with the empathy he ascribed to them. He drank the tea. Then he looked at me and said dully, “I suppose . . . we’d better go.”

  * * * * *

  Next morning I woke in a dread Beryx did nothing to allay. He looked ill, almost cowed, and when he woke, sat a long time huddled silently in his cloak. We were packing up before I saw him take a deep breath, stiffen his shoulders, and turn his gradually emptying eyes toward the south.

  The camp movement ebbed away. One by one we turned to watch him, waiting, with a pang of fearful anticipation, for what his vision might reveal. The Ulven had gathered behind us, silent as ever, but with a shade of expression in their midnight eyes.

  Heartbeats ticked by. Were left uncounted. Their passage grew stressful, painful, and still he stared . . . Then he gave a violent jerk and wrenched back, clapping the left hand over his eyes. His shoulders twisted. He said something incoherent, and buried his face in his knees.

  It was an act of sheer willpower when he straightened up. After another endless moment, he

  began to speak.

  “Your sister. . . .”

  My eyes flew up, Zyr had blanched a mottled whiteish pink. Beryx’s eyes were black in a bloodless face. I knew what he wanted to say, and that no words were adequate.

  He got up, tottered up, a hand to his head. “Think,” he said thickly. “Must think. . . .” And walking through us as if we were not there he vanished into the scrub.

  * * * * *

  The sun climbed, the Ulven appeared and dissolved and reappeared. The day crept on. We offered our futile sympathy to Zyr, and he wrought with his grief. Zem and Zam, looking scared and queasy, had drawn in close to me. Recalling their gift, I could not stop myself asking, “Can you. . . .” And Zam nodded, and gripped his lips together. But he did not speak.

  It was mid-afternoon before the scrub rustled, and Beryx, slow and bent as a cripple, made his way out.

  His face was pale, with shadow-like bruises round the eyes, he had that shrunken look of a critically wounded man, and he moved as if he had met some adversary beyond even an aedr’s strength. His eyes found Zyr, and flinched away. Then he came slowly to the middle of the camp, and nerved himself to speak.

  “I put a Ruanbraxe on . . . all your kin. All I could find.” He forced his eyes back to Zyr. “If I’d thought . . . if I’d done it sooner . . . I’ll never forgive myself.”

  And that, I knew, was gospel truth.

  Zyr answered very steadily, “Not your fault, sir.” Iron came into his voice. “It’s hers.”

  Beryx shut his eyes a moment. A cold rill shot down my spine. I could tell he was steeling himself for other, more dreadful news.

  “Rema. The maid. Your. . . .” His voice was ragged, just audible. “I had it wrong. . . . Not revenge.” He dragged in a breath. “It’s the next . . . offensive. In here . . . we can’t be reached. So—we have to be brought out.”

  We stared. He seemed to shrink on himself.

  “By—by—using . . . hostages.”

  Understanding, then vivid horror, then an altered horror showed in every face. The conclusion none of us dared to voice.

  “I thought about it.” The mere consideration must have been torture. “I thought of—everything.” His face twisted. “And—I have no choice.”

  I heard Callissa choke a cry. Amver was gray, Evis white. The image of Klyra’s head, Thephor’s remains, burnt before my e
yes. But not the twins, I thought desperately. Not the twins as well!

  Then bitter, helpless hatred blazed in me. Witch! I raged. Hell-hag, diabolical whore . . . she knew he could not have borne the murder of innocents, his followers’ kin, blameless in every way. That he would sacrifice himself first. And us. Once again his own good, that should have been a shield, had been made a dagger inside his guard. With fists and teeth clenched I prayed, If I could just get my hands on her . . . oh, to the pits with this useless, crippling Math!

  My eyes cleared. The acceptance of certain, horrible death was on every face. Sivar spoke for us, his voice just recognizable.

  “Well, I—I’ll go with you, sir—at least.”

  Others murmured. Beryx stared. Then more excruciating realization woke. His voice shook worse than Sivar’s.

  “No . . . You don’t understand. I mean—I can’t go out.”

  For a moment I doubted either my ears or my wits. All of us were speechless. He faced us, a man caught between his own integrities and being pulled apart.

  “If I stay,” his voice shook almost uncontrollably, “she’ll hunt out your families . . . farthest kin . . . friends . . . anyone so much as linked with you.” The sweat was standing on his face. “One by one . . . While we watch. . . .”

  “Sir, can’t you stop it?” Evis broke in wildly. “Fight her! Do something! Surely—”

  “She has the Well,” Beryx said flatly. “I’m not strong enough.”

  The silence yawned like a grave. We had seen the scope of his power, however leashed. For the first time I really understood Los Velandryxe’ threat.

  Wenver was stammering, “But s-sir, if we went back to Ph-Phaxia, if we didn’t try to—”

  Beryx’s eyes blackened like smoke-stained glass.

  “She planned it . . . while we were in Phaxia. I saw. . . .” He thrust a hand over his eyes. “She let me see. . . .” It was the barest whisper. “She’ll go on with it . . . wherever we are.”