Moving Water

by Kelso, Sylvia

  By the third day after the army’s release the tension had gone beyond jest. When Beryx retreated with lagging steps into a clethra stand we waited with a keener version of the old dread. We knew her capabilities now. We did not know her choice.

  We had underestimated. He came out of the clethras like a bolting horse, halfway across the camp before he got control. “Oh, Four,” he said, turning in circles. “Oh, Four, I don’t think I can handle this.”

  Terrified, we rushed to calm him, sit him down, fetch tea. He would have none of it. He strode up and down as if driven by whips, raging to the indifferent air.

  “How could she? How could she? Four, not the lousiest bandit, not the dirtiest mountain rat with four troopers in his tail and a half a yoke of Gebria to terrorize would—” His voice rose in anguish. “It’s worse than incompetence—it’s—it’s—bestiality!”

  “But sir,” pleaded Sivar, scurrying in his wake, “what’s she done?”

  He spun round. His eyes were crystalline light green, distilled rage.

  “Tengorial. She turned the whole town out on the farms. Worse than an invasion—killing, wrecking, raping, burning—their own folk! And then she turned them on each other.” His eyes narrowed, fairly spitting. “Tengorial’s ablaze and the citizens won’t fight the fire, they’re butchering each other in the streets. Etalveth’s the same—but she used the garrison there.” He choked and whirled on his heel. “Four, the bloodiest usurper ever crowned never made his people tear their own country apart!”

  “She must have gone mad.” Zyr was stunned. “Lost her wits.”

  “Oh, not in the least!” He began to patrol with the same huge frenzied strides. “This time I can’t do a thing. I can’t anticipate, I can’t prevent, I can’t interfere. If I do, she just moves somewhere else. They don’t have to mean something to us. Anyone will do. They’re all Assharrans. All innocent. All her own—oh, Four, Four, how could she ever think of it!”

  Words were on Evis’ lips. They were on mine, but I held them there. I had said too often, Is this not a Must?

  Wenver said it for me. “Sir, mightn’t this be—the one thing too much?”

  “No!” Beryx rounded on him. “It hasn’t broken her power. For that she has to misuse the Well so completely that—I don’t know what will happen, it’ll shatter, blow up in her face, I can’t guess. No, Four help me, this isn’t the one thing too much.” The gale collapsed. “Except,” he sounded strained, “it may be too much for me.”

  * * * * *

  After that we watched him like a fever patient at crisis point. I have to confess, with shame, that Assharral’s woes meant less than they ought to us. We had been through the fire. We felt for his pain, and we feared he would break, and we earnestly desired to live. Not only for survival, but because, despite all he had said, we wanted our revenge.

  There was no march that day. The Ulven crept about the perimeter, Callissa made endless brews of tea, and the rest of us kept in earshot but beyond the thunder’s range, while he scoured up and down, more than three quarters out of his wits.

  A dozen times he checked to stand staring south, with rage, with grief, in an agony of opposed compulsions, only to wheel and start pacing again. Once he burst out, “Cursed woman!” Once he cried, “Oh, if only Fengthira was—” More than once he cried, “No!” and spun like a top, but what he was refusing we could not tell.

  He brushed off Callissa’s attempts to make him eat or drink, with his nearest ever approach to brusqueness, and presently I found the anxiety had acquired a sharper tooth. I knew now what Math required of a conqueror. It is not enough to defeat your enemy, or to forego retribution. You must also worst Ammath in yourself. Even if he did not crumple under the pressure, she had broken his guard. Outraged his ruler’s instincts, the deepest sanctities of his life. He was perilously close to losing what he had called the real battle. Of succumbing to hatred. Falling into Ammath.

  It was late afternoon before the tempest waned at last. Yet again he halted, staring south. But this time I saw the tension slowly drain away. His shoulders relaxed. Then they firmed, the stance of the ensign-bearer that proclaims, Here I am, and here I stay.

  Presently he spoke. Very quietly, a final commitment, he said, “Imsar Math.”

  Then he came over to the fire. His eyes were translucent, sheets of heaving green shadow like the aftermath of storm swells in their depths, his face loked almost pure bone. As he sank down by the coals Callissa silently poured yet another cup of tea. This time he took it, saying in a rather slurred voice, “Thank you, ma’am—Callissa, I mean.”

  It was only a lull. Next morning he had to reconnoiter, and by noon he was fighting the whole engagement over again. By nightfall his fingernails were bitten to the quick and he was pacing to and fro, to and fro, with eyes that patterned the inner tumult, swirls of lime and viridian, fluctuant, vivid and fascinatingly spectacular. Only this time the dance was not power but distress.

  The Ulven crowd had increased that day. I had the oddest feeling, as their eyes followed him about, that unlike us they were not in search of reassurance but poised to offer help. Just on dusk Ygg came up to Amver and drew him aside. Then they summoned Callissa. Then she beckoned me.

  She held two or three sprigs of some unknown plant. “Ygg says,” she began without preamble, “this is a sleep-maker. I’m going to put some in his food. But Ygg wants your consent.”

  “I know the dose.” She was impatient at my blank look. “But he says Beryx won’t like it. I don’t know how he knows, but . . . anyway, he says you have to agree.”

  I could not see what my consent had to do with it. Then I looked again at that driven, easeless face and said without hesitation, “Yes.”

  It took more coaxing than a virgin’s seduction to get the fish down his throat, but the result was all we asked. He fell asleep over the plate. Not breathing, we rolled him in his cloak. He did not stir. Feeling happier than for weeks, I set the watch.

  Dawn was past before he woke. First he rubbed his eyes, then his head. Then he stared about, at our carefully disinterested faces, Callissa making business at the fire, the Ulven audience. His eyes flickered. He got up.

  “I’ll have some of that tea,” he said, walking up behind Callissa, who nearly joined the pot in the coals. “And this time, see it’s not doctored.” He glared at us, an attempt to look baleful foiled by a twitching lip. “Confounded impudence!”

  Since we knew better than to repeat that, we tried feeding him instead. Some mornings he would end like a temple idol, heaps of every known or unknown game, vegetable and fruit piled at his feet, and a score of Ulven pleading in dog-like silence behind. Since he could not bear to disappoint them, that had limited success. The one thing he did express a wish for we could not provide. None of us played an instrument, few of us could sing, and all lacked the nerve to try. “Never mind,” he said wearily. “I just thought. . . . But this is Assharral. You don’t have harpers here.”

  * * * * *

  How long? Again I cannot tell. We did not ask about the torments of Assharral, though we knew he watched them all. Frimmor, Darrior, Climbros, Thangar, Gjerven, Kemrestan, Axaira, Tasmar, Nervia, Morrya. When the wind set southerly, smoke would pierce even Stirsselian’s humid shroud. Sometimes a particularly wanton ruin would make him cry out, as at some precious possession of his own smashed before his eyes, but we did not ask. It was enough to know that if, beyond our refuge, Assharral was malignly tearing its heart out, it had not yet succeeded in breaking his.

  The weather grew heavier and more sultry. In the shade, at night, you were still oppressed by the stifling air, the weight of thunder coming to the boil. When Amver called me for middle night watch I was usually awake. I recall the night he whispered, in a tone of revealed miracles, that Beryx was actually asleep.

  “Sat down just now and dropped right off. Worn out.”

  The ever-present, unacknowledged fear was in his voice. Trying for silence myself, I tiptoed off to the sentry
post by a thrithan clump. Ygg materialized beside me, and we sat watching Beryx’s shadow against a clethra butt, head fallen on his breast, breathing softly, motionless. Then Ygg’s hand took my elbow, and in the same moment I heard it for myself: the first low longdrawn growl of thunder, far in the north.

  With a blood-curdling yell Beryx turned inside out and bolted as he hit his feet, my own rush collided us head-on and he punched and kicked and clawed as if tackling Hawge barehanded. I just had time to pray he would not use the arts, before he woke.

  Sobbing, shuddering, he hung on to my wrist, while I got him to the fire. Hushed the camp, made a hash of brewing tea. He was still shaking so badly that he dropped the cup. Blessed with nightmares of my own, I did not ask, “What woke you?” But Ygg came and crouched beside him, one hand on his crippled wrist, and presently, like a horse at a calming touch, he grew quiet.

  “Nothing,” he said at last, both answer and denial of my thought. The thunder had died. He looked off into the south. When he spoke my heart jumped, for the tone was no longer torment; it was abysmal, yielding weariness.

  “Four,” he said, “let it not be long.”

  * * * * *

  The next night was hotter than ever, and alive with fireflies. For a long time I lay on top of my cloak, ears full of the mosquitoes’ perpetual whine, thinking that the Wet could not come too soon, while I watched the clouds of tiny torches wake and swirl and prick out again against the stars. When I did drop off, it was to dream that they had become the Lady’s golden meteors, and were sucking me off into space that was not space but the inner distances of her deadly eyes.

  But the nightmare did not wake me. I came to sitting up with the camp bolted upright round me, all of us flung straight into battle readiness by the sound.

  It was in the air, the jungle, the water, the earth itself. My sleeping ears had recorded its inception, a blast to split the sky. My woken mind perceived the sequel, a protracted ground-shaking thunderously sonorous drumbeat that rumbled on and on and on, till it sank to a floodhead roar that never completely died.

  Evis tugged my arm. Twisting in my cloak I saw his face, but not by the glow of our little fire.

  The clethras on the camp perimeter were cut out in silhouette, stark and precise, every bole, branch, twig and leaf. A red glow had opened the horizon behind them, a vermilion fierce as sunset, lightening to lurid crimson and then to a diluted scarlet that crept, even as I looked, toward the zenith sky. But it was not moonrise, not even a stupendous sunrise. For I was facing south.

  I got up and went over to a gap in the clethras. Without surprise, I found Beryx already there.

  The fire dyed his face blood color, and showed its expression. It held no triumph, however innocent of Ammath. It held sadness, and the serene, drained languor of a man in long and excruciating pain who has finally been released.

  The red mounted to the zenith, illuminating the whole land around. I could see the dugouts, the tents, the Ulven’s ruddy eyes, every shrub and branch. And hear that distant growl, shaken occasionally by a deeper throb, as of some spasm in the heart of an expiring beast.

  “She was trying to use Wreviane,” he said. “With the Well. Before the Wet came. To burn the whole of Stirsselian over us.”

  I caught my breath. His eyes were still on the south.

  “And,” he said softly, “it went awry.” That peace, too spent to be called triumph, remained in his face. “The Morhyrne’s blown up.”

  I was deprived of speech. He remarked, “It always was a volcano, you know.” Though his gaze had not moved, the bloody light showed decision, quiet, sure purpose, crystallizing before my eyes.

  “There it is.” He murmured it, with calm, almost elegiac vindication. “The one thing too much.”

  * * * * *

  With action permitted he knew how to act. Dawn found us on the edge of Stirsselian, uneasy in our mud gear for the first time, farewelling Ulven who had not seemed to need explanation. Beryx embraced Ygg, smiling into his face. “Yes,” he said, not waiting for an interpreter. “No thanks needed either side. We’re off to end the drought.” And Ygg lifted his hand, and watched us walk out into the Gjerven rice-fields, and melted quietly away.

  “Stirian Ven,” Beryx said as we tramped. “I’ll get horses, but it may take time. The whole country’s in chaos. And we must be careful. She was lucky with the Morhyrne, the cone blew out at its southern base. So Ker Morrya’s still there. And so is the Well. She’ll have a good deal on her hands. But not enough to forget us.”

  We were in striking range of Stirian Ven just before dusk. Halting us in a well-isolated kymman stand, Beryx grinned at me with a resurgence of his old blithe authority. “Want to add horse-catcher to your trades, Fylghjos? Get down by the road and wait.”

  I slid into a thrithan clump above that familiar double-paven carriage way, and ensconced myself, gazing down those empty swords of distance into the south. Except for the distant perpetual rumble, it was deathly quiet. No human voices called, no axes rang, no beasts cried or birds sang. Indeed, none had sung all day. The air smelt as if a gigantic forge had been overthrown in mid-fire, and greasy black smoke had spread over the whole sky, so at high noon we had moved in an eerie dusk. But now the sun was going, and the dusk was topaz, golden wine, lilac, royal crimson, a dome of glory over the broken earth. An ironic splendor to have sprung from ruin.

  As I thought that, my ear caught the sound of hooves.

  I leant out of the thrithan stems and jerked in surprise, for the beast was nearly on me, coming at a smart collected walk. Then it moved out of silhouette, off the road’s skyline, and the hair prickled on my scalp.

  It was a gray mare, shimmery as moonlight, built like a war-horse, well-boned, long in the rein, with a fine if placid carriage of the head. And a Sathel rider, blue desert robe, black turban, no stick in his hand. The mare clipped quickly up the carriageway, she was abreast of me, I was still wondering how she had got so near before I noticed, when she checked.

  As in a dream I rose among the thrithans, looking up into a pair of almost rectangular, black-lashed, rainwater-clear gray eyes. The mare blew gently through her nostrils. Shadows wove in those gray irises, and then I knew what I had met.

  “Fengthira,” I said.

  Chapter XI

  Those gray eyes raked me, one swift compressive glance. Yet I had the unnerving impression that Beryx himself had never seen me so completely; that for a moment I had been no more than a sheet of glass against the sun.

  She answered, “Ah.”

  “Best not stand jawing here,” she went on. Her voice was decisive, resonant, yet utterly feminine. “Come tha and stop them trying to take my head off at the camp.”

  The mare cleared the road ditch in one easy spring. Her rider seemed to know the way, for I found myself hurrying to keep up.

  “Save tha questions,” she said over her shoulder. “Not that tha askst many.” A note of wintry approval. “And needst not pother about his beasts.” She slowed the mare. “Come tha in front.”

  I went past her, with a warning whistle that raised bellicose figures everywhere. My “Stand easy” hardly reassured them. Beryx alone did not move.

  He was cross-legged, his breath slow and effortful, eyes blank, deep in trance. Wreve-lan’x, I thought. Then a warm horse breath touched my elbow and above me Fengthira said, dryly amused, “Nay, t’is only the Hethrian witch.”

  She slid down while they were still dumbstruck and went up behind Beryx. Evis lunged forward with a warning growl. She glanced at him, and he seemed to freeze in his tracks.

  “Calm thaself,” she said, the mockery sharper yet, before her eyes dropped to Beryx. “T’is not Velandryxe, but. . . .”

  With delicate care she brought her hand in contact with his neck. Her breathing slowed to match with his. Then hers altered, his followed, and she stood back while he sat blinking, rubbing at his eyes.

  “What . . . ” he said. “How. . . .” He twisted round. Then his face bur
st open in almost ecstatic relief.

  “ ’Thira!” He came up with a leap and hurled himself, clutching her in his left arm and trying to do it with his right. “Oh, thank the Four—if ever I needed you it’s now!”

  Her turban emerged, well down his chest. Her hands, a light, affectionate clasp, were either side his waist. “Ah. Hast been through the crucible this time, I see.” Her head came clear. “Daft looby. I’d to use a Ruanbraxe, si’sta? No sense letting the filly kick us both out of the yard.”

  He was laughing, somewhat shakily. “ ’Thira, I could strangle you, if you knew what I’ve been thinking. . . .”

  “Ah. No way to guess if she’d know it too.”

  He nodded, briefly sobered. Then the joy revived. His arm tightened on her shoulders. “How did you—when did you—what did you—how should I—oh, Four, I’m too full of How and What and Why to have a hope of First!”

  Her eyes were dancing. I knew the turban masked a smile.

  “A month on the road. Act as tha’st planned. And art in good truth a looby. I tell thee Through is sometimes worse than Round, and when it does sink in tha ironclad skull tha must needs fetch a circuit round the back of Selionur.”

  “Oh.” He sounded so dashed I could have boxed her ears. “Four, ’Thira, I didn’t know what to do, I—every choice was Ammath.” His head drooped. “I might have known I’d make a botch of it.”

  “Botch?” Her eyes were sober, but there was quiet emphasis in her voice. “Didst the only thing tha couldst.”

  After a moment his look became understanding. Then a solemn acknowledgement.

  “And I might have known,” she added tartly, “when tha tookst a prentice tha’d choose one twice as hard in the mouth as thaself.”

  If I had thought Beryx could no longer startle me, I was wrong. His eyes flew wide. Then the color flooded his face from brow to chin and he blushed like the veriest boy.

  Fengthira merely stared, the hard laughter sparkling. “Ah,” she said.