Moving Water (10 page)

“Never mind her line. What about this—this—heirloom?”

“Um. . . . The lower arts, like the Sights, and the Commands, even A'sparre, deal with minds. The higher ones are different. Wreve-lan'x, Axynbrarve, then the harder ones, Wreviane, Wrevurx, that's weather-work—”

“You can control the
weather?
”

“Oh, yes.” He was quite matter-of-fact. “I could have turned that storm in Thangar. But Wrevurx is the first art where Velandryxe really matters. Wisdom. Justice, judgment, and Math.”

My head swam. “I thought Math was respect for that-which-is?”

“Part of it, yes. The rule part. Just as a storm's part of that-which-is. Before you meddle with it, you have to judge if your reason's pressing enough. To push a storm about may drown someone here, or ruin someone there, who needed rain for his crops. It may spoil remoter things.” His look was unfathomable. “So you must use judgment as well as power. And guide the judgment by Math.”

“Respect for that-which-is.” I clung to that talisman. “But where does this Well come in?”

“At the very top. The supreme art is Wreve-lethar. The old aedryx never told prentices about that at all. You had to be a master to know and a Velandyr so much as to think of trying it. And of the handful who tried, only one, so far as I know, managed to succeed.”

“But what did he actually do?”

He grew very quiet. “Wreve-lethar means, to control the dream. And what aedryx call the Dream is—what you call the Universe.”

My head spun right round. I grabbed for solid stone. When the Lady said, “You could change the entire world,” I had thought she meant something ordinary like conquering it.

“You need wisdom,” he was saying, “and more skill than I'll ever have, and the sort of strength I only dream about. Most aedryx said it was for the Pharaon, the creators, and forgot it. A few tried, and lost their minds. But one succeeded. And he changed the Dream. He brought Math into the world.”

“Who . . . was he?”

“Th'Iahn.” He spoke the name with care, respect, but not reverence. “The first Heagian. Founder of the Flametree, from which both my and Moriana's lines were a branch. . . .” His eyes came to sudden life. “But I'll show you. Look here.”

His eyes seemed to swallow me into gulfs of black. Then a tiny world rushed toward me, I was in it. Part of it.

He was on his feet looking straight at me across a work-table cluttered with mementoes, gems, bird-skulls, artifacts. His coppery hair flung back from his temples as with the wind of flight, his eyes bore down on me like runaway green fires, leaping from that volcanic face. “You'll want and wish as you like,” he hissed, “but I say you
will!
”

I literally tumbled backward from that impact. Beryx looked down on me sprawling amid the puddles with a somewhat wry grin.

“One of his happier moments. Makes you wonder how he could sire Math?”

I reformed my wits. “So he used Wreve-lethar and—and changed the world by dreaming Math?” He nodded, I scrambled up. “At least my outposts are set. But how does this Well come in?”

“Wreve-lethar's like any other art. There has to be a focus. A mind, a woodheap, a horse. When you try to change the Dream, Los Velandryxe is where you look.”

The torch popped, water dripped. He stared back at me, not trying to soften the significance.

“Yes” he said. “In the wrong hands—with the wrong intent—it could be the most terrible thing on earth.”

“But—why didn't you take it when she—”

“No!” It was violent. “In Math you do only as you must. The temptation to alter things, to—” The sweat sprang on his forehead. “If you did master the Well, it could rot you as easily as power. Easier. Especially if you follow Math. The hardest lesson I ever had to learn is not to act. To let alone, if not well alone. To have the Well. . . .” He shuddered. “No, I can't—I won't think of it!”

“So,” I was still catching up his line of march, “she offered it to you for evil. Ammath. Is that it?”

“She doesn't know what she's doing, Alkir.” It was almost pleading now. “Four knows how she came by it, it was lost in one of the upsets three generations before Berrian, and he was my ninth forefather. Fengthira thought it was lost forever. She told me about Wreve-lethar, but just in explaining Math. Moriana doesn't know. She's aedric blood, but she's blind ignorant. She's learnt to tinker with a few things,” again that adept's scorn, “like slowing time to keep herself young, and mastering Assharral—she picked the rest from my thought. She's a child. A child playing with a wound-down catapult.”

I caught my breath. “With the world sitting in its target eye!”

Then Assharral's bondage, ten guard captains, my ignoble subjection, his defeat by his own integrity, all burst in my head at once. “A child! No child would—no child could—have you mislaid your wits?”

“Now don't start feeling your wounded vanity all over again.” The grin revived. “Mine's a lot more wounded than yours.”

After a moment I said, “What do you mean to do?”

His face wore the strangest look. Airy, willful, save for the lack of malice it might have been the Lady's own intransigence.

“Oh, I intend to . . . wait.”

“Wait! You—she—I—what will your Fengthira say to that?”

He chuckled. A resonant, acerbic feminine voice snapped, “ ‘I told thee naught but trouble would come of tha gallivanting. Tha wast ever one to stick tha hand in a hornets' nest and wonder that t'was stung.' No,” he resumed in his normal voice, “distance means nothing to Lathare.” Ruefully, “And she's probably right. I couldn't resist teasing Moriana at the end, and look where it's landed me.”

I ignored this last frivolity. “She won't help? What sort of a friend—”

“Alkir, Alkir. She follows Math. Do only what you must. If she came raving in here firing thunderbolts, who knows what she might spoil?” The chuckle answered my thoughts. “No, this isn't bad enough for a Must. Not yet. What can you do? Um. You were allowed down here once, so . . . I could do with something to eat. And something to sit on. And—most definitely—something to throw at the rats.”

* * * * *

Part of me must have outmarched my chaotic thoughts, for as I blinked onto the street a black flash at one eye-corner spun me round with a fistful of surcoat and my sword at an unprotected throat.

“Eh, ow, Cap'n, whoa!” Sivar's heavy face was twisting ludicrously above my grasp. “I ain't done nothing, sir!”

“Oh.” I let go. It was all triggered and light, as in a battle's heart. “Yes. I—what are you doing here?”

He squirmed. Then he addressed the pavement. “Sir . . . is it true? Our wizard—he's been chained up in there?”

Our
wizard. I hardly noted it. Nor did I marvel anew at the wonders of barrack espionage. I was merely thankful for them.

“Walk away. Normally.” We paced downhill. “It's true. The Lady—” I stopped.
Our
wizard. But how far did that go?

“He's detained.” An eye-corner on his face told me all I needed. “You're off duty? Buy some food, and something rat-proof to put it in. No, it's not the lap of luxury down there. A stool. Candles. Water-bottle. If you can find it, some,” I all but said Everran, “Sathel wine. Keep things small. We'll have to lug it past the whole Treasury. Meet at my house. You know it?”

He nodded, eyes glistening. Intrigue, illicit intrigue, and with an officer. He would glory in it till his dying day.

Callissa was posted in earshot of our door. At my footstep she flew out, face transparently thankful at seeing me alone. “Thank the Lady, he's gone! It's all over. Now we can—” She stopped.

Taking her elbow, I made for our living room. Unsurprised, I noted it was already evening. Soon the twins would be in from play.

“Do we have a couple of spare blankets? And where's my campaign cloak?”

She did not move. “I thought it was finished,” she said.

“He's in the Treasury vault. In chains. Can I just walk away?”

Her face was flint. I had never seen such a wall in it. “You should.”

I opened my mouth. She cried, “You're Captain of the Guard, Alkir!”

“So?”

“So leave it alone! Let the Lady see to—”

“Callissa . . . listen! She told us to arrest him. He could have killed us all.” She went white. “He told me he would never save himself by killing innocent men. Can I walk away from that?”

“You should! You must! If she chained him he's bad! I knew it, I knew he was, mad and bad and—”

“Callissa, she ordered us to arrest him! She wouldn't have cared if we had been killed!”

“You'd be doing your duty, wouldn't you? You always said that was what mattered. That it was all a soldier would ask!”

“Yes. But. . . . Obey orders, yes. But how if they're not right?”

“Not right! They were the Lady's, weren't they?”

“Yes, but—suppose they were still wrong?”

“How could they be wrong? What are you talking about?”

“If they were . . . not good?” Ammath, he had said. How could I explain, with only the vaguest newborn notion of what its own disciple admitted to imperfectly understanding, this intangible, unintelligible Math?

Her face was brittle with scorn and strain and hostility. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Callissa. . . .” Never had I so desired the gift of words. “He's an aedr. A wizard. He has powers. Magic, if you like. But he won't use it, unless he thinks it's right. He—”

“Right! Oh, you're besotted! He's sorcelled you! He can't help you, you can't help him, he's just a mad magician and he'll ruin you, you'll lose the captaincy, the—”

“I don't want the captaincy!”

“Oh, Alkir! No money, no house, no rank—the disgrace—the wives whispering—the whole school jeering Zem and Zam—”

“To the pits with the wives, and the brats as well! Do you tell me you're afraid of that?”

“No! No!” Suddenly she screamed it, gabbling at me. “What about the Lady? She'll never forget it, she'll take you like the others, you'll go up there and never come back—”

“Then I'll have done my duty! My real duty, for once!”

“And what about me? What about the boys? A criminal's widow—evicted—begging—stoned—the boys—” Her face crumpled. “Oh, I wish we'd never left Frimmor! I wish we were home and s-safe!”

With shame I admit she cried a good ten heartbeats before I could reach out for her.

“Be easy,” I told her hair. Bitterly I envied those who had no hostages, no bonds to shackle their honor at such a pass. “Don't worry. I won't . . . leave the Guard. Only—where's my campaign cloak?”

She drew away. At the beaten apathy in her face I made to draw her back. But she said, “No. What does it matter? You won't listen to me.”

* * * * *

Our passage drew scared glances but no opposition from the Treasury scribes. As we unloaded, the prisoner raised his brows at Sivar, grinned, “Don't tell me you've never been in cells?” turned to me, thanks clearly on his lips. And stopped.

“We'll be back tomorrow.” I ignored his expression. “The Treasury's locked at night.” You were allowed down here once, he had said. It was pure but determined assumption that we would be allowed again. “We'll bring more candles. I'm sorry about the bucket, and the straw. So late, we could get nothing else.”

He merely nodded. The pity had grown clearer. Then he said quietly, “We all have our own choices. Don't blame her for putting your sons first.”

I opened and shut my mouth. Then I felt an easing, as when a bandage is slacked over a swollen wound. Tossing out the blankets, sure he would read the mock-taunt rightly, I said, “Sleep well.”

* * * * *

A Guard Captain has duties, whatever his allegiance. Parades, inspections, escorting the Lady abroad. The old world engulfed me, emphasizing the change at home, driving in the knowledge that I am not made to serve two masters, and that a choice would have to be made. I almost welcomed the furtive meetings to enlist more of the escort as provisioners.

“Cheerful, he is,” Sivar reported at the third noon-watch, face knotted in wonderment. “Been killing rats by the hundred. Reckons he'll charge mouser's fees to cover stabling the mare.”

“The mare!” I had quite forgotten her. “I'd best go down and pay something before they turn her out in the street.”

I entered through the long post-house yard with its ranks of seemingly disembodied horse-heads, meaning to inspect her first for myself. But the whole inn force was moiling about out there, ostlers, tapsters, scullions, cooks and hysterical chambermaids. I paused to retreat. Then I saw the red streams oozing amid their shoes and tore into the crowd as into a battle-front.