Moving Water (9 page)

“Don't you want it?” she purred.

His face moved. Not in shock or wrath or any other emotion he had shown. This time it was vulnerable. Naked, as in physical desire.

 He swallowed. Then he said harshly, “No.”

“But I'm incompetent.” She knew she had the whip hand, and was showing it. “You could do so much better than I.”

He took a quick hard breath and licked his lips. I did not understand the fence. I simply knew he had lost his guard, and was being pressed beyond hope of recovery.

“No,” he said fiercely. “I don't want it.”

She merely looked at him. We both knew it was a lie.

“You're not . . . competent?”

The light writhed in his eyes, the pupils flared, they were turning black. His hand lifted, and was wrenched violently back to his side.

“Just think,” she murmured, “what you could do for Assharral. From the court to the painted savages. No more terror. No more tyranny.” He choked as if hands had him by the throat. “And not only Assharral. Hethria. Everran. The Confederacy. You know what this is. You know you needn't stop at that. You could change the entire . . . world.”

He shut his eyes. That one small act was a bitterly contested, cruelly expensive victory.

“That is not Math.” His voice shook. He was not stating a belief but reciting a prayer. “Math isn't doing. It's doing only what you must.”

“But surely you know it must be done? You were—are—a ruler too.”

“No.” Sweat ran down his jaw. The scar glared purple. He clenched his fist.

“No.” It came on a longdrawn, struggling breath. “I . . . will. . . .” His voice cracked, I barely heard the clinching whisper. “. . . not.”

She had missed the pivot point. She still sounded soft. Concerned. Pitiless.

“You'll turn your back? On all that? Even on Assharral? Is it Math to see something so evil and to . . . walk away?”

He opened his eyes. The irises were bleached, the sockets looked bruised, evidence of a fight that had taken every atom of strength. But the exhaustion was at peace.

“Moriana,” he said. “Give it up. Please.”

Her eyes went blade sharp. “To you?”

“Not to me. Not to anyone. I know you don't understand Math, but even an imbecile knows Ammath when it touches him. And this is Ammath. You're not a Sky-lord, however much incense they burn for you. Do you taste all those butchered sheep? Four, of course you don't. You've perverted something like—that—” He gestured at it, not looking. “And for what? What pleasure is there in playing morsyr to ten lives' favorites?” I knew he meant the black spider who eats her mates. “Working some bastard form of Fengthir on poor clowns like those?” He jerked his head at the guards. “Terrorizing decent soldiers, emasculating your nobles, toying with an empire? Believe me”—the plea deepened—“it might do for a while. It won't fill an ‘eternal' life.”

She bent her head away, a swan's pure curve. A little, willful smile played on her lips.

“But,” she cooed, “it amuses me.”

“Amuse—!” He caught his breath and wiped sweat off with a jerk. “Moriana, there are other, more amusing things for an aedr to do. Four, you've never been prenticed! When I talked about Pharaone you didn't know what I meant.” It was pity, rigorously concealed. “You rot away by your little fountain, abusing something that—well, never mind that—and you think there's the rest of time to do it in. When it may already be too late.”

She leant back, feigning consideration. Her voice half-teased, half-protested, a flirting woman's denial that she is ready to yield. But I knew this No was real.

“If I left this . . . I'd turn into a hag.”

“For Math's love! You'll come down a girl, you just won't stay that way. Women! It's your head that matters, not your face!”

“Oh.” Blandly demure. “But . . . what would I do—out there?”

“You could begin,” he answered grimly, “with amends to Assharral.”

Her eyelids lifted. She gave him a long, silent stare.

“So,” he said after a moment. “That may be true. It wouldn't matter. Not if—”

“Not matter?” Her fingers arched on the globe. “I'm to leave my palace, renounce an empire, give up ‘eternal' life. And then, when my ‘loving subjects' hound me into exile, probably hunting my blood, when I'm out in the road, growing old, ‘ignorant,' ugly, not to mention penniless—then just what becomes of me?”

The grimness shattered, burst by spring-light that was all too familiar, all too inevitable. I never had time to bellow, No! Not here! Not now!

“Welllll,” it came in a drawl. He cocked his head, appraising her like a tavern wench. “Even then . . . I'd probably marry you.”

Her eyes spat. Her cheeks flamed. In a flash she was not merely aged but hideous.

“You ape! You oaf! You limping hobbledehoy! You—” Her eyes slashed past him. “You gaping ninnies, take him! Truss him up! Cripple him!”

He spun on the advancing guards, I felt some blind compulsion seize me and found I was advancing too, sword out lest he resisted, mind aware of what he was and that I was a friend to him, limb and muscle refusing to hear and will accepting it.

He whirled back to me. I saw his eyes flare, green-white, blinding, and knew he would use A'sparre, in a moment I should be dead as Gevos. I had no way of preventing it, and no fear. Whatever impelled me did not care.

His back arched, his breath drew in. Then, like a bough breaking, the intent snapped.

As my sword-point touched his ribs he said, “I won't fight, Alkir.”

I could not feel relief, let alone thankfulness. Something was appeased, I knew that. I also knew where we were to go. Down into the city, to the Treasury, whose vaults had once been the imperial prison for rebels of common blood. There were still chains riveted into those clammily weeping walls, their key in the Vault-keeper's custody. I would lock them on, and restore the key to its rightful guardian.

The guards about-turned and fell in on either side. Without protest he swung and started to walk.

I had climbed back to Los Morryan, handed the key to the Lady, and re-crossed the square outside Ker Morrya's gate, when I regained my will.

Waking up? No, for I had never slept. Escaping a glass cell? No, for glass you can smash for yourself. Growing up in a single breath? But a baby lacks a man's coherent memory. I could remember everything. But now it all had meaning. And I was free to make a response.

The passersby must have thought me a lunatic, running full-pelt in the street. The Treasury scribes certainly did, for I barged straight back to the Vault-keeper's room and on down the long flight of steps into those dim tunnels, past the torch we had left in a bracket, snatching it as I tore into the dank crypt where that other will had directed me, yelling, “What happened? For the love of anything you like, what happened up there?”

He stood as we had left him, back to the square rough wall blocks whose faces ran sopping red in the torch-glow, red as the pools on the uneven floor. I had done my duty well. A long fetter ran to each manacle, another to the leg-iron on each ankle. He could hardly have lain down, had there been inducement. But whatever we did, he had recovered his own guard. His eyes caught the light, narrow, sparkling green.

“To me?” he said. “Or to you?”

“To, to—” I found then what it means to grow incoherent with rage.

“You were given a Command. Not pure Chake, a blend of some sort. There's something odd about all you Assharrans, it must come from—up there. You're all permanently half under Letharthir—half mesmerized.”

“Mesmerized!”

“Bewitched, then.” His brows came down. “Did you never think, on the way here, to ask what you were doing? To say to yourself, Here's a very strange fellow, peculiar powers, quite unknown quantity, could be highly dangerous—so I'll just conduct him straight to my ruler's doorstep and see what he'll do?”

 “I, I—”

I stopped as it hit me, winding as a door in the face. All that way, clean across Assharral. The Captain of the Lady's Guard. With a wizard under my shield-arm, worrying about spies and the doings of the Sathellin.

“Then, when you do get a Command, you go clean under.” The eyes twinkled. “Like sleepwalkers, you were.”

“And you, you cackling idiot!” It is wonderful what liberties affection permits. “You let her get away with it!”

The laughter snuffed. “To stop her,” he said flatly, “I would have had to kill you all.”

I gasped. He nodded. “Or challenge her, and try to break the Command. There wasn't time.”

Water plopped. I heard the scurry of a rat. Then my own voice, sounding shrunken, small.

“Could you have—done it?”

“You mean, was I able? Oh, yes. Was I willing? Never. No.”

I stared. He sounded quiet, stern, pure adamant.

“I will never,” he said, “save myself by killing innocent men.”

The torch guttered between us in the sodden air. He had had the power to win. He had chosen defeat, shameful bondage, rather than abuse that power. For the sake of his enemy's tools. And whether she understood his power or not, whether or not she had gambled on his integrity, the Lady had been ready to see us slain. For malice, revenge. Victory.

I should have agreed. Every soldier knows his life may be the price of winning, and counts winning the end that justifies all means. And unquestioning obedience, unswerving fidelity, are the corners of a soldier's earth. But mine was no longer firm.

“She,” I said, “just wanted to win.”

He nodded, silent. Even now, he would not stoop to calumny.

“However she did it. . . .” Slowly, a conviction formed and firmed to intent in my mind. “I'm going back to get that key.”

“Alkir!” His voice spun me round and his eyes were white-hot crystal. “You'll do nothing of the sort!”

“But—but—you said yourself, it's against Math! It must be stopped! You can't sit here and refuse to—”

“I refuse,” he said between his teeth, “to get you killed.”

“Killed!”

“Wake up, man. Stop thinking you're a big brave sword-swinging soldier and she's just a slip of a girl. If she let you up there, you couldn't do a thing. She could walk you straight over that parapet. And she would.

“Don't drop the torch,” he went on after a moment, rather hastily, but I knew the smile had revived. “I'm not that fond of the dark.”

I groaned. He, I could hear, smiled. “When Fengthira taught me Lathare I spent two days tied on a rope-end. This is just damnably wet. And uncomfortable.”

“And,” I said bleakly, “there's no way out.”

He was testing the manacles. “I don't . . . think . . . Axynbrarve is up to these. If it were, I'd have to cut down a wall of sleepwalkers upstairs. And probably the whole guard outside.” He gave me a cryptic look. “Including you.

“And don't get sacrificial,” he anticipated me. “I loathe sacrifice.”

“Then what in the name of your Math,” I bellowed, “is this?”

“Oh, this is tactics,” he answered cheerfully.

Looking round, I saw a fetter-ring, and stuck up the torch. “I don't even know the ensigns, and I'm in the middle of a war. Do you think you could explain, at least? To begin with, what
was
that—thing?”

“Not a thing.” For the first time he showed reverence. “
That
was Los Velandryxe Thira. The Well”—reverence deepened—“of Wisdom's Light.”

“But what
is
it?”

A fetter cramped the familiar scrub at his hair. “Nobody really knows. Fengthira tells a very old story that it's a drop of water from Los Therystar—do you know the Ystanyrx, the Great Tales? No. Anyway, there's one about the Xaira, the separation of aedryx and men. The Mothers of men and aedryx were sitting by Los Therystar, the Well of the Purple Flowers, when Arva Aedryx saw in its water the first vision in Yxphare. Foresight, you'd say. The Mother of Men laughed and Arva Aedryx struck her blind. So ever since, aedryx and men have been”—an old wound spoke in his voice—“different.”

He looked at my face, and shrugged. “Math knows where Los Therystar was, if it was at all. The Tales are truth, not history. And nobody knows the origin of Los Velandryxe, because at some stage some enterprising soul put a Ruanbraxe, a mind-shield, on it. You can't see it with the Sights, not with Pharaone or Phathire, and Fengthira says Yxphare's the same. One reason why that Sight's so dangerous.”

“Sights?”

“Pharaone is farsight. How I checked the mare this morning. Phathire is vision of the past. Yxphare, future-sight, is a gift, it can't be taught. Because of the mind-shield, I didn't know what Moriana had. I thought she was just Ammath. Evil. An aedr gone rotten. For her line, it would be in character.”