Gunwitch (21 page)

The major looked as though he would say more, but did not. He only stretched out beside Janett, one arm under his head as a pillow. He did not close his eyes.

“Miss Rose said we should stay here until dawn,” Janett said, still sitting upright.

Chal looked at Janett. “And now you are agreeing with her?”

Janett’s face flushed but she did not look away. “There are hundreds of them– Whatever they are. We are only four, three now. What can we do? We should stay here, and wait for Miss Rose to come back.” She sniffed. “If she comes back. Then we go to my father and–”

“And what, Miss Janett?”

“Father will know what to do!” the girl said, her voice rising. “He will send out an army to deal with these–these
things
. And he will rescue Margaret.”

“These … things,” Chal said, “are between us and your father. Please,” she added, “keep your voice down. We are not the only creatures in the bayuk who have ears.”

“She told us to wait here,” Janett said, her voice just above a whisper. “Until dawn. And if she does not come back, we go to my father. He will know what to do.”

Chal twirled her fingers in the grass again, but this time she did not listen to the song of the waters. Instead, she reached through the blades, through the roots, through the moisture of the earth, and her mind brushed across Janett’s. Janett’s eyes grew wide.

Sleep
, she said without words.

With her awareness and the connection, Chal could see the fatigue in the girl’s muscles, the pain of overexertion. She reached with her right hand and dipped one finger into the water of the bayuk.

At once the waters sang in a chorus of a thousand thousand voices in her mind, calling to her, beckoning her to join them. And with every ounce of her being she longed to answer their call, to join the waters, to melt into them. But the time was not yet.

With an effort that strained her muscles and her willpower and caused her to stand, she pulled her finger from the water. The chorus cut off as if a door had slammed shut and she blinked away tears, but the power of the waters remained within her, welling up like a rushing river thwarted by a dam.

Around her, the bayuk seemed to shine with the light of full day, a light that only she could see. Before her, laying on the ground, both of them asleep now, the children lay. She could see them clearly, see through them to their cores, see their sinews and muscles and the blood pumping through their veins. She stepped forward so she was between them, and knelt.

She laid one hand on each of them, and let the warmth of the waters flow from her into them. Major Haley gasped and Janett moaned, but neither of them woke. She watched, her sight dimming back to human normal, as the pains and the fatigues and the tensions washed out of man and girl. Two hours of sleep would do them more good now.

She pushed herself back to the patch of grass and sat, her arms trembling from exertion.

Now who was the child? she asked herself. She shook her head. The Water Mother would say there were three children here in the bayuk this night. But the major and Janett would need all their strength. She could not leave them behind. She needed them. To keep up with her.

Her gaze moved from the sleepers to the still trembling surface of the waters in the bayuk. Would the Seekers have sensed her? Only the touch of her finger?

* * *

She woke Major Haley, then Janett.

“We can save her life,” Chal replied. The children were not standing fast enough, so she took the major’s arm and pulled him up, surprising him. She turned to assist Janett, as well, but the girl pulled away from her. “We must hurry,” Chal said.

Chal considered forcing the issue. She had little patience left for the girl, but decided to let it go. “Very well.” She reached out her left hand to the major. After a brief hesitation, Major Haley took her hand. His grip was tentative. Hers was not. Through her fingers she could feel his renewed strength, from the rest and from the waters. “Stay close to the major, Miss Janet, and walk in his footsteps as much as you can. Perhaps you will gain some benefit.”

“Benefit?” Janett asked. “What kind of benefit?”

Chal ignored her and took a deep breath. She considered the direction they must go. Unlike Rose, they would take the most direct route. The Seekers would not know what she did, but there were those among Ducoed’s force, including Ducoed, who might feel her coming to them. There was no help for that, just as there was no help for her own lack of sleep and the fatigue such a path would claim on her. But Rose needed her. Needed all of them.

She pulled the major forward, at a fast walk, drawing from him some of his new reserve of strength. There was an instant of resistance from Janett, then the combined pulling of Chal and Major Haley overcame the girl’s inertia.

Chal led them in a straight line. Grasses and flowers bent for her and sprang back up behind the major. Bushes divided so she could pass through, closing behind Major Haley, their branches and nettles reaching for Janett’s skin and clothes and hair, pulling when they got a hold. The branches of trees rose or bent out of her path–and more than once caught Janett smartly across the forearm or threatened her head. They reached a bayuk, nearly twenty feet across, and Chal stopped.

“I am doing what I must, Miss Janett, and what I can. All of us have limits. If you do not hold my hand, then you are outside of mine.” She waited, but Janett just looked at her. She almost smiled. “Very well.”

She sensed … a knowing, a waiting ahead of them, and it pulled her attention from Janett. A trap?

There was no time for subtlety. Chal
pushed
into the earth at her feet, then
out
of the earth and stone at the bottom of the channel in front of her, and forced stepping-stones to burst through the surface of the water. The major gasped and let out an oath–had he felt that his strength had done this for her?–but followed when she tugged him, leaping from stone to keep up with her.

Janett protested and tugged at the major, but came on. She made it half-way before slipping off and splashing into the water, still holding his hand.

“Do not step off the stones, Major Haley,” Chal said, pausing so he would not be pulled off balance. “The water is not deep.”

“I can see that,” Janett said, standing in the water up to her knees. “And no thanks to you. My shoes are soaked through, and my dress–”

“Help her back on the stones, Major Haley, but do not step into the water. Keep up, Miss Janett,” she added when the three of them were again on the stones.

They reached the shore at a slower pace, without further slips. Then she led them into the underbrush again, following the same straight-line path. She disliked leaving the stones as they were. It was not her way to leave such things in her wake, but she was in a hurry. Their path led through a briar patch. Behind her, she heard Janett gasping and crying out as the thorns found her.

“No, Major Haley. That was … a call for help. Do not let go of Miss Janett,” she added. She no longer walked, she ran. As fast as she could, held back by the major who was held back by Janett, the three of them stretched in a line, her pulling them all with the major’s strength. She no longer passed through the underbrush, she
pushed
a path in front of her. A path that would only slowly recover from the affront of her passing. She regretted the necessity. At least it made Janett less of a drag.

At the next channel she did not slow. Her feet made great splashes in the water as she
pushed
the water away from her, and she ran in a bubble that wrapped itself around her, let her feet fall on dusty damp earth and closed behind her, sloshing water against the feet and legs of the major and Janett. The waters protested her keeping them away, she could hear their cries, and some catfish and kraveys suffered a few seconds of asphyxiation and convulsed in the dust beside her feet before the waters returned to them.
I am sorry
, she told the waters and the creatures and the plants.

The Seekers might very well sense her. Through the change in the song of the waters or the distress of the fish, through the water that splashed on Major Haley, or even through Janett, who floundered behind them, soaking up enough water in her skirts and petticoats to drop the level of the entire bayuk and raising such a fuss that Chal expected the few remaining citizens of far away Tik’al could hear her. But there was no time for sneaking, no time for worrying about the Seekers, and no time to properly shut up Janett–assuming that was possible with either might or magic.

Out of the channel on the other side and still running, still pulling Major Haley along, and him pulling the growing storm that was Janett.

Chal threw her senses forward as she ran, through the leaves and the flowers and the grass and the roots of the trees, searching for sign of Rose. Any sign at all.

For long seconds, stride after stride, she found nothing, and doubt and despair grew in the back of her mind. She did not wish to lose Rose, her friend and sister. Through her long travels she had found few sisters among either the pale newcomers or the cousins of her own people. To the former, she was only another native girl, to be ignored or exploited. To the latter, she was not of their sept or clan, so she was forfeit. Rose, though, had been like her, an exile, pushing against the constraints of her world as much as Chal pushed against hers.

Water flows
, the Water Mother had told her time after time.
It does not choose its course. It does not ask where it flows.

Water can be pushed uphill, Water Mother
, she had replied.
Or carried
.

Yes, child.
The ancient face of the Water Mother had showed only the patience of a mother at the repeated nonsense of a child who had not learned to listen.
But once you release the water, again it flows, and all your pushing and carrying is for nothing. That is the nature of water: to flow.

Chal had mastered the waters, but not learned to give herself to them and let them flow. And so the Water Mother had sent her away.

Go, child. I release you. When you have learned for yourself what I have been unable to teach you, you will return to me.

What if I die, Water Mother? Before I can return to you?
Chal had been found by the Seekers when she was a child, and had no memories of her life before the Water Mother. She had grown up learning about the waters–and wondering about the world beyond Tik’al, and longing to go and see. But her duty had been clear from the beginning. She was to succeed the Water Mother. Why else had she been found and trained? That was why she had hesitated on the last step of the temple and did not place her foot on the path to her future.
What if I find … that I do not want to return?

All waters return to the source, child. Have you learned nothing?
The thin shoulders of the Water Mother had shrugged.
But, if you are lost, then I will train another.

Chal had smiled.
What if there is no other, Water Mother?

Water flows, my child. Water flows.

Those had been the last words Chal heard in her own language, and the sight of Water Mother closing her eyes, nodding her head, then turning to walk back up the tall temple steps, had been the last time she had seen the old woman who was her first sister and the only mother she remembered.

Water Mother had returned to the waters during Chal’s journeys. Chal did not wish to lose another sister. So she pushed water uphill, carried water to aid her sister.

As Chal led the major and the girl through the next channel, she finally sensed the footfalls of Rose Bainbridge. Rose was running toward them, head on, retracing her path. She was fatigued, Chal sensed. She had expended herself in her escape, but she was alive.