Moving Water (2 page)

“Something is coming. Coming here.”

I was relieved to unearth tangibles, and tangibles within my sphere. “An enemy, ma'am?”

Her lips curved. To this day I cannot decide if that smile held hate or love, hope or dread, eagerness or enmity.

“All things in the Dream,” replied that low, absent melody, “seem as you see them. Rose, thorn. Treasure, serpent. One, the other. Both.”

I hoped she was not listening to my thought. Respectfully, I did not say, Are you babbling? but, “If the Lady has need of me. . . .”

“Oh, yes.” She was still gazing westward. Her words fell cool and crystal clear. “You are going to meet it, Alkir. Bring it to me.”

I tried not to swallow. “Yes, ma'am. Er. . . .”

She turned her head. Her mouth spoke what I knew her eyes would hold. Knowing, languid mockery.

“Hethria,” she said. “You've never heard of it.”

“Er—yes, ma'am.” You dare, sometimes, to contradict even the Lady Moriana. But very, very respectfully. “It's a desert. Beyond Kemrestan. I served garrison duty out there once.”

“How very”—silken menace—“convenient.”

Looking over her head at the glittering black rock of the Morhyrne's shell, I felt the toes curl in my boots.

“It is coming,” she sank back, letting the dew-globe slide down into her lap, “from Hethria. To . . . let me see . . . Etalveth. You know the town . . . no doubt.”

“Ma'am.” My mouth was dry.

“A fleapit,” added that drowsy lilt. “Full of bored dogs, lazy soldiers. And Sathellin.”

The picture assembled in my mind, white dust between white mud flat-roofed shanties, searing sun, sanctuaries of shade jammed with donkeys, dicing soldiers, beggars, peddlers, and the black-turbaned, blue-gowned figures of the Sathellin, the desert sailors whose caravans wind in from oceans only they can chart, laden with the craziest blend of rubbish and treasure-trove. Ochre-daubed amulets, tall pointed jars of wine from an unknown vineyard, maerian gems and goat-skin sandals, dried serpent skins and the priceless tapestries hung in her own loggia. . . .

The image faded. Los Morryan twinkled, the perridel's golden bloom and silver leaf were dancing, while the Lady looked past me with that odd smile in her coal-black eyes.

“You will go to Etalveth, Alkir. Take . . . two pentarchies of the Guard. And collect this gift.”

“Ma'am.” I saluted. My heart bounced ridiculously halfway up my throat. After my forebodings, this lunatic order was a gallows reprieve. And then the omission occurred to me.

The Lady smiled. Now the laughter was cruel, alert, and aimed at me alone.

“Yes. How very remiss of us. You are looking for a man, Alkir. A man with a scarred face.” She drew her fingers down the flawless porcelain of her right cheek. “With a crippled arm.” She moved her right arm on the parapet. “And. . . . Oh, yes. He has green eyes.”

* * * * *

Los Morryan did fulfill part of its reputation. It seemed a mere minute or two we spoke there, in the first quarter of a fine Dry-season day. Yet I descended into late afternoon, to find the Guard in turmoil, Evis unsure if he was a second or a new-made commander, and Callissa occupying my work-room amid a swarm of upset children and a flood of half-stemmed tears.

“Yes,” I told Evis, untangling a wife from my breast-plate and a son from each leg. “But not for long. Yes, dear, I'm alive. No, son, nobody's eaten me. I just have to go away for a while.”

Callissa substituted frightened query for frightened relief. We grew up on two of Frimmor's little neighboring farms. She was never fully reconciled to my quitting it for the army, even after I married her and necessity rather than ambition kept me aiming for captaincy of the Guard. Without influence, it takes a good deal more than simple addition would predict to feed four mouths. She had never said a word against soldiering, the Lady, Zyphryr Coryan. Only I knew that if I ever asked, “Do you miss Frimmor?” we would be striking camp in a week.

“Nothing to worry about,” I told her, smiling to calm those clear brown eyes. She has clear skin too, and a cloud of fine brown hair, and fine bones that looked elfin before Zem and Zam arrived. “I'll tell you at home. Just let me grind Evis' nose a little flatter first.”

Before we talked I also had to bed down the twins, supply a condensed saga of the latest Phaxian war, and warn them that my trip was “in security.” I doubted the Lady's whim was for open talk, and that was enough to lock their mouths. Then I disarmed and bathed and Callissa silently kept an eye on the maid serving roast beef and vegetables. Servants were still not customary to her.

She did not exclaim on the Lady's vagaries, speculate on the stranger's aims or provenance. There was no “Etalveth's such a long way” or “When will you be back?” or “Why must it be you?” or even “Is it safe?” There never had been, even when I marched to Phaxia. Only at the end, not raising her eyes, she said quietly, “I suppose it had to come sometime.”

“What on earth do you mean?” In peace or war, our kind mislike cold prophecies. “This is just an errand. Inside Assharral. I'll be back before the boys need more new shoes.”

She turned the silver on her plate. A Captain of the Guard needs silver tableware, naturally, and naturally it bore the moontree crest. So did most things in our large old house above the main barrack square. Cups, hangings, chairs, fan-light, the round moon with its crowning tree looked back at you everywhere.

“Oh, you'll be back.” With anyone else, I would have called that note defeat. “Only . . . things won't be the same.”

“Tell me,” I said, taking her hand, with gentleness.

“Nothing.” She turned her hand to clasp mine briefly before removing hers. “Just stupidity.”

* * * * *

If it is shorter than the way to Eskan Helken, the road to Etalveth is journey enough. Four of Assharral's ten provinces it crosses, from the coastal farms of Morrya to Thangar's ranges with their timber forests and tingling air, then the long grain lands of Climbros, and Darrior's mines and cattle-camps; before the ever-more-arid shepherd lands of Kemrestan change from half-desert to wilderness, and a fringe of garrison towns marks the edge of no-man's-land, the prelude to Hethria.

We were a fortnight on the way, despite post-horses and the silver moontree on our black surcoats that gave us precedence over everything but chance. A fortnight is ample time to think. Yet I had reached no conclusions when I informed Etalveth's flustered garrison commander that I was on “an informal inspection of the western defenses,” and he quartered us in his half-empty fort.

The western garrisons are little more than the Lady's whim, or the army's nursery. When Assharral looks for trouble, it is northward, from Phaxia. My ten guardsmen livened the brothels and enriched the gambling sharps, I spent half my days in military trivia and the rest at the caravanserai, the huge colonnaded courtyard with its crumbling brick walls and monstrous old keerphar trees and babble of a dozen different dialects, where the Sathellin camp in Etalveth, when they come at all.

Only in the last two generations have they come. No one then knew why. There were many rumors, all baseless. Wild stories of a realm beyond Hethria, a cluster of realms called the Confederacy, wilder stories of a witch dwelling in Hethria, who dammed a great river to make the desert flower and bade the Sathellin carry wares from one to the other end of the world. There were curious tales of wizards, and another sea. Everyone knows there is only Gevber, which borders Assharral and Phaxia, and keeps the islanders of Eakring Ithyrx trading instead of invading us. I heard a good many yarns in that week I haunted the caravanserai, from grooms, sweepers, peddlers, merchants. All Assharrans. No caravan was in.

I wrote to Callissa and sent the boys toy Hethrian spears, blunted to prevent massacre. I extricated two guardsmen from the civil jail and a third from an imputed paternity suit. The caravan master took to nodding, then to offering mint-tea. He had once visited Zyphryr Coryan and felt himself the Lady's intimate.

On the eighth morning my humoring of his humors paid off. A sweeper met us setting out to inspect a nearby signal tower and said, touching his brow, that the master thought I might be interested. Some Sathellin were due.

“Nomads,” I told the blank-faced fort commandant. “Homeless. Masterless. Have you never thought, what a perfect communication line for a spy?”

His jaw dropped. He never paused to wonder what you would spy on in Kemrestan, or what value it would be at such a transit's end. We rode out past Etalveth's wattled sand-levees, to where the works of man sink into insignificance, and confronted the pebbly curve of sky that is the threshold of Hethria.

The caravan was approaching from slightly north of west. At first it was only a snailing dust smear, like an infantry column in extended march. Then it became a slowly swelling red cloud. Then blurs patched the fog. Then heads stuck out at long intervals, black-turbaned heads. Then the bobbing ears of horses, donkeys, mules appeared, interminable squadrons roped in sixes and sevens to each other's pack-saddles, with a Sathel riding at each troop's head. They ride side-saddle, controlling their mounts with a stick tapped on quarters or neck. “Barbarians,” said the commandant, comfortably superior. “Never heard of a bit.”

Most rode donkeys, but here and there was a horse of another breed to the heavy, shaggy clumpers laden with water-skins, fodder and firewood, along with human goods and provender. And these horses, in the days before Zem and Zam made horses a forbidden luxury, I would not have disdained myself. Most were black: fine-boned, blaze-faced, with a proud bearing and a look of tempered stamina. But at the very rear of the caravan another kind caught my eye.

It was more like a war-horse, tall, well-boned, though so finely proportioned it did not seem heavy, with splendid shoulders and rein and a fine if placid carriage of the head. It was gray. A silver dapple-gray, like a piece of moonlight come to life.

The rider, swathed to the eyes in blue robe and black turban, resembled all three accompanying Sathellin, except that he had no stick to control his beast. I watched him as they rode by. Then, thinking it would make a pretext for scout-work, I said, “I wonder if there's a price on that horse.”

The commandant laughed. “With Sathellin,” he said, “there's a price on a sister's virginity. Just so long as it's high.”

* * * * *

I went down to the caravanserai at dusk. A pretty time, in any camp. The fires gild the dust, there is a comfortable smell of cooking and off-saddled beasts, the babble of a long day relived in talk, a romance in the mundanities of picketing. The caravan-master was delighted to sip mint-tea and school me in the scandalous habits of Sathellin, while through his door arch I watched horses, donkeys, mules being watered, and the blue-robed figures that passed with their swift, gliding walk. But nobody brought a gray horse to drink.

Presently I disengaged to take a stroll. Some Sathellin were already haggling. In this or that room tallow lamps caught a vehement mouth, a waving finger, an eager, skeptical, impassive, wary curve of cheek, the gleam of metal or sheen of fabric, the glitter of other, more precious stuff. One buyer was sampling wine. It ran redder than heart's blood in the glow of the lamp. But nowhere, loose or picketed, could I catch a glimpse of a gray horse.

Having patrolled the entire court, I was forced to clumsier tactics. As the next Sathel passed I halted him and said, “When your caravan came in, there was someone riding a gray horse. Do you know where he is?”

Though he was a mere blur in the dusk, I sensed a withdrawal, a stiffening. “Why was you wanting to know?”

“I rather,” I said, “liked the look of the horse. I should like to see it again.”

“Ah,” he said at last. He stopped another passerby. I caught only a quick run of words, ending in one intelligible phrase. “Thorgan Fenglos.” The Moon-faced King.

Sometimes there is vantage in surprise. “Thorgan Fenglos,” I repeated. “Is that the man? Or the horse?”

One Sathel twitched. The other let out a snort. Both seemed to withdraw. Then the second said under his breath, “Ah, well.” He jerked a thumb. “Down the end there. Last keerphar.”

I had walked past. Walking back, I found a door had been masked by the tree's wide, gnarled trunk. I ducked under the prop that upheld one huge low limb, stumbled on a hump of root, and looked up into a rectangle of deeper darkness from which came a faint silver gleam, and the sound of someone humming, as you do at a pleasant task.

It was a man's voice, clear, low, with a lurking gaiety. Under it ran a brisk rhythmic brushing noise. As I came up the humming broke off. The voice said, “Stand over, then.” Hooves clopped on stone, and a faint tingle coursed my neck. Whatever the context, it is impossible to mistake the tone of a military command.

I hesitated in the keerphar shadow, oddly ill-at-ease, wishing for light. The humming ceased. The voice said with that good-humored authority, “If you don't fancy Assharran water, madam, that's all I can do for you.” A shape came swiftly from the doorway, straightening and checking so we stood face to face.