Moving Water (27 page)

Beryx stepped forward. His arm was in a silk sling, the fort commandant's one victory. Since no ordinary size would fit, some hastily conscripted tailor had made him Phaxian clothes, and he carried off the baggy trousers, voluminous shirt and close-fitting mud-brown tunic well enough, though the tailor had closed his eyes at the sight. But as he stepped toward Zass his bearing set a royal cloak swirling at his heels. He was no longer a fugitive wizard. He was a journeying king.

Zass had read it in the first stride. The finger crooked again. Stewards flew like hail. A state chair materialized on the dais to the right of the throne, an inlaid table set with ornately enameled jar and cups for Phaxian rice wine followed it. Beryx inclined his head and seated himself with the same regal air. Zass swiveled sideways on his throne. I saw his hawk-yellow razor eye, and knew that if a sword had made him, he had no swordsman's mind. Then a steward plucked discreetly at my sleeve. Our presence was no longer required.

To our relief we were quartered together, in the eastern wing. Forbidden to explore, Zem and Zam resorted to making cushion castles and sliding down to flatten them. Evis prowled. The others were out of their depth and showing it. A hundred questions about our future hung in the air.

There was time to ponder them. Being mere chattels, we were left to cool our heels while Zass gave Beryx a conducted tour of Phamazan, then had him to dinner in the royal rooms. Bugles had called the Phaxian Lights-out from a hundred different barracks before he came to bed.

He still wore the polite mask of a diplomatic duel. It melted far enough to assure Sivar and company, though without his former gaiety, that they were not yet for the rubbish heap. Then he quirked a brow and asked, “Fylghjos, can I degrade you to body servant? I'll never worm out of this tunic alone.”

His room was furnished with the usual austerity, though with a few additions: a splendid silver ewer, a silk quilt on the low wooden bed, a conspicuously posted scarlet hat. Eying it, he observed with a trace of his old self, “Show your rank, or else.”

As he sank rather heavily on the bed, I essayed his own tactics and asked, “Shall I start with the boots? My squires always did.”

He answered in mindspeech, without looking up.

It was sheer incomprehension that muzzled me.

Confusion whirled in me. Wasn't that why we came, it's better than beggary, did you mean to forget the whole thing, surely you wouldn't mind a little of your own back, won't conquering Assharral remove Ammath?

He lifted his eyes, black-green in the lamp glow, revealing the fatigue of Zass's interview and the stresses beneath.

He shuddered.

But it would overthrow the Lady, I thought.

His face sharpened.

I sat limply on a tathrien stool.
Will you leave Phaxia, then? You can hardly stay, if you refuse Zass!
With sinking heart I contemplated fresh flight to some wholly foreign place.
Will you go back to Hethria?

Then . . . ?

He pulled himself up. “I don't know,” he said. “And I'm too groggy now to find out. Skin me out of this tunic, Fylghjos. I might turn up something in my sleep.”

* * * * *

It did not show at breakfast if he had. He was composed but inscrutable, and soon left at a summons from Zass. We had resigned ourselves to another day's idleness when a chamberlain entered to announce that the foreign lord desired his retinue. Looking unsociable, Callissa muttered, “I'll stay with the twins.”

The great court does have a colonnade, a promenade for officials, nobles and idlers. As we appeared Beryx rose from a stone bench by the main gate, saying, “I thought you'd like to see the great court. Thank you, Fen, that will be all.”

Chamberlain dislodged, we paced out onto the hot, dusty, hoof-beaten earth, dutifully noting the myriad slender pillars of the balcony, a princelet flying a merlin in jesses, the dusty emerald flutter of a forgotten cavalry mark. When other strollers were well clear Beryx said without preamble, “I'm sorry to tell you this, but I can't stay in Phaxia. If I do, Zass will expect me to conquer Assharral for him.”

I looked round on blank dismay. They too would have preferred a fixed exile, it seemed.

At length Evis asked hollowly, “Will we—go to Hethria, sir?”

“No.”

“Vyrenia's not bad,” Sivar offered half-heartedly, “ 'cept that blighted rain every day.”

“Vyrenia?” Beryx stared. “Why would I go to Vyrenia?”

“But sir—you can't stay in Phaxia, you gotta go somewhere!”

“To go to Vyrenia won't stop Zass invading Assharral.”

“Let him,” said Dakis. “Who cares? Not our affair.”

Beryx said flatly, “It is not what Assharral deserves.”

There was a discomfited pause. Then Karis asked, “How're we gonna stop it, sir?”

He studied our faces. A hint of the old mischief flickered, overlaid by worry and remorse.

“Zass knows my powers,” he said. “If I weren't in his camp, he'd be very wary of crossing me. And he'd think twice about invasion if I were anywhere I could interfere.”

Zyr pulled a copper plait. “Yes. But, sir, where?”

“I thought a long time about that. In the end, there was only one choice. Only one place it could be.” He paused. Plunged. “Stirsselian.”

That is the closest I ever came to outright revolt. No, I thought in instinctive refusal. Bad enough to be homeless, penniless and futureless in Phaxia, but not Stirsselian! The mosquitoes, the quick-mud, the fever, the clethras, the whole nerve-fraying reality washed back over me.
No,
I cried before I could help it,
Not again! Not with Callissa and the twins!

My eyes cleared. Beryx was watching me, with sympathy, understanding, absolution. he said. I know, that look added, exactly how you feel.

Hearsay alone had given the others pause. He turned to them.

“This is something I have to do,” he said. “But I have no claim on you. I've already made you exiles. If you want to go to Vyrenia—Hethria—I'll do my best to see you safe.”

There was some hard gulping and grimacing. Then Sivar set his jaw.

“I been in this from the start,” he announced. “ 'N Stirsselian or no Stirsselian, I don't reckon I wanna pull out before the end.”

Amver set his teeth. “Or me.”

“Or me,” Karis came in.

Others followed. I was not aware of the choice. I only heard myself say, sounding distorted, “Once is enough.” They looked at me in puzzlement, but Beryx understood.

He looked around us. Swallowed too. Then he said, “I wish I could give you more than thanks.”

Feet were shuffled. Evis was already deep in plans, the others facing up to the plunge. Then Wenver spoke up.

Like most Darrians he seldom wasted words, but he was something of a tactician in his methodical way. “Sir,” he began, apologetic but not timid, “if we want to stop Zass . . . we can do it just as well . . . probably better . . . and a lot more comfortably . . . from Vyrenia.”

Beryx considered him. Then his eyes pulsed, shimmered, turned to white-flecked jade. With joy, with intense foreboding, I saw the old impishness return at last.

“Yes,” he said. “It would stop Zass if I sat on his northern border. But it wouldn't help with what I want.”

“Then what,” I demanded, “do you want?”

He said, “Assharral free of Ammath.”

All our mouths fell open. He stared at us. And then the laughter sparkled out at last, alive, wicked, fountaining like Drytime sun through leaves.

“When I called this a strategic withdrawal—that was exactly what I meant. I may have shifted my ground. I haven't ceded the field.”

“B-but,” Dakis out-spluttered the rest, “we thought—”

“So you did.” The laughter had become an outright grin.

“But if we ha'nt pulled out,” Karis burst forth, “whyn't you stay with Zass? If ever there was a chance to smash her, it'd be here—”

The mischief was full-blown now, provocation giving it fuel.

“I don't want,” he said blandly, “to smash her. I want to free her too.”

My jaw hit my collarbones. His eyes danced at me. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“You—you. . . .”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“You are impossible!” I was beyond manners, let alone respect. “Turn up these crazy, these lunatic ideas and laugh. . . . Laugh! Is it the magic? Did the Lady rot your brains out? Or were you always like this? Heaven pity your phalanx commander—he probably lost
his
mind as well!”

He was simmering like a kettle, his whole face alight. It did waver at mention of his phalanx commander. But in a moment the sparkle revived.

“Inyx,” he agreed, almost demurely, “did use to say things like that. . . .” I threw my hands in the air. “But I think I was probably born this way.”

I got my breath. Carefully, I said, “You mean—you don't just want to free Assharral—you'll go on trying to reclaim, reform, convert, whatever you like to call it—the Lady? To—to—”

The simmer had become sparks of sheer delight. “Actually, I don't mean to do anything,” he said, “except follow Math.”

I would have flung my hands up then, had I been capable.

“Madness, yes.” He chuckled. “Pure insanity. But—”

“But you can't—you won't—what can you do!”

The light spired, spiraled in his eyes, dancing as in that vision by Los Morryan.

“I shall sit in Stirsselian . . . and block Zass . . . and infuriate Moriana . . . without doing a thing.” The dance intensified. “Zass is a canny general, with nothing personal against me. When his agents report from Assharral, he'll decide it's worth his while to wait. But Moriana . . . Moriana has a grudge. So . . . I shall let her make herself into Math.”

For an instant the laughter spilled over so it seemed to clothe him in light, summer-green, riotous, reveling. Then the dancers stilled.

“That is,” he said unsmiling, “if she doesn't make Ammath out of me.”

* * * * *

As we trooped back to quarters I reflected that the most daunting part of it would be to tell Callissa, and I was right. The storm evicted the rest and terrified the twins. I wished fervently for Beryx's help, but it did not come. In the end I was reduced to the flat statement that I was going, and the boys with me, “and if you want to stay in Phaxia, that's up to you.”

After Zyphryr Coryan we had no doubt that an aedr could get us out of Phamazan. He did it that night. Doors opened, horses materialized, underlings helpfully fulfilled our needs and washed us from their minds, we rode out the city gate past a blithely oblivious guard. After he recovered, Beryx glanced back at the rowdy lamplit streets and said rather guiltily, “I hope Zass doesn't roll any heads for letting an aedr slip.” Then he flexed his hand, two days out of bandages, glanced at the rising moon, and said, “We don't have a lot of time.”

We were down that vile switchback road and over the Azmaeres by dawn. The sun met us in the foothills, staring copper-red on the few unploughed rocks, spreading a tender blue-and-green haze toward the distant sea and more distant Assharral. But directly ahead it fell flat and impotent on the olive-green-and-gray band of Stirsselian, and my stomach knotted at the sight.

“Sir,” Amver pushed his pony into the van. “I been thinking. About Stirsselian.” Beryx nodded. “We might do better going west. See, sir, it's fresh water then. 'N it widens out a lot. Better for hiding.” This is true. In places the basins are two hundred miles across. “What's more. . . .” He grew ill-at-ease. “There's—wild Gjerven up there.”

Unless driven to it, no civilized Gjerven will so much as admit they exist. They are too close akin. Beryx said, “You think they'd help us?” And Amver wriggled on his wooden saddle.

“Well, sir—it'll be worse'n impossible in there if they take a dislike to us.”

I had never seen one, but the tales were lurid. Little naked men with stone spears and poisoned arrows who were there and gone in a blink, who could set an ambush six feet from a path, who signaled on drums and were wont to eat their prisoners. Amver offered the supreme sacrifice. “We lived on the edge of Stirsselian. In fact—I was sort of—brought up with them.”

Nobody ostracized him. Evis said in relief, “Best news since Frimmor.” Beryx carried briskly on, “Thank Math for someone who might know what he's doing. Amver, I've been thinking too. The best way to move in there wouldn't be horses, or on foot. It would be boats. Do you know anything about. . . .”