The Steerswoman's Road

Steerswoman, Book, 1
and 2

Rosemary Kirstein

1989, 1992, 2003

ISBN 0-345-46105-3

A SERVANT OF TRUTH

If you ask, she will answer. If she asks, you must reply. A
steerswoman will speak only the truth to you, as long as she knows it—and you
must do the same for her. And so, across the centuries, the
steerswomen—questioning, searching, investigating—have slowly learned more and
more about the world through which they wander. All knowledge the steerswomen
possess is given freely to those who ask. But there is one kind of knowledge that
has always been denied them: Magic.

When the steerswoman Rowan discovers a lovely blue jewel of obvious
magical origin, her, innocent questions lead to secret after startling secret,
each more dangerous than the last—and suddenly Rowan must flee or fight for her
life. Or worse, she must lie.

As every wizard in the world searches for her, Rowan finds unexpected
assistance. A chance-met traveler turned friend, Bel is a warrior-poet, an
Outskirter, and a member of a barbaric and violent people. Or so it would seem.

For Bel, unknowing, possesses secrets of her own: secrets embedded
in her culture, in her people, in the very soil of her homeland. From the
Inland Sea to the deadly Outskirts, surrounded by danger and deceit, Rowan and
Bel uncover more and more of the wizards’ hidden knowledge. As the new truths accumulate,
the two women edge closer to the single truth that lies at the center, the most
unexpected secret of them all ....

By Rosemary Kirstein

The Steerswoman

The Outskirter’s Secret

The Lost Steersman (Coming Soon)

These books are dedicated to

INGEBORG KIRSTEIN

who
traveled
far, to a very strange land indeed, and to

BRIAN BAMBROUGH

one good wizard and most importantly, most especially to

SABINE KIRSTEIN

who taught her little sister the music of language, and
the dance of ideas.

The author wishes to thank the following people, whose assistance
helped make this book possible:

Ingeborg and Willi Kirstein, for food, lodging, and financial
assistance; Brian Bambrough, for emotional support, gainful employment, and
advances upon wages; Shelly Shapiro, for artistic perceptiveness, professional
dedication, and personal encouragement; Lisa Bassi, for providing intelligent
critiques and poetic inspiration; all my other friends, for their
encouragement, comradeship, and patience; and

Sabine Kirstein, for everything mentioned above, and much
more.

The Steerswoman
is the first novel in the Steerswoman
series. Steerswomen, and a very few Steersmen, are members of an order
dedicated to discovering and disseminating knowledge. Although they are
foremost navigators of the high seas, Steerswomen are also explorers and
cartographers upon land as well as sea. With one exception, they are pledged to
always answer any question put to them with as truthful a response as is
possible within their own limitations. However, they also require anyone of
whom they ask questions to respond in the same manner, upon penalty of the
Steerswomen’s ban; those under the ban do not receive answers from the
steerswomen.

In this novel, Rowan is a Steerswoman who is interested in
some strange jewels which have been found distributed in an unusual pattern.
These jewels are made of strange materials bonded onto metal. Some think that
such jewels are magically produced.

Rowan meets Bel, an Outskirter warrior, in a frontier tavern
and asks her about a collection of such jewels that she is wearing as a belt.
Bel tells her that the belt had been made by her father with jewels found
embedded in the Dust Ridge far beyond the Outskirts. Rowan is intrigued by this
information and wants to visit the site, but first she needs to return to the
Steerswomen Archives. Bel has come to the tavern with friends and plans on
returning to the Outskirts with them, but the chance to see the Inner Lands is
too good to miss. She suggests that she travel to the Archives with Rowan and
then accompany her from there to the Dust Ridge. Rowan agrees and they leave
the next day.

On the way, Rowan and Bel discuss the jewels and their distribution.
Rowan notes that the jewels are scattered like thrown objects. When she tries
plotting various velocities and initial heights on a graph, she begins to
suspect that the jewels were thrown from a very high place at great velocity.
Bel suggests that they are part of the disappeared moon, but Rowan knows from
her prior investigations that the jewels impacted on the surface long after the
Moon vanished. One aspect of her graphs disturbs her; she notices that objects
thrown from a great height with sufficient velocity will never hit the planet,
but will circle it endlessly.

Early the next day, they are attacked and almost killed by
one of five men who had been wearing a wizard’s uniform in the tavern. Later
they are almost killed when they are trapped in a burning inn which has been
attacked by a swarm of young dragons; the local wizard who normally controls
these dragons arrives on the scene only after the building is fully ablaze. At
this point, Rowan begins to suspect that some wizard has ordered her death.

Rowan and Bel manage to slip away from the fire scene with a
party from the
Morgan’s Chance
, the vessel upon which they have obtained
passage, and sail away to Wulfshaven and then overland to the Archives. There
Rowan and Bel report these events and the Steerswomen make plans to investigate
the wizards.

This novel has the immediacy and impact of Kingsbury’s
Courtship
Rite
. It has the same sense of exotic ambiance, strange customs and
struggle to survive in an alien environment. The characters have deepset traits
that motivate their actions, yet exhibit a flexible response to their
environment. Best of all, this jewel of a story has sequels:
The
Outskirter’s Secret
is at least as good as this novel and
The Lost
Steersman
should be another excellent read.

The steerswoman centered her chart on the table and anchored
the corners around. A candlestick, a worn leatherbound book, an empty mug, and
her own left hand held the curling parchment flat. The lines on the paper
seemed to be of varying ages, the ones toward the center drawn with cracked,
browning ink, those nearer the edges sharp and black. Extent of detail also
showed progression. A large body of water, labeled “Inland Sea,” dominated the
central portion. The northern shore was depicted with painstaking precision.
Farther north and farther east lines became more general, and there was a broad
blank space on the right-hand side of the map.

The innkeeper regarded the woman a moment, then turned his
attention to the chart. “Ah, look at that, now, all laid out just like we were
birds and all.” He tilted his head for a better vantage. “Here we are, then.”
He placed a chubby finger down on the parchment, on a spot north and east of
the sea, midway between precision and vagueness. “Here’s this very crossroads,
see, and the town, and the tavern itself.” The last was not depicted. The
steerswoman made no comment.

The finger moved northeast, leaving a faint, damp mark. “There,
that’s where me and my brothers used to live. Right there; I know that river,
see.”

“And that’s where you found the jewel,” Rowan the steerswoman
said.

“Yes, lady, that’s right. Felling trees, these great big
ones here.” With a sweep of his arm he indicated a vast supporting beam visible
in the ceiling of the narrow sitting room. “There we were, cutting these great
things down—they did the worst of it, I’m not so strong as my brothers.” The
innkeeper was an immense square block of a man, of the sort whose padding
generally concealed considerable muscle. “So I spot this smaller one, more in
my range, like. And I heave back my axe, give it one great bash—and there it
was.”

Rowan reached across the table and picked up the object that
lay there, an irregular lump of wood about the size of her two fists. As she
turned it over in her hands, something glinted inside the hollows and depressions
carved into its surface: rich colors that fractured and shifted as the light
shifted, opalescent—now blue-black, now sky-blue, now a flash of purple,
recalling amethyst. The surface was laced with tiny veins of silver. Rowan
touched one of the visible faces and found it perfectly smooth, far smoother
than a jeweler could have cut it, and with a faintly oily feel.

Putting the object down on the chart, she reached into the
neck of her blouse and drew out a small pouch, hung by a leather cord. She
slipped the cord over her head, opened the pouch, and slid its contents out
onto the table.

The innkeeper smiled. “Ah, you’ve got one, too, though not
so large and fine as mine.” He picked up the blue shard, about half the size of
the thumb he rubbed across it. “Oh, it’s the same, yes.” But it seemed less a jewel
than a slice of a jewel. It was flat and thin as a knife blade. Only one
surface showed, the other sheathed in some rough-textured, silver-colored
metal, as if it had been pulled from or broken from a setting.

The steerswoman made a vague gesture. “We can’t tell how
large yours is, imbedded in wood. All the others I’ve seen are like my own,
small and one-sided. I suspect that what you have is actually several jewels,
nestled together.” She turned back to the map. “Can you recall which side of
the tree it was found in?”

He was surprised. “Side? No side, lady. It was inside like I
said.”