The Steerswoman's Road (41 page)

“It’s the truth. And he wants to meet you; in fact, I
promised to recommend him to a wizard, if ever I had an opportunity. I recommend
him to you now. He’d like to be your apprentice.”

He shook his head. “We choose from among our own.”

“A separate people? That’s something else we didn’t know before.
But it’s not working very well, is it, if you have to use two wizards for one
job. I must assume no one better was available.”

“That was Slado’s doing.” His expression grew grim at the
thought. “It was too soon.”

“Not by his lights. Part of his game, Corvus; he wanted that
holding established right now, immediately. It must be important to him.”
Rowan watched the wizard’s face change as he internally assembled facts known
only to him, to some result that he found deeply disturbing. “I won’t ask you
what you’re thinking,” Rowan said. “But perhaps you’ll tell me, one day, of
your own accord.” She rose. “Come. Young Willam has something he’d like to show
you. I think you’ll find it interesting indeed.”

Some ten years earlier, a clever sailing captain had thought to
avoid docking fees by bringing his ship past the public wharves, to a private
landing up a narrow corner of the harbor. The ship moved slowly, and sounding
leads were thrown every five feet of the way; but on a short starboard tack,
between one sounding and the next, the hull met a narrow jagged rock, was
breached, and the holds filled with water. The ship remained, half-submerged,
more decrepit every year, to become the hated enemy of every riverman, confusing
the currents and releasing unexpected debris.

Willam removed it.

During his hectic preparations of the previous week, Rowan
had been his shadow. She asked no questions, but by some unspoken agreement he
abided her presence. She understood little of the proceedings and was annoyed
by what she did recognize. They seemed simple processes: distillations and
precipitations such as an herbalist might make, but using no plants. At one
point she thought he was making tea from some powder, but during the process,
when he discovered one hand damp from the brew, he flicked his fingers dry,
and the droplets fizzed into sparking flame as they flew.

Now he stood, his bow in his hand, Corvus at his side, on
the west bank of the river. The wizard had seen none of Will’s preparations
but had watched with interest from the bank as the boy scuttled about the
wreck, one of Artos’s regulars his dazed-looking, cautious assistant.

The day was hot and thick with damp, the sky a white dome of
haze. Downriver, the harbor docks were crowded with spectators. “Is there any
danger for those people?” Artos asked.

Will shook his head distractedly. “Not at this distance. I
didn’t use that much.”

The duke was suspicious and uncertain, but did not protest.
Behind him, Bel was tending a merry little blaze, three rag-tipped arrows on
the ground beside her.

Rowan stood, a wide-legged, stable stance, waiting for the
ground to become the rolling sea she remembered from the fortress. She had not
seen Will’s magic at the last violent moment, had had her back to it as she
ran. This time she intended to watch.

Wiliam made a gesture to Bel, and the Outskirter lit one
arrow, turned it to even the flame, and handed it to the boy. He stepped up to
the water, waded into it up to his knees, and nocked the arrow. With the smooth
ease of a true archer, he aimed and let fly in the same movement.

The bolt ended in a pile of straw braced against an
afterhouse on the tilted deck, and the straw flared. Will ran back to shore.
Bel stiffened, bracing herself, but Rowan stood looser, preparing her body to
absorb the motion.

Nothing happened. There was a long pause, and people began
to look at each other in perplexity.

“I, I’m sure I did it right—” Willam stuttered. He reached
to Bel for another arrow.

Corvus put a hand on his shoulder. “The charm in that straw
was the first you set?”

“Yes ...”

“They absorb water.”

“I didn’t let it get wet—”

“The air is damp, and you set it hours ago. And even before
that, if it wasn’t properly protected, it might have drawn water from the air.
Are all the charms the same?”

“No. I use two kinds. One releases easiest by fire, and the
other by, by a blow, or if another charm nearby is released.”

“You use the one kind to activate the other?”

“That’s best.” They were oblivious to all else, lost in
discussion of magic.

Corvus gave a small, almost kindly smile. “But enough heat
will release the other sort, too, won’t it?”

Willam looked in amazed realization from the wizard’s face
to the ship, where the afterhouse was rapidly catching fire. He said in a vague
voice, “You’d better get down.”

Corvus dropped prone with no hesitation, Willam beside him.
Artos and Bel exchanged glances and more slowly made to imitate them. The
little band of Artos’s regulars looked about in confusion, some laughing
nervously.

And the spell released.

It was like thunder from the sky, like standing next to a
lightning-strike. Time seemed to slow as Rowan’s thoughts sped more quickly,
and she saw the rapid action with perfect clarity.

Water sped away from the wreck, moving out in a circular
wave so violent that it broke in an instant, the stable surface around it like
stone by comparison. Spray dashed straight up in a fountain impossibly high.

The ship separated into a hundred pieces, and each piece
seemed to flee in its own direction: the bowsprit hurried across the river, the
deck shattered and flew up into the air, the sides of the hull seemed to seek
earth, pushing the water flat, then down, and Rowan briefly saw the shallow
river bottom.

The poop deck became a cloud of splinters that rushed toward
her. She turned and dropped to the ground, bits of wood pattering against her
back like hail.

There was a long, echoing quiet, and a second wave of water
dashed against the shore like a breaker.

Bel let out a delighted hoot and went to pull Willam to his
feet. “That was wonderful!”

Artos and Corvus rose more cautiously, and something seemed
to pass between them as they viewed each other. Rowan stood up, splinters
falling off her to the ground.

Bel was thumping Willam’s back, and he took her congratulations
quietly, wearing the same expression he wore when he had viewed the destroyed
fortress. He looked like a man who had been told some shocking news, secretly
knowing that he was to blame.

Corvus took in the group with a long, slow gaze. His eyes
ended on Artos. “I suppose, if I tried to kill these two, you and your men
would do your best to prevent me.”

“You’d have to use some powerful magic,” Artos said evenly.

The wizard nodded, and he looked a bit sad. “I don’t want to
hurt them. Rowan.” He turned to her. “Steerswomen are very good at discovering
reasons. If there’s a reason I shouldn’t eliminate you and this boy, it’s one
that I ought to know.”

She did not hesitate. “You won’t do it,” she said, “because
it would do you no good.”

He raised his brows in surprise, and she continued.

“Willam and I are nothing special, nothing unique. Killing
us would solve nothing.” She approached him, her boots pushing splinters into
the ground. “That’s why I told you that no wizard was helping me; that’s why I
didn’t hide behind your misconceptions. I’m just a steerswoman, Corvus, and a
common one at that. Four years past my training, wandering about the world
with no better mind than my sisters.”

She stood before him, studying his face, urging him to understand.
“As long as you wizards thought I was unique, you hunted me. I’ve managed to
avoid you, or escape from you so far; perhaps I can do so for many years. It
doesn’t really matter; in the end, I think, you’d kill me if you really wanted
to.

“But what then? Do you think the Steerswomen themselves are
remarkable? Will you destroy the Archives? I don’t doubt that you can do so,
easily enough.

“But the Archives don’t make us what we are. Will you hunt
every steerswoman? We’re scattered throughout the known world, and we’d go into
hiding. It would take a long time, but perhaps you’d destroy us all, yes, and
the new ones we’d train in secret.”

Looking up into his dark face, his pale eyes, she saw that
he was disturbed. “But there’s one more thing, Corvus,” she told him. “There’s
Willam.”

Bel shifted, eyed Willam, then led him by the elbow to Rowan’s
side. The three stood together facing the wizard: warrior, thinker, and child.

“He’s just a boy,” Rowan said. “Of the common folk. All he
has is his eyes, his hands, his reason, and his courage. You can’t destroy
that, and you can’t command it. He’s not unique, and he’s not trained. He’s no
steersman, he’s the son of a blacksmith—but he knows, and I know, secrets you
claim for your own. And if it weren’t we two, if it weren’t now, it would be
someone else, sometime soon ...

“How will you stop us, all of us? Will you break us down to
barbarism? Will you kill every son of a blacksmith? Every merchant who uses a
simple formula to calculate profits? Every farmer who can add? Every
chambermaid who dares to look at the stars and wonder?

“Will you? Then, wizard, who will you rule?”

Corvus spoke, his voice was very quiet. “I don’t want to do
any such terrible things. I want the world to be as it’s always been. It’s not
a bad world, really, as a whole.”

She gave no ground. “The world is changing. You know it and
I know it, but neither of us knows why. Watch what happens, Corvus, and when
the time comes, choose your side. But remember us, that’s all. Remember.”

Corvus accepted Willam as apprentice.

It was against tradition, against common and wizardly
wisdom. Corvus gave no reason, and Rowan’s mind filled with a hundred speculations,
each more dreadful than the last. But she satisfied herself at last with the
recognition of one simple fact: It was what the boy wanted.

As they turned to leave, Wiliam stopped, suddenly
recognizing his departure for what it was. He paused in realization, then
rushed to embrace Bel, his head bending down against hers, and she held him
quietly for a while.

When he came to Rowan, he took her undamaged hand in both of
his. His eyes were full of amazement and gratitude. “Will I see you again?”

“It might be years. It’s a long way to the Outskirts. And no
means to guess what may happen between here and there. Or after.”

“You’re still going?”

Her mouth twisted. “There’s something I’d like to see.”

He looked displeased, and it came to her that he disliked
the idea of her traveling about without his protection. She laughed despite
herself, and he became a bit sheepish.

“Well,” he said, “I won’t forget you, or what you said to Corvus.
Don’t you forget me, either. I made a promise to you.”

It took her a while to remember. “That if the wizards kept
their secrets for some mean reason, you’d defy them and answer what I asked.”

“That’s right.” He nodded shakily. “I’ll stand by it. You
have my word.”

The pair walked away, up the riverbank in the hazy air, to
the road that led back to Wulfshaven Harbor. Rowan, Bel, and Artos watched in
silence.

“Artos,” the steerswoman said at last, her eyes still on the
boy. “Stay by him. Be his friend. Don’t let him forget what he is.”

“A common man. So he’ll become a wizard with the true common
touch?”

“If we must have wizards, that’s the kind we need.”

They turned away, but for Bel, still watching, her face uncertain.
“You’re not pleased with this?” Rowan asked.

“I ought to be. I’m not. I’m worried for him. But I do think
it’s a good thing. A wizard with one of the common folk as apprentice; I wonder
how that will affect Corvus?”

“I wonder how Corvus will affect Willam,” Rowan countered.

Bel released a pent-up breath and looked up at her. “Well,
he said he’d help us, one day, and I believe him. We have his promise.”

But the steerswoman took a long time in replying. “Wizard’s
words,” she said. “A wizard’s promise.”

Rowan, the heroine of Kirstein’s previous
novel,
The Steerswoman
, continues her adventures in the second
installment of this fantasy trilogy. After the first book, in which Rowan
learned that wizards control the navigational satellites known as Guidestars,
she sets off with her friend, the Outskirter named Bel, into Outskirter
territory to locate a Guidestar that had crashed to the earth. While on her
quest, Rowan fulfills her duties as a steerswoman, observing and recording all
that she can of the medieval Outskirt world. On their journey, the pair
overcomes goblins, barbaric warriors and inclement weather. The world Kirstein
creates is captivating in its gritty descriptions and realistic culture: we
learn, for example, that the nomadic Outskirters roll their bread from goat’s entrails.
The novel reads like a fantasy, but there are hints that Rowan’s world was
pre-dated by a more advanced society: perhaps the “magic’” that the wizards use
to control the Guidestars is some vestige of high technology. Though the plot
wanders occasionally, readers will no doubt be pleased by this installment and
eager for its sequel.