The Steerswoman's Road (60 page)

A shadow fell over Rowan’s shoulder; she looked up and found
three other tents, erected back-to-back in a square with her own. As she
secured the last guy lines, a woman nearby said, “Like this, Rowan,” and showed
her the best way to cross the lines of the adjacent tent.

“Thank you.”

A man approached, wearing two shoulder-slung pouches, straps
crossing on his chest. He was of warrior age, but he carried no sword; the
steerswoman noticed that he lacked a left arm. “Rowan!” he greeted her, and
then said, “Which one?” indicating the tents with his only hand. Before she
could reply, Garvin, now inside the tent, held open the entrance flap and waved
the man inside. The flap closed, to be reopened an instant later as the rain
fly and its two gnarled poles were thrust into Rowan’s arms. Atop the tent, an
overlap slapped open from below and was tied into place by hands that vanished
a moment later.

“Rowan?”

She turned to see an Outskirter standing behind her; he slid
a pack from his shoulders and brushed a strand of white hair from his face. A
thick white braid trailed down his broad chest, and his eyes were black in
nests of weather-beaten wrinkles.

“Kammeryn, Murson, Gena,” he introduced himself, and added
with a gentle smile, “Seyoh. Welcome to our camp.”

The steerswoman stood bemused, arms full of canvas and tangle-root,
and looked around. She was in the middle of a town.

Her newly erected tent faced the central square, where the
fire pit was already being put to use by two squabbling mertutials. Other tents
circled the areas, entrance flaps and occasionally entire sides rolled open and
secured above, to show inner chambers carpeted with patterned cloth.
Outskirters—warriors and mertutials both—strode, wandered, or bustled according
to their individual duties. Half a dozen warriors arranged a carpet before one
of the open tents, dropped packs, and settled to relax and converse.

“Thank you,” Rowan said to Kammeryn, “but I feel a bit odd
being welcomed to a place when I haven’t moved ten feet from where I originally
stood. Perhaps I should say to you, ‘Welcome to my former bivouac.’”

“We have been told that you are a steerswoman. Now you must
tell us what that means.”

The adjoining walls of four adjacent tents had been rolled
up to the ceiling and tied in place, creating a single large chamber, its remaining
walls rippling like water from the chill wind gusting outside. Above, vent
flaps were turned up, affording sixteen identical views of crystalline blue
sky. Their configuration against the flow of wind occasionally set them
humming faintly, disharmoniously.

Rowan and Bel sat in the center of a thin carpet angularly
patterned in blue and white, surrounded by a circle of eighteen seated
Outskirters. Kammeryn sat directly before his guests, an armed cushion of the
same design behind him. Rowan took a moment to scan the faces. There was no
clear demarcation between warrior and mertutial; but she noted that the woman
on Kammeryn’s right was of his own age, and certainly a mertutial, and that the
man to his left was younger than Rowan, and surely a warrior. There seemed to
be a general trend toward maturity, progressing around the circle to end at the
seyoh’s seat. Rowan wondered if, should Kammeryn die, the circle would simply
shift, adding one young face at the beginning.

“I said a great deal to Jann, about myself and my purposes.
She didn’t pass the information on to you?”

“Jann spoke to me only, briefly, and returned to her
position on the outer circle. What you have to say, we need to hear from you.”

Rowan nodded, and gathered her information into a coherent
explanation. “That I am a steerswoman means that I am a constant student. I
try to understand everything I encounter. I study what I see, and if there are
people who can inform me, I ask questions of them.

“The simplest thing I study, and most constantly, is the
land itself. I chart the country I cross, as accurately as possible. That skill
of steerswomen is the one of the greatest uses to people in the Inner

Lands, and it’s what we are best known for. But we are also
interested in the people of the lands we chart, their ideas, actions, and
traditions. And many more things: why plants grow where they do, the nature of
objects, of natural events, how to use mathematics to navigate and to measure
and describe ...” She paused, discovering a more concise and inclusive
statement, and its simplicity surprised her. “The Steers-women are actually
trying to answer only three questions: what, how, and why.”

“To the Steerswomen,” Bel put in, “knowledge is life.”

“That’s a very simple statement,” the seyoh told Bel, “and
true in every way.”

Someone behind Rowan caught Kammeryn’s eye, and he made a
gesture of formal recognition. The person addressed Rowan, who turned to face
the speaker. “But not everything is significant, to every person. One learns what
one needs to know, to survive.” It was a woman, just past middle age, her hair
two sweeps of dusty crow’s wing down her breast.

“There’s more to life than survival,” Rowan told her. “Bel
sings, for example, and she doesn’t do it to survive.”

“I’ve never heard Bel sing,” Kammeryn said, with a dignified
nod in Bel’s direction, “but I can tell you this: She does sing to survive. It
keeps her spirit alive.”

Rowan smiled. “I learn to keep my spirit alive. And I give
what I know to whomever should need it, and that keeps my spirit alive, too.”

The council considered the statement; then a young man at
Kammeryn’s left was granted the floor. “And have you finished with the Inner
Lands,” he said, in a challenging tone, “that now you come to study the
Outskirts? Perhaps we don’t want to be studied.”

“I don’t wish to interfere with your people in any way. And
no, we haven’t finished with the Inner Lands; I don’t believe we ever shall.”

“But you’ve come here.”

“Yes. For a particular reason,” she told him, then spoke to
the assembly at large. “For the most part, the steerswomen travel along their
assigned routes, studying whatever they encounter. Later, when they’re too old
to travel well, or if they so decide at a younger age, they may choose one
subject and try to understand it in depth.” She nodded to Bel, who unfastened
the belt she wore and passed it to Kammeryn. “This is what I’m studying now.”

Nine silver disks, with silver links between. Each disk held
an odd, flat jewel of opalescent shades that fragmented and shifted in the
light from the vent flaps: sky blue, midnight blue, pale water blue, and one
jewel showing shades of rich amethyst. The gems all had thin silver lines
crossing their surface, as if inlaid: some parallel, some branching
geometrically from a central vein.

Kamineryn fastened the catch and held the belt up, looped
around two spread hands. “Beautiful. And a waste of good metal.” He passed the
belt to his right. It began to make its way around the circle. “And I approve,”
he continued. “Beauty is its own end.”

“Have any of you seen that sort of jewel before?” Rowan
asked. The grizzled man who now held it shook his head. “Stolen from the Inner
Lands, I would guess. We don’t have jewel-cutters.”

“My father made it,” Bel told him, “of jewels found in the
Outskirts.”

The information inspired puzzlement, and the belt continued
its journey smoothly, each person studying it and indicating unfamiliarity as
it passed through his or her hands. But Kammeryn’s gaze held both Rowan and
Bel, and he shook his head, not at the jewels but at the two women.

“A treasure hunt,” he said. His voice held deep
disappointment.

“No,” Rowan replied. She leaned forward. “I want to go to
the place where the jewels were found, and see how they lie, and what might be
there with them.” She took a breath before revealing the most startling fact
imaginable. “These are the shattered pieces of a fallen Guidestar.”

The jewels’ progress stopped, abruptly. They were now directly
behind Rowan, and she could not see who was holding them; but she saw all
around her faces turning toward that invisible person, bodies leaning, one hand
reaching.

The old woman on Kammeryn’s right was the only person to
show no surprise. “Something so beautiful could only come from the sky,” she
said when the seyoh recognized her, and then she nodded, slowly, almost
sleepily. Her expression was blank and serene, representing possibly calm
wisdom, possibly age-raddled stupidity.

“No Guidestar has fallen,” the youngest member said, then realized
he had spoken without being recognized, and silenced, flushing in youthful
embarrassment. Kammeryn reassured him with a glance, then made a small gesture
that indicated general discussion was permitted. The young man continued,
hotly, “You Inner Landers think anyone who can’t build an outhouse is a fool.
But we have eyes. The Guidestars are still there.”

“Unless—unless there are others we’ve never seen.” Rowan had
to turn to see the speaker: a woman, somewhat older than Rowan, red hair
cropped short, face broad of cheekbones, pointed of chin. It was she who now
held the belt, looped over one hand. Small blue eyes, pale and bright as
diamond chips, flickered as she thought, blinking as if their owner’s mind were
moving too quickly for her to follow.

Rowan was pleased to find herself understood. “Yes. There
ought to be four, as far as I can calculate, with the other two hanging above
the opposite side of the world. The way the fragments found are distributed,
all in a line from the Inner Lands to the Outskirts, the speed that would be
necessary to send them so far so quickly, the fact that the Outskirts jewels
lie imbedded in the face of a cliff—all these things tell me that they must
have fallen from the sky. And the only things that stand in the sky are the
Guidestars.”

“And the true stars,” the eldest woman said.

“True stars are distant suns,” someone put in. “They’ll
never fall.”

“And what does this have to do with us?” another asked.

“We have to help them, if they need help,” the young man
told the speaker with awkward dignity; he was new to his position in the
circle. “They risked themselves to save Averryl.” And he traded a careful
glance with the red-haired woman, who nodded as if in confirmation—the matter
of Averryl, it seemed, concerned her particularly.

Kammeryn assumed the floor again. “And what help do you want
from my tribe?” he asked Rowan and Bel.

“Bel has told me, and I’ve learned that it’s true, that
traveling alone in the Outskirts is dangerous and difficult,” Rowan said. “If
your movements are going to take you east, then all that we ask is to travel in
your company, for as long as our route lies near your own.”

“For as long as that’s so,” Bel stressed, then added, “Even
if it will be more than seven days.”

Rowan turned to her, surprised. “Seven days?”

Bel did not explain, or look at her; her gaze held Kammeryn’s.

The seyoh studied Bel with narrowed gaze, then spoke to Rowan.
“We must help you, that’s true,” he informed her. “But there is a limit to our
obligation. A seyoh can extend the tribe’s hospitality for seven days, but no
duty can force us to keep strangers among us beyond that time.”

Rowan was taken aback. “I didn’t know that.” She looked to
her companion again, for explanation of the omission of this information.

Bel ignored her. “It will have to be for more than seven
days,” she reasserted to Kammeryn. “It will have to be for as long as you’re
going in our direction.”

The seyoh’s eyes narrowed. “You cannot demand this of us.”

“You’ll want to do it.”

“How so?”

Bel turned to the steerswoman. “You didn’t tell him the
rest.”

“The rest?”

“Tell him about Slado,” Bel instructed.

Kammeryn was as perplexed as the steerswoman. “Slado?”

“The master wizard of the Inner Lands,” Bel told him. “He
works in secret, and the other wizards follow his orders, even when they don’t
know his motives.”

“Why should we care what wizards do? They’re far away from
us.”

Bel paused to scan the circle, meeting each gaze
individually. She pointed up. “Because their
things
are hanging in our
sky.” Abruptly, she turned to Rowan, and addressed her in the Inner Lands form.
“Tell me, lady, what’s a Guidestar?” In the past, Bel had used the form only in
half jest.

Rowan was taken aback; but the answer spoke itself. “A magical
object, created and lofted into the sky by wizards, long ago. It moves, from
west to east, and the rate of its motion is the same as the speed of the world’s
turning. For this reason it seems to hang forever motionless above the land.”
Rowan became fascinated by Bel’s face: the Outskirter’s expression was
identical to that she had worn while in wild battle, slaughtering goblins.

“What is it for?” Bel prompted.

“The wizards use them in certain spells, to effect purposes
beyond my knowledge.”

“Why did one fall?”

Possibilities were three. “Either it was made to fall, or it
was permitted to fall, or its fall could not be prevented.”

“Why did Slado know it had fallen, when no one else did?”
Possibilities were two. “Either he has sources of information his fellows
lack, or he caused it to fall himself.”

“Why would he want it to fall?”

“I don’t know.” But possibilities were two; the same two
that lay behind every human action. “To make his life better, or to prevent his
life from becoming worse.”

“Why would he hide the facts from the other wizards?”

Two. “Either he does not trust them to understand the
benefits, or they would not benefit, but suffer.”

“Thank you, lady.” Bel turned back to Kammeryn, dismissing
Rowan so completely that the steerswoman felt she had vanished. There was only
the wide, rippling chamber; the bold, primitive pattern of the carpet; the
ring of faces, warriors and past-warriors; and the empty squares of sky above,
humming in the wind.