The Steerswoman's Road (87 page)

The rumor had several alternative endings: the steerswoman
answered, resulting in the town’s destruction and causing her to take her own
life in remorse; she answered, then escaped to warn the town; she answered with
a lie, and on her release immediately resigned the order (or again took her own
life, in yet another version); she refused to answer and was tortured and
killed by the bandits.

The tale was generally regarded as apocryphal: there was no
way to verify the events. Nevertheless, it caused a great deal of discussion
among the students, as a hypothetical case, and they debated the options with
the fierce, fresh, intellectual enthusiasm of the young.

But eventually, interest in the topic waned. It was an unlikely
occurrence. Steerswomen meeting bandits were usually simply attacked, as would
be any other of the common folk. They responded by fleeing or defending their
lives by sword. In situations of smaller harm, such as personal intrigue, the
steerswoman first told the questioner that all parties concerned would be
informed of the entire conversation, and the question was usually withdrawn.

Rowan’s own experiences had been more extreme, and she had
responded to the wizards’ threat to her life by resigning the Steers-women,
leaving her free to assume a false identity and deceive as necessary. But she
had suffered during that period. While a steers-woman, she was a living
embodiment of the principle she held highest; while not a steerswoman, the
lack of that principle left a wound in her spirit, as sharp as physical pain.

She said to the seyoh, “If you asked for the names, I would
first ask if you planned to use them to cause harm.” A person intending harm
would not be likely to admit to it; and she would catch him in an obvious lie,
place him under the Steerswomen’s ban, and be free to deny him the information.

He avoided the trap. “And if I did, and said so?”

She became angry. “Then,” she said fiercely, “this is what I
would do: I would answer your question, but I would delay my reply for the
space of time it took for me to challenge you to a blood duel, and either win
or die.”

He raised his eyes and regarded her calmly. “A dead woman
cannot answer. A dead man needs no reply. This is clever, but dangerous. You
would do this to protect your friends?”

“No.” She felt that she was thinking as an Outskirter, and
that it was absolutely correct to do so. “I would do it as revenge against you
personally, for daring to try and force me to betray my own honor.”

And to her utter amazement, he smiled. “Ha,” he said, and
pounded the carpet with his fist, twice. He seemed to enjoy the action;
possibly it served him in place of laughter.

Then he rose, crossed the tent, and returned carrying a box
of stiff, woven fabric, somewhat larger than was usual. He placed it before
her, opened it, and removed an object from within. He said to her, and it was a
strange phrase to hear stated in such a prosaic tone, “Here is a wondrous
thing.” He closed the box, placed the object on the lid, and leaned back.

The steerswoman sat stunned. “Skies above,” she breathed.

A squat cone on a short base, standing a foot and a half
tall and perhaps two feet in diameter, made of tarnished, dented metal. Its surface
was studded with smaller objects, some attached directly to the face of the
cone, some placed on the ends of rods.

She forgot the Face Person, the tent, the fact that she was
sitting in the middle of a possibly hostile camp. The object stood before her,
startlingly incongruous, impossibly present.

Fascinated, Rowan moved closer, rising to her knees to do
so. The seyoh spoke. “You may touch it; it is harmless.”

She did so, hesitantly, then probingly. The rods and objects
were attached securely, but four of the six rods were bent at an angle. She
tested and could not straighten them. The objects on the rods’ tips were
damaged; one had glass shards where there must once have been a small glass
boss.

She tilted the cone to see the base. The metal was cool on
her palm, but it was not iron or steel, or brass; the entire thing shifted too
easily, was too light to be constructed of those materials.

From the base hung a number of thick, stiff strings; and
these she had seen before. When she and Bel had infiltrated the fortress of the
wizards Shammer and Dhree, Rowan had managed by stealth to examine the
contents of one of a number of wooden boxes being unloaded from a delivery
cart: rolls of semirigid strands of a brightly colored, unidentifiable
substance, with copper cores within, like magically coated jeweler’s wire.
These were the same. “This is wizard-made,” she said.

“Wizards are legends, so I had always believed,” the seyoh
said. “I thought this merely made by men with strange knowledge.”

She could not take her eyes from the thing in her hands. “We’re
both right,” she replied distantly. “Wizards are men, with very strange
knowledge indeed.”

The connection between cone and base was crushed and flattened
to one side. She peered up at the joining. It seemed designed to rotate. The
base itself was hollow to a shallow depth, stopped by a flat surface etched
with lines of copper. Not the pattern itself, but the intricacy nudged at her
memory; it was vaguely reminiscent of the sort of decorations found on
clothing made by the Kundekin, a reclusive craftspeople dwelling in the Inner
Land. But more importantly, the spell that controlled the magical gate guarding
the wizards’ fortress had been activated by a wooden disk and a ceramic recess,
both of which had lines not much different from these.

The magical gate had opened of its own accord; and Rowan
knew that this was one use of magic, to animate the inanimate. Likely this
object, as part of a Guidestar, did something, undertook some action; and as
she had suspected, the Guidestars themselves somehow acted.

“I’m tempted,” she said, “to try to take it apart.”

“I have tried, myself, often. It does not admit my prying.”

Rowan noted scratches and scorings on the surface. “Did you
use a metal knife?” He had done. He showed it to her, and its edge was chipped.

The inner surface around the open base was of a substance
something like very hard ceramic, bearing innumerable dark lines where the
knife had been drawn across the material. She cautiously inserted her hand into
the base; it was smooth on the sides, and the back of her hand was scratched by
the copper-etched face, which seemed to have short bits of wire thrust through
from the opposite side.

She removed her hand and looked inside again. The copper
lines served to connect the short bits of wire to each other. The positioning
of the wire ends suggested the placement of objects on the opposite side,
tantalizingly; there were obvious sets of pairs, the outlines of rectangles and
parallelograms. Using her fingers, she tried to feel the edges of the
copper-etched face. The seyoh watched, then wordlessly passed his chipped knife
to her. She inserted the blade and ran it around the sides, finding no
purchase. “Have you tried to break it open?” A sledgehammer and anvil might
have been useful.

“Yes. I failed.”

The steerswoman stood the object back on its base, atop the
Outskirter box. She drew away her hands and sat regarding it.

A piece of the fallen Guidestar. This thing had once dwelt
in the sky, forever falling around the world, forever missing the ground, forever
seeming to hang at one point on the celestial equator. And it now sat before
her. “How did you get it?”

“I found it myself, as a young boy. There was more: a great
hole in the ground where it had struck, and some more metal in the earth. I was
tending the flock and discovered it, and ran to tell my seyoh.

“I thought straightaway that it was a piece of the light of
omen, that it had fallen from the sky. My seyoh agreed, and saved this part of
it. We carried it with us always.” He made a small, disparaging sound. “He
revered it, and said we were to do the same. I am no such fool. It is a only a
thing. Wondrous, but still a thing.”

“But you still keep it.”

He nodded. “It is strange. It inspires strange thoughts.”

She pulled her gaze from the object and turned to study the
seyoh, speculatively. “You seem to regard that as good.”

He smiled, slightly. “I thought long on it, as a child and
as a warrior. I thought in a strange fashion. It is useful, to think strangely.
You see the world in a different way, become hard to fool. It enabled me to
rise among my people and become seyoh.”

“I see.” Inspiration from the sky; originality. “Why did you
not mention this at Rendezvous?”

He grunted. “All Outskirters are my enemies. On the Face, to
live is to cause someone else to die; by the sword, by hunger. And this is true
elsewhere in the Outskirts; but it happens more slowly and is harder to see. I
wish that among those living people shall be all the members of my tribe.

“Bel, Margasdotter, Chanly says to me that we must work together,
and fight with all tribes side by side. To hear it, it sounds like a good
thing.

“But if battle comes, or magical attack, perhaps Bel will
see that three tribes will live if she sends one into danger, knowing it may
die.” His head jerked in anger, and he spoke vehemently. “That tribe will not
be mine!”

“I see.” Stated so, it made sense; but only from the one
tribe’s perspective. “But don’t you understand,” she went on, “that if the
wizards, or Slado himself, come to the Outskirts themselves, that your tribe’s
help may make a difference to the outcome? And that if the other Outskirters’
resistance fails, you and your tribe will suffer?”

He grunted. “So Bel has said. But she is an Outskirter. She
will protect her own and let others suffer. I do not trust her. I promise nothing
to her. But you—” Rowan found herself held in a gaze like deep, black water. “You
are different.”

“How so?”

He sat long in thought; and it came to Rowan that he would
attempt to express a very abstract idea, and that the small words with which
he was most familiar would prove insufficient tools.

“In the morning,” he said hesitantly, “the sun comes up.
This is good to know, for you must rise, and do things. But if you sleep in
your tent, someone must come and tell you: The sun has come up.”

“Yes ...”

He became more sure. “To sleep or to rise, to do the work of
your day or to wait—to decide this, you must first know one thing: that the sun
is up. In life, this is always true. In order to do, you must know.”

The steerswoman understood. “True.” In order to choose between
alternatives of action, or inaction, one must first possess the relevant
information.

“But you do not always know what is needed for you to know.
You must learn far more than you need to know.”

“True.” Once the choice of action was made, most facts acquired
were revealed as superfluous to it, and unrelated to the subject; but one must
first acquire those facts, in order to recognize that. “You, steerswoman,” the
seyoh said, “you know a great deal.”

“Yes ..”

He looked down, then around, as if the walls of the tent had
vanished and he could clearly see his tribe about him. “My people suffer. I
wondered why. I did not have enough knowledge to say.” He turned back to her,
intent. “And then, at the meeting of the seyohs, you tell me. You know more
than I.”

“About this one subject, yes, I do ...”

“Who is to say to you what is needed, or not needed, for you
to know? And so you ask, always. Only foolish persons would not answer; because
it is your way that once you understand, you give understanding to all who ask
it of you.”

“I’m a steerswoman,” she confirmed.

“And you showed to me that you would rather die than serve
as a tool for others to cause harm.” His earlier questions had been a test.

He indicated the Guidestar fragment. “And so I show you
this, and tell you what I know. Perhaps it will help you, and me, and my tribe.
Perhaps not. Who can say? Only you, who know the most, can discover. And when
you discover, you will tell all.”

She left the camp in high spirits.

She was accompanied to the camp’s limits by one escort, and
to a distance of a mile out by a second: grim, small men, virtually indistinguishable
from each other. Rowan found herself admiring them, for the sake of their
seyoh.

When she was left to continue alone, she knew that there
were other watchers hidden, somewhere in the nearby grass. The fact did not at
all disturb her. And when a figure rose from the grass directly ahead, she
expected no trouble whatsoever.

It fact, it was Fletcher. She regarded him, amused. “Have
you been out there all along?” she asked.

“Hiding like a fool-you bug, up till now.” He looked very
nervous indeed. “Let’s get out of here.”

She smiled reassuringly. “It’s all right. They don’t plan
any harm.”

“So you say.” He led the way back. “If they don’t mean harm,
why are they watching us so damn hard?”

Bel said, “Natural caution.” Where Bel had appeared from,
Rowan had no idea; but there she was, walking alongside. “If my tribe was so
close to another, I’d have a full war band scattered in hiding, as well.”

“Or two,” Fletcher said, all attention fiercely on the
surroundings. Bel glowered. “I counted eleven; so I guessed twelve.”

“I counted eighteen. I guess two dozen.”

“Not that many.” Bel was disparaging. “Your imagination is
running away with you.”

He spoke between his teeth. “I could hear the buggers breathing.”

Rowan could not help but laugh; she could not ask for two
more dedicated guardians. “Really, both of you, everything is fine. And I’ve
heard and seen the most amazing things.” She prepared to relate the entire
experience, too excited to wait until they reached camp.

But Fletcher had come to a dead halt ahead of her and stood
j ittering. “Damn,” he said under his breath.