Water (30 page)

in and kept the dangerous sand-tides out?

“Tell me a little about this place,” she said.

He sat back, willing to allow her time to compose herself “This is the fourth of the Eleven

Sandpales that King Tor the Just and Powerful set round the Great Desert Kalarsham some years

after the battle of the Hero’s Crown and the second and final death of Maur, when it became

evident that no easy cure for the desert would be found and that Damar’s ancient forest was gone

forever, and Geljdreth, the sand-god, would rule us if we let him. This Fourth Pale is called

Horontolopar
in the Old Tongue, and I am its Watcher, Zasharan, fifteenth of that line, for it was

my father’s mother’s mother’s father’s”—his voice fell into a singsong and she did not count, but

she guessed he named fourteen forebears exactly—“mother, who was first called Zasharanth, and

installed by Tor himself, and kissed by Queen Aerin, who wished her luck forever. And we have

had luck”—he took a deep sigh—“even tonight, for I did find you, though it was a narrow thing.

Much too narrow. I would like you to tell me more about
Roanshire,
and
Mauncester,
where you

are from, and how you came to be in such state, for no guide would have led or sent you so, and

my eye tells me you were alone.”

“Your eye?” she said.

“My Eye,” he replied, and this time she heard. “I will show you, if you wish. The Eye may see

more to this puzzle that you are: how it is that a sandstorm should have come from nowhere to

bring you, and yet pursue you across my doorstep so viciously that the wound it laid open on

your leg took eight stitches to close. My Eye lies in the place where I Watch, and it is much of

how I do what I am here to do. It is only Aerin’s Luck that I looked tonight, for this is an

unsettled season, and no one has set out from Thaar in weeks. Perhaps you did not come from

Thaar.”

She laughed, although it hurt her. “No, I did not come from Thaar. And—and I have gone

away—and come back. The storm—you brought me here two nights ago.”

He looked at her calmly. “You have not been here above an hour. You fainted, and I took the

opportunity to dress your leg. Then you woke.”

She was silent a moment. Her head swam, and she did not think another sip of
tiarhk
was

advisable. “Are you alone here?”

He looked astonished. “Alone? Certainly not. Rarely does anyone else come to this end of the

citadel, for I am the Watcher, and no other has reason to know of the desert door I brought you

through. But there are some few of us, and the caves run far up into the Hills, and where they

come out there is the filanon town Sunbarghon, although you would not find it unless they

decided to allow you to, and Ynorkgindal, where they ring the Border, that the music of their

bells may help keep us safe from the North, and the dlor Gzanforyar, which is mastered by my

good friend Rohk. Perhaps you will meet him one day—” He blinked and gave a tiny shiver, and

said, “Forgive me, lady, that was presumptuous.”

She shook her head. “I should like to meet him,” she said, but she heard in her voice that she

believed there would be no such meeting. Zasharan heard it too, and turned his face a little away

from her, and she saw how stiffly he sat. Her first thought was that she had offended him, but she

remembered,
Forgive me, lady, that was presumptuous,
and before she could think, had reached

to touch his arm. “But I
would
like to meet your friend, and see the caves, and your Eye, and—”

She stopped. How long would the dream last this time?

He turned back to her. “There is something strange about you, I know that, and I see—I think I

see—I—” He looked down at her hand on his arm, which she hastily removed. “You trouble me,

lady. May I have your name?”

“Hetta,” she said.

“Hetthar,” he said. “Do you think you can stand, and walk? Do you wish food first? For I would

like you to come to the place of my Eye, where I think you and I may both be able to see more

plainly.”

“I am not hungry,” she said, and tried to stand; but as she did, her head swam, and Zasharan and

the room began to fade, and she began to smell wood shavings and wet tarmac. “The sand!” she

cried. “The sand!” And just before she lost consciousness, she flung herself on the floor of

Zasharan’s cave, and scrabbled at the sand with her hands.

She woke lying on her back again, her hands upon her stomach, but her hands were shut into

fists, and the backs of them hurt up into her forearms, as if she had been squeezing them closed

for a long time. With some difficulty she unbent the fingers, and two tiny palmfuls of sand

poured out upon her nightdress. Slowly, slowly she sat up, pulling up folds of her nightdress to

enclose the sand. She stood, clutching the front of her nightdress together, and went to her chest

of drawers. She had been allowed to move into this room, which had been her grandmother’s,

when her grandmother died, but she had always been too busy—or too aware of herself as

interloper—to disarrange any of her grandmother’s things that weren’t actively in her way. But

they were friendly things, and once the first shock of grief was over, she liked having them there,

reminding her of her gran, and no longer wondered if it might be disrespectful to keep them as

they were. On the top of the chest there was an assortment of little lidded boxes and jars that had

once held such things as bobby pins and cotton balls and powder, and were now empty. She

chose one and carefully transferred the sand into it. She stood looking at its lid for a moment.

She had chosen this one because it had a pretty curl of dianthus flower and leaf painted on its

surface; her gran’s dianthus still bloomed in the garden. She lifted the lid to reassure herself that

the sand was still there—that it hadn’t disappeared as soon as she closed the box—and for a

moment, faint but unmistakable, she smelled the spicy smell of Zasharan’s cave, and
tiarhk.

When she dreamt of nothing again that night, she almost didn’t care. When she woke up, she

looked in the tiny box on her chest of drawers and the sand was still there on this second

morning, and then she went downstairs to get breakfast. Today was her day to drive to the mall.

Usually, if her list was not too long, she could spare an hour for herself. And today she—wanted

to go to the library.

It took more time to get to the mall than usual; she had had to go the long way round their block

because of the fallen tree that still lay in the broken remains of their front paling, and there were

other trees down elsewhere that the exhausted and overburdened county council had not yet cut

up and hauled away. In one place the road had caved in where a flash flood had undermined it.

There were detours and orange warning cones and temporary stoplights, and when she finally got

there, some of the car park at the mall was blocked off. She’d have barely half an hour at the

library, and only if she pelted through the rest first.

She didn’t go to the library very often any more, since she had had to stop school. She didn’t

have much time for reading, and she couldn’t think of any book she wanted to read: both fiction

and nonfiction only reminded her of what she wasn’t doing and might never do. She did read

seed catalogues, intensely, from cover to cover, every winter, and the offbeat gardening books

and even more bizarre popular science books Ruth bought her every birthday and Christmas,

which, because Ruth had bought them, were friendly instead of accusing. The library felt like a

familiar place from some other life. There were calluses on her hands that scraped against the

pages that hadn’t been there when she had been coming here several times a week.

None of the encyclopedias had any listings for Damar, nor the atlases, and she didn’t have time

to queue for a computer. They had added more computers since she had been here last, but it

hadn’t changed the length of the queue. She went reluctantly to the help desk. Geography had

never been a strong suit, and by the time she was standing in front of the counter, she felt no

more than ten and a good six inches shorter. “Er—have you ever heard of a place called Damar?”

The librarian’s eyes went first to the row of computers, all occupied, and she sighed. She looked

up at Hetta. “Yes,” said Hetta. “I’ve tried the encyclopedias and atlases.”

The librarian smiled faintly, then frowned. “Damar. I don’t recall—what do you know about it?”

It has eleven Sandpales and a Watcher named Zasharan at the fourth.
“Um. It—it has a big

desert in it, which used to be ancient forest.” The librarian raised her eyebrows. “It’s—it’s a

crossword puzzle clue,” said Hetta, improvising hastily. “It’s—it’s a sort of bet.”

The librarian looked amused. She tapped
Damar
into the computer in front of her. “Hmm. Try

under
Daria.
Oh yes—Damar,” she said, looking interested. “I remember ... oh dear.

If you want anything recent, you will have to consult the newspaper archive.” She looked

suddenly hunted. “There’s a bit of a, hmm, gap—up till five years ago, everything is on

microfiche, and in theory everything since is available on the computer system but, well, it isn’t,

you know .... Let me know if I can find ... if I can try to find anything for you.” She looked at

Hetta with an expression that said full body armour and possibly an oxygen tank and face-mask

were necessary to anyone venturing into the newspaper archive.

“Thank you,” said Hetta demurely, and nearly ran back to the reference room; her half hour was

already up.

Daria. The Dorian subcontinent in southwestern Asia comprises a large landmass including both

inland plains, mostly desert with irregular pockets of fertile ground, between its tall and

extensive mountain ranges, and a long curved peninsula of gentler and more arable country in

the south
—
Its government is a unique conception, being both the Republic of Damar under its

own people and a Protectorate of the Homeland Empire and legislated by her appointed officers.

See text articles ....

Damar. It existed.

She had been nearly an hour at the library. She ran out to the car park and banged the old car into

gear in a way it was not at all used to. It gave a howl of protest but she barely heard it Damar.
It

existed!

The ice cream had started to melt but her father never ate ice cream, and there were scones for

tea with the eggs and sausages because scones were the fastest thing she could think of and her

father wouldn’t eat store bread. She ignored more easily than usual her mother’s gently

murmured litany of complaint when she took her her tray, and in blessed peace and quiet—Dane

and his girlfriend, Lara, were having dinner with her parents, Jeff was doing homework in his

room, their father was downstairs in the shop, and Hetta had firmly turned the still-resident TV

off—began washing up the pots and pans that wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher. She was trying to

remember anything she could about Daria—they had been studying the Near East in history and

current events the year her grandmother had died and her mother had first taken seriously ill, and

the only thing she remembered clearly was
Great Expectations
in literature class, because she

had been wishing that some convict out of a graveyard would rescue her. This had never struck

her as funny before, but she was smiling over the sink when Ruth—whom she hadn’t heard come

into the kitchen—put her hand on her arm, and said, or rather whispered, “Hetta, what is
with

you? Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t been yourself since the storm. I mean, good for you, I think you haven’t been

yourself in about eight years, except I was so young then I didn’t know what was going on, and

maybe you’re becoming yourself again now. But you’re different, and look, you know Mum and

Dad, they don’t like different. It’ll turn out bad somehow if they notice. At the moment Dad’s

still totally preoccupied with the storm damage but he won’t be forever. And even Mum—Ruth

shrugged. Their mother had her own ways of making things happen.

Hetta had stopped washing dishes in surprise but began again; Ruth picked up a dish-towel and

began to dry. They both cast a wary look at the door; the hum of the dishwasher would disguise

their voices as long as they spoke quietly, but their father didn’t like conversations he couldn’t

hear, and the only topics he wished discussed all had to do with business and building furniture.

“I—I’m embarrassed to tell you,” said Hetta, concentrating on the bottom of a saucepan.

“Try me,” said Ruth. “Hey, I study the sex lives of bugs. Nothing embarrasses me.”

Hetta sucked in her breath on a suppressed laugh. “I—I’ve been having this dream—” She

stopped and glanced at Ruth. Ruth was looking at her, waiting for her to go on. “It’s ... it’s like

something real.”

“I’ve had dreams like that,” said Ruth, “but they don’t make me go around looking like I’ve got a

huge important secret, at least I don’t think they do.”

Hetta grinned. Hetta had always been the dreamy daughter, as their father had often pointed out,

and Ruth the practical one. Their grandmother had teased that she was grateful for the eight-year