Will Shetterly - Witch Blood (21 page)

KIYAN OF ISTVIAR
gave me a post in her mother’s guards. We were secret lovers, or so we thought, though many people would smile when I would leave the barracks to spend an evening out, or when Kiyan would have me attend her for an afternoon of personal instruction. My two years in the City of Ships were happy ones. I became an instructor of sorts, teaching the palace guards what I knew of the Warrior-Saint’s Art and learning other techniques from those who knew them. When Kiyan’s mother died and she became the Sea Queen, she sent for me. We met in Kiyan’s bedroom. When I moved to kiss her, she held up her hand between us, offering a heavy coin purse without comment or expression.

“What’s this?” I asked, taking it.

“Your pay.”

“Ah.”

“I’m going to marry.”

“And this isn’t a dowry.”

She smiled and caressed my cheek. “No, Rifkin. I’ve decided to marry one of the western princes. It’s for the good of Istviar. It’ll strengthen the Alliance.”

“Ah. For the good of Istviar. I understand.”

“I still care for you, Rifkin. I might be tempted to keep you here if I didn’t.”

“Which means I must leave?”

She nodded. “I don’t expect him to keep a lover, Rifkin. I can hardly keep you.”

I nodded slowly.

“I have met him. He seems kind.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“Really?”

“No,” I said. “Well, yes. Maybe.”

She laughed and beckoned to me. “One last time, old friend?”

I swallowed carefully, set the bag of coins aside, and said, “Of course.”

In the morning, lying in her sheets, I tried to memorize her features and wondered whether I loved Kiyan or only what she represented to me. She woke, snuggled against me, and said, “I’ll miss you.”

“Good.”

She must have heard some bitterness in my voice. Her eyes opened and she studied me, completely awake. “Rifkin. If I send for you, will you come to me?”

“Though ten thousand soldiers should bar the way.”

She laughed and put her head against my neck. “What a dope.”

I returned to Loh. I was older, and I was rich, and I had served the Sea Queen. I discovered that the Searich line did not despise me, and that little Rileel, one of Vayil’s sisters who had been widowed the year before, was much more attractive than I remembered. Rileel and I lived together for nineteen years. Vayil and Svanik both came to Loh to visit, and we even practiced the Art together, and I was content.

News traveled slowly between Istviar and Loh, but we heard of Kiyan’s marriage, and later, that it resulted in a son. Kiyan’s rule seemed to be a good one, though people muttered that she was too kind to Istviar’s witches. She decreased the witches’ taxes and no longer required them to inhabit Istviar’s witches’ quarter. Still, Istviar prospered under her rule, and I knew of no serious discontent in the Sea Queen’s country.

The Searich family grew richer while I lived with them. We bought a fourth boat. When Istviar established a garrison in Loh, I arranged a contract with the garrison’s leader to supply them with fish. Rileel and I had four children—a son by her first marriage, then twin daughters, then a son. When Kiyan’s messenger came—

I write this too quickly. I can already hear the complaints of my favorite critic. Very well, I’ll tell more of my later life in Loh.

When I was one of Tchanin’s students, Rileel was a gawky girl who thought she loved me, and I had little time for her. I never saw her for what she was; I saw her for what she was not. She was not her older sister, and she was not Kiyan. I knew her flaws very well: she laughed too loudly, and she giggled at the most simplistic jokes. Others in Tchanin’s class had noticed the looks that Vayil’s sister gave me. They kidded me about her. She embarrassed me, and I was Second Student, who deserved far better than Vayil’s silly sister.

When I returned to Loh, Rileel was a widowed mother who bore her sorrow well. I was rich, and I had bought a hut and a small boat. For the first week I spent my days in the boat, trying to learn what the smallest children of the fishing families already knew. I spent my evenings sober, but in the second week, I passed two evenings quite drunk on happiness milk. When I woke the third morning of the second week, Rileel was waiting in the yard outside my hut. I knotted a sheet like a sarong about my waist. ‘“Leel. Mornin’.”

“You need a helper in your boat,” she said quietly, not meeting my eyes.

I nodded.

“All of my family know these waters.”

“
I know
.”

“My lover’s boat was caught in a storm when he was too far out.”

“I heard.”

“I was too pregnant to be with him.”

“He shouldn’t have gone out too far.”

“If I’d been with him, he wouldn’t have.” She looked up, and her eyes, I noticed, were a very common brown, but that brown was no less attractive for being common. “If you take me as a helper, I’ll only ask a quarter of your catch. And I’ll double that catch.”

“Great,” I said. “That guarantees two fish today.” When she smiled slightly, I said, “You could work on one of your family’s boats.”

She didn’t answer. I thought of Vayil’s independence, and realized that it was a trait of the Searich family.

“No matter, Rileel. You’re ready to go?”

“My mother is caring for my son. I’m ready.”

We caught more fish that day than I had caught all week.

Rileel moved into my hut seven months after that day. Our daughters were born almost a year later, and our son, ten months after them. And now I will tell the next part much too quickly, and I will make no apology. We had eighteen good years in Loh. I continued to practice the Art, even though I knew that I loved my family and my village too much to seek spiritual transcendence. I taught what I could to my children. In the nineteenth year plague came to Loh, and I watched my family die.

I do not know why the plague never touched me. I had been very sick for a week in Istviar; perhaps that satisfied the spirits of illness. I only know that in that spring, a trading ship came to Loh from a western city. A week later people began to sicken. Sores developed in their mouths, their groins, their armpits. They screamed. They soiled themselves like babies. They become unconscious. They died. One-fourth of Lori’s people died in three weeks.

When I had buried the last of my family—my eldest son, Rileel’s firstborn—I went to the man who made happiness milk and gave him a fistful of coins. “Bring a jug every morning to my hut. Tell me when I need to pay you again. I have more coins.“

“Yes, Rifkin Searich.”

I stared at him until he said, “What did I say? I didn’t mean—”

I tapped myself. “Rifkin Freeman.” “Of course.”

“A jug every morning,” I repeated. “And when you want more coins, I’ll dig up more for you. Amazing, isn’t it? Gold doesn’t rot in the earth.”

When he said nothing, I returned to my hut. I tried very hard to stay drunk after that, but after several days, I shattered that day’s jug and began to practice the Art again. I may have practiced for an hour or so every day while my family lived, but when they died, I practiced all day. I remembered enough of what I had learned on the White Mountain, and I set myself new tests. One day three months later, as I did the Thirteenth Pattern—the longest and most difficult—in reverse at one-fourth its normal speed, I became aware of a black-garbed figure watching me.

I finished without altering my speed. I did the final bow to my watcher, who nodded in approval. He was a small, dark man with his hair cut close to his skull. He returned my bow and laughed. “I heard that a madman lived in Loh who was a greater follower of the Warrior-Saint’s Art than any Priest or Spirit who ever lived.”

“You hear exaggerations.”

“So I see.” His clothes were more closely tailored than those of a Priest. He could only be a Spirit. When my family lived, his presence would have frightened or angered me. “Still, you’re very good.”

I sat to begin meditating.

“Come to Moon Isle. We’ll have a place for you.”

I let my lids half close.

“You cannot want gold, or you would not live like this. So I won’t offer gold to you.”

I listened to my breath, thinking of inhaling deeply and letting my exhalation come when it would.

“However, I can give you a purpose, Rifkin Madman.”

I thought I did not react, but he laughed.

“There’s evil in Istviar. Humanity is threatened. It’s time to finish what the Warrior-Saint began.”

“Go away.”

He laughed again. “The witches live among us, Rifkin. They hold places of trust in our government. They establish a reign that will be far harder to overthrow than the Witches’ Empire. They’ll control us from places of political and economic power. They’ll rule the world if we don’t stop them.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let them.”

“Remember me,” he said, and he left.

Svanik Priest came five or six days later. His face was much smoother than it had been when he was a child. Now, more lines showed on the side that had never been burned. He came while I was practicing my leaping side kicks. “You don’t have to stay here,” he said at last.

I remembered that speaking to the Spirit had not helped, so I continued my kicks. From a tree I’d hung a bag of dirt that served as a target.

“There’s a place for you on the White Mountain.”

I kicked.

“You aren’t what you were, Rifkin. You were only concerned for yourself then. You’ve learned to love—”

I kicked again, and I had not thought I could kick harder than I had kicked before. I could.

“We all grieve with you. Vayil is at her mother’s now. We would have come sooner—”

I switched to leaping front kicks.

“We didn’t know, Rifkin. We rarely have messengers.”

I could do double front kicks before landing, though that called for judging the spinning of the bag between the first and second kicks.

“I loved Rileel, too, you—”

I spun as I landed from the last kick and said, “If you don’t want to learn whether I am still Second Student and you are still Third, leave now.”

He pursed his lips as though to speak, then nodded and left.

When Vayil came that afternoon, I faced her in fighting stance. She opened her arms wide to show she was defenseless. “Rifkin.”

I could not speak in sentences for fear of crying or attacking her. “Go. Away. Now.”

She nodded to me and went.

Someone brought food and water every day. Only later did I realize that it was the man I had paid to bring me happiness milk. I practiced and I meditated, but my meditation was a flight from thought and responsibility. It did not bring me peace. When I dreamed, the Black Shark chased my family, gnawing upon them while I could do nothing. Sometimes the White Lady appeared, and she would entice my family aboard her ship. They went trusting her. When they had boarded, the White Lady’s ship moved away as though a strong wind had caught its sails. Its masts were as bare as oak trees in winter. I screamed from the shore for the White Lady to return, to release my family or to take me also. She only smiled at me. Her smile said that I had conspired with her in my family’s death.

My last visitor was a boy in the vest and helmet of Kiyan’s guard. He came almost a month after Svanik and Vayil had returned to Loh. He said, “The Sea Queen asks you to come to Istviar.”

I nodded. “Lead me.”

Kiyan received me in the small room where we had often met. She wore a red and white silk sarong that I had admired, and her hair was tied back as if she were a student again with Tchanin. She smiled gently, and for a moment, it was as though I were returning again from the White Mountain and she was there to comfort me. “Hello, old friend.” Her voice was weak, and lower than I remembered.“

“Kiyan.” I nodded to her.

“I’ve heard. I’m sorry.”

I nodded again.

“I remember Rileel. I hope you treated her better than you did when we were students.”

“A little.”

“Good.” She clapped her hands, and the curtain to the room was brushed aside by a small, dark young man in loose silk trousers and silver jewelry on his fingers, arms, ankles, and ears. He smiled a secretive, superior smile as Kiyan said, “My son, Izla of Istviar.”

Izla assessed me with his glance. “This is the peasant who was your... friend, Mother?”

“This is Rifkin Artist, Izla.”

“Artist?” Izla laughed. “One of those fellows who break trees with their foreheads and fight bulls on feast days? He must be very proud. There aren’t many who are the equals of trees.”

Kiyan’s eyes closed for a moment. “My son is a fool, Rifkin. That is why I’ve asked you to come here.”

‘To teach him?“ I asked.

Izla laughed delightedly.

“No,” Kiyan answered. ‘To protect him.“

We stood in the room in silence. If Izla had laughed, I might have left then. He gnawed at the cuticle of the little finger of his left hand. My youngest son at Loh had done exactly that when he was nervous or thinking of distant things. “Very well,” I said. “I’ll protect him. From what?”

“Assassins. Rebellion. His own foolishness.”

“I can’t guarantee to save him from any of those.”

“I know that.” There was relief in Kiyan’s voice, and that pleased me.

“I don’t like this,” Izla said.

“Poor baby,” Kiyan answered.

“I can protect myself,” Izla said, and his hands were suddenly encased in globes of fire.

“Fool!” Kiyan snapped her hand at him. A gust of wind extinguished Izla’s flame.

I stared at them both. In songs, heroes wonder at such times if they have gone mad, but I did not disbelieve what I had seen. “Witches,” I said.

Izla smiled. “He is quick, for a peasant.”

“You see why my son needs protection?”

I touched my tongue to my lip, then nodded.

“The people whisper that Istviar is ruled by witches,” Kiyan said. “And they are right. It’s been a secret since the Witches’ Empire fell. I’m not sure how the rumor began.” She looked at Izla.

“I wasn’t careless!”

“Maybe not.” When she turned her eyes to me, she said with some pride, “Izla’s the strongest witch in generations, Rifkin. In our family it’s traditional to teach our children the truth about themselves when they reach their twentieth birthday, and then to begin instruction in using our art. Izla discovered his in puberty. One summer people in the palace began to feel as though they had no privacy, as if there were secret watchers hidden in the rooms. I discovered the truth one evening when I felt a clumsy spy in my mind and realized who it must be.”