Moving Water (6 page)

There is no warning. Just a last jink of the tree-shuttered road and the bridge fires you out into immensity. Glancing round at nine grins wider than my own, I thought what joy there is in seeing others' joy take them by surprise.

“You femaere,” he said when I dismounted and walked over. “You never said a word.”

“You did say,” I pointed out, “that you wanted to see it with your eyes.”

“So I did.” He was still devouring it, too rapt to comment again, even in superlatives.

When he finally moved and sighed, I said, “We call the ocean Gevber. The Eastern Sea. The land is Morrya province. That little hill's the Morhyrne. Zyphryr Coryan's on its seaward side. And above Zyphryr Coryan is where the Lady lives.”

“Oh, yes.” At that moment she could not have mattered less. But at last he turned away, to scan the bridge again, and then remark, “Must be some good in Assharral, when they build something like this just to show off something like that.”

When I said, “Thank you,” he looked delightfully abashed. Then he said indignantly, “Sneak that under my shield, you can expect a kick in the teeth.” And I swung back astride laughing, so relieved to have him himself again, I dismissed questions of kingship along with his baffling Math.

* * * * *

The byplay had touched the guards too, though it was hardly perceptible. Just a minute sense of atmosphere grown indefinably easier, as we passed Vallin Taskar and the road began its zigzag down a vertical cliff into the forest depths.

Lisdrinos' trees are mammoth, its undergrowth impassable. Bird and beast flourish in that wet green labyrinth, but you catch only rare glimpses, like the spell-cast vistas from a road shoulder: half a waterfall in the fern, a segment of Morrya past a vine-hung cliff. If you are lucky, the frigid quiet may yield one syllable of a ferrathil's slow, chiming call. It was in there, soon after we left next morning, that one of the horses chose to cast a shoe.

“Take him back, Wenver,” I told his rider, “with my nastiest compliments, and get another one.” I felt the cold war had eased to such small levities. “The rest fall out, but sit on the road, unless you want to banquet the whole family Leech.” I had been through such forests before. Then, thinking there could not be too much danger, I lay down with my head on the curb and my feet in the sun, and promptly fell fast asleep.

said my charge,

I came upright inside out clawing my sword as I spun to meet a mass assassination attempt. He was nowhere in sight. Eight amazed faces stared uphill at me. “What—where—” I had just begun to yell when he broke in, sounding oddly flat.

Then how in the Lady's name, I almost shouted as I ran, could you talk to me down here?

he commanded. I tiptoed. Shadow and creeper resolved into a crouching blue back and a guard's wide black rump. he countermanded himself.

As if after a Phaxian sentry I slithered up to the father of logs that was their ambuscade, with sour thoughts of leeches nestled to its spongy bark, inched my head up to gauge his line of sight. And forgot everything else.

Ten paces away a tiny glade of bracken ferns was caught in a shaft of blue-white sun, dazzling as liquid thillian in the greenish gloom. The light framed a tall earth mound. I had vaguely heard a racket suggesting a whole barrack-room of birds. Now, as sight slowly became perception, I knew there would be only one.

At first it looked like a filmy white helmet crest shaken out just above the ground. Then the two long bronze and gold-spatched outer feathers came into focus, framing the white plumes in their open-heart curve, two finer ones rising to repeat the heart above. A black flash of foot beneath the silver arch. A shine of bright black eye. And it had assembled, facing me, tail arched forward high over its head as it performed the mating dance. A heart-tail bird, a clythkemmon, or as some say, a terrepher, a silver dancer, or a tingan as others call it, a many-tongue, because it can mimic any sound on earth.

The silver fan quivered. Slid gracefully to the left. On the final hop I had a glimpse of wings. It sidled back. The calls had passed from a ferrathil's chime to a gerperra's whipcrack cry to the salvoes of a gweldryx flock. Now, quite distinctly, came the clop of hooves and the very timbre of my commands. Hearing my charge's breath of a laugh I nearly thumped his shoulder, for they are the shyest of all birds.

But it was all right. The sun flamed on the trembling silver curtain, the gold and bronze feather bars glowed, distinct as beads, the dance went on. Advance, halt, retreat. The hen must be somewhere close, I thought.

A crying child, a windlass's squeak. A rovperra's splutter of raucous man-like laughter and the fan swept shut. A dull brown bird with an ungainly tail edged coyly up to a stump, saying, “Choo . . . choo.” Another patch of dowdy brown fluttered down to it, and then the forest had drunk them both.

After a long time the three of us sighed in near-perfect unison, and sat back. I glanced at my charge. He was on my right, still staring into the gloom, turban fallen round his neck, which let me study his undamaged profile: as I took in the long jaw, springing nose, black-lashed green almond of eye, sweet-tempered mouth that belied the bone structure of command, it struck me that women must once have found him a more than handsome man.

Silently, as behoves beauty unindebted to men, we filed back to the road. As we started down, he said, “I'm glad you called me, Sivar. The captain says it was a clythkemmon. Or a tingan. Or a terrepher. By any name, it makes Assharral a lucky place.”

More thought-reading, I deduced resignedly. And then, galvanized: How did he do that? How did he get any of them to speak to him, let be follow him up there alone?

blandly,

I did not pull a face at him. I knew Sivar had picked up “the captain
says,
” too.

That first implicit praise had made him preen as well as mumble. Now his eye-whites were showing. I waited for him to run. A word, a bare glance from the menace would have been enough. But my charge ignored him, making steadily on downhill.

Another three strides, crunching on the road's damp stone. The others were watching, not yet in earshot. I caught Sivar's indrawn breath. Then the half-cleared throat, and, with more than natural awkwardness, the word.

“Sir . . . ?”

My charge made an encouraging noise.

“Sir . . . but . . . Fylg . . . ah, the captain—never said anything.”

Does he know, I thought, that this is an overture from the shyest of all birds? Does he guess how much rides on this?

But of course he had.

“Not aloud,” he answered matter-of-factly, not looking round. “But we couldn't talk up there. So I had to read his thoughts. It's just another art.”

At Sivar's, “Oh,” my heart sank.

Then other concerns yielded to my own query. “Apart from picking my mind, just how did you get me up there?”

“Oh, dear.” He stopped, and scrubbed at his hair. Sivar, I noted hopefully, had stopped too, showing more inquisitiveness than fear.

“You see,” he smiled disarmingly, “about the first art we learn is Mindspeech. Lathare. And I couldn't shout for you.” The smile broadened. “Though if I'd yelled as loud aloud as I did in Lathare I'd have brought the whole of Assharral. You have a great talent for sleep.”

As Sivar gleefully joined the laugh curiosity bested my own wariness. “Can anybody hear—and talk—like that?”

Sivar broke in with a jealousy quick as his about-turn to interest, “C'n I, sir? Or is it just officers?”

“You have to be taught,” he answered thoughtfully, “to speak. But many people can hear. It's like an ear for music. Doesn't seem to matter who you are.”

“Ah,” said Sivar, and he returned, and laughed so infectiously Sivar forgot his fright.

I had already thought of something else. “How did you know I could?”

His eye glinted. “You jumped round quick enough the other day when I told you to ‘ 'ware backs'.”

Sivar's thought had followed mine. A question, a puzzle, a struggle for courage fermented in his heavy face.

“Sir,” he was still painfully timid. “Gevos. Just what—did you do?”

My charge's face shadowed all over again. He answered quietly. “The Arts use several of what we call direct Commands. The main one is Chake.” He pronounced it “Sha-kay.” “If you're strong enough, you can stand someone on his head with that. But the only real difference is the scale of power. Knock somebody over, knock them out, blind them, kill them. That's A'sparre. I meant to knock him out. But I hit too hard.”

For a moment he could have been back kneeling over the corpse. I could find nothing useful to say. But Sivar was also hunting consolation, and, I should think, a quite unwonted tact. What he achieved was an outright herald's staff.

“Well, sir, everybody's gotta make mistakes. My old man used to say you gotta be toes-up before you don't.” He withdrew hastily on camp. “Sir, permission to check me horse. . . .”

Watching him scuttle away, my charge said slowly, “You know, I think that's the kindest thing anyone ever said to me.”

I found myself gagged by my own base, ridiculous jealousy. He went on, thinking aloud.

“Fengthira was right. ‘Th'art never Round but Through.' I thought he'd never get it out. I wanted to jump in and answer before he said it, like I can with you.” My gag dissolved. “But if I had . . . it would have tipped the scales, sure enough.” He looked absurdly pleased with himself. “I think I'm getting the hang of Math.”

* * * * *

Whatever Sivar told the rest worked faster than any herald's staff. By nightfall they were all trying to ride in earshot. Next day in the inn-yard both Zyr and Ost, the second file-leader, dared an outright glance at him and a mumbled, “Morning, sir.” At the midday halt Sivar hovered, then sidled up to hazard, “Where did you come from, sir? Before Assharral?” In a couple more days the lot were all but climbing in bed with him.

With the wall down they wanted to know how he had learnt and how it felt, to have their thoughts read and be taught to “speak,” with explanations of the rest and demonstrations thrown in. They never tired of dropping things and saying plaintively, “Sir, do you think . . .” or piling wood for noonday mint-tea and asking, “Sir, would you start . . .” or pleading, “Sir, couldn't you just tell this horse. . . .” I had to forbid boasting at post-houses and restrain collectors of everything from bulls to butterflies and curtail a flood of talk on all the minutiae of Assharral.

Against imposition he was his own defense. He would bear with them as long as he chose. Then he would smile, raise his brows and say pleasantly but firmly, “Well, now,” and they would subside, mild as milk. At times I wondered if I was leading an escort or a harvest festival.

We reached Zyphryr Coryan in late afternoon, riding from farmland into the virgin forest belt that girdles the city like an outer wall, the road swinging in a wide curve about the Morhyrne's base, with glimpses of black rock cone through the silver-green, sparse, long-fingered foliage and close-packed slender white trunks of Morrya's helliens. The boughs were clamorous with birds. Big gray coastal lydwyr hopped leisurely from our path, making him exclaim. “We only have lydyrs in Hethria.” He glanced at me and half-smiled. “Little hoppers. Nothing like that.”

Then we rounded the long curve onto the cliff above Rastyr, and all Tyr Coryan opened at our feet, a shining labyrinth of apple-green and azure wound among silver-gray wooded spits, edged with bayside villages' dabs of white and ochre above the trelliswork of naked masts. Up from the quays on the left flank rose the spur that backbones Zyphryr Coryan, a stepped chine of white, brown, rose, gold, granite gray and steely blue, the green of street and park trees laced along its side, the city wall showing in discreet black patches at its base. And above, where the Morhyrne's shoulders rear into the rock cone, lay the sinuous varicolored necklace of Ker Morrya, lapped in its gardens' green.

We had all reined in, watching his face. He gazed a long time, occasionally sniffing the tang of city and salt, at first with frank pleasure in his look. “Smells like Hazghend,” he remarked. “A country I know.” Gradually the pleasure became interest, then assessment. Then his eyes lifted a little, and grew quite blank.

At last Sivar broke out, “Not a bad little village, is she, sir?” As a local, he did have the right of disparagement.

“It's a fine city,” he agreed. Sivar looked pleased. He could not have caught the hint of trouble in the voice.

By the time we hurdled over the harbor hills it was sunset, and traffic had dwindled to a few tardy pedestrians, the lull before wagons began to pour in from the farms and up from the harbor for the markets' opening at dawn. He dutifully admired the tall double city gate between its bastions, and ran a soldier's eye over the city guard in their green surcoats, which Sivar and company viewed with disdain. He studied the big squares lined with courtiers' and nobles' mansions, the sightseers' rally points of temple, tower, public garden and colonnade, the government buildings, the observatory, the beetling outer wall of the treasury. When we reached the military quarter the light was nearly gone, and a fresh problem confronted me.