The Outskirter's Secret (15 page)

"Slugsnake in a tanglebrush," Bel said
indifferently. Slugsnakes were harmless.

Bel threw up her arms as if the lay of the
terrain had defeated her, and slipped out of her pack. "Pull out
your maps, and settle down as if you're checking our route. I'll go
ahead, like I'm scouting, and try to double back and catch
him."

Rowan began to comply, vainly trying to sense
the follower without looking in his direction, attempting to use a
combination of hearing, peripheral vision, even smell. Her skin
tingled, as if, with her other senses useless, she might manage to
locate him by some extension of touch.

She understood Bel's strategy. "I'm bait,"
she muttered, uncapping her map case.

"You have to be. It's too late to hide, and
you can't move without being seen. I can. If he tries to come near
you, I may spot his motion. Keep your sword handy."

Bel wandered off to the east, and Rowan
seated herself on the Outskirter's pack, holding the map before
her. The slugsnake rattled its tanglebrush.

The wind faltered, faded to silence, then
rose again, slowly. At first quietly, then more loudly, the grass
began again its tapping, hissing, until it became a sound so
constant as to hold no meaning whatsoever.

A person who followed in hiding could mean no
good; there was danger, and Rowan was alone.

And suddenly, under the impetus of that
danger, Rowan accepted the sound of the Outskirts, without
conscious thought; she accepted it and dismissed it. It was
expected, it was background. It held no information; with her eyes
on her charts, she waited for other sounds, for something
unexpected.

Unexpectedly, the tanglebrush had not rattled
in the wind.

Under the guise of comparing chart to
landscape, Rowan rose and looked in that direction. Bel was there,
crouched to the ground, her body blocking the tanglebrush from
view. Rowan looked away.

But Bel's body could not have blocked the
sound.

Rowan looked again. Bel was not there, but
her cloak was—draped over the brush in perfect semblance of a
cloaked Outskirter crouched among the redgrass.

As if absently, the steerswoman moved closer
to her pack and sword. Turning in a slow circle, she alternated
outward glances with longer gazes at her map. The chart covered
territory left far behind, days ago; she did not truly see it, but
tried to study the images she gained from each outward glance,
tried to absorb them, to hold them clearly in her mind.

To the east: hills, slowly ranging lower in
the twisting distance, and the decoy cloak in the foreground.
South: small hills of writhing redgrass, then longer hills, rising
to a false horizon.

West, where the follower was hidden: lower
land, flatter, with occasional stands of tanglebrush, merging
eventually into hazy distance. In the wild sweeps of motion, no
recognizable sign of a person, nor of an animal. North: a peppering
of single conical hills that rose above the grass and at the limit
of sight, where red and brown merged to a dull brick red, a gray
meandering line of what she guessed to be lichen-towers.

East, and she had finished her circle: the
decoy, and no sign of Bel. Rowan was alone.

Her heart beating hard, she stared blindly at
the chart in her hands; and suddenly, of itself, her mind added the
quartered images together, completing the circle of her sight. The
world came to her, entire and whole, all senses simultaneous,
shockingly clear:

She stood on the rocky crest of a conical
hill, part of a series that swept from the north, joining into wild
ridges in the south, with flatland to one side, hills and dales to
the other; grass covered the earth, a deep carpet, waist-high
everywhere but the stony hilltops. The sky was a blue dome, arcing,
perfect, clouds crowding in from the south; she felt the shape of
those clouds as surely as if she were touching them.

To the eyes, sky and horizon met, but she
knew that sky and land continued beyond sight: skies she had seen,
land she had crossed herself, and farther lands beyond those. All
touched each other: a continuum sweeping from the mountains west of
Wulfshaven, across two great rivers, through green forest to red
veldt to the place where she stood, and past her to the east, and
the north, and the south.

She stood with stone beneath one foot, bare
earth beneath the other; redgrass began below her position.

—Alone, on top of a bare hill. She made a
perfect target.

She sat. Outskirters carried no bows. (Why
not? No wood but tangleroot—too stiff? Too short?) A knife could be
thrown. A tangleroot knife would be too thick to fly well, too dull
to do damage at distance. She noted the distance of a thrown metal
knife, mentally marking a safe circle around herself.

Wind shifted from east to north, and the tone
of the chattering grass altered. To her mind, the sound was no
sound, it was identical to silence; she ignored it. True sound in
this world was patterned sound: a man walking, an insect hunting.
She heard nothing.

Colored waves of turning and twisting
redgrass—movement caused by wind, by its force and direction. The
motion had a source and a reason; she did not try to hold the
colors, or to watch them, but let them sweep unimpeded across her
sight. And it came to her that she could use that motion, that what
she sought was motion at odds with that patterned sweep, and that,
if it were there, it would show clearly.

And then it came, suddenly and quickly, in
the corner of her eye, a flicker of contrast so sharp that it
seemed to burn: color out of pattern, diagonal movement against
parallel—and sound: three crunches, as feet abandoned stealth. She
found her sword and spun.

A thump, a wild rattle. Bel's cloak was on
the ground. Grass hissing, leaves twisting, bright color showing
the departing motion, as clear as a shout, as clear as a finger
indicating:
There!

The attacker was fleeing, crouched beneath
the grass tops, the disturbance of his motion drawing a contrasting
line within the sweeping colors. He had discovered Bel's ruse, had
seen Rowan spin, sword in her hand, had lost his advantage.

Rowan heard Bel approach from behind,
recognizing her steps as easily as if she walked among silence. "He
fooled me. He went for me instead of you."

The angle of the motion changed abruptly and
vanished; the person was moving south, artfully using the grass's
motion as cover for his own. But he could only move at the same
pace as the windy patterns; if he tried to move faster, then—

Brown where there should have been red, red
instead of brown. "There!" She found that she had shouted it.

"He's very good," Bel commented.

The statement made no sense—Rowan could
see
him! "Can we catch him?" She
wanted to, desperately, furiously.

"Too late."

He vanished again; he was far enough away
that the wind's pace was safe. Rowan did not know his position.

No, she did: she knew his speed and his
direction. She calculated, her eyes tracing the only possible
invisible path. "Which way around that hill, do you think?" He
could not climb it without being seen.

"It depends. He might be running to someplace
in particular."

The hill would make eddies of the patterns,
like water around a rock, hard to predict. If he passed on the near
side, he would give himself away. "The far side," Rowan said.

"If he hasn't lost his head."

A brief splash of brown against red, an
instant before it disappeared behind the hill. "There." And he was
gone. The women were alone under the windy sky, above the
chattering grass.

"He might have been a scout," Bel
ventured.

"Would a scout attack as a matter of course?"
Rowan asked, turning to Bel—

—and clarity of perception vanished as
suddenly as a snapped twig. Its loss broke the steerswoman's heart.
"Oh, no . . ."

"What?" Bel stood before her, solid and
familiar—under a sky too wide, too blue, above a roiling
meaningless mass of brown and red . . . The Outskirter turned to
see if something behind her had prompted Rowan's reaction.

The steerswoman looked around: rising and
falling slopes of color, spots of black, the horizon too near,
nearer than she knew it to be. She sank to a seat on Bel's pack,
hand limp around her sword hilt, and cursed, weakly and
repetitively.

"What's the matter?"

I'm on a hill, Rowan told herself, and the
rocky hilltop did become real; but it seemed to exist alone, as if
floating unmoored on an ocean of red-and-brown waves. "I could see
. . ."

"See what?"

See as a steerswoman saw: completely. No
frantic, piecemeal stitching-together of sight and sound and scent;
see entirely, feel herself in the world, reason what she could not
perceive, and know it all as true.

"See everything," she said.

Closing her eyes, she sensed the hill below
her as suddenly as if it had just risen up from the ground. She
matched its shape with her memory, pictured the pattern of terrain
it had inhabited so sensibly, considered the wise redgrass that had
told her so much, so easily, and tried to add all those ideas to
her inner vision of the world.

Experimentally, she opened her eyes again.
Bel was crouched close in front of her, brows knit. Behind her were
the hills that Rowan expected: but too flat, like ranked landscape
cutouts in a traveling pantomime theater.

It did not matter. She told Bel, and she told
herself, "I can do it. I did it, and I can do it again."

Bel said nothing.

Rowan spoke bitterly, a fury directed only at
herself. "I knew what the grass was saying to me. If that man had
come at me, I would have seen him, I could have taken him!"

Another realization struck her abruptly, and
her anger vanished, replaced by shame. "Bel," she said, "you can't
forever fight for two, guard two, feed two." She gave a weak laugh.
"I can hardly believe it; that you've done this much, this long,
for me . . ."

"I'm doing it for myself."

"Perhaps. But . . ." Briefly, patterns and
pieces fell together in her mind, then fragmented. There was reason
and sense behind the Outskirts; it was a place, as surely as was
the Inner Lands, with elements interlocking: wind, grass, water,
life . . .

"I don't care to be a burden to you," she
told her friend. "Starting now, I will . . . I will cease to be
some package, that you have to deliver."

Bel considered, studying Rowan's face; and
then she nodded satisfaction. "Good. It's about time."

R
owan dreamed
of the sea.

The water was gray and sunlit silver, alive
with small waves moving clean and regular as mathematics. Above,
the sky was a perfect clear dome of blue, where stars were faintly
visible, although it was full daylight. High overhead the Harp
stood, Vega gentled to dim comradeship with the coolly brilliant
sun.

She stood on a deck, the wind two points aft
of starboard, her ship running fast on a close reach. The vessel
was shaped like a cargo ship, but small, no more than fifteen feet
abeam. Perfectly fitted, it was of simple design, without
ornamentation, but constructed of the richest of woods,
dark-stained and gleaming, showing everywhere the handiwork of
master craftsmen.

Facing aft, she saw that the poop was
deserted. Without looking elsewhere, she knew that there was no one
else aboard.

She controlled her ship by thought alone.

She was in no way surprised by this It seemed
to her that it was proper, but it was immensely difficult. Mere
wishing was not sufficient; every detail of control must be held
consciously, simultaneously. The angle of the rudder, the set of
the sails, the particular tension on each sheet—she was aware of
each, as aware as if by touch, and each must be maintained, or
moved, in perfect respect to the currents of wind and water, by
force of will and wisdom.

Constant, interlocking, interdependent, the
details filled her mind completely, but other than these, her
thoughts were few. Within this work, there was no room for such
things as personality, identity. In command of all, she was herself
diminished. Time passed in her dream, and as slow as stones, a
feeling began to grow in her that she had another task at hand.
Eventually she understood that it was that she must also chart her
course. Taking navigational sightings, the subtle interplay of
numbers—all seemed beyond her now. Yet it must be done.

Turning her body and making the few steps to
the plotting table were actions identical in kind to her control of
the ship itself, and had to occur without lessening her other
awareness. Standing still at the plotting table freed her to see
what was lying on it, and she found that she possessed no calipers
or rulers, no pens, no charts. Alone on the table lay only a huge
leather-bound book.

A single ribbon marked a place. She eased
slack into the jib sheet, adjusted the rudder more tightly against
the current, and caused her hands to open the book.

Words: line after line, for page on page.
Straining to encompass their meaning, she began to see that the
words comprised specific, detailed instructions. Her course was
here, described not by maps and headings, but by single words, one
after another. Each individual action that would take her to her
destination was laid out, precisely, step by step, moment by
moment. She need make no choices, but only enact.

She was satisfied. The handwriting was her
own.

And in her dream, it now seemed that she had
been running in this fashion for a very long time. In her dream, it
seemed fitting.

For an unmeasured length of time she traveled
so, the sun never moving, the sea and stars never changing. Her
mind was completely inhabited by the innumerable small and large
details of control—constant, blending, endless—following her route
without the need of thought, trusting the book and her previous
self for the truth of her course and destination.