The Outskirter's Secret (3 page)

The jewels were in fact magical, and were
used by the wizards in certain spells involving the animation of
inanimate objects; but what the spells were, and how they were
activated, Rowan had never learned.

The jewels' pattern of distribution across
the Inner Lands, which had at first so puzzled her, was explained
by a fact both simple and stunning: They had fallen from the sky.
They were part of a Guidestar—not one of that pair that hung
visible in the night sky, motionless points of light, familiar to
every Inner Lander, but one of another pair, previously unknown,
which hung over distant, possibly uninhabited lands, somewhere on
the far side of the world. Why one had fallen remained a
mystery.

That the wizards, jealous and mutually
hostile, should abandon their differences to cooperate in the hunt
for Rowan, seemed a fact as impossible as the falling of a
Guidestar, until Rowan learned yet another secret: there was one
single authority set over all wizards, one man.

She knew that his authority was absolute; the
wizards had sought to capture or kill her without themselves
knowing the justifications for the hunt.

She knew that they resented his control of
them but were unable to deny his wishes.

She knew his name: Slado.

She knew nothing else about him—not his
plans, nor his powers, nor his location, nor the color of his
eyes.

The belt that Bel wore was made of nine blue
shards from the secret, fallen Guidestar. Her father had found the
jewels deep in the Outskirts, at Dust Ridge, which the wizards
called Tournier's Fault. It was the largest concentration of such
jewels that Rowan had ever heard of. The description of the
finding, and Rowan's own calculations on the mathematics of falling
objects, led her to believe that at Dust Ridge she might find what
remained of the body of the Guidestar. Knowing this, she had to go
there.

A current chart in her hands, Rowan retraced
the long lonely route across the breadth of the Inner Lands, to
that little village past Greyriver, where she and Bel would meet
again to enter the Outskirts together. It was the one part of the
journey of which she could be certain. Beyond that point . . .

Setting the map down, she took up the top
chart from the sequenced stack and studied it with vast
dissatisfaction. It differed wildly from all the others.

Gone were the western mountains, the two
rivers, the wide sea; this map showed a single river at its left
edge, running south, then curving southwest to the edge of the
paper. Intermittent roads tracked the banks, occasionally branching
east to end abruptly in small villages.

A tumble of low hills ambled vaguely across
the southern edge of the paper; a second river with a few
tributaries began seemingly from nowhere and ended without
destination; a short stretch of shore marked
INLAND SEA
made a brief incursion, then stopped,
unfinished. In the low center of the chart, a jagged line trailing
northeast to southwest bore the notation
DUST
RIDGE (TOURNIER'S FAULT)
.

Despite its size, despite its scale, the rest
of the map was empty.

Rowan glowered at it. It was drawn by her own
hand.

She had reconstructed it from one she had
seen as a prisoner in the fortress of the young wizards Shammer and
Dhree. While their captive, Rowan had freely given all information
requested, as befitted any steerswoman; since neither wizard had
yet lied to or withheld information from a steerswoman, they were
not under ban. Rowan herself had carefully avoided courting the
ban, by never asking Shammer and Dhree any questions she suspected
might be refused, and by this means the conversation had been able
to continue for the best part of two days.

But in their eagerness to learn, the wizards
had inadvertently revealed more than they suspected. Giving Rowan
the opportunity to see a wizard-made chart of this section of the
Outskirts had constituted one such slip. Their map of those unknown
lands had been astonishingly complete, and to a detail and skill of
depiction unequaled by the best of steerswomen. But despite Rowan's
sharp eye and well-trained memory, with no chance to copy
immediately what she had seen these few unsatisfying details were
all she could recall.

She knew her point of entry into the
Outskirts; she knew her destination; she knew next to nothing
between the two.

She caught Henra watching her. The Prime
smiled. "You must add to the chart as you travel. And bring it back
to us, or find a way to send it . . ."

"When I return, I'll come out through Alemeth
. . ." Alemeth was far enough south to suggest a straight-line
route west returning from Dust Ridge.

"Then send it from there. After Alemeth, I
think you ought to go to Southport, and do some work in that
area."

This was new. "Southport?"

"No one is covering Janus's route." Janus, a
steersman, one of the few male members of the order, had
inexplicably resigned, refusing to explain or justify his choice;
he was now under ban. "And," the Prime continued, "Southport has no
resident wizard."

"In other words," Bel said with a grin, "when
you're done with this, lay low for a while."

Rowan made a dissatisfied sound. "Keep out of
sight. Hope the wizards forget about me."

And, for the moment, they seemed to have. How
long that might last, no one knew.

According to Corvus, the wizard resident in
Wulfshaven, the wizards had decided that Rowan's investigations
must have been directed secretly by one of their own number. They
were now involved in mutual spyings, schemings, and accusations,
trying to discover the traitor, and had effectively dismissed Rowan
as being a mere minion.

Rowan had herself disabused Corvus of the
idea. He had neglected to pass the information on to his
fellows.

What Slado might do when the truth was
discovered was impossible to guess. He had motives of his own
behind these events, Rowan was certain. He had some plan.

Rowan shook her head. "We don't know why
Corvus is letting his fellows search for a nonexistent traitor."
She found a mug of peppermint tea on the floor, where she had
abandoned it earlier, and took a sip. It was long cold. She studied
green flecks of floating peppermint, then used one finger to push a
large leaf aside. "He must gain something by it, some kind of
advantage."

"What might that be?" Henra prompted.

Rowan made a face. "That's impossible to
guess." Certainly, Corvus was as interested as she to learn that a
Guidestar had fallen, as surprised that Slado had not made the fact
known among the other wizards. Perhaps Corvus planned an
investigation of his own, an investigation that confusion among his
fellows would somehow serve to aid. Nevertheless, for whatever
reasons, the result was that, for the time being, Rowan was again
free to investigate as she pleased—

—because Corvus wished it so.

Rowan found that she was on her feet, her
chart, forgotten, sliding with a rustling hiss from her lap to the
floor. Shadows from the flickering fire ranged up against the
walls, across the long room, shuddering against the stone walls and
the motley ranks of bookshelves.

She looked down at Bel, a backlit shape
seated on the stones of the hearth, and made her answer to those
dark, puzzled eyes. Her voice was tight with anger. "I'm the
advantage. Corvus is using me."

The Outskirter took in the information,
considering it with tilted head, then nodded. "Good."

"What?"

"If he's using you, then he'll want to help
you. He'll want you to finish your mission."

"I don't want a wizard's help!"

"Too late. You've got it."

"If Slado is trying to keep the Guidestar
secret from the wizards," Henra put in, "then Corvus can't move,
can't investigate it himself without attracting attention. Perhaps
he can learn something by seeing how Slado behaves among the
wizards, but for outside information, for—" She spread her hands
and made careful, delimiting gestures. "—for an understanding of
the effects of these events . . ."

"He needs me."

"He needs you. You might be his only source.
You might be the only one able to discover why the Guidestar
fell."

"And find why Slado wants to keep it secret,"
Bel added. She leaned forward to retrieve Rowan's fallen map.
"Corvus himself didn't know, until you told him." She regarded the
chart thoughtfully, her eyes tracing undrawn lines of unknown
routes across the blank face of the Outskirts.

But what help could Corvus provide, across
those empty miles? And at what price?

"Gods below," Rowan said quietly. "He's made
it true. I am a wizard's minion."

The Prime spoke quickly, leaning forward,
emerald eyes bright in the gloom. "You're no one's minion, not even
mine. What Corvus decides to do is his own choice. Your business is
to learn. He's under ban, and you have no obligation to tell him
anything."

To be a steerswoman, and to know, but not to
tell . . .

As she stood in that wash of firelight, Rowan
felt the long room behind her, felt it by knowledge, memory, and
sensation of the motionless air. She faced the warmth of the
hearth, and the far, unheated corner of the room laid a cool, still
hand on her shoulder.

High above, all around, the tall racks and
unmatched shelves stood, like uneven measurements, staggered lines
across and up the walls. The books they held had no uniformity: fat
and narrow, with pages of parchment or pulp or fine translucent
paper that would stir in the merest breeze, between covers of
leather, cloth, or wood. Each book was the days of a steerswoman's
life, each shelf the years, each wall long centuries in the lives
of human beings whose simple hope was to understand, and to speak.
And Rowan knew, without turning to look, where lay that one shelf
in the southeast corner that held her own logbooks: five years of
her eyes seeing, of her voice asking, of her mind answering.

Her books stood to the left on the shelf. The
right-hand end was empty. And more shelves waited.

"I will tell Corvus," Rowan said slowly.
"Without his needing to ask." And she sat.

Her cold cup of tea was still in her hand,
and Bel shifted the stack of charts to clear a place for it on the
table. Rowan set it down and composed her thoughts.

"Whatever Slado is up to," she began, "it
looks to be bad not only for the folk, but for the wizards as well,
else he wouldn't need to keep it secret from them. For some reason,
he can't let his plans become known—so the thing that we most need
to do is to make them known, whatever part of them that we can see;
known to everyone, even the wizards." She looked at the Outskirter,
at the Prime, then spoke definitely. "It will make a
difference."

The Prime was motionless but for her gaze,
which dropped once to her hands in her lap, then returned to
Rowan's face. "So the truth becomes a weapon."

Rowan was taken aback, and paused for a long
moment. "That's true." It seemed such an odd idea: innocent truth,
a weapon. Then she nodded, slowly. "It's always been true. Truth is
the only weapon the Steerswomen have."

"Look." Bel was holding two maps, Rowan's
unfinished one and the copy of Sharon's. The Outskirter laid them
one atop the other, then turned to raise the pair up with their
backs to the fireplace. Yellow light glowed from behind, and the
markings showed through, one set superimposed upon the other. The
viewpoints suddenly struck Rowan as uncannily similar.

Fascinated, she reached out and took them
from Bel's hands.

On both charts: west, a small, known part of
the world, shown as clearly as could be managed by the
cartographer; in the center, a long vertical sweep labeled
THE OUTSKIRTS
; beyond,
emptiness.

Sharon's map, and Rowan's: the oldest map in
the world, and the newest.

Bel's dark eyes were amused as she watched
her friend's face. "You're starting over."

Rowan separated the charts again and, across
near a thousand years, looked into the face of her sister.

She smiled. "Yes," she said.

"
Y
our friends
have headed into an ambush," Bel announced.

The old woman looked up from the campfire and
peered at the travelers. She was large-framed, ancient muscles
slack within folds of skin, heavy belly slung on her lap, and her
features were gnarled around a vicious scar, ages old, driven
across her face from right temple to left ear. One eye was blind.
"Have they?" She spoke calmly; she watched intently.

"Yes." Bel unslung her pack and nonchalantly
strolled into the encampment, Rowan following with more
caution.

It was a temporary bivouac, a mere holding
place for the packs and equipment of the raiding war bands: a
shadowy glade among the firs, cleared and flat, a little rill
conveniently nearby. Midmorning sunlight dappled the deep greens
and browns, splashing shifting spots of white on the old woman's
sunburned skin, her threadbare tunic, her single wary eye. The tiny
fire was a snapping orange flag in the gloom.

"A boy spotted your camp at sundown and
warned the villagers," Bel continued. She dropped her pack and
seated herself uninvited on the ground, idly nudging the earth
banked around the fire with one shaggy boot, a pose lazy and
ostentatiously comfortable.

The old Outskirter turned her attention to
the steerswoman standing at the edge of the camp, half in shadow,
ill-at-ease. "That one of them?" The question was addressed to
Bel.

Rowan had been warned to expect Outskirters
sometimes to dismiss her. She answered for herself. "No," she
began, intending to continue.

"Good. Have to kill her, otherwise." The
woman returned to her task, breaking branches into kindling,
grunting under her breath at each snap. "Well, if you're not going
to attack me, what is it you want?"