The Steerswoman's Road (36 page)

“Here.” She indicated. “There are a number of farms between
the Eastern Curve and the salt bog. They’re irrigated from this brook—”
Astonishingly, one of the irrigation ditches, probably the largest, was marked.
“That’s where my jewel was found. I began to ask, and then search for more ..”
Dhree handed her a stick of charcoal. Rowan overcame her reluctance to deface
the map and drew, from memory, the location of each finding. “And finally, I
heard that there are a large number deep in the Outskirts.” She drew a narrow
oval, encircling the northern findings, sweeping southeast, and terminating in
the middle of a huge area colored dull brown. Leaning closer, she found a
jagged line crossing the oval at its far end. It was labeled “Tournier’s Fault.”

“That must be what the Outskirters call Dust Ridge.”

Shammer made a face. “What a bother, walking all that way,
just to see more of something you’ve already seen.”

“It might be important.” Dhree knitted her brows in a frown
of thought.

“Perhaps you should go there, Sister.”

“Perhaps I will, if we can’t get any answers from Slado.”
Her face impassive, Rowan grasped at the name.

“And how soon did you realize you were being hunted?” Dhree
asked.

“It was after I left Five Corners to return to the Archives.”
She described the soldiers at the inn. “One of them accosted me on the road
later. I don’t know who controls that area, but the soldiers were Red.”

“That’s Olin,” Shammer told his sister. “Such a stupid man.
He always does too much, or too little. Or nothing, when the mood takes him.”

“He’s insane,” Dhree said, half to herself. “Really, that
basilisk ...”

“Still, as she was crossing his holding with her questions,
I suppose he’s the one who’s started all this.”

“Maybe not. I can’t imagine he’d place any more importance
on this jewel than we did.”

“The only importance the jewel seems to have,” Rowan pointed
out, “is the degree of attention it provokes.” She took a risk. “I expect Olin
was also acting under orders.”

Shammer’s only response was a twitch of his lips, and the muttered
word “Orders.”

Rowan tread carefully. “It’s interesting. I always assumed
that wizards are ones who give orders, not take them.”

“Don’t become too interested.” But both their faces showed the
hate they held for the one who gave them orders. They would disobey if they
could. And that meant that they could not.

Discussion continued. They dined—a late dinner, or early supper,
Rowan could not tell which. The day had dawned overcast, and the shift of Rowan’s
sleeping time had skewed her usually reliable time sense. The courtyard outside
showed no shadows.

Rowan explained that the jewels were a recent phenomenon. “The
earliest date I can pinpoint for their appearance is about thirty-five years
ago. I have that date for only two of the findings; the others are
indeterminate but don’t contradict it. And it’s interesting that the farms
between the Eastern Curve and the salt bog are relatively new. None existed
before thirty years ago.”

Dhree drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “And why was
that, do you know?”

“Demons in the salt bog was the rumor. But only rumor. No
one living there had ever seen one.”

“That’s odd. Demons are never found in the Inner Lands.”
Shammer thought briefly. “It’s possible. They need salt water.” Rowan puzzled. “But
there are none on the shores of the Inland

Sea.”

A wry smile. “It’s the wrong sort of salt.”

Rowan put that aside for later consideration.

Eventually exhaustion overtook her, and the wizards decided to
consider her information and continue in the morning.

They wondered what to do with her. “We certainly can’t keep
her in the dungeon. Considering, that is, all the help she’s giving us.”
Shammer spoke as if amused, but behind his air Rowan could still read suspicion
and wariness. He was off-balance.

Dhree, musing on the jewel, did not look up. “One of the
inner guest rooms. We need bars on the windows, a strong bolt, and an opening
in the door for the guard to watch her.”

“So we do. That’s a day’s work on the window for a mason.”
He pursed his lips, fidgeting with the end of his queue. “I’ll do it myself. An
hour or so.” He departed, humming, possibly relieved to be leaving the
theoretical discussion for work more direct and practical. Rowan was left with
Dhree.

“What happened to your entourage?”

Rowan was puzzled. “‘Entourage’?”

The wizard pushed aside the charts and jewel. “Yes, those mercenaries
who fought for you during your attack. Our man reported that his squad was
badly outnumbered.”

Rowan’s mouth hung open for a moment; then she laughed long
and without restraint. Dhree frowned.

“Your man,” Rowan said when she had recovered, “assumed I
would never show up here to give the lie to his story. I had two assistants,
no more.”

A muscle in Dhree’s cheek twitched. “And the three of you
overcame our trained soldiers?”

“That’s the case.”

“Where are your hirelings now?”

Rowan neglected to correct the term and answered only the
question. “Not here,” she said regretfully, internally limiting “here” to its
most circumscribed definition.

“How unfortunate for you.”

Her prison was a small, comfortable room, luxurious in its appointments.
The bed was goose down, with silk sheets and satin coverlet, curtained with
lace. A comfortable chair stood by the hearth, where a small blaze had been kindled.
Bare spaces on the wall and the off-center arrangement of furniture betrayed
the removal of certain items, possibly objects useful to visiting fellow
wizards, dangerous or forbidden to common folk. An empty bookcase occupied one
corner. Her guard politely instructed her in the use of the magical lamps that
illuminated the room; a small brass wheel on the wall by the door, when
turned, caused the light to dim and go out according to her wish.

When he left, Rowan settled before the fire, fighting sleep
to give herself the time she needed to think. She was a steerswoman again.

She had used that fact as both tactic and technique.

It was a tactic of delay. Cooperating with her captors was
buying her time, the time she needed to devise an escape.

And it was a technique of manipulation, far more effective
than any web of lies; with every true sentence she spoke, the wizards gifted
her, by their reaction and response, with information they would never betray
to direct questioning.

Each new fact was like a card, and she sat late into the
night, mentally shuffling and spreading them, watching the interlocking
patterns appear and dissolve. The branching of possibilities began to narrow,
and the patterns started repeating, but she played them, over and over,
fighting not only to recognize, but to understand.

When at last she turned down the lamps and took herself to
bed, she had managed to reduce all her still-incomplete knowledge down to one
fact, true and inescapable: Something was wrong, and her whole world was at
that moment in the very act of altering. It was changing from something she now
recognized as badly misunderstood into something whose new nature she could not
even guess.

She slept without dreaming.

Except for the fact of being a prisoner, Rowan could find no
complaint for the treatment she received. Breakfast was excellent, and the
servant who brought it inquired after her comfort during the night. Despite
her assurances, he offered extra bolsters, a softer quilt, a finer bed robe;
when his list of suggestions eventually worked its way down to musicians to
divert her, she stonily called it to a halt and requested his personal absence.

She chose from the selection she found in the wardrobe, grateful
at least for the fresh clothing. Presently her door was unlocked, and she was
conducted back into the presence of the wizards, and the business was picked
up from the previous day.

As their discussions continued, Rowan began to see the inefficiency
in the wizards’ division of labor. Dhree was quick to follow dense theoretical
matters, but when Rowan pointed out practical considerations, she had
difficulty altering her ideas to accommodate them. Shammer was able to
recognize detail and devise immediate solutions to practical problems; but in
questions of theory he first waited for Dhree to reach her own conclusions,
then laboriously explain them to him.

It was a flawed arrangement, not a true collaboration at
all. In every situation, one or the other had to be dominant, and the necessity
of communicating across the gaps in their understanding slowed the pace of
learning. As the discussion moved from mere fact to speculation, Rowan found
the pair more and more isolated in their intellectual corners.

They considered the question of the jewels’ distribution.

“As you can see,” Rowan began, indicating the narrow oval
drawn on the map, “there’s a definite direction to the findings, with the
largest concentration, I believe, here.” Dust Ridge. “This is one of the
findings with a date that I’m certain of. Since the opposite end of the trail
seems to have the same date”—the farms by the salt bog—“I’m considering the
likelihood of a single event or agent being responsible for the entire
dispersal.”

Dhree frowned in thought. “Such as a man, walking along,
throwing the jewels as he went?”

“The path begins on one side of the salt bog. There was
another finding not far from the other side, and in line with the first, and
with Dust Ridge.” Rowan indicated again. “No man could walk through the bog.”

“He flew,” Shammer said easily. “Only a wizard would possess
the jewels to begin with, and flying’s no difficult matter for one of us.”

“You say the jewels are common. If the wizard in question
was using them while he flew, or carrying them, perhaps there was a flaw in his
spell, and he fell.”

The young man pursed his lips. “He wouldn’t use them in a flying
spell. They’re not strong enough.”

Dhree paused briefly, then objected. “It ought to be
possible.”

“He’d fly ten feet off the ground, at walking speed, with little
real protection. Small children could pick him off with stones. But he might
have been flying by other means, and carrying the jewels.”

Rowan considered. “If he dropped them as he flew, he must
have been flying very fast; at Dust Ridge, the jewels hang halfway up a cliff.”

Both wizards had difficulty visualizing that. The
steerswoman elaborated. “If a man is riding on a fast horse, and he drops a
coin, it doesn’t hit the ground directly under the point where he dropped it.”

Dhree caught on. “He and the coin share the same velocity, until
the influence of the motivating force is removed from the coin. It falls,
losing horizontal speed, gaining vertical speed.” She took a sheet of paper and
a pen. “How high up were the jewels found?”

“Halfway up the cliff. I’m afraid I can’t be more specific
than that.” In sudden inspiration, Rowan turned back to the map and found
Tournier’s Fault. There, along the line marking the cliffs, she found dimly
marked measurements. There were no units assigned to the number; were they
feet? Miles? But she indicated them to Dhree, and the wizard tilted her head to
read, closed her eyes briefly in thought—and then, astonishingly, drew a rough
version of the very graph Rowan had used in her argument with Arian, a chart
showing the range and interrelationship between possible height, speed, and
falling time for falling objects.

Dhree showed the chart to her brother, who used an affected
disdain to cover his incomprehension. Dhree was wise to his behavior. She
tapped the chart. “Here. The normal falling path was interrupted by the cliff—”

Twisting his mouth, he said, “Tell me what I
need
to
know.”

In exasperation, she indicated a point along one of the
scales. “Here’s your range of speed.”

He glanced at it once, then shook his head. “Impossible.”

“Nonsense! It’s just a question of finding a strong enough
force—”

“It may be lovely in theory, but it simply can’t be done.
Forces like that can’t be controlled.”

“It ought to be possible. If you can find a usable spell,
scale up its strength—”

“You can’t simply scale things up without considering the effect
on the materials and spells involved. In extremes the results become unpredictable.”

“If the theory exists, there must be a way to implement it.
You’re approaching this backward—”

He tilted his chin up. “One of us is.”

The course of this argument was very familiar, Rowan noted
with amusement, remembering Arian. Seeking a way out of the impasse, she tried
the opposite approach. “Shammer.” When he turned to her, she continued. “Forget
all this for a moment. Suppose you wanted to lodge a cluster of objects halfway
up a cliff; try to think of the sort of spell you would use.”

Response was immediate. “I wouldn’t need a spell at all.
Close up, a very good catapult would do the job.”

“Imagine that you weren’t close up.”

He blinked. “Any number of means.”

“And I assume that they’re all magical.”

“You assume correctly.” His fingers drummed on the tabletop,
and his face acquired the introspective, concentrated look of a person involved
in work of the imagination. “I could use a spell that would fling the objects
hard enough to leave the ground and strike the cliff. But it’s tricky—and
dangerous. I’d have to arrange the spell so that it would activate in my
absence.” He smiled wryly. “In other words, I’d set it up, then run like the
devil. With that sort of thing, it’s not a good idea to get in the way.”

The phrase jogged at Rowan’s memory. Where had she heard it?
Then it came to her: Wiliam.

Dhree spread her hands. “Then that’s the answer.”

“No.” He frowned, dissatisfied. “The spell isn’t
directional—it works in a sphere. The objects would go in every direction: up,
down, all around.” Reaching across the table, he pulled the chart closer and
studied the narrow oval. He tapped it with one long finger. “You wouldn’t get
anything like this.”