The Steerswoman's Road (92 page)

Dumbfounded, the watching warriors and mertutials stood
speechless until someone broke the spell with an outraged, inarticulate, disbelieving
cry. The yard became a chaos of arguing voices. Rowan and Bel looked to each other
silently, and silently agreed. As one, they turned and walked, passing through
the yard as if it were empty.

They entered the tent without ceremony. Kree broke off some
comment to Kammeryn; Fletcher startled, the panic he had painted on his face
now overlaid with confusion and annoyance. Only Kammeryn remained undisturbed.

“Do you two have something to add?” the seyoh asked. The
sunlit sky flaps threw rectangles of light at his feet.

“Yes,” Bel said. She was standing with feet apart, a pose of
challenge. “Whatever Fletcher says, don’t do it. Whatever he wants, it’s the
very thing you mustn’t do.”

Rowan said, “Fletcher is a wizard’s man.”

Kree spun to Fletcher. “What?”

Fletcher stood as if alone, looking at Rowan from the
light-split shadows. “No.” He mouthed the word, too shocked for speech. She
held his gaze, impassive. “Or a wizard himself.”

He found his voice. “I’m not a wizard!”

“One or the other,” Bel said.

“It’s not true!” Fletcher tore himself from the accusing
eyes and turned to Kammeryn, throwing his arms wide, speaking quickly. “Seyoh,
I don’t know why they’re saying this—I don’t know, and I don’t care. Rowan has
some grudge against me, I don’t know why. Now she’s gotten Bel into it, but for
Christ’s sake—” His body twisted as he beat one fist on his thigh, his voice
risen to a desperate-sounding cry. “—for Christ’s sake none
of that matters!
This is what matters, this is what I know: There’s something terrible
coming, it’s coming here, and you’ve got to get the tribe away!”

Rowan could almost believe him, so expressive, so seemingly
urgent and intense was he. “It seems to me,” she said, her voice quiet and
reasonable, “that if a wizard sends you away from a place, then there’s
something going to happen that he doesn’t want you to see.”

Bel grinned tightly. “Let’s stay and find out what, shall
we?”

Fletcher ignored them and spoke to Kammeryn alone. “Seyoh, I
know you don’t believe in my god, but you do believe in gods. I saw this thing,
and if my god didn’t send me the vision, then some other did. What can it hurt,
to go? If I’m mad, if I’ve dreamed the whole thing, then I’m a fool and more
than a fool, but what can it hurt, to go? Seyoh, take us away from here!”

“I have never met any Christer,” Rowan observed, “who would
admit even the possibility of other gods than his existing. You’re not even a
Christer, are you, Fletcher?”

Kree spoke up at last. “Rowan and Bel,” she said, and her
small, diamond-sharp eyes were steady on them, “Fletcher is my man, one of my
warriors. Anything you say against him, you had better have good reasons to
say. Or it’s me and my people who you’ll have to face.”

“Fletcher carried a wizard’s sword,” Bel told her, “until
Jaffry took it from him.”

“A sword of wizard’s make,” Rowan clarified.

“How can you know?”

“Because I carry one myself. His is like it. I realized that
when I saw him fight Jaffry, and confirmed it when I fought Jaffry myself.” She
turned to Kammeryn. “Perhaps you think we ought to have told you immediately,
and perhaps you’re correct; but it seemed to us that if you knew, you’d make
some move against him. We didn’t want that, not at that time. We thought more
could be learned by seeing how he behaved, while he thought his deceit was
still intact. We’ve been watching him.”

It was Kammeryn’s composure, his dignity, his calm demeanor,
that held Kree and Fletcher silent as he considered Rowan’s statements. Then he
nodded minutely. “I know,” the seyoh said. “I’ve been doing the same.”

The steerswoman was speechless; but Bel spoke, eyes narrowed
i suspicion. “You knew he was a wizard?”

“I’ve known since Rendezvous.”

“I’m no wizard!”

Bel spun on Fletcher. “Minion, then,” she spat. “Servant.
Property. Slado’s hands and eyes in the Outskirts.”

“No—”

“Be silent, both of you.”

Bel subsided; Fletcher did the same, assuming the appearance
of the dutiful warrior, waiting for his seyoh to command.

Kammeryn gazed at him, and more than anything else, his expression
was one of deep disappointment. He spoke to the three women. “Please draw your
weapons. Now that he is revealed, we cannot predict his behavior.”

Bel did so instantly, and Rowan, surprised by the force and
speed of her own motion. It was a relief to draw a weapon on this creature.
Kree hesitated. “Kammeryn—”

“Do it.”

Kree complied, slowly. She drew a breath. “Fletcher, give me
your sword.”

He looked at his chief, shocked. “It isn’t true.” His voice
was small, his body inexpressive. Her response was a jerk of the chin; he did
as ordered, drawing and passing the wood-and-metal sword slowly, as if the
weight of it was too great for his hand.

“And your knife,” Kree said.

“It’s not enough,” Rowan said. Her grip on her sword tightened,
and its point rose. “We don’t know what magic he can call down on us.”

“Fletcher,” the seyoh said, “you must make no sudden moves,
speak no magical words, or you will die instantly.”

Fletcher looked at his two empty hands. “Seyoh, I can’t do
any magic ...”

But Kammeryn had turned away, and he stepped around Rowan
and Bel, to the tent entrance. He spoke quietly to his aide outside. “I want
Orranyn’s entire band posted around this tent. At any disturbance, they are to
come in, fighting.” And he closed the flap on the astonished face.

Fletcher attempted his arguments again. “Seyoh, please, we’re
wasting time. The only thing that matters is that we get away from here, now.”

Kammeryn made a show of puzzlement, faintly mocking. “Must
we?”

“I am not a wizard.”

“Aren’t you?” He walked calmly back to his position. “Then
listen to this:

“At Rendezvous,” the seyoh began, addressing the women, “I
met Ella again. When I saw her, I took a moment to congratulate her for her
tribe’s destruction of the Face People’s camp.

“She had been about to say the same thing to me. It was not
her people who destroyed the camp. Someone else did it. I wondered who that
might be.

“No third tribe could have been near without my scouts or
those of Ella’s tribe seeing signs of them. It was just possible that one very
skillful person might be nearby, in hiding, but no single person could possibly
destroy an entire camp—”

Rowan had a sudden memory of the boy Willam, standing in the
shifting light of fire with a mighty fortress blasted to ruins behind him.

^“
—unless that person possessed powers beyond
those of other human beings,” Kammeryn said.

“Because of Rowan and Bel’s missions,” he continued, “I had
wizards on my mind. Perhaps a wizard, I thought, might easily destroy an
entire tribe, by magic.

“But why that tribe, and no other? The wizard, if he indeed
existed, had harmed neither my tribe, nor Ella’s. He had acted to our benefit.

“But suppose ...” The seyoh began to pace the length of the
tent slowly, long strides, like a soldier on guard. “Suppose the wizard were hidden,
not out on the veldt, but within one or the other tribe? Then, to defend that
tribe would be to defend himself. And he would steal away to do it in secret,
because he would wish his power to remain hidden. Neither Ella’s people nor
mine would know he had done this thing.

“I asked Ella about the movements of her people during that
time; but even as she answered, I was asking the same of myself, and finding my
own answers.”

He stopped and faced the listeners: Rowan, fascinated; Bel,
suspicious; Kree, confused and disbelieving; and Fletcher.

“The smoke from the Face People’s camp,” Kammeryn said, “was
first sighted by Fletcher, who had gone out early to say his daily prayer—and
had gone out, as ever, alone.

“When Bodo discovered the broken demon egg, and Rowan wished
to know more, it was Fletcher who, the very next morning, discovered another,
intact—and did it alone. And it was Fletcher, with his small skill at arms, who
had survived the stealthy attack of a skillful Face Person raider—alone; and
Fletcher who sighted the approach of another Face People tribe, before even the
outer circle saw them—and did it while alone.

“Fletcher, who, when he meets the unexpected, can always
deal with it—alone. Fletcher, who looks and speaks like a fool, but who always
seems to see more than better warriors

“Fletcher, who always, somehow, survives.

“But I could not judge against a man simply because he possessed
skills useful to my tribe. I began to watch him. I saw only what I always saw:
an odd man, a cheerful and friendly Inner Lander who for some reason chose to
live out his life in the Outskirts. I doubted myself.

“When Rendezvous had begun and the tribe stopped moving, I
had ordered volunteers to the positions where Rowan and Bel might expect to
find the tribe. They would meet these scouts only if some problem forced them
to return before the end of Rendezvous. I did not know of any problem they
might encounter. The order was a precaution only.

“But one day Fletcher, who had shown no previous interest in
the duty, volunteered to go out. And I thought: He has some foreknowledge.

“I permitted him to select his own position to cover. I
ordered Zo to feign a headache and follow him in hiding, lest he have some plan
to injure you. And I told myself: If Fletcher, of all the ones I sent out, is
the one to meet Rowan and Bel as they return unexpected, then I will know.”

Rowan recalled the unseen follower in the night, and that
she had thought the person smaller than the average man. “We knew we were being
followed. It was Zo?”

“Yes. I didn’t think the wizard would harm you, as he had
had many opportunities before. But, in case I was mistaken, you had one unseen
protector.”

Fletcher said quickly, “I could never harm Rowan.”

Kammeryn’s sad gaze met his. “So you say.”

“I don’t believe it,” Rowan said.

Fletcher turned to her. “It’s true.”

“Don’t talk to me of truth, damn you.” Her voice was level,
her face blank with hate. “In the Inner Lands the wizards hunted me. I come to
the Outskirts, where there are no wizards, and suddenly one of their minions is
right beside me.” Her gaze narrowed. “I know that you were already in the tribe
before my troubles began in the Inner Lands. But, somehow, Slado passed a
message to you: that, being here already, you were to come after me.”

_“No—”

“You somehow caused the tribe to come to where Slado thought
I would be—”

“No! I didn’t know about you, or any fallen Guidestar, or
anything!”

Rowan held her breath. It was not an admission; but there
were implications in his words:

He did not know about any fallen Guidestar: Fletcher had
been in the Outskirts before Rowan began investigating the Guidestar. Of the
other wizards, only Corvus knew about it, and only because Rowan herself had
told him. If Fletcher were the mere servant of some wizard other than Slado
himself, then he would be doubly unlikely to know.

He did not know about Rowan herself: Isolated from the Inner
Lands, he would not have heard of the events surrounding the wizards’ hunt for
Rowan. And she had left that country quietly, drawing no attention to herself.
If all her care taken had been successful, then Fletcher’s own master would
have had no reason to alert him to her arrival.

“I believe you,” she said to Fletcher, studying his
expression. “You didn’t know. But, perhaps, you feel you ought to have been
told. Have you told your master that I’m here?”

He stood before her like a startled animal, a deer surprised
by a hunter, too frightened to flee. “Kammeryn,” he said, and the speaking of
the seyoh’s name freed him to turn from Rowan’s eyes. “Kammeryn, you know I’ve
never done you any harm. I’ve
helped
the tribe.” He became again
pleading, desperate. “I just want to help again. You’ve got to believe me, we
have to get away from here.”

Kammeryn was impassive. “Answer the steerswoman’s question.”

The wizard’s man had three swords pointed at his heart, a dozen
warriors waiting outside, an entire camp of fighters all around. He opened his
mouth to speak, stopped, began again, stopped again. He stood with his long
arms loose at his sides, and his gaze went far away, then returned, very
slowly. He said, “I’ve told no one.”

Bel hissed at the confirmation. “Wizard’s man!” She spat,
and her grip tightened on her sword, so that its tip became level with Fletcher’s
wide blue eyes.

He stared at it, frozen; then his eyes shifted beyond it, to
Rowan’s face. He spoke to her directly, as if explanation was due only to her. “It’s
not a tempest,” he said levelly. “It’s the heat that Efraim told us about, the
one that used to come before Rendezvous. It’s coming down from the Eastern
Guidestar, it’s coming here, and we need to get away.”

“Can’t you stop it?”

“Me?” His surprise was extreme. “No.”

Rowan thought. “Then we’ll wait for it to begin, as proof of
what you’re saying.”

“There’s no time!”

“Efraim’s people had time,” Bel said.

He turned to her. “This is different. There’s no buildup, it’s
coming all at once.”

“How do you know about it?” Rowan asked him.

His mouth opened and closed three times as he tried to
answer. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Then don’t explain,” she spat. “Describe.”

He struggled to organize his words, then surrendered to the
impossibility. “I checked old schedules for repeating events in a twenty-year cycle,
and found something called ‘routine bioform clearance.’ The last one recorded
was forty-eight years ago. But this morning, it showed up on the upcoming
schedule, same code, same label. I wouldn’t have known what it was if I hadn’t
been looking before.”