The Waters Rising (71 page)

Abasio’s wagon awaited them at an inn in Wellsport, brought by a couple of hostlers from the abbey. A large number of horses awaited them in an area outlying Wellsport, brought by the Free Knights from Valesgard in Dale at the command of Hallad, Prince Orez. The “plan” was that the group would first take the wagon and the horses to Woldsgard. Then, said Precious Wind, they would go from Woldsgard to the Eastwatch Tower and from there up the cliffs of the highlands, where the villagers awaited them. Messages had gone out and replies had been received. They were expected.

Xulai carried several boxes of sea eggs, two pair of which were to be left in Wellsport and another pair in each of the Becomer villages. All the cliffside villages were close enough to one another that eggs could be shared among them. Besides, sooner or later the villages would have to relocate nearer to the sea. Everyone who received sea eggs would need to live closer to the sea. Only those who could change would parent the new race; only the sea would test who could change. This was explained to the populace by Abasio and by Precious Wind. They had to be willing to accept the change of shape in order to prove to the people of the sea that they were worth saving. The people of the sea weren’t sure.

On this topic, the town was full of discussion, argument, and a few brawls.

“You wuddn catch me doin’ that if the world ends t’morraw.”

“You old goat, you’re too old to do any changin’, egg or no egg.”

“Who you callin’ old?”

Or: “Sounds nasty to me. Just pure nasty. Turnin’ into somethin’ like that. Yer not agona do that! No daughter o’ mine’s agona do that.”

“Ma, it’s that or drown . . .”

“You’d jus best drown.”

Precious Wind shook her head and went to Abasio and Xulai. “They’re going to have to see it happen, Xulai.”

Xulai burst into tears. “I’ve been poked and prodded and questioned and your doctors took samples of every part of me, and I am
not
going to change
naked
in front of all those people!” Her mind was saying,
This is unbecoming. This is childish.
Her body was saying,
Don’t give a damn.

“I know.” Precious Wind sympathized. “I’d feel the same, but I’ve figured out a way . . .”

Accordingly, Xulai went down to the shore wearing a loose garment that resembled a small tent from which her arms and head emerged. At the edge of the sand, she changed and went into the sea from beneath the tent, leaving it in the surf. While curious townsmen examined the tent to be sure she hadn’t been hidden in its seams, she swam about among a small group of curious local swimmers and divers, allowing herself to be petted, stroked, looked at, and returning only when Precious Wind had spread the tent properly at the waters’ edge. She slipped under it and resumed her proper form.

Abasio, who said to himself he would be damned if he would refuse to do anything Xulai was expected to do, eschewed the tent and changed right out in public. Wellsport was not a puritanical community, and nakedness was a fact of life in a place where freshwater was scarce and public baths were the rule. If the women would be offended, they didn’t need to look. He changed in the surf and swam away.

Three young men of Wellsport had agreed among themselves to have some fun with him if he changed into that thing the woman changed into. In fact, they provided him with a good deal of fun they had not expected. Octopods had more arms than any three regular swimmers, and octopods could breathe underwater, which the human swimmers had forgotten, to their subsequent discomfort. Abasio was in a better mood when he slithered back onto the sand, changed, toweled himself off, and dressed in time to assist the rescue of his would-be tormentors. Once again, the explanation. They had to be willing to accept the change of shape, even into something some people considered repulsive, in order to convince the Sea People they were worth saving!

The discussions that ensued in Wellsport were not notably changed.

“I tell you no daughter of mine is gonna . , .”

“Josh, your daughter’s fifty years old. Nobody’s gonna even suggest it.”

“Women’ve had babies when they were fifty. My own ma! That’s de-scriminatin’.”

“Maybe, but you don’t have to worry about not lettin’ her. Nobody’ll ask her.”

“An’ I’d like to know why not! We’re as good as anybody.”

“Ah, fer . . .”

For several days most of the troop was busy with unloading and repacking while Precious Wind and Xulai talked to groups of young men and women.

“I want to know how it feels when you’re like that.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Do you have to learn to breathe underwater or is it just like breathing air when you’re born?”

“When you, you know, do you do it in your human shape or do you have to do it . . . you know?”

No,
Xulai thought.
No, no, no, I don’t know
.

“What happened to the baby when you changed?” asked Precious Wind. “Did it . . . ?

“I DON’T KNOW!” said Xulai.

From among those who asked the most sensible questions, they chose the two couples who seemed most devoted to one another, for, as Xulai vehemently pointed out, if they were not devoted to one another, the difficulties caused by their families and friends would separate them soon and permanently. The four swallowed the eggs. They subsequently had endless discussions with the Tingawan women concerning the rules for disposition of future sea eggs: where, to whom, how many.

“I understand your sister’s feelings, but you may not give sea eggs to your sisters and brothers.”

“Your cousin breeds chickens, not people. Inbreeding in this case is not a good idea.”

“It doesn’t matter what your father said, you may not sell sea eggs. Anyone selling sea eggs or forcing someone else to do so will be sent to Tingawa and put in a cage at the shoreline, and stay there until death or drowning, whichever comes first. If it was suggested by someone else, that person will be alongside in another cage. Tell him we said so.”

“Remind your aunt that she will be dead long before the waters rising has affected her. No sea eggs except to young people.”

Xulai thought of having to repeat this over and over in every community they came to and despaired. Precious Wind seemed merely to get thinner and more tightly controlled with each passing day.

Eventually, the small cavalcade left for Woldsgard: Abasio and Xulai in the wagon, the warriors and Justinian mounted on Valesgard horses, another small wagon carrying their gear. Precious Wind rode separately, ahead of them, with the wolves. She had, she said, been training them to recognize the Old Dark Man, by smell and by sight.

“By smell?” Abasio wondered.

“The emissary picked up a bit of the creature’s clothing from the cellar. The wolves have good noses. They’ll alert us to anything strange. If necessary, if we get into a . . . confrontation . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t want to think what might happen to her pack if, indeed, they got into a confrontation.

Every few miles they encountered relay riders from the Eastwatch Tower of Wold, all saying the same thing. There had been no sightings on or near the road. If the information had been otherwise, the group would have retreated to Wellsport. They were not yet ready for confrontation.

When they approached Riversmeet, however, the message changed. There had been sightings, not confirmed, near the place where the Old Dark House had once been. People with distance glasses watching both from Eastwatch Tower and from villages farther up the cliff face had seen a tall dark something moving about in the forest and along the eastern slopes of Altamont. The wagon turned toward Woldsgard, extra horses were hitched, and the pace quickened. Precious Wind took the wolves uphill, into the forest of Wold. She was carrying the thing master, the
ul xaolat
. She thought it better to feed the wolves with wild game than to upset the Wold farmers by killing their livestock. Once at the gard, Precious Wind would house the wolves and feed them as she had done on the ship.

It was Abasio who first called their attention to the silence. It was summer; the weather was warm. Normally there were sounds in the forest: the young that had been born in the spring would be learning to find food and shelter and water. Some would learn to gather nuts, others to graze on grass or browse tender leaves, and all that activity was accompanied by a constant, quiet chitter-chatter of squirrels, the calls of mate to mate, the territorial songs of birds, the nighttime twitter of bats and hoot of owls, the rustle of fallen leaves or underbrush where small, furry things hunted or sought hiding places from hunters. Now, however, the forest was silent, as though every creature in it was burrowed as deeply as possible, hidden as well as possible. No creature called any attention to itself.

“I can almost smell the thing,” Xulai murmured to Abasio, clenching her hands together to keep them from shaking. “I can imagine what it must have been like during the Big Kill. I find myself wanting to stop thinking so it can’t find me.”

“The library helmet says people took drugs then,” said Abasio, putting his arm around her. “They took drugs so they couldn’t think, but the slaughterers found them anyhow. We have unconscious thoughts that drugs don’t stop and the creatures could find. Remember what Precious Wind told us. At the end, it didn’t kill only the people who thought wrong things, it killed anyone who wasn’t thinking the
right
thing.”

Silently, he was thinking about losing Xulai. He would not. Duty or no duty, saving the race or the world, he would not. And if she was determined, then by all that was holy she would not go alone. Not the way Ollie had gone. Never again. Xulai would not go alone.

They stopped for the night at the Queen’s Skep in Hives. They found the small town locked, as though against a plague. Justinian had to convince the innkeeper that he could safely provide for them, and later that they could open to Precious Wind, who had come to report.

“The
ul xaolat
is finding game all too easily,” she said, her face twisted in revulsion. “I have never before seen hungry deer lie with their heads down, unmoving, half-starving, with browse all around them. The wolves know of the creature, as well. They can smell it. All of them turn into the wind, pointing, like trained hunting dogs. Men are dead, their families are dead, the wolves and ravens have found their bodies. We need to bring this to an end very soon.”

“The power source for your locator?” Abasio asked. “Is it mobile?”

“The original device was designed to store power from the wind. As I said, we’ve made one that uses human power. We can crank it or pedal it.”

“The Edges had solar power,” said Abasio reminiscently.
Also, the Edges had walls. And places dug below where monsters could not come. And they had weapons. The warriors that attacked the Old Dark House had weapons, and what good did they do?

“We have solar and wind power in Tingawa,” she replied. “But for this, we need the power source to be totally reliable, even if clouds cover the sun or no wind blows. The locator sends out a pattern. If it finds that pattern, a signal comes back and shows up on the screen. We need to see that signal move, so we know it’s the creature, not some rag or bit of clothing or flesh it has lost or discarded.” She shook her head in frustration. “I could almost use the wolves for this! They only tell me the direction, though. Not the distance. Two men can keep the locator constantly powered all day or all night without being overtired. Four can keep it running night and day. Theoretically, we could put it in your wagon, Abasio, and keep it running as we moved, but it works more accurately if it is set up and established in one place where we can determine the fewest possible . . . things in the way.”

“Interference,” said Abasio. “That’s what things in the way are called. Like human beings. Animals.”

“Whatever it or they are called, we want to avoid them. So, we plan to unpack it high atop a tower at Woldsgard and use that as our locator base. We have far-talkers with us, so the people running it can keep in touch with us.”

“So you’ll locate the thing; then what?” asked Justinian.

“Then we’ll do something to entice it to the place we want it, when we want it,” said Precious Wind. She laughed shortly. “Meantime praying it does not find us in a place we don’t want it before we do want it.”

“You’ll look for a pattern,” said Xulai.

“We’ll pray for a pattern,” said Precious Wind. “A pattern lets us make a plan. If there is none, our task will be very much more difficult. And I’m not telling you anything else, because we don’t want anyone at all to know anything at all.”

“Including me,” said Xulai to her father.
I wonder if I will survive this? I really don’t want to die. I’d like to have . . . my child. I’m very curious about my child. Of course, now that the sea
eggs are being distributed, I’m not so important as I was before . . . They can risk me now.

“It seems unending,” said Justinian. “The Before Time, resurrected. The Big Kill, starting over.”

Precious Wind put her hand on his and squeezed it. “There is only one of them left, Duke of Wold. He, it, cannot go on much longer. Mirami is gone. Alicia is gone. The Old Dark House is gone. Even if we fail, there will be an end to it.”