Wonders of the Invisible World (25 page)

But he had to risk it. “You startled me,” he said.

She lifted her face out of the water then, revealing a familiar, charming smile, a slender neck, the curves and hollows of her shoulders. He wondered if her skin was that golden everywhere.

“I know,” she answered. Her voice was light and sweet, a purl of water. She raised her fingers; he saw the webs between them, delicate, iridescent. She pushed lazily at the water, the light. “Come join me.”

“I don’t dare,” he said somberly.

“Then I’ll leave you.”

“No—Don’t do that.”

“Then come in with me. We’ll talk.”

That face drew hard at him, so familiar, all its smiles for him, promising all he wanted.

“You’re a dream,” he breathed.

“So? Don’t you take pleasure in dreams?”

Don’t fall in love
, the mage had warned him,
with the water-born....
She was there, he remembered, starting again. In his head, watching out of his eyes. He sighed noiselessly, relieved to have the choice made for him.

“The water-mage sent me,” he said carefully. “She wonders if we have offended the water folk.”

She flicked water toward him again, not answering, only looking at him out of that face she must have pulled out of his thoughts. Was her true face, he wondered, what he had seen under the water that morning, watching him?

“If we have, tell us what to do to make amends.”

She smiled, raising both hands out of the water, fingers stroking the air like wings, beckoning.

“I’ll show you...” he heard, but how he couldn’t imagine, for she had already vanished.

He stood a moment longer, waiting for her, feeling a curious emptiness, as though it truly had been Damaris and he had turned away from love.

Damaris, he reminded himself, or the mage did, urging him along. Reluctantly, he mounted again, rode to the watchtower dock to summon the ferryman.

A dozen market-boats had ventured down that far; they swarmed around the dock, selling bread, strawberries, cheese, ale and savory pasties to the men in the tower. Garner bought some meat and onions skewered on a stick, and roasted on a little brazier balanced on a shelf on the prow of the boat. It seemed precarious, but fire rode easily over the swell and dip of water. The boatman, his face seamed with an endless labyrinth of wrinkles, lingered at the dock to thread more meat and turn his skewers.

Garner, watching him as he ate, asked impulsively, “Have you seen anything strange in the water?”

“Strange? You mean like mermaids, such?”

“Anything out of the ordinary.”

The man shook his head. But his mouth widened into a gap-toothed grin at the same time; he chuckled soundlessly, waving a skewer at the bees. “Only what everybody saw this morning.”

Garner felt himself flush, but pursued the matter anyway. “What?”

“You didn’t see? It happened near the bridge, where the market-boats are thickest. A man in one of the fancy houses along the river pushed his head out of the vent in his private water-closet, crying that something was in there laughing at him. Then the water-closet slid right down his wall and into the river. For a few moments, we all thought it would float at the head of the king’s procession. But it stuck in the mud and got pulled ashore before the king had to see it. The man came out cursing his leaky pipes that had rotted the wood. But a water pipe wasn’t what terrified him. You could see that in his eyes.”

“What was it, then?”

The old man shrugged. “Water sprite, likely,” he said calmly. “They get frisky sometimes just before the ritual. We make our living on the water; we’ve learned to placate them, leave gifts in the river—flowers, beads, floating candles, little carvings—so they don’t toy with our boats. But I’ve never seen them go that far before. Up pipes and into someone’s house.”

Garner finished his meal hastily, disturbed, and rode to the shallows beside the dock, where the ferryman, a lean man with his head hooded against the wind, sat alone on his raft, watching the currents.

“Between tides,” he remarked cryptically. “Easy journey.”

Garner led his horse on; they were the only passengers. The ferryman glanced up and down for traffic, then gave a cry. High-pitched, inarticulate, it sounded across the river like some wild water bird calling to another. At the royal dock a giant spool began to turn. A pair of ropes attached to the front of the raft rose slowly through the water to the surface and tautened. Another spool turned on the watchtower dock, loosing the raft cables. Garner felt it begin to move.

The ferryman plied his pole, kept the raft from drifting. Garner stood stroking his horse, watching the great stone pile loom above them until it filled the sky. Its shadow slid over them, mid-river.

“She get the message yet?” the ferryman asked, shifting his pole.

“She—” His thoughts had strayed; he couldn’t imagine what they were talking about. “The water-mage?”

The ferryman flashed him a glance. “The mage. The minister. Either.” Garner stared at him. He looked back, long enough this time to give the knight a clear view of his spindrift face, his shell-white eyes. The ferryman smiled then, a quick, tight smile. “Guess not.”

The cables on one side of the boat snapped, whipped the water with a vicious hiss. Garner ducked, clinging to his horse’s reins. On the other side, the rope dipped underwater, pulling the raft down with it. He felt his boots fill again with water. The raft tilted like a door opening into the riverworld and he went through it for the second time that day.

Beale would not go away. Damaris, desperate to find her engineer again and inquire about the fountain, kept seeing her betrothed in her doorway, no matter how many times she paced around the table. His pleasant, thoughtful voice went on and on; his eyes, seeming to follow her spiral path, saw nothing disturbing in it; walking around and around a table must be simply what she wanted to do.

“Chairs,” he said, “for fifteen musicians. The little gilt ones. To be placed, I think, beside the fountain and facing it. The music is, after all, a gift to the fountain. Don’t you agree? The king, I believe, is planning to step out of the royal barge near the square and proceed up one of the streets to the fountain. I’m not sure who else will make up the procession. The musicians, of course, will not come down by water. The Minister of Ceremony has not yet decided exactly when to unveil the fountain: before or after the king’s arrival. In either event, the musicians will already be there. I don’t think I’ve told you this: Master Ainsley plays a very sweet flute and will be joining us to perform his own composition for the first time.”

Master Ainsley, Damaris thought, chilled. Who must still wonder if he’ll be playing mud-music.

“Beale,” she said desperately.

“Not to leap ahead, since there are so many details to consider, but I am so much anticipating our journey after the celebration to my estate, where you will finally meet my mother. As I’ve told you, she’s much too frail to make the journey to Luminum.”

“Beale.”

“She is eagerly awaiting our arrival. So is my sister, who used to be one of the king’s musicians until our mother’s health—”

“Beale!”

He stopped, seeing her finally, his fair brows raised. “What is it, my love?”

“If—if there should be—if something should go wrong—”

“What could possibly go wrong? You’re intelligent, wonderful, young enough to bear twenty grandchildren for my mother, your family and history are impeccable, you look like a water nymph, my mother will adore you.”

She closed her eyes, tried to keep her voice steady. “I meant with the fountain.”

“The fountain. What could go wrong with the fountain? You let the water flow; it comes out the holes; we play. Simple as breathing.”

She opened her eyes, saw, over his shoulder, a bad dream coming toward her down the hall, its bare feet squelching watery footprints on the marble. She gave a hiccup of astonishment, and closed her eyes again, hoping it might go away.

“Beale. Excuse me, but I must find my engineer.”

“There is such a charming analogy between the holes in the fountain, and those in our instruments,” he said with sudden enthusiasm. “Don’t you think? One flowing water, the other music; both necessary for life, I would argue, though no amount of music would—Now, I wonder, could an instrument be fashioned that could flow with both water and music at once? What would it look like? Surely—”

The face of the nightmare was beside him now: the Knight of the Well running water like a leaky pipe. His dark eyes were furious, but that she understood. It was the fear in them that brought her fingers to her mouth. Be careful, she pleaded silently to him. Be discreet.

Beale turned; even he must have felt the exudations of emotions and dampness. He stared, amazed, at the knight. “You seem to be dripping.”

“I fell in the river,” Garner said shortly, and otherwise ignored him, holding Damaris’s eyes with his disquieting gaze.

“Again?” she said through her fingers.

“The ferryman tossed me in. This was after I spoke to the nymph—”

“Stop,” she said sharply, and, to her relief, he veered away from that.

“I have a message for you from the water-mage.”

“Nymphs and water-mages and Knights of the Well,” Beale murmured. “Sounds like a tale that should be set to music. Does it not? A small, perfect cycle of compositions—”

“Beale,” Damaris interrupted explosively, “I must hear Eada’s message in private. Please.”

“Oh.” He glanced with surprise at the doorpost against which he leaned. “Of course.” He moved himself, but only to advance with a touch of deliberation into the room, where he positioned a kiss firmly on the cheek of his betrothed. “Come and tell it to me when you’re finished here.” He left finally, passing Garner with a careless nod and a laugh. “You must tell me your nymph story in more detail later. Don’t forget.”

“Come in and close the door,” Damaris said tightly. “Don’t drip on my papers. Tell me what the mage said.”

“Something is wrong in the waterworld. She sent me searching everything from ditchwater to the river to find out what. She told me to tell you this.”

“She did.”

“Do you think I wanted to come back here?” he demanded. “To interrupt your intimate conversation with Lord Felden? To make a fool of myself drenched and barefoot in front of you both?”

“No,” she admitted. “Anyway, it wasn’t very intimate. Anyway,” she said more firmly, “what did you mean about the ferryman? He had an accident, taking you across the river?”

“It wasn’t an accident, and he wasn’t human.”

“Oh,” she whispered.

“He sank the ferry deliberately. I nearly got kicked by my horse flailing in the water before I could grab its mane. We swam across together. I didn’t have a chance to question anything among the waterweeds. I lost my boots. Again. Whatever is going on among the water people is becoming dangerous to humans.”

“Well, did you find anyone to ask?”

“I asked the water nymph. She just looked at me out of your face and refused to answer.”

Damaris felt behind her for the edge of the table, held on. “My face,” she said faintly.

“You had been on my mind,” Garner sighed. “I think she—whatever it truly was—must have seen it in my thoughts.”

“I see.” She chose words carefully, as though they were stones across a swirling current. “You didn’t—I’ve heard such nymphs are—are difficult to resist.”

“Of course she was,” he said bluntly. “But I also had a water-mage looking out of my eyes, and after this morning, I was wary of going anywhere near you. Or anything that looked like you. I didn’t want to come here now. But I’m beginning to be afraid for Luminum.”

“Yes.” Her fingers tightened on the wood. “So am I. We had what looked like muddy water coming out of the fountain earlier today. Before anyone had uncapped the conduit pipe at the Well.”

He gazed at her silently, some of the anger in his eyes yielding to bewilderment. “Do you have any idea why?”

“Because we have run pipes out of the Well itself?” she guessed. “But we began the project years ago, and nothing has bothered us until now.” She paused, eyeing his plastered hair, his sodden clothes, his naked feet. “Garner, be careful. They seem to be using you as a—a conduit for their messages.”

“Yes,” he said quickly. “The ferryman asked me if you had gotten it.”

“What?”

“The message.”

She felt the blood leave her face. “He said that. If I had—”

“The mage or the minister,” Garner amended himself. “I assumed he meant the Minister of Water. Maybe not.” He moved restively. “I need to get out of these wet clothes and continue my search. Do you have any suggestions? You know the waterworld as well as any human can.”

“I’m beginning to feel that I don’t know it at all... I may understand more after I speak to the engineer. But, Garner, what will you do for boots?”

He shrugged. “Steal a pair from my cousin.”

“Be careful,” she said again, and he looked at her a moment, silently.

“You be careful, too,” he warned, and followed his own soggy path back out.