The Water Road (31 page)

The thought of her fame caught
Antrey off guard. It must have shown on her face.

“Tell me, jeyn, most of what you
know about my people, about the Elein or the other clans, comes from the
Altrerians books, yes?”

“Yes,” Antrey said. She added no
honorific. He had called her jeyn, she had called him thek. Their relative
positions had been established. They were, for the time being at least, talking
as equals. “Until recently, I hadn’t spent any time with the clans since my
youth. Before…”

He waved the rest of the sentence
away with his hand. “Before you were sent away from your people for,” he
paused, as if looking for the right Altrerian words to use. “For being what you
are,” he finally concluded.

She nodded and said nothing.

“I have no intent to be cruel,
child. Only to confirm what I suspected. All your life you learned that our
people were isolated brutes, each clan having little to do with the others.
Reality is much more complex. In truth, stories move from clan to clan like
birds, particularly a story as compelling as yours.”

“Compelling?”

“Oh, yes. I believe that word of
what you had done with the Dost had already begun to spread amongst the clans
before you boarded that Islander ship that brought you here.”

“Oh,” Antrey said, thrown off her
game a bit by the details. “Then you know what I am here to ask you, I
suspect.”

“I know what I have heard,” he
said, returning to his seat and motioning for Antrey to sit down in a similar chair
across from him. She did, while Naath remained standing near the door where
they came in. “Unfortunately, rumor often travels more quickly that truth. I
have given much thought to what I have heard about you, Antrey, but before I
make any decision, I wish to know if I have all the facts straight.” He leaned
back, ready for Antrey to begin her pitch.

Buoyed by the experience of several
of these meetings already, Antrey began her well-rehearsed presentation. She
covered her discovery of the history of the Triumvirate’s plans as well as the
details of those plans. Depending on the audience, Antrey either emphasized or
downplayed the role of Alban’s death in the story. She suspected that, while
Birkthir did not seem the type of leader who would value her history as a
killer, he would be equally disappointed if she left out that detail of the
story to make herself look better.

When she finished, Birkthir sat for
a moment, taking it all in. “So what I have heard about you is true, after
all,” he said. “Not only the story itself, but the person who tells it.”

Antrey smiled slightly. “I can’t
tell if that is a good or a bad thing.”

“It is a very good thing,” he said,
leaning forward towards her, “that the story you tell me here today is the same
that is working around the clans. It shows that the others telling the story
are not changing it to suit their own motives. More importantly to you, I
suspect, is that it means I have no need for further reflection on these
facts.”

“Does that mean you’ve made a
decision about what the Elein will do?” Antrey asked, more directly than she
meant to. She was flush from the ability to ask the question directly to the
man who would make the decision rather than some intermediary.

“That I cannot say,” was his
answer. “Not yet, at least.”

Antrey deflated just a bit.

“I have no doubt about the just
nature of your cause,” he said. “But I worry about your ability to lead this
fight. It has nothing to do with your…status.”

“Status?” Antrey asked, sure what he
meant but willing to push a bit. “Do you mean that I’m a woman or that I’m a
halfbreed?”

Birkthir shook his head. “Neither.
Women play an important role in the history of my clan, as the Speakers of Time
would tell you.” He pointed to another one of the ornate pillars in the corner
of the room. “As for your parentage, I am not naive as to how such things
happen. But you bear no fault for it. It is not important.”

Antrey was not certain she believed
him, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Then what is the
problem?”

The old man stood and walked
towards Antrey. Instinctively, she stood up. “The fight ahead will require a
leader not only of great courage and will. I have no doubt that you possess
those qualities. But it will also require someone who is a fearsome, cunning,
and ruthless war leader.” He stopped a few paces from her. “I do not know that
you possess those qualities, Antrey. I know there are others who share my
concern.”

Antrey backed away from him. “I
have not led any army in battle, that is true. Nor do I intend to. I know there
are leaders among us already, such as yourself and Kajtan of the Dost, who know
more than I ever could about the battlefield. I would not presume to ignore
that experience.”

Birkthir stood for a moment, surprised
by her answer.

“What I will do is draw on all that
I learned while living in Tolenor, all I absorbed from the books in Alban’s
library. I cannot know what you know, Birkthir. But neither can you know what I
know.”

“Books,” the old man said, curious.

“Yes, books. You value the stories
of your Speakers, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“Because the stories that the
Speakers tell, about what came before you and how the Elein came to be what
they are, they help you learn about the world in which you live, correct?”

He nodded.

“Imagine that, instead of having
only those stories from which to learn, you could have the stories of every
Speaker who ever lived in any clan from which to learn. Different Speakers with
different perspectives and ideas about a single event. Think of how much you
could learn from those stories. That is what books gave me.”

Birkthir said nothing. He was
clearly not buying into Antrey’s argument.

“Think of it this way. The Speakers
of your clan know the stories of the Elein. But what if they also knew the
stories of the Sheylan? What do their stories of the battles with the Elein
say? Are they the same as yours? Imagine what a third person—a reader—could
learn about the battle and the people who fought it by reading both stories?
Are they the same? Are the differences important? What do those differences
tell us?”

He began to nod slowly. “I
understand about the stories, but such tales only get one so far.”

“Let me give you an example, then,”
Antrey said. “Many hundreds of years ago, two great cities of the Arbor fought
a long and bloody war. Kerkondala sat on the bank of the River Adon at a place
called The Narrows, where the Adon and the River Innis are at their closest.
Because of that, Kerkondala controlled all passage from north to south. Maladondala,
which lay to the south of The Narrows, wanted safe and regular passage. Two
great armies spread out across The Narrows and the war ground to a standstill.

“The Maladon war leader grew
impatient with the stalemate and ordered his generals to find any weakness in
the Kerkon defenses and break through. As it happened, the weakest point, by
far, was on the Kerkon right flank at a town called Ahldop. Ahldop was a holy
site to the Kerkon, but it had no actual strategic value. It could be taken,
but the Maladon generals were hesitant to attack and consulted the war leader.
They told him that if they attacked a holy site, they worried about what the
Kerkon would do in response.

“The Maladon war leader was
outraged, as you might expect. He had given orders to break through wherever
there was a weakness, with no exception. He was so angered by his generals that
he had some of them executed for insubordination, while others were stripped of
rank and sent home in shame. The war leader took on the task of planning the
attack on Ahldop himself. With him at the head of the Maladon forces, Ahldop
fell easily. Their victory was inevitable, swift, and brutal.”

Birkthir interrupted her. “That
sounds like an odd story to tell as part of this discussion.”

Antrey smiled and raised a finger
to cut him off, as if gently scolding him. “But there is more to the story. As
it happens, the war leader’s generals were correct to be worried. The Kerkon
had left Ahldop lightly defended because they knew it had no strategic value
and assumed that the Maladon would never attack such a holy, yet worthless,
location. But the Maladon attack energized the Kerkon army and their people,
who had been wavering about whether the war was worth fighting. Now they had
something to rally behind, a great wound to their souls. The Kerkon cried to
‘avenge Ahldop!’ Which they did. They retook the town and won the war.”

She paused for a moment. “That
story—which is so old it may or may not actually be true—was used as an example
in every kind of book about strategy, military and political, that I read in
Alban’s library. Dozens of different people, brilliant thinkers, have analyzed
that story, what it means, and what lessons can be drawn from it. I read all of
them.”

Birkthir returned to his seat and
thought a moment. Then he said, “I understand your point, Antrey, but I am
still not certain about your ability to leads us. Answer me this question: Why
did the Rising fail?”

The question took Antrey by
surprise. She had listened to many stories from Otom about the Rising, all of
which had been oddly positive. At worst, the Rising was a glorious lost cause,
doomed to failure by factors beyond the control of the Neldathi. It was a
convenient fiction, Antrey recognized, based on her earlier reading.

Birkthir noted her surprise. “You
did not expect such a question, did you? It is not a topic about which many
people want to think, but it is important.”

“To be honest, I have never really
thought about it,” Antrey admitted. “But I know what the Altrerian writers, and
the Triumvirate, have said about how the Rising was put down.”

“And?” Birkthir asked. “What did
those books tell you?”

She swallowed hard. “That the
Rising ultimately failed because Sirilo fought the Altrerians on their own
territory and on their own terms. Had he drawn the Triumvirate army into the
mountains, they would have had to fight not just the Neldathi but the terrain
as well. In the mountains, the Triumvirate army would have fallen apart into
separate small groups that could have been defeated.”

He smiled at her. “You have learned
well, it seems. But what of the final battle that crushed the Rising for good,
the Battle of the Hogarth Pass? It took place in the mountains, did it not?”

It occurred to Antrey that he was
not simply asking these questions for himself. He was asking for others in the
clans who might jump to such an obvious, yet flawed, counter example. “That is
true, but by the time Sirilo and his army reached the Hogarth Pass, it had
already been routed on the Plains of Terrell, north of the Water Road. By the
time the Triumvirate army followed them into the mountains, Sirilo had no
ability to stop them.”

Birkthir rose slowly from his seat,
clapping slowly. “Exactly correct. And precisely what many people will need to
hear.” He walked over to where Antrey was standing and placed his hands on her
shoulders. “To the extent that it helps, you may tell any others that the Elein
are with you in your cause, Jeyn Antrey.”

She stood there quietly, trying to
contain her joy and fear.

Strefer had to give Rurek some
credit. Her complaints about their surroundings had been constant and insistent
over the past few days. She was so tired and road weary that she could not even
remember what she had said to him or kept to herself. Regardless, tonight he
found them a beautiful spot in which to make camp. It was a clearing beside a
small stream that burbled up out of the deep woods on its way, Strefer assumed,
to the River Innis. The clouds that had been constant companions for the past
two days were gone, leaving a stunning veil of blazing stars to poke its way
through the canopy of trees overhead.

The stream ran free and cool, deep
enough for Strefer to wade in up to her knees. She rinsed the gunk of however
many miles from her feet and toyed with the idea of trying to take something
like a bath, but decided against it. For one thing, the sun had set and a chill
was settling into the air, so being wet all over was not a particularly
attractive notion. For another, it would be just their luck for them to be set
upon by someone or something unpleasant while she was dripping and naked. She
shuddered at the thought, stepped from the running water, and walked over to
the fire.

The campfire Rurek built that night
was small, but sufficient to help keep away the chill. They had not encountered
any game today, at least any that Rurek could catch and kill, so there was no
need for a larger fire to cook over. They sat on opposite sides of the fire,
chewing on some berries and leaves they had found nearby. There was really
nothing to say to one another at this point, having so thoroughly exhausted all
topics of conversation. They did not yet despise each other, but Strefer felt
certain that Rurek yearned for contact with others, just as she did.

Strefer hadn’t realized she had
dozed off until she heard Rurek’s voice, and chided herself for hearing it even
in her dreams.

“Who’s there?” he asked in a hushed
yet urgent tone. Strefer awoke to see Rurek standing by the fire, pikti in hand,
ready to pounce. He was stepping slowly, carefully, quietly towards the trees
just upstream from where he had been sitting. “I heard you in there. Who is
it?”

Strefer shook off the haze of
sleep, got to her feet, and found the knife that had become her most often-used
object these past few weeks. She let Rurek continue towards the trees while she
scanned the area behind him for signs of an intruder.

“Come out,” Rurek said, swiping at
an extended clutch of branches with his pikti. “We know you’re there. You won’t
surprise us anymore. Show yourself.” He poked at the branches again, this time
prompting a brief, startled shout.

“Stop!” yelled an old, trembling
voice. “Stop, please! I will come out, I will come out!”

Rurek stepped back and cast a
glance over his shoulder at Strefer. She showed him her knife in hand. He
nodded.

The foliage rustled like something
was caught in its dry arboreal grasp. A small, stooped old man shuffled out of
the dark. “Please, stop!” he said, one hand raised in supplication, the other
grasping a rough tall walking stick. “I have no desire to harm you!” On his
back was a sack full of something. His skin was a medium green, with a thin
half crown of white hair ringing his head. He hobbled about a bit and waited
for some kind of instruction.

Rurek stepped towards him,
menacingly brandishing the pikti. The old man tottered away and nearly lost his
balance, catching himself on his walking stick. “You still haven’t answered my
question,” Rurek said. “Who are you?”

The old man breathed heavily. “Give
me a moment, young friend,” he said. “I thought I was alone in these woods
tonight, as I assume you did as well.”

“Answer my question,” Rurek said,
pikti still poised to strike.

“Goodness, young friend. Is it so important
that you have a name to hang on me? To associate it with my face, my clothes,
my pack here?” He gestured towards the stuffed bundle on his back.

“Yes, it is, old man,” Rurek said
in his best commanding tone. “You aren’t my friend. I’m not your friend. She
isn’t your friend. We have business that does not involve you. It will cause me
no grief whatsoever to send you on your way. Whatever that might take.”

“Rurek,” Strefer said, gently
pleading with him. The old man’s sudden appearance was curious, but he did not
seem to be a threat in her eyes.

“Ah!” the old man said, his eyes
widening. “I now have a name to attach to you, young friend. I can see that
does place you at some disadvantage. Very well. I am called Marek. Is that
better?”

“Somewhat,” Rurek said, relaxing
just a bit. “Where did you come from?”

“That is a long tale, young friend.
One that I cannot possibly tell while standing. Might I share your fire this
night?” the old man asked. “I have provisions.”

Rurek looked at Strefer and
deflated as their eyes met. “All right,” he said, dropping the pikti to his
side. “But if you do anything I don’t like, you’ll be on your way.”

“Of course, young friend,” Marek
said, shuffling towards the fire. “Of course.” He nodded politely towards
Strefer.

Before she could say anything else,
like her name, she looked to Rurek for guidance. Although he had relaxed, the
look on his face told her to be very frugal with any information she doled out
to the old man. She put her knife away and sat back down by the fire. “Are you
out here all alone?” she asked.

The old man chuckled as he slowly
sat on the ground a few feet away from her. Rurek took up his usual position on
the opposite side of the fire. “Yes, young lady, I am,” Marek said as he hit
the ground with a grunt. “I appreciate your concern, but I am quite used to
it.”

“It’s unusual for people to wander
about out here by themselves, you know,” Rurek said.

“Unusual,” the old man nodded, “but
not unheard of. Besides, I am hardly wandering, young friend. I know precisely
where I am going and where I am going after that.”

“Do you?” Rurek asked. His
skepticism was evident.

“Of course,” Marek said, then
turned to Rurek. “Why? Are you out wandering about aimlessly, young friend? I
would not advise it.”

“No,” Rurek said, too forcefully
for the point he should have been making. He shifted attention away from
himself. “So where is it that you’re going?”

“I am on a route I have traveled
since before either of you were born,” the old man said. “I start in Felandala
early in the year, then go south from city to city until I reach the Water
Road. Then I turn back north and make my way to Nevskondala. Next year, I will
do it all again.”

“That’s a long way to go on foot,”
Strefer said, impressed if the old man’s tale was true. “You do it carrying
that thing?” she asked, pointing to the sack that now rested on the ground
beside him.

“Yes, although usually by this time
it is not so full,” Marek said. “I am afraid that this has not been a
particularly good year for business.”

“And what business would that be?”
Rurek asked.

The old man turned, fussed about in
his sack, and pulled out a small figurine, of about three to four inches in
height. He handed it to Rurek.

“What’s this?” he asked, examining
the figure.

“Why, that’s you, isn’t it?” the
old man said with a laugh.

“Let me see that,” Strefer said,
reaching around the fire to snatch it from Rurek. She laughed when she saw it.
There, in miniature, was a Sentinel. Down to the uniform and the pikti, it
looked very much like Rurek, although the face looked completely different.
“Not a bad likeness,” she said regardless. She handed it back to Marek.

“You’re a junk peddler,” Rurek
said, none too impressed.

“I, my young friend, am a peddler
of petty novelties,” the old man said with a great flourish.

“Petty novelties?” Strefer asked.

“Knickknacks. Curiosities. In
addition to the Sentinel figurines, I also have ones depicting Neldathi
warriors, some with two or more fighting each other,” Marek continued.

“And people actually buy this stuff?”
Strefer prodded.

“Not so much these days,” he said.
“It is my brother who makes them. I simply carry them about the Arbor. Things
were much more lucrative before the Great Awakening. The real money was in
religious petty novelties. Small idols of the gods, that sort of thing.
Believers will buy most anything that makes them look holy.”

“So sorry to hear you’ve been on
hard times for so long,” Strefer said.

Marek shrugged. “I get by.” He put
the Sentinel figurine back in his pack, rooted around some more, and pulled out
a long metal tin, well weathered and beaten. He prodded the top off and
extended it to Strefer. “Jerky?”

Without looking to Rurek for
approval, she took a strip. “Thank you,” she said, ripping into the dry meat.
“Beef?”

“Goat,” the old man said, extending
the tin towards Rurek. He took two. “Not much room for cattle in the Arbor,
young lady. Goats are a little easier to manage.” He took a strip for himself
and they sat, for a moment, in silence, munching. “So, my friends,” he said after
a while, “I have told you how I came to be here on this night. What brings you
to this place in the middle of the Arbor?”

Rurek said nothing, but shot
Strefer a look reinforcing his earlier gestures. It told her not to give away
too much to the old man.

“We are on our way,” Strefer said,
pausing for a moment, “somewhere.”

Marek chuckled. “Aren’t we all,
young friend?” He waved away the question. “You have no need to tell me where
you are going. It is of no matter to me, after all. I am curious as to why you
are here, however.”

Strefer decided the old man was
harmless. “I have something,” she stopped and corrected herself, “we have
something. A story that needs to be told. We are looking for people who might
help us tell it.”

The old man nodded thoughtfully.
“Fiction? If so, this is an awfully hard road to go.”

“Not fiction, no,” Strefer said,
glancing at Rurek. He was sulking and gnawing on jerky. “But it’s a story that
only a very few people know. Only three people, in fact, so far as I know.”

“Ah, so it is a secret,” he said.

“I suppose it is,” Strefer
conceded.

“And it is your intention to spread
this secret about?” Marek asked. “To make it no longer a secret?”

“Strefer,” Rurek said, glowering at
her.

She ignored him. “That’s right.”

Marek shook his head. “I would
think very long and hard about doing such a thing, young lady.”

“What makes you think we haven’t?”
Strefer asked, a bit offended. “Besides, this is something that needs to be
heard. People need to know about it.”

“I cannot argue with you on the
merits,” Marek said. “I do not know the extent of this secret, nor do I wish to
know. I am simply pointing out that sometimes revealing the truth can be worse
than keeping the secret.”

“I appreciate your concern,”
Strefer said, “but we have thought about this. Would we be here in the middle
of these godsforsaken woods if we hadn’t?”

“A fair point,” Marek said. He
seemed ready to drop the point, but then asked, “Could I tell you a brief
story?”

“I certainly won’t stop you,”
Strefer said, looking to Rurek for his opinion. He rolled his eyes but said
nothing. “Go on.”

“Many years ago, near Maladondala,
there was a town called Thorne, named after the family who founded it,” Marek
said. “Or so that was the tale. It went that a Thorne from several generations
back had been expelled from Maladondala. He was a pious and honest man, who had
been falsely accused by his rivals of causing some sort of disaster or another.
All he need do to preserve his station in the city, maintain his role in its
daily life, was to admit to the heinous allegation. He did not, choosing
instead to leave the city with his honor and dignity intact.”

“Now
this
sounds like
fiction,” Rurek offered.

Marek smiled at him. “And indeed it
was, young friend. But, nevertheless, that was the story. And the story
provided the basis for the Thorne family’s dominion over their town.”

“You’re not going to argue that
political legitimacy based on lies is a good thing, are you?” Strefer asked.

Marek shook his head slowly. “I am
not arguing anything, young lady. Merely telling a story. May I continue?”

“Of course,” Strefer said.

“For generations Thorne was ruled
by the eldest of the clan of that name. And in that time, the town flourished. It
was never going to become another walled city like Maladondala, or even a
famous outpost like Oberton,” he said.

Strefer panicked just a bit at the
mention of their destination and glanced at Rurek. His lack of concern helped
calm her.

“But it was a prosperous and good
city,” Marek continued. “The people were happy. The members of the Thorne clan
who ruled them were just and wise. All was well. Until one of the Thornes, who
could not rule because of her place in the order of birth, decided to write an
extensive history of the town, from its founding to the present day. She talked
to all the people that she could, reviewed all the parchments in the town
archives. And, one day, she went to Maladondala, to look at the records of the
city in the time of the first Thorne, the one who left them rather than
submit.”