The Waterstone (12 page)

“I am Tadpole of the Fisher Tribe! I am the Sagamore!”

The black-robed High Priest lunged toward him, his furred fingers curled like claws.

“Kill the boy!”
The cold voice echoed off the tall stones, bouncing from one to the other until it seemed that there were hundreds of voices singing in chorus, each louder than the one before.
“Kill the boy! Kill the boy! Kill the boy!”

The Grellers, moving as one, lifted their spears.

A terrible calm came over Tad. Time, for an endless moment, seemed to stand still. He felt a power gathering inside him, swelling, filling him up. And then, astonishingly, the night was full of voices. Some were no more than distant whispers, too faint and muddled to understand; some were clear as crystal, as if the speakers’ lips were pressed close to Tad’s ears.

“. . . slaves and power, she said we’d have, and riches, too, red gold, mayhap, and fire opals big as huggle-berries . . .”

“. . . high time and more I were captain in his place, and now I do have the Lady’s promise of help . . .”

“. . . Lady, guide my aim, as I be your faithful servant . . .”

It wasn’t voices, Tad realized. He was listening to people’s minds. No, not just people. From the edge of the clearing, just beyond the towering stones, came a high inhuman jabber of mind voices that twisted slyly around one another, coiling together like snakes in a nest. The voices rose and fell and overlapped, filled with anger, fear, pain, and despair. Slaves now, they were slaves, the voices mourned, taken from the kinship circles in the warm earth-smelling warrens, dragged with chains and bands of leather, forced to carry the Masters who held the stinging whips. One mind was black with misery; another, a red ember of fury and hatred; a third, a confused jumble of cravings for escape, to run and run, back to the deep of the forest, where the only blood spilled was in honest kill, where family waited, welcoming, curled together in the narrow tunnels. But that could never be, never, because one must obey the Masters. There was no other way. Slaves, they were slaves; obey, they must obey . . .

It was the weasels. They clustered together in the shadows, tethered to polished stakes driven deeply into the ground. Tad cautiously reached toward them.
No. Not slaves. Pull free.

The sinuous coil of minds fell silent, alertly listening.
Simple minds really
, Tad thought, moving gently among them — little earth-soft minds filled with thoughts of hunger and hunt, home and kindred, field and forest and deep long sleep.

Slaves. Obey.
The weasels’ minds murmured, but Tad, prodding, could feel them beginning to question.

No
, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut with the effort to make himself heard.
No. Not slaves. Pull free.

One weasel mind — the angry red one — joined him. He could feel the weasel bracing its front paws, tugging wildly at its leather rope.

Home. Free. Hate Masters hate.

Another weasel joined in. One tremendous heave, and a tethering stake yanked out of the ground.

Slaves? Obey?

No! Pull free!

Another weasel followed, and another. A Greller on the outskirts of the circle shouted an alarm. Another weasel tore itself loose, and then another and another. They sprang forward, hissing, pointed teeth bared.

Hate Masters hate! Hate Masters hate!

Those Grellers nearest the weasel rush were flung violently off their feet. Some managed to stagger up again, to be dragged away by terrified companions; others lay where they fell. Hagguld the High Priest took a horrified step backward, tottered, and crumpled to his knees. In the center of the scattering crowd of Grellers, a weasel reared up on its hind legs, screamed, and struck. Tad saw it raise its head, its eyes glaring, blood on its muzzle. It screamed and struck again. Grellers, shrieking, fled in all directions, stumbling and shoving in their rush to escape, forcing their way past one another, out of the stone circle, away into the forest. Birdie and Pippit scrambled up to stand beside Tad on the altar stone. Around them, weasels darted and pounced, their minds bright with astonishment and joy.

Not slaves! Pull free!

The stone circle now held only a leaping confusion of weasels and the limp fallen forms of savaged Grellers. One of them, Tad saw, still clutched his metal-pointed whip.

Not slaves! Home!

The weasels turned, all together, and streaked like swift black arrows into the enveloping night.

Home! Free!

Tad, suddenly remembering the High Priest, looked down, but there was no sign of Hagguld to be seen.

“What happened to the High Priest?” he asked.

Birdie shook her head. “I didn’t see,” she said. “He must have run off with the others. You did it somehow, didn’t you? The weasels?”

Tad nodded.

“How?” asked Birdie in a small voice. “You were yelling and then you scrunched your eyes up and then the weasels were free. I don’t understand, Tad. How can you be the Sagamore?”

“I don’t know yet,” Tad said. He could still feel the power inside him, damped down now, but ready to grow again.

Not this time, Azabel
, he thought into the quivering dark.

“It’s getting lighter,” Birdie said. “It must be nearly morning.” Suddenly she leaned forward and pointed over Tad’s shoulder. “Look, Tad, it’s one of the weasels. It must not have been able to pull itself loose.”

One black weasel still remained. As the children drew nearer, they saw that it was tied by its leather harness to a young sapling. The bark of the tree was rubbed raw where the creature had tried to tear itself free. Now it huddled against the ground, trembling slightly, its head between its paws.

Anger. Fear.

Tad put out a cautionary hand.

“Don’t go too close, Birdie,” he said.

“It doesn’t look dangerous,” Birdie said. “It’s just a young one, Tad. It looks scared.”

She moved toward the weasel, one hand held out.

Comfort. Friend.
Tad thought.

The weasel stopped trembling. It lifted its head and looked directly at Birdie. Then it scrambled to its feet. Standing on four paws, it was not all that much taller than the children themselves, though it was much longer.
It would make three or four of me
, Tad thought,
if I were lying down.
It still wore its elaborate harness: straps and belts of leather that passed across its chest and over its narrow shoulders, each strap inset with oddly shaped gold nuggets and chunks of blue turquoise.

The weasel stretched out its long snakelike neck until it just reached Birdie. Then it gently nuzzled her shoulder. Birdie stroked its head, and it nuzzled some more. She turned to Tad in delight.

“It
likes
me!” she said. “It’s
tame
!”

Birdie was petting the weasel again, rubbing the top of its sleek head and its small rounded ears. The weasel had its eyes closed and looked ecstatic.

“I don’t think anybody was ever nice to it before,” Birdie said. “I’ll bet those Grellers were horrible to it. Look.” She prodded with her toe in the dust. A discarded whip lay there, three knotted leather thongs fastened to a wooden handle. “I don’t see how they ever managed to tame it in the first place.”

“They didn’t,” Tad said. “They didn’t tame any of them. They captured them.”

“And then hit them,” Birdie said bitterly. She seemed to have forgotten all about number two (weasels) of the Four Great Dangers.

She kicked at the whip on the ground, tossing it as far away from the weasel as she could.

“No one will ever hurt you again,” she said to the weasel, scratching the fur under its chin. The weasel butted its head against her and made a sound that was almost a purr.

Birdie was unfastening the straps that tied the weasel to the tree. “We could ride him,” she said. “Let’s, Tad. I’m awfully tired.”

So, Tad realized suddenly, was he. His legs were shaking with exhaustion. He could have lain right down on the ground, limp as a piece of boiled grassroot, and gone to sleep. He looked doubtfully at the weasel, remembering the look of those sharp pointed teeth, but the weasel mind radiated nothing but gratitude and contentment.

“Bend down a little,” Birdie was saying. The weasel crouched lower to the ground. Birdie braced one bare foot against its leather harness and scrambled onto its back, reaching for the dangling reins.

“Hand me Pippit,” Birdie said.

Tad passed up the struggling Pippit — frogs, it seemed, did not like weasels — and then clambered reluctantly onto the weasel’s back himself, while Birdie stroked its neck and murmured soothing words. The weasel’s back was warm and beautifully soft. Its black fur was shiny and smooth, touched with blue in the early morning light. It was just the color of a crow’s feather.

“Which way do we go?” Birdie asked. “To Witherwood’s house?”

Tad pointed silently. He felt worn out.

I could fall asleep right here
, he thought.
If I could just do it without falling off.

Silent as a shadow the weasel with the three passengers on its back slipped away through the forest.

“I think I’ll call him Blackberry,” Birdie said.

The weasel paused at the edge of a clearing in the forest, and Tad, Birdie, and Pippit slid from its back to the ground. The sun was almost directly above them through the opening in the trees, warm on the tops of their heads. Almost highsun.
Half-day eating time
, Tad thought wistfully. Meals had been few and far between lately, and he was hungry. He wondered if Witherwood — if they ever managed to find him — would offer them something to eat.

The clearing must have been beautiful in the days before the Drying. Now its thick carpet of velvet grass was brittle and brown, and the bluebells and daisies that edged its borders were limp and withered on their stalks. The only sound was a worried humming of black-and-yellow bees, searching vainly among the drooping flower heads for nectar. The quiet was so heavy that it almost felt solid, like a crystal blanket. No one wanted to disturb it. One exclamation, one loud noise, Tad felt, and the whole clearing might shimmer into nothing and disappear like a burst bubble. The weasel was as still and silent as a black stone, and even Pippit was quiet, goggly eyes shifting back and forth hungrily following the bees.

Finally Birdie spoke. “Is this the right place?” she whispered. “Is this where Witherwood lives?”

“Shh,” Tad whispered back. He tugged her arm gently and pointed toward the far end of the clearing. “Look.” There, almost hidden by the dappled patterns of shade and sunlight, stood a little stone cottage covered with greenbrier vines. A mortared stone chimney poked up through its bark-shingled roof, and wooden shutters were pulled wide, leaving windows open to the warm summer air. The cottage door was open, too, and in the doorway, on a wooden bench in the sun, sat an old man.

Tad and Birdie advanced toward him, moving quietly across the dry grass. Pippit — distracted by hovering bees — hopped reluctantly behind. Birdie led the weasel by the reins. As they drew nearer, they saw that the old man was asleep. One eye was closed. The other was covered by a leaf patch, secured and tied around his forehead with a band of braided grass. His face was deeply lined, and his shoulder-length hair was pure white. He wore a tunic of soft gray feathers. A wooden crutch leaned against the wall by his side. A dreadful puckered scar ran down one side of the old man’s face and slashed across his throat.

“He’s been terribly hurt,” Birdie whispered.

At the sound of her whisper, the old man opened his single eye. Birdie gave a start of alarm. The eye was yellow, as bright and fierce as the eye of a hunting bird.

Tad gasped.

The yellow eye turned and fixed itself on Tad, studying him with sharp interest.

Birdie started to ask a question, but Tad didn’t hear her finish. Again, the world slipped and shifted. He felt as if he were falling, spiraling down and downward, into the yellow depths of that strange eye. Then the old man and the stone cottage vanished, and Tad saw only a great circle, glowing gold. The circle flickered and went dark. Suddenly it became a doorway, a gaping hole in a great dead tree. The bare twisted branches of the tree were hung with bones — bones in clacking bundles dangling from strings of dried skin, and, here and there, whole skeletons topped with grinning ivory-colored skulls. The bones shivered and chittered in the wind, and cold tendrils of night mist rose and wrapped around them, draping them in ghostly cloaks. Tad stepped forward, and his feet crunched on piled bones, the broken remains of many midnight feasts. He was in an owl’s lair. The hollow stank of fear and blood. Then something huge moved in the darkness. Great moon-round eyes blazed far above his head, and an immense claw — a talon as long as his arm and sharper than the Grellers’ spears — slashed at his face. He cried out and flinched back.

“Who-oo are you?” A deep hollow voice, heavy with menace. “Who-oo are you, who comes to brave the Owl?”

There was a rustle and a scraping sound as something enormous moved toward him.