Water Logic (27 page)

Alone in the desolate landscape, she was the only thing moving between the horizons. Shaftal’s walls had been built to make the world smaller, she supposed, so that within those narrow horizons people could feel like gods. Now, especially at night when she lay in the open without even the symbolic comfort of a fire, there was no escaping her own unimportance. She could believe it was possible to literally die of loneliness.

At last she reached the edge of the canyon, that vast earthwork with which the Otter River guarded Shaftal’s northern border. She had not been to this place since she and Emil and Medric had brought Karis here, after rescuing her from Mabin.

There Karis had been helped by water magic as she fought her way out of addiction. There Karis had begun to remake all her old decisions. There she and Zanja, on the verge of clasping hold of each other, had nearly lost each other. And then it had begun.

The wind made a hollow cry as it moved through the canyon. The sun lay low on the horizon, and to the east and the west the canyon seemed a black wound in the ruddy flesh of the earth. But at Zanja’s feet the canyon was so wide that the beautiful lake that lay cupped in its vast hands still glowed with light. She could not possibly have failed to find Otter River, but she had not expected she could aim herself so accurately at the lake itself. Now, to find herself unexpectedly so close to her destination made her impatient—too impatient to even look for a path. She stashed most of her gear, took off her boots, and climbed down the escarpment by twilight.

The sky was still red, but in the canyon it was full dark when Zanja reached the loose boulders and rubble that cluttered the canyon bottom. Here she was at greater risk of injury from uncertain footing than when climbing the perpendicular walls. She had to scramble over boulders taller than she, and the moonless night grew ever darker. When she reached the lakeshore, she was scraped, bruised, and limping. There she could faintly hear frog song and the echoing cry of a waterbird.

The island in the middle of the lake lay silent: no distant fires glowed, no voices or laughter carried sweetly across the water. The possibility that she might not find the people she sought had scarcely occurred to Zanja. Yet this canyon was no more inhabited than the rocky heath above. The Otter People were not here.

She sat on a stone, stunned. The sky filled with stars, and suddenly she could no longer bear to be under the open sky. When she and her friends had taken shelter in this canyon, there had been a pebble beach and a cave. She certainly would go to bed hungry this night, but if
she could find the cave, at least she might have a roof over her head. She began to follow the water’s edge, feeling her way across unsteady stones.

A big boulder blocked her way. With sore hands she hauled herself up to the top. There she knelt on bruised knees, gazing with astonishment at the pebble beach she sought, and at the campfire that burned near the water’s edge.

As she drew closer, she could see a little boat scarcely bigger than a washtub that was drawn up on shore. She could see the small, withered man who squatted on his heels by the fire, dressed only in a simple skirt. And then she could see him clearly enough that she could realize she knew him. It was the Otter Elder who would befriend Karis some two hundred years in the future.

Zanja stood for a moment on the water-smoothed stones.
As far as my intelligence casts its light, I think that is all that exists. But in fact I only see a small part.
She walked up to the campfire and bowed with her hand over her heart. “I greet thee, Otter Elder,” she said in his tongue.

“I greet thee, Zanja na’Tarwein. Wilt thou eat with me?”

She set down her boots and bedroll, and sat beside the Otter Elder’s fire. The air was clear and still, and the smoke flowed directly upward. She smelled the crisp, mineral scent of the lake. Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears.

The Otter Elder skewered fish that he took from a basket, and suspended them over the fire to cook. “Thy journey hath been long,” he commented, grinning so wrinkles spread like ripples across his leathery face: the face of a man who had been laughing for hundreds of years.

“Yes, Elder—a very long journey. And a very surprising one.”

“Thy way is always uncommon,” he said, or something similar. Zanja’s command of the water tongue was tentative, and she relied heavily on intuition to understand him.

She said, “Yes, Elder. Will you explain to me something? Water/time flows downhill, but now it also flows up—back.” She made her hand into a wave and showed it climbing upward. “How can that be?”

The Otter Elder made a clearing gesture as if to remove the invisible picture Zanja had drawn. “Time/water does not flow. It is a still lake. We swim, we float, we fish in it.”

Zanja tried to imagine herself swimming steadily in one direction through the vast lake of time. Someone intercepted her, dragged her under, and pulled her backwards, so she came up in a different place. For a moment this little story almost made sense to her.

But if time were a still lake, then why could she and most people only experience it as if it were moving? Why could she not stop, or even go backwards, whenever she liked?

And how was it possible to be human under such circumstances? To be shaped and burdened by the past, to have desire or determination for the future, without these qualities a person would come to a standstill, would exist in each moment without pain or purpose. Should that happen, wouldn’t Zanja’s passions and griefs, accomplishments and disasters, all prove to be mere delusions?

To water logic such a prospect might seem a funny joke. But to Zanja it was dreadful. Polite only with effort she said, “I fear thou art thought-broken, elder.”

He laughed out loud with such delight that Zanja found herself smiling in reply despite herself. “Zanja na’Tarwein, thy thoughts are small!” His hands shaped a vessel the size of a person’s head. Then he threw out his arms in a gesture that seemed to encompass the whole of the lake, the canyon, the sky. “Thou canst not hold this . . .”

He used a word that Zanja could only guess at. Perhaps he meant wholeness or completeness. Perhaps he meant that moment of time.

She said, “If I am swimming in time/water, then how can I swim home?”

“Thou canst not swim at all!” declared the old man.

“I can swim,” she grumbled.

The Otter Elder grinned. “The one who fetched thee here must return thee to thy place.”

“Must?” she asked sharply.

“Yes. Or drown with thee.”

“Truly?”

He nodded, smiling benignly, as a parent smiles upon a stumbling toddler.

“Was it thee who did this to me? Or dost thou know who? Or why?”

“Thy life is a dance, Zanja na’Tarwein. Thou danceth the steps that suit thee best, and to observe thy dance is to know thy heart.” He rose up, grinning, and danced a few steps to illustrate.

It was the beginning of the katra—Zanja’s katra, graceless, but recognizable.

Hooting with laughter, he capered to his boat and lifted out a basket filled with the bread the Otter People made of wild grain that they cooked in thin cakes on flat stones. The old man did not interrupt Zanja’s offended silence until the cooked fishes became loose on their skewers and he neatly caught the flesh with pieces of bread as it fell.

They ate. Zanja instructed herself to observe, heed the impulse of curiosity, formulate a question. “Dost thou know who else has been observing my dance?” she finally asked.

“Thou art interesting,” he said. “The way thou floatest on the flood. The way thou continually turnest to face the rising water. The subtlety of thy movements as thou drowneth and reclaimeth thy world. There is no one else like thee!”

“I am only living as I must. That I am interesting does not seem a thing to be punished!”

“Ah, thou seekest fairness,” said the Otter Elder mockingly.

Zanja understood his words but not his explanations. She tried again: “Who has brought me here?”

“The other one.”

“Another water witch? Another Otter Elder?”

“She is a woman of the tides, as I am a man of the floods; she is a woman of salt water, not sweet.”

“Is she of a coastal tribe, then? Or is she not a tribal woman at all?”

The Otter Elder shrugged as though such details were of no importance. “I know her; I do not know her.” He abruptly took a bone flute out of its fish skin sack and began to play.

At first, the hollow, melancholy, sweet music of the flute did nothing to ease Zanja’s frustration. Like the conversation, it seemed without pattern: one note led to the next, but without sense, phrasing, or predictability. The music was sweet without being pleasing. Yet Zanja could only listen, for to interrupt would have been unimaginably rude.

She remembered she was tired. Her feet and muscles ached from the hard, fast journey. Slowly, sharp-edged stars blurred; their edges melted together and the old beauty of their separate lights became a glorious new beauty: vast sweeps of light, shimmering and strange. They swirled—no, Zanja herself spun below them even though she sat still—no, it was the bands of light that were moving, after all. The light was the music, the music was the light. The turning of the sky was the turning of the land. Zanja was dancing her katra, the dance of her people. Her dancing met the music; the music met the stars; the stars turned with the earth; the earth supported her dance.

When the music ended, it seemed Zanja still could hear it. Slowly, the dance left her. She was sitting by the fire. She noted incuriously that the fire had not died down although no wood had been added in all the time she had been there. She did not know how long that had been, whether hours or days.

When she awakened in the morning, the Otter Elder was gone, along with his boat, his flute, his baskets, the ashes of the fire, and even the smoke stains on the rocks. She ate the oatcakes she had carried with her into the canyon, as the sun rose over the glimmering, wind-ruffled lake. The island was alive with birds but not with people; the only swimmers were the fish that marked their presence with radiating ripples. Zanja had no boat, and she did not know how to row or sail one, anyway. The river offered a way to the sea, but if she went that way, intending to scour Shaftal’s contorted coastline for a single individual, she must accept that it might take years to accomplish her task.

She rose stiffly up from her stony bed. She could still hear, or feel, the music of the Otter Elder’s flute, but the sound was as distant as a dream. The passing moments of her life had caught her up in their current again, and unlike the Otter Elder she could not swim backwards, except by remembering. What she remembered now was the university at Kisha, which she had seen once before the Sainnites destroyed it. But an old saying had survived the university’s destruction: “There are no mysteries in Kisha.” She would go to Kisha, with its vast library and revered scholars, and there seek someone who could tell her where to look for an ocean tribe.

Kisha lay where Zanja had already gone: she could return along her own trail, camp in the same sites, build new campfires in the remains of the old. This repeat journey might prove valuable or might prove useless. She felt she had gained something here at Otter Lake, and perhaps she might gain something more at the university. But she feared that her journey had scarcely begun. In the meanwhile Karis struggled alone along a path she could not see, with the future of Shaftal in her arms. Karis needed Zanja, and Zanja was not there. Lonely, joyless, and troubled, she once more set her aching feet on the trail.

Chapter 20

The Paladins give Clement Saleen’s dagger. This was not in the plan.

She holds the weapon, and it is cold and heavy. No rust, no rust pits, carefully and properly sharpened, well balanced. “A good blade,” Clement says.

The Watfield Paladins nod, and one says, “A good man.” Their eyes are shining.

“You will remember him in the blade,” Karis murmurs. The G’deon
is standing with all the others in the alley. Her face is pale. Her feet are so painful she can hardly walk. But she has come, so she can save Clement
again.

“In the blade,” Clement says, “I will remember Saleen.”

The Paladins brush at tears. Two step forward to remove Clement’s belt, attach the sheath, and put the belt back on her. She does know how to do this herself, though. The belt is necessary to keep the blood-stiff, shredded remains of her tunic from flapping open, for she wears no undershirt. She is glad the Paladins put the belt back on her.

Earlier, one of the officers had taken off her own tunic for Clement to wear. Clement was doing the fastenings, then the plan came to her. She had taken the tunic off and given it back. “I’ll wear my ruined tunic. Find Karis for me.”

Karis had come in, and Clement had told her the plan. Clement had acted very calm. But her breathing, that had been wrong. Karis had said, “Shall I do it now?”

Now Clement is clear. She sheaths Saleen’s knife. She steps from the shadowed alley into hazy sunshine.

She wades in mist. Her blood-stiff trousers chafe her crotch. The thick sunlight casts a damp warmth onto exposed skin. Her steps disturb the mist. A haze of light rises up around her.