The Waters Rising (25 page)

After a time they heard the creaking of wheels and saw the others approaching on the road below. Precious Wind clucked to her horse and they walked a bit faster, keeping up with the wagons but going no nearer them. They saw only one habitation during the afternoon, evidently a cooper’s house, for his cooperage lay all about the dwelling: piles of split oak, sheds stacked with hoops and staves and the round cut tops and bottoms of barrels. Smoke from the untended forge drifted into the air among stacks of finished kegs. Of the cooper himself, they saw no sign, though Xulai thought she heard tuneless, possibly drunken singing coming from the house.

When evening came, the wagons pulled off the far side of the road onto a grassy flat and the men made camp near Wilderbrook itself. Precious Wind took her group farther into the forest, found a fallen tree with a hollow beneath it, and set up a camp of her own before starting a seemingly purposeless wander among the trees, muttering to herself.

“What are you looking for?” Xulai wanted to know.

“A place to tether these animals where they can lie down if they want to, but where they can’t be seen from the sky . . .”

“From the sky?”

“Did Xu-i-lok never speak to you of watchers in the sky?”

Xulai stood with her mouth open. Yes, the princess had done that. “She had me put mirror on the windowsills . . .”

“I know, but we can’t attach mirrors to the horses, even if we had mirrors, which we don’t.”

“Then we need to make the horses seem to be something else,” Xulai said in an imperious voice, totally unlike her own. “Tie them, and I’ll take care of it.”

Precious Wind was moved to laughter that reached no farther than her throat. No matter how ridiculous the words had sounded, laughing at that particular voice was utterly impossible. Instead, she moved the animals into a copse of closely set trees, tied them loosely, and provided them with some of the hay and oats the mule had carried before moving away and standing, like a puppet waiting for someone to twitch her strings. It was not a role Precious Wind enjoyed or was accustomed to.

Xulai left the campsite and went into the copse to speak to the horses in earnest tones.

“What did you tell them?” breathed Precious Wind when Xulai returned to her.

“I told them they did not want to be horses, because there’s a monster in the woods that eats horses. The monster doesn’t bother deer, so they think they are deer, three does and a fawn.”

“Deer. Why not rabbits?”

“Night eyes in the sky probably eat rabbits,” Xulai replied in the imperious, unfamiliar voice. “Better a hunter not be tempted down.”

“What if they whinny?”

“Don’t be silly,” Xulai said sharply, haughtily. “Deer don’t whinny.”

Wordlessly, Precious Wind led the way back to the campsite. “No fire,” she murmured. “We might hide the light of it, but not the smell of it.” She waited momentarily for Xulai to say something like “Nonsense, of course we can hide it,” but no such words came. Perhaps, Precious Wind thought, one might find it easier to convince horses they were deer than to convince firewood it wasn’t burning.

They ate cold sandwiches and apples. Precious Wind announced her intention of going into the woods to keep watch.

“Up a tree?” asked Xulai.

“Possibly.”

“Remember what you said about watchers from the sky. In Altamont, that night of the wolves, there were hunting birds in the sky. Wherever you climb, do it a considerable distance from where the men are. Whoever watches them won’t look far for us.”

Again, that urgent, lofty voice. Precious Wind, not trusting her own, merely nodded agreement.

Oldwife and Xulai, with the cat basket between them (while the secret chipmunk explored the intricacies of the half-rotted trunk), curled up in blankets under the fallen tree and went to sleep, though not until Xulai had spoken earnestly to the tree trunk above them, the grasses, and the neighboring trees. As Oldwife later told Precious Wind, “It was something about nothing being here but cats. Wildcats.”

From her perch up a tree, well-hidden by higher branches and a good way back down the road they had just covered, Precious Wind could not see the men’s camp in the meadow below, but she imagined Bear rolling a blanket into his bedroll to resemble a sleeping person before he sneaked across the brook and into the woods on the far side of the road. It was no great distance. The valley narrowed as it steepened, and at this point the edges of the forest were only about a hundred yards uphill on either side of the Wilderbrook road. Remembering Xulai’s request, Precious Wind surveyed the sky, thinking it unlikely she would be able to see a flyer above her and as unlikely the flyer would see her. The last of the light had gone.

It was not long, however, until the green moon rose to cast a ghoulish light on everything. The human spy arrived on foot around midnight, a shadow barely visible against the pale packed soil of the wide wheel tracks as he crept silently along the grassy verge. Precious Wind watched as he crawled around Bear’s camp, looking at it from all sides, then among the wagons, where he lifted canvas and looked under sacks of oats. He did not go near the sleeping men but turned back the way he had come.

Descending from her tree, Precious Wind went silently to the edge of the woods. The spy’s horse stood at the far end of a long curve, tethered near the road, and the spy led the creature a goodly distance farther away before riding back the way he had come. By this time the green moon was high. It was said to be bad luck to be out when the moon shone green, probably because everyone looked dead in its rotting light. The green moon, so it was said, dated only from the Before Time, the time of the Big Kill.

“Somebody down at Benjobz is interested in us, isn’t she?” Bear asked from behind Precious Wind’s left shoulder.

She gasped. “Idiot. Are you trying to scare me out of a year’s growth? I thought you’d be over there, on the other side.”

“I wanted to be sure everything was all right. How’s our little one?”

Precious Wind started to tell him what had happened, then stopped herself. This was, perhaps, one of those things best not talked of. What Bear did not know, he could not say. She contented herself with saying, “She’s a good little traveler. Uncomplaining. She helped hide the horses and she doesn’t fuss at the long ride. I think we’re well hidden.”

He stared at his feet for a time. “This has been a very strange journey, Precious Wind. There’s something going on here, something that wasn’t part of our bargain.”

“My only bargain was to protect Xulai,” she said calmly.

“If that is Xulai.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “Why would you doubt it?”

He said bitterly, “At present, I do not. Being a Xakixa makes her unusual here, true, but why in the names of all the pantheon of Tingawa does she attract all this interest? It’s not as though she were the ambassador’s daughter! They told me she’s just a child, a family member, true, but of a distant branch, an orphan. At home, she’d be virtually a nobody.”

“She’s carrying Xu-i-lok’s soul.”

“And what does that mean to anyone who is not Tingawan? It should mean nothing! It does mean nothing! So why all this interest?”

Precious Wind considered what she might tell him. “Well, if someone went so far as to poison Xu-i-lok, that same person might wish to destroy her soul. I think that’s perfectly understandable.”

He stared at the sky. “Well, the orders I was given were clear enough that I can follow them without understanding them, otherwise I might let confusion lead me into error. Whoever is stirring trouble, or for whatever reason, all we have to do is keep her safe and take her where we were told to take her. Meantime, we should make defensive moves. At this stage that means spreading confusion among her likely enemies. We’re doing that, and if, as you say, Xulai cooperates nicely, I suppose that’s all we can expect.”

He yawned widely, gaping at the sky. “I doubt we’ll be visited again tonight. You three stay in the forest one more day and we’ll rejoin company at our stopping place tomorrow.”

“You’re sure that’s long enough?”

“It will have to be. The farther up the road we go, the narrower and steeper this valley gets. Black Mike’s been up this road before, taking Woldsgard birds to the abbey, and he tells me you’ll only have one more day of reasonably level ground among the trees. After that, we’ll need to keep to the road or let you females ride mules. They’re more sure-footed.”

“How’s Nettie and her so-called cousins?”

“No reason to think they’re not doing well. They’ll travel a bit faster than we can. They should be along tomorrow or the next day with the traveler either before or after.”

“Then I wish you good morning, Bear. If I’m lucky, I’ll get half a night’s sleep.”

They parted. Bear made his way up the meadow to his men, Precious Wind to her bed beneath the fallen tree with a feeling of relief that surprised her. She did not know what she would have said if Bear had pursued the question of the interest in Xulai. The answer she had given him was probably true. Perhaps she could merely have pointed out that the Duchess of Altamont did not need reasons to cause pain. Her own enjoyment in creating pain was reason enough.

They were asleep when a large owl came floating up the valley to circle above Bear’s camp for some time. Four bedrolls beside a covered fire were visible. The owl, who could hear a mouse move a single whisker, heard breathing from each one of them. She moved over the forest seeking other life, finding some creatures visible, birds mostly, and other creatures only detectable by their breathing or small movements, in hollow trees, under a fallen trunk, in a copse of trees. She flew down among the trees, searching. Nothing under the fallen tree trunk but a family of wildcats; nothing in the copse but deer.

Blinking slowly, without volition, the owl flew back down the valley to Benjobz Inn. In the forest beside it, she lit upon a low branch. The woman before her stared into the owl’s eyes. The owl, unable to move, thought of what she had sensed. The woman stared more intensely, hurtfully, digging deeply. The owl was first gripped by terrible uncertainty, then by terror, then by hideous pain as the woman snatched her feathered neck, grasped her head in one strong hand, and twisted . . .

Pain over, everything over, the feathered body dropped to the soil, where Alicia, Duchess of Altamont, stamped upon it furiously before striding back to the inn. Alicia really preferred liars. People who lied to her gave her excuse to terrorize and torture them, but the damned innkeeper had told her the truth! The child and her nursemaid had gone back to Woldsgard! They must have gone by while Alicia was taking her alternate route from Altamont, the route that nobody knew of but herself and Jenger, and a few of her guardsmen. So she had missed the ones going to the abbey and two mounted troops as well, both of them headed toward Wellsport; so said the innkeeper.

It was infuriating. Of all things in life, she loved having her own way, but it pleased her more to have it when someone else opposed it. It didn’t matter whom she was vying against, or even whether they knew they were vying. It could be a bet on cards, a horse race, a plot to take over a kingdom. Any of these could involve an opponent who was fun to squash like a bug or even more fun to deal with deliberately, torturously, at excruciating length, best of all if they didn’t know why! The delight of their seeking a reason, their frantic attempts to understand! Their despair when she told them there was no reason. So amusing when they realized she needed no reason except her own desires. She had looked forward to dealing with a lying innkeeper, looked forward to pursuing an irritating Tingawan presence, even to the very walls of the abbey. The innkeeper hadn’t lied; the girl and her caretakers hadn’t gone to the abbey, though possibly, only possibly, the man called Loppy might learn otherwise.

She would wait for Loppy to return before she gave up all hope for the amusement she had planned. And even if it were true, it would mean only a slight delay before she could find the girl and her guardians and kill them all. Perhaps when she returned to Altamont she would create a new Big Kill, one of her very own. Or perhaps she would wait until she went to Woldsgard, as wife of the duke. She would make him watch. Though it might work best to wait until she was his widow. Before he died, he could spend endless days tortured by her description of the deaths that would follow his own.

W
ilderbrook Abbey was deceptive at first appearance. As the reunited animals, people, and wagons came up the last pastured hill toward it, they saw first only the clustered bell towers fingering the sky. When they were a bit nearer, they saw a massive structure extending for a mile or more behind an even longer, though lower, wall. As they came still closer, they saw that the wall had its foundations at the bottom of a huge, circular depression in the grassland, one that curved away from them on either side, circling the abbey and continuing beyond it into the forest. The walls, for they were multiple, were very high, dotted with guardsmen along their lengths; the lands they enclosed were extensive; the depression was very deep—too deep, too wide, and too water-filled to be crossed except by way of a bridge.

There were several bridges. A leather-clad man on horseback beckoned to them from the outer end of the nearest one. As they turned toward him, he motioned toward the drawbridge and portcullis between the fourth and fifth of the huge stone piers that supported the structure. As they approached, the drawbridge rumbled down. The mounted man led them across, ironclad hooves and iron-sheathed wheels beating a reverberating tattoo upon the timbers. The narrowly grated portcullis rattle-clanged up into its recess in the thick wall, just high enough to clear the wagons, barely allowing time for Abasio’s wagon to follow the rest before it thundered down behind him. Once through the wall, however, all this noise had gained them access to only a wide, curved corridor between the outermost wall and a taller, inner one that was no less heavily guarded. The two walls had a wide space between them, enough that they had no trouble turning the wagons to the right to follow their guide.