The Waters Rising (30 page)

“Sister Tomea will be surprised.”

Oldwife took a deep breath. “Yesterday, the way they spoke to you, I had the feeling they were seeing you differently than you were used to. I think they saw you pretty much the way you are today. It would make sense for everyone here to see you just as you will be while you’re here. And you haven’t seen the abbot yet, though you’re supposed to do so this morning.” She squeezed Xulai’s hand. “Every girl who changes from child into woman feels strange, but the strangeness will pass. It really will.”

Xulai shut herself into her bedroom to think this over. She knew this particular change would not pass. The strangeness was not merely a matter of age. It was greater than that, different from that, stranger than any of her companions had even considered. Sadly, it had come without a directory that might have defined what might happen, how she might behave, even what she might become. Recent experience indicated that when dangerous things happened, when the possibility of being maimed or killed seemed imminent, some protective knowledge would simply happen, without being summoned, even if she didn’t want it. It would come! It would ride over her like a warrior on a warhorse, hooves pounding her own will into the earth, no matter what she wanted! Even if she would rather die, it wouldn’t let her.

Not that she could conceive of really wanting to die.

“Weasel?” she called. “Fisher?”

Ears, a nose, eyes came out of the pocket of her cloak. “You forgot the eggs.”

“Precious Wind will bring them. She’ll be back before long. It’s just . . . did my mother provide you? As a helper maybe? And what are you?”

“I don’t know who provided me. I remember waiting a long time at the temple for someone to come. When you came, I knew you were the one. I’m your helper, guide, rescuer. Just now I suppose I am a fisher. I can move rather fast. I fit through tight spaces. I can’t keep up with a horse, however, so if you’re taken away by someone on horseback, you might expect to meet a bird shape instead of a four-legged one. Hawk, I should think. They’re very swift. If you’re in a dungeon or something of that sort, it might be most anything. I think I might be a whole tribe of gophers, perhaps. Or even a bear.” He sounded rather pleased at the bear idea.

“All different?”

“Different shape, but always one thing. That’s why I said I needed a name for you to call when you need me. No telling what form I might show up in, but always able to communicate. And always needing to eat!”

“You were the thing I swallowed? You couldn’t have been. You came before I swallowed it.”

“I was part of the box, but what you swallowed was something else.” The sinuous creature disappeared into the pocket. Xulai sat on the side of the bed, struggling to think calmly. She felt she might have accepted all this more easily if she had the right to reject whatever thing or being might come shrieking out of her brain or heart or wherever it was hiding. She could have accepted it better if she could command it, tell it to go away.

However, she told herself in a kind of bleak despair, even if she couldn’t command the future, she would like to command her own memory so she could forget that Xu-i-lok, despite her protective knowledge and skill, still had perished at the evil will of the Duchess of Altamont. And of all the people she wanted at this moment, she most wanted Abasio. If no one else could explain herself to herself, he probably could. Or he could help her find out. If he didn’t already know.

Chapter 5

An Awakening

W
hen Precious Wind returned from the dining hall, she brought a basket of hot bread, half a dozen boiled eggs, a ball of soft cheese, and several apples. “I have told Bear and the others,” she said. “It will spare you having to explain or react.”

Xulai took this in the spirit it was meant and thanked Precious Wind for her thoughtfulness. She went to her room to eat by herself, in order to think; actually she and the fisher thought together. Avoiding emotional subjects, they decided he would be called Fisher. This had a certain reference to water, which for some reason pleased the creature, and fishers were not common animals, which was acceptable to Xulai. Having eaten two eggs, Fisher returned to what he referred to as “his” pocket, carrying the uncracked eggs to eat later. Xulai returned to the living room.

“Bear reminded me that the abbot wanted to talk with us this morning,” said Precious Wind. “Particularly with you, Xulai.”

“Why not?” Xulai answered, managing to keep her voice level and staid, though she still roiled inwardly like a stormy sea. She could not remember ever having been this emotional before. She could not remember, in fact, feeling anything very strongly except affection and fear. She had loved the princess, had respected her Tingawan minders, and had found comfort and affection from Oldwife, who had taken out splinters and removed thorns and bandaged scraped knees. None of those feelings had been desperately ardent; they had required nothing but an obedient passivity. The one time she’d been asked to do something really active, she had almost ruined it. Now she thought it a pity she couldn’t have been angry a lot sooner, for anger demanded something of one! It demanded action! Response! Naturally, now that it was very difficult
not
to show how she felt, showing any emotion at all would be unwise.

She took a deep breath. “Meeting the abbot can’t be any more difficult than the morning so far.” She stood up and straightened her skirts, attempting a placid smile. It felt stretched, as though her lips wished to snarl and resented being refused the opportunity.

Precious Wind nodded. “Brother Aalon will guide us. He’ll be here shortly.”

Oldwife begged off the meeting, so it was only the two Tingawans and Xulai who followed the brother on a lengthy route that included several locked gates guarded by helmed men and ended at a heavy door with a knocker in the shape of a kraken. Their guide rapped three times. The door opened, apparently of its own accord, and they found the abbot, a small, clean-shaven man, head haloed with a mist of white hair. He was dressed in a simple white robe and seated behind a huge writing desk in a simple chair from which he rose as he beckoned them forward.

“Ah. Here is a partial contingent from the Woldsgard group. Your associates have nothing to share with me?”

Precious Wind bowed gracefully. “They’re trying to get themselves and the animals settled, Eldest Brother, so we’re the delegation.”

“Thank you, Aalon,” said the abbot. “There are some comfortable chairs in the little room down the corridor, if you don’t mind waiting to take them back. We shouldn’t be long.”

The brother bowed and withdrew as the abbot gestured them toward a group of chairs around a table that bore a dozen little cups and a steaming pot over a candle warmer. “You’ll like this,” the abbot murmured. “Real Jen-tai. Last year’s.” He poured and distributed the cups from a lacquer tray.

Xulai sniffed the steam from the cup. Flowers. And hay. And something like piney woods. She sipped as the others were doing, no one speaking at all. Perhaps it was a Tingawan thing they hadn’t told her of, this silent sipping. More likely it was an abbey thing, for surely over all those forgotten years she had been told everything there was to know about Tingawa!

When his cup was empty, the abbot sighed and turned it upside down on the tray. The others followed his example.

He said, “Now. I need enlightenment. I have received messages from my friend Justinian, but he has never gone into any detail. He has never sent me a messenger or a bird with anything beyond a hint.”

This was not what Justinian had told her! Xulai took a firm grip on her tongue and said, “Details can kill. Messengers can be tortured. Birds can be shot with arrows.”

Both Bear and Precious Wind stared at her in surprise. She returned their stare. She had no idea how to go on except . . . to go on!

The abbot nodded, his face grave. “Well, there is no bowman in this room. I did gather this trouble centered on Altamont. What do we know and what have we heard about Alicia, the Duchess of Altamont?”

He was looking at Precious Wind, but it was Xulai who answered, spontaneously, in the strange, peremptory voice she had used only a few times before.

“I will be happy to tell you what we know about the duchess, if you will tell us what is known about Huold the Fearless.”

The abbot gave her a look of amused surprise, then went to the door, opened it, and called to Brother Aalon. “Call Brother Wordswell, Brother Aalon. It seems we need him.”

“He’s probably in bed, Brother. He spends most of his nights in the library.”

“Well if he is, wake him.”

They sat without speaking, Bear almost visibly steaming, Precious Wind regarding Xulai with a strange expression, half amusement, half concern, while Xulai herself sat suspended, in a kind of mental cobweb, thoughts going off in all directions and ending nowhere in particular. The abbot gave no hint either of discomfort or of what he might be thinking.

A rap came at the door, which opened to admit a very tall, gray, thin brother in wrinkled white robes and a disheveled golden stole, his golden headdress so far atilt it was in imminent danger of sliding down over one ear. He had obviously dressed in a hurry. His furry eyebrows struggled with each other over the bridge of his beaky nose, and his lips were pursed in annoyance. The wrinkles around his mouth indicated the expression was habitual.

“Sit down, Brother Wordswell,” the abbot said invitingly. “Will you have tea? No? Well then, sit comfortably while this young woman tells us a tale and asks you for some information afterward.”

Xulai folded her hands in her lap. “The abbot asks what we know about Alicia, Duchess of Altamont. To speak of her we must first speak of Mirami.

“Falyrion, Duke of Kamfels, had a wife, Naila; a daughter, Genieve; and a son, Falredi. Naila died. Not long thereafter, Falyrion married Mirami, who bore him a daughter, Alicia, and a son, Hulix. Then Falyrion died and Falredi succeeded to the ducal throne of Kamfels. Then Falredi died. Mirami’s son Hulix succeeded him as duke. Mirami left Kamfels to her toddler son, under the care of a steward, and took her daughter, Alicia, to the court of King Gahls on the King’s Highland. It is my understanding that the king calls his court, city, and the surrounding area Ghastain.

“Strangely enough, over the preceding few years, King Gahls had been married three times. All three of his young, healthy, virginal wives died soon after marrying, suddenly, strangely, and childless.

“King Gahls then married Mirami, who very promptly bore him a son, supposed half brother to Mirami’s other children, though likely they are full siblings sired by her chamberlain and constant companion.”

Bear half rose. “Xulai!”

She waved him down imperiously. “Alicia grew up and was given the duchy of Altamont. It was then suggested to Justinian, Duke of Wold, that he should marry Alicia, Duchess of Altamont. He, being already betrothed to a Tingawan daughter of the clan Do-Lok, refused this honor, and his wife-to-be was cursed on their wedding day. She later died strangely and childlessly, and the duchess Alicia is now trying to force a marriage with Justinian.

“One ducal husband and one ducal stepson dead in Kamfels, three royal brides dead in Ghastain, one ducal bride dead in Wold, all dead! And, after all these convenient deaths, one of Mirami’s children is heir to the throne of Ghastain; one is Duke of Kamfels; one is Duchess of Altamont; and all three of the children, Rancitor, Alicia, and Hulix, are evincing considerable interest in Wold and the castle of Woldsgard.

“That is what we know about the duchess and her mother. Oh yes! It is not impossible that Naila, Falyrion’s first wife, was an even earlier target.”

She looked up. Silence. Three pairs of eyes focused on her, three jaws slightly dropped. Brother Wordswell was staring at his hands. “I’m sorry,” she said in an unapologetic tone. “I thought you wanted me to speak.”

“How old are you?” asked the abbot.

“It seems I am about twenty,” Xulai said with a slightly twisted smile.

Bear said disagreeably, “Twenty going on sixty-five.”

“I had been told you were somewhat younger,” murmured the abbot.

“What an odd coincidence!” Xulai replied, managing a smile. “I had been told the same thing. For some no doubt suitable reason, I was treated as though I was much younger and was enabled to look and act the part. I suppose it was a kind of protective coloration provided by the Tingawans who selected me as Xakixa. Now it is evidently time to give up that particular pretense. It’s a relief to me, in a way, for it helps me understand why I’ve been troubled for quite a long time by feelings that did not seem suitably childish.”

After a long moment’s silence, the abbot said, “It’s strange no one else has noticed these coincidences in Mirami’s life.”

Xulai nodded. “There has been some notice; covert, I should imagine. And there’s no real reason anyone should have taken overt notice. The events occurred over a period of years and in separate places. The births of Alicia and Hulix came some years before the deaths of Duke Falyrion and Falredi; there was at least a year or so between the deaths of each of King Gahls’s three young wives; the birth of the heir to the throne came years before Alicia was given the lands of Altamont and began her assault upon my . . . lord Justinian. And there were years, long years, after that before Princess Xu-i-lok died.

“To anyone hearing of these, they would have seemed separate happenings, one thing at a time, but I heard about them all at once, in the space of a few hours. It was like hearing a song, each verse with the same refrain. Death. Barren wives. Mirami.” She looked down at her hands, then up into the librarian’s quiet face. “Elder Brother, what do you know of Huold the Fearless?”

“And how did Huold get into this matter?” Wordswell asked.

Xulai had briefly thought she might tell the abbot about her real parentage and what she had learned about the duchess during her nighttime mission in the forest of Wold, but upon considering last night’s meeting with the prior, she had decided against it. She was not entirely sure he could be trusted, and those things had been Xu-i-lok’s secrets, her
mother’s
secrets. She would keep them until she knew it was no longer necessary. The story she could tell was true in most of its elements, and it would do well enough.

“The road to the Stoneway, north of Wold, is little used. I often sat in one of the orchard trees along the road, well hidden from any passerby, a quiet place where I could read or merely sit and watch the birds. One day the duchess went past on her way to visit her brother. She passed very slowly, stopping here and there along the way, eating Wold with her eyes as I had seen her do before. I heard her remark to her companion that she intended to find something on Wold lands that Huold had left there. I wondered if that might be why she is so set on my cousin marrying her. So she’ll have the right to scour the lands, looking for whatever it is.”

“You never mentioned this to me,” said Bear, his eyes slitted as they were when he was angry.

She smiled sweetly at him, ignoring the answering heat his tone had ignited. “Bear, I beg your pardon. It happened just before the princess died. If you’ll recall, everyone at Woldsgard was grieving and distracted. Then this journey began, almost overnight, and there’s been no time to talk quietly of anything at all. The trip has been long and tiring and dangerous, and it was more important to get here safely than to discuss the devices of ancient heroes, which, in fact, I had forgotten about until this morning.”

“But since it did come to mind,” the abbot said thoughtfully, “you thought it might be useful to know about it.”

“Yes. Exactly. Who was Huold, and what was it he hid or left or buried on the lands of Wold, assuming he did any such thing?”

“The thing he supposedly took into the Icefang range during his last journey,” said the abbot, cocking his head and staring at his librarian.

Brother Wordswell wiped his lips, shrugged, looked over the company searchingly, then settled himself. “Throughout all his many conquests, it was said that Ghastain wore or carried a mysterious thing of limitless potency which gave him great power.” Wordswell shifted in his chair, head rotating back and forth slightly, as though glancing through an index on the wall that no one else could see. “It was said that this whatever-it-was allowed him to prevail even when the odds were against him, even when vastly outnumbered, even when he attacked heedlessly, without planning. The post–Before Time historian Thrastus Danilus tells us that as Ghastain’s reputation grew, so did his pride. He thought himself invincible. He coveted the world!

“During all those years, Huold was his faithful and beloved companion, many times wounded in Ghastain’s service. He was sometimes called the Arm of Ghastain. We learn from the historian Barkamber that when Ghastain ran out of other places to covet, he amassed an armada and sailed westward to seize the isles of the Sea King. Barkamber quotes the stories of that time, which tell us that the Sea King called up the power of the deep. Waves taller than the tallest tree rose from the depths; Ghastain grasped the thing of power and called upon it, but it was of no use. He and all his men were drawn down into the sea.