The Waters Rising (42 page)

As for Precious Wind and Oldwife, that part was easy. She’d actually had cats with her, actually had a chipmunk whose job was to tempt the cats into moving around a little, while the cats themselves made little cat noises. Wildcats weren’t that different in smell from other cats, if that mattered. The tree they slept under was dead, and there’d be the same warmth beneath it from cat bodies as from human ones. The owl would hear the chipmunk moving, hear the cats, sense the warmth perhaps. She remembered staying awake a long time that night, mentally telling Oldwife not to snore, and on that night, the old woman had breathed almost silently.

In this case, hands and feet in shackles, she didn’t have to convince a tree or a horse or an owl. She had to convince herself.

What was the reality of her situation?

Her hand was too big to come through the iron bracelet.

Why was it too big?

Because it had all her fingers on it.

Suppose she could convince herself it didn’t have all the fingers in one row like that. Suppose the hand had only two fingers, the little finger and the ring finger. In her mind she saw them separating from the rest of the hand.
Too bony to separate? Bones are too real. Convince yourself the bones are flexible, like a willow wand.
She could feel it happening, feel the hard bone deciding to become more supple. Somewhere down her arm another brain was actually telling her hand what to do. It wasn’t her brain, not her big brain in her head, but another, smaller brain, down the arm, one of several little brains like a string of beads down her arm, a little necklace of brains saying,
Let’s pull our arm out of this shackle very gently, softly, then let the other part of the hand become equally soft, equally pliable, and out it slides, slippery, easily,
the two parts of her arm caressing one another, rubbing away the soreness where the shackles had chafed the wrists. . .

We dreamed this,
she told herself.
We dreamed of the tree branches splitting just like this. The roots reaching down and the branches splitting. . .

Now, now the other hand, it’s already moving, the hand splitting painlessly, the wrist opening down the center, the flesh rejoining seamlessly, the arm bones gone, all gone, the arms coming out of the shackle, out of the sleeve. Now the feet! Too bad, feet are in boots, so we have to divide inside the boot and leave the boot behind when we come out of the ankle shackle. Now the other leg. Now all that’s left is the head, but we don’t need to worry about the head, the arms and legs can unfasten the thing that’s holding the head. No key, just a pin in the shackle, quite enough to hold a prisoner unless the prisoner has eight extremities and a skull that has suddenly gone soft and malleable and a lot of little minds up and down her body and has decided to leave the clothes where they are as her body oozes out of them, then off of the bench, across the floor, then, slowly, up the wall beside the door, effortlessly up the wall to a position over the doorway.

In the room at the top of the tower, Jenger thought of using the signal flags that sometimes worked when the shafts were flooded. He hadn’t signaled her yet. She didn’t even know he’d made it up the slope, much less that he’d had time to bribe the boy at the abbey and make off with anyone. It had been a bit touchy getting up here. The shaft held more water than he liked to see. No one else would use it; that was sure. Not until it had drained a good bit more. Well, then. He had to let her know and there was no wind to stretch the flags so one could tell them apart. The flags wouldn’t work. Even if there were enough wind, it was already getting dark.

He sat down at the table and tried to write a message. The words wouldn’t come. Each time he finished he threw the thing away. He kept thinking of her eyes, the woman downstairs, her eyes. She had looked at him as though she didn’t believe he existed, as though she could not be convinced that he could be as he was. The woman’s eyes held no endless, deadly tunnel as did the duchess’s eyes. Instead there was a calm, fearless, reasoned judgment there. A cool judgment: no hatred in it, simply an assessment as to value, likelihood, possibility, reason. Those eyes knew that nothing existed without reason, and since they found no reason for his being, the eyes had decided Jenger did not exist.

The damned Great Bear of Zol thought Jenger existed! Jenger had found a reason for Bear. Money was his reason, money to pay off his bride-price. And for Mirami, power was a reason. Mirami knew he existed. And Alicia had found a reason for him. He gave her what she liked, did the things she liked. The duchess thought she wanted power, but it was pain she really wanted. Pain and fear. People with money existed. People with power existed. People who could inflict pain existed. But the woman downstairs discounted him, disbelieved he
was.

He wrote again. “
The Tingawan child and the driver have gone on to Elsmere. I have one of her servants, not the driver we met. What do you want me to do with her?
”

He went to the Dark House cage and picked out a pigeon, glanced at the window, and realized it was already fully dark. The pigeon wouldn’t fly at night. He’d have to wait until morning. If the duchess wanted the woman brought down to the Old Dark House, he’d return some of the Vulture Tower birds to the Old Dark House at the same time. The cage was too full. Too many messages had come from both the Old Dark House and Ghastain, and he hadn’t had a chance to send any of the birds back. Very few travelers cared to go to the Old Dark House, even if well paid to do so. He rolled the paper and placed it in the message tube, leaving it on the table. It would have to wait until morning.

He was tired but he wasn’t ready to sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about the eyes of the woman in the cell. Eyes could be changed. People who did not accept reality could be forced to accept reality. Perhaps if this woman knew more about him, she would disbelieve less. He had changed people’s opinion of him in the past. He had pursued, won, delighted, then terrified, then killed or worse than killed. It was part of the game Alicia had him play, part of the game Alicia had played with him, too, only she had most often been the one to pursue, win, delight, and now and then, to terrify.

A mirror hung on the back of the door in the room where the cages were. He looked into it, trying to see into his own eyes. He couldn’t see anything. Perhaps he couldn’t believe himself. He would have to make himself believable. First he would change the mind of the woman downstairs and then he would come back and look again. Either that or get on his horse and ride as far as he could as fast as he could, which would do no good at all. The duchess would find him, somehow.

It was a good thing he hadn’t taken the little girl. He wouldn’t have dared touch the little girl. The duchess had said she had far worse things than rape to do to the little girl and she wanted those things to come as a lovely surprise. He had not seen her torture a child before. He was not sure he could bear it. But a woman the age of the one he’d taken prisoner shouldn’t be that surprised. Even if she were virgin, she should have heard of the things that some men had been taught to enjoy, guessed at those things. She had no right to disbelieve that he existed!

He went back down the stairs. Back in the mining days, the old tower had been both the communication center and the punishment tower, for workers who didn’t do what they were told to do. It was called the Vulture Tower because of the carrion that had lain around it. Vultures nested near carrion, when they could. Back then there had been flag towers all up and down the slopes to exchange messages. They’d used runners, then, kids with long legs and good lungs. Before. When things were normal. When things weren’t disbelieved.

He unlocked the cell door and opened it. The afterglow was almost gone. He could barely see the woman across the room, lying limp against the far wall, her clothing sagging. He had just a second to register that the clothing actually looked empty before something swung toward him from above, something gray that closed on both sides of his head at once, clamping tight on his head, closing on both his arms and wrapping around his body and upper legs so he couldn’t move. He barely had time to think that he was bound as she had been bound, helpless as she had been helpless, time to realize there were two huge eyes in front of him, looking at him, and between them, a beak, like a vulture’s beak, that opened, wider and wider. The top of it entered his forehead; the bottom of it came up under his chin, thrusting through into his mouth, piercing his tongue. He felt his face tear like wet canvas, felt it rip away from his skull with a terrible sound, a spongy tearing sound, forehead, eyelids, nose, cheeks, ears . . .

He couldn’t scream because something boneless slithered down his throat and stopped his breathing. Very soon, his heart gave up the battle.

The thing decided to dispose of Jenger. Better if nothing were found. It oozed its way down the few stairs to the tower door, through the outside door, and into the dusk, dragging the carcass behind it. From downwind came the calls of a wolf pack.

Moving swiftly, the thing towed Jenger’s body away among the trees, some little distance from the tower. It found a cliff, a straight drop onto a little plateau, a difficult climb for a man, not too difficult for a wolf, a badger, for tiny scavengers, for vultures, crows, mice. The thing paused to chop the legs and arms into pieces with its strong beak, to crush the skull into shards with a rock held firmly in its tentacles, to rip the rib
cage, spine, and pelvis into fragments and then let the remnants fall. The thing stayed where it was for a long moment, as though thinking, before emitting a cloud of fragrance or stink or mere aroma, depending upon what might attract the sensors downwind, four legged, two legged, no legged at all. The cloud dissipated, moving away on the wind toward the place where wolves had howled.

The thing returned to the tower. There was quite a bit of blood on the floor, door
frame, and door itself, some on the wall, the steps, the tower floor. The stone cistern at the side of the room was fed by a rainspout from the roof. It had rained recently. The cistern was full. The bucket sitting inside the cell was dipped and sloshed across the cell floor, dipped and sloshed across the cell wall, emptied repeatedly over the thing itself, then over the steps, the floor of the tower, the doorstep leading outside, sloshed again and again until all the blood was washed away. The thing retreated. Went away.

I
n the dawn sky, wings high above located the tower and plunged toward it. Wings became fur. The fisher found Xulai sitting in the room at the top of the stairs, her arms on the table, her head on her arms, so deeply asleep she could not be wakened. A nearby plate held crumbs of bread, a bit of cheese. The cupboard the food had come from stood open in the corner. A half-empty bottle of cider stood beside an empty mug. The fisher left her and slithered through a quick reconnoiter of the entire tower and the area around it. Xulai upstairs, one horse in the stable, and several cages of pigeons in the tower were the only living things around. Fisher became winged again. From the sky he could see the man and the horse who had traveled all night to get here. Fisher, winged, cried out and dropped once more, landing on the man’s shoulder.

When Abasio arrived, Xulai was still as Fisher had found her. Abasio put his arms around her and pulled her close. She was shivering but still deeply asleep. She had not been injured. There was a blanket on the bed. He looked at it, considered some of the things Precious Wind had recently told him, and rejected using it for anything at all. Instead, he fetched the blanket he had brought with him. He wrapped her in it. He opened the door to the other room widely, its mirrored back banging against the wall. He opened all the cages so the birds who homed here could feed and the birds who homed elsewhere could fly away, propping the outside door open so it couldn’t close on them. The biggest cage bore the hunched shape of a perched vulture’s wings. Vulture Tower. One cage had the house sign on it, obviously the Old Dark House. Those were the two new signs Xulai had seen at the abbey. He left the room, shutting the door behind him without seeing or being seen by the mirror on its other side.

Blue was waiting with the other horse. Abasio would not stay a moment longer than necessary, for Xulai’s captor might have summoned others or might himself return. There might have been another horse. He might merely have gone a short distance away by foot. They left the tower and went back the way they had come, Xulai cradled in Abasio’s arms on Jenger’s horse, Blue following, almost sleepwalking. They had to circle widely not to be seen by the abbey watchmen on the walls, but by late evening, Abasio had hidden all of them in or near the wagon, where a small, virtually smokeless fire in the little clay stove made it warm and comfortable. There was room between the wagon and the back wall of the old, wrecked house for the two horses to stand or lie at ease. Abasio had spread straw in the space, and the little stove warmed this temporary stable as well.

He looked Xulai over carefully while she slept, his touch seeming to be of no concern to her. She was not injured anywhere except for a chafing of her wrists from the shackles he had seen in the cell, shackles still closed, locked. She was not bruised except on the upper arms and around her hips where she had obviously been bound on the way to the tower. The bruises were not extensive. Her clothing, complete with hidden weaponry, told him she had been taken totally by surprise but not interfered with in any way. She had been taken, chained, but not abused, and her captor had disappeared. There was something sewn into the hem of her undershift, but it didn’t feel like a weapon. He let it alone.