Waterdance (26 page)

Atheris shook his head wearily.

“No. Even had I wished to do so—which I assuredly did not—I would not have dared, lest in your weakened condition you died. But I can imagine easily enough how it was done. When the Bone Hunters found their fallen comrade, they found his weapon, still stained with your blood. I should have thought to clean or take it, but I was too shocked by your victory. Having your blood and the weapon that wounded you, the others could cast a leech spell easily enough, even without knowing your location. I tended you as best I could, but I am no healer and no life-giver. In the end it was simply your own healing magic and the potency of your will to survive that saved you.” He closed his eyes. “The distance to Rocarran—I did not know how far it was myself, and I did not ask the others in the caravan. I did not want to know. I left it to destiny to decide whether you would recover in time for us to escape, or—or not.”

He shook his head again.

“Yes, I prevented the battle death you sought in the corridor. If you were indeed the Harbinger, as I knew by then you must be—” He sighed. “I thought your life would be spared to ensure that your role in the prophecy had been fulfilled. I did not know your royal blood, you see. I did not know. And if I had known—”

He fell silent.

Peri shook her head, too.

“Mahdha scour me raw.” She sighed. “Well, the question is, what do we do now?”

“Do?” Atheris shrugged. “Sit. Wait. Die.”

Peri ground her teeth.

“Bright Ones, are you a complete idiot or just a complete coward?” she demanded. “Do you think there’s something noble about sitting around like a cull waiting for the slaughter?”

Atheris’s eyes blazed at the insult, but the anger quickly faded into weary resignation.

“No, there is nothing noble about it,” he said shortly. “But neither is there anything especially clever in futile struggle against destiny.”

“It’s only futile,” Peri said just as shortly, “when you’ve tried and failed. And destiny is what you make it. I didn’t hear anything in your prophecy that said we have to sit here passively and wait to die. If it’s my destiny and there’s no way to prevent it, then nothing I try is going to do any harm, right?”

Atheris shrugged.

“I suppose not,” he said. “No good, but most likely no harm either. Since my destiny appears to be death by torture, I have no compunction against attempting to avoid it. What do you propose?”

“Do you have any magic that can get us out of these cells?” Peri asked, hoping against hope.

Atheris chuckled dryly, dashing her hopes even before he spoke. “I am geas-bound against any attempt to escape,” he said. “Do you think they would trust me, a heretic and traitor, any more than you?”

“Attempting to escape,” Peri said slowly. “Just that?”

Atheris shrugged.

“As far as I can ascertain,” he said. “What else might I be expected to do?”

Peri clenched her hands again.

“Can you remove the geas binding me?” she asked softly.

Atheris dropped his eyes.

“Perhaps,” he said, just as softly. “But I will not. If it is your destiny to die as a sacrifice to wake Eregis ... I owe my people that, at least. If you are meant to avoid that fate, there will be another way.”

Peri ground her teeth. Bright Ones knew she wanted to escape, but there was a far more important consideration. Eregis’s rising, real or imagined, could mean only one thing—a new attack against Agrond and Bregond. It meant Agrondish and Bregondish lives, more blasted earth—

“Atheris,” she said slowly, “I’m going to tell you something, something you need to understand. I’m only High Lord Randon and High Lady Kayli’s misfit daughter, but I’m still a child of the royal house of Agrond. By the time I rescued you, my uncle already knew I was missing. By the next morning he’d know where I’d gone. By noon the garrison mage would have contacted my mother in Agrond and my aunt in Bregond. Between the two houses it wouldn’t take any time at all to raise at least a first-strike battalion and mount them on fast horses for the Barrier—and they’ve got good horses.

“By this minute, Atheris, I’ll wager there’s a good gathering of troops there and at least a couple dozen mages honing their battle magics—probably including my fire-slinging mother and my storm-herding aunt. They’re not waiting for a sacrifice or a prophecy or a god. In their mind, your people came down into Bregond to capture me, and that’s all the warning they’ll need that Sarkond is planning something that involves Agrond and Bregond. Believe me, it won’t take much to convince either country to go to war against Sarkond. I don’t know whether they’ll collapse the Barrier and march straight into Sarkond, or whether they’ll risk sending a mage and some troops through to scry and scout, but I doubt they’re going to wait too much longer before they do something drastic.”

Atheris listened silently, but his eyes widened, and Peri spoke as earnestly as she could.

“Say, just as speculation, your temple sacrificed me this very minute and your god came roaring up bright and perky from wherever He’s been sleeping. Just what do you expect your god to do? Go walking personally down to the Barrier to stomp out our troops? Wave His hands and make all the people vanish from Agrond and Bregond so your people can walk down there and take it? Short of that, suppose He does what gods usually do—make a lot of noise and spectacle and throw out a few minor miracles to get the worshipers all fired up.

“Fine. He’s done that. Your people are all raring to march right down to the Barrier and conquer two countries full of enemies. Say Eregis empowers your mages, too, because they certainly aren’t going to be able to pull anything more out of those southern lands, are they? Even so, Sarkond’s still got to gather an army, and from what I’ve seen, finding soldiers who are up to any kind of battle is going to take a miracle right there.

“But say there’s enough competent fighters, too, just for the sake of argument. After all, we’re talking gods and miracles here. Still, it’s going to take time to gather them and arm them—we won’t worry about training and drilling and strategy either, or how Sarkond’s going to muster up armor and weapons. The plain fact is that by the time Sarkond could put together any kind of force—weeks at the very least, even given the best possible circumstances—Bregondish and Agrondish magics and troops will have blasted what’s left of your country to ash.” Peri waited a moment, and when Atheris said nothing, she pressed, “Can you look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong?”

Atheris said nothing, but he would not meet her eyes.

“So you’re hanging all your hopes on your god’s direct intervention,” Peri said plainly. “The same god that let your people down the last time they went to war and gambled everything on their faith. Now I’ll tell you what I think. Personally I think your prophecy is so much stable muck shoveled out by your priests to keep your people going, keep their hopes up. I can’t blame them for that. But never mind what I believe. Say it’s a genuine prophecy. If that’s true, your priests misinterpreted it once already, and look what that did to your country and your people. Can Sarkond afford to lose what little it’s got left if that happens again?”

“What choice have we?” Atheris said flatly. “It is the only hope my people have had for decades.”

“Obviously you think there’s a choice,” Peri countered, “or you’d never have taken the chance you did. Even you believe there’s another way, a better way to view this prophecy. I’ll tell you true, with a war and my life at stake, I’ve got to hope you’re right.”

“What do you want of me?” Atheris said wearily. “I will not kill you, Peri, and I cannot help you escape.”

“For now, just think about what I’ve said,” Peri said slowly. “Just consider it while I try to come up with an alternative, and promise me that if I do think of something, you’ll consider it with an open mind.”

Atheris was silent for a long moment.

“Yes,” he said at last. “That much I can promise.”

Peri scooted over to the bars, as close to Atheris as she could get, but he made no effort to move closer.

“And tell me whatever you know about this Whore of Eregis,” she said.

Another long moment of silence.

“No one knows much,” he said. “She came from the south around the time that Sarkond was devastated and the Barrier erected.”

“She couldn’t have been very old then,” Peri murmured. “Hardly more than a child.”

“I know only that she was revealed to the temple as a prophet,” Atheris said apologetically. “And she has served Eregis ever since.”

“How could a Bregondish child find her way around Sarkond, much less make it through the armies, across the border, and as far as Rocarran during the war and set herself up in the temple as a prophet?” Peri mused. “Unless she was captured and taken to Rocarran. But why would Sarkondish soldiers bother taking a Bregondish child to the temple?”

Atheris shrugged, shaking his head.

“I do not know,” he said. “And why would she have even lived to be taken there? I have heard it said that even Bregondish children take their own lives if capture seems inevitable.”

Peri touched the empty sheath in her boot where her grace-blade had once been.

“Only two reasons,” she said. “Either she was bound or geased to prevent suicide, like me, or she came to Sarkond purposefully. And I can’t imagine why—”

Then she fell silent. There was a story from the war, a story of the time just following her mother and father’s marriage, when—

“I know who she is,” Peri said suddenly. “Her name was Seba. She was captured by Sarkonds as a child and ended up sold in Agrond as a slave. She tricked her way into my mother’s service and tried to poison her. Later, when Sarkondish raiders attacked at the border, killing almost the entire ruling family of Bregond, Seba—supposedly the only survivor—was taken back to Agrond and told my uncle that my parents had been killed in the raid. She disappeared after that.”

Atheris stared at her, his eyes wide.

“I cannot believe any Bregond, especially a child, could so betray her own people,” he said very softly. “I cannot believe our prophet could be such a person.”

“I know,” Peri said grimly. “It makes no sense. There’s a lot I’ve been told about the war that doesn’t make any sense. But grant me this much—if I’m right, then anything that comes out of that traitor’s mouth is pretty questionable prophecy, isn’t it? Can you tell me you didn’t see the madness in her eyes?”

“Yes,” Atheris said after a moment’s pause. “I cannot dispute that. But how can we know if you are right?”

“Simple enough,” Peri said, shrugging. “We ask her.”

In fact, by Peri’s reckoning, it was no more than an hour before the Whore returned, this time without guards. She turned and sat down in the chair silently, taking in Peri’s change of position and smiling.

“Ah, I see you have made peace with your friend, the treacherous Sarkondish enemy,” the Whore said. “So you believe him, that he did not betray you. No, child, fate doomed you even as it doomed me.”

“If fate doomed you,” Peri said deliberately, “then you helped it along, Seba.”

If Eregis’s Whore was surprised by Peri’s statement, she made no sign of it, only smiling slightly.

“So you do know that much, at least,” she said thoughtfully. “What else do you know?”

“I know that despite everything my mother did to help you,” Peri said flatly, “you did your best to have her killed, and the entire royal family of Bregond with her.”

Seba laughed softly.

“Then you know nothing,” she said.

“Then you deny it?” Peri challenged.

“I deny nothing.” Seba gave her a dreamy smile. “Tell me, young warrior, you’ve lived in the horse clans, have you not?”

“I’ve fostered there most of my life,” Peri said cautiously.

“What if your clan leader gave you an order,” Seba said, “not only for the good of your clan, but for the good of all of Bregond?”

“I’d obey him,” Peri said, shrugging.

“Even if he bade you do something you found horrible, even repugnant?” Seba pressed.

Peri shrugged again.

“My feelings don’t matter,” she said impatiently. “Mahdha knows I’ve been told that often enough of recent. It’s what’s best for Bregond that matters.”

Seba chuckled.

“Then by your standards, I’m not a traitor, but a hero,” she said. “For my actions were bidden by one looked upon with the greatest of respect by all of Bregond, one of its staunchest protectors, High Priestess Brisi of the Temple of Inner Flame. I was only a child then, a child abducted, sold, and raped, and then disowned by my own people for the simple crime of survival. The High Priestess and her allies were the ones who took me in, told me that Mahdha hadn’t yet forgotten my name. I was given orders to perform certain acts that I was told would save my country and my people from utter destruction and restore my honor. I obeyed those orders and was named a traitor for my trouble. My crime, young Perian, was in foolishly trusting one I’d been taught to respect and obey, but my country found that as unforgivable as they’d found the fact that a mere child was too young and frightened to kill herself for their peace of mind.”

Peri flushed.

“They don’t know that you weren’t to blame,” she said hotly. “Nobody knows.”

“Oh, yes,” Seba said softly. “Somebody knows. High Lady Kairi knows. Your mother knows. And yet they’ve kept silent, haven’t they?”

Peri hesitated, remembering her mother’s vagueness about the war. Yes, there had been some commotion about the temples, hadn’t there, some hint of scandal? And her brother Estann, he hadn’t gone to the temples to train.

“They kept silent,” Seba said, smiling, “to shield the temples from the rage of a betrayed people, to preserve their precious Orders. They hid the truth because I made a far more politically convenient scapegoat, because the honor of one orphaned girl-child didn’t matter. But it matters now, doesn’t it, Perian? And I matter now.”

“If that’s the case,” Peri challenged, “why didn’t you stay and tell the truth, instead of disappearing?”

Seba laughed.

“The word of a child already dead to her people and deemed traitor in two countries, against the word of the two High Ladies she’d tried to kill? Assuming, of course, that I’d have been allowed to live long enough to tell at all. No, there was nothing left for me in Agrond or Bregond—no kin, no honor, no hope. But Sarkond was a country full of hopeless people, the outcast, the lost. My past association with High Priestess Brisi bought me shelter, sanctuary, from her allies here.”