The Waters Rising

by Sheri S. Tepper

  He held out his hands. She put her own into them and bowed over them, shaken to her heart at the vehemence of his words. “I promise you, Cousin. I promise you.”

  After a moment’s silence, he said, “They know, in Tingawa, that the princess is dead. They know I am asking you, that is, the Xakixa, to make this promise. Both she and they required it of me when we were wed. Precious Wind was sworn to keep it. Now you are sworn to keep it.” He paused for a moment. “I must tell you something troubling . . .” He shifted uncomfortably.

  She leaned forward and placed her hand over his. “Tell me whatever I need to know, Cousin.”

  “Great Bear was sworn to serve Xu-i-lok. When he was sworn to service, we all thought, well, when . . . if the princess died, you would return to Tingawa immediately. If she did not die, you would stay here in her service while Great Bear and Precious Wind might return to Tingawa as they chose. We all knew Great Bear would choose to go home. He had already paid a part of the bride-price for the woman he had chosen. At the time, she was only a child, named Legami-am, but of a very good family. It was something of a coup for Bear to have betrothed her and there was plenty of time for little Legami-am to grow up before she and Bear would wed . . .”

  “Ah,” she whispered. “But it has been a very long time.”

  “It has been a very long time, longer than anyone could have foreseen. She is older now. They have sent messages to each other, they have seen each other’s pictures, they have been lauded, one to the other, by their families. Now Great Bear is afire to go home and start a family.”

  “But we are going to Tingawa.”

  “You are going by a long, slow way. Great Bear is not happy about that. Also, while in the service of Xu-i-lok he could not earn the prizes he had been earning at the battle games. He is a poorer man for having made this commitment, and I will not let him lose by his faithfulness. Half a year ago, Prince Orez sent three men to the abbey. They carried a very large reward I had given him for Bear and Precious Wind. It is more than enough to make up Bear’s bride-price. I will tell Precious Wind about it before you leave.”

  “Why did you not send it now, with us, Cousin?”

  “Better three hunters from Etershore, dressed shabbily, not worth the robbing, than a well-manned group of wagons from Woldsgard, Xulai. Such wagons are bait for snoopers and spies, some of them very clever. You will be looked over more than once on the way. The men from Etershore carried the treasure in gems, light in weight, easy to hide, and the abbey is accustomed to such. We know the funds are safe, waiting for them, for the men brought me the receipt on their way back, signed by the prior. I will give it to Precious Wind before you go. Neither she nor Bear will lose by their honorable commitment. Still, I wanted you to know the source of Bear’s discontent. He will get his treasure when he steps on the ship to Tingawa and not before. I believe him to be honorable, but we all know the danger of giving Bear any treasure so long as his . . . habit may come upon him.”

  “I will be aware, Cousin. Does Precious Wind know this?”

  “Yes. She knows part and will know all before she leaves. And she knows Bear well, and therefore understands the need. She calms him, but still he . . . frets.”

  “How do they know in Tingawa that the princess is dead?”

  “I sent birds to Wellsport and Etershore. Sometimes a small boat is blown across the sea by storm, and we send messages on the return voyage. Despite that, I am positive the Tingawans knew of it the moment it happened.” He turned slightly, staring out the window into the west, as though to find that far-off land. “If I learned anything about the Tingawan people from . . . from her, it was that these knowing senses of theirs are very real. Perhaps only some of them are so gifted. Xu-i-lok certainly was. I think Precious Wind is, also.”

  He went to stand at the window, saying thoughtfully, “This business of being a soul carrier seems to be spoken of quite openly. The custom is generally known of in your land, and yet no one in Norland knows much about it. Not about it or about you . . .”

  “Some in Norland know some things about Tingawa, Cousin,” Xulai blurted. “The duchess has a spy here.”

  He turned to her, face drawn. “I know. Cook knows. The scullery maid. She’s not the first. She stays in the kitchen or up in her cubby beneath the roof, and Cook sees to it that she learns nothing at all. Your name, perhaps. Why you came here. Who your protectors are. And that’s all. She does not know anything about my disposing of the treasures of Woldsgard, and you must not talk of it, Xulai, not with anyone, not even with your Tingawan protectors. What they do not know, they cannot say. The important thing is that you and they are to go away from here, staying here and there in safe havens until your journey can be completed.”

  “Where do I go first?” she breathed, her own eyes swimming. “Where, Cousin?”

  “Ahh,” he said, leaning forward to put his hand on her shoulder. “To Wilderbrook Abbey, child. Precious Wind will go with you, of course, and others you know and trust. Bear will go with you, at least as far as the abbey, though he’ll probably leave you there for a time while he scouts the trail south. It’s been decades since we’ve heard from anyone who has actually traveled that route, and we feel it needs to be reconnoitered before you set out on it.”

  “If he will go, may I ask Abasio, the traveler, to come along?” begged Xulai.

  “Traveler?” He seemed dumbfounded. “Who?”

  “The man with the dyer’s wagon,” she said. “He’s staying in the yard. I wanted you to meet him today, but there was no occasion for it. He tells the most wonderful stories, and he told me the other day he wanted to see the great falls.”

  “How could he have come here without seeing them?” he asked sharply, with a suspicious glance out the window that looked down upon the castle yard.

  “He came through the northern forests, then down along the south side of the highlands to Ragnibar Fjord, through the Stoneway, and from there down the road that comes past the gard. He has told Bear all about it. They have exchanged a good deal of information about the northern forests.”

  He stared into a dusty corner, thinking for a time. “That’s amazing. I’d like to talk with him. We’ve had no visitors coming that way for a long time. Did he mention trolls?”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Trolls, Cousin. He did, indeed. He says there are far too many of them past the Stony Mountains but that they do not seem to reproduce. I always thought they were mythical.”

  He laughed, a brief bark, half amusement, half self-mockery. “So I’ve always thought, but some years ago my birds brought me word that an age of myth had begun again in the east.”

  “East, where?”

  “Beyond Norland, over the Great Stony range, on the far side, where the plains begin. Oh, it was some years ago. I was told there were trolls, and giants, and griffons, and . . . any other creature you might care to mention. We here in the west heard of a great evil building in that area. It was said a great sorceress had flown into the sky to retrieve the secrets of the ease machines and return them to earth. I confess, some of us were more than a little worried over that possibility. There seemed to be a dreadful kind of inevitability to it, but either she never went or she never returned.

  “Of course, that was when I was much younger. Before . . .” Before she died. He blinked back a tear and cleared his throat. “Later we heard the evil had somehow been vanquished, though it seems to have left a hole to be filled by the next dreadful thing.”

  “Trolls?”

  “I haven’t been there. Perhaps your traveler has. Ask him if he would talk with me. He is your friend?”

  “More like family, I think,” she murmured. “He seems very close, as though I had known him before, somehow. He says he would love to see your birds.”

  The duke smiled at this, thinking: If Precious Wind says the man is harmless, and if the child enjoys his company, why not? She’ll have others around her to guard her. Surely, quickly, she must be taken to the abbey.
Too much danger gathers here.

  “If he wants to see the birds, send someone to bring him to the bird towers tonight, or come with him yourself. And let him accompany you to the abbey, if he likes. The place is known to be kindly and hospitable. They have a wonderful school there; the teachers are drawn from everywhere in this world, even from Tingawa. You will have youthful companions. It will be pleasant for you, I pray.”

  “When do I go?”

  “Day after tomorrow, early in the morning. And, dear child, should anyone meet you on the trip and ask how old you are, you will say you are seven . . .”

  “Is that how old I am?”

  “It is how old you look, though you may be . . . a little older. I am told that Tingawan women age very slowly. Though some girls here in Norland marry as early as twelve or thirteen, Tingawan women do not become marriageable until they are around twenty years old. I want you to look and act as young as possible for your own protection. The younger you are believed to be, the more inconsequential you will seem.”

  They sat quietly for a time, hand in hand, before Xulai murmured, “If Princess Xu-i-lok died of a death curse, Cousin, it took a long time achieving its purpose.”

  His hand clenched around hers, hurting her, and she cried out.

  “Ah, I’m sorry, child, but it hurts to hear you say it. Yes, it took years. We fought it, Xu-i-lok and I. It may be that she fought it in ways I don’t know of. I have friends who comprehend these things, and they tell me the princess had powers and strengths of her own. The curse could not be broken, but it could be resisted, so we fought endless sorties against it, countless divagations, continual feints and retreats. I let it be known at the beginning that Xu-i-lok was my betrothed and my beloved, that I would keep her beside me so long as breath was within her. Every season that she survived was a small victory. She bade me keep her alive as long as possible.” He wiped his eyes again. “She said if it were only to annoy the one who had planned this, it was worth living to do so. She said that given time enough, we might do more than merely annoy . . .”

  Xulai sighed deeply, aware that a dreadful oppression had risen from her heart. She had not been guilty of keeping the princess in pain, nor had her cowardice undone the princess’s will to go on living. “She knew she was cursed.”

  “She knew before I did. It was a day or so before we were to be wed. She came in from walking in the woods and told me it had happened. I remember it as though it happened this morning. She was carrying a trowel and her hands were muddy. She had been mucking about, she said, among the forest plants. They fascinated her, and she had been exploring. She was near that old temple—you may have seen it—when the knowledge came to her. She had that Tingawan way of seeing things, knowing things. I should not have been surprised, earlier, at the questions you asked, for it is a talent your people share, that knowing without being told.”

  “My people?”

  “Her people and yours. The Tingawan people of the Thousand Isles.”

  That night, Xulai took Abasio up to the bird lofts, introduced him to the duke, and left them there. After an awkward few moments, they decided they liked each other, and Abasio, reading the signs of grief, said some things that surprised the duke, who returned with some knowledge that much surprised Abasio.

  “You’ve actually seen the waters?” the duke asked.

  “I have. And I’ve heard more than I’ve seen.”

  “When my wife’s father was here with us, he told me it was going to be . . . very bad.”

  “For those of us who breathe air, that’s what they say.”

  “Your acquaintances in the Edges? I’m told that wise men believe it’s happened before and it wasn’t that great a catastrophe.”

  “It has happened before, but not like this. Before it was just melting ice from the poles. These are far greater waters rising. But there’s still some time. A lifetime or two.”

  “A lifetime. Of a mouse? Or a man?”

  Abasio smiled. “I was told there were enough lifetimes for a plan to work itself out, if everything goes as it should.”

  The duke stared at him in frank astonishment. “Who under heaven told you . . .”

  “A man I met. Not a Norlander, I think. He came to find me, he said. He didn’t say who sent him or how, he just pointed me in this direction. I think he sent me to Xulai—though . . .”

  “Though?”

  “He did not tell me to expect a child.”

  Justinian stared over his head blankly. “Child or not, you’ll go with her?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ll go with her.” He would, though the idea was very unsettling and he could not find the reason.

  When Xulai left Abasio in the tower and was alone in her room, she surrendered to all the emotion she had so far refused to feel and let herself weep for a loss so enveloping that there was room for nothing else. She would miss the Duke of Wold and the princess, yes, but the one was as he had always been; the other had gone past grieving; so what she grieved for now was the loss of her world, her home, every accustomed corner of it, gardens, animals, trees, the entirety of the place that had been hers.

  There were places in the forest and along the river she went into as though they were well-loved rooms, full of pleasure and peace; mornings with Horsemaster, watching the colts in the paddock; countless afternoons in the haylofts above the stable among the mother cats and their kittens; evenings in a certain tree copse near the swamp where the bell-like call of a blue-plumed bird and the shush of wings over her head were daily benedictions. These places had become as much a part of her life as were her hands, her feet, her eyes! Losing them felt as though she was being stripped of her skin, of her heart, of her mind, of her senses.

  Since babyhood she had relished the noise and bustle of the castle, very much like a town with its various trades and the coming and going of crops and supplies. Though she had not had friends among the children, there were others she knew well. She knew the shoemaker, his wife, the farrier and his brother, the hostler and his mother, the armorers, the maids and footmen, the stewards of the various large estates within Wold. She knew the farmers, their fields, their woods, their animals. She had spent untold hours with Horsemaster, first learning to ride, then learning everything else he would teach her. Wold’s Horsemaster was known as far away as Wellsport, and though he did not share his secrets with many, he had shared them with Xulai. Her roots ran deep among all the Woldsgard people, and now those roots were to be ripped out and burned, the ashes whipped away by the wind. So she gave herself to grief and wept, her hand in her pocket curled protectively around its tiny inhabitant.

  From nowhere came black and white Bothercat to leap upon the bed and curl up by her stomach. Spotted Vexcat crept across her to find his place at the back of her neck. They purred, two cats but only one loud purr, rhythmic as breathing, a constant hum, like the hum of bees in the summer meadow, the hum of the wind in the young copses, the hum, perhaps, of the stars where they spun through the night. She fell into the hum, the purr, while her tears dried and she slept.

  In the morning, when she awoke, the cats had departed and the chipmunk was sitting on her pillow, grooming its tail. She thought cats and chipmunk had grown accustomed to one another. Now she greeted chipmunk and offered the pocket of her skirt. She had decided that it did talk. If stones could talk, little rodents could talk. Her cats didn’t, but then, perhaps they had nothing to say that could not be conveyed by a snarl, a hiss, a purr, a pleading meow. She wouldn’t mention it to anyone else, but she would accept it for herself. Chipmunk stayed beside her, a tiny companion, while she washed all signs of tears from her face and later, while she made herself respond sensibly when the duke informed her of the details of her journey.

  “Be careful, my lord,” she whispered at the end of his instructions. “Be very careful.”

  “You don’t hate me for sending you away?” he whispered in return. “You understand?”

  “Oh, yes. I understand.” And, in truth, those
two words were all that mattered, for he gave her such a smile of confidence and fondness that she secured the memory of it against her heart as though it were a golden locket.

  She took the rest of the day to say good-byes, starting with the people and creatures of the stable. When she arrived in the stable yard there were four vehicles being packed for her journey: a wagon, a dray, a large closed carriage of the type called a company-trot, and a lighter, open one often called a hop-skip. Half a dozen castle servants were fussing over the dray and the ’trot. Her hand was in her pocket; the chipmunk nibbled at it and the feel of the tiny teeth made something blink in Xulai’s mind. She stood frozen for a moment, then went to find Horsemaster (always so addressed), who was speaking with Wainwright (who merited an equivalent title, as Wold had only one of each).

  “Well, there you are,” Horsemaster said as she approached him at the back of the stable where he was bent over a great heap of harnesses. “Thought you’d be down.” He stood to his full height, which wasn’t much above his full width, a brown and ruddy rock of a man, red haired and with wonderfully white teeth.

  “Horsemaster, Wainwright, this will be my first journey outside Wold. Well, the first one I’m old enough to know about. Are such journeys easy? What kinds of things go wrong?”

  Horsemaster laughed his dry laugh, one that sounded like winter weed stems rubbing together. “You mean other than people behavin’ like jackasses?”

  She grinned at him. Let him take it as humorous. “Well, you’ve told me much about that already. What about other than that?”

  “Well, there’s animals runnin’ off or goin’ lame . . . ,” he began.

  Wainwright interrupted. “Then there’s wheels doin’ more or less the same. Then there’s axles breakin’. Those things happen more often than landslides or floods or trees fallin’ on people, all of which I can remember happenin’ one time or another.”