“I beg your pardon, Tadwell. I am telling you what I know.”
A silence fell. It was so quiet Zanja could hear water dripping from clothing to splash on the stone floor. The G’deon’s sodden boots squished audibly as he paced to the stone wall and turned back. He came to within a step of Zanja, and his square hands lifted as if of their own will.
“Don’t touch me, sir—not before witnesses,” she murmured. Whatever Tadwell had sensed, it had been strange enough to cause him to abandon the Basdowners, to lead his Paladins on a precipitant race in miserable weather, directly to Zanja. When he touched her, Zanja feared, it would be a shock impossible to conceal.
Tadwell lowered his hands. “Why do you refuse to speak to a Truthken? What are you keeping secret?”
“I will answer your questions, sir—but only in private.”
“Tadwell, you should not be alone with her—she is a violent woman, possibly a murderer!”
Zanja dropped to her knees on the cold, damp stone. She unbuckled her belt and tossed it out of reach, and followed it with the knife from her boot sheath. She sat back on her heels to make herself even less dangerous, and rested her hands on her thighs.
Many of the Paladins now eyed her appreciatively. But was this drama overt enough for even an earth witch to understand?
Tadwell’s gaze lingered on Zanja’s discarded weaponry: the dagger, the knife, also unique in Zanja’s time, forged by the hand of a smith who had at least twice Tadwell’s power.
“All of you, wait outside. Silence!” Tadwell added, as the house captain began to protest. “Leave her weapons where they lie.”
The room emptied; the door was shut, and the silence began to itch and ring in Zanja’s ears. Tadwell stood over Zanja’s belt and blades.
Zanja said, “You will be startled, I fear.”
Tadwell picked up the bootknife and dropped it with a grunt of surprise. It rang on stone with a piercing purity of sound.
Zanja said, “My blades were shaped by the hand of my wife, who will be the G’deon two hundred years from now.”
Faint voices could be heard outside the door where the Paladins, as always, had begun to pass the time in vigorous conversation.
Zanja said, “On an errand for her, while I was crossing a frozen river, the ice gave way under me and I fell in and drowned. When I came to consciousness I had been removed from my own time. By logic—fire logic—I know I fell into a trap of water magic that was designed to capture me and carry me here.”
Tadwell continued to stare at her, dumbfounded.
“I am a katrim, like Arel,” Zanja said. “I am considered a hero of Shaftal.”
At least Tadwell didn’t declare in outrage that no border woman could achieve such a status.
In a strained voice, he said, “Why were you brought here?”
“Only the water witch knows that.”
“But if you have a fire talent, you have suspicions, at least.”
“Survival has required all my attention and energy. But a seer from my time did predict that I would cross the boundary of time, and choose insight.”
“I have no time for riddles! Someone must explain!” The G’deon began pacing agitatedly again, this time in a circuit of the room. “The Basdowners are feuding over trivial issues, actually killing each other—and won’t acknowledge their true problems of too many children and too many cows. For three seasons in a row the lambs in the western sheeplands have been decimated by illness, and no one can determine what to do about it. The people of the midland cities are requiring farmers to pay for the privilege of selling in their markets, and the farmers are banding together and refusing to go to the cities at all—”
It occurred to Zanja that Tadwell was young, both in age and in experience. She said more acerbically than she had intended, “Certainly, every crisis should wait on your convenience.”
He stopped, and glared. “I see you are accustomed to taking a familiar tone with the G’deon.”
“Is that a reprimand? Is it considered correct behavior in this Shaftal for everyone to avoid speaking plainly to you? Or do I just seem arrogant to you because I don’t accord with your expectations of a border person?”
Tadwell loomed over her—belligerent, pugnacious.
“Do you leave everyone kneeling before you like this?” Zanja said.
“Stand up, then.” He offered his hand.
She put her hand in his, and he staggered. She stood up without his help. He took many rapid, harsh breaths. “Give me your hand again,” he said. This time he clasped her hand in both of his. In time, his breathing slowed. “You have had a terrible life,” he said. “Or at least you have been both terribly unlucky and astonishingly lucky: You should have died from your injuries. You should be too crippled to walk.”
“Everything you say is true.”
He dropped Zanja’s hand and paced away, paused, and turned back. “Shaftal will become so dangerous? Her heroes will be survivors of repeated violence? What will be her enemies and how will they appear?”
“Tadwell, I don’t know how to judge what I should and should not tell you. This is why I dare not be in a Truthken’s presence, also.”
“Such judgments are not yours to make!”
“I agree with you—but whose judgments are they? Would you have me satisfy your curiosity with no concern for the effect? If our positions were reversed, would you do such a thing?”
“I would do anything to prevent future ills.”
“How could you possibly do so? Sir, it is arrogant and naive to think you know what is best for a people not yet born, in a land that will be much changed.”
“By that logic, no one has any right to do anything at all under any circumstances!”
“Then I’m wrong,” said Zanja. “I will begin by telling you when and how you will die.”
“No!”
She gazed at him. Finally he looked away, muttering, “I suppose your caution is sensible.”
“Arel knows I am journeying in time, but he doesn’t know what direction I have traveled in. I’ve told nothing to anyone else.”
“Good,” he said. “But if you are dangerous—”
“The seer would have intervened!”
“Seers!” he said in disgust. “Why would a water witch choose you? What is it that you alone are capable of doing? And how can anything you do be right when you have been forced into doing it?”
“I don’t know. But I must face this quandary alone.”
“And you expect me to simply trust you to do what is right?”
“Yes, Tadwell. Just as Karis would trust me.”
He looked at her, and looked away. “I cannot argue. The value she places on you is unmistakably present in your flesh. It is more convincing than any letter of introduction.”
He walked away from her and stood in silence, gazing into the fire, as many people do when they are thinking. But he would not see any inspirational visions there; like any earth blood he was thinking about the problems of cause and effect, of risk and result. As he considered the situation she had presented him with, she considered the one he had presented to her: What am I alone capable of? It seemed a fearsome question, for she had done some awful things—however justifiable. She understood why Tadwell might be reluctant to set her loose upon this peaceful land.
Eventually she raised her eyes to find he had turned to her again. She saw a man beset and troubled, empowered but not particularly wise, a man like Karis and like herself, whose responsibilities usually seemed impossible to fulfill.
“You may continue to reside with Arel,” said Tadwell. “But you may not leave his quarters.”
“Yes, Tadwell.”
That seemed to be all he had to say to her. She did not ask when he would decide what to do w
ith her, for, like Karis, he would act as he felt compelled at whatever time his action seemed necessary. Zanja could only wait, an art at which she had little natural talent but much unfortunate practice.
Tadwell was heading for the door, and soon the room would again be crowded with anxious Paladins. “Sir,” said Zanja. He turned sharply as if he anticipated he would have to assert his will over her some more. She strove to make her tone more humble. “May I study some glyph paintings during my isolation? For they are beautiful, and I would consider it a great kindness to be so allowed.”
“Glyph paintings!” he exclaimed. “What use are they?” Then shaking his head, he added, “On the other hand, what harm are they?”
“This is a very peculiar imprisonment,” commented Arel as Zanja ate the meat pie he had brought for her supper. When he first arrived, the door to his rooms had stood wide open, as the glyph master took his leave after reluctantly delivering to her a precious painting.
Arel said, “Where is the lock for the door? The armed guard? The shackles?”
“I think the G’deon is testing my obedience.”
“At least you seem resigned.”
“Then I am a finer actor than I thought.”
The meat pie was delicious. Its flavorful gravy covered the deficiencies of long-stored vegetables and reconstituted meat. Living under the influence of an obsessive cook for just two months had taught Zanja to notice and appreciate kitchen skill. She paid attention to her meal. Arel was uncharacteristically restless. Perhaps he was feeling his own confinement, for Tadwell certainly would have forbidden him to ask Zanja any questions. Or perhaps he felt the tedium of mud season.
Zanja licked her plate and her fingers. She said, “Surely Tadwell will decide my fate before he returns to Basdown. But you’ll be able to leave before he does—there’s rarely a flood in the north, and the mountain ways will probably be passable by the time you reach them.”
“Come with me,” he said.
Zanja found herself unable to reply. Return to the Asha Valley? How could that possibility have not occurred to her? To travel into the mountains! To traverse those bright, dark, dangerous places with easy confidence! To go home!
She took a breath. “But it is not my home, my brother.”
“You are Ashawala’i, a person-from-the-valley-of-stones!”
“It is not my valley—not my people—not even my stones.”
Arel squatted before her. His braids swept the woven carpet. “My sister, do you think I cannot see your loneliness? Six years you have wandered! It is time to cease being a ghost. Your family, your lovers—they will not be there. But your tribe is your tribe, always.”
She turned her face away from him. She heard him rise, giving her the distance and privacy that her gesture had requested. His movement across the room was nearly soundless. He stepped into the water closet and shut the door. He didn’t come out until she was no longer weeping.
“I will sleep somewhere else tonight,” he said.
“No, my brother—not for my sake. I enjoy your company.”
He squatted again—at a distance. “I will tell you something: I have a lover here, among the Shaftali, and he has asked me to come to him.”
“I am shocked,” she said.
“Of course you have managed without a lover all your years of wandering.”
Zanja met his gaze, and they both began to laugh.
Only after he had left did it occur to her that his lover was probably Tadwell.
The rain stopped falling two days later. News arrived that the Corber River had flooded. Tadwell would not attempt to return to the south until he could cross the Corber by bridge, and that would not be until the flood waters subsided.
As soon as the rains ended, a gentle wind began to blow almost constantly through the rooms and hallways of the House of Lilterwess, for every door and window was left open by day, and often by night as well. There began a cleaning revelry, a scrubbing and airing and washing that included every stone and even the skin, for people and even animals were bathed and combed. Laundry lines were strung in the open courtyard below Arel’s one window, and there began an amazing beating of carpets that lasted from dawn to nightfall for several days. All of Arel’s carpets were hauled out, and while he was taking his turn with the carpet-beaters, Zanja wore out a scrub brush and used up an entire cake of soap.
Then Arel left for the Asha Valley, without her. She had told him she must consider whether it would be wrong for her to bring into the valley those alien influences he had noticed when they first met. “We all carry our histories with us,” she said. “But I am a Speaker—and like you, I am to be changed without causing change.” She might go home with him in the autumn, she added. But she regretted even that modest promise when she said it, for such a wound of yearning opened up that she feared it might cause her intuition and judgment to become unreliable.
Choose insight, Medric had said: absurd advice, when insight pierces like arrows of light from the stars, or drops down out of an empty sky like an owl upon its prey. Yet a person does choose to climb the hillside towards the stars, or make oneself available to the owl. In this Shaftal, Zanja must live each moment like a casting of glyph cards, be able to ask any question and to accept any answer. By no other method would it be possible for her to slip through without destroying or undoing the Shaftal in which she did belong. She must desire only to return there—nothing else.
She began to be glad of her solitude, then. The days passed, and she danced her katra alone. She did not try to converse with the glyph master when he visited every day with a new painting, nor with the Paladin novices, Orna among them, who brought meals and carried away the waste. She did not even look out the window anymore. She meditated on the glyph paintings, and, gradually, all else ceased to matter.
At last, Tadwell came into the room and closed the door. Zanja had been meditating on a particularly difficult glyph painting, and her flesh felt like it had woven itself into the carpet. “Greetings, Tadwell. Please excuse me—I am somewhat befuddled.” She hung the leather cover over the painting so it could not distract her.
As she turned back to Tadwell, he said abruptly, “Can you pretend to be a Paladin?”
Zanja made a long study of her bare feet, which she had absent-mindedly placed so they were harmonious with the carpet’s pattern. “Lately I wish I had a Paladin’s ethical training,” she said. “And I doubt I can pretend to love speech as they do. But the greatest obstacle would be my appearance.”
“I asked the Paladins if there’s a reason a border person can’t join them, and they say there isn’t.”
The answer would have been different, Zanja suspected, had she been a genuine aspirant. But she said neutrally, “I will pretend to be a Paladin. But I will not be one.”
“Is there a difference between acting and being?”
“To a fire blood there’s almost no difference at all, which is why I must defend the distinction so carefully.”
Tadwell uttered a disgusted snort. “And in the meantime, the Paladins are convinced that permitting an impostor will denigrate the value of the reality. They did consent—but the integrity of the order must be defended. I promised them that if you violate their principles, I will personally hunt you down and . . . punish you.”
“Would you kill me?”
There was a silence.
“I would expect you to,” Zanja added.
“I have never killed anyone. But I would have to, I suppose. For if you prove to be unable to keep a simple promise, then I certainly can’t trust you to guard yourself in the manner necessary to avoid an even greater harm. I have tried to imagine what could happen if you set some small event in motion . . . but all I feel certain of is that it must not happen. Therefore, I will kill you with my own hands if I must. You cannot hide from me,
Zanja na’Tarwein—you are too singular for that. If you flee, I will chase you across the nearest border and let the desert do my killing for me—or the mountains—or the sea.”
“I choose the mountains, then—and I will go willingly.”
He said after a moment, “It would be your own life you’d be destroying if you were to fail. So you feel the importance of this more keenly than I do, don’t you?”
“I am trying not to,” she said. “Fear is no better than desire in my situation.”
He turned away from her and opened the door. The house commander and the novice, Orna, who had been waiting outside, came in. Orna hauled an impressive load of clothing and gear, and appeared to be stifling a delicious amusement. The house commander avoided even looking at Zanja. She laid a gold earring in the G’deon’s hand.
Zanja knelt so Tadwell could pierce her left ear with a needle, and rose with the gold depending heavily and distractingly from her stinging earlobe. Orna helped Zanja to change into a Paladin’s rough wool clothing—she was allowed to keep her underclothing, her boots, and her belt—and then stood back to look critically at her. Her forehead creased. She opened her mouth, but said nothing.
“Do I look so strange?” asked Zanja.
The young woman said rather helplessly, “Commander, it’s just a piece of jewelry, a few articles of clothing. It should not make such a difference!”
The commander finally looked at Zanja. She made a study of her. Then she said to the novice, “Everything is framed: everything we know, everything we see. What has no frame cannot be seen at all. Yet the frame also shapes what we see, and even determines what we can see. To change the frame changes the thing itself. So now we have here a Paladin where there used to be a vagabond.”
The girl protested, “I cannot believe that! I think she was—is—a Paladin in her heart. The clothing just makes her heart’s truth visible.”
Water Logic Page 20