Waterdance

by Logston, Anne

  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.”

  Peri laughed bitterly.

  “It’s quite a jump from escaped traitor to prophet,” she said.

  “No jump at all,” Seba corrected. “The prophecy was made long before you or even I drew breath. But, you see, I knew the prophecy for truth, and as the signs unfolded, I knew it was my destiny to see it fulfilled. I had the means already; I only awaited the perfect time, and of course the Harbinger, Perian, and you so kindly obliged me.”

  “What do you mean, you had the means?” Peri said slowly. Was there some army gathered that neither she nor Atheris knew about, poised to march into Bregond?

  Seba smiled.

  “When I reached the temple at Rocarran, I found they’d already received a most interesting prisoner,” she said. “One taken well before the first true engagement, but forgotten in the confusion. He’d been taken in simple nightclothes, after all, and was badly injured, near death. All the healers had gone to join the army, and in his state he couldn’t be questioned to learn his identity. But I knew him immediately. Ah, yes. For of all the people in Sarkond, I was probably the only one who had ever seen the face of High Lord Elaasar of Bregond.”

  Peri froze, and Seba chuckled.

  “Ah, yes. The greatest disgrace of the Bregondish people—the disappearance of their High Lord during the Sarkondish raid which took the lives of his lady and two of his daughters. Agrond and Bregond mourned him with all due ceremony. Your mother and her sisters mourned him. But nobody ever really knew, did they? And that was Bregond’s shame—and your mother’s even more so, for she knew the truth of why it had happened. And here he was brought, and here he lives still, disgraced even as I was, by life.”

  It took Peri a long moment to force enough breath into her lungs to speak. What Seba said couldn’t be true. It couldn’t.

  “You’re lying,” she whispered through dry lips.

  Seba laughed, unoffended.

  “Am I?” she said lightly, standing. She tossed something into the cell. It sparkled on the floor. “Is this a lie? Or have all your truths suddenly become lies instead, as once they did for me?”

  Peri knelt and picked up the Signet of Bregond with shaking fingers. She clutched it tightly, biting her lip so hard it bled.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she whispered.

  Seba smiled.

  “Because I’m going to offer you a choice, young Perian—the same choice I had. A dishonorable death, or an even more dishonorable life.”

  Peri laughed bitterly.

  “You expect me to believe that you’d give me a choice?” she said. “You have no reason to let me live, especially knowing what I know. And I’m your Harbinger, aren’t I? Your sacrifice.”

  “Not at all,” Seba said smoothly. “The prophecy requires the royal blood of an enemy, you see. And as I’ve just told you, that we already have, and a High Lord, no less!

  “So you may choose. If you prefer, we’ll sacrifice you. It isn’t a pleasant death, I’ll warn you, and such a death at our hands won’t be the honorable ending you’d like. Your spirit would never fly home on Mahdha’s wings, and we’d still have High Lord Elaasar, of course. But at least you’d never have to face your disgrace, would you?

  “Or you choose to live, to carry a message back to Bregond for me,” Seba continued. “However unpleasant his death, I imagine your grandfather would find that ending a mercy now. You can go home, face your disgrace, become an outcast as I did. It would be amusing to see if you fare better than I have.”

  Peri gazed at the signet, still almost too shaken for speech.

  “You can’t expect me to make a choice like that,” she said faintly.

  Seba chuckled.

  “Oh, you’ll choose,” she said lightly. “You’ll choose, because you must. Think on it, young Perian—only a short time, for that’s all I can give you now. Think on the value of your life.” Then she was gone in a swirl of silken robes.

  “Do you believe her?” Atheris asked softly. “That she has your grandfather?”

  Peri turned the ring in her hands. She tried to tell herself that the signet could have been taken from High Lord Elaasar’s dead body, but she knew better. If the High Lord had died by his own hand, he would have first taken measures to assure that the signet would not be recovered by the enemy—buried it or had one of his guards swallow it or some such. If he could not die then, he would have still done anything he could to keep the signet from being taken. And if her grandfather was dead, Seba had no reason to release Peri. Unless that offer was false, too. But to what purpose?

  “Yes,” Peri said shortly. She clenched the signet tightly in her fist. “I believe her.”

  “But why release you?” Atheris said slowly. “The Bonemarch would never allow it, so she must be acting without their knowledge. Even if she does not need you for the sacrifice, why let you return to Bregond to betray her plans?”

  Peri shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think—I think she wants me to tell them about my grandfather. I don’t think there’s anything in the world that would shake the people of Bregond more than knowing that their High Lord was shamefully taken captive by Sarkonds, that he’d survived all these years, only to die now to serve Sarkondish purposes. I can’t even imagine what that would do to the people—or to Aunt Kairi or Mother, for that matter—if that were known. But why wait all these years to do it? There’s got to be something else, something more, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what.”

  “If she is truly mad, as you say,” Atheris murmured, “then how could we possibly understand her reasoning?”

  “Because she wants us to understand,” Peri said, shaking her head. “She wants somebody to know what she went through, why—unless that’s it,” she said suddenly. “Can it be as simple as that, just plain revenge for what happened to her? She was captured by Sarkonds as a child, and that made her outcast in Bregond forever. But then Brisi and her allies in the temples found a use for Seba, told her she could serve Bregond, even save it. She was just a child, frightened and desperate, and she believed in the temples, in their authority. She did what she was told, believing she was serving the greater good of Bregond and restoring her honor. And then, after it was all done, she realized she’d been betrayed again—tricked into becoming a traitor to her own country, nowhere to go, nobody to help her—”

  Peri shook her head again, grimacing.

  “That’s got to be it,” she said. “To her, I’m a younger version of herself. I’ve been captured by Sarkonds. I’ll never be accepted in Bregond again. So Bregond’s lost its Heir. I’d have to go back to Agrond instead, and when the truth about my grandfather comes out, that blow will shake Bregond even harder. And it’ll hurt Mother, too—but at the same time Seba’s returning me alive to her. She knows Mother will take me back—Mother accepted her, after all. Mother and Aunt Kairi will be shamed in Bregond’s eyes because their father didn’t manage to kill himself, and Mother discredited in Bregond for accepting me back—and then we’ll all have to live with that knowledge, that pain, just as Seba’s had to live with hers. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t Mother’s fault or mine. It wasn’t Seba’s fault either, all those years ago, but that didn’t save her.” Peri sighed. “Mahdha forgive me, Atheris, what am I going to do?”

  Atheris did not look at her.

  “Go home,” he said quietly. “Go home to your family, Perian, and fulfill Seba’s plan and live. I know your Bregondish custom, and perhaps I understand it. But I have tasted both life and death, Perian, and believe me when I tell you that life is better. Even with pain, even with sorrow and loss, even with shame, life is better.”

  Peri did not answer. Yes, she’d rather
be alive than dead, even with the pain of what she knew, even as an outcast from Bregond, even with the shame that she’d been unable to take her own life. Yes, she’d pay that price to live—but, as Danber always said, “Only a fool turns over his gold without checking the horse’s teeth.” And she was far from certain that her life was worth the price that her mother, and all of Bregond, would pay with her.

  But possibly—just possibly—there was another choice.

  She turned to Atheris.

  “Atheris,” she said slowly, “do you believe in that prophecy about the waking of Eregis?”

  Atheris lowered his head.

  “I have always believed in it,” he said simply. “As you said, what other hope did my people have? It was only the interpretation I ever questioned, not the message itself.” He shook his head. “Even now I cannot refuse to believe. I want to doubt, but a part of me clings to that hope still.”

  “Then think about this,” Peri said deliberately. “If these things are destined to happen, then events will shape themselves to make it happen, the same way that everything we did pushed me on to the temple here. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Atheris said cautiously. “Yes, you fulfilled your role as Harbinger despite your best efforts.” He flushed.

  “Then if this is really the time that Eregis will rise,” Peri said, “nothing you and I can do will stop it—in fact, anything we might try could just as easily be part of the plan. Right?”

  Atheris frowned.

  “I suppose so,” he said.

  “Then I’ll make a bargain with you,” Peri said grimly. “I’ll need your help. Help me, and I swear to you, by what’s left of my honor, that I won’t stand in the way of your prophecy—and if that means my life, then I’ll give it. Bargain?”

  Atheris hesitated.

  “I trust your honor,” he said quietly. “But how can I help you?”