The Stone of Farewell (47 page)

Young Rovalles started to speak, but broke into a fit of coughing as he choked on a crust. Neylin, the other acolyte, pounded him on the back until he got his breath, then continued pounding, perhaps a little overexcited at being in Nabban for the first time.

“A man we meet when we are coming here,” Rovalles said when Neylin had been restrained, “he is from Hewenshire, or some place up in Erkynland.” The young monk did not speak Westerling as well as Septes; he had to stop and think carefully before choosing words. “He say that when Elias' siege cannot throw down Josua's castle, the High King raise up white demons from the earth, and by magic they kill everyone in the keep. He swear it is so, that he sees it himself.”

Septes, who had been dabbing at the front of his robe while Rovalles spoke, now leaned forward. “Like me, Isbeorn, you know how full of superstition people can be, yes? If only this man told the story, I would call him madman and have done. But many are speaking quietly here in the Sancellan, many who say Elias has trafficked with demons and evil spirits.” He touched Isgrimnur's hand with his bent fingers; the duke fought an urge to recoil. “You must have heard of the siege, even though you say you left the north before it ended. What is the truth behind these stories?”

Isgrimnur stared at the old monk for a moment, wondering if there was more to this question than met the eye. At last he sighed. This was a kindly old man with a harelip, nothing more. These were frightening times—why should Septes not try to cadge information from someone who had come from the heartland of rumor?

“I have heard little more than you,” he said at last, “but I can tell you that evil things are afoot—things that godly men would rather not know about, but damn me if that makes them go away.” Septes' eyebrow twitched upward again at Isgrimnur's language, but he did not interrupt. Isgrimnur, warming to the subject, spoke on. “Sides are forming, you could say, and some that look prettier are really the fouler. I can't say more than that. Don't believe everything you hear, but don't be too quick to cry ‘superstition,' either ...” He broke off, realizing that he was entering dangerous territory. There was little more he could say without attracting attention as a source of substantiation for the gossip that was doubtless flying through the Sancellan Aedonitis. He could not afford to be the subject of attention until he had learned if Princess Miriamele was indeed here.

The bits and pieces he had doled out, however, seemed to satisfy Septes. The old man leaned back, still scratching idly at the drying soup stain on his breast. “Ah,” he nodded. His voice just carried above the tabletalk. “Welladay, we have heard enough fearsome stories to take what you say seriously, yes? Very seriously.” He gestured for the nearest acolyte to help him up. “Thank you for sharing our meal, Isbeorn,” he said. “God keep you. I hope we can speak more in the common room tonight. How long do you stay?”

“I'm not sure yet,” Isgrimnur replied. “My thanks to you, too.”

The old man and his two companions disappeared into the crush of retreating monks, leaving Isgrimnur to sort out his thoughts. After a moment he gave up and rose from the table.

I can't even hear myself think in here.
He shook his head grimly, pushing toward the doorway. His large size helped him make rapid progress and he reached the main hallway swiftly.
Now I've gone and spouted my own piece, but I'm not a whit closer to finding poor Miriamele,
he thought sourly.
And how can I find out her whereabouts, anyway? Just ask someone if Elias' missing daughter is anywhere in the place? Oh, and she's traveling as a boy, besides. That's even better. Perhaps I'll just ask around, find out if any young monks have shown up at the Sancellan Aedonitis lately.

He gave a bitter snort as he watched the river of habited forms swirl past.

The Duke of Elvritshalla rubbed his fingers along his unnaturally smooth jaw. Then, startling even himself, he began to laugh at his own hopeless foolishness.

Passing priests eddied nervously around the big-bellied northern monk, who was evidently caught up in some kind of religious fit. Isgrimnur roared and bellowed with laughter until the tears coursed down his chafed pink cheeks.

Thunderstorm weather lay on the swamp like a blanket, damp and oppressively hot. Tiamak could feel the storm's yearning hunger to exist; its prickly breath made the hair stand up on his arms. What he would not give for the storm to break and a little cool rain to fall! The thought of raindrops splashing on his face and bending the leaves of the mangroves seemed like a dream of the most benevolent magic.

Tiamak sighed as he lifted his pole from the water and laid it across the thwarts of his flatboat. He stretched, trying without success to unkink the muscles of his back. He had been poling for three days and had suffered two near-sleepless nights filled with worry about what he should do. If he went to Kwanitupul and stayed there, would he be betraying his tribesmen? Could they ever understand a debt he owed to drylanders—or owed to a few drylanders, anyway?

Of course they wouldn't understand. Tiamak frowned and reached for his waterskin, sloshing a generous mouthful around before swallowing it. He had always been thought of as strange. If he did not go to Nabban to plead his people's case with Duke Benigaris, he would simply be a strange traitor. That would be the end of it as far as the elders of Village Grove were concerned.

He took his kerchief from his head and dipped it over the side of the boat into the water, then arranged it atop his hair once more. Blessedly cool water dribbled down his face and neck. The bright, long-tailed birds perched in the branches overhead stopped screeching for a moment as a dim rumble rolled across the swamp. Tiamak felt his heart beat faster.

His boat had begun to slow when he had stopped poling. Now the stern began to swing gradually out to the middle of the watercourse, turning him sideways so that he faced the bank—or rather, what would have been the bank if this were a dryland river. Here in the Wran it was only a tangle of clustered mangroves whose roots held in just enough sand for the colony of trees to grow and prosper. Tiamak made a resigned noise and pushed his pole back into the water once more, straightening the boat and prodding it forward through a thick clump of lilies which clutched at his passing hull like the fingers of drowning swimmers. It was several more days to Kwanitupul, and that was if the storm he was praying for did not bring heavy winds in its train, winds which might uproot trees and make this part of the Wran an unpassable snarl of roots and trunks and broken branches.

His heart felt unutterably heavy. How could he choose between two such awful possibilities? He could go as far as Kwanitupul before choosing whether to stay there in accordance with Morgenes' wishes or to go on to Nabban as Older Mogahib and the rest had ordered. He tried to soothe himself with that idea, but wondered if such thinking was not in fact just like allowing a wound to fester, when instead he should grit his teeth and clean it out so the healing could start?

Tiamak thought of his mother, who had spent most of her life on her knees, tending the cookfire, grinding grain in the pestle, working every day from the darkness before dawn until it was time to crawl into the hammock at night. He had little respect for the village elders, but now he felt a sudden fear that his mother's spirit might be watching him. She would never understand her son turning his back on his people for the sake of strangers. She would want him to go to Nabban. Serve his own folk first, then take care of his personal honor, that was what his mother would say.

Thinking of her made it seem very clear. He was a Wrannaman first: nothing would change that. He must go to Nabban. Morgenes, that kind old man, would understand his reasons. Afterward, after he had finished his duties to his people, he would go back to Kwanitupul as his drylander friends had asked.

The decision lifted part of the load of worry from Tiamak's shoulders. He decided he might as well stop soon and scare up something for a noon meal. He reached down and tested his fishing line, tied to the back of the flatboat. It seemed light; as he pulled it up he saw to his disgust that the bait had been eaten again, but whatever had dined at his expense had not waited around to pay respects. At least the hook was still there. Metal hooks were painfully expensive items—he had paid for this one with an entire day of work as an interpreter in the market at Kwanitupul. The next month at market he had found the parchment with Nisses' name on it, and had paid a full day's wages for that as well. Two expensive purchases, but the fishook had indeed proved much sturdier than the ones he whittled of bone, which usually broke on the first snag. The Nisses parchment—he patted protectively at the oilskin bag lying at his feet—if he was correct about its origins, was a gem beyond price. Not bad work for two days' marketing.

Tiamak hauled in the line, wrapping it gently, then steered the boat over closer to the bank of mangroves. He poled along slowly, waiting until the mangrove roots gave way for a while to a short stretch of soggy dirt cluttered with waving reeds. Bringing the boat as close to the edge of the watercourse as he could, he pulled his knife from his belt and dug in the wet soil, at last turning up some spitfly roe. He wrapped the shiny things in his kerchief, saving one only to bait the hook. This done, he tossed the line back into the water to trail behind the boat. As he poled out into the middle of the stream once more, thunder grumbled in the distance. It seemed to be farther away than last time. He shook his head sadly. The storm was in no hurry.

 

It was late afternoon when he passed out of the overhanging thicket of mangroves and emerged into unshadowed sunlight once more. Here the waterway grew wider and deeper. A sea of reeds rolled out toward the horizon, all but motionless in the oppressive heat, crisscrossed with the shining tracks of other watercourses. The sky was gray with threatening clouds, but the sun burned brightly behind them, and Tiamak could not help but feel more lighthearted. An ibis rose, white wings flapping slowly, then settled down into the reeds a short distance away. To the south, past miles of marsh and swamp forest, he could see the dark line of the Nascadu Mountains. To the west, invisible beyond an endless prairie of cattails and mangroves, lay the sea.

Tiamak poled distractedly, momentarily caught up in a correction he had decided to make in his great work of scholarship, a revision of
The Sovran Remedies of the Wranna Healers.
He had suddenly realized that the shape of the cattail itself might have something to do with its use among the men of the Meadow Thrithings as a marital potion, and was planning the wording of a footnote that would delicately suggest this connection without seeming too clever, when he felt a strange vibration against his back. He turned, startled, and saw that his fishing line was pulled taut, humming like the plucked string of a lute.

For a moment he was sure it must be a snag—the pull was so strong that it had imparted some of its tension to the stern of the boat—but as he leaned over he saw some silver-gray thing rise briefly toward the surface, wriggling, then dive down into the brackish water again. A fish! As long as Tiamak's arm! He gave a small cry of delight and began to pull on the line. The silver thing seemed to leap up at him. For a split instant one pale, shiny fin appeared above the water, then it vanished beneath the boat, stretching the line tight. Tiamak heaved and it gave a little, but not much. It was a strong fish. A sudden image of the line snapping and his next two days' worth of meals swimming away filled Tiamak's heart with sick horror. He lessened the tension on the fishing line. He would let the fish tire itself, then he could reel it in at his leisure. In the meantime, he would keep an eye open for a dry patch where he could build a fire. He could wrap the fish in
minog
leaves, and surely there would be wild quickweed growing somewhere nearby ... In his thoughts he could already taste it. The heat, the recalcitrant thunderstorm, his betrayal of Morgenes (as he still saw it) and all else receded in the warm glow of the contemplated meal. He tested the line again, rejoicing at the firm, steady pull. He had not had fresh fish in weeks!

A splash impinged on his reverie. Tiamak looked up to see a rainbow of ripples spreading beside the shoreline, a couple of long stone-throws away. There was something else as well: a moment later he picked out a row of low bumps like tiny islands moving smoothly through the water toward his boat.