Thirteen Ways to Water Read online

  “To hell!” shouted the voice. Khairt rolled onto his back as his assailant vaulted over his horse.

  “What have we here?” Daisilodavi half sang.

  What indeed? thought Khairt. The one who had just unhorsed him was little more than a girl, and armed with only a wooden staff. She wore the coarse rags of a scullery maid. A black smudge, as of stove black, marked her cheek.

  But the young woman stood in a warrior’s stance. She gripped the staff by one end. She swung. The staff arced toward Khairt’s unprotected face.

  Khairt kicked and rolled in a half-forgotten move. His chain mail slowed him, his left knee throbbed, but the maneuver still worked. The staff struck the earth with a thud, and Khairt was backing onto his feet by the time the girl was ready for another swipe at him.

  “Will you not yield?” she demanded.

  “Yield?” said Khairt. “To a girl with a staff? Yield?”

  “Or die,” the young woman said.

  “I rather think she means it,” said Daisilodavi, bemused. Still mounted, he had sidled behind the lass, but kept his distance.

  To Khairt’s eye, there was much awkwardness to the way the girl held herself. As spirited a fighter as she might be, she was unschooled. By shifting her weight, or by standing still too long, she revealed openings, opportunities for Khairt to sweep her from her feet.

  Yet Khairt did not do so. Instead, he watched her face. Her hair, though plain and brown, swept back on either side like folded wings. Her eyes were bright and clear. There was determination in her face, yet little hardness.

  She was beautiful, and though he no doubt had looked upon beautiful women often enough, the last time he had looked and seen like this had been…

  Oneah.

  He clenched his fists. “You will yield,” Khairt said. “And you will tell us why you waylay strangers.”

  “You’re no strangers to me,” she said. “All about you hangs the stink of Amjad.”

  “May his name cause head lice,” said Daisilodavi.

  The girl took a step to the side, trying to keep the gray-clad rider from getting behind her, while still keeping the knight before. “I fight to protect my Lord Glinham.”

  “Then do I grieve for you,” said Khairt, “for Glinham must die.”

  Resolve flashed in her eyes a moment before she moved, and Khairt knew how she would launch herself, and how swing her staff. He dove beneath her attack and struck her knee with his forearm. She swayed. He struck again and swept her from her feet.

  She did not fall well. He heard a snap that might have been her wrist as she tried to catch herself. She winced as she rolled aside.

  Between the weight of his armor and the creaking of his knees, Khairt could not grasp and pin her. She struggled to her feet, cradling her wrist.

  Though Khairt had not even seen the man dismount, Daisilodavi was waiting for her. The needle jabbed the back of her neck before she knew he was near. Before she could turn, he was six steps beyond her, and before she staggered and fell, he had mounted his horse again.

  A rictus of agony twisted the pretty face and left it twisted as she died. Khairt looked away.

  “That was not needful.”

  “It was,” said the assassin. “She’d never have yielded. Were you to defeat her for the moment, she’d have been hunting us again as soon as she was able. Mayhap she would brain you with a lucky blow, if we let her keep trying.”

  “She fought like a hero.”

  “She did,” said the assassin, kicking his horse to a walk. “She had the heart of a hero.” Over his shoulder he said, “Are you developing a conscience?”

  Khairt made himself look at her face again. When was the last time he’d felt the slightest regret in seeing an opponent die? But what he felt was not any pang of conscience. He was only sorry that her face was no longer pretty.

  Khairt heaved himself into his saddle again and, at a trot, caught up with Daisilodavi. “If the scullery maid has a hero’s heart,” he said, “then how much more dangerous must be Glinham’s men at arms!”

  “In the Heart of Shanodin,” said Daisilodavi, “expect surprise.”

  “I always expect surprise.”

  “Save for the ambuscade of a scullery maid.” Daisilodavi winked. “What were you dreaming of, to let her take you unaware?”

  “I do not dream,” the knight said through his teeth. He called a harsh “Geha!” to his horse and trotted ahead of his companion.

  But the question remained. How had he been so easily surprised? How was it that he had fallen into a state of bliss, of satisfaction? If ever a man thinks himself satisfied and happy, then does he open himself to wounds. Khairt knew that well, as he knew also that the man who endures is the man who strikes first, who kills without mercy, who sees any garden as a likely battle ground. What is a hedge but a hiding place? What is a fountain but a place where one’s enemies might be drowned?

  And yet…Even as these hard thoughts came to him, so came to him the gentle rustling of leaves high above, the surprise of bright blossoms in the undergrowth. He thought again of the girl’s face, the brightness of her eyes while she lived.

  He took a deep breath and drank in the scents of the forest. The black leaves of the forest floor and the black earth beneath smelled as rich as bread baked fresh. Again, he heard thrush song, and the calls of other birds high above. He felt the eyes of the forest at his back, above, all around.

  So it was that, for a second time, he was lost in reverie when Daisilodavi rode up next to him and hailed the man who walked before them. “A fellow traveler,” said the assassin. “Did you not see him?” Then, loudly, Daisilodavi called out, “Ho, soldier!” for the man had a short sword strapped to his belt and went along tapping the ground with the end of an unstrung bow. “Ho, archer!”

  The man did not turn. His clothes were filthy, as if he’d been sleeping on the bare ground.

  “Blue and gold braid on his tunic,” said Daisilodavi. “This is Glinham’s man. Do you see?”

  “I have eyes.”

  “By the look of him, though,” the assassin continued, “he may be no one’s man at all.”

  Khairt’s hand rested on his sword. “Surfaces deceive.”

  “Not always,” said Daisilodavi with a thin smile. “Not in all places.” Then he called again, “Ho, archer! Thou wanderer, ho!”

  The man did not stop or look up until the two riders passed him, one on either side. Daisilodavi spun his mount to face him. Khairt rode a bit further, scanning the bushes for signs of another ambuscade. He saw no threat. However, he did notice the butterflies flitting above the foliage. Their wings were silver on blue—Clouds in Heaven, he’d have called them, were it his task to name them. He leaned forward to see them better.

  Stop this! he thought. He was not here for butterflies. He was here to kill a man. With a tug on the reins, he halted and turned his horse.

  Daisilodavi was asking the man-at-arms, “And did you not hear us?”

  “Aye, whether or not I heard you, that was what I considered,” the man said. His hair was tangled and bits of leaves clung to it. “I was thinking, ‘Is that voices I hear, and do they hail me?’ If I turned to see you, could I then be certain that you existed? What certainty is there in the senses?”

  “What’s he prattling about?” said Khairt.

  “Let him speak,” said Daisilodavi.

  “I thank you,” said the man, “whether you exist or not. As I say, what certainty is there in the senses? Do the mad not see what is not there? Do dreamers not hear and see what they believe to be real? Who is to say that I will not, a moment hence, wake with a start to think what a strange conversation I was having just moments ago in my sleep?”

  Daisilodavi smiled. “I take your meaning. And even were you to wake, how could you know that you were not having a dream of waking? Perhaps you are a great sea slug asleep on the ocean floor, dreaming that you are a man, when in truth no such creature as man has ever been.”

  �
�Just so.”

  “Gods and gashes,” said Khairt. “I have never heard such nonsense traded.” He drew his broadsword from the saddle scabbard, then balanced it on his shoulder. “Answer while you have your head to speak with. Where is your lord?”

  “I have no lord,” the man said. “I am finished with that life.” He lifted his unstrung bow. “Have you considered,” he asked, “the impossibility of an arrow’s flight?”

  “Answer me!” said Khairt, lifting the sword. “Where is Glinham?”

  “I can hardly be sure that such a being as Lord Glinham ever existed,” the man said, spreading his hands helplessly. “As for where he is now, I do not know, and can not be sure I would know how I knew if indeed I thought that I did know.”

  Khairt grew red in the face.

  “No need to split his head,” said Daisilodavi, smiling. “Put away your sword, knight. He answers you as best he can.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Hardly nonsense,” said the man. “Fundamental questions!” For the first time, an almost soldierly flash came to his eyes, but he made no move toward the sword at his belt. It was as though he had forgotten he had it.

  “Sword down,” Daisilodavi said to Khairt. “We’ll find neither help nor hindrance here.”

  The knight rested the heavy blade on his shoulder again.

  “You said something of arrows,” said Daisilodavi.

  “Arrows,” the man said. “Yes. That was the end to my soldiering. Consider, before an arrow can fly to its mark, it must fly halfway, must it not?”

  “Indeed,” said the assassin.

  “And from that point, it must fly again halfway further, true?”

  “True.”

  “And from there, halfway again—an eighth—and from there, halfway to the mark once more—a sixteenth. Wherever it flies, from half to quarter to eighth to sixteenth, the remaining space may be divided again by half. And then by half again. And may it not be infinitely divided? Is the space ever so small that it may not be halved again? So the points through which the arrow must pass are infinite in number. And, being infinite, they may not be summed. The arrow will never reach its mark.”

  Daisilodavi said, “The fletcher’s paradox, that is called.”

  “Is it? I thought I had originated it.”

  “Nay, it has wrinkled many brows before yours.”

  “You see now wherefore I leave my bow unstrung.”

  “I do.”

  “Do you?” said Khairt. “Do you think an arrow will not pierce a heart because the archer has bethought this muddle?”

  “You, sir,” said the man, “are a fool.”

  “I, a fool?” said the knight. “I’ll show you who’s the fool!”

  “Come,” said Daisilodavi, turning his horse. “We’ve a task.” Over his shoulder, he called to the former man-at-arms, “Here’s a thought for you. Consider that an all-powerful demon appears in your dreams and offers you three wishes. Your first wish is that your first wish not be granted. Has the all-powerful demon the power to grant that wish?”

  With a snort, Khairt returned his sword to its scabbard. He did not immediately give the former man-at-arms his back. The fellow still had a sword, after all. He might not be so addled as he seemed.

  “I wish that this wish not be granted,” the man said to himself. He began to chew his lip and rub his forehead.

  Khairt turned his horse. When he caught up with the assassin, he said, “Will you not circle back and poison this one, too?”

  “I have poisoned him with a puzzle,” said Daisilodavi. “He’ll frown upon it until he starves. Or if he gives it up, he’ll find another question that wears him down. When he realizes that he is hungry, he’ll want a theory of food before he eats. Would that all men were philosophers. Mine would be an easy profession then.”

  “The world crawls with fools,” Khairt said.

  “Not fools,” said Daisilodavi. “You see not the half of it.”

  Khairt gave no answer to that. He was already lost in the patterns and variations made by white bark and black, rough and smooth. The very trunks of the trees themselves were a kaleidoscope of shifting geometry as he rode. Only just now had he noticed. As he noticed, he once more felt that his gaze into the trees was returned.

  “Not the half,” Daisilodavi said.

  Dusk light was deepening to gloom when they had ridden far enough to again encounter brambles.

  “The far side,” said Daisilodavi. “We have ridden the breadth of the Heart of Shanodin.”

  Shanodin, Khairt thought. It was a beautiful name. There was music to it. But what he said was, “No sign of Glinham himself.”

  “Oh, there’s some sign of him.”

  “His retainers, you mean.”

  “No, I mean him. Or did you not notice, two or three leagues behind us, a change in the scent of the air? Was there not some unnatural trace?”

  Not notice the smell of the air? Why, Khairt had been drunk with it! There were the rich scents of moss and leaf, the musk of a deer somewhere upwind, the sweet notes of flowers, and from some other region of the forest, a subtle scent like vanilla. That was the scent of red-barked Shanodin pines. Nor was that the only spice-like scent. There was a faint trace of attars, as from an alchemist’s press—the scent of rose and clove and wanderseed touched with the bite of flame…

  Khairt reined his horse. “Lamp oil!”

  “So you did smell it. And not any lamp oil, was it? No, someone burns a scented oil, expensive oil. That’s the sort of dainty, the sort of luxury we might expect of a rich merchant, aye?”

  “Three leagues back! And you did not stop at once?”

  “You were so lost in your dreaming, I dared not wake you.”

  “Dreaming!” Khairt made a fist, but knew not what to insist or what to deny. He had not been dreaming, exactly, though neither had he been about his business. “Demons and dung!” he said at last. “Now I see why our lord Amjad trusts you not to do his bidding!”

  “Tell me,” said Daisilodavi, “what maze of thoughts were you wandering when that scent came to both our noses?”

  “Blast you and your lawyerly graces! Blast your slippery tongue! We should turn and ride. Glinham lies close at hand.”

  “And so will he at the morrow. It grows dark. We’ll encamp and wait for light.”

  “We might have slain him already,” Khairt said. “We might be riding home even now.”

  “And you want to leave, do you?” said Daisilodavi. “I was thinking that you were somewhat drawn to this place.”

  The knight looked at the dark shadows of the trees. They seemed both lovely and foreboding. “This forest is too like a woman, and I’ve had naught to do with women since I left…”

  He caught himself before he named the place. In the service of King Amjad, he had never spoken of his life before, in a court upon the plains. The less others knew of his past, the more free he was of it.

  Daisilodavi was leaning forward in his saddle, as if straining for the missing word. When it did not come, he dismounted. “There’s no sense in risking our horses in the dark. We’ll encamp. Glinham is going nowhere in the meanwhile. He has settled, or why do you think we smelled a lamp burning in the day?”

  “A cave.”

  “Quite so. And we’ll find the entrance better by day than by night.” Daisilodavi laid a blanket upon the ground and unrolled an oilcloth beside it, then went to see to his horse.

  Khairt still did not stir from his saddle.

  “Will you sleep ahorse?” Daisilodavi said.

  “We are watched. Closely.”

  “And as we do not profane the trees, the watchers mean no harm. Put the dryads out of your mind, knight. Get down. Sleep. I may make use of your sword arm on the morrow.”

  “None makes use of me but Amjad and I myself. I do not serve you. You make no use of me.”

  “A figure of speech. Stars in heaven, knight. Dismount and rest!”

  Khairt sat a moment longer, lest his
immediate response should seem obedience. Then he clambered down, lest his resistance seem only the churlishness of a lesser man. He fed his horse some oats and hobbled it.

  The hard tack that had been their meal this week past had passed Khairt’s lips untasted day after day. This night, as the last forest light faded, he noticed the fullness of it, the pleasure of so daily a taste as unleavened, unsalted bread.

  “Will you sleep sitting up again?” said Daisilodavi. The oil cloth covered him.

  “The sooner to my feet and fighting, this way,” Khairt said.

  “That’s if you wake in time. You slept ahorse today. I do not think you’ll stand a vigil any better in the night.”

  Khairt did not answer.

  Daisilodavi closed his eyes, and in the darkness, he smiled. The knight was beginning to show himself. At last, Daisilodavi would see what sort of man it was who stood with him at Amjad’s right hand.

  For his part, Khairt was troubled without knowing quite why. Yes, the feeling that he was ever watched disquieted him a little. But there was something more. Since he had taken up the sword, since he had come into the service of Amjad, a certain calm had settled over him, though he was always in the midst of murder. Or because he was always in the midst of murder. Now that calm had left him. He felt naked. Unarmored. There was something more dangerous about this forest than any line of pikemen he had ever charged.

  As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he perceived the ghostly glow of phosphorescence on rotting logs and stumps. On many vigils, he had seen this bluish glow, and never fancied it beautiful. Now, as the emberflies and witchbeetles traced lines of red and green light through the black air, he felt as if he’d never seen a greater wonder. Soon he was lost in the weaving patterns of light, and even as his eyes closed, still he saw the lights dance.

  He dreamed flowers. He dreamed black tree trunks, and brown, and gray, and white, soaring toward the canopy above like pillars in a great hall. He dreamed of the black swirls and dots and slashes on white birch bark, saw that these markings were lines of poetry he could almost read. His lips, thick with sleep, tried in vain to form the words.