Water Witch by Connie Willis
—Our safety lay in our anonymity.—
—And my ignorance. I’m at the bottom of a sinkhole, Father, and you’re being eaten, by buis on the desert. How safe were we, Father, from the innocent babe Sheria? She caused the hovercraft accident, didn’t she, just on the off-chance we were still alive?—
He didn’t answer.
—The Tycoon said she was coming to the compound to sell the Red City’s secrets, your innocent Sheria. Well, I’m coming too, Father. From a direction no one expects.—
She did not wait for him to argue with her. At the next turning she could see light, and she half-walked, half-ran to the sinkhole pool and the open sky above it. The water was nearly all gone, evaporated into the dry air of the karst, the pool no longer being fed by the Maundifu, which Deza could feel now, farther underground and to the south.
Tycoon, Deza thought, I could show you your source now if you hadn’t been so hasty. Sheria can’t find it for you. I’ll wager she’s no true water witch. And the two of you were so bent on my murder I don’t think I shall grace either of you with the knowledge. I will come to see you, though.
There was a limp bundle on the far side of the pool. Deza skirted the smooth, carved-rock shore and bent to pick it up. It was the Tycoon’s pack, thrown after her body, no doubt, as being useless. All his hopeful equipment for finding the underground river: carbide lanterns, ropes, climbing pitons, magnesium pocket flares, and an ample supply of food and waterskins. Good, Deza thought, now I won’t have to skulk through the dark on my way back to the compound.
She put her cloak into the pack, strapped one of the carbide lanterns to her wrist, and slung the pack onto her back. The warmth of her body activated the lantern, though its light had little effect here in the sunlight. Its beam shone dimly across the pool onto a narrow opening marked by two squat stalagmites. She felt a sudden longing to enter that door, retrace their journey. To go home, she thought, but not yet. I have business to settle at the compound first.
She turned determinedly and looked behind her. The little girl and her father had not followed the underground passages to their ending at the sea, probably because there were native settlements along the shore, though the compound had not been built yet. They had left the underground regions here, climbing onto the karst by the route she had just descended. It didn’t matter. The water and the lack of it and all the dark passages between formed a pattern in Deza’s mind. She was not even sure she needed the lantern at her wrist to find her way back to the compound, so confident of her new powers did she feel.
She plunged into the shadow at the edge of the sinkhole and unerringly into the passage that would lead her through the surrounding bluffs of the karst and under the compound’s plain, ending, Deza supposed, in the mbuzim pens she had seen before. From there it would be an easy matter to get into the house.
—I’m coming to get you, Father,—she thought jubilantly.
—And who else, Deza?—he said.
She closed her mind stubbornly.—Do you know where Radi is?—she said.
—Is it Radi you are longing to see, or the Tycoon? And Sheria? Revenge is a pointless exercise, Deza.—
She didn’t answer. The lantern let her make quick work of the two miles to the edge of the karst. The tunnel she was in took a sharp downward turn and the walls began to take on the dustiness of the mbuzi caverns. She began to move more cautiously.
She heard a faint echo of voices and a soft thud as of something small falling. She switched off the lantern with a flick of her wrist and waited listening in the dark. No sound. She switched on the lantern again, this time shielding it with her other hand so it gave off only enough light for her to walk by, and rounded a corner.
She was not at the pens. The narrow row of shallow caves cut into the rock had not been built for mbuzim, but for men. The low openings were effectively cut off from the tunnel by a deep wide chasm. Dungeons, she thought. It’s a wonder I didn’t end up here before this.
She heard the sound again, a sliding, and swung her light to the left, close to the wall. At her ear, very close, she heard the sudden trill of a singing snake.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was so dark Radi couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. He only knew that it took extraordinary strength to raise his eyelids to see nothing at all. Even so, he tried to keep them open and watch for the telltale glow of Harubiki’s light when she came creeping down the stone corridors to assassinate them.
“It’s moving around, Radi,” the boy had whispered hours, or only minutes, ago. Edvar, sitting beside him, had put the sack with the singing snake in it on his belly to keep the reptile warm so it wouldn’t become torpid in the cool cave air. Radi had no idea how much time had gone by since he and Edvar had been chained in the dungeon. There was nothing by which to measure time’s passing, and the fever in his body distorted any natural rhythms he might have judged by.
“Radi!” Edvar whispered.
“Shhh,” Radi cautioned. For an instant he thought it was the fever making phosphenes in his eyes, but the glow he saw bobbed and brightened in a fashion that could only indicate someone quickly approaching with a carbide lantern. There were no boot sounds like those the Tycoon’s guards would have made, so it had to be Harubiki in her soft leather cave boots. “Throw the snake the instant the light touches us,” Radi whispered to the boy.
Edvar was so silent in changing his stance that Radi seemed to feel him moving about rather than hear him. As he watched the light grow, he imagined Edvar poised to throw, arm drawn back, muscles tense as he held the snake’s fangs and tail. When the light struck them, it momentarily blinded Radi, but he knew the snake was away, for he heard its song behind his ear, where he knew the snake could not be.
He watched the light halt, hoped that it would never move again. Suddenly the beam of light streaked upwards, flashing off crystals in the limestone walls and just briefly catching on red wool pants.
“Who’s there?” Radi said hoarsely, worried that some innocent servant had been sent with rations to feed the prisoners, perhaps even one with keys to free Edvar.
“Radi, is that you?” It was Deza’s voice.
“Deza, run!” Edvar shouted. “There’s a singing snake…” Before Edvar could finish his warning, the light dived to the floor of the cave and stayed there, radiating out across the chasm. “It got her,” Edvar shouted. “Radi, the snake got Deza.”
Radi struggled to his feet while he stared at the motionless light. The brilliance after so long in the darkness was making him blink, or was it tears that blurred his vision? He groaned, sick to raging that his sick body could make his wits so sluggish that he couldn’t distinguish the footsteps of the woman he loved from the ones of the woman who would murder him. No matter that he thought Deza was already dead and that he was taken by surprise. He’d killed her with his signal just as surely as if he’d drawn his knife across her throat. “Oh, Deza,” he said, groaning again.
“What?”
Radi blinked and rubbed dust, not tears, from his eyes just in time to see Deza step into the light, struggling to put something in her pants pocket.
“Deza?” Edvar’s query sounded with his own.
“Yes, just a moment.” It was the singing snake she was struggling with, and she had no snake hook with which to maneuver the serpent the way the native hunters did. “They’re so wiggly… there.” She looked up at them. Her curly red hair was matted and tangled and her yellow shirt was dirty and torn, but she was very much alive. She put her hands on her hips. “What are the two of you doing down here… and in chains?”
“It’s a long story,” Radi said, leaning back against the wall of the dungeon. His knees were getting weak.
“Deza, do you have any water?” Edvar said urgently. “Radi has a peketa bite and we’ve run out of… liquids.”
“Peketa bite? Down here?” she said, stepping back into the shadow. When she returned she had the carbide lantern by its wrist strap and was holdin
“Careful, Deza, there’s a chasm between us and you,” Radi said. But Deza had already seen it or knew it was there, for she was pushing the metal bridge out onto its track with her foot. When she ran across, Edvar caught her in his arms.
“Deza,” he said joyfully. “Thank the stars you are alive. I knew my father wouldn’t kill you, but then the snake… Deza, Deza.”
Radi could only stare up at the boy as he continued to crush Deza against him, and envy the pleasure of feeling her heart beat against him. But as he looked, her sparkling eyes met his, her attention totally on him in spite of Edvar’s strong grip. Finally Edvar seemed to realize that Deza was responding as much as a rag doll might, and he released her and stepped back.
Without even a glance at Edvar, Deza knelt by Radi and opened the waterskin. Her strong hands supported his head as she put the waterskin to his lips.
“Drink all of it,” she commanded gently. “Four or five skinsful and we’ll have the poison flushed out of you.” She sounded confident, but Radi could see that she was biting her lower lip to keep from saying more, and now her eyes were flashing with worry, too. He must look terrible. He felt her fingers pushing aside his clothing as she looked for the peketa wound. She barely paused when she found it on his neck, continued looking.
“There’s only the one,” Radi said, pushing away the water skin.
Deza sighed, relieved. Radi knew what she was thinking. One peketa bite was dangerous enough without sufficient water to treat it, but two or more would have been a death warrant unless there was a lake full of water to drink, which was clearly impossible here. “Were you out on the desert looking for me?” Deza said. “Is that how you got bitten?”
“Yes and no,” Radi said. “I was out in the desert with Harubiki. She tried to kill me.”
“Oh, no. I should have warned you. Radi, she never sent the water message. She was disobeying you right from the start.”
“How could you know the message was not sent?” Radi said.
“I just know. I can feel such signals in the water for hours. There was nothing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Deza looked chagrined. “I thought you were a pirate.”
Radi shook his head regretfully. “Nothing was as it seemed, was it, my dear? So much has happened to make me understand how ingrained this treachery has become. But it’s me who is to blame for your troubles with the Tycoon out on the karst. If I’d paid attention to business that night instead of… other things, I’d have known that the Tycoon meant harm to both of us. I counted too much on marines that never came, marines that Harubiki never sent for. Your instincts were more reliable than mine. You had good reason to be frightened. At least he didn’t try to kill you.”
“Yes, he did. He just didn’t succeed. And he may never understand how, but he did me a favor when he threw me down that sinkhole. I couldn’t get up, but I remembered how to get out through the caves.”
“What do you mean?” Radi said, frowning. “Are you trying to tell me you came to these dungeons under the compound all the way from the karst?”
“Yes,” Deza said. “I probably wouldn’t have remembered how to travel through the caves or who I am if he hadn’t taken me out onto the karst. Radi, do you know who I am?”
Deza the con artist was not the answer, of that much he was certain. Radi remembered the delicate gembone cheek insets, perfect to the last detail in looking like genuine insets. He remembered Deza wet and shivering, awed by the vast ocean. And Radi knew that only a true water witch could handle a singing snake without fear. He shook his head. “There is only one true water witch that I know of. Can it be that Akida and the princess Deshenaza did not die so long ago?”
“Deshenaza,” she whispered. “No one has called me that for a very long time. I had almost forgotten the true form of my name. But there is another princess. Your Sheria.”
Radi shook his head. “My allegiance is to the Red City first, and she has betrayed the City. She’s going to fill the Tycoon’s reservoir with water from the Maundifu. I fear she will drown the City in the Red Cave during the process. All in exchange for a shipload of arms, with which she thinks to rule the surface world.”
“Sheria’s not a true witch. She cannot unleash the Maundifu,” Deza said, looking royally indignant in spite of her tattered clothes and tangled hair. “She wouldn’t know how.”
“Not how to do it safely, but she can do it. When your father left the City with you, there were no more witches. Sheria’s father ruled by computer and he taught Sheria what he knew. She thinks she controls the computer, but it may well control her. She has brought terminals with her to the Tycoon’s compound, and by her command, the computer can release the waters of the Maundifu.”
“Sheria’s here? In the compound?” Deza looked wild and excited. “I thought I’d have to go through the caves to the City to find her. But she’s here!”
“Yes, she’s here. But so what?”
Deza let go of his hand and stood up. “Don’t you understand, Radi? She forced me out of my home, and she tried to kill me twice! She succeeded in killing my father. I won’t let her kill all my people in the Red City as well. I’ve got to stop her. I’ve got to go home, and when I go I want my home to be there.”
She turned and ran toward the bridge.
“Deza, no. You can’t do this alone. Get the keys to our chains and free us. We’ll go to the City by the underground trail.” She hesitated, staring at him. “Deza, you don’t fully understand what you’re getting involved in. You must let me help.”
Deza shook her head. “She killed my father. She murdered him, just like her father murdered Vira.”
“Deza!” The sharpness of his voice stopped her again. “Deza, I am the commander in chief of the defense forces of the City in the Red Cave. I am a minor prince, but one loyal to the true line. I pledge my oath of loyalty to you, Deshenaza, and I beg you to allow me to come with you.” But she ran, her soft-soled sandals flashing in the light of the lantern. “Deza, I love you!” he shouted. And then she was gone.
“I pledge my oath of loyalty to you,” Edvar mocked. “Throwing kisses. You would have done better to tell her to throw her pack at us. Look at what’s over there.”
Radi shook himself, trying not to fear what Deza was running to, and looked where Edvar was pointing. There were ropes and pitons, and sturdy picks that could have chopped at the bolts in the limestone walls, if only they had them in their hands. Worse still, the carbide lantern was beyond their reach and shining in their eyes. If Harubiki came now, she’d have easy prey, and there’d be no singing snake to stop her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Deza was nearly to the level of the pens where the mbuzi had been kept before she slowed her headlong ascent and leaned against the rock wall to catch her breath. The caverns where she had left Radi and Edvar helpless prisoners were far below her, almost on the level of the Maundifu. She wondered if they had originally been part of the underground network of the Red City.
Deza tried to call her father. She had had some sort of fixed idea that her father had to be where she had left him, but the sight of the pens above her had brought her to her senses. Her opinion of the Tycoon had changed drastically out on the karst, and now she had to keep that change clearly in mind or she would find herself a prisoner, too. The Tycoon had to have known about the slipspaces. He already knew about the mbuzi and Deza’s attachment to it. Deza had no idea what she might have said in her delirium. She might easily have betrayed her father, and if so, she was walking into a trap with the mbuzi as bait. No, that was wrong. Even the Tycoon would not set a trap for a dead person. Then where was her father? Asleep? Sulking?
—I don’t have time for this foolishness, Father.—
—I quite agree,—he said suddenly, so suddenly he had to have been listening for some time.—Foolishness is a luxury we cannot afford with time so short. So come and get me and we’
—There are things I have to do first,—Deza said.
—Yes,—he said,—I know what things. There isn’t time. If I had allowed myself the time to revenge Vira’s death, you would not be here to argue with me.—
—Vira?—Deza said, the anguish in his voice jerking her back to the image of the woman whose blood had flowed from her throat onto Deza’s hands.—My nurse?—
—My beloved, my betrothed, your new stepmother.—
Deza did not answer. She pressed her face against the rock, trying to absorb this new staggering piece of information. Finally, she said,—You did not take any revenge.—
—You cannot help the dead, and they are past caring for revenge. The living are worth saving, and the time to do it is now. I’m in the slipspace,—he said, and she realized from his unbidden admission that he must think he had convinced her of something.
But he hasn’t, she thought, keeping the thought carefully concealed. I will revenge my father’s death. She moved carefully up to the level of the pens and was almost instantly rewarded for her stealth because the narrow space she squeezed into to reconnoitre turned out to be the place where the keepers of the pens stored their belongings. Including the keys to the dungeons. Including spare water skins hanging from the wall. She pocketed the keys and took a moment to sling two of the full water skins down the steep path she had just ascended. She could pick them up on her way back. Then she started her careful way across the pens, keeping to the walls and watching for the servants who would be tending the bleating mbuzim.
She stopped halfway across. It had taken her far too long to get even this close. She had still half the distance of the pens and then the stables to cross before she could reach the back staircase she had followed the servant down on her first trip to the pens.
—Father,—she said,—do the slipspaces extend into the mbuzi pens?—She did not think he would know, but it was worth a try.
He was slow in answering, but his voice was strong, as if he were very near.—Deza,—he said, and his voice faded a little.—Come and get me. I’m in the slipspace.—