Water Witch by Connie Willis
Only now did Radi realize that it was not delirium causing him to hear the sounds of water. The sounds were real. Water was rushing somewhere in the dark caves behind him, and the sounds were quite real. He grunted and tried to stand. Quickly Deza’s strong arms were around him, helping him.
“She tried to drown us,” Edvar said, looking back down the dark passageway from which they had come. “She tried to drown us, and he let her!”
“No,” Deza said briskly. “Your father didn’t know. He bargained for your release, but she betrayed him, too, as she’s betrayed us all.”
“And you’ve saved us all!” he said bitterly, and Deza seemed to become aware of his mood for the first time.
“It seems to me you’ve done your share of saving, too,” she said gently. “I’m very grateful to you.”
“I didn’t know I was saving your boyfriend for you or I might not have been so willing to dig him up.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said firmly. “You were helping me. You were the one I turned to for help, the only one I could trust.”
“I was a lot of help to you on the karst,” he said, sounding more sad than bitter now. “I couldn’t believe he’d try to kill you. My own father.”
“He thought I was already dead when he threw me down that sinkhole. He was just disposing of a body, not killing someone,” she said, telling him the one thing he needed to hear most. Radi knew what an effort it must have been to tell that particular lie. “Your father’s not the enemy, Edvar. Sheria is. Your father may end up a victim of her treachery like the rest of us if we don’t get to the Red City in time to stop her.”
“Will we be in time to stop her?” Edvar asked.
“Not if we stand here,” Radi said, throwing an arm around the Tycoon’s whelp. “So let’s get moving.”
Edvar said, “Just a minute. There’s something I want to say. I don’t know how to make an oath of loyalty like a prince, but I just want you to know you can count on me, Deza.”
“I already knew that,” Deza said, and shouldered her pack again.
“At least we’ll have clear passage,” Radi said. He cocked his head toward the mounting sounds of rushing water. “No one can follow us through that.”
“I wish that were true,” Deza said. “Harubiki may be past the water and right behind us. If she heard me in the slipspace, she would have had enough time to get through the dungeons before they were flooded.”
“If she heard you? Did she? Did you make a noise?” Radi demanded.
Deza grimaced. “I was in a hurry, but… yes, the spear must have fallen.”
“Then we can bet she’s behind us. No maybe about it. When she realizes that I’ve escaped her again, she won’t even consider turning back. She’d swim the Maundifu if she had to to finish me off.”
Still weak, feeling grim, Radi leaned onto Edvar’s strong shoulder and tried to walk faster. In an hour, he’d be stronger. But they didn’t have an hour, not with Harubiki lurking nearby.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Deza stopped uncertainly, started forward, and then stopped again before the men had a chance to follow. She didn’t sign to them for silence. She didn’t have to. She had already heard the sound she was waiting for. Deza didn’t know what she had heard, the scrabble of sliding pebbles, perhaps, the scrape of a knife along a sluice wall. Harubiki was behind them.
She leaned tiredly against the wall for a moment, wishing she had the power to feel where Harubiki was as easily as she could feel the water. Sound underground was wildly deceptive. Harubiki could be miles behind them or only a few yards. Deza wondered what kind of weapons she would be carrying.
“Radi,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t. He still looked dazed, even though she’d given him the last of the water twenty minutes ago, and it should have taken effect by now. If he had gotten more than one peketa bite, as she was beginning to fear, waterskins would not be enough to revive him, and they were a long way from the Maundifu.
“What is it, Deza?” Edvar said. He didn’t look much better than Radi. The effort of climbing and half-carrying Radi through this nightmare terrain had almost done him in. She thought momentarily of lying to him in some misplaced idea of protecting him. All that was likely to get him was an unexpected knife in the back.
“Harubiki’s following us,” she said. “I heard her.”
“I know,” he said quietly. She wondered how long he had been keeping it from her.
“We have to get through to the Red City,” Radi said groggily. “We have to get to the computers. Forget about me. Take Deshenaza, the princess of the Red City, and go. She will know what to do. Take her to the computer.”
“And do what?” Deza snapped. “I don’t know anything about computers. Neither does Edvar. Just exactly what do you expect us to do without you?” Her voice caught.
“Deshenaza knows. Go with her,” Radi said and sank back into the half-sleep in which Edvar half-dragged, half-carried him. They would never make it.
Edvar shifted Radi to a better position over his shoulder. “We’ll all get there, Radi my man. Don’t worry. Just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and we’ll be there in no time.” In exactly the same tone he said to Deza, “We’ll never make it. He’s past hearing you. We’ve got to get him to water, Harubiki or no. It’s our only chance. How far’ are we from this underground river?”
“About a half a mile, I think,” Deza said. “I couldn’t risk leading us back the way my father and I came. They’ve flooded half the sluices, and the rest of the approaches to the Maundifu are riddled with cave traps. We could all end up going over a cliff.”
“We’ll have to risk it. Can’t you tell a dead end with your… abilities?” His tone was hurried, almost impatient. How far behind us is she, Deza wondered. She plunged into the explanation.
“All I can tell is whether there’s water and where it’s flowing. I can’t tell if the opening is a slope down to a beach or a drop of hundreds of feet unless there’s water in the passage. The cave traps look like they’re safe, and before you know it, you’re over the edge.”
—Ah, yes, the cave trap,—her father said suddenly.—A useful device.—
—How is something that can kill us useful? I’ve got a sick man here and an enemy right on our heels.—
—If it can kill you, it can kill your enemy. She is, I understand, an excellent tracker. She would surely follow wherever you lead.—
“I’ll get us to the Maundifu,” Deza said. Edvar perked up, as if he thought she had witched the answer out of their dilemma. “This will have to be trial and error. I can only tell if there’s water, not if it’s safe.”
“Let’s get on with it,” Edvar said and urged Radi, now totally unaware of what was happening, down the narrow slope.
It was more than the half-mile to the river’s edge, and Deza had to stop every few feet to recheck their position. They moved ahead without turning off their lanterns or trying to step soundlessly. She had not been quite truthful with Edvar. She could sometimes detect a cave trap from the water going over the edge. That was what she was doing now as they went. She could probably more easily find a dead-end by poking her head into one passage after another, but it would do no good to lead Harubiki into a trap if they were trapped in it with her. What Deza needed was a combination of a real opening to the river and a false one, close enough to one another that Harubiki would be deceived. At last she thought she had it and moved rapidly down a twisting sluice newly emptied of water. The floor of it was slick under her feet, and she went back to help Edvar, but he waved her on ahead.
The sluice branched to right and upward, left and downward. The roar of the Maundifu was audible even to the men here, and Radi lifted his head like an animal sniffing a water hole. She halted them at the branching, handing Edvar her knife before she took off into the upward-branching corridor. As she had divined, the path climbed only for a few yards and then went down in wide easy steps to the river’s edge. She we
As soon as they were safely out of sight, she headed into the lower corridor, sure with a sudden frightening certainty that Harubiki was hard on her heels. She turned off her lamp and crept forward on her hands and knees down to where the corridor began to twist in on itself, rising almost imperceptibly.
There were a few inches of water on the floor, seeping slowly down from some higher point in the corridor, not enough to read her path by, and the corridor was rising rapidly now and becoming narrower.
Her intention was to go to the last possible safe point before the cave trap started its descent, then make enough noise that Harubiki could get a fix on her, and get back out of the sluice before Harubiki showed up. If that didn’t work, she had felt a narrow alcove, hardly a slash in the rock, that she could fit into if worse came to worst.
Deza could feel the water plummeting over the edge of the cave trap only a few yards further on, though the passage was still climbing steadily and she could not hear any sound of water at all. She took another climbing step, letting go of the sluice wall to steady the pack on her back, and put her foot down onto emptiness.
Deza screamed. Her foot connected with the cave floor, but she was already into a careening descent, skidding as she had fallen, half on her shoulder and with the pack twisted helplessly across her arm. It was like a water slide, but she knew it would end in sudden death. The roar of the water was suddenly, violently loud. She could not hear the end of her own scream. She flung her free arm out to brace herself, but the tunnel wall was smooth, and she was sliding faster as new waters poured in from overhead sources and plunged her to the falls.
—Put your arm up—her father said, an island of calm inside her head.
She reached up, the pack constraining her, and grabbed onto a strong bar. She gripped it and felt almost jerked apart by her sudden stop. She pulled herself to a sitting position and latched onto the bar with her other hand. She had thought the bars were metal, part of some ancient pipes of the Red City, but she realized now they must be tubular crystals of galena, formed by intrusion of the lead into the volcanic roof of the passage. They would not bear her full weight, but she could use them to break her slide and guide her ascent back to the point at which she had fallen into the trap. She began a cautious hand-over-hand retreat up the tunnel to where she had been trapped.
The sound of water lessened to the trickle she had heard at first, one of the tricks of the passage. It cushioned its own sounds so that the luckless traveller could not hear his doom just ahead. The latticework of crystals faded, too, to an occasional spur of rock. Deza heaved herself the last few feet, praying she wouldn’t start to slide again. And heard Harubiki.
It was the sound of a footstep, a footstep in water deep enough that Harubiki was far into the tunnel and moving fast, perhaps with a light. There was no time to waste. She fumbled out of her pack and slung it over into the cave trap. Then she counted her steps rapidly back to the niche and squeezed herself in. In the darkness she had no way of telling if one flash of Harubiki’s lantern would expose a foot or a hand. She pulled herself in as tightly as she could, and stopped breathing.
Harubiki went by almost immediately. She had a light, but it was only a pocket flare that pinpointed the corridor. She also had a laser. She was as unlikely as Deza to see the treacherous trap. Deza listened to her progress, the deepening of the water slowing her steps a little, and then the sound that must have drawn Harubiki so unerringly. Harubiki screamed. It was a strange sound, thinned and muffled by the acoustic properties of the passage, and yet oddly naked. Deza had not been able to hear herself over the roar of the waters. Harubiki would not either. Deza closed her eyes.
The scream died away, and there was no answering sound, but Deza felt it and put her hands involuntarily up to her cheeks: the sudden displacing of water as something fell into the endless depths.
She found her way rapidly out of the passage and into the branch that would lead her to the Maundifu. The men weren’t by the river, but she turned on her lamp, and used it to find one of the lights embedded in the rock. With its even light, she could see their footprints in the soft sand, heading upstream to the lake.
Edvar was standing by the lake, the lantern on his wrist casting rings of light on the lake. Radi sat at the water’s edge cupping his hands to fill them with water, and raising his hands to his mouth. He seemed to be drinking absently, his attention on the gleaming surface of the lake until he heard Deza’s nearly soundless approach. Radi turned abruptly.
“Deza,” he said, getting shakily to his feet. “Deza, are you all right?”
“Are you all right?” she said, taking his hand and raising her lantern to look at him.
“He may be too bloated to move,” Edvar said, looking at Radi’s distended belly critically, “but I think his head’s clearing.”
There were terrible circles under Radi’s eyes, and his flesh still seemed drawn and pinched, but his eyes were not so glassy as they had been. “Good,” Deza said, feeling some measure of relief. She squeezed Radi’s hand, then knelt in the sand to take a drink from the lake. Edvar was looking down at her inquiringly. She scooped up water and drank before she answered. “Harubiki’s dead,” she said.
Edvar nodded. Radi seemed stunned.
“You’re sure?” Radi said. “Harubiki is not an easy one to dispatch.”
“I’m sure,” Deza said, feeling slightly irritated. “I did so well that I almost fell into the trap myself, and I knew it was coming. She’s no witch. She couldn’t have known, so she’s dead.”
Radi threw a sharp look at Edvar, but the boy just shook his head.
“He’s angry that I let you endanger yourself. He’s being more reasonable about it now. You should have seen him twenty minutes ago. He got just strong enough to really be mad. It was all I could do to keep him here.”
“Some of that was the peketa poison,” Radi said apologetically, “but you must understand that Deza is the princess. The salvation of the City lies in the continuation of the water witch line.”
Deza looked at him, feeling strange inside. “There’s no salvation in computers,” she said, knowing somehow that was true, yet wondering how she knew. She must have seen the City’s computers as a child, but she would not have known their importance or their limitations at that age.
Radi smiled slightly at her and extended his hand to help her up. She took his hand, but did not lean into it. Even so, she sensed there was some strength in him now.
“You are without question your father’s daughter. Akida’s child,” Radi said. “Do you know that I was charged with your safety when I was merely a boy myself? I’ve bungled the job badly. It has been a case of mistaken identity for years. I thought he meant any princess of the City should be kept safe and in a position to continue the line. I always thought that princess was Sheria. She had the genes even if she didn’t have the gifts. But now I know he meant you. If there’s salvation for the City, it’ll be yours to give.”
“When you talk like that, it’s hard to tell if you really care for me, or just for the City.”
Radi smiled again. “Deza, Princess Deshenaza, there is no difference. You may not realize it now, but you are the City.”
“Akida,” Deza said, musing. “He used many names, but never that one and yet I know it’s right. I can hear Vira my nurse calling him.” For just a moment, Deza felt overwhelmed, her head reeling.—Father,—she said.—Father, I know so much, and yet I know so little. How did you make me forget? Won’t you help me fill in the rest? Please, Father. Father?—Deza took a deep breath, caught her balance even as Radi was reaching for her in alarm. Deza looked around wildly. “The mbuzi,” she said. “Where is the mbuzi?”
“We were looking
“How could you let it go?” Deza said, stepping out into the water to add her own lantern light to Edvar’s. “You know what happens to them when they drink too much groundwater. This is the Maundifu. It’s got to be out of its mind with…”
—Delight,—she heard.—You oughta try it, Deza old girl. This is much better than the pools of Sindra. Come on in.—
“Where?” Deza said frantically, then caught a glimmer of ripples off to her left. She ran through the shallow water, Edvar and Radi at her heels.
The mbuzi was swimming strongly in tight circles, nostrils flaring, eyes wild. It saw Deza and dived, no mean feat for a four-legged beast, but its head and body were suddenly submerged, and only the tips of its ears were visible.
Deza tried to walk to it, but by now the water was up to her waist. Her wool pants dragged heavily against her legs.—Father, come out of there at once,—she said. The mbuzi surfaced and bawled, and the sound echoed endlessly off the cave walls.
“Deza, leave it. We have to hurry,” she heard Radi say. “The City needs you, Deza.”
“It will swim until it dies,” Deza said. “It won’t have enough sense to come out before it’s too tired to make the shore.” She took a few more steps toward the mbuzi, which was now swimming in a line parallel to the shore. It was one step too many, and Deza went down. Her lantern went out, but this time she remembered to stand up. She’d barely regained her feet when she felt Radi’s and Edvar’s hands on her, both of them pulling her back to the shore.
“No,” Deza said stubbornly. “I won’t leave without him. “—Father,—she shouted silently.—Come out of that water or I’ll leave you here to drown.—
—No, you won’t, Deza old girl. You need me in the Red City. Who’s gonna unlock the computers if I’m not there?—
—What are you talking about?—