Water Witch by Connie Willis
—The keys to the City. Ha. That’s a good one. The keys to Mahali. You can’t leave me. I’m inspedensible, spindemensible, …—
—You’re not indispensable, you great lummox. I should have left you in the desert to begin with.—She was trying to wade back into the water, but Radi had too firm a grip on her. “Radi, please,” she said, trying to struggle out of his grasp.
Suddenly her arm was free, and Radi was gone from her side, leaving her and Edvar in water up to their hips. Edvar was still holding their last working lantern.
—That’s right. Send your ape of a boyfriend after me. You’d better not let him hurt me. I’m …—
—I know. Indispensable. What makes you think that?—There was no point in talking to a drunk, but maybe she could distract her father long enough for Radi to be able to catch the mbuzi.
—I remembered the insets, didn’t I? Even when Vira was lying there, all bloody. Poor Vira! Poor bloody Vira!—Her father began to blubber, but his drunken emotions didn’t seem to be having any effect on the mbuzi, which was paddling steadily toward the edge of the light. Now Deza could see Radi swimming after the beast, not as fast as he might have if he were well, but the water seemed to give him strength. The mbuzi hadn’t been weakened by peketa poison. It hadn’t even been tired by the long trek through the caves of the karst. It had gone the whole way on Deza ‘s shoulders, so it was full of energy. It saw Radi coming and let out a gurgling bleat.
—You’re no match for me, you ape,—her father said.—And don’t think I’ll let you marry my daughter, either. I deserve respeck.—
Radi lunged for the animal and went down in a violent splashing of water. The mbuzi continued swimming.
—No respeck at all.—
“I wish I’d never given you the little beast,” Edvar said anxiously. “We need to get going.”
“I know, but.…” Deza said, on the verge of telling him the mbuzi contained her father’s spirit. But what would she say? That old goat out there is my father?
Radi’s head disappeared from view. Deza gasped, and Edvar went a few steps deeper to cast the light farther over the water. The mbuzi was swimming at the farthest edge of the light, and then they couldn’t see it anymore, only the ripples of its wake. Deza held her breath, and Edvar lifted his arm high to flood the cavern with light. Nothing, not even the ripples now.
“He’s gone under,” Edvar said. “I’d better go after him.” Edvar unstrapped his lantern and handed it to Deza. She saw a splash at the edge of the ring of light.
“Wait,” she said. The two of them stared for a moment, then Radi’s head surfaced. Within seconds they heard the mbuzi bawl again, as if in pain.
—Ow! Make him let go of my tail!—her father said.
—You’re lucky it’s not the ears he caught hold of, though I think it’s the brain end of you he’s got hold of,—Deza said, at once angry and relieved.
Her father seemed to burp, or something like it, in her mind, then said indignantly,—You always were a brat.—
When Radi was close enough, Edvar reached out and grabbed the mbuzi by the scruff of its neck, picking it out of the water. The little beast sagged down to the bottom of its skin, dripping and still trying to swim, pupilless eyes half-closed. Deza took the little beast and draped it over her shoulders, wanting to admonish it, but knowing that anything she said or did would be useless in its present condition.
“Can we go now?” Radi said, also dripping and bedraggled. She noticed, however, that despite his exertion in going after the mbuzi, he did not reach for Edvar’s shoulder to lean on.
Deza nodded. “Akida may thank you personally for this some day,” she said. “But until then, I will have to thank you on his behalf.”
Radi shrugged, accepting but not really understanding. She didn’t try to enlighten him. No one really believed in spirits in gembone, not until it was a personal experience. And how could she tell him the truth of the matter when she didn’t know it herself? Had her desperate need for her father’s advice made her create his ghost? Or had he been born out of the hypnotic blocks her father had placed in his child’s mind? The revelations of her past might have driven her insane if she hadn’t found a logical way to let it out, bit by bit, in the form of her father’s advice. From an mbuzi.
—Reedicklus,—her father said.—I’m not a figment of anyone’s mijajination… gimazination. Give me another drink of the Maundifu and we’ll see who’s a figment.—
—Oh, shut up, Father,—Deza said, and stepped out of the water.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Radi walked behind Edvar and Deza as they followed the shore of the lake. There were lots of old sluices here, cutting through the sand, but they were empty or just trickling a bit of water, and he knew that they ought to be full. It had begun, then. The water was being diverted from its natural path, and was pooling somewhere above the City. Every minute was precious, and he had wasted an unknown number of them on the cursed mbuzi. He looked bitterly at the black lump across Deza ‘s shoulders. Its head lolled and it bawled incessantly, lamenting its abrupt rescue from the intoxicating lake.
Yet Radi knew he could not have done otherwise. Deza held an odd attachment for the little creature, and it was hard not to remember that Sheria had no room in her heart to love anyone, not him, and certainly not a stupid animal. The difference between the two women was important. The crowned queen of the Red City must have compassion for all in her domain, even the natives on the planet surface and their beasts.
“Can you walk faster, Radi?” Deza said, not breaking her stride to look back at him.
In response, he quickened his pace. It was not an easy thing for him to do. His muscles were stiff from poison and abuse, and his stomach felt as if it were full of lead. But he could move now, for the effect of the peketa bite was losing its grip on him with this last gorging of water to wash it through. Yes, he was thinking more clearly, and his muscles responded to his will, albeit painfully.
Deza turned from the beach and led them into a narrow tunnel, part natural cave but widened in places by the old machines to allow more water to flow. So much time had gone by and so much water had flowed through them over the years that the travertine had built up and clogged the old scars in the rocks. There was no water here now except that which was pooled in the depressions in the travertine under his feet. The way was slick, and he walked carefully.
“How far, Deza?” he asked.
“It can’t be much farther,” Deza said, putting her hands to her cheeks. Radi thought she must be aching nearly as much as he, though from a different cause. Great amounts of water could distress water witches if they didn’t constantly strive to keep it under control, and in times of stress, he knew that might be difficult.
“Perhaps we should rest,” Radi said.
“No,” Edvar said flatly. “We have to hurry.”
“Deza may need a minute…” Radi said. She looked at him gratefully, but she shook her head.
“I’m all right.”
“Only now,” Radi said, “am I realizing how difficult it must have been for you to pull me out of the sea. You are untrained.”
Deza shook her head and walked on grimly clutching the mbuzi. “No, he trained me. He threw me into the pools at Sindra, he never let me skip a bath. It never became easy for me, but I managed.”
“It will,” Radi said.
“Will what?” Deza asked.
“Become easy, just as easy as eating and breathing. Witches who have no fear to conquer don’t usually live to adulthood.”
“Well, this one won’t make it to old age if we don’t hurry.”
“What’s that?” Edvar said suddenly. The mbuzi had bawled again, but Radi knew he was not referring to the beast’s noise, for between bawling and snuffling it had rarely been quiet the entire trek along the lake. They stood silently, and heard a scraping noise.
“A sluice gate,” Deza said. “They’re opening or closing one ahead.”
Perhaps he should wait here in the dark. Any pursuers would betray themselves by their lights, whether it was the Tycoon’s soldiers or Harubiki, not so dead as Deza believed. Then he thought better of it. The dangers still ahead were more certain than the dangers behind. He did not expect a royal welcome for Deza in the City and certainly none for himself. He hurried after Deza and Edvar, following their bobbing light through the hollow earth.
The sluice gate at the top of the water run was open, and Deza led them across an empty man-made canal to a natural cave that sloped sharply down. The way was filled with loose rock and so steep that only the narrowness of the passage prevented them from falling a long way. As it was, they could deliberately jam their bodies against the wall to prevent headlong plunges, and wriggle through when the way caught their clothes and flesh.
“Where are we?” Radi said. They had to be close to the City by now, but he’d never seen anything resembling this passage on the grids. He thought he would have remembered one this close to the City.
“We’re climbing down to the City,” Deza said, slipping through yet another crack in the rock. The mbuzi bawled indignantly as its fanny scraped along behind her. “The galleries are right through this wall,” she said, giving the rock a slap with the flat of her hand, “but we have to enter from below. The water is flowing over the City, in the old bed. The sluice gates up there won’t hold.” Her voice sounded anxious, but she was not frightened. She lowered herself, ledge to protrusion, moving steadily down.
Finally the tiny chimney they’d been climbing through widened into a sloping wall, down which they half-climbed, half-fell. At the bottom was a small natural chamber, formed of the same red rock as the City itself, limestone heavily laden with iron and oxidized to a brilliant rust. A staircase had been carved in the stone. It spiralled up to a wall.
“We made it,” Deza said, taking the steps two at a time. “There’s a door. It’s tons of stone, but it’s counter-balanced… if we can just find the lever.” She was groping along the rock face at the top of the stairs, feeling along the smooth red rock for a lever Radi was sure must be hidden. Edvar was halfway up the stairs, ready to help.
As Radi went to join them, a stone tumbled down the slope from above. It was a tiny stone, its noise almost insignificant compared to the noise the two on the stairs were making. Any one of them could have jarred it loose during their downward plunge, left it precariously balanced until a grain or two of debris had shifted and upset the delicate balance. Perhaps. But all his soldier’s instincts warned him that a foot could just as easily have upset that stone. His best course of action was to stand back in the shadows and wait to see who emerged from the overhead chimney. But that course of action was not open to him. He heard Deza shout in triumph as the stone door swung wide.
“Wait,” Radi said. He dashed for the staircase. “Deza, you can’t just go running into the City. Edvar may pass for a native, but you’re wearing the royal insets. You’ll never get past the guards. Take off your insets.”
Deza started to unsnap the filigreed gembone from her cheeks, and then stopped. “No,” she said. She bent swiftly, rummaged through her pack, and triumphantly pulled out her blue cloak. “What about this?” she said, tying it around her neck and pulling the hood far forward to hide her face.
“Blue is Sheria’s color,” Radi said doubtfully. “It will only… well, it’s better than nothing. But keep your face hidden. And carry the mbuzi under your arm. They’ll never believe you’re Sheria with that thing draped around your neck.”
They ducked through the door into near darkness and swung it shut. “Can you lock it?” Radi asked Deza.
“I don’t think so. I can close it, though.” She pressed her hand into a wide flat space in the rock and the door swung slowly shut. Radi could see no means of locking it now that it was shut. Invisibility was its protection on this side of the wall. But the other side was a stairway leading to solid rock, and Harubiki would have no trouble figuring out where they had gone.
Deza, he noticed now, had stopped and was looking around the narrow hallway in which they found themselves. There was a little light coming in from farther down the corridor, and Edvar switched off his carbide lantern and stuck it in his pocket. The hallway had once been opulently furnished, but the dark blue wallhangings hung in shreds, and there was a smell of must about the place. “I think we go this way,” Radi said. “This was one of the old apartments on the lower level of the computer center. I think this hall leads to the outside.”
“No,” Deza said. She had flung the hood back. “I know where I am. I hid in this hall, waiting for my murderers. I know this very well.”
She pulled the hood forward with one hand and brushed past them, striding rapidly through the adjoining room and to the foot of a wide stairway. Radi hurried after her and grabbed at her arm. “Deza!” he said furiously. “You can’t just run up there like you own the place. We’ve got to have a plan.
“Edvar, the stairway will be heavily guarded. I don’t know if they will let us through or not. They must know by now that something is going on, but she wouldn’t have warned them that they were about to be sacrificed. We may have to fight our way through.”
Edvar nodded grimly and withdrew the knife Deza had given him from his belt. He kept it nearly out of sight as they started up the stairs.
“Deza,” Radi said. “You see your chance and take it. Don’t wait for us. Go straight to the main computer terminal.”
“But I’ve never worked a computer before.”
“I’ll be right behind you. And keep that gorgeous face hidden.”
She flashed a sudden smile and started up the stairs ahead of Radi. He followed, hoping there wouldn’t be more than two guards. There were seven of them, guards in full regalia, standing two to a step but for the captain who stood a few steps above them. Their swords were sheathed, and they stood at easy attention, watching but making no move as Radi, Edvar, and Deza approached. The captain was staring. Radi recognized him as a young captain who’d trained under him a few years ago. Now the young soldier recognized Radi. He made no move, gave no shout, but Radi had seen the shock of recognition on his face. He’d been a good man, Radi remembered. Maybe he could…
“Do nothing,” Edvar whispered, and Radi felt the blade of Edvar’s knife pressing into his ribs at the same moment that the young captain spoke.
“Seize them!”
“No need,” Edvar said, stepping around to show his knife. “I’ve got him in hand.”
But Radi knew that trick would not work here, not in the Red City. These guards were not the Tycoon’s men. They had no reason to trust a native if that was what they believed Edvar was. Radi leaped away as the first guard approached and lunged for the half-drawn sword. Others fell on Edvar behind him.
Radi disposed of the first man by kicking him soundly in the head, only to have two more appear from each side. He went for the closest first, wrenching the sword away and then turning on the second, feeling slightly better now that he was armed. The swords crossed, and the cave was filled with the noise of their fighting. Radi became aware that more guards were coming from the piazza above, and he shouted to be heard above the noise.
He pinne
He wouldn’t have listened either if he’d been in their places. Now he was fighting two swordsmen, and though he could see that Edvar was managing to hold his own, he knew they’d be hopelessly outnumbered in seconds. He looked wildly around for Deza, but saw her nowhere. He did, however, see Harubiki, racing up the stairs past the fight.
“No!” Radi shouted, and turned to follow her. He hadn’t taken two steps before the rest of the guards barred his way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
At the top of the stairs Deza turned to the left and ran into the maze of water grids. She was not using her water-witching powers here. She knew the way well from all the trips to the computer center with her father and the forbidden games of hide-and-seek with Vira.
The grids cut her off completely from Radi and Edvar and the soldiers. When she looked back all she could see were the banks of upright computer grids with their tortuous map-like tracings and their endless lists of coordinates that made no sense.
—Why are you stopping here?—her father said. He sounded fairly sober, and the mbuzi had stopped bawling, but it was still kicking feebly under her cloak. —You know the way to the main terminal from here.—
—I’m waiting for Radi.—
—He told you to go on,—her father said, mildly enough, but the mbuzi flailed against the blue cloth as if it were being smothered.
—I have to wait for him, —Deza said stubbornly. —He knows how to work the computer.—
—So do you.—
—How can you say that?—Deza said, but she started forward again between the grids that marched like walls on either side of them. —Even these grids mean nothing, and they’re simple compared to the controls of the terminal. And don’t tell me you taught me how to run the computer and then made me forget that, too. I was only three years old. The only thing I did in here was play hide-and-seek.—