Moving Water by Sylvia Kelso Page B

said, “just wanted to win.”
    He nodded, silent. Even now, he would not stoop to calumny.
    â€œHowever she did it. . . .” Slowly, a conviction formed and firmed to intent in my mind. “I’m going back to get that key.”
    â€œAlkir!” His voice spun me round and his eyes were white-hot crystal. “You’ll do nothing of the sort!”
    â€œBut—but—you said yourself, it’s against Math! It must be stopped! You can’t sit here and refuse to—”
    â€œI refuse,” he said between his teeth, “to get you killed.”
    â€œKilled!”
    â€œWake up, man. Stop thinking you’re a big brave sword-swinging soldier and she’s just a slip of a girl. If she let you up there, you couldn’t do a thing. She could walk you straight over that parapet. And she would.
    â€œDon’t drop the torch,” he went on after a moment, rather hastily, but I knew the smile had revived. “I’m not that fond of the dark.”
    I groaned. He, I could hear, smiled. “When Fengthira taught me Lathare I spent two days tied on a rope-end. This is just damnably wet. And uncomfortable.”
    â€œAnd,” I said bleakly, “there’s no way out.”
    He was testing the manacles. “I don’t . . . think . . . Axynbrarve is up to these. If it were, I’d have to cut down a wall of sleepwalkers upstairs. And probably the whole guard outside.” He gave me a cryptic look. “Including you.
    â€œAnd don’t get sacrificial,” he anticipated me. “I loathe sacrifice.”
    â€œThen what in the name of your Math,” I bellowed, “is this?”
    â€œOh, this is tactics,” he answered cheerfully.
    Looking round, I saw a fetter-ring, and stuck up the torch. “I don’t even know the ensigns, and I’m in the middle of a war. Do you think you could explain, at least? To begin with, what was that—thing?”
    â€œNot a thing.” For the first time he showed reverence. “ That was Los Velandryxe Thira. The Well”—reverence deepened—“of Wisdom’s Light.”
    â€œBut what is it?”
    A fetter cramped the familiar scrub at his hair. “Nobody really knows. Fengthira tells a very old story that it’s a drop of water from Los Therystar—do you know the Ystanyrx, the Great Tales? No. Anyway, there’s one about the Xaira, the separation of aedryx and men. The Mothers of men and aedryx were sitting by Los Therystar, the Well of the Purple Flowers, when Arva Aedryx saw in its water the first vision in Yxphare. Foresight, you’d say. The Mother of Men laughed and Arva Aedryx struck her blind. So ever since, aedryx and men have been”—an old wound spoke in his voice—“different.”
    He looked at my face, and shrugged. “Math knows where Los Therystar was, if it was at all. The Tales are truth, not history. And nobody knows the origin of Los Velandryxe, because at some stage some enterprising soul put a Ruanbraxe, a mind-shield, on it. You can’t see it with the Sights, not with Pharaone or Phathire, and Fengthira says Yxphare’s the same. One reason why that Sight’s so dangerous.”
    â€œSights?”
    â€œPharaone is farsight. How I checked the mare this morning. Phathire is vision of the past. Yxphare, future-sight, is a gift, it can’t be taught. Because of the mind-shield, I didn’t know what Moriana had. I thought she was just Ammath. Evil. An aedr gone rotten. For her line, it would be in character.”
    â€œNever mind her line. What about this—this—heirloom?”
    â€œUm. . . . The lower arts, like the Sights, and the Commands, even A’sparre, deal with minds. The higher ones are different. Wreve-lan’x, Axynbrarve, then the harder ones, Wreviane, Wrevurx, that’s weather-work—”
    â€œYou can control the weather? ”
    â€œOh, yes.” He was