The point of view had changed when the picture cleated. She was looking inside the Lock House. There were bodies scattered about,, some sprawling like discarded rag dolls, some bound and gagged. All dead. Small dark men dressed in leather and rags and heavily armed were sitting at a table playing a game of stone-and-bone on a grid one of them had scratched in the wood. The view shifted again, showed the inside of the watchtower. One of the raiders was standing at the south window, looking down along the river. The sun was just coming up, staining the water red; the fog lingering under the trees was pink with dawnlight. A boat appeared, the Miyachungay.
Karoumang growled, lurched onto his feet.
“Sit down!” Korimenei pushed him away, keeping her eyes fixed on the image, willing it to hold as it wavered and threatened to break up.
The image boat slowed, moved past the gates and hove to. Some of the men in the Lock House ran to the tackle and began winching the gates closed. As soon as the bars clunked home, other men came trotting from behind the House, carrying canoes; they dealt competently with the eddies and the undertows and went racing for the boat. In minutes they were swarming over the rail, hacking and clubbing the crew, killing everyone they came across; Karoumang and the crew fought back, but there were too many attackers. When the killing was done, the raiders tore into the bales and barrels, spoiling what they didn’t want. When they were finished, they set fire to the boat. They opened the lock before they left, sat on their shaggy ponies cheering and waving bits of cargo as the charred timbers and the dead went floating away.
The image vanished.
Korimenei watched her fingers twitch, then flattened her hands on the table. “Well,” she said. “You know the river. When will we get to… what was it… Kol Sutong?
Karoumang was frowning at the water; when she spoke, he turned the frown on her. “It didn’t show you. Why?”
“It never does. The seeker is always outside the scene. Um.” She ran her finger around the rim of the bowl; unlike glass, the pewter was silent. “You needn’t take these things as chipped in stone, Karou.”
His fingers drum-rolling on the table, he examined her face. “I’ve been to seers before, Kori Heart-in-Waiting. I’ve seen the water pictures summoned before. Always the seers tell me, that IS what will be.”
“They lie, Karou. Well, maybe not lie, just make things simple for a simple man.”
“Tchaht I’ll give you simple, ibli ketji.” He wrapped a hand around her wrist. “Stop being perverse and explain.”
“If I’m a devil, why should I?”
“Come to bed and let me show you.”
“Shame-shame. Bribery. I accept. Seriously, Karou, what you’ve seen here is something that’s set up to happen, that will happen unless we act to stop it.” She tapped the back of his hand and he opened his fingers, freeing her wrist. “So, tell me. How soon?”
“It was almost moonset when I came down, dawn’s about three hours off. We should be seeing the tower roof a little after first light.” He stared past her, unseeing eyes fixed on the porthole. “Unless I go back and pass a few more days at Maul Pak.”
“Any point in that? Would the local chernlord send troops to rout out those raiders?”
“The Pak Slij huim Pak?” He made a spitting sound without actually spitting, it being his boat and his table. “I don’t have the gold it’d take to stir that tub of lard into action. The Jade King himself doesn’t have that much gold.”
“Mmf. What if you did tie up for two, three days? The hillmen wouldn’t stay put that long, would they?”
“Turn tail like a pariah dog. Turn once, I have to keep turning. No.” He frowned at her. “With a sorceror on board? No.”
“Fledgling sorceror, Karou; I left school less than a month ago. I have no staff, I haven’t pledged to a Master, I haven’t… oh, so many things, it’d take too long to list them. I don’t know what I can do… should do,” she rushed the last words, “I have to think.” Her hands were shaking again and she pressed them hard against the wood, finding a kind of comfort in the resistance of the seasoned oak. “Is there a place along here where you could tie up for an hour or so? I’d better not try anything difficult on water, I’m not good with water, I need to have earth under me.”
“That’s water.” He waggled a thumb at the bowl. “That’s different. What you need, it costs more; it takes… well, if I manage anything, it’ll take a solider base.”
“It’s your business, ketji. I suppose you know what you’re doing.” He got to his feet. “I’ll give you two hours; if you can’t come up with a plan by then, I’ll take the crew and burn the bastards out.”
6
A worn broom under one arm, a lantern in her free hand, Korimenei turned slowly in an open space where an ancient had fallen in some long-ago storm. Woodcutters had carried it off, leaving only the hollow where the roots had been. The cedars ringing the glade were young, their lower branches sweeping the ground, lusty healthy trees with no limbs gone. She held the lantern high; there was no down-wood anywhere, not even chunks of bark. “Cht!” she breathed. “Pak Slij. No doubt he’d sell air if he could figure out a way to bottle it.”
She set the lantern down on a relatively level spot and began sweeping away the loose earth and other debris. Working with meticulous care, she removed everything movable from a circular patch of ground, ignoring insects, worms and other small-lives because she couldn’t do anything about them anyway. When she was finished, she took a fragment of stone and drew a pentacle with the same finicky care, humming absently one of the nursery songs her dead mother sang to her. After the drawing was done, she took off her sandals and laid them beside the lantern, shucked off her outer robe, folded it and set it on the sandals. She took a deep breath, smoothed down the white linen shift that was all she was wearing, then stepped into the pentacle, carefully avoiding the lines. The night was old, near its finish, the air was chill and damp; frost hadn’t settled yet, but it would before the sun came up. Shivering, eyes closed, she stood at the heart of the drawing. By will and by skill she smothered the fire in the wick; the lantern went dark.
By will and by skill, chanting the syllables that focused patterning and re-patterning, she redrew the lines, changing earth and air to moonsilver until the circled star shone pale and perfect about her.
She opened her eyes, smiled with pleasure as she viewed her work. It was one of the simpler exercises, but there were an infinite number of ways it could misfire. She dropped to her knees, then sat with her legs in a lotus knot, her hands resting palm up on her thighs, heat flowing through her, around her.
Minute melted into minute, passing uncounted as she sat unthinking.
The Moonstone emerged from her navel, oozed through her shift and rolled into her lap. Moving slowly, ponderously, as if she were under water, she lifted the stone and looked into the heart of it.
She saw the village. It was dead. The palisade gate sagged open; the streets were filled with bodies, men, women, children. Mutilated, eviscerated. She looked into the houses. They were filled with the dead. Ghosts wandered through the rooms, reliving what had been.
She saw the Lock House. The raider deadpriest had chased the ghosts away so they wouldn’t alarm the crew on the boat they expected, but the dead were there, sprawled or bound. She saw again the game of stones-and-bones, she saw hillmen curled up, sleeping, she saw hillmen gnawing at plugs of tjank, eyes red and unfocused, she saw hillmen with three girls from the village, passing them around like the tjank.
She considered what she’d seen.
There were fifty-five raiders, fifty-three fighters, a warleader and a deadpriest. She thought about the fighters. Patterns. The original band must have been five groups of twelve. The villagers had gotten at least seven of them. That pleased her.