Water, page 8
part #1 of Tales of Elemental Spirits Series
“You will come with us into the hills and show us how to build rafts so that we may float the stones downriver to the water,” said Mel. “That done, you will ferry the stones across the water and help us to float them as far as may be up into our own hills.”
“Stones?”
Mel half turned and considered the space before him. A shape made itself, shadowy, like frozen smoke, its height twice that of a man and its width a long pace through each way. Iril measured it with his eye, unsurprised. As he had said, he had heard of Mel. How could he not have, from the travellers he ferried across the estuary? Much of their talk these days was of the great new shrine to Awod, the Fathergod, that this man Mel was building up in the hills to the south. Such a shrine would need huge stones for its central ring. The best stones, the stones with power in them, came from across the water.
“How many such stones?”
“Ten this first year.”
The shape faded. With his crutch Iril hooked the bracelet towards him, picked it up and weighed it in his hand.
“Twenty and twenty men is not enough.”
“You will bring your own people also.”
“How many days into the hills?”
“Three days. Silverspring.”
“Those stones?”
“Those stones.”
Iril tossed the bracelet back at Mel’s feet and looked away. For twenty and twenty and seven years he had carried women north across the estuary on their pilgrimage to the ancient shrine of Tala, the Earth-mother at Silverspring, where Siron was priestess. Tala had been greatest of the Old Gods, just as Awod was greatest of the New. So there was enmity between them. Iril took no side in this contest. He served Manaw, the Sea God, who was both Old and New. The sea does not change.
Mel took another bracelet from his arm and dropped it beside the first. Then a third. All watched in silence, the men of Iril’s kin to his right, the women to his left, and Mel’s own followers behind him.
There was a half-built hut behind Iril’s men. Mel gestured and they moved aside. He considered the hut. Between a breath and a breath it burst into flames, not shadows of flame as the stone had been shadow. The hut burnt and became embers and did not remake itself.
Iril nodded. He had heard of Mel.
“No man can find the path to Silverspring,” he said.
“I will open the path,” said Mel. “If I fail, you will keep one bracelet. But I shall not fail. Those times are over.”
Iril looked to his left, at his eldest son’s first wife. She met his gaze but gave him no sign. He looked back to Mel.
“No,” he said.
Mel turned and studied the men of Iril’s kin. He beckoned one forward. Jarro came like a sleepwalker. He was Iril’s third son, ten and five years old only, barely a man, but he could dream the wave. Iril’s two elder sons, Farn and Arco, were expert raftmen. They could take a raft north on the ebb, even in rough weather, and then bring it smoothly back, riding the flood-wave. But neither of them, as children, had ever shown the signs. Neither of them now, however much leaf they chewed, could fall into a half-trance and then dream the wave, become part of the moving water, know it as a man knows where his own limbs are in the dark. Almost as soon as he could talk, Jarro had prattled on waking about the wash of the tides along the estuary. Then he had lost the gift, as growing children did. But one day, when he was a man, he would chew leaf and dream the wave again. If he had been a distant cousin, he would still have been more precious to Iril than any of his own sons. Mel had never seen him before.
“Shall I show you what he will become if you refuse me?” he said. “Now in shadow, as I showed you the stone? But if I choose, in truth, as I burnt the hut?”
Iril did not look at Jarro, nor at the women. He dragged one bracelet towards him and put it on his arm.
“My terms are these,” he said. “When the stones float, I will take the second. When they leave my care, the third. Furthermore, we bear no weapons. We take no side between tribe and tribe. We carry and deliver. All that has to do with water is in my charge and at my command. All that is on land is in yours.”
“So it shall be,” said Mel. “My terms are these. You will float the stones to this shore, and then up our river as far as may be, so that I may have them in place by Seed-in. They have powers that I will lay asleep, but for this they must travel all together.”
“That will take thought,” said Iril.
“It must be done.”
“These stones weigh many, many men. Are you able to make them less?”
“They are what they are. They will weigh their own weight.”
“The river from Silverspring. How wide? How deep?”
Mel considered. The air around him wavered as if heat were rising through it, and then he was standing on untrodden grass beside a small river running along a mountain valley. Iril could see the shapes of huts through the left-hand mountain. The slopes of the valley were clothed with ancient woods. He nodded and the scene vanished.
“We will cut timber for the rafts there,” he said. “Cable and thongs we will need more than we have, and also twenty and twenty and ten float-skins for each stone.”
Mel considered.
“I have sent for this stuff,” he said. “Do we cross to-day?”
“I have one raft waiting, unloaded. On the morning ebb I can take over ten and six men, and some gear, and return for another party on the evening wave. Thus we could all cross in five ebbs, which is three days. If we must all travel together we must wait for rafts to come downriver, or build new. Either will take many days.”
“We start this morning,” said Mel.
It was an easy passage. Iril, propped on the low platform at the centre of the raft, scarcely needed to gesture to the two sweepmen. They knew their work, using the curve of the main current that touched the southern shore of the estuary just below Iril’s village and then, guided by the intricate and endlessly shifting pattern of mudbanks beneath the water, swung almost all the way across to the northern shore. Not that a stranger, however skilled a raftman, would have been safe if he had tried it. This was no ordinary ocean tide, falling steadily from high to low. Here twice a day the waters of the outer sea were hauled into the estuary between the narrowing arms of land and held there by the weight of the tide behind them. Then, when the tide reversed itself, they were sucked swirling out, often falling within the space of a milking time by the height of six grown men. On the stillest day the race of the main outflow was a muddle of hummocked waves, but if a raft was set rightly among them, the current would carry it clean across to the other shore, with only an occasional stroke of the sweeps to hold it true. But if Iril had misjudged his course—in places by no more than the width of the raft itself—he might well have been caught in an eddy which would have carried him half way back to the southern shore and then perhaps out to sea, or at least left him stranded on a mudbank in mid-estuary.
Iril made no such mistakes. He had been riding the ebb tide and the in-wave for more than the lifetime of most men. He walked with a crutch since his leg had been caught between two logs when he was a boy, as his father’s raft had broken up in a freak squall. His father had been lost, with all who were on that half of the raft, but Iril had brought his half safely home.
They landed and ate. Then Iril, helped by his middle son, Arco, hobbled up to a low red bluff from which he could see right across the estuary to the mist-blurred shore beyond. Mel came with them. The tide had gone, leaving a waste of glittering grey mudbanks patterned with channels through which the river waters still flowed to the sea. Iril pointed and said a few words. Arco grunted and returned to the landing place, but Iril took a leaf from his pouch, chewed it, settled down on the grass, curling up like a dog, and slept. Mel stood in silence. Sometimes he was there, watching the raft being readied as the waters began to return. Sometimes he was elsewhere.
Towards sunset Iril snorted in his sleep and woke. Hauling himself upright on his crutch, he touched Mel’s elbow and pointed down the estuary, without apparently having looked to check that what he was pointing at was indeed there. The leaden waters glimmered with the gold leavings of the day. Across their surface ran a level line, as if they had been ice which had cracked from shore to shore. Iril hallooed down to the raft, already waiting in the shallows. The men poled it clear of the shore.
“Small wave, this season,” explained Iril.
He felt no anger against Mel for the burning of the hut and the threat of horror to his son, nor fear of him either. He had been threatened before, by kings among others, and had when necessary given in to their threats, but both he and they had known that there were limits to their power over him, because in the end they could not do without him and his kin. Who else could dream the wave? Who else could ride it?
This wave, which he had called small, was about half a man’s height. As the tide returned, the narrowing estuary forced it to hummock up, because there was nowhere else for the mass of water to go. It came silently, foaming only where it rummaged along the shoreline. At one point the water surface was at this level, at the next it was at that. The difference was the wave.
When it reached the raft, it pushed it ahead while the sweepmen paddled gently to keep the carefully shaped sternboard at the exact angle to spill the propelling water away on the near side and so nudge the raft sideways along the wave. The raft was picked up and swept towards the southern shore in a sweet easy movement, like that of a skinning knife lifting the hide from the flesh beneath. For a while it followed the course of the main channel, but the underlying current made little difference. Only the wave mattered, as it carried the raft across the estuary on an almost straight diagonal that re-crossed the main channel at the end of its long curve and finished up a little below Iril’s village. There the raft would be beached to let the wave go by, wait for the still-rising tide to refloat it and be poled up to the landing stage on the last of the inflow. When it was well set on its course, Iril’s middle son came up the hill and helped him down to the huts, but Mel stayed where he was, gazing south. Sometimes he was watching the dwindling raft. Sometimes he was elsewhere.
They made a litter for Iril and carried him inland, leaving his sons to manage the regular crossings. Mel led them not by the pilgrim’s road, but along minor tracks and across bare hill-sides, always making good speed. At evening he brought deer to the camp, which stood blank-eyed, trance-held, waiting for the knife. On the third morning they crossed a ridge and came down through dense autumnal woods to the valley and river that Mel had shown Iril when they had first met. With a pole Iril measured the depth of the clear, brownish water, repeating the process as they travelled along the bank until they reached a waterfall with a pool below it. Feeder streams tumbled down from either side above the fall, and beyond them the river was much less.
“Overland to this pool,” said Iril.
“Good,” said Mel. “The first stones will be here in three noons, the last stone not for four more. You may stay and make ready.”
“My people will fell timber,” said Iril. “I will come with you and see Silverspring while its stones still stand.”
“You are not afraid?”
“No man has seen Silverspring. I have lived more than a life.”
“Come, then.”
Above the fall the forest closed right down to the stream. The track along which they had travelled ended in a wall of brambles. Mel considered the barrier for some while, until part of it became shadowy and vanished, and the trees beyond wavered and vanished also, leaving a clear path that ran on a ledge above the stream. In places boulders had been rolled aside, or piled to level the way. The slopes on either side became steadily steeper until track and stream ran through a defile which ended in a sheer cliff with the river welling out into a pool at its foot. Mel considered the cliff, again for some while, until it opened a crack in itself, a crevice not four paces wide, with cloudy sky beyond.
Iril was surprised by none of this. It was known that no man could find the way through to Silverspring. But he had also heard of Mel.
Beyond the crevice the valley widened into a huge volcanic crater in the heart of the hills. Its bowl was rimmed by bare black cliffs, with steep woods below them, but the bottom was a wide clearing of sheep-nibbled grass and strips of ploughland. At the centre rose a gentle mound, ringed half way up by a circle of standing stones. Below this circle, directly facing the crevice, was a dark opening from which the stream flowed.
Beside the woods on the left were a dozen huts, in front of which a group of women waited, some with babies in their arms. There were no older children and no men. They watched Mel and his party emerge from the crevice as if they had known they were coming. Mel ignored them and walked towards the mound. When he was about twenty and ten paces from the cave, a woman came out of its darkness and faced him.
She was short and plump, but moved with grace. Her face was pale, round, soft, her hair a greying black. She wore a dark green cloak which fell to the ground all around her. She was not what Iril had expected, and at first he thought she must be a servant, but then he saw that she must be Siron.
At her appearance Mel’s people had halted, but Mel walked forward until he was a few paces from her. Iril growled to his bearers to follow, but they would not, so he slid himself down, took his crutch and hobbled on alone. Siron’s gaze left Mel and caught him. He was aware that she could have stopped him but she let him come. As he neared, she considered him, considered his leg, the half foot that twisted sideways at the ankle. The years-long ache vanished. The foot straightened. Wasted muscle and smashed bone grew whole. For five paces Iril walked level, like other men.
Siron stopped him a little behind Mel’s shoulder. Her eyes asked a question. He shook his head and tapped the bracelet on his arm. Many of her pilgrims came across the water. She would know that the wave-riders did not break a contract for any threat or gift. She looked away and his leg was as it had always been.
Mel spoke. Iril did not know the words but could hear the tone of command. Siron answered with a question. Mel spoke again, shortly, and then Siron for some while, a dignified pleading, mixed with some anger and much grief, until Mel cut her short with one flat sentence. She did not reply, but considered, and moved to one side.
Out of the darkness of the cave, low down, close by the stream, a head appeared, flat, scaly, dark green patterned with black, wider than a man’s two spread hands. A forked tongue flickered from its mouth. The jaws gaped, showing fine white fangs. The body emerged in slithering windings, wide as a man’s thigh and many paces long, with the tail still unseen in the cave. The head reared up, weaving from side to side, peering for its target.
Mel gestured with his right hand, held low. Iril sensed a movement close behind him, smelt a sharp reek, but did not flinch as a beast paced close beside him, cat-shaped but large as an ox, its fur yellow-brown blotched with black. Saliva dripped from the yellow, curving fangs, as long as walrus tusks. As it passed Iril, its tail twitched against his thigh, hard, like a rope’s end. By that he knew it was no sending but a thing, itself.
The beast faced the serpent, tense, balanced, watching for the strike. The serpent’s head swayed back and forth, probing. The beast moved, seeming to start its spring, but it was a feint. The forward flash of the serpent’s head was too quick for Iril to follow, as was the beast’s counterstroke, but then they were facing each other again, the beast apparently unharmed but the serpent with dark red blood oozing from a gash behind its head. It resumed its weaving, but the movement now seemed less certain, and when the beast took a half pace nearer it withdrew, turned back on itself and slithered into the cave. Siron followed it without a word, making a gesture as she passed into the darkness. The cave vanished, and the stream now welled directly from the turf.
Mel scratched his beast between the shoulder-blades and dismissed it. It stalked towards a group of grazing sheep, which moved nervously away, all but one that stood waiting blindly. The beast killed it with a blow and dragged its carcass into the trees.
Mel walked up the mound and round the ring of stones, laying a hand on each in turn and marking some with a smear of orange stuff which he took from a small pot. The women had vanished into their huts. Iril watched the men begin to dig, and to set up the tackle they would need to lift the first stone onto its rollers. They knew what they were doing, he decided. He signalled to the litter bearers, who came and carried him back to the pool below the waterfall. The crevice did not close up on them, and the track was clear all the way.
The pool was apparently close enough to Silverspring for the stones to be hauled to it one by one without Mel losing his control, so having seen to the floating of the first of them, Iril returned to his trade. There were others beside Mel who needed to cross the water, and it would be a moon and another moon before all ten stones were ready to float down to the estuary. The problem of how to build and manage a raft large enough to take them all across the water together filled Iril’s spare hours.
Women travelled to Silverspring for the midwinter rite. Iril said nothing to them but took no fees. They came back shaken and disconsolate, saying that they had been unable to find the way, even those who had made the journey often before. The night after the last of them had gone, Iril chewed leaf and lay down in his cot to dream the wave, as he had done many nights since his return from Silverspring, trying to set his great raft on it in his dream, and feel how the inert thing might move in response to the moving waters. In the small hours of the dark the wave swept through his mind as it swept up the estuary. After a lifetime of practice he could direct his dream to any part of its passage, and know why the currents and eddies and cross-currents flowed as they did, and why they changed and reformed through the seasons, so that he and his sons could ride both ebb and flow through the year.
This night as he travelled with the surging tide in his dream, and set his dream raft upon it, he sensed something else close by, a great mass that was neither raft nor water, but moved easily in the current, of its own will, as a bird does in the wind. Many, many years earlier, a whale had stranded in a lagoon below the village after a wild high tide, and when it had died, there had been prodigious feasting. Never had any man seen so great a beast. Could this be another such? It seemed yet larger. Though he had merely sensed it, and in a dream only, Iril knew it was there.
