Water Sleeps

74

I managed to overtake Tobo before he sped through the crossroads' circle. "We're stopping here," I told him, hanging onto his shoulder.

He looked at me like he was trying to remember who I was.

"Back up to the circle."

"All right. You don't have to be so pushy."

"Good. The real you is back. Yes. I do. No one else seems to be able to restrain you." As we stepped into the circle, I told him, "There should be a... yes. Right here." There was a hole in the roadway surface, four inches deep and as big around as my wrist. "Put the handle of the pickax in that."

"Why?"

"If the shadows can get inside the protected areas, that's the direction they'll come from. Come on. Do it. We've got a ton of work to do if we're going to set up a safe camp." There were too many of us to get everyone inside the circle. That meant some would have to overnight on the road, not a practice encouraged by Murgen.

I wanted only the calmest personalities back there. Murgen guaranteed that every night on the plain would be some kind of adventure.

Suvrin found me trying to get Iqbal and his family moved toward the heart of the circle. The animals were hobbled there. And I had a feeling that the plain really did not like being trampled upon by things with such hard feet. "What is it, Suvrin?"

"Master Santaraksita would like to see you at your earliest convenience." He grinned like he was having a wonderful time.

"Suvrin, have you been getting into the ganja or something?"

"I'm just happy. I missed the Protector's state visit. Therefore I'm all right until sometime that's still far off yet. I'm on the greatest adventure of my life, going places no one of my generation would have thought possible even a few weeks ago. It won't last. It just plain won't last. The way my luck runs. But I'm for damned sure having fun now. Except my feet hurt."

"Welcome to the Black Company. Get used to it. Bunions should be our seal, not a fire breathing skull. Did anyone learn anything useful today?"

"My guess would be that Master Santaraksita might have come up with something. Else why would he bother to send me to find you?"

"You got bold and sarky fast once you got up here."

"I've always thought I'm more likable when I'm not afraid."

I glanced around. I wondered if stupid ought not to be in there somewhere, too. "Show me where the old boy is."

Suvrin had the chatters. Bad, for him. "He's a wonder, isn't he?"

"Santaraksita? I don't know about that. He's something. Keep an eye out that you don't accidentally find his hand fishing around in your pants."

Suvrin had made camp for himself and the older men right at the edge of the circle, on its eastern side. Santaraksita had to have picked the spot. It was directly opposite the nearest standing stone. The librarian was seated Gunni-style, crosslegged, as near the edge as he dared get, staring at the pillar. "Is that you, Dorabee? Come sit with me."

I overcame a burst of impatience, settled. I was out of shape for that. The Company continued its northern habits—using chairs and stools and whatnot—even though we now had only two Old Crew souls left. Such is inertia. "What are we looking for, Master?" It was obvious he was watching the standing stone.

"Let's see if you're as bright as I believe you are."

There was a challenge I could not ignore. I stared at the column and waited for truth to declare itself.

A group of the characters on the pillar brightened momentarily. That had nothing to do with the light of the setting sun, which had begun creeping in under the edge of the clouds. That was painting everything bloody. After a while I told Santaraksita, "It seems to be illuminating groups of characters according to some pattern."

"Mainly in reading order, I think."

"Down? And to the left?"

"Reading downward in columns isn't uncommon in the temple literature of antiquity. Some inks dried quite slowly. If you wrote in horizontal lines, you sometimes smeared your earlier work. Writing downward in columns right to left suggests to me left-handedness. Possibly those who placed the stellae were mostly left-handed."

It struck me that writing whatever way was convenient for you personally could lead to a lot of confusion. I said so.

"Absolutely, Dorabee. Deciphering classical writing is always a challenge. Particularly if the ancient copyists had time on their hands and were inclined to play pranks. I've seen manuscripts put together so that they could be read both horizontally and vertically and each way tells a different story. Definitely the work of someone who had no worries about his next meal. Today's formal rules have been around for only a few generations. They were agreed upon simply so we could read one another's work. And they still haven't penetrated the lay population to any depth."

Most of that I knew already. But he needed his moments of pedantry to feel complete. They cost me nothing. "And what do we have here?"

"I'm not sure. My eyes aren't sharp enough to pick up everything. But the characters on the stone closely resemble those in your oldest book and I've been able to discern a few simple words." He showed me what he had written down. It was not enough to make sense of anything.

"Mostly I think we're looking at names. Possibly arranged in a holy scripture sort of way. Maybe a roll-call-of-the-ancestors kind of thing."

"It is immortality of a sort."

"Perhaps. Certainly you can find similarly conceived monuments in almost every older city. Iron was a popular material for those who considered themselves truly rich and historically significant. Generally, though, they were erected to celebrate individuals, notably kings and conquerers, who wanted following generations to know all about them."

"And every one of those I've ever seen was a complete puzzle to the people living around it now. Thus, a feeble immortality of a sort."

"And there's the point. We'll all achieve our immortality in the next world, however we may conceive that, but we all want to be remembered in this one. I suppose so that when the newly dead arrive in heaven, they'll already know who we are. And, yes, even though I am a devout, practicing Gunni, I'm very cynical about what humanity brings to the religious experience."

"I'm always intrigued by your thinking, Master Santaraksita, but in today's circumstances I just don't have time to sit around musing on humanity's innumerable foibles. Nor even those of God. Or the gods, if you prefer."

Santaraksita chuckled. "Do you find it amusing to see our roles thus reversed?" A few months in the real world had done wonders for his attitude. He accepted his situation and tried to learn from it. I considered accusing him of being a Bhodi fellow traveler.

"I fear I'm much less of a thinker than you like to believe, Master. I've never had time for it. I'm probably really more of a parrot than anything."

"And I suspect that surviving in your trade eventually leaves everyone more philosophical than you want to admit, Dorabee."

"Or more brutal. None of these men were ever sterling subjects."

Santaraksita shrugged. "You remain a wonder, whether or not you wish to be one." He made a gesture to indicate the standing stone. "Well, there you have it. It may say something. Or it may just be remembering the otherwise unheralded whose ashes nourished weeds. Or it may even be trying to communicate, since some of the characters seem to have changed." His tone became one of intense interest as he completed his last sentence. "Dorabee, the inscription doesn't remain constant. I must have a closer look at one of those stellae."

"Don't even think about it. You'd probably be dead before you got to it. And would get the rest of us dead, too."

He pouted.

"This's the dangerous part of the adventure," I told him. "This's the part that leaves us no room for innovation or deviation or expressing our personalities. You've seen Sindawe. No better or stronger man ever lived. That was nothing he deserved. Whenever you feel creative, you just go look on that travois. Then take another look. Gah! It smells like the inside of a stable here already. A little breeze wouldn't hurt." As long as it blew away from me.

The animals were all crowded together and surrounded so they could not do something stupid like wander out of the protective circle. And herbivores tend to generate vast quantities of by-product.

"All right. All right. I don't make a habit of doing what's stupid, Dorabee." He grinned.

"Really? What about how you got here?"

"Maybe it's a hobby." He could laugh at himself. "There's stupid and stupid. None of those boulders is going to make my pebble turn into a standing stone."

"I'm not sure if that's a compliment or an insult. Just keep an eye on the rock and let me know if it says anything interesting." It occurred to me to wonder if these pillars were related to the pillars the Company had found in the place called the Plain of Fear, long before my time. Those stones had even walked and talked—unless the Captain exaggerated even worse than I thought. "Whoa! Look there. Right along the edge of the road. That's a shadow, being sneaky. It's already dark enough for them to start moving around."

It was time I started moving around, making sure everyone remained calm. The shadows could not reach us if no one did anything stupid. But they might try to provoke a panic, the way hunters will try to scare up game.