Water Witch Read online

  Water Witch

  Connie Willis

  Cynthia Felice

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

  Welcome to the SF Gateway.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Website

  Also By Connie Willis

  Dedication

  Author Bio

  Copyright page

  CHAPTER ONE

  Radi came up onto the princess’s gallery and strode for the courtyard. “Tell Sheria I’m here,” he said brusquely to the guard, not bothering with the formalities. Sheria was only too well aware of the formalities, as this latest move of hers had proved.

  The guard, almost as thin and delicate-looking as the princess she served, moved in front of him. “The Princess is holding audience. She is not to be disturbed.”

  Tell her anyway, Radi almost snapped, I won’t be kept waiting on this. Then he thought better of it. Anger and highhandedness rarely had any good effect on Sheria. They only made her cooler and more distant, and he wanted an explanation, not a royal icebath. “Never mind,” he said more civilly, and could see the guard relax at his decision. “I’ll wait below.” At least he would not give Sheria the pleasure of seeing him waiting in the courtyard like some common messenger.

  He went back down the stairs to the narrower galleries that should have housed the lesser royalty. But there were no lesser royalty now, no families to live in all these rough-carved limestone chambers etched out of the walls of the great red cavern. The old builders had not anticipated the rivalries, the petty disputes and plots that would empty the royal galleries of everyone but one slim girl, hardly fitted to rule the huge City in the Red Cave, let alone to manage the affairs on the surface of Mahali.

  Radi leaned over the marble railings and looked at the city below. From here it looked the same as ever: the roofless dwellings and shops, the glittering computer center with its masonry walls of quartz and even rows of water grids that formed the basis of the City’s rule of the planet Mahali. The elaborate computer-drawn grids plotted every inch of Mahali’s underground water, the key to the wealth of a desert planet where sweet surface water was almost nonexistent. Mahali had an ocean, but it was laden with heavy metal salts, and cripplingly expensive to make potable, so the ancient City in the Red Cave held sway over all of Mahali from its inviolate position underground. But Radi knew things were changing.

  The nomads, most of them, still feared and depended on the City, paying their tithes and housing the holy men and women of the City in exchange for water, apparently unaware that there wasn’t a full-fledged water witch among them. The computers and the grids made that deception possible. It would take great abuses to make the nomads turn against the City and face the waterless desert on their own. But the foreigners from the distant planet Kalmar, and the natives who clustered around their compounds, that was another matter. One Sheria refused to see.

  Looking at the huge, complex city far below, Radi felt a stab of fear for the city. Sheria was, after all, just a child, a child forced into being princess because there was no one left to rule. It was her ambitious father’s doing that there was no one of the true line left, that Akida and his infant daughter had fled the city. It had suited Sheria’s father’s plans to have no true water witch in the city, even though he made the claims of descent for his daughter. He had ruled with an iron hand with Sheria as figurehead for fifteen years, and he had not needed witching skills from her to tell him that the foreigners were a growing threat, that the City had to be careful to enlarge its navy and keep its location and water-knowledge secret in order to remain in control.

  He had prepared Sheria to rule only when he knew his own death was imminent. His daughter did not comprehend the political intricacies any more than she understood the vast and complicated water grids on which policies were based. Her father’s lifetime of experience could not be handed over to Sheria in a few short months. She looked the part of a ruler, standing cool and imperious behind the ceremonial cheek insets of a water witch. But this latest action of hers was obviously politically naive. Remember how young she is and how unused to power in her own right, Radi reminded himself. If only they could marry soon so that he could assume the authority of the Red City as well as the responsibility. The City needed a true heir, one only he and Sheria could produce. He remembered Akida, shortly before the civil war that had caused him to flee the Red City, saying to him, “Remember always that the fate of the Red City lies in the continuation of its true line of water witches, not in its computers.”

  He heard voices above and automatically stepped back, even though he was feeling more kindly toward Sheria than he had when he’d come. The audience was over, apparently, and Sheria had come out into the courtyard with the supplicant, whoever it was. Radi could hear a man’s deep voice and Sheria’s high one.

  “There was no reason to do that,” the man’s voice said. “They were only a couple of surface natives working a harmless swindle.”

  “Harmless?” Sheria said. “A pretender to the throne is not harmless. I didn’t want to take any chances, and I don’t want to take any chances with the mission either. I have worked it out and will tell you what to do, just as plainly as I told you what to do with the pretender.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “You’re certain we won’t have any more interference from those natives?”

  “Oh, yes. I didn’t even have to convince the old man. He jumped at the escape I’d set up. I think he’d realized he was in de
eper with the tycoon than he could handle. For a while I thought the boy would be a problem, but they took off anyhow. It’s the mission I’m concerned about. He’s determined to…” The rest of what he said was lost, for he’d apparently stepped away from the edge of the balcony.

  “I’ve taken the necessary precautions,” Sheria said, and then Radi heard firm steps coming toward him. He was about to step forward, so that it would appear he was just starting up the stairs, when he saw that it was Botvidi. The older man was in a hurry, scowling slightly. He did not look as if he wanted to meet anyone. Radi stayed well back in the shadow of the gallery and did not start up the stairs until Botvidi was well down on the next level. Perhaps he had been wrong. If Sheria had called an audience with the surface governor Botvidi, she must be concerned and if she were concerned, then Radi would have no problem convincing her to reassign the marines. It was troublesome to have to clear his every move with Sheria, especially now when he needed to be moving swiftly.

  “Harubiki,” he said to the guard this time, “can you announce me now?” He smiled easily at her.

  She didn’t smile back, whether because she was angry at his peremptory treatment of her before or because she knew he must have seen Botvidi. Probably the former. After all, Sheria would have no reason to conceal the visit from him. And he had acted badly toward Harubiki, with whom he shared more than loyalty to the princess. Radi had been largely responsible for Harubiki’s training as a guard. Fragile though she might look, she was well able to defend her princess or herself. Though Harubiki had never tightened her arms around Radi’s neck except in passion, he had no doubt she would be a formidable enemy if she were defending her princess.

  Harubiki turned on her heel. “Yes, sir,” she said sharply.

  He caught at her arm. “Harubiki,” he said smoothly. “It is Sheria who angers me, not you. I’m sorry I spoke harshly.”

  She pulled his hand away with her fingers. “She is your princess, not your mistress, whom you can be angry with at will.”

  Radi dropped his arm, surprised. “Princess, of course. And soon to be wife.”

  “I will announce you,” she said, and walked away. He followed her through the curtain into the receiving room. “The Princess,” she said coldly to him and brushed past the curtain on her way back to her post.

  Radi looked toward the dais where Sheria was supposed to receive her supplicants. She wasn’t there. Then he saw her at the balcony that looked out over the lower galleries, her blonde hair in a coronet of braids. Now she saw Radi and stepped up on the dais.

  “I am pleased to see you looking so fit and ready for your mission,” she said, looking cool and beautiful as ever. Radi crossed the chamber and she extended her hand for him to kiss, ignoring his readiness to take her into his arms. Even this early she was wearing the white robes of a water witch and the fossilized gembone insets on her thin cheeks that were supposed to conduct water vibrations to the inner bone structure of the face and thence to the brain. Radi had rarely seen her without them, even though he knew she received no water messages through them. She betrayed her lack of water sensitivity in countless ways: her lack of awareness of weather changes, her reliance on the computers for the simplest of dousing tasks, and in the singing snakes she kept caged in her receiving room as proof of her station. Any true water witch would have kept the deadly snakes in her pocket. But Sheria was wise enough to realize she had no power over them.

  But even though she did not have the gifts of waterwitching, she carried the potential for them in her genes, as did Radi. He must persuade her to marry him soon. But first he had to persuade her that the foreigner—Tycoon matter must be settled immediately.

  “My mission,” Radi said. “Which I suppose you expect me to carry out single-handedly?”

  “I’ve assigned you Chappa and a majini crew. Pelono’s willing to go with you. And I’ll send Harubiki with you, if you like.” She turned away from him.

  “Harubiki will hardly replace the contingent of marines I was promised. Where are they, Sheria?” Radi said, giving into his anger. “They’re not at the docks ready to go.”

  “I sent them on another important mission,” she said, turning back to him and looking him straight in the eye. “You think these foreigners are the only problem on the whole world. You forget that I must deal with everyone, natives and foreigners, and there are just so many marines to order about. Yours were ready. I ordered them to take charge of the pirate at Sindra. He’s been raiding the northern coast.”

  “A pirate!” Radi almost shouted, “A pirate’s nothing compared to the danger the foreigners represent. We can’t let this situation continue. The Tycoon’s actually thrown a priest out of his compound. No one, foreigner or native, has ever done that before, and it sets a dangerous precedent. You should have sent me last spring when the Tycoon stopped tithing. Then this wouldn’t have happened.

  “Now he’s thrown Pelono out, he’s refusing to negotiate with Botvidi, and the compound’s water is totally out of our control. If we have to realign the grids, it’ll mean money and time. It’ll also mean that the Tycoon will get away with his insolence for almost six months before the water can be completely cut off. In that time, who knows how many foreign compounds will defect, refuse to tithe. The power of the Red City will be seriously undermined.”

  “All he wants is more water,” Sheria snapped. “He was willing to pay for it, willing to pay a good deal. Is the City so rich that we can afford to turn down income?”

  “Yes, the income’s important, but the Tycoon shouldn’t need any more water. His compound gets four times the allotted amount for a native settlement of that size. We can’t risk depleting the water table so that the foreigners can waste water. And if he wants it for something other than those hot baths he takes, the City should know about it. You’ve talked to Botvidi. You know how dangerous the foreigners can be.”

  She looked up sharply. “I know nothing of the kind,” she said. “I didn’t know you were aware of his visit.”

  “I saw him on my way here, and I assumed that. …”

  She looked up at him, her expression softened, “I sent for him to begin the arrangements for our wedding. We will post the banns as soon as you return.”

  “If I return,” Radi said sullenly, even though his heart had lifted at the news of the wedding. “We have no priest inside the compound, and we have no guarantee that the Tycoon will be willing to take water hospitality with us. Without the marines as a show of strength, I’ll be risking the lives of the entire party.”

  “Surely no one would refuse water hospitality to a prince from the Red City.”

  “What does a prince mean to the foreigners? They’ve never seen the City nor challenged its strength before. You would have done better to discuss this with Botvidi instead of wedding plans. He would have told you I need the marines.”

  “If you need them, get them. It won’t take you more than a day if you take my majini. They’re at Sindra. I’ll tell them to stand by when they’ve taken care of the pirate. Then you can march south on the compound with all the display of force you feel you need.”

  Radi had misgivings. “Three days at least is what we’ll lose, one getting to the marines, and two more marching south to the compound. And that’s three days during which the Tycoon can learn of the march and strengthen his forces. We’ll be coming from the north, over the karst. He could attack us anywhere in the narrow defiles and sinkholes of that wretched land, and it would be a slaughter.”

  “Radi, you’re building a full-scale war out of a simple disagreement over water,” she said, plainly displeased.

  “Do I need to remind you,” he said, “that all wars on Mahali have been fought over water?”

  This was degenerating into an argument, one Sheria could carry on at length if she chose, and he had lost enough time with this change of plans already. She had kept him nearly an hour, debating something that should have been a foregone conclusion and would have been with her f
ather that the foreigners were a danger that had to be dealt with immediately.

  “Still,” he said, hoping he sounded properly convinced, “Things are as they are. The marines are at Sindra, and considering that, this is a good compromise.”

  “I thought it was,” Sheria said.

  “But once we’re wed,” Radi couldn’t resist saying, “I will take charge of the strategic planning, from start to finish.”

  “Of course,” she said, too quickly, and he wondered briefly if she wanted the interview to end, too, and would avoid an argument at any cost.

  He hated to leave it like this. Because of their squabbling, he had not been able to ask her about Botvidi and the information he must have brought about the Tycoon. Now he would not be able to ask. And Chappa would be waiting by the boat, furious at the delay, more furious when he heard this new change in plans.

  Sheria called in the guard. Harubiki already was dressed for the trip and carrying a backpack and a gembone-backed water-message device. So the offer of Harubiki’s services had not been a spontaneous gesture, but something they had worked out beforehand. That meant Sheria knew how angry he would be at the change in plans and had prepared against it.

  “Harubiki has promised to follow my orders without question. She will serve you as I have ordered her to. Isn’t that right, Harubiki?”

  “Yes,” Harubiki said without smiling, “I serve the princess always.”

  “You said the majini was waiting,” Sheria said. “You’d better go.”

  Radi hesitated, wishing she would dismiss the bodyguard so that they could have a private parting, but she made no move to soften the moment. It was hard to believe they would be making marriage plans when he returned.

  “May the water hold you safely until return,” Radi said, reciting the old ritual of parting for those who had taken water hospitality together and wished to part in peace. Sheria made no movement toward him to clasp his hand and finish the ritual with, “And may we meet again where the water runs sweet.” She stood perfectly still, waiting for him to leave.