He looked directly into Karis's face and recoiled with surprise.

Zanja remembered then what it had been like to meet Karis for the first time, to feel the shocking, palpable presence of her intelligence, like a handshake that leaves the hand aching. Emil, whose talent made people's hearts transparent to him, dropped heedlessly to his knees. Karis gazed at him in some puzzlement, then at Medric, who had crouched, wide-eyed, beside him, and then she turned to Zanja and said, "I should know these people."

"They helped in your escape and have been with us ever since. These are my friends, Emil Paladin and the seer Medric."

"How could this be?" Karis said blankly.

Much to Zanja's relief, Emil's look of astonishment gave way to a genuine smile. "Well, Karis, Medric had a dream that Zanja needed us, and so as soon as we could we traded our dray horse and wagon for a couple of riding horses, and nearly killed them coming here cross-country, rather to Zanja's surprise.

But for us it was very simple, really."

Karis looked from him to Medric.

Medric said, "Karis, you are the hope of Shaftal."

There was a silence. Karis said, "So I see that, like all seers, you are mad."

Zanja convinced Karis to eat while she explained where they were and how they had gotten there.

Before she finished the tale, Karis's tremors began again, and Medric and Emil delicately took their leave. Karis set the mostly empty bowl aside and lay back upon the plain pallet, wan and hollow-eyed.

She said, "I didn't want and never would have chosen the ancient office of G'deon. But your fire blood friends seem enchanted by the glamour of it."

Zanja said, "Oh, yes, it is quite glamorous. I myself am struck dumb by the glory of it."

Karis shut her eyes, and said heavily, "I know I should laugh. But the truth is too bitter. For fifteen years I have carried this weight within the flawed receptacle of my flesh and bones, and as if that weren't enough, have also borne the burden of Mabin's unremitting censure and Norina's overbearing solicitude.

Mercy could only be had from the secrecy that allowed me to be a mere earth witch and metalsmith of modest ambitions. Now that mercy is gone."

Zanja said, "So now you must become accustomed to being treated with affection and respect by three fire bloods. Why is it terrible to be so richly perceived now?"

Karis flinched as a particularly strong tremor shook her frame. "If I live-then I will fail your hopes.

Shaftal-I am so tired."

"Our hopes for what?"

Karis shuddered again. Sweat beaded her forehead as if she endured an intense pain. "Whatever you want. Deliverance. The healing of the world. All things I cannot do."

Zanja said softly, "Even the G.o.ds could not save my people from destruction. So if Shaftal is to be saved,it seems it must happen in a more ordinary way. Karis, how can I give you peace? Shall I tell you that I'm simply fulfilling my long overdue obligation in a trade agreement? You broke into a Sainnite prison and saved my life and rescued me; now I have broken into a Paladin prison and saved your life and rescued you. It's a simple exchange. Or would it make you feel better if I tell you that once I've made you indebted to me I have every intention of abusing your sense of obligation? That would make you feel better."

Karis began to laugh, but it was painful to watch.

Zanja said, "But the truth is that I dare not let you die, nor dare I release your secret to the world, for Norina will hunt me down and skewer me."

"That's true," Karis said. "But it's not the whole truth."

"Well, of course, I am devoted to you. So why can you accept devotion from Norina and not from me?"

Karis's hand clenched convulsively in Zanja's, her palm sticky with sweat. "I accept Norina's duty," she said. "But you have no excuse."

The convulsions began.

Even the worst of battles has an end, but for Karis the siege never seemed to lift. Three times between each sunrise, Zanja sat beside her as she fought her tedious, horrifying struggle, only to give in, over and over again. With slowness that seemed unendurable, Karis won back her life from smoke, gaining ground so slowly that many a time it seemed as though she won nothing at all. It was a wearying, desperate, grinding labor of will that yielded too little reward. Days of sudden fevers and devastating fits of nausea gave way to days of dispirited exhaustion and irritable boredom. Then, Karis made a water clock by piercing a hole in an empty pot and hanging it to drip water into a container. This clock became her enemy, and the changing containers Zanja put down to catch the water defined the progress of the combat. For seven days the time Karis called her own could not fill one of Emil's tiny porcelain teacups.

But then the teacup overflowed and Zanja's battered tin porringer replaced it.

Ten more drops of water today than yesterday, and tomorrow it would be ten more. Medric timed the water drops with Emil's watch, then worked a cipher on the stone floor with a piece of charcoal. At this rate, a year would pa.s.s before Karis was smoking only once a day again. Zanja made him erase it before Karis could see the grim numbers.

One afternoon, when Zanja came out of the shadowed cave into the rich warmth of the late summer sunshine, Medric was waiting for her. Karis had just smoked, and had fallen into an exhausted sleep. This was not the first time either Medric or Emil lay in wait for Zanja, but only now did she realize that it was no accident. The two of you are taking turns," she said.

Medric grinned. "It's a measure of how preoccupied you are that it took so long for you to realize it.

Here, sit down. I want to talk to you."

She sat on one of the large stones that served them as furniture. The entire population of the Otter People's village seemed to be out on the lake this warm afternoon. One of the young people engaged in a raucous boat race was a stocky, brown-haired South Hill farmer who seemed on the verge of tipping her boat into the water. It hardly mattered, since Annis wore no clothing. The sun had cooked her brown as a loaf of overcooked bread. Someone dumped Annis into the water and she came up laughing."There is a shadow over Karis," Medric said. "And it lies over you as well, since you have bound yourself to share her fate."

"What shadow?" Zanja asked. "Death, is that it? Madness? Neither one seems worse than this torture."

Medric said, "A moment of decision is coming upon you, a time when you must see clearly and speak with courage. But you have lost your vision. Karis's whole attention is on the water dripping from her clock, and there's a kind of madness in that-one that you have come to share with her. Here, eat this."

He had given her a piece of the Otter People's flatbread, with some of the ubiquitous smoked fish rolled up inside. Zanja ate it rather as Karis would have done, obediently, without hunger or pleasure. Medric pushed his spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose and gazed rather blearily out across the water, blinking in the glare. "These water folk make me see how much we fire bloods are bound by our seriousness. Everything we do seems fraught with importance. It's easy to lose perspective." He took off his spectacles and put on the other pair. "Aha!"

Zanja said, "What can't I see?"

"I have seen Karis lift a hammer and strike, and the sparks fall around her in a shower of gold. I see her shaping the world on her forge."

There was a silence. Zanja said, "Will you stay here for a while and keep an eye on Karis? I want a bath."

She took the cake of soap and bathed in the downriver end of the lake, washing even her stinking clothing and dirty hair, and when she came back with her dripping laundry in her arms, Medric loaned her a clean shirt to wear and combed her hair for her. Then, as Zanja braided her hair, he read out loud from one of the half dozen books that he and Emil continued to haul around with them, though most of the library was safely stored. He read a history of a time so ancient the story seemed more myth than fact, yet the tale had an eerie familiarity: a tale of people arriving by sea to a land inhabited by tribal folk, and how at first they had been conquerors until at last the land tamed them and taught them how to live upon it. That land had been Shaftal.

Zanja lay back, with her hair only half braided, dazed by cleanliness and sunshine and the easy rhythms of Mednc's reading voice, and the ancient cycles of history. Medric broke off and said, "Here's Emil, looking grumpy, and the water witch."

Zanja sat up and rubbed her eyes. Two boats had landed on the beach. The water witch, carrying a heavy jug, went into Karis's cave. Zanja started to get up, but Emil's hand restrained her. Medric went back to his reading, and then he and Emil sat talking about history for hours. When at last the water witch reappeared, he crouched down beside Zanja and said, "Give her the water to drink until she has drunk dry the jug."

"Esteemed sir, as you will," she said, and bowed.

He got into his boat and rowed away.

"You absorb language like paper absorbs ink," said Medric admiringly.

"Land have mercy," Emil said, "isn't the man tired yet? He took me on a half-day journey upstream until my arms were about to fall off from rowing, and then we had to climb the cliff to a little spring that bubbled out from a crack in the stone. I'm certain he explained it to me, but unlike Zanja, I don't understand a word he says."Zanja said, "You obviously are the elder of our tribe. Therefore, you stand witness on our behalf."

"Witness to what, though?" Emil said, rubbing a stiff shoulder.

Medric lifted his head and smiled suddenly. Zanja turned to look at what he was seeing, and leapt to her feet and ran to the doorway of the little cave, where Karis stood, braced between stones. Karis said thickly, "If I'm to receive guests now I should be more presentable." She dropped her shirt, which she had been unb.u.t.toning, and walked across the beach and into the water.

Zanja picked up the shirt, which was even more rank than hers had been, and stood there feeling like a parent must feel when her firstborn suddenly ceases to be a child.

When Karis came out of the water, Emil wrapped her in a blanket, and gave her the last cup of tea. She sat by the coals of the fire, watching Zanja stew her shirt and spice it heavily with shavings from their solitary bar of soap. "You never told me what a peculiar feeling it is to have someone work magic on you," she said to Zanja.

"Well, I didn't want to seem as if I were complaining."

"What did he do?" Medric asked.

"Water magic makes no sense to me. He did something very ordinary."

"Surely not!"

"It was ordinary, I tell you."

Perhaps Karis was incapable of appet.i.te, but she ate an astonishing quant.i.ty of bread and fish, and then pursued a lengthy argument with Medric. It was well past sunset by the time the tremors began, and when Zanja went into the cave with her, the porringer under the water clock had filled to overflowing, and was surrounded by a small pond of spilled water, with the water clock nearly empty.

"I guess we need a bigger bowl," Zanja said.

Karis sat upon her pallet of woven reeds.

"Here, you're supposed to drink dry the jug, he said." Zanja picked up the water jug from the floor, but it already was empty. "What did he do to you?"

Karis said, "You know how people wish for more time."

Zanja looked at the overflowing porringer. Another drop plunked into it. "Time is water?"

"For him it is. I told you it made no sense."

"How is it ordinary that he gave you more time?"

"People give each other time fairly commonly, don't they? You're giving me some of yours right now. I tend to be miserly with mine, however. I always feel like I don't have enough of it." She lay down. "Am I tired?"

"You should be."The spasms, when they came, were not nearly as violent as they had been. Afterwards, in the few moments between smoking the pipe and going under smoke, Karis said, "I think I might live."

"You've faced your ordeal with great courage."

"What choice had I?" And she was gone.

Chapter Twenty-four.

The night had been edged with a bit of autumn's chill, and when Zanja awoke, she remembered that she had crawled into Karis's bed in the middle of the night and covered them both with her blanket. She lay alone now upon the reed pallet, and a bowl with waves painted along its edge sat beneath the water clock, collecting time. She went out and found Karis beside the fire with Emil. He had unb.u.t.toned and rolled up the leg of his breeches to reveal the knee that plagued him so. It was a wonder that he could walk at all, Zanja realized as she got a closer look at the scarred, distorted, swollen joint, much less run and fight the way he did. Karis laid her hand upon his knee and he began arguing with her.

"Just concede," Zanja advised him. "She's bigger and stronger than you are."

Her clothing had dried enough to wear. She took Medric's borrowed shirt to put it with his gear, and found him asleep on the reed bed he and Emil shared. He often slept late, for he often sat awake for half the night. When Zanja returned to the fire, Emil's knee had been transformed. "I don't know," he said bemusedly. "Somehow, this seems like cheating." He worked the new knee as he might work the trigger of a new pistol.

Karis said, "Five years of walking on a shattered knee seems long enough to me."

"It's just as well I haven't known you all these years. How could I have kept from entreating you to heal my friends, who all are dead now? What a horror I would have made of your life, laying upon you a burden of moral quandaries, matters of life and death, that no one person should have to resolve by herself. It used to take an entire government and strength of tradition to relieve the G'deon from having to decide how to dole out his favor. You have no such protections."

"Not even the protection of being able to pretend that I'm superior to everyone else. Good morning," she added to Zanja. "Is it too early for such serious talk?"

"We're out of tea," Emil said sadly.

Karis had already eaten, but sat down with Zanja to eat again, and told her that Annis, who seemed to be living with the Otter People, had rowed over at dawn with the new bowl for the water clock, the day's delivery of food, and a pair of sandals for Karis. "Have I met Annis before?" Karis asked.

"I doubt you remember. She's a genius at blowing things up, and comes from a good family."

"That's better than I can say about myself."

Emil took a few steps, testing his new knee. "Oh blessed day," he said, "You're a genius, anyway. You can always get a good family."Karis was still smiling as, after breakfast, she took Zanja's arm and walked her down the beach. "You must have been cold last night."

"I'm afraid it made me presumptuous."

Karis had turned her face away to look over the busy waters of the lake. Now she looked back, and Zanja did not think she had ever seen such unhappiness. "Presumptuous?"

"I-".

"Let's pretend I don't understand why it might be presumptuous for you to share my bed on a cold night," Karis said.

"All right." The pretense was certainly preferable to any other alternative.

"But if I'm to be your torturer . . ."

"What torture? I have no false hopes." Zanja kicked at the stones. "I thought we were pretending we didn't know what we're talking about."

"I guess that's not going to work."

"Well, then let me say my speech about how I hope you won't let this come between us, and how in time I'll come to my senses- "Come to your senses! Oh, have pity!" Karis dropped to her knees and drove her fists onto the stones with enough force to send them flying and clattering across the beach. Zanja grabbed her wrists, fearful that she would break the small bones of her hands without knowing it. Karis cried, "Let it me be who comes to her senses! Let me taste, let me feel hunger and pain and weariness and even pleasure! Let me know the name of the desire that drives me! If there be G.o.ds-"

Karis was taken by a spasm of grief as sudden and violent as the smoke convulsions that made her life all but unendurable. She struggled in Zanja's embrace, but finally let her head rest in the cradle of her shoulder while she wept. At last she was still, and said hoa.r.s.ely, calmly, with her head heavy against Zanja's breastbone, "Zanja na'Tarwein, you're in love with a madwoman."

Zanja kissed the tangled mess of Karis's hair. "I'm not entirely sane myself."

Karis convulsed again; Zanja could only hope it was with laughter this time. And then they both lay still, while the sweet laughter of the Otter children echoed across the water, and the warm sun rose above the canyon rim. In that silence that came in the wake of sorrow, Zanja felt the heavy weight of the moment resting upon her like a door upon its hinge. She said, "Councilor Mabin has proven herself so ruthless, it seems that something about you must terrify her. I wish you would explain it."

Karis groaned against Zanja's chest. "Shall I explain why water runs downhill? Shall I name the forces that bind together and tear apart? That I can do. But why Councilor Mabin hates me and has always hated me, that I can't explain. It's not for anything I've done-I've done so little-so it must be for what I am."

"Once you lived with her, you and Norina."

"No, Norina lived with her, but I was her prisoner, for Mabin doled smoke out to me, one piece at a time, like a reward given a trained dog. Mabin is the one who taught me that no matter what else I did with my life, I had better learn a trade so I didn't have to depend on anyone except myself for my smokesupply."

Zanja stroked a hand down Karis's unruly head, but had to stop because it was too much for her to endure.