“It is unclear, however, where the current understanding of the Iterations originated.”
—From the Discourses on Knowledge, Volume 15, Year 1023
The barge was made ready in such a short time Lhaurel had trouble believing it. After Talha’s confrontation with the portly, green-clad man, she had gone off to speak with the priestess in charge of the locks. Apparently, a storm had passed through the lake into which the canal fed, causing the water levels to rise. According to Talha, that was going to cause a little bit of extra work for the priestesses, though she didn’t seem overly concerned.
Lhaurel was trying to decide if she should send one of the priestesses to fetch Talha when she appeared with a woman Lhaurel could only assume was the priestess Talha had gone to see. Talha’s companion wore the same white robes as the other priestesses, but hers was far more ornate, festooned with intricate, colored patterns along the sleeves and with a shawl of a deep maroon about her shoulders. Lhaurel had never seen a color quite like it before. She also seemed a lot less obsequious than the other priestesses, her eyes meeting Talha’s on more than one occasion that Lhaurel saw just in the few moments it took the two women to walk the few spans from the side street where they’d appeared to Lhaurel’s side.
“I thank you for the use of your barge,” Talha was saying as the pair approached. “And the additional priestesses to get us through the swells. I will be sure to return them.”
The colorful priestess—Lhaurel didn’t know her name—shook her head, her short, blond hair bouncing around her ovular face. “There is no need of that, Sister. These have been here for many years. It would do them good to visit their branch of the temple in Estrelar. I think, also, that Mhenna would be glad of them. I have prepared a missive, requesting a rotation that will better serve the people here. If I may implore upon your goodwill?”
Talha smiled, taking the proffered scroll. “I will ignore the irony of that remark. I will deliver your message, priestess, and my compliments on what you have done here. I will ask but one more thing of you, however.”
“Name it.” The priestesses eyes flicked over to Lhaurel for a brief moment, question in them, then back to Talha.
What was that about?
“That fat idiot who approached us, the fool in green,” Talha said.
“I know him. He appointed himself the political leader here a few months back.”
Talha’s expression hardened. “Dispose of him for me.”
“Of course.” The priestess bowed and turned to go.
“Wait,” Lhaurel interrupted, reacting without thinking. “You don’t mean kill him, do you?”
Talha spun on Lhaurel, eyes hard as stones and lips pressed tight together. “Yes, kill him. It will serve as a lesson to those who witnessed his insolence.”
“You’d murder him for that?” Lhaurel’s stomach flipped over inside her, nausea swelling up from deep within.
“I would not do it if he had not forced this action upon me. His death will serve as a reminder of the respect due the Seven Sisters. It would serve you well to remember it yourself.” Talha’s voice was a whisper, but it shook Lhaurel with the force of a raging storm.
Gone was the kindly, absentminded woman Lhaurel had come to know on their journey thus far. Even the taciturn, moody Talha of the last few days was better than the Talha that now stood before her. Lhaurel took an involuntary step backward, then her back stiffened. Every part of Lhaurel urged her to stand.
“Whatever it is you do,” Lhaurel said, “you will have to live with it for the eternities, Talha. His death will not change the Path.” Lhaurel didn’t know where the words came from, but they resonated within her in perfect counterpoint to the raging storm of Talha’s words. Lhaurel brought her foot back forward, locking eyes with Talha. “Be wary of what lessons you teach this people.”
Talha froze for a moment, then her mouth tugged down into a frown. She brought one hand up to tap a finger against her lips.
“I think it is time we leave,” Lhaurel said. She felt blood pounding in her ears and a small voice at the back of her mind questioned what had just happened, though Lhaurel wasn’t able to devote much attention to the thought at the moment. She and Talha had been alone for that moment, but now their priestesses were approaching, bringing with them the final items to be loaded onto the barge.
Talha turned and looked over her shoulder at the approaching priestesses and then nodded, striding past Lhaurel without looking at her. She stepped out onto the barge and Lhaurel followed, only then wiping away the sweat that had appeared on her forehead. The priestesses all filed on the barge after her. There were a lot of them, more than just those who had come with them. Lhaurel saw maroon
shufaris
mixed in with both hers and Talha’s. The “borrowed” priestesses, perhaps? There were so many, in fact, that Lhaurel had to move closer to the small hut-like constructions in the middle of the barge to give them space to board.
“Let us be off,” Talha said.
The priestesses moved in what looked like practiced forms. They split into two even groups, one going to each side of the barge and then arranging themselves in a line parallel to the railing there.
“Loose the line!” Talha shouted. On the shore, several men untied the long lines that held the barge in place against the canal wall.
“Release the lock!”
People rushed by on the shore as the barge rocked and shifted, drifting out from the canal wall toward the middle of the gap. Lhaurel was grateful she was holding onto her staff for the support. Still, she watched the people running on either side of the canal with rapt attention. She wasn’t sure what was about to happen. No oars or poles were in sight which, Lhaurel assumed, would have been the usual means of transportation for a water craft of this size. And she still didn’t know what a lock was.
A noise sounded from ahead of them and the barge lurched forward. The priestesses along the rails reached out and grasped onto them, keeping their balance, though their faces and expressions were intent and fixed ahead of them. People from the town appeared along each side of the canal, pointing and waving as if watching some sort of great game. Lhaurel turned to get a look at what lay ahead of them.
A massive wall Lhaurel hadn’t noticed before stretched across the canal about a hundred spans further down. It had been blocked from her view earlier by the town’s ramshackle array of buildings. Now, she saw it as it
opened.
The wall swung outward, a crack in the center widening the wall and split down the center. Water rushed out through the growing gap, which pulled the craft forward along with it. Lhaurel felt a sudden rush of excitement as the barge shot forward. The wall, the
lock
, continued to swing open, water gushing out into the space beyond it with a sound like the roar of a sandtiger. The barge surged forward. The gates continued to open at their steady, plodding pace. Lhaurel could see people on shore pulling on long winch handles which attached to chains hooked into the lock’s door.
They weren’t going to open fast enough. The barge was going too fast and jostling from side to side in the water.
“We’re going too fast!” Lhaurel cried, her voice laced with more excitement than fear. Though she didn’t know how to swim, the water itself held no fear for her. She was a Sister. Such danger held no power over one who was eternal.
The locks continued to wing open. The barge moved faster.
“Steady it!” Talha shouted, her voice ringing out over the roar of the cascading water.
Steady what? How?
Lhaurel looked over at Talha with a question in her eyes, but at that moment the barge suddenly lurched more forcefully than ever before. Lhaurel was forced to reach out to the wall of the room next to her for support to stay on her feet.
Then the barge stilled. In the midst of the chaos and surging water, the barge lay as calm and steady as a sleeping babe in its mother’s arms. Lhaurel stared about in confusion, trying to figure out what was going on and how the barge was now holding itself so still in the center of the canal. Then the lock walls were upon them.
The barge tipped forward and Lhaurel grabbed onto the window of the little hut. Water sprayed into the air, dousing Lhaurel and everyone aboard the barge in an icy deluge. Lhaurel sucked in a breath and coughed as water entered her lungs. The barge rocked back suddenly as it hit the water on the other side and then pitched backward again. Lhaurel lost her footing and, still spluttering and coughing, fell to the barge’s floor. Her head struck the wood and light flashed in her eyes. Patches of shadow and light walked across her sight and time seemed to slow. She blinked, and the boat rocked beneath her. She coughed, and the sky above spun in a strange double circle before starting to undulate like the waves of the sea. The boat rocked again and she rolled, but her arm was caught by something. Her shoulder seared with pain as her momentum was stopped by whatever had trapped her arm within its grasp. Then it all went still.
Lhaurel blinked, unsure of where she was.
“Lhaurel?” The voice came as if from far away. “Lhaurel?”
Whatever had been holding Lhaurel’s arm released it and Lhaurel groaned, head still fuzzy, thoughts clouded and dark. A face appeared in Lhaurel’s gaze, a face with dripping red hair and odd, pointed teeth. Painted teeth.
“Talha?” Lhaurel asked.
Talha put a hand on either side of Lhaurel’s head and closed her own eyes. A burst of coldness washed over Lhaurel, a cold so deep Lhaurel cried out, muscles seizing up beneath her. A burst of heat just as intense burned away the cold and Lhaurel gasped, sitting up, mind clear and all pain suddenly gone. Power raged through her for a moment and Lhaurel’s body and mind reached for it with all the ferocity of a raging sandstorm. Talha let go of her head. The hunger storm within her ebbed away, fading with a reluctance that left Lhaurel gasping for breath.
“You should be more careful, Sister,” Talha said, getting to her feet with the aid of her staff, which she’d retrieved from the wooden floor.
Lhaurel got to her feet, one hand going to the back of her head where it had struck the floor. She expected to feel blood or, at the very least, a large swollen lump, but her fingers found unbroken scalp and her fingers came away clean of blood. Talha held out a hand. Lhaurel looked at it for a long moment before reaching out and letting Talha pull her to her feet with surprising strength.
“Thank you,” Lhaurel said, looking around carefully. Not even a twinge of pain slowed her movements.
Talha nodded and walked toward the other end of the barge. Once the barge was moving, Lhaurel soon discovered that it was the priestesses who kept it moving down the canals and in position. She’d forgotten they were wettas and had the ability to manipulate water. Even if she had remembered, she doubted she would have guessed the extent of their combined power to move the barge and all its contents at the speed and with the precision that they did. It gave her an entirely new perspective on just how limited Khari had been in her abilities, and how little the Rahuli truly knew about all they did. They were, as Talha had so pointedly said on a number of instances, a broken and backwards people simply surviving as best they could. Lhaurel was beginning to see just how lucky it was that the Rahuli had survived at all.
The barge moved along the canal at a steady rate, perhaps twice as fast as they had gone on the wagons and faster than Lhaurel could have walked, but slower than if she were running, but only just. It was worth noting, too, that it apparently didn’t require all the priestesses to maintain their speed. Once they were going, the priestesses traded out in shifts, half taking breaks to sleep or eat while the others remained at the rails to maintain their forward motion. At first, Lhaurel had watched the hills give way to a vast grassy plain, the town of Geithoorn left far behind them in mere minutes. The expanse of grasslands looked much as the sea had, except for with a difference in color. The wind moved across the tall, thin plants and created a pattern of waves so similar to both the sand dunes of the Sharani Desert and the ocean that Lhaurel had spent the first few hours of the journey entranced by the passing scenery. That interest quickly gave way to boredom.
Lhaurel walked along the perimeter of the barge to where Talha sat reading in a chair that had been set up for her near the front of the craft. A pile of books lay on the deck near here, most half wrapped in treated canvas to protect it from the moisture in the air. Talha didn’t glance up as Lhaurel approached though she did notice her.
“Hello, Lhaurel,” she said. “Can I help you?”
Lhaurel leaned stiffly on her staff, unsure of how to proceed with her question. She felt a little awkward after what had happened at the locks, though she still felt as if she’d done the right thing. Despite that, there was tension between them now that hadn’t been there before.
“Speak, child,” Talha said, finally looking up from her book to glance up at her. “I know you well enough now to know you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have either a question or a statement of some sort.”
Lhaurel felt herself flush, something she hadn’t done in months, which only heightened the awkwardness. Talha must have noticed the coloring of Lhaurel’s cheeks as she sighed and snapped her book shut.