The Water Road (30 page)

Three months ago, Antrey had never
set foot on a ship. Now she felt like a skilled traveler of the open seas,
although the rougher waters still sent her scrambling for a bucket.
Nonetheless, it was easier than dealing with the clan representatives she had
met during her travels. Although others had told her what skill she had in
dealing with strangers, Antrey never quite believed it. The nausea of the sea
came and went. The fear of failure on land sat like a weight in the pit of her
stomach almost all the time.

So far, all had gone according to
plan. Naath and the crew of
Gentle Giant
had become her clan, after a
fashion, helping her spread her message as quickly and widely as possible. They
went from port to port, making contact with the local clans. Since the cities
were Islander strongholds, members of multiple clans often mixed in them,
making the process even quicker. It also allowed her and her group to be seen
less as interlopers and more like fellow travelers, at least at first.

In each city, Antrey would find
representatives of as many different clans as possible. If someone was willing
to take her message back to their clan, Antrey would send him away with one of
the members of her entourage, including one of the Speakers of Time she brought
with her. Trave
l
ling under a banner of neutrality, the Speaker would tell the clan
leaders what was now the standard recitation of Antrey’s story. Then the
emissaries would be sent back from the port where they began. Going east to
west—from Port Levin to Port Jaray to Port Karn to Port Orford—Antrey would
send out her messages. On the way back, she would collect the responses upon
their return. By the time they returned to Port Jaray, Antrey would have a good
idea of what the response was to her proposition.

It also helped when she got lucky.
In Port Levin she found not just a representative from the Volakeyn, but also
the Chellein. The Chellein would have to be addressed eventually, but she knew
they would not sign on with only the Dost already committed. Antrey was able to
speak to the two representatives together, hopefully lending her proposal a bit
more weight with the Chellein. He listened politely and agreed to take the
offer back to his thek, but showed no enthusiasm for the concept. The Volakeyn
representative, on the other hand, was very interested in Antrey’s proposal and
offered good chances that her thek could be convinced to go along with it.

Port Jaray played out in much the
same way. There Antrey found representatives from the Mughein as well as the
Akan, who roamed the west side of the Vander Range. Their territory included
the Hogarth Pass, where the remnants of the original Rising had been brutally
and totally crushed. To have the Akan on her side would mean a great deal. Both
seemed skeptical, but the Akan representative’s reaction gave Antrey some hope.
He also offered a kindness to her and agreed to take the message to the Kohar
as well.

By the time they left Port Jaray,
more than half the clans had been contacted. Pleased with herself, Antrey
thought the matter would be settled shortly.

~~~~~

Port Karn was the largest of the
four Islander cities along the Neldathi coast. It perched on the southernmost
tip of the continent, just on the edge of the territory controlled by the
Elein, one of the largest and most ancient of the clans. It was far enough
south that, even on days like this one when the full blush of spring was
evident, the air clung to a crisp chill and snow lay in slowly melting piles on
the ground.

By now, Antrey and her group had
settled into a familiar routine when they arrived in port. Naath, it turned
out, was quite correct about the vital role he played on the
Giant
and
had extended his talents to acting as a liaison between Antrey and the locals. He
knew which clans were in a particular city, when they were there, and where
they congregated. He knew which of the traders would be interested in the items
from Ushan’s trunk and how to get the best price for them. It helped that the
profits from those sales all went back to the
Gentle Giant
as payment
for Antrey’s passage. He was nothing if not a motivated seller.

He had told her one night, in all
honesty, that he did not think she could succeed with her plan. That was after
he had been a part of her meetings with the Haglein, Mughein, and Volakeyn and
Antrey’s hopes had been at their highest. Naath told her that he did not think
that any kind of coalition could hold, in the long term. As he told it, it did
not matter to him one way or another. He and his crew were not along for some
grand cause, but simply as a business proposition. As long as the goods they
sold in the ports fetched the right price, he was a supporter. Antrey had to
admit, in her private moments, that she liked having someone around who was so
practically helpful but broadly pessimistic. It helped her stay grounded.

As a result of his role in their
plan, Naath and Antrey had spent a great deal of time with each other. Although
his initial reaction to her showed some signs of revulsion about her heritage,
Naath warmed to her and soon treated her as an equal business partner. That
relationship had become a source of concern for some of Antrey’s Dost comrades.
They were naturally suspicious of the Islanders, as they were one of the clans
that did not deal with them regularly. The Islanders were still Altrerians,
after all, and the Dost had plenty of experience with them. It took many
conversations, and Goshen’s intervention, to allay their fears.

In Port Karn, Naath’s commitment to
the cause paid a handsome reward. While in the other cities Antrey was lucky to
meet with any member of a clan, in Port Karn she learned that the thek of the
Elein was in the city. Most theks, and even their most senior advisors, would
not travel to the port cities, either out of superstition of what lay there or
in order to show solidarity with the nomadic life of their people. Naath was
not only able to find the thek, but able to arrange a meeting with him as well.
It was a great piece of luck and skill. For once, after Antrey had one of these
meetings, she would have a solid understanding of what the clan might do. The
only difficulty was that the meeting was agreed to only if Antrey came alone,
along with Naath. Hirrek protested in the name of safety, while Goshen
complained simply because he was being left out of the loop.

As she and Naath weaved their way
through the bustling streets of Port Karn, Antrey was struck by how different
it was from Tolenor. Tolenor was a planned city and was laid out in a way that
made perfect sense, even to newcomers. It fanned out from a central point, with
the most important neighborhoods closest to the center. People who have never
been to Tolenor can make their way anywhere they need to go. Port Karn, like
the other Islander cities, on the other hand, was the work of happenstance,
impulse, and opportunity.

In one sense, all shared the same
general plan in that the streets all led to the docks. Aside from that,
however, they each had their own peculiar character. Port Karn, more so than
the others, had been shaped by the lay of the land, particularly the mountains
that loomed over it. While the hills began as gently rolling swells, they
quickly turned jagged and unpredictable and dictated the way the streets and
alleys wove through them. The result was a confusing thicket of dead ends,
one-way streets, and steep climbs that made Antrey feel completely turned
around. Naath, by contrast, was composed as always, as if he never put a foot
wrong.

By sundown they reached a hall
perched on top of a flat hilltop that looked down over the city. “Here we are,”
Naath said as they approached, “the Elein common hall.”

“What?” Antrey asked, confused and
stopping in her tracks. “How can a nomadic clan have a common hall? They don’t build
buildings, you know.”

“That’s true,” Naath said, “but
they do buy them. Look, some of the clans are more sophisticated than others
when it comes to the cities. Doesn’t it make sense to have a permanent enclave
in a larger permanent settlement where your people do business all the time?”

Antrey nodded and conceded the
point. She looked around, thankful that the location at least gave her some
time to get her bearings with regard to the rest of the city. She could even
see the
Giant
tied up at the docks below, although she had no idea how
to get there on her own.

As they resumed their walk towards
the hall, Naath explained, “The common hall is actually several buildings that
are linked together. It has meeting space, of course, where the clan can
receive visitors. But it also has dining halls for the clan, both informal and
formal, and sleeping quarters for a few dozen people. Around back there is a
storehouse where the Elein traders can deposit their goods when they arrive in
the city. We won’t be allowed into most of those rooms, of course.”

“Naturally,” Antrey said. She had
gotten used to the status of a suspicious outsider.

They reached the front gate of the
yard that sat in front of the main building, which was flanked by a pair of
dour, humorless-looking guards. Naath announced their presence and purpose to
the guards, something he had mastered quickly when he began arranging these
meetings. Whether he did it so enthusiastically because he really wanted to
help Antrey succeed or was simply amused by the challenge, Antrey appreciated
the enthusiasm.

“Good afternoon, sentries of Elein,
long have they roamed,” Naath began in his most formal tone. “I am Naath of the
Isle of Amereh. This is Jeyn Antrey, who belongs to no clan and claims them all
as her brethren. We are expected for a meeting with the honorable Thek
Birkthir.”

It was unclear whether the guards
understood any of what was said, aside from the proper names. Neldathi in the
cities, Antrey had learned, understood the Altrerian tongue well enough to get
by, but there was a possibility that these two had not wandered far from the
common hall. They looked at each other, puzzled, long green and white braids
running down their backs.

“I was here this morning,” Naath
continued, “and spoke with…ah, there he is now.” Naath pointed past the guards
towards another Elein who was walking briskly to the gate.

The man called out something to the
guards, who stood to one side to allow Antrey and Naath to walk between them.
The other man unlocked the gate from inside. Once they were in the yard, Antrey
looked back and saw the two guards eyeing her suspiciously. Naath introduced
her to their emissary, although she did not commit the man’s name to memory.

The Elein representative led them
into a small, but sophisticated, meeting room. It was much like Antrey imagined
a permanent version of the meeting tent in which she first met Ushan might be.
That permanence, however, had allowed for the most elaborate woodcarvings to
grace the edges of the room. Instead of plain pillars holding up the ceiling,
the roof was supported by six intricately carved totems.

The beautiful artwork drew Antrey’s
attention. It took the utmost effort on her part to even notice the old
Neldathi man seated alone in the far corner of the room. He said nothing when
the emissary left them. He simply sat in silence, lacking any of the finery
Antrey had come to expect from a thek. After all, her only prior experience
with a clan leader had been Ushan, who never let anyone forget her status. The
man sitting in the corner looked almost as if he was trying to avoid being
seen, the better to observe his guests.

“Quite impressive, is it not?” he
said finally in the same formal clipped tones Goshen used when he spoke
Altrerian. Antrey looked at him without answering. “It was carved over three
hundred years ago by one of our clan’s greatest artists. And yet, it makes up
only one small part of the beauty of this room.”

“It’s very lovely,” Antrey said,
taking the invitation to examine the carving in more detail. “Is it supposed to
say something? I mean, these figures, are they part of a story?”

“It means many things,” the old man
said, rising from his chair and walking slowly towards her. “On the surface it
tells the story of when Barhein, goddess of fertility and protector of our
people, convinced the snows to retreat just long enough to allow the Elein to
escape a deadly mountain pass.” He pointed to the top of the totem, at the
jagged valley over which a lithesome Neldathi goddess hung. “But below the
surface, it is a story about the many times the Elein have escaped from danger
because of our own skill and cunning.” His hand touched the totem and traced
its contours down to Antrey’s eye level. “On a level of pure craft, it is the
beginning of the golden age of Elein woodwork.”

“Seems like it means different
things depending on who is telling the story,” Antrey said.

“Indeed,” the old man said,
shifting his gaze from the totem to her. “They say the same thing of you, Jeyn
Antrey.” He nodded his head, not so much in reverence as simple acknowledgment.

“It honors me that you know of me,
Thek Birkthir.” Antrey bowed in a more formal way towards him.

He smiled a gap-toothed smile at
her. “Child, any thek who did not know of you is out of touch with the world in
which he lives.”