When she went toward the old well, two or three women hurried across to her to set her right.
“Young mistress—don’t trouble with that. It’s dry.”
“Come to the well on the South Terrace, lady. We’ll show you.”
The girl paused and looked at them. It was clear she had heard them, for she smiled a little and half inclined her head. But then she went on up the steps to the well. Framed by its shattered arch, she stood as if in thought or daydream.
The women conferred. They were mixes, and did not like to belabor their point. They waited under the steps for her to see for herself and come back to be shown the working well the other side of the Lepasin.
All about the moving market was astir with sale and barter, but near at hand there was already some interest in the Amanackire maiden at the dry well.
A young half-Xarabian man left his brother to mind their booth of painted earthenware and vegetables. He brushed through the knot of women now gathered under the well. The Lowland girl had caught his fancy. He walked up the steps until he was beside her.
“There’s been no water in there since my father’s time. Didn’t those daft pigeons tell you? Let me take you to the other well.”
“Wait,” she said gently.
For a moment he was about to answer, then he clapped his hand to his head, inside which he had heard her. His half-blood had made mind speech a rare incoherent thing. To receive so strongly thrilled him. As the hero Raldnor himself had once done, he fell in love with a woman for allowing him one moment’s sheer telepathy.
When she lowered the bucket into the well, he let her do it, unprotesting. When the bucket came up, she dipped in her jar.
He had been looking at her, not the bucket, but sounds alerted him. He looked at the jar, then, and saw it was wet.
Under the steps, the women had seen too. One exclaimed. They gestured toward her.
Then she offered the jar to him.
“Drink.”
The word—but it was not a word—stood bright as glass in his brain. He found he was trembling as he reached and took the jar and brought it to his mouth. Then the trembling stopped and he let out a roar.
Heads turned all about.
The young man was in an ecstasy of incredulous delight, almost fury. “It’s wine!”
People came hurrying, questioning, calling.
“A trick!”
“Magic!”
The girl stepped aside, and let them lower and raise the bucket for themselves; taste, vociferate, pour away, lower again and raise again and taste again and shout at each other.
The noise grew into hubbub.
Watching from his window that looked out across the market, the Vardian, Haut, felt himself also begin to tremble once more. He had known the well was dry, the Xarabian landlord had explained that. Haut heard the cries. He understood she had not required his presence, but now he felt impelled to go into the Lepasin, to become involved in what was happening.
It was part of the repertoire of magical religious conjurings intrinsic to his continent, especially to Shansar. The symbolic metamorphoses: A staff or a sword to a snake, air into fire, the blasting of trees into stone, or the bringing out from stone of water, the changing of water into blood for a curse, and into wine for a blessing. As with the rest she had shown him, he was ethnically at home with it. Yet something now made him want to taste the wine, and perhaps to weep.
When he had pushed beyond the door, one of Haut’s servants caught his arm.
“You know what’s done, sir?” Haut nodded. “They’re trying to buy the wine from her.”
Haut laughed after all, his commercial bone tickled.
You did not buy miracles.
The excitement and coming and going about the well of wine went on until the heat of noonday. The activities of the market were suspended, or carried on half-heartedly. Whoever came new to the scene was told. The dry well did not run dry.
As for the girl, she sat by the well on the topmost step, quite composed, gazing into the faces of those who approached, or away across them all. It was as if she waited, but whether for some sign from the crowd, or from within herself, or out of the sky, was not certain.
Those who knew or had discovered Haut belonged to her, sought him.
“Does she never speak?”
“She doesn’t speak aloud. Just within. She’s Amanackire.”
“Where did she come from? Over the sea?”
“My land? No. I found her in Lanelyr.”
He was a celebrity, since he accompanied one. He stretched and basked, not minding it. The wine was yellow, very clear, a Lowland vintage. Everyone had drunk the wine. He had drunk it. Perhaps he was altered.
Slightly astonished, he found he was comfortably dozing on his bench, his back to the wall. It was very hot. Something so strange was happening, but it was quite acceptable, a perfect fit.
The Lepasin was packed like a cupboard. On the upper terraces they reclined on their sides over the cracked stone and bleached grass, under makeshift parasols. People sat in windows and doorways. A handful had climbed the ruinous facades of the two palaces. Haut could even see the noble bearded faces of some of his sheep peering down between the columns.
The sun passed from the zenith.
The girl rose from the top step of the well.
They watched her as she walked down, and across the market. A vast number got up, unbidden, unrefused, and went after her.
She walked about the ruined city, through its scoured shells and dusty streets.
Twenty or thirty paces behind her, the crowd followed. At any spot she seemed to wish to traverse, where sections of masonry might have collapsed and blocked the way, young men, usually headed by a blond Xarabian, would run ahead with yells and laughter and the fume of dust, to design her a path.
She seemed to know history well.
She walked to the house that had once given shelter to a man called Orhvan, who in turn had sheltered there Raldnor—and, unwittingly, the traitor Ras. She went in at the door and through the round hall alone, and out again, and on. She moved into the upper quarter to the house once belonging to the Ommos, Yr Dakan, but did not enter. The Zarok-pillars outside had long since been crushed by mallets. She crossed the city to the stagnant palace from which the Dortharian garrison had held the Plains, rung its curfew bell, planned its rapine and sadism, and where, on the night of Awakening, it had died screaming in its blood at Raldnor’s word.
She entered the long cold vaults of this palace and lingered. Only a few accompanied her there, to see her and to see her safe. Men seldom ventured into the building. It was reckoned unlucky by the mixes and the Vis, a thing of pain and sorrow to those pure Lowlanders on the edge of their kind.
There were a few other places she visited. Another house that Raldnor had occupied. The makeshift forge where the first Dortharian sword had been seared with a crude but passionate emblem of Anackire, and still hung on a post, rusting now. The street where they said Raldnor had slain a huge white wolf.
The sun lowered itself on golden chains.
The crowd was footsore, some elated and chattering, some losing the thread, wondering why they had followed her, what she was that they should have done so, the little slight figure of a young girl, who never looked back at them.
The shadows were long spills of cinnabar when she led them again into the Lepasin. The black broken column-shafts of the palaces streaked a carnelian sky, darted with purple birds.
Those persons who had remained in the market had cleared their booths for the night and gone away. Only here and there vigil was kept by a lighted lamp. Lamps had been woken also in the windows round about, where watchers leaned to look forth.