“Walk steadily,” Luet whispered. “The less you splash, the better, so you mustn’t run. You’ll see that if you just keep going, you’re in the boat soon, and the pain passes quickly.”

  So she had done this before. Very well, if Luet could bear it, so could he. He took a step toward the water. The women gasped.

  “No,” she said quickly. “In this place, where you’re a child and a stranger, you must be led.”

  Me, a child? Compared to you? But then he realized that of course she was right. Whatever their ages might be, this was her place, not his; she was the adult and he the infant here.

  She set the pace, brisk but not hurried. The water burned his feet, but it was shallow, and he didn’t splash very much, though he was not as graceful and smooth in his movements as Luet. In moments they were at the boat, but it seemed like forever, like a thousand agonizing steps, especially the hesitation as she stepped into the boat. At last she was in, and her hand drew him in after her, and he walked on feet that stung so deep within the skin that he was afraid to look down at them for fear the flesh had been cooked off them. But then he did look, and the skin looked normal. Luet used the hem of her skirt to wipe his feet. The oarsman jammed the blade of an oar into the mud under the water and pushed them back, her muscles of her massive arms rippling with the exertion. Nafai faced Luet and clung to her hands as they glided through the water.

  It was the strangest journey of Nafai’s life, though not a long one. The fog made everything seem magic and unreal. Huge rocks loomed out of the water, they slipped silently between them, and then the stones were swallowed up as if they had ceased to be. The water grew hotter, and there were places where it bubbled; they steered around those spots. The boat itself was never hot, but the air around them was so hot and wet that soon they were drenched, their clothing clinging to their bodies. Nafai could see for the first time that Luet did, in fact, have a womanly shape to her; not much, but enough that he would never again be able to think of her as nothing but a child. Suddenly he was shy to be sitting there holding her hands, and yet he was more afraid to let go. He needed to be touching her, like a child holding his mother’s hand in the darkness.

  They drifted on. The air cooled. They passed through narrows, with steep cliffs on either hand, seeming to lean closer together the higher they went, until they were lost in the fog. Nafai wondered if perhaps this was a cave, or, if it wasn’t, whether sunlight ever reached the base of this deep rift. Then the cliff walls receded, and the fog thinned just a little. At the same time, the water grew more turbulent. There were waves now, and currents caught the boat and made it want to spin, to yaw from side to side.

  The oarsman lifted her oars; the steersman took her hand from the tiller. Luet leaned forward and whispered, “This is the place where the visions come. I told you—where the hot and the cold meet. Here is where we pass through the water in the flesh.”

  In the flesh apparently meant exactly that. Feeling even more shy to watch Luet undressing than to undress himself, he watched his own hands unfasten his clothing and fold it as Luet did hers and lay the pile in the boat. Trying to somehow watch her without seeing her, Nafai couldn’t quite grasp how she managed to slip so noiselessly into the water, then lie motionless on her back. He could see that she made no move to swim, so when he—noisily—dropped himself into the water, he also lay still. The water was surprisingly buoyant. There was no danger of sinking. The silence was deep and powerful; only once did he speak, when he could see that she was drifting away from him.

  “No matter,” she answered quietly. “Hush.”

  He hushed. Now he was alone in the fog. The currents turned him—or perhaps they didn’t, for in the fog he couldn’t tell east from west or anything else having to do with location, except for up and down, and even that seemed to matter very little. It was peaceful here, a place where his eyes could see and yet not see, where his ears could hear and yet hear nothing. The current did not let him sleep, however. He could feel the hot and cold wash under him, sometimes very hot, sometimes very cold, so that sometimes he thought, I can’t bear this another moment, I’ll have to swim or I might die here—and then the current changed again.

  He saw no vision. The Oversoul said nothing to him. He listened. He even spoke to the Oversoul, begging to know how he might somehow manage to get the Index that Father had sent him for. If the Oversoul heard him, it gave no sign.

  He drifted on the lake forever. Or perhaps it was only a few minutes before he heard the soft touch of the oars in the water. A hand touched his hair, his face, his shoulder, then caught at his arm. He remembered how to turn his head and then he did it, and saw the boat, with Luet, now fully dressed, reaching out to him. It did not occur to him to be shy now; he was only glad to see her, and yet sad to think that he had to rise out of the water. He was not deft at climbing into the boat. He rocked it badly, and spilled water into it.

  “Roll in,” whispered Luet.

  He lay on his side in the water, reached a leg and an arm into the boat, and rolled in. It was easy, almost silent. Luet handed him his clothing, still wet, but now very cold. He drew it on and shivered as the women propelled the boat on into the bone-chilling fog. Luet also shivered, but seemed undisturbed even so.

  At last they came to a shoreline, where again a group of women were waiting. Perhaps another boat had gone directly across the lake, not waiting for the ritual of passing through the water in the flesh, or perhaps there was some road for runners bearing messages; whatever the reason, the women waiting for them already knew who they were. There was no need for explanations. Luet again led the way, this time through icy water that made Nafai’s bones ache. They reached dry land—a grassy bank this time, instead of mud flats—and women’s hands wrapped a dry blanket around him. He saw that Luet also was being warmed.

  “The first man to pass through the water,” said a woman.

  “The man who passes through the waters of women,” said another.

  Luet explained to him, seeming a little embarrassed. “Famous prophecies,” she said. “There are so many of them, it’s hard not to fulfil one now and then.”

  He smiled. He knew that she took the prophecies much more seriously than she pretended. And so did he.

  He noticed that no one asked her what had happened on the water; no one asked whether she had seen a vision. But they lingered, waiting, until finally she said, “The Oversoul gave me comfort, and it was enough.” They drifted away then, most of them, though a few looked at Nafai until he shook his head.

  “We’re through the easy part now,” she said.

  He thought she was joking, but then she led him through the Private Gate, a legendary gap in the red wall that he had only half-believed was real. It was a curving passageway between a pair of massive towers, and instead of city guards, there were only women, watching. On the other side, he knew, lay Trackless Wood. Quickly he learned that it had earned its name. His face was streaked with cuts, and so was hers, and their arms and legs as well, by the time they emerged onto Forest Road.

  “That way is Back Gate,” said Luet. “And down any of these canyons you’ll reach the desert. I don’t know where you’re going from there.”

  “That’s good enough,” said Nafai. “I can find my way.”

  “Then I’ve done what the Oversoul sent me to do.”

  Nafai didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even know the name for what he was feeling. “I think that I don’t know you,” said Nafai.

  She looked at him, a little perplexed.

  “No, that’s wrong,” Nafai said. “I think that I didn’t know you before, even though I thought I knew you, and now that I finally know you, I don’t really know you at all.”

  She smiled. “Those crossing currents do it to you every time,” she said. “Tell no one, man or woman, what you did tonight.”

  “I’m not sure, when I remember it, whether I’ll believe that it really happened myself.”

  “Will we see you again, at Aunt Rasa’s house?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nafai. “I only know this: that I don’t know how I can get the Index without getting killed, and yet I have to get it.”

  “Wait until the Ovcrsoul tells you what to do,” said Luet, “and then do it.”

  He nodded. “That’s fine, if the Oversoul actually tells me something.”

  “She will,” said Luet. “When there’s something to do, she’ll tell you.”

  Then, impulsively, Luet reached out her hand and grasped his again, for just a moment. He remembered again, like an echo in his flesh, how it felt to cling to her on the lake. He was a little embarrassed now, though, and drew his hand away. She had seen him being weak. She had seen him naked.

  “See?” she said. “You’re forgetting already how it really was.”

  “No I’m not,” he said.

  She turned away and headed down the road toward Back Gate. He wanted to call out to her and say, You were right, I was forgetting how it really was, I was remembering it through common ordinary eyes, I was remembering it as the boy I was before, but now I remember that it wasn’t me being weak or me being naked, or anything else that I should be ashamed of. It was me riding like a great hero out of prophecy across the magical lake, with you as my guide and teacher, and when we shed our clothing it wasn’t a man and woman naked together, it was rather two gods out of ancient stories from faraway lands, stripping away their mortal disguises and standing revealed in their glorious immortality, ready to float over the sea of death and emerge unscathed on the other side.

  But by the time he thought of all the things he wanted to say, she had disappeared around a bend.

  FOURTEEN

  ISSIB’S CHAIR

  Nafai didn’t know what to expect when he got to the rendezvous. All the way across the desert in the starlight, he kept imagining terrible things. What if none of his brothers escaped? They didn’t have the help of Luet and the women of Basilica. Or what if they did escape, but the soldiers followed one of them to their hiding place, and then slaughtered them? When he got there, would he find their mutilated bodies? Or would there be soldiers lying in wait for him, to take him as he made his way down the canyon?

  He paused at the top of the canyon, the place where they had stopped to cast lots early that same morning. Oversoul, he said silently, should I go down there?

  The answer he got was a picture in his mind—one of Gaballufix’s inhuman soldiers walking through the empty nighttime streets of Basilica. He didn’t know what sense to make of this. Was the Oversoul telling him that the soldiers were all in the city? Or was Nafai seeing this vision because the Oversoul was telling him that soldiers were waiting for him in the arroyo, and his brain had simply added irrelevant details of the city to the vision?

  One thing was inescapable—the sense of urgency he was getting from the Oversoul. As if there was an opportunity he could not afford to miss. Or a danger he had to avoid.

  When the message is so unclear, Nafai said silently, what can I go on except for my own judgment? If my brothers are in trouble I need to know it. I can’t abandon them, even if there might be danger to myself. If I’m wrong, take this thought from me.

  Then he started down the arroyo. There came no stupor, no distraction. Whatever else the Oversoul was trying to tell him, it certainly didn’t mind him going down to the rendezvous with his brothers.

  Or else it had given up on him. But no—it had just gone to so much trouble to bring him out of the city, through the Lake of Women, the Oversoul could hardly plan to abandon him now.

  It was so dark in the canyon that he ended up stumbling, sliding down, until he finally came to rest on the gravelly shelf where his brothers were supposed to be waiting.

  “Nafai.”

  It was Issib’s voice. But Nafai hardly had time to hear it before he felt a harsh blow. Someone’s sandal against his face, shoving him down into the rocks.

  “Fool!” shouted Elemak. “I wish they’d caught you and killed you, you little bastard!”

  Another foot, from the other side, smashing into his nose. And now Mebbekew’s voice. “All gone, the whole fortune, everything, because of you!”

  “He didn’t take it, you fools!” cried Issib. “Gaballufix stole it!”

  “You shut up!” shouted Mebbekew, advancing on Issib. Nafai was at last able to see what was happening. Though his face stung from the tiny rocks embedded in the bottoms of their sandals, they really hadn’t hurt him seriously. Now, though, he could see that they truly were raging. But why at Nafai?

  “Rash was the one who betrayed us,” said Nafai.

  Immediately they turned back to him. “Is that so?” said Elemak. “Didn’t I tell you that I was going to do all the talking? I could have had the Index for a quarter of what we had, but no, you had to—”

  “You were giving up!” cried Nafai. “You were walking out!”

  Elemak roared in fury, pulled Nafai up by the shirt, lifting him partway from the ground. “Half of bargaining is walking out, you fool! Do you think I didn’t know what I was doing? I, who have bargained in foreign lands and made great profit on few goods—why couldn’t you trust me to know what I was doing? All you’ve ever bargained for is a few stupid myachiks in the market, little boy.”

  “I didn’t know,” said Nafai.

  Elemak threw him down onto the ground. Nafai’s elbows were scraped, and his head struck the stones hard enough that it hurt him. Without meaning to, he cried out.

  “Leave him alone, you coward,” said Issib.

  “Calling me a coward?” said Elemak.

  “Gaballufix was going to have our money no matter what we did. He already had Rash on his side.”

  “So now you’re the expert on what would have happened,” said Elemak.

  “Sitting on your throne, judging us!” cried Mebbekew. “You think Nafai’s so innocent, what about you! You’re the one who got the money out of Father’s accounts!”

  Nafai stood up. He didn’t like the way they were menacing Issib. It was one thing for them to take out their fury on him, but something else again when they seemed about to hurt Issya. “I’m sorry,” said Nafai. There was nothing for it but to take the blame, and their anger. “I didn’t understand, and I should have kept my mouth shut. I’m sorry.”

  “What is sorry?” said Elemak. “How many times have you said sorry when it was too late to undo the consequences? You never learn anything, Nafai. Father never taught you. His little baby, precious Rasa’s little boy, who could do no wrong. Well, it’s time you learned the lessons that Father should have taught you years ago.”

  Elemak pulled one of the rods out of a pack frame leaning against the canyon wall. It was designed to carry heavy loads on the back of a camel; it had some flex to it, and it wasn’t terribly heavy, but it was sturdy and long. Nafai knew at once what Elemak intended. “You have no right to touch me,” said Nafai.

  “No, nobody has the right to touch you,” said Mebbekew. “Sacred Nafai, Father’s jewel-eyed boy, no one can touch him. He can touch us, of course. He can lose our inheritance for us, but no one can touch him.”

  “It would never have been your inheritance, anyway,” Nafai said to Mebbekew. “It was always for Elemak.” Another thought came into Nafai’s mind, thinking of who would have received the inheritance. He knew before he said it that it wasn’t the wisest thing to say, when Elemak and Mebbekew were already in a fury. But he said it anyway. “When it comes to what you lost, you both deserved to be disinherited anyway, plotting against Father.”

  “That is a lie,” said Mebbekew.

  “How stupid do you think I am?” said Nafai. “You might not have known Gaballufix meant to kill Father that morning, but you knew he meant to kill somebody. What did Gaballufix promise you, Elemak? The same thing he promised Rash—the Wetchik name and fortune, after Father was discredited and forced out of his place?”

  Elemak roared and rushed at him, laying on with the rod. He was so angry that few of the blows actually landed true, but when they did, they were brutal. Nafai had never felt such pain, not even when he prayed, not even when his feet were in the scalding water of the lake. He ended up sprawled face-down in the gravel, with Elemak poised above him, ready to hit him—where, on his back? On his head?

  “Please!” Nafai shouted.

  “Liar!” roared Elemak.

  “Traitor!” Nafai shouted back. He started to get to his knees, to his feet.

  The rod fell, knocking him back down to the ground. He’s broken my back, thought Nafai. I’ll be paralyzed. I’ll be like Issib, crippled in a chair for the rest of my life.

  It was as if the thought of Issib brought him into action. For as Elemak raised the rod again, Issib’s chair swung across in front of him. The chair was turning as it went—it couldn’t have been completely under control—and the rod caught Issib across one arm. He screamed in pain, and the chair lost control completely, spinning crazily and reeling back and forth. Its collision avoidance system kept it from banging into the stone walls of the arroyo, but it did bump into Mebbekew as he tried to run out of the way, knocking him down.

  “Stay out of the way, Issib!” shouted Elemak.

  “You coward!” cried Nafai. “You were nothing in front of Gaballufix, but now you can beat a cripple and a fourteen-year-old boy! Very brave!”

  Again Elemak turned away from Issib to face Nafai. “You’ve said too much this time, boy,” he said. He wasn’t shouting this time. It was a colder, deeper anger. “I’m never going to hear that voice again, do you understand me?”

  “That’s right, Elya,” said Nafai. “You couldn’t get Gaballufix to kill Father for you, but at least you can kill me. Come ahead, prove what a man you are by killing your little brother.”