"Of course you do," Cehmai said. "Come on, then. Walk with me."
The fields were not the largest Maati had seen, and reminded him of the
gardens he'd worked as a child in the school. The dark soil of the
riverfed lowlands was unlike the dry, pale soil of the high plains
outside Pathai, but the scent of wet earth, the buzzing of small
insects, the warmth of the high sun, and the subtle cool rising from the
water all echoed moments of his childhood. Not all those memories were
harsh. For a moment, he imagined slipping off his sandals and sinking
his toes into the mud.
As they walked, he told Cehmai all he'd been doing in the years since
they'd met. The idea of a women's grammar was one they had discussed
before, so it required little more than to remind him of it. He outlined
the progress he had made, the insights that had taken the project far
enough to begin the experimental bindings. They paused under the broad
shade of a catalpa and Cehmai shared a light meal of dried cherries and
dense honey bread while Maati recounted his losses.
He did not mention Eiah or the school. Not yet. Not until he knew better
which way his old colleague's opinions fell.
Cehmai listened, nodding on occasion. He asked few questions, but those
he did were to the point and well-considered. Maati felt himself falling
into familiar habits of conversation. When, three hands later, Cehmai
rose and led the way back to the river gate, it was almost as if the
years had not passed. They were the only two people in the world who
shared the knowledge of the andat and the Dai-kvo. They had suffered
through the long, painful nights of the war, working to fashion a
binding that might save them. They had lived through the long, bitter
winter of their failure in the caves north of Machi. If it had not made
them friends, they were at least intimates. Maati found himself
outlining the binding of Returning-to-Natural-Equilibrium as Cehmai
turned the rough iron mechanism that would slow the water.
"That won't work," Cehmai said with a grunt. "Logic's wrong."
"I don't know about that," Maati said. "The girl's trained as a
physician. She says that healing flesh is mostly a matter of letting it
go back into the shape it tends toward anyway. The body actually helps
the process that way, and-"
"But the logic, Maati-kvo," Cehmai said, using the honorific for a
teacher as if by reflex. "It's a paradox. The natural balance of the
andat is not to exist, and she wants to bind something whose essence is
the return to its natural state? It's the same problem as
Freedom-FromBondage. She should reverse it."
"How do you mean?"
The river gates creaked as they closed. The flow thinned and then
stopped. Cehmai squatted, elbows resting on his knees, and pointed
toward the water with his chin.
"Water-Moving-Down didn't only make water move down. She also stopped
it. She withdrew her influence, ne? So she could make rain fall or she
could keep it in the sky. She could stop a river from flowing as easily
as making it run fast. Your physician can't bind Returning-to-Balance or
however she planned to phrase it. But if she bound something like