Merlin stared at the woman, realising she was the rebel leader. She had quick darting eyes and a determined looking chin that hinted she was the leader for good reason.
‘And her?’ Bramble asked, seeming to sense Merlin’s scrutiny.
‘I vouch for her too,’ Ford answered. ‘There is no need for mindbonding since she will be coming with me when I leave.’
‘Fair enough,’ Bramble said dismissively. At a nod from Ford, Bors slipped from the tent and Merlin guessed he had gone to get Aran.
Bramble brought forward some mugs and a huge skin of beer and poured a drink for herself and Ford. Merlin had shaken her head in response to the beer, not speaking since it appeared Ford had no intention of revealing who she was. The rebel leader had offered nothing to the only other occupant of the tent and Merlin looked at him curiously, wondering at his silence and downcast air.
‘So,’ Bramble said, sitting and inviting Merlin and Ford to do the same. ‘What brings you to Conclave so early? Or did you Remember your brotherblood was about to develop a conscience?’
Ford gave the rebel a sharp look, and Bramble burst out laughing, pushing the curls impatiently out of her eyes. ‘I am not a fool, Ford. Just because women are generally Rememberers, does not mean men are not sometimes able too. But since it embarrasses you, I will speak no more of it.’
Ford said shortly: ‘Bors said you had news for me?’
Bramble grinned and Merlin noticed a deep dimple crease her cheek. ‘As to that, I have much to tell. Let me introduce you to my companion. Helf?’
Roused, the hooded man leaned forward and firelight lit his melancholy features. Merlin was startled to recognise the old man who had sat with Sheula on the Mound of Wisdom.
‘I know your face,’ Ford said slowly.
The old man nodded. ‘You should. I am a warden of Sadik. Have been for thirty years. I was a warden when the Citizen gods first came.’
‘I am Ford and a scatterling,’ Ford said. ‘What makes a warden turn?’
The old man told Ford about his servant boy. ‘It took his return as a mindless Walker to open my eyes. To begin with, I said nothing of my loss of faith. But each day I saw greed and lies and treachery in the wardens about me. Until I could stand it no more.’
‘Fortunately, one of our people got to him before he could do himself too much harm, though he is known as a warden who thinks too much,’ Bramble said, smiling fondly at the old man.
‘If I think too much, then most of the wardens think too little,’ Helf said.
Bramble leaned forward. ‘Helf was at the Lord wardens’ judging table tonight when your old friend Delpha denounced Aran and a girl.’
‘The girl came to the Mound,’ Helf said.
‘While she was being judged a Rememberer announced she was to bring about the end of the visiondraught. She claimed to have been with the scatterlings. At present she is in the temple . . .’ Bramble began.
‘The girl is no longer in the temple,’ Ford interrupted.
’You have got her out? Then she spoke truly when she said she had been with you? But how is it that the gate-guardians let her through?’
Before Ford could respond, Helf stared at Merlin, obviously recognising her. ‘You!’
Bramble reached out and pulled the hood from Merlin’s head, staring critically at her hair. ‘It does not become you, girl. Is it true that you came past the gate-guardians?’
Merlin nodded.
‘Helf told me you claim not to know who you are.’
Merlin nodded again.
‘Curious,’ was all the laconic Bramble said. She turned to Ford. ‘So, she was with you, and then she came here alone, and now you have her. What will you do with her? And how is it she left you?’
‘There was a misunderstanding,’ Ford answered simply. ‘Our Rememberer believed she would bring terrible strife down on us. But the reading was blurred. What Helf will not have told you is that when she woke with no memory, she was in a crashed Citizen gods’ flier.’
‘Wha-at!’ Bramble showed her first real surprise. ‘Then she must have been Offered . . . but . . .’
‘Exactly,’ Ford said. ‘If she was Taken, how is it that she is not a Blessed Walker? And why didn’t the gate-guardians have her mindprint?’
Bramble eyed Merlin with curiosity. ‘A puzzle . . . And the Rememberer said she would go to the Citizen gods, not that she had come from them. Perhaps she got it around the wrong way.’
‘No doubt,’ Ford said. He drank deeply from his mug and Bramble filled it again. The air smelled sour with spilled beer and Merlin wondered how they could drink the foul-smelling stuff.
’What other news?’ Ford demanded.
Bramble’s eyes became grave. ‘Helf is not the only warden to have joined us. We also have a Lord warden.’
Ford jumped to his feet in astonishment. ‘A Lord warden?’
10
They all stared down at the man lying on the pallet bed. Bramble had taken them through the back of the tent to the tiny alcove where he slept. Merlin thought she had never seen anyone so ancient. His cheeks were sunken and thick blue veins wound like cords beneath papery skin. His arms and legs were little more than frail bone and the scant flesh that covered them was mottled with scabs weeping a yellowish ichor. The heat radiating from his wasted body was intense. That and his shallow breathing were all that told he lived. The stench in the room was foul.
‘The truly amazing thing is that he is this way by choice,’ Bramble whispered, her eyes shining with pity.
‘Who is he?’ Ford asked softly.
‘Don’t you recognise him, Ford? He is the Lord warden who condemned you to exile.’
‘Ranulf!’ Ford guessed faintly.
Bramble nodded, the orange light from the torch she held glinting on her dark curls and smooth cheeks. She reached out and gently shook the old man’s arm.
With an agonised moan, his eyelids slid open to reveal the faded sallow glint of his eyes. For a moment he seemed not to know who Bramble was, and where he was. His eyes flickered fearfully from her face to the billowing darkness of the tent walls and Merlin held her breath, certain he would cry out. But then he smiled, a macabre twist of wasted lips.
‘Bramble . . .’ he whispered, seeming to see no one but her. ‘Sweet Bramble . . .’
Bramble stroked that hideous face as tenderly as if it were the face of a lover. ‘Ranulf, how goes it?’
The old man swallowed, his lips folding over pink gums innocent of teeth. ‘It is well with me. And you?’
‘I, too, Ranulf,’ Bramble said softly, dropping to her knees at his bedside. Merlin wondered how she could bear to be so close to that living corpse.
Then the old man’s eyes slid shut slowly and Merlin wondered if he had died. But Bramble rose and pulled the blanket up over his emaciated form to his neck and kissed his withered cheek. Then she gestured for them all to go back to the other section of the tent. They did so without speaking, but it was some minutes before Bramble joined them. Merlin was astounded to see the rebel leader’s eyes bright with unshed tears.
‘What is wrong with him? He looks so old,’ Ford said, as Bramble joined them around the pit fire. Merlin felt icy cold and stretched her hands out to the flames. She noticed Bramble did the same.
She filled a mug with beer and drained it in one long drink before answering. ‘I stumbled on him one night when I was returning from a hunt,’ she said. ‘You remember how he was? Tall and strong. Arrogant mouth and sneering eyes. He rode like a god and that was his only redeeming feature. I had hated him for as long as I could remember, since he killed my sisterblood for loving someone else. But that night, when I came on him, he was grovelling on the ground, half mad with delusions. I could see from the way he held his leg that it was broken and guessed he had been thrown from the black beast he rode. He was filthy and looked as if he had dragged himself far, yet I looked on his broken body without compassion.’ Her eyes were bleak with the memory.
; ‘Naturally my first thought was to slide a knife into his belly while there were no witnesses. I would never have such a chance again. Do you know what he did when I came to him with my hand on my knife?’
Mesmerised, both Ford and Merlin shook their heads.
Bramble stared into the dying flames as if the story were written in the embers. ‘He begged me to kill him.’ She shook her head. ‘He looked up at me, his haughty face twisted, his eyes wet with tears, and he begged me to put my knife in him. He said he would bless me for it.’
‘Why?’ Ford asked. ‘Surely a broken leg would not cause so much pain.’
Bramble gave him a strange smile. ‘Of course, I thought as you do that he was over-reacting to the break. I thought him a coward. I did not kill him. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps because he asked it and I wanted to do nothing for him. I took him back to my hovel. He wept and begged all night to die. Then, he slept. When morning came he was lucid but fevered. He demanded in his old proud way that I return him to his home. Again, I don’t know why but I refused. Maybe because it pleased me to have a Lord warden at my mercy. And I still toyed with the thought of killing him. He threatened me with death if I did not return him to the other Lord wardens, but I closed my ears to him. And he began to convulse. He was racked for hours. It was the most terrible thing I have ever seen. He screamed with the pain for hours, and I could do nothing. I tell you, after that night, all my hunger for revenge was burned away by what I saw him suffer. I had decided I would get a Lord warden to come to him in the hope that they would know what ailed him, but as I prepared to go, he asked me to stay with him. He said . . . he said he was afraid to be alone. He said it was worse at night . . . so . . . I stayed and we talked.’
There was a long silence and Merlin pictured the young Amazon and the stricken Lord warden talking together in the darkest hours of night.
‘We talked of many things and of nothing. Not of the Offering or of my sisterblood or clans, but of places where we had ridden and streams where we swam as children and . . .’ She shook her head. ‘That night, Ranulf changed in my eyes. For the first time, I did not see him as my sister’s slayer, but as a man who had once been a boy.’
But the pain and the convulsions had come again, and strange fits filled with nightmare visions that had reduced the Lord warden to gibbering terror. In between were lucid hours, and in these hours, he had told Bramble about the visiondraught.
The rebel leader looked at Ford. ‘Understand that like you I thought the visiondraught was a thing one could lust for like fine clothes or gold: a luxury paid for in the blood of the innocent. But it was not long before Ranulf taught me the truth. Visiondraught is a terrible potion which, once taken, is craved for ever. It is this dreadful crazed hunger that blinds the Lord wardens to the Citizen gods, for though the drug gives visions and wondrous ecstasy to those who drink it, it becomes a necessity to the body and the mind and without it . . .’ She waved her hand significantly towards the alcove.
‘A drug . . .’ Merlin murmured, but no one heard her.
‘Don’t you see?’ Bramble asked Ford. ‘He . . . they, had no choice. Later, in between the bad times, he told me the Citizen gods had held them down and pushed the visiondraught into their bodies with hollow needles that first time when they had been taken into the forbidden city to speak with the Citizen gods under truce. After that the hunger for the potion ruled their souls. They would do anything for it. Anything.’
There was a devastated silence, then Ford nodded towards the alcove. ‘Why did you bring him here? It is obvious he is dying.’
‘He wanted to come. You see, he . . . he wanted to get free of the potion, and so he would not take it. The other Lord wardens think he suffers from some mysterious illness. They believe he has the mating heat for me, or I for him.’ She shrugged. ‘They bring him the visiondraught, and I pour it away. Where it touches the earth, no plant grows. In the beginning, he fought the hunger for the potion because he believed if he could overcome this, he could convince the others to do it. Now, I think he lives only because he says he refuses to die until his soul is his own again.’ She blinked rapidly and stared into the fire.
‘How long has he been like this?’ Ford asked gently.
Bramble looked up in anguish and Merlin saw that she loved the dying Ranulf. For the first time since she had wakened in the Citizen gods’ flier, Merlin felt real sorrow for another human being, and a searing anger for the terrible things done by the Citizen gods. She was startled and shattered to realise she had not really thought of the clanpeople as human before then. She could no longer tell herself the Citizen gods were the scatterlings’ problem.
‘I found him not long after we returned from last Conclave,’ Bramble said. ‘He has been fighting the potion for almost a year now. Still, he suffers as he did in the beginning, but each day his body grows weaker, less able to fight. I think he has begun to accept that this is a battle he cannot win. He wanted to come to Conclave because he wanted you and the rebels of the other clans to see what the Citizen gods have made him. He wants everyone to understand that the Lord wardens were not weak or greedy men and women, but that they were trapped and poisoned against their will or choice. He wants you to understand that the enemies of the clans are not the Lord wardens, but the Citizen gods.’
The tent flapped open and Bors entered with a heavily cloaked Aran barely recognisable in plain garments.
Bramble seemed to draw herself together with an effort, but she managed to greet a clearly astounded Aran. ‘Welcome to the underworld, pretty boy. I’m Bramble,’ the rebel woman announced.
Aran did not react to her scorn. ‘So, Bramble is a woman?’
Bramble stared at him belligerently. ‘Does that not please you, sire?’ she asked in a wheedling voice.
Aran bridled, but his voice was calm. ‘I do not blame you, my lady. But I offer my aid sincerely, and I will mindbond to prove myself true.’
A flicker of surprise showed in Bramble’s gamine face. ‘Very well. So be it. Perhaps there is more to you than meets the eye, Aran.’
Aran smiled faintly. ‘Perhaps there is . . . Bramble.’
After a moment, Bramble smiled reluctantly. ‘Very well.’ She drew herself up to her considerable height, hands on her hips. ‘I offer the honour of mindbond,’ she intoned formally.
‘I accept the honour of mindbond,’ Aran responded with equal dignity. Merlin watched with interest as the two faced one another, less than a hand span between them. Slowly, like dancers timed, each clasped their hands behind the other’s head, thumbs bent forward to rest under the chin, and they stared intently into one another’s eyes.
‘This is the formal stance,’ Bors whispered to Merlin. As he spoke, both Aran and Bramble began to hum in low breathy tones. ‘That is the trance song,’ Bors explained. ‘You have to be in the right state of mind and the trance song ensures it.’
Aran’s eyes unfocused and he began at once to sweat.
‘What exactly are they doing?’ Merlin asked quietly.
Bors drew her back to the edge of the tent. ‘Mindbonding. Bramble will tie all of her sensations and thoughts into Aran’s, and then she will examine his thoughts.’
Aran groaned.
‘Is it painful?’ Merlin wondered.
Bors nodded fractionally. ‘Sometimes it is worse than others. It is difficult to simply allow someone complete access to your mind. It’s easier the more often it is done, but the Lord wardens have banned it.’
Merlin realised the Lord wardens could not afford to have their own consuming lust for the visiondraught exposed.
Aran groaned again.
‘There is an even more intimate mindbond but that is part of the mating heat and involves body as well as mind,’ Bors said.
At last the pair fell apart. Aran sagged to a log chair and Bramble swayed on her feet.
‘A good journey?’ Ford asked her.
She nodded. ‘You were right, Ford, there is more to your brotherblood than met th
e eye.’
Aran looked up at Bramble and Merlin was surprised to see admiration and wonder in his expression. Then his eyes darkened and he looked unerringly towards the hidden alcove where the old Lord warden lay. ‘We must fight them for what they have done.’
Merlin was startled to realise Aran must have got the knowledge of Ranulf from Bramble’s thoughts. Bors poured two mugs of beer and Aran and the rebel woman drank thirstily, Aran with a grimace.
Bramble turned to Merlin. ‘I do not know who you are, but I salute what you will bring about. The end of the flow of visiondraught,’ she toasted. The rest raised their mugs and Merlin shrank from their expectations. They acted as if she were supposed to defeat the Citizen gods single-handedly.
Merlin asked: ‘Did . . . Ranulf say why the Citizen gods turned your people into Voids?’
Bramble shook her head.
Ford set his mug down purposefully. ‘I must return to the Hide. Sear must know of this.’
Bramble caught him by the arm. ‘Tell him Ranulf said the only way is to fight the Citizen gods. He said there was no possibility of dealing with them.’
Ford nodded abruptly and drew his cloak about him. ‘We will meet before next Conclave. No more clanfolk must be sacrificed. In the meantime, you must make sure all of the rebels know of Ranulf and the visiondraught.’
Ford embraced his companions, then Bors and Aran left the tent. A little time later, Helf departed.
‘Good luck,’ Bramble said when Ford decided enough time had passed for it to be safe for them to leave.
Ford grinned. ‘I make my own luck – or find it,’ he added with an oblique glance at Merlin.
There were still a few people around the stalls when they slipped out of the tent. Most seemed to be stall holders packing up for the night. Looking at the pale horizon, Merlin guessed it was close to dawn. Suddenly she felt exhausted. Ford made them go carefully, but they reached the deserted temple without trouble. Just as the sun began to rise, they passed through the temple doors and into the honeycomb of caves behind the main rooms.