“There is no need for you to be caught,” I told Kevrik. “Go into the trees and hide. Wait for my friends in the wagon.”
“I will stand with ye,” Kevrik said stoutly. “They will be Vos’s men, so maybe I can convince them of the treachery Malik planned.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Malik give the armsman a look of burning fury. But I had no time to think of him. I stepped into the road and shaped a beastspeaking call, praying that one of the approaching horses was unbanded. To my surprise, my probe slid into the lead horse’s mind as smoothly as a hot knife into butter. Then I realized why. I knew her.
“Esred!” I sent, hardly able to believe my own senses. The horse responded with delight, but as she returned my greeting, incredulous relief splintered into a confusion of longing and despair, for riding upon her back was the Master of Obernewtyn.
Rushton.
RUSHTON CLIMBED DOWN from Esred and went to help Dameon off Faraf. The long-legged Empath guildmaster ought to have looked absurd on the small pony, but Dameon had a way of conferring dignity on anything he did. Rushton hung back to allow Dameon to sense his way to me. I ought to have been glad, as my feelings for the Empath guildmaster were a good deal less complicated than those roused by Rushton. But what I longed to do with a passion that shocked me was to rush over and fling myself into Rushton’s arms. Ironically, that was a thing I had never allowed myself to do, even in the days when it might have been welcomed.
Dameon embraced me, and I gave myself to the kindness and affection that flowed from the empath as naturally as warmth from the sun. Fortunately, affection for me had not caused him to abandon the emotional barrier he erected habitually to protect him from the overwhelming force of other people’s emotions, because the fierce tangle of emotions I was experiencing would have felled him.
“So, you are a rider now,” I said. “How does it feel?”
“Painful, but only in one place,” Dameon said dryly in his cultured lowland voice. He held me a little away from him now, and his milky eyes seemed to examine my face. “What have you been up to?”
“I will tell you in a moment,” I temporized. “First tell me how in Lud’s name all of you come to be here.”
“Maryon,” Dameon said simply.
Of course. “Would that the Futuretell guildmistress had seen that we were riding into danger in Saithwold before we left Obernewtyn,” I said tartly.
“She visioned it the day after you left,” Dameon said. “Of course, the knights would have ridden out at once to stop you, but Maryon—”
“The Futuretell guildmistress said you must not be stopped.” Rushton finished his sentence.
My skin prickled at the sound of his velvety voice, with its grainy hint of highland accent. Girding myself, I looked into his handsome, craggy face, into dark green eyes that had once caressed me as tenderly as his hands had done. Something inside me ached and twisted, but I was careful to offer only my cool guildmistress’s expression, knowing he wanted no more than that from me, as I asked calmly, “Why?”
“What happened to your face?” Rushton asked in a strange, flat voice.
I lifted my hand to my cut lip self-consciously, realizing I probably looked dreadful. And what did Rushton feel seeing me like that? Certainly there was no hint of emotion in his expression. “This is nothing,” I told him lightly. “I would have been dead if not for Kevrik. He is, or I should say, was, one of Vos’s men.” I looked at the armsman. “This is the Master of Obernewtyn, Rushton Seraphim.”
Several expressions chased themselves across the highlander’s face, but he stowed Malik’s knife and said solemnly, “Sirrah, I am pleased to meet ye. I have always been taught to regard Misfits as dangerous human-shaped beasts or worse. I am shamed now by my former ignorance. I have nivver seen such courage and determination as this young woman has shown, an’ if all Misfits are like her, then ’tis an honor indeed to meet their master, be ye beast or human or some part of both.”
“There is none to match the guildmistress of the farseekers,” Rushton said, but there was no warmth in his voice.
“You asked what Maryon foresaw to stop us coming after you immediately, Guildmistress,” Rushton said. “She said that despite the danger you would face, you would avert a catastrophe. I assume that the prediction had somewhat to do with your prisoner.” He glanced at Malik, who gave him a stony look, then added, “Maryon was almost certain you would triumph without our help.”
“Almost certain,” I echoed, and was startled by how bitter I sounded.
Of course, I understood. If I had been stopped from entering Saithwold, no one would know about the invasion. Or if they had come soon after I had entered Saithwold, Malik would have warned the Herders to postpone their invasion, and it would only have been his word against Noviny’s if he were accused. Instead, I had come to Saithwold, and with Kevrik’s help and the horses’ courage and cleverness, I had triumphed over Malik. Maryon had been right, yet I could not help but remember that dreadful moment when Malik had held his knife to my eye.
“What has been happening here?” Rushton asked with a touch of impatience.
I told them almost everything, from Brydda’s assistance in getting us through the barricade to my rescue by Kevrik, and I watched Malik pale when I told of the invasion. By the time I had finished my story, his expression was stony again, giving away nothing.
I concluded by telling them Zarak’s idea about taking the invaders’ ships. “But before we can plan anything, we will need to coerce the details of the invasion out of Malik.”
“I will take him to Sutrium this night, so one of the knights can coerce all he knows from him, before the Council of Chieftains,” Rushton said. “We must ensure that no one can accuse us of putting words in his mouth.”
“Where are Zarak and the others now?” Dameon asked.
“They were hiding in the old cloister, but they ought to be along any time,” I said. “We were going to Vos’s property—”
“We will ride ahead to secure it,” Rushton said decidedly and bade Asra and Hilder ride to Malik’s camp to help Gahltha and the other horses herd their prisoners to Vos’s property.
Dameon chuckled as the knights rode off. “This seems to have been as much a victory of beasts as of humans.”
“Clearly, Maryon was right in saying you had no need of us,” Rushton said coolly. There was something in his tone that I did not like, but before I could fasten on it, he turned to Kevrik. “Will you ride with us, armsman? You can speak with your fellow armsmen and explain what Malik has been about.” When the armsman nodded, Rushton suggested that Dameon wait with me for the wagon so Kevrik could ride Faraf.
“I will bear the funaga-li as well as you,” Esred sent to Rushton, stamping her hoof and farseeking to me and those who could hear her. “But tell him that if he so much as tickles my belly with his heels, I will give him a brand that will mark him forever.” I took some pleasure in relaying the threat, but Malik said not a word as he was mounted up on the mare, his hands still tied behind his back.
Kevrik mounted Faraf gingerly, but she bore his weight stoically, commenting to me that she did not suppose they would gallop. Abruptly, as Kally and Linnet remounted, Rushton asked if it was Malik who had beaten me. I had carefully glossed over how I had got into Malik’s hands, but even as I opened my mouth to suggest we exchange stories later, Kevrik began eagerly describing how I had been captured by Vos’s men and taken to Malik. My heart sank as Rushton led the armsman deftly to relay what had happened at Malik’s camp—in particular, the beating interspersed with questions.
“You watched and … did nothing?” Linnet asked him scornfully.
“If she had nowt made me promise to do nothing to interfere in what happened in Malik’s camp, I could nivver have stayed still,” Kevrik told her, flushing slightly. “But th’ worst of it was when Malik grabbed her and ran, in the midst of the stampede. It was sheer luck that I saw her taken.” He described the headlong run through the tre
es, and when he repeated Malik’s threats just before he had rescued me, there was a profound silence.
“Thank you for saving the life of the guildmistress, for it is clear that she would not have survived her adventure without you,” Rushton said. He turned to me and asked in a low, glacial voice, “Am I correct in assuming that you deliberately allowed yourself to be handed over to Malik? Does it matter at all to you that you contravened the agreement of all guildleaders not to put themselves into danger?”
Anger rose in me, as clean and hard as a blade. “It is strange that you should object to my putting myself in danger, given that you and Maryon were prepared to allow me to ride here knowing there was danger waiting for me. At least I chose it with Malik, but neither you nor Maryon gave me the choice. Why did you not come after me and simply tell me what she had seen? Do you think I would have balked at coming here if you had told me that facing danger would enable me to avert a catastrophe? Have I given you such cause to doubt my courage? Was I not conveying Dragon to Sutrium, even though she hates me, because Maryon said I must? And what of that foreseeing?”
Rushton had grown very pale. “I asked that of Maryon, and she said that one foreseeing did not negate another, even when they appeared to conflict. You were to take Dragon when you left for Sutrium, and so she has gone to Sutrium. Nothing was said of you arriving with her, Maryon says. And her foreseeing concerning Saithwold was that no one must go after you, else you would not do what you were meant to do. You speak as if I chose this.”
Dameon reached out to lay a quelling hand on Rushton’s arm. “This is a difficult time, and it is not yet over,” he said gently.
Rushton gave a jerky nod and said in an expressionless voice that he was sorry if I thought he had done wrong in obeying Maryon. He bowed to us both, turned on his heel, and mounted Esred behind Malik, saying that he would see us at Vos’s homestead. In a moment, he and the others continued along the road.
Watching them ride away, I found myself thinking of the night before I had left Obernewtyn. Rushton had come to my chamber with the letter for Dardelan, which contained Obernewtyn’s formal charges against Malik. Taking the missive, I had summoned the courage to ask why he had been avoiding me for most of the wintertime. Rushton had answered in a weary voice, “Do you not understand, Elspeth, you who are so bright? Is it not obvious? There is nothing left in me to feel emotions with.”
The quaking in me grew, and I began to tremble so hard that my teeth chattered. I was furious with my weakness, but I could not stop. Dameon gave an inarticulate exclamation and put his arms around me, drawing me close.
“You are in shock, dear one,” he said compassionately, leading me to the side of the road. “Let us sit down to wait for the wagon.”
As soon as we were seated, he began to emanate a low, soothing flow of emotions. He told me of a walk he had taken through Obernewtyn’s orchards with Alad to visit the teknoguilders in their caves. He had sensed that they were being followed by the strange, silent boy Gavyn, whom beasts called adantar. Dameon had called his name, and I imagined the boy stepping out and coming to the blind empath, accompanied by the dog Rasial, who had become leader of the Beastguild at Obernewtyn in the absence of the mare Avra.
“He so rarely speaks, and yet I felt his desire to communicate very strongly,” Dameon said softly. “I asked if he wanted to tell me something, and he said that Seely was coming to see him.”
“Seely!” I echoed.
Before the rebellion, the unTalented Seely had fled with her young Misfit charge all the way to the mountains from the west coast for fear of what the Council would do to the boy at the behest of his stepmother, Lady Slawyna, who had guessed her stepson was a Misfit and wanted his Councilman father’s property to pass to her own son.
I had found the pair and brought them to Obernewtyn, but during the rebellion, Seely had returned to the west coast with the teknoguilder Jak to help set up a refuge in the Beforetime ruins. Like all of the Misfits I had sent there to aid the rebel groups, she had been trapped there when the Suggredoon had been closed. Gavyn had never seemed to miss her, though he had once or twice mentioned dreaming of her. But how could she visit him unless the west coast was won from Council and Faction? Was this a sign that we would capture the invasion ships and use them to reach the west coast?
Forcing myself to calm down, I asked Dameon if, since my departure from Obernewtyn, there had been any new dreams of the Misfits I had sent to the west coast recorded in the dream journals. He said that he had inquired after the strange encounter with Gavyn, and there had been only one recorded dream. In it, the young empath Blyss and the coercer Merret had been waiting outside a city for a messenger from the rebel Gwynedd.
“The city must be Murmroth,” I said, but Dameon shook his head, saying the dreamer had scribed that the city was right on the coast. Murmroth was the only coastal town not situated right on the coast.
“If messages are being exchanged between us and the rebels, it may be that Tardis is less opposed to us than she was,” I said.
“I think hers was an inherited hatred rather than the fierce and fanatical hatred her father apparently had for Misfits, and it may be that circumstances have so altered in the west that old prejudices have melted away. But it might also be that something has happened to Tardis, because from what was said in the dream, it sounds as if Gwynedd is the leader of the Murmroth rebels now.
“And, no,” Dameon went on, anticipating my next question with a smile, “there have been no dreams of Matthew, save for one brief dream I experienced only last night.” The empath went on to describe the dream, in which Matthew and another man had been speaking of a ship anchored offshore from the Red Land, which rumor said was delivering a new shipment of slaves. Matthew had been insisting that the ship was the very same that had brought him to the Red Land, in which case it was likely to go back the way it had come once it had emptied its holds. The remainder of the discussion had been about the possibility of boarding the ship and stowing away, which both men had acknowledged as difficult and deadly. Then there had been some incomprehensible talk of something called The Spit, which Dameon said seemed to have put Matthew off the idea of stowing away.
“A true dream?” I asked, knowing it was always harder for Dameon to tell, for his dreams were scent and smell and sometimes taste dreams.
“It felt real, but it was too brief to be sure,” the Empath guildmaster said.
Suddenly Dameon stiffened. “I hear a wagon.”
I scrambled to my feet and saw the wagon in the distance. I farsought Zarak with relief and found that he already knew about the arrival of Rushton and the others, for Asra and Hilder had stopped to speak with them. But when Lo brought the wagon to a halt, Zarak looked shocked.
“What happened to your face?”
“It looks worse than it is,” I said lightly, taking his hand and climbing into the back of the wagon. Darius lay bolstered on all sides by blankets and took up most of the floor space.
“We will send for a healer as soon as we can,” I said as Zarak helped steer Dameon to the seat opposite his father, where there was room for his long legs. As the wagon lurched forward again, Khuria introduced Dameon to Noviny and his granddaughter. Dameon held out a hand, and Wenda put her own awkwardly into it. The empath released her hand and asked if she was a healer. She looked startled, nodded, and then flushed, realizing he could not see her.
Noviny asked me what had happened at Malik’s camp, for Gahltha’s equine messenger had not been much of a taleteller. I obliged, describing the stampede and concentrating on the courage and brilliance of the horses. When I concluded, Noviny gave a great sigh and said it was a relief that he no longer had to worry himself sick trying to think how to notify the Council of Chieftains about the invasion.
I noticed the glimmer of metal at Darius’s throat, and remembering the key Kevrik used to free me from my demon band, I drew it from my pocket and crouched down beside Darius to insert it into the lock. His waxen ski
n felt clammy and cold against my fingers as I unclipped the band and pulled it gently out from around his neck. Handing the key to Zarak to remove the other demon bands, I pulled the blanket higher around the gypsy’s neck.
“Poor man,” Wenda said as Zarak removed her band. “His limbs were already inflamed and giving him pain, and then he was so roughly handled by the armsmen. They did not care that he was hurt.” She added, “I was able to find some good healing herbs near the cloister to bring the swelling down and ease his fever. But then he fell into this still, cold sleep. I do not know how to treat him, for I do not understand what ails him, unless it is shock. That can sometimes come after an event and have strange and deadly effects, especially on someone who is already ill.”
“If it is shock, I can help him,” Dameon said, and he asked Wenda to guide his hands to the cripple’s chest. This done, he closed his eyes and concentrated. Then he drew back and shook his head. “He is not in shock,” the empath said with authority. “There is something causing him so much hurt that he withdraws from life rather than endure it.”
Dameon now turned his blind eyes to me. “I cannot cure what ails him, Elspeth, but I can help him rest more serenely until we reach the healing center in Sutrium.”
I bade him do what he could, and we all watched in silence as the Empath guildmaster closed his eyes again. There was no sign of his empathising and no great change in Darius, except that, to me, his expression seemed to grow more peaceful. When Dameon opened his eyes again, he looked weary but serene as ever, and Wenda let out a breath she had unconsciously been holding.