“That is because you are strong,” said a familiar voice.
I started violently and then saw the beasthealer, Darius, sitting before me, under a tree. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry about what?” he inquired gently. “About me, because I am so insignificant that you almost walked past me? About that man back there, who must daily grow in awareness of what he did in this valley? Or are you sorry about yourself for having such a nature? But, no, people who are strong forgive themselves least of all.”
Darius smiled gently and with a graceful gesture invited me to sit. I lowered myself to the knobbled knee of a tree, shocked to notice that from a certain angle, Darius bore a strong resemblance to Swallow. It was hardly remarkable; Twentyfamilies gypsies seldom bonded to outsiders. Indeed, bonding among them required the approval of the old women who kept track of genealogies so the match would not be too close. I felt a stab of pity for Darius, to have such a face set above a dreadfully misshapen body. Then I wondered at my thought. Should I wish him a face as distorted as his body?
His gentle smile widened as if he heard my thoughts, and I felt the blood heat my cheeks. Twentyfamilies gypsies could see spirit auras with their normal eyes, and who knew what mine told him?
I rose, offering to send food, but Darius heaved himself awkwardly to his feet, saying he would come with me. Back at the camp, Katlyn and Kella were chopping mushrooms and garlic, and the healer looked up and smiled at our approach. She said that Dragon had found several huge rings of mushrooms, and they had decided to make a proper meal. I asked where Dragon was, and Kella told me that she had taken some grain to the horses. Darius examined the herbs Katlyn had gathered. I wanted to tell Kella about Analivia, but Darius held up a small scarlet flower with a crow of delight.
I left them to gloat over their herbs and sat on an upturned barrel beside Louis Larkin. Awake now, the old man was prodding moodily at the fire in a desultory way. Maruman lay curled asleep in his lap.
“He seems to do nothing but sleep lately,” I said.
Louis shrugged. “Carryin’ a deal of years is a terrible wearisome business.”
I did not doubt it, but in Maruman’s case, I did not know if it was just age. Until recently, the cat had been a great wanderer; his adventuring had earned him many scars and cost him an eye. But during the wintertime just past, he had not once gone wandering, choosing instead to sleep. I had been glad, but now I worried that the old cat might have abandoned his physical adventures to travel on the dreamtrails, which could be far more dangerous. In his dream journeying, Maruman did not have old bones and weary flesh, but any wound or hurt taken would be echoed by a real wound that would afflict his spirit, and this would affect him physically.
On impulse, I said, “I have been thinking of those Twentyfamilies gypsies who came to Obernewtyn when you were young.”
Louis gave me a knowing look. “So that’s th’ way of it, then. That Swallow.”
I stared at him in bewilderment for a minute, then realized what he was implying. Opening my mouth to give him the sharp edge of my tongue, I had a sudden clear vision of Swallow, leaning forward to kiss me after rescuing me.
I wondered if Swallow even remembered that kiss. So much had happened since. He had become D’rekta of the Twentyfamilies gypsies, with all the responsibilities of leading his people and fulfilling the mysterious ancient promises that lay at the heart of their community. Our realization that these promises connected to my secret quest meant that Swallow knew more about me than any other human. So much so that the Agyllians had made use of him more than once when I had been in danger. The overguardian of the Sadorian Earthtemple had even told me that one of Kasanda blood would accompany me to the desertlands where I would receive Kasanda’s final message for the Seeker. I knew that Swallow had spoken of me to the seers among his people, and though he had never told me what they said, these days when we met, he was always very stern and serious. I wondered if I had not preferred the devilish gypsy who looked at me with admiration and kissed me without permission.
Louis was still looking at me expectantly, so I said, “Louis, would you let me enter your memory of the gypsies’ visit to Obernewtyn?”
The older man’s face creased in a scowl. “Ye’ll keep out of me brain, girl, be ye Mistress of all Obernewtyn! Look at what happened to Dragon when ye meddled with her!” His voice had risen and I felt the other three look at me. Louis pushed Maruman unceremoniously to the ground and stalked away stiff-backed.
“Cannot funaga control themselves/emotions?” Maruman sent coldly as he climbed onto my lap. I said nothing, for my throat was tight with unshed tears. Louis’s words seemed to highlight a growing feeling of my own inadequacy and displacement. Again, I found myself wondering when my quest would claim me.
“It claims you now,” Maruman sent. “It has never stopped claiming you. All that you do, ElspethInnle, serves the old Ones and the quest.”
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, we rose in the thin, gray, predawn light, having said goodbye to the teknoguilders the night before. We did not bother lighting a fire, for we would eat at one of the inns in the upper lowlands. Both wagons had already rattled off, and I was preparing to follow the others when Garth came shambling out in his nightshirt, a blanket draped around his massive shoulders.
“I have been thinking about this daughter of Radost. This Analivia …,” he began.
“We have spoken more than enough on that subject,” I interrupted him firmly, for he had speculated at length about the young woman after I told him of our meeting. “She might be Radost’s daughter and Moss’s sister, but she is also the sister of Bergold, who mistreats no human or beast. For Lud’s sake, it is common knowledge that her father loathed her! She is no danger to Misfits, and she might very well be one of us.”
A look of real agony passed over the teknoguilder’s wide face. “But if she continues spying …”
“Garth, why are you so worried about people finding out about the sunken city?” I demanded, exasperated. “Do you really think they will rush here to see it or try to prevent your guild researching the past? Most likely, normal Landfolk will merely shudder at your interest and name it ghoulish. The Council has gone. We are free people in a free Land.”
He stared at me, speechless, and I grew silent, for my words had the weight of a futureteller pronouncement and I felt slightly abashed.
“What you say is true, Elspeth,” Garth said at last. “But this freedom is new and precarious. The world can turn back in an instant, and all our care and work would be lost if it should be decided that Beforetime sites are taboo. At the least, it is better to continue as we have begun, in secrecy, until Dardelan is elected. For all we know, Malik has found new favor during the wintertime. Instead of being made to answer our charges, he might be elected high chieftain! Or the Herders on Herder Isle might be building a secret weapon. Or the Council on the west coast might be on the verge of a successful counterattack. I must protect what we have learned.”
I nodded wearily and closed my coat’s fastenings, reaching down to pick up Maruman. As I draped him about my shoulders, he sank in his claws to make himself secure and comfortable. Garth still looked as if something further might be said or decided, so I nodded and turned away decisively. I glanced back once to see him still standing there, peering after me.
“Funaga …,” Maruman began.
“I know emotions annoy you,” I beastspoke the old cat tersely, “but, unfortunately, they are as much a part of us as our bones. We can’t set them aside to please you, even if we wished it.”
Not even to please ourselves, I thought privately.
“They are untidy/disturbing,” Maruman responded with a fastidious mental shudder that was rather like having someone sneeze inside your head.
“Well, there is nothing to be done about them.”
He fell silent, but his indignation was loud. I bit back a desire to tell him that his own emotional emanations were fairly disturbing, but of course he caught the thought and
sent a huff of irritation rippling through my mind. I endured it doggedly, concentrating on finding the best footing, until his stiffness softened and he slept, his breath sawing in and out by my ear.
Only then did I reach up and stroke the battered head with a tenderness and pity I would never have dared express when he was awake. Louis had been right in saying the cat was old, though I hated to think it. Maybe it was true that his sleeping of late was no more than a sign of age. I did not know how old Maruman was, but he had not been a kitten when I first overheard his thoughts at the Kinraide orphanage, and I wondered, as I had done countless times since, where he had been born and how he had come to Kinraide. Most likely, he had survived a farmer’s attempt to drown an unwanted litter, but that beginning, however traumatic, would not explain his mind’s strange distortions. It was possible, of course, that he had simply been born as he was, just as I had been born Misfit. Perhaps I would ask Atthis about his origin when next she communicated with me. After all, the Agyllian mystic ruthlessly used the old cat’s distorted mind as a conduit, because those distortions meant he could not be spied upon.
Such memories summoned the pale face of my nemesis Ariel.
When I had first met him, at Obernewtyn, he had been a beautiful, sadistic boy. When we took over, he had fled and somehow wormed his way into the confidence of both Henry Druid and the Council. Later he had joined the Herders, and rumor said he was now high in their ranks. He had lost none of his beauty in the intervening years; the last time I had seen Ariel, he had been a tall, slender man with a cascade of silky, nearly white hair surrounding that astonishing face. He hated Obernewtyn and had harmed us, directly and indirectly, whenever possible. But his antipathy to me was more specific and malevolent; in fact, I believed that Ariel was the Destroyer, destined to resurrect the Beforetime weaponmachines if I failed to disarm them. Atthis had never named him the Destroyer, but Ariel had hunted me on the dreamtrails just as Atthis had warned me the Destroyer would. If I had needed any more proof, Maruman called Ariel H’rayka, which means “one who brings destruction” in beastspeak.
The last time I had seen Ariel, he had been aboard a Herder ship laden with Landfolk who were to be sold as slaves in distant lands. One of those slaves had been the farseeker Matthew, and the memory of my final moments with him still anguished me, though Maryon had foreseen his survival. From time to time, those of us who had known Matthew experienced fragmentary true dreams that showed him living in a port city in a hot desert land. Gradually, we had come to believe that Matthew was in the Red Queen’s land, which many believed to be a myth. Brydda’s seaman friend Reuvan had assured us that it was very real but was so unimaginably distant that few had ever traveled there. True dreams of Matthew showed a brutish horde that had enslaved its people occupying the Red Land. Matthew and others taken from the Land also served the slavemasters, working at extending the city or in the mine pits outside the city.
In my dreams, Matthew had become a grown man with broad shoulders, muscled from breaking stone and working in the mines. I had seen him striving to convince the enslaved people to rise up and overthrow their oppressors. To Matthew’s great frustration, they refused because of a prophecy foretelling that the people would overcome the slavemasters only when their queen returned. Their queen, however, had been slain. One day, Matthew had seen a wall frieze depicting the Red Queen and noticed her uncanny resemblance to Dragon. Matthew had realized then that the filthy urchin we had rescued from the Beforetime ruins on the west coast was the Red Queen’s lost daughter. Which meant a Red Queen could return. But the last time Matthew had seen her, Dragon had lain deep in a coma.
In my most recent dream of him, I had seen Matthew trying to persuade people that they had misread the prophecy, that they had to overthrow their oppressors before the Red Queen could be restored to them. It had not been hard to guess that Matthew wanted to free the Red Land and bring Dragon to her kingdom in hopes that this would wake her. He did not know that she had awakened and that the shock of remembering her mother’s betrayal and murder had erased from her memory everything except her time alone in the ruins. Like Matthew, I dreamed of restoring Dragon to her land, but we could not reach the Red Land without ships capable of making the journey, not to mention maps and charts to show the way.
Over time, I had taken to reviewing the beautiful intricate dream maps the futuretellers compiled from dream journals that each guild kept, looking for dreams about Matthew. From these I learned that the farseeker had ceased trying to convince the people of the Red Land to rise and had begun thinking of returning to the Land. He had the support of other Landfolk who had been taken as slaves, but they were insistent that any plan to steal a ship must be foolproof, because if caught, they would be sentenced to work in a mine within a chasm where a monster dwelt, a fearsome creature called an Entina. I did not know what it was, but Garth speculated that it must be one of the rare creatures spawned on the Blacklands, which had adapted to the tainted earth. Why else would it not venture from its chasm in search of victims?
Several of Matthew’s companions had been caught stealing weapons and had been assigned to the deadly mine. Those taken by the beast uttered screams of such intense terror and pain that grown men had fainted hearing them.
I wished, as I had done many times before, that I could communicate with Matthew to tell him he need only bide his time, for as soon as possible, we would come to him with Dragon.
The misty dawn had given way to a soft cool morning when we reached the main road and hauled the wagons back up the scree slope. It was a pleasant ride, and we saw nobody for several hours.
“I had a queer dream last night,” Zarak said as we rode along. “I was in the mountains near the hot springs, an’ I saw Miryum and Straaka walkin’ together. I suppose it was bein’ in the White Valley that put them in my mind.”
I frowned, remembering that there had been other recordings of dreams about Miryum and the Sadorian tribesman Straaka. It was impossible that they were true dreams, since Straaka had died to protect Miryum, but there must be some reason why people were dreaming of them. When we returned to Obernewtyn, I would ask Maryon.
I was about to say as much when I noticed several wagons coming along a small road that joined the main road just ahead. Given that the wagons were heavily laden with furniture and that there were children and women as well as men on them, I guessed the travelers had come from Darthnor. We had heard reports that some miners had rejected Bergold’s offer of work, preferring to pack their families’ possessions and leave the region. Despite the rebellion, the miners retained their old loathing of Misfits and blamed us as much as the rebels for the loss of the smelters and metal works in the west that had meant the closure of the mines.
I knew it would be obvious that we were Misfits, given the direction from which we were coming, and my heart began to hammer as we approached the smaller road. I forced myself to nod to the wagoners, and to my relief, we received courteous but unsmiling nods in return. We were far down the road and out of sight before I relaxed, and I smiled ruefully at the memory of the stirring speech I had given Garth in the predawn light about being free people in a free land.
It was late in the day before we passed the blunt black face of Emeralfel, but a purplish haze obscured our view of the whole lowlands spread out beyond. I told myself the day would clear, but as we continued, heavy gray clouds massed overhead. It was foolish and superstitious, but I felt the darkening day to be an ill omen. On impulse, as we approached the hamlet where we had decided to stop for supplies and information, I suggested that Katlyn and Kella continue on in their wagon and wait for us on the road to Rangorn. After they had gone, I tied Gahltha to the wagon and sat on the front bench with Zarak, drawing a simple shawl over my hair.
The hamlet was only one of many nameless clusters of buildings and stalls grown up willy-nilly by the roadside to serve travelers who could not be bothered leaving the main way to replenish their supplies or get a meal in one of the village
s or small towns. I had stopped at this one before the uprising, but I had no fear of being recognized. Those who worked in such places were often wanderers themselves, earning a few coins before traveling on. When visiting such villages before the rebellion, I had invariably gone disguised as a gypsy. As we approached the inn that was the hamlet’s centerpiece, I noticed several new trading stalls and a number of cottages, and there was now a sign of a horseshoe painted on a board, denoting a blacksmith. Was this growth a sign of prosperity brought about by the changes in the Land? I climbed down and bade Lo pull the wagon around behind the inn, just in case any wagons came along and decided to take a closer look.
Zarak was unhitching the horses when he sent to ask if he ought to make some pretense of hobbling or restraining them. I sent a terse no, suggesting to the horses that they merely graze discreetly among the trees surrounding the hamlet. In the meantime, Zarak ought to fill the feed bins and replenish the water barrel.
The inn was the same rudimentary building I remembered, constructed of timber and stone, its front standing open to the road. I approached the wide serving bench and sat upon one of the stools set before it.
“What will ye, young mistress?” asked the gray-haired woman behind the counter in a friendly but businesslike way.
“I would like apple cider if you have it. I remember it was very good the last time I came this way.” I tossed out the information to suggest I was a regular traveler, and I knew that my lowland accent would tell her and anyone else listening that I might not necessarily have begun my journey in the highlands, though my wagon had come from that direction.
“Will ye have it warmed? It’s turned chilly.”
“I will,” I said equably, knowing that warming the cider would take time in which she might be prevailed upon to gossip.
“Where are ye bound?” she asked as she set a pot of cider to heat over a small fire.
“Saithwold,” I answered. “My brother is a woodworker and we have a hire there.”