The tents and cook fires were busier than ever, but as we approached them, I realized I had no tokens or any coin to exchange for them. Bruna waved aside my confession and brought us both hot berry pastries and minted water. We ate and drank standing, watching two small women with honey-colored skin and deeply slanted eyes tumble and roll with an agility that Merret would have gasped to see. We were interrupted by a long mournful note that swelled in the air.
“That is the signal to tell the hunted that they have an hour before the hunt begins. An hour before I teach some warriors to eat my dust,” Bruna said, her golden eyes glimmering with contempt. Fleetingly, I saw the wild, haughty child-woman who had first come with her mother to the Land. Then she smiled. “I have enjoyed your company, Elspeth.”
“And I yours,” I said, wondering if Dardelan would take part in the hunt and how she would feel when she discovered it. “Good luck,” I added, but she was already sprinting away on long lean legs.
“You ought to have said, Run wild and never submit unless you choose,” said a voice.
It was the Druid’s armsman Daffyd, standing beside me clad in loose Sadorian robes.
“Da-Daffyd!” I stammered, gaping at him. “What are you doing here?”
His smile faded into a grim determination. “Doing what I have been doing since Ariel sold Gilaine, my brother, and Lidgebaby to Salamander.”
“But Salamander has never been here,” I said.
“I am not so sure,” Daffyd said darkly, glancing around.
I stared at him, taking in his gaunt look and haunted eyes. “Why do you think he would come here?” I asked gently.
Instead of answering, he said, “I have just been speaking to Rushton. He told me what has been happening on the west coast and in the Norselands. That was a fine set of victories. He told me, too, about Domick. It aches my heart to think of it.”
I sighed heavily and told him it ached mine, too, but I did not want to speak of the coercer. The hours I had spent with Bruna had lightened my heart, and I did not want to plunge into grief again so soon.
So I said, “Why would Salamander come to Sador knowing he would be despised as a thief of freedom, captured, and sentenced to the desert walk?”
“I don’t think he came here as a slaver,” Daffyd said with such certainty that I was taken aback.
“You think he came in disguise?” I asked.
“I think if he came here, it would not be in any disguise, because what he wears the rest of the time is a disguise. I think he came as himself. As a Sadorian tribesman.”
“You think Salamander is Sadorian?” I demanded incredulously. “The Sadorians despise slavers even more than murderers.”
“True, most Sadorians hate slavers as they hate murderers,” Daffyd said. “But do you think there are no Sadorian murderers?”
“I see what you are saying,” I said more moderately. “But what makes you think Salamander is a tribesman?”
We went to sit on a dune slightly apart from the press about the stalls, and Maruman slipped from my shoulders into my lap.
“I didn’t come here originally to find Salamander,” Daffyd said. “I came here because there was no way to reach the west coast from the Land after the rebellion. My plan was to board one of the vessels that fish the waters along the edge of the strait and bribe the shipmaster to let me slip overboard and swim to the west coast.”
“But you could not find a ship that would take you?” I prompted, weary enough to feel impatient with the circumlocutions of his tale.
“The rumors that fishing boats went that far from Sador proved untrue. Once I realized there was no way to reach the west coast from here, any more than from the Land, I was disheartened. There seemed no reason to go back to the Land as long as the Suggredoon remained closed, so I worked as an aide to one of the traders who stays here all year round, serving the odd seaman and trading with the Sadorians who wander by. I was so much into the habit of thinking about Salamander that I went on doing it, and gradually I started to wonder why he had never attacked any of the Sadorian greatships save the one he destroyed at Sutrium, and why he had never come here.”
“Because he is a slaver and the Sadorians loathe slavery,” I said.
“Listen,” Daffyd said, and now he suddenly changed the subject and began to tell of a good hire he had been offered to go into the desert with a kar-avan. The story was fascinating enough that I did not interrupt, but finally he said that on this trip he had heard something that made him question the prevailing belief that Salamander was from the Red Queen’s land.
This startled me out of my irritation, for I had always assumed Salamander had come from the Land until recently, when it had occurred to me that he might be of Gadfian stock. I advanced my own theory, but Daffyd merely shook his head and went on with his kar-avan tale. He said that halfway through the trip, he had become friendly with the bondmate of a Sadorian who had eventually confided to him that she was originally from the Land.
“I asked how she had come to be bonded to a tribesman. I suspect she had never told her tale, and maybe my being from the Land led her to confide it. She said she had been a shipgirl aboard one of the small vessels that the Black Ship had attacked. As was usual in those days, Salamander boarded the ship and took all passengers and shipfolk aboard the Black Ship to sell as slaves, save one, who was blindfolded and put into a ship boat with the tiller tied so that it would eventually reach land if it did not capsize. The aim, of course, was that, if the man did reach the Land safely, he would tell his tale and spread a terror of the Black Ship to make other ships much more inclined to surrender at once. Sometimes Salamander claimed the ship he had captured, but more often than not he simply scuttled it, as he had done this time, and departed.
“Unbeknownst to Salamander, the woman from the kar-avan had climbed over the edge of the ship on a dangling rope, and she clung to it grimly through the battle. She knew it was Salamander’s practice to release a single person in a ship boat, and her idea was to swim after it and climb aboard. But she didn’t dare swim to it at once, for fear of being seen. She waited until the Black Ship was far away before she dived from the last bit of the ship poking up from the water and swam after the ship boat.” He shook his head and added that it had been carried almost out of her sight, and from the woman’s account, it had been a long, desperately hard swim to reach it. The whole time, she had been in mortal terror of sharks or of losing sight of the ship boat in the gathering darkness and the high waves. But luckily the moon had risen, and knowing she would die if she did not reach the boat had given her strength and determination. Reaching the ship boat at last, she had dragged herself into it, untied the man, and between them they managed to paddle the boat into a coastal current that brought them here. The man went back to the Land, but the woman stayed in the desert lands and changed her name, terrified that the vengeful and fanatically secretive Salamander would come after her.
“You see, when she was dangling from that bit of rope, the two ships were side by side for a time, and right after the battle, when her shipmates were being marched across a plank onto the Black Ship, she saw a queer thing through a porthole in the Black Ship. Salamander strode into a cabin, gloved, masked, and swathed in trousers and greatcoat as usual, clutching at his belly. When he took his hand away, his vest was red with blood. The great half-naked slave who tends him took out a needle and thread, and Salamander lifted up his shirt to let the man sew the gash. It was a bloody wound but not a mortal one, but here’s the thing: the woman said Salamander’s belly was as brown as choca.”
“He is Gadfian,” I murmured, imagining the woman hanging precariously between the ships, holding her breath, and praying not to be crushed or noticed.
Daffyd went on. “My first thought on hearing he was brown-skinned was that Salamander must be Sadorian, but I could not understand why he would be so fanatically secretive if he was, given that the Black Ship never visited here. That is when it came to me. He would not care th
at he was seen and recognized as a Sadorian unless he wanted to be able to come back here.”
I asked breathlessly, “Have you told this to any of the Sadorians?”
He shook his head impatiently. “I did not care about accusing Salamander to the tribe. I just wanted to use him to go to the Red Queen’s land to rescue my brother, Gilaine, and the others. If I could find out who he was, I could slip aboard his ship. I figured he must use one of those vessels he had taken in the strait, since he could not simply come sailing up in the Black Ship without being instantly identified as a slaver. I set myself the task of learning if there were any Sadorians who vanished for periods and then reappeared. It was a near impossible quest given that the Sadorians are nomads, but what else had I to do?
“Then not an hour ago, I bumped into Rushton, who told me he is here because he is trying to mount an expedition to the Red Queen’s land before the next wintertime. I asked if I could join, and he said that he saw no reason why I should not come but that I must present my request to Dardelan and Gwynedd, who are high chieftains of the Land now, for they would be the masters of the expedition. Rushton told me that he is to address the tribal council tonight, and he wants me to come with him and tell what I have learned of Salamander. He believes the Sadorians’ profound loathing of slavery might sway them in favor of this expedition, since they would protect their land from the slavemasters by participating, and they would have the opportunity to capture Salamander and learn who he is.” He frowned. “I suppose you know that the slavemasters are Gadfians?”
I frowned. Once I had dreamed that the slavemasters were Gadfian, but I had not taken it seriously until I had begun thinking that Salamander had got his ship from them. “It is hard to imagine the Gadfians described by the Sadorians could have increased in such numbers.”
Daffyd nodded. “From what I have gathered, the Gadfians who stole the Sadorian women died out long ago. Those who invaded the Red Queen’s land were another group, and wherever they settled, their fertility was not affected.”
“But how could one people live so far apart?”
“The land of the Gadfians was vast, so perhaps after the Great White, some of its people fled in one direction and thrived while the rest settled on the tainted land, which destroyed their ability to bear healthy children.”
“You have learned a good deal about Gadfians,” I said.
He shrugged. “The Sadorians teach their children about them and the lost Beforetime.”
At the sound of an explosion and a flare of golden light, I looked up to see a cloud of shimmering gold snowflakes against the dark sky.
“That is the signal that one successful hunt has ended,” Daffyd murmured.
“What happens if the woman doesn’t let herself be caught?” I asked, thinking of Dardelan and Bruna.
“Nothing. The hunters who strived for her will have their stones returned.”
“Daffyd!” It was Gilbert, hurrying across the sand. He smiled warmly at me as I struggled to my feet with Maruman in my arms. Daffyd had leapt to his feet at once, and the two men greeted one another with warm handclasps and many questions. Daffyd expressed surprise at Gilbert’s Norselander hair, and Gilbert laughed and said he was armsman to Gwynedd, king of the Norselands. Daffyd demanded to know how that could be.
“Come with me, and Gwynedd will tell you his own tale, for he has sent me to find you,” Gilbert said.
“Now? But it is not even dawn. How does he know of me anyway?” Daffyd looked almost comically alarmed.
“Rushton spoke of you just now, and when I said I knew you, I was promptly dispatched to find you. As to the time, it seems we have given up on sleep for now. Will you come?”
Daffyd looked at me apologetically. “I should go, for I can ask at once about joining this expedition to the Red Queen’s land. We will continue our conversation later.”
“Just one thing,” I said to Gilbert. “Is Dardelan with Gwynedd?”
The red-haired armsman shook his head. “I think he is the only one among us sensible enough to have gone to his bed, for I have not seen him since the feast ended. Shall I find him for you?”
I shook my head and said that I would see him at firstmeal. I bade Daffyd farewell for now, and Gilbert smiled at me as they moved away. Not until they had vanished into the crowd about the trade stalls did I remember my dreams of Gilaine and Daffyd’s brother, Jow, in the Red Queen’s land. I should have asked Daffyd if he had dreamed of Gilaine, since my dream indicated that she had dreamed of him. That would have to wait until later. I yawned.
“I/Maruman am tired,” Maruman sent.
“I am, too,” I admitted, draping the old cat about my neck. Yawning again, I made my way slowly across the sand to the cluster of sleeping tents, hardly able to believe that only a few hours before, I had been inside the labyrinthine Earthtemple receiving a mysterious communication from Kasanda. I reached into my pocket and felt the little memory seed, but I was too weary to begin another whirl of speculations. It was enough, for now, that I had gained what Kasanda had left for me.
By the time I crawled into my tent, I could hardly keep my eyes open. I stripped off the loose robe I had worn for my swim and stretched out luxuriously on my bedroll, lying gingerly on my beaded hair and pulling the cover over me. Maruman turned in several intent circles before settling against my waist, and in moments, I could hear his soft, purring snore.
I was so weary that I felt dizzy, but something kept me from actually falling asleep. Almost of its own volition, a probe formed and ranged, first over the tents, touching a few minds lightly, then moving out beyond the fires and press of people to the open desert. As had happened very occasionally before when I was extremely tired, my mind spontaneously produced a vague spirit shape, and suddenly I was seeing the desert with spirit eyes. The desert’s aura was a shifting, liquescent yellow-gold and white.
I saw a dark form running across it, and curiosity sharpened my wits and bade me send my probe toward it. I could not make out the face of the shadowy human form with my spirit eyes, but I reached out to touch the person’s ice-blue aura and realized it was Bruna. My curiosity about her was strong enough to have directed my unfocused probe to her. I felt her surprise as she stopped abruptly, and I realized she had heard someone running toward her. She turned and ran on, and I followed her effortlessly.
Then the desert changed, and Bruna seemed to enter a cave. When I saw the glowing aura of plants, I realized she had entered one of the rifts. She was moving deeper into it, and my curiosity was so intense that it drew me deeper into the merge so that, suddenly, I saw through Bruna’s eyes just as I had once been able to do with Matthew. I was elated, for it was rare to find someone compatible enough to manage this, but I was shocked, too. For standing before Bruna was Dardelan, but Dardelan as I had never seen him! Through Bruna’s eyes, I saw that he was naked but for a Sadorian loincloth and a dagger strapped to his leg. He was pale and slim, yet there was a wiry strength to his body not evident when he was clothed. But the most fascinating thing was his aura, visible to my spirit eyes as an overlapping glow. It was a blaze of yellow and gold with flashes of diamond white so dazzling as to be nearly painful. I had never seen an aura quite like it, and I wondered if it was why people had always found Dardelan so charismatic.
“You!” Bruna whispered. “What are you doing here?”
“Hunting you,” Dardelan answered. “You spoke once of loving a particular isis pool. So I begged Andorra to lead me here, and I asked Hakim to place his own stone in the bowl and drive you in this direction. I do not know who the other man was, whose stone was in the bowl, but I claim victory. Yet I did not hunt you as a tribesman would have, so I will not send up the golden sign unless you will it.”
“You … have hunted me?” Bruna’s voice trembled with doubt, with grief, with anger. “Why would you bother? I am the same woman you let walk away in Sutrium without a second thought. I have not changed. I will never sit tamely at home while you go to fight. I wil
l never obey orders without question.”
“I treated you as I did and said what I said not because I desired you to be anything but what you are, but because I believed that your mother was right in feeling you would be happier here in the desert lands. But after you left Sutrium, I realized that I had never given you the choice.”
“You let me leave.” Bruna’s voice had hardened, and I sensed her implacability. The ice lume of her aura shimmered around us.
“I did not let you leave. I deliberately drove you away and only then discovered that I had sent the sun into exile. I love you.”
I felt her shock reverberate through our merged aura, and a wave of hot dazzling red suffused the ice blue. “You … discovered that you loved me after I left?”
Dardelan laughed, but there was no humor in the sound, and bruised purple ran through the golden aura. “I was dazzled by the fire in you when you were nothing but a child, as sweet and golden and full of stings as fresh honeycomb. You shone like a flame before my eyes. I went about my duties, turning my eyes resolutely away from you, but I seemed to see the afterimage of your face and form everywhere. Maybe it was because you made such a strong impression when you were still a child full of tantrums and willful pride that I failed to perceive that you had grown into a woman. Only after you rode away from Sutrium did I see you clearly, and when I thought of your last words to me, I was shamed. But even amid the shame, I felt pride in the lovely dignity you had shown. I knew I must come to you and beg your forgiveness.”
“My mother told me that you came here to ask the tribes for the sacred ships,” Bruna said in a stony voice, but I could feel that she was trembling from head to toe.
“I had made up my mind to come here the first moment I could, within a day of your departing Sutrium. But I am high chieftain, and I could not leave on the eve of the great ruse. As Jakoby’s daughter, you understand that a leader has a duty to those he leads that he must set above his own desires. My duty took me to the west coast, but then Gwynedd asked your mother to bear him to Norseland, and Rushton asked your mother to bring us here afterward. My duty required me to go with them, but I rejoiced, for there was nowhere else I desired more to visit. I was determined to find you and speak with you before I left the desert lands. But then … last night I heard some tribesmen speak of this hunt … One talked of hunting you and I …” He broke off and laughed, looking all at once younger. “I was filled with jealousy, and I put a stone into the bowl with your name upon it. I feared I would lose you to your unknown Sadorian suitor, and I knew it would serve me right, for I had been a fool and did not deserve you. Yet here we stand.” Dardelan took a deep breath. “And now all that remains is for you to tell me whether the love you once felt for me is utterly quenched, or whether there is a spark I can fan to life.”