“Do you allow this Misfit to insult Malik by implying he will not keep his word to her?” Vos snarled, springing to his feet.
“Since this Misfit has all but agreed to risk her people in Malik’s plan, though he makes his loathing of them insultingly apparent, I cannot blame her for wanting his sworn word and our surety that he will abide by it. I think it wise rather than insulting,” Serba observed. She turned to me, and I was gratified to see respect in her deep-set eyes. “We will accept your aid in this matter with gratitude, of course, but I will leave it to you and Malik to sort out the finer details privately, as is our policy these days.”
“My people will make their own plans and execute them,” I said, looking past her into Malik’s stone-gray eyes. “All we need to know from Malik is where and when the rebels will be waiting in ambush.”
“I will show those of your Misfits that join me in Guanette,” Malik countered.
“I don’t trust him, but I can’t see that he will dare break this oath,” Gevan sent. “Maybe we should ask outright why he wears the demon band.”
“If I raise the subject, it will mean admitting we tried to probe him without his permission. And worse, it will let him know that the wretched things work. I would rather say nothing and force him to wonder. But I would like to get hold of one for Garth to examine.”
“If we send an empath to Guanette, we should be able to confound Malik into thinking the band is useless,” Gevan suggested.
Serba was continuing the rebellion strategy, and I listened with interest as she reminded everyone that after the soldierguard camp had been secured, all able to be spared would ride to Sutrium for phase two of the plan. Once these rebels had joined Dardelan’s groups throughout the city, a simultaneous attack would be made on the main Herder cloister, the two soldierguard encampments, the Councilcourt, and the holdings of Radost, Jitra, and Mord, preventing the possibility of any group aiding another. This was to be accomplished with as little noise and bloodshed as possible, thereby keeping the general populace unaware of what was going on. Serba would have some of her people from Port Oran watching the ferry port to ensure no one slipped away to warn the west coast Councilmen.
If all went according to plan, Sutrium would be in rebel hands by dawn. But Serba admitted frankly that the Sutrium phase of the plan was most likely to go awry.
“The possibility that someone will sound an alarm is a real danger, though with Misfit aid, getting the timing right—our other main concern—will no longer be a problem.”
“I would like to remind everyone that the Councilmen and soldierguards we take prisoner are not to be harmed,” Elii said firmly. “No bruised or broken noses. Nothing. We want them fit for their public trials so that we can demonstrate the difference between our justice and theirs.”
“What of their families and children?” Dardelan asked.
“I’m afraid they must be taken prisoner, too,” Serba said. “I don’t like the idea of it, but what else can we do? Children are better with their parents, in any case, and it won’t be for long.”
“What about keeping wives and children together somewhere other than the cloisters?” suggested Tilda, the effeminate young man who represented Yavok.
“I’d prefer that, but it might not be possible the first night,” Serba said. “Not when speed is so vital. Better the children get a fright than be dragged into a bloody battle that rages for months.”
Dardelan spoke then, explaining the measures he had devised to keep a lid on Sutrium so that the third phase of their plans could proceed smoothly. Once the city was under control, rebels would occupy all soldierguard posts, clad in their telltale yellow cloaks. Notices would be posted throughout the town warning that someone suspected of suffering from the plague had entered the town and advising people to remain indoors until the cloister bell was sounded, signaling that the culprit was in custody. It was a clever idea, and with luck, the notices would drive people to cower in their homes.
“Phase three will begin after nightfall the next day,” Serba said. “We will go over that again in Sutrium in detail, but for now, you know we will be taking one city each night by attacking from outside while the town’s own rebels move from within. Morganna is almost as big as Sutrium, but we will have a considerable combined force at our disposal by the time we get there, and hopefully we will still have the element of surprise on our side.”
She paused, her eyes sweeping the room sternly. “Up until tonight, no one but the rebel leaders and a few trusted confederates have been privy to these plans, and we have circulated misinformation among our own people as a way of thwarting the traitors in our midst. We have no choice but to let at least a portion of our true plans be known now. This is our greatest danger, yet with the Misfits’ help, that danger will not trouble us for too much longer. Just the same, I suggest each rebel leader delay speaking of these plans in detail until the Misfits assigned to him or her have arrived. Anyone may refuse to have the Misfits penetrate their minds, but I suggest those who do be given no vital information.”
Something made me glance at Malik. I found him staring at me, his masklike face giving no clue of his thoughts. I kept my own expression bland and was pleased to see a ripple of doubt cross his hard features.
“Elspeth?” Serba said. I stared at her blankly until Gevan sent sharply that she had asked me if Misfits could speak to one another from one part of the Land to another.
“Our mental reach is limited, and some of us have a shorter reach than others, just as some among your rebels are stronger physically than others. With enough of us spread throughout the Land, we should be able to efficiently relay messages. But our abilities do not work over tainted areas like the water and the banks of the lower Suggredoon, or over very large physical barriers like the Gelfort Range. Also, heavy rain or storms make it harder for us to make contact with one another.”
“If you cannot send your mind across the Suggredoon, then perhaps we could have one Misfit on either side,” Cassell suggested.” They could take turns crossing by ferry at regular intervals to exchange news.”
“What of Herder and Norse Isles?” I asked.
“We have not included them in our immediate plans. Ultimately, we mean to offer the priests exile on their island if they prefer it to being defrocked, but first we will have to take it over to release anyone who wishes to leave,” Serba said. “That will require boats and will be the fourth phase of our plan, along with the taking of Norseland.” Her eyes flickered to Gwynedd, who had stiffened slightly at the mention of his birthplace.
“Can we finally set the day?” Malik asked loudly.
“I believe we should make our move one sevenday from today,” Serba said decisively, and the others nodded.
“That will give the Misfits time to join our groups,” Elii approved.
“A good night for secrecy,” Zamadi added. “The moon will be a mere sliver in a sevenday.”
“Very well, then, in a sevenday from now, the rebellion will begin,” Serba announced. “Speak of this date to no one outside this room, for all of our sakes. I have no doubt the traitors among us wait for just this information. Now, I suggest we finish this meeting. The time for action looms.”
“Truespoken,” Elii said, standing immediately. “If all goes as we have planned, we will meet again in Sutrium when it belongs to us.”
There was a murmur of approval tinged with excitement, and people began to leave, slipping out at staggered intervals. Malik and his cronies departed first, with Brocade asking Brydda to ensure the door was closed after everyone had gone.
I thanked Dardelan for defending the Misfits’ honor. “You are beginning to make a habit of it,” I said.
“Malik is a disgusting man,” he answered. “He has no scruples, and I am more than glad the Battlegames showed him for what he is. It will be purely thanks to your people that this rebellion will not become a slaughter. I truly feared it, especially when it looked as if Malik would become our leader.”
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“I just hope that whatever help we give will be remembered afterward,” Gevan said.
“It will,” Dardelan promised. “But we have not met yet. I am Dardelan, son of Bodera, rebel chief of Sutrium.”
“I am Gevan,” the Coercer guildmaster said, standing to bow formally. “I have heard much of you and your father.”
Serba interrupted to bid us farewell, and when she departed, Gwynedd, Cassell, and Yavok’s proxy, Tilda, went with her. Whatever their inner struggles, it seemed that the west coast rebels were far more united than those in the rest of the Land.
As Brydda secured the barn, he told Dardelan he would collect Sallah and meet him at the crossroads on the other side of town. Then Brydda, Gevan, and I walked back to the gypsy encampment together.
“You found nothing,” the big rebel said as we picked our way over a shadowy wheat field with the wind in our faces.
“Nothing in those we were able to probe,” Gevan admitted. “We could not touch Elii’s mind or Gwynedd’s, and Malik was unreachable because he wore one of those demon bands the Herders have been selling.”
Brydda gave him a startled look. “These bands block your powers?”
“Unfortunately. Though, given our lack of reaction during the meeting, I bet Malik is wondering now if they work or not.”
“Do you suspect him of the kidnapping because he wears the band?”
“Not truly,” I said, sighing. “As you said at Obernewtyn, it just doesn’t make sense that he would force us to join you.”
We walked in silence on the narrow track running along the cliff, listening to the churning roar of the sea at its base. The wind was chilly enough to make me draw the edges of my coat together, but its astringency revived my flagging spirit.
“What now?” Brydda asked when the magi wagons were in sight.
I shrugged. “I’ll leave for Obernewtyn tonight, and Gevan can follow in the morning. Then we’ll send some of our people to each rebel group as promised and go on looking for Rushton. There is nothing else we can do until we have some clue as to who took him and where.”
He nodded absently. “You did not need to agree to be decoys in Malik’s foray. You realize it makes you sworn allies, for all your talk of limitations.”
I wondered if I ought to feel we were betraying Rushton and our ideals, but instead I felt we were doing the right thing. We had talked in guildmerge of abstaining from violence, but we had never considered that we might actively work against it.
The rebels seemed genuinely committed to a bloodless rebellion, and with our help, this might be possible. Wouldn’t helping them be a different sort of adherence to our oaths?
Gahltha and I cut around the perimeter of the town as before, avoiding the narrow, winding streets clogged with revelers. Getting through the cluster of tents was less easy. The moon fair was drawing to an end, and there were twice as many as when we had gone in the other direction. People were becoming increasingly un-inhibited. Everywhere there were campfires and clots of people laughing and singing, blocking the makeshift roads.
After I passed the outskirts, the road became easier. Most travelers endeavored to reach their destinations before dusk, given the robbers who prowled the dark hours. There were only one or two men driving empty carts, and they eyed me suspiciously.
The stalls at the crossroad were boarded up, their owners having presumably joined the revels. I passed them and took to the main road. Far ahead, the Gelfort Range was a jagged smudge.
The moon rose slowly, at first low and golden and then fading to white. It was odd to think that right now in Sutrium, Kella or Ceirwan might be looking at this moon, and in the high mountains perhaps the Agyllians gazed at it, dreaming past and future dreams. Maybe Jakoby looked up at it, too, somewhere in the Sadorian desert, and far out to sea, ship fish would be leaping out of the silvery waves into its faint light.
There was no secret from the moon. Perhaps even now, it illuminated Rushton’s face.
The thought of Rushton came to me as the weary ache of a bruise that has been bumped too many times. I asked Gahltha to gallop, but as we thundered along the empty road, I seemed to hear Rushton’s name over and over in the beat of his hooves. We galloped until Gahltha wearied, and then he walked and trotted alternately, following his own inclination.
After some hours, exhausted by emotion, or the repression of it, I stopped to get some food at a roadside tavern, a rough ale pit reeking of spilt drink and vomit. The customers leaning over the bar were all male and glared at me suspiciously or with repellent lust, so I did not linger. Taking my purchases, I rode another hour up the road to the Brown Haw Rises before stopping. I climbed a low hillock that overlooked the road in both directions, laid my travel blanket under a single ravaged Ur tree that stood on a jutting mound, and sat down with a sigh. Emeralfel was a looming black shadow whose presence I could discern only because it blotted out a great jagged triangle of stars. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and I hoped it would not rain before I got home.
I had brought oats and carrots for Gahltha, and he munched hungrily as I unwrapped bread and soft cheese for myself. It grew colder, and as I gazed down at the shadowy world where everything was so eerily still, it seemed it was holding its breath in the calm before a storm. By the time I finished eating, Gahthla had wandered away to graze. I lay back against a tree root and stared up at the dark canopy of leaves, silvered here and there where the moon penetrated the clouds.
“Rushton,” I whispered, feeling the name in my mouth and on my tongue.
I wept a few useless tears out of frustration and sorrow and confusion before falling into a dull mindless state. I did not mean to sleep, but sleep I did, and deeply.
I dreamed of Matthew walking under the glaring sun along a red-earth street bordered by slablike buildings of red stone with small windows and flat roofs.
At first I barely recognized him, for his hair was very long and hung in a gleaming tangle around broad shoulders. His upper torso was naked, and he was impressively muscled and very brown. For the first time, he looked a man rather than a boy stumbling into manhood. His face had a new maturity, and the lines etched between his brows told me he had suffered.
He seemed to be searching for something, for his eyes scanned the street on both sides constantly. A number of times he cast quick glances over his shoulder as if he feared he was followed. He stopped outside a brown door set deep in a stone wall and looked about again before knocking just once. The door swung open and a girl beckoned him inside.
I gasped, or I would have if I had mouth or breath to do it with, for the girl was unmistakably Gilaine, the mute daughter of the renegade Herder Henry Druid, and the long-sought beloved of our ally Daffyd. She had since been sold to the notorious Salamander by none other than my own nemesis Ariel. I opened my senses and heard her welcome Matthew telepathically. The light inside the hall was dim, falling from a set of slits near the roof. In it Gilaine looked older than I remembered, though no less lovely, her moonbeam-pale hair bound into a long plait.
“You were not followed?” she sent to him.
“No. But, Gil, I saw something. A carving on the temple wall…”
“It is the lost queen of the people who once ruled here.”
“What happened to her?” asked Matthew.
Gilaine shrugged as they entered a windowless room containing two low, worn couches and a simple wooden table. The only ornament in the room was a square of green cloth fastened to the wall. The light from slits near the roof fell directly onto it, causing it to glow and cast its cool hue over the room.
“Some say Salamander sold both her and her daughter over the waters,” Gilaine sent. “Our masters don’t tear down the temple wall that shows her face, because they know the people will not revolt so long as they believe she will return.”
Matthew had a queer expression on his face. “How old was the daughter when she disappeared?”
“A child,” came a new voice. A dark-eyed woman with
long, unbound, blue-black tresses entered the room, carrying a tray of tall glasses. “Five or six years old.”
“Bila, how are you?” Matthew asked gently.
“As well as I can be,” the woman said almost indifferently, but there was a quiver in her voice and raw pain in her eyes that told another story. Gilaine came to take her hand and pressed it to her cheek.
“Perhaps he lives…,” Matthew began.
The woman shook her head. “No one lives who enters the pit.” A tear rolled down her cheek, and she dropped her head and wept without embarrassment. Gilaine and Matthew exchanged a worried look over her head.
“This can’t go on,” Matthew sent to Gilaine. “They have to find the courage to stop this.”
“You don’t understand,” Gilaine sent gently. “It is not that they fear to rise. They simply believe they must not until the queen comes again. That is their prophecy, and it is all that holds them together.”
“Their prophecy keeps them enslaved!” Matthew sent. “And it’s only a matter of time before I am sent to the pit, too….”
I blinked and squinted to find I was lying on my back with the sun full on my face. I sat up, bewildered, and realized the whole stony face of Emeralfel was shining in the sunlight.
Cursing, I stood, finding my clothes wet with dew. Gahltha was nearby, cropping contentedly on a clump of clover. I reproached him for failing to wake me.
“You needed sleep,” he sent.
I wet my hands on the dewy grass and washed my face as best I could, then changed into a dry shirt. It was still very early as we rejoined the road, and my annoyance faded.
The road curved around behind the Gelfort Range to avoid the sullen mists of Berryn Mor, and I pondered my dream. It had felt like a true dream, but it would be an incredible coincidence if Matthew had ended up in the same place as Gilaine.
Yet perhaps it was not so extraordinary, considering that they had all been taken by Salamander. No doubt he returned to the same markets to sell his wares, like any trader. Matthew had never met Gilaine when they had dwelt in the Land, but he might have sensed her abilities, as he had mine when we’d first met.