I nodded; then we both fell quiet, for we had come to a lane where people were bustling about in preparation for the day’s trading. In one tiny market square, a fire had been lit in a metal barrel, and cloaked men and women stooped over it, warming their fingers. They were busy and preoccupied with their own affairs, which made it easy to weave a coercive net that would make it difficult for anyone to keep their eyes on us. I wondered at the absence of soldierguards, given the events of the previous day.
I thought of my first meeting with Daffyd—a chance encounter, if such meetings were ever really chance. I had been waiting in the Councilcourt to undergo the Misfit trial that would see me sentenced to Obernewtyn. Daffyd and another man had been waiting to see about a trade permit for the high country. I could not recall what words had passed between us that day as we sat there, but somehow, Daffyd had given me the courage to hope.
I had never forgotten his brightness in that dark moment.
We had met a second time after I had been taken captive by the fanatical ex-Herder, Henry Druid. Daffyd had been one of his armsmen. It had been at the Druid’s secret encampment in the White Valley that Daffyd and several others had been simultaneously awakened to their Misfit Talents and emotionally enslaved by a powerful Misfit baby, Lidgebaby; it was there that he had fallen in love with Gilaine—daughter of the Druid and despised by her father for her muteness.
I had shown them how to free themselves from Lidgebaby’s powerful overmind in return for their help in escaping. When a firestorm razed the Druid camp to the ground, Daffyd alone had escaped.
Discovering the loss of his friends, he had been heartbroken, but he remained with us in the mountains for some time. He had left us during the last summerdays, after Maryon had dreamed of his friends. He had been convinced they had survived and was determined to find them. Maryon had told me the dream had been vague and the faces unclear, but Daffyd had not cared.
We had not seen nor heard from him since. Until now.
“Elspeth?” Brydda murmured with faint exasperation, and I realized we had entered an empty street.
“I’m sorry, I was thinking about Daffyd. Yes, it was his probe. I am sure that his working for the slaver has something to do with his friends from the Druid camp, though there was little time for him to explain. I farsent him the location of the safe house, and he said he would come when he could.”
“It is a pity we did not know that he worked for the slaver all along. It would have spared you reading his mind. I doubt that was a pleasant experience.”
I licked my lips. “Brydda, I didn’t farseek the slaver. I couldn’t. His mind is sensitive, and he would have felt me at once. Daffyd stopped me just in time. He has spent months trying and still has not managed it.”
“If he has been working for the slaver for so long, he must have some notion of where Salamander is,” Brydda said.
“I think not, since he is trying to get into his mind for that very reason: to find Salamander. That much he did tell me.”
The rebel said nothing.
“I’m sorry, Brydda.”
“I know you are not to blame, Elspeth,” he said heavily. “But if Daffyd does not come by tomorrow night with the knowledge of Salamander’s whereabouts, we will have lost the chance to stop him.”
“But surely we can follow the slaver until he meets with—”
“You don’t understand. Two nights hence, when I do not take the five slaves to the abandoned warehouse as agreed, Salamander will guess something is wrong. Knowing his reputation, there will be a short and savage bloodletting during which anyone with any connection to him will be slain. That slaver we met tonight will be one of the first to go if he knows what Salamander looks like or how to reach him. And perhaps Daffyd, too, though his ignorance might protect him. So you see, there will be no one to follow back to the source.”
“Daffyd will come,” I said, crossing my fingers.
The air was damp with the promise of more rain, and dark clouds obscured the waxing moon as we came in sight of the safe house. In the gaps between clouds, the sparse morning stars were winking out one by one.
We rode into the yard, dismounting to the squeak of leather and the jingle of metal buckles on the harness. When the horses were released into the grassy holding yard, Brydda bade them thanks with his finger signs, saying aloud to me that he would not come up. “Reuvan expects me back by sunrise, and it is moments away. Where are the drugged Councilfarm workers being kept?”
I told him the cellar’s location that I had taken from the overseer’s thoughts.
“I will return tomorrow night,” the big man said as he strode away. “Let us hope Daffyd has come by then with some news for us.”
Instinctively, I glanced up, seeking the pitted face of the moon. Maruman had always attributed his darkest foresight to it, and I had come to see it as a bad omen, too. As if summoned by my thoughts, the moon suddenly sailed clear of the clouds.
I felt a mindless rush of fright at the sight of it glaring down on me like the eye of some unearthly hunter. But even as I laughed at my melodramatic imagination, I felt oddly unsettled, and it took me a long time to sleep.
I woke just before midday.
Gray daylight streamed in through the sky windows of the sleeping chamber, but there was no warmth in it. I stretched under the covers, then sat up reluctantly, reaching for my robe. Ariel’s face came into my mind, and I froze in the act of climbing out of bed, remembering that I had dreamed of him.
We had been in the stone tunnel again.
The stone tunnel was a recurrent image from my dreams, and once I had asked Maryon what it could mean. She had replied that it was either a place where I would one day go, or it represented me or some aspect of me.
I belted the robe, letting the dream flow back into my mind. This time, instead of pursuing me with a knife or some other horror, Ariel had been walking beside me, his hand nestled in mine, small but very cold. He had smiled up at me as we came to the part of the tunnel where the doors of Obernewtyn flamed.
With the strange logic of dreams, it had seemed perfectly reasonable to me that the doors, which I had commanded be burned, should exist here.
“Why did you burn them?” the dream Ariel had asked in his piping, eager voice. His eyes had seemed to bore into mine with hypnotic intensity.
“Because there was a map carved into the design,” I had answered. “I did not want anyone to find it.”
This was the truth. Everyone at Obernewtyn believed the doors had been burned to free the inlaid gold in the design so that we could make guildleaders’ armbands from it. But my true object had been to destroy the hidden map carved into the doors, which showed the location of the very Beforetime weaponmachines that I now knew I would one day seek.
Louis Larkin had once told me that he remembered, as a boy, Marisa Seraphim’s purchase of the great doors. She was long dead now, but there was a painting of her at Obernewtyn. She had been very beautiful, but everything in the picture spoke of her brilliance and will and nothing of her heart. Her diaries had revealed a woman as clever and ruthless as a teknoguilder without soul.
In the dream, Ariel’s face had possessed that same brilliant, soulless quality as he moved forward to peer at the doors.
Drawing on my slippers, I wondered what it meant that Ariel had asked such questions in my dreams. I had the powerful feeling that he had asked something more, but I could not recall what or if I had answered. The questions had ended when I had heard Gahltha’s cool mental voice calling my name. He had emerged from the shadows behind me in the tunnel, dark and even more magnificent than in life.
“Ride on me,” his mind spoke to mine.
I had responded instinctively, vaulting onto his back. We had ridden a road that led eerily up into the clouds and the sky, leaving Ariel and the dreamcave far below. We had ridden impossibly high, until Gahltha sent to me that he was unable to go farther. Before I could say it did not matter, he bucked violently, sending me flyin
g up like a stone from a catapult.
I had screamed in fear, but all at once, an Agyllian flew beneath me. I clutched convulsively at the warm feathers and thin bones.
I had thought the bird was Atthis, except the Elder was blind and would have been too small to bear me. This bird was enormous, but pure white rather than red like the Agyllians.
“Things bear their spirit shapes on the dreamtrails,” a voice had whispered, but so faintly I could not tell whose it was. The bird bore me silently ever up and out, through a swirling rainbow of color and light that ended only when I awoke.
It had been a peculiar dream. Not an ashling, for all its vividness; perhaps no more than the distorted summation of a long day of turmoil. Even so, it was hard to throw off.
I took refuge in practicalities. A swift farseeking scan told me Matthew and Kella were busy shifting the last boxes from the rig back into the safe house. There was no sign yet of Daffyd. Or, for that matter, of Maruman.
I gathered up my clothing, careful not to wake Dragon, who was still sound asleep. I crept from the room and padded along the hallway to the bathing chamber to splash my face and neck before dressing.
My eyes looked out of the mirror at me, bloodshot but alert. That was when I realized with horror that I had done nothing about the mental barrier I had set up to catch the pain of the whipping in the market. I knew better than anyone the danger of allowing too much pain to build up, for when freed, it had an accumulative impact—the pain from a simple leg cramp, left for too long, could become a crippling agony.
My heart thumped with apprehension as I began carefully to dismantle the barrier. I went very slowly, so as not to flood my senses with too much of the stockpiled pain at once. It was always difficult to regulate the flow.
To my surprise, nothing at all leaked out of the minute gap I had made. Puzzled, I removed the barrier completely, but there was not even a slight ache waiting to be endured.
My expression in the mirror was blank with astonishment. Stored pain could not be released without experiencing it, so what had happened? Had Maire’s herbal ointment somehow absorbed or counteracted the pain? Or had I dismantled the barrier and endured the pain in my sleep? A suppressing barrier could split open of its own accord, but it was hard to imagine sleeping through it.
On the other hand, it might explain the queerness of my dreams and the sluggishness that had filled me on waking.
Well, I had no complaint if that had been the case. Relieved to have been let off so lightly, I decided not to push my luck and disturb Maire’s bandages. Instead, I simply put on a clean shirt and went to the kitchen. Over a late firstmeal, I told Matthew and Kella what had happened in the meeting with the slaver.
Not unexpectedly, Kella disapproved. As a healer, she did not accept the notion of revenge. But to my surprise, Matthew also chided me.
“Ye know Rushton would nowt approve. An’ ye should at least have let me know where ye was goin’.”
This caution was so unlike the farseeker that I stared at him.
His eyes fell away from mine, but I caught a swiftly shielded memory of Dragon with her arms about the two children in the market. This Dragon was not the dirty urchin Matthew usually saw when he looked at the empath-coercer. She was older, and her eyes shone with courage. In its own way, it was no more a true picture of her than the old one had been, but at least it was no longer derogatory.
Matthew had always peopled the world with villains and heroes, and his head was stuffed full of wild scenes of courage and drama. The fleeting and idealized memory of Dragon defending the children suggested her mad-headed bravery had forced a change in his attitude toward her. Clearly, he was finding that confusing enough to distort his other cherished attitudes.
Domick arrived during midmeal. He was unsurprised to hear about my encounter with Daffyd, saying only that he had expected the armsman to turn up sooner or later. He had come to tell me that the search for the renegade gypsies had been shifted to Rangorn. “There is a rumor that you were sighted up that way, and three troops of soldierguards have been dispatched to search the area.” That explained the absence of soldierguards on the street that morning.
I was impressed. The gypsy who had rescued me from the whipping might be arrogant and conceited, but he had said he would get the soldierguards out of the city, and he had done it.
Even so, I could not help being puzzled by the scale of the search, and I said so.
“Th’ Council mun have some reason fer orderin’ such a sizable search,” Matthew agreed.
The coercer shrugged. “If they even ordered it. The soldierguards may have done it on their own. They have the power, and given that some of their men were killed in Guanette, they might want revenge.”
“But rank-and-file soldierguards are a mercenary lot,” I said. “They fight for coin, not for justice or loyalty to their fellows. I cannot see it troubling them that a soldierguard or two died. They would simply give thanks to Lud that it had not been them.”
“Well, then it may be the Herders’ doing,” Domick said impatiently. “The fact that gypsies killed one of their people would enrage them, and they might be putting pressure on the Council to strengthen the search.”
Especially if they believed a Twentyfamilies gypsy was involved, I thought. If they could prove that, it might destroy the accord.
“I want you to find out for sure whose doing it is,” I said firmly. “And where the coin is coming from to recruit all of these soldierguards. I heard a soldierguard say the Faction is going to fund a war against Sador. If the Herders are splashing bribe coin about, we must know from whence it comes.”
Domick snorted scornfully. “How would the Faction have coin to finance wars? What coin they have is extorted from their congregations. It would not be enough to bribe one soldierguard, let alone a captain. You make too much of this and worry where there is no need. The search is concentrated on Rangorn, as I told you, so what does it matter? They will not find you there.”
There was an arrogance to Domick’s surmising that dismayed me. Yet he might be right that I was overreacting. After all, how much did they know that would hurt us? Only that there were a few audacious youths who had flouted Herder authority on two occasions—unlikely, but not impossible. I still was not completely convinced that this was the reason why a larger than usual number of soldierguards might be sent out. But since there had been no obvious use of Misfit powers on any of the three occasions, it must be seen as a mystery relating to gypsies, not Talented Misfits.
After the meal, the coercer returned to the Councilcourt, and Matthew accepted Kella’s offer to learn how to bake bread.
I decided to spend the afternoon trimming the horses’ hooves and reshoeing them. This was done whenever we came to the city, for it was the only time horses were forced to walk on stones and cobbles. In the mountains, they had no need of metal shoes.
The afternoon shadows were long, striping the yard, when I hammered the last nail into the last shoe and stretched the taut muscles in my back. I took a comb and began to smooth Jaygar’s tangled mane, worrying at how this life had changed Domick.
I would let Rushton make the final decision whether to bring Domick in. Regardless of his usefulness as a spy, my own instinct said we ought to bring him back to Obernewtyn. Surely, with Domick’s inside knowledge, someone else might be insinuated in his place. And it would be wise to have someone else trained, just in case something ever went wrong.
For a second, I had a remarkably vivid vision of the coercer lying slumped in a Councilcourt cell, his hair long and matted, his body covered in sores and filth. I thrust the revolting image from me and made the warding-off sign, for I believed, as Maryon did, that things could be made to happen by thinking of them too much.
I finished the roan’s mane, acknowledged his thanks, and turned to Gahltha, my thoughts circling back to Maruman and the hazy look that had been in his eye when I’d last seen him. It had been more than a full day, and I had been unable to
find him with a finely attuned farseek probe. I knew the cat’s mind as well as my own, but if he had fallen into one of his mad states, his mind would change its shape, rendering him invisible to a probe that was specifically shaped to his sane mind.
Was he wandering, mindless, in Sutrium? I wondered if I should have restrained him for his own good. Since I loved him, hadn’t I the right to stop him from harming himself?
With something of a shock, it occurred to me that this was the sort of thinking that had made Gahltha try to stop me from helping the little mare Faraf. And that had once caused Rushton to forbid me to go on dangerous expeditions.
I would never exchange freedom for safety, I thought, regardless of the danger. I had the right to risk my life as I chose.
“Truly, danger is part of freedom/freerunning,” Gahltha sent unexpectedly. “It is easy to forget this when it is not us/me.”
“It’s easy to have one rule for others and another for myself, but there’s no honor in such double standards,” I sent mildly.
“Honor?” Gahltha snorted. “That is a little word for a great thing. Funaga have freerunning thoughts. But instead of admiring/joying in them, you would cage them with words. Some things will not be so tamed.”
I smiled a little, thinking how Maryon and her futuretellers, or Dameon in his most reflective mood, delighted in such complex ethical and moral discussions as this. They never tried to come up with a final answer. For them, the reason for such a mental journey was in the wordy road traveled.
But it was not enough for me to admire words and ideas as beautiful abstractions. I had to see how they could be applied. And I knew only too well that what worked in words was often very different when you tried applying it to a real situation. In essence, freedom of choice sounded a fine and noble thing. But in reality?
Putting away hammer and brushes and heading back upstairs into the safe house, I admitted wryly that it was difficult to be philosophical about Maruman and his right to freedom when I only knew I loved him and wanted to protect him.