Powyrs winked angrily, a peculiar combination. “What’s to like? I admire the Sadorians, though I don’t go for putting land before people. Now if it was the sea …”
“How can these Sadorians live off a desert?” Hannay wondered.
“Most of their needs come from the spice groves inland at the foot of the mountains. Sadorians weave cloth from a fiber they get from the trees’ bark, and they get sugar and medicines from its leaves and sap, and a potent fement from its berries. Most importantly, they get spice from its flowers, and they trade that for everything else the trees cannot offer.”
“What about water?” Fian asked.
“There are natural springs all around the perimeter of the desert that water the groves, and in the desert there are isis pools. The Sadorians call them the tears of the goddess.”
“What of the slave trade?” Rushton asked. “Do the Sadorians involve themselves in it?”
Powyrs chuckled. “Oh yes. The Sadorians involve themselves, all right. They send slavers and anyone proven to have dealt with them out into the desert without water. If the slavers make it to the other side, they are freed.”
“Do many survive?” Kella asked.
The seaman grinned wolfishly. “One that I’ve heard of, and he was stark raving mad. The Temple looks after him, though, just as it does anyone who is sick or aged or who can’t keep up the pace of the kar-avans.”
“Kar-avans?” Kella echoed.
“They are what a group of Sadorians on the move call themselves. And Sadorians are always on the move.”
The ship listed slightly, wiping the smile from his face. “Got to watch these fools who call themselves seamen or they’ll run my Cutter up on a shoal,” he muttered, hurrying outside.
“I have to get a look at that Temple,” Fian said with all the fanatical determination of a teknoguilder on the trail of new information. “Garth will kill me if I don’t.”
“And I’ll kill you if you start any fuss,” Rushton said with perfect seriousness. “We’re not here to tread on Sadorian toes. There’s every likelihood that this Temple will be out of bounds to Landfolk.”
Fian subsided, looking chastened; then, at Rushton’s request, he and Kella went to retrieve the twins, Dameon, and Freya.
When we had all gathered, Rushton squared his shoulders in the way he did when conducting guildmerge. “Tomorrow we will reach Sador,” he said. “I have no doubt we can win these Battlegames, but this is the first time we will pit ourselves against unTalents who know what we can do, and this will season us and allow us to see how we function under stress. I want you all to store up impressions about the battle, thoughts and suggestions that can be shared during guildmerge when we return to Obernewtyn.
“One warning. Under no circumstances are you to use your Talents on anyone in Sador, except during the games. No farseeking or coercing, no empathising. Although these rebels will be our opponents in the Battlegames, we hope to fight beside them in the future as allies. We must be able to offer a code they will trust and assure them they will not be violated by our abilities.”
He glanced once about the salon to emphasize this point. The others nodded, but I thought of Malik’s cold laughter and doubted any code Rushton could promise would impress him. Everything would hinge on winning.
“Daffyd has agreed to fight with us,” Rushton went on. “Dragon cannot take part, and we should assume that Dameon will be unable to participate as well. That makes us ten if we include Daffyd and myself. And though I have no usable Talent to offer, I have battle skills, and there may be need for these.”
His green eyes shifted to me, but I looked away quickly, afraid of what he might see in my face.
“I do not feel that I will disadvantage us,” he added pointedly, and I realized he thought my refusal to meet his eyes indicated my disapproval of his inclusion.
At the end of his speech, Rushton asked me coldly to see him in his chamber after the nightmeal.
37
I DID NOT go.
In time, I would be able to face Rushton calmly, but not yet. I could not trust myself. What if somehow I betrayed my feelings? Perhaps I already had by speaking so stiffly to Freya. My thoughts ran wild. What if Rushton wanted to see me alone so that he could apologize for not loving me any longer? What if he tried to explain his attachment to Freya?
These were stupid thoughts, and it was the fear of making a fool of myself that made me cast about desperately after the nightmeal for some plausible excuse not to go to Rushton’s chamber. I found myself plucking nervously at the bandage covering the tattoo Swallow had given me, and this produced an idea.
I would go and see Fian about the Govamen mark. He was ensconced in Powyrs’s chamber, and I doubted anyone would think of looking for me there. The tattoo was reason enough to have forgotten Rushton’s summons. I would tell Rushton of the tattoo—and I imagined the apologetic and slightly flippant smile I would wear as I said it—and explain how it had come about. I would casually mention that the gypsy had kissed me. Just as if people were always kissing me, so that I hardly even bothered about it.
Let him dare try to pity me then!
Having worked myself into a fury, I marched off to Powyrs’s cabin, taking good care to let no one see me enter.
“Elspeth,” Fian said, sounding surprised. He had to flatten himself against the wall to get the door to the tiny chamber open, but there was hardly enough room even when it was closed. He waved me to the only seat that would fit and propped himself on the corner of the rickety wooden table piled high with books.
“I’m glad ye’ve come. Ye know there are actually some Beforetime maps amongst these papers? I am tryin’ to …” He stopped. “Lud, I do blather on. It is a Teknoguild failing, I know, to imagine th’ world revolves around us. Did ye want somethin’ in particular?”
I bit my lip, suddenly unsure of how much I wanted to tell.
“I did,” I said slowly. “Do you remember the mark on the Govamen plasts we saw beneath Tor?”
Fian wagged his head impatiently. “Yes, yes. Three Guanette birds goin’ round one another?”
“Was there anyone else who might have used the same mark other than Govamen?”
“Unlikely,” Fian said. “It appears on every single piece of research an’ plast from Govamen, an’ I think it was especially devised fer them. In fact, th’ plasts appear to have been stolen from Govamen—we think the Reichler Clinic had a spy working there. It would have to be one of th’ scientists—that’s what th’ Beforetimers called teknoguilders.”
“You think this scientist wanted to help Misfits stay hidden?” I asked curiously.
“Or help them to escape, if Govamen had them already. Why do ye ask about th’ mark anyway?”
I took a deep breath. “Do you have any idea what gypsies were before the holocaust? Where they come from?”
“There were people called gypsies in the Beforetime, but they were swallowed up into other races long afore the Great White. Our gypsies are just people who took on some of their philosophies—there’s no true connection.” Fian’s puzzled expression deepened. “What is this all about, Elspeth?”
I went on to explain much of what Swallow had told me.
“Amazin’,” Fian said after some time. “You must write this down for our records. I had no idea gypsy society was so complex. But what has any of it to do with th’ Govamen mark?”
“The purebloods wear it on their inner forearms.”
“That is odd. Why would a gypsy wear th’ mark of a long-dead Beforetime organization?”
“Exactly what I am wondering,” I said. “And how do you explain that the gypsies regard it as a sacred mark?”
“Perhaps their mark only looked like th’ Govamen symbol,” Fian suggested.
I rolled up my sleeve to reveal the grubby bandage around my arm and gestured for Fian to pass over a jug of water sitting on a tray.
He stared as I dipped my arm in it and let the water penetrate. “A Twent
yfamilies gypsy gave the mark to me,” I said. “You will see if it is exact or merely alike.”
Fian listened, horrified, to my description of the tattoo procedure.
“Let’s keep our fingers crossed it is healed properly,” I said, carefully separating the sodden bandages. When I lifted the last layer away, we both stared.
“Is this a joke?” Fian demanded crossly.
I was mute with astonishment, for other than the crisscross reddening left by the bandage, my skin was utterly without mark or discoloration.
The tattoo had vanished!
Leaving Fian’s tiny room, I dismissed his suggestion that I had been tricked into thinking I had been given the tattoo. If Swallow had intended to rook me, why would he have told me so much about himself? Besides, I had seen the needles and felt them pierce my skin.
But I could hardly blame the teknoguilder for his doubts. Unfortunately, only Swallow could answer what had happened.
I sighed and decided to relieve Miky, who was sitting with Dragon. Maruman was sleeping curled up at the foot of the mattress, but he woke as I entered.
When the Empath guilden had gone off yawning to her bed, I sat on the floor and took Dragon’s small, limp hand in mine. Maruman rose, stretched, and came to curl himself into my lap. We made no attempt to communicate, and I was grateful for his silent companionship. It had been a long, confusing, painful day, and I just wanted to lay my head on the bed and be still.
I put my cheek against Dragon’s hand and stared out the small circular window at the sky. Almost at once I slept.
I dreamed of walking along a black road. Rushton was behind me, calling. “Wait. I will come with you.”
I walked faster, thinking of him holding Freya. “Elspeth …”
But his voice faded. I was crying, but I walked faster still.
I fell then into a deeper dream: a chaotic tumult of images that made no sense.
There was a chair, red and bulging with carvings of grotesque faces. One moment the faces appeared to convulse with mirth, and the next, they seemed to shriek with agony.
I saw a tall, beautiful woman smile.
“All the women in my family have it,” she said in a soft, musical voice.
Then the same woman was slumped in the carved chair. Her hair was red like Dragon’s, and her breast, too, for she had been stabbed there, and the knife still protruded from the gaping wound. Bending over her was a bald man with a pale, greasy face and a bloody hand. “Who will ever know it was my hand that struck the killing blow?” he whispered with feral glee.
The vision changed, and I was aboard a ship going over the waves. Then I was in the sea, and the water about me was tinged with the red-haired woman’s blood, for she was beside me in the water. I tried to keep her afloat, but the waves were violent and kept tearing us apart.
“My daughter,” she rasped. “You are … you must …”
“Templeport ho!” a voice called, and I woke with a start to a blazing hot day, my head aching abominably.
I got up stiffly, disentangling myself from Dragon. I rubbed at my stiff back, ignoring Maruman’s grumbles at being disturbed.
The others were outside already when I got there, all pressed up against the side of the ship and staring out through the goldshot salt haze at Sador. I was astounded to see how high the sun was. I had slept near through to midday! The air outside was dry and hot, and breathing seemed to burn the inside of my nostrils.
The soaring sea cliffs lay before us, running as far as I could see in both directions. They were sheer and utterly inaccessible. But right ahead of us, the cliff was cracked as if split by a giant axe, and sand from the desert beyond had trickled out to form a spit, pointing out into the dark sea like a white finger. This, Powyrs said, was Templeport.
As we came closer to the tip of the peninsula, we could see a cluster of tents fluttering white like scattered blossoms, but there were no buildings and no greenery at all. Little wonder. The spit would be barren, saturated as it was with salt from the sea, and the pitiless heat would scorch anything that tried to grow. The shore wavered and danced through shimmering waves of heat, appearing as insubstantial as an illusion.
“How can anyone live here?” Miky said. This had been directed at Angina, but her twin was busy murmuring softly into Dameon’s ear, describing the scene.
I kept a tight shield around my mind, for Dameon always seemed to sense my darkest moods. The image of Freya and Rushton was still fresh in my mind, and I had no wish to confide my feelings to the empath, for all that I loved him dearly. Some pains were not to be shared.
“It is too hot,” Miryum grumbled, her voice slurred by her long sleep.
“You’d best get used to it,” Hannay said. “The ship will be cool compared to the land.”
“Hmm,” Miryum grunted. “Well, at least the ground will stand still under my feet.”
“There is the Earthtemple,” Powyrs said, pointing.
I scanned the spit for a building but could see nothing.
“Oh Lud,” Daffyd murmured suddenly. “There. In the cliff. No wonder it is called an Earthtemple.”
The Temple was part of the cliff and visible only because the cliff exterior was carved from top to bottom. Closer, I could make out windows in the carving. From the number of them, the Temple must be enormous.
I felt someone at my side.
It was Rushton, and his eyes were accusing. “I asked you to come and see me last night.”
“I … I had to see Fian,” I stammered. “He …”
Rushton’s eyes blazed with such fury, I faltered. He turned on his heel without a word and went to stand with Freya and Hannay.
“What in Lud’s name are those?” Angina exclaimed once we had disembarked.
He was pointing at a group of great, shaggy, dun-colored beasts with four legs and a lump of flesh pouting up from their backs.
“They are kamuli,” Powyrs said, looking over his shoulder with a grin. “The Sadorians use them rather than horses, and they are not mutants, however much they might look it. They existed in the Beforetime and were called ‘desert ships’ because they traverse the sands effortlessly with their soft, splayed hooves.”
“Sadorians do not use horses, then?” Freya asked curiously.
“Inland they do,” the seaman said. “Where the spice groves are, the ground is hard and there is thick forestation that makes horses more suitable as transport.”
I noticed Kella watching me and made an effort to look interested.
“Act,” Brydda had once advised me. “Pretend that you are clever, wise, brave, calm, courageous.” Pretend, and some of the time you can forget it is pretense.
It was incredibly noisy on the spit. Everyone seemed to shout at the top of their voice—a great deal of bartering took place literally from ship decks—and there was a tremendous bustle as people carried boxes and bundles to and from the ships. Yet the scene was, for all its loudness, curiously colorless. The savage blaze of the sun seemed to bleach everything to a blinding bone-whiteness that made my head pound and my eyes water. More than anything else, I longed to sit in a bit of shade and drink a cold mug of water.
Unfortunately, the only shade available was that cast by the towering Sadorian cliffs, looming on both sides of the sloping pass that led up to the desert, and that was a goodly step away.
Powyrs pointed out a spot farther up the spit where it widened at the base of the cliffs. “About halfway to the cliffs, there is a place where visitors set up their tents. Can you see them? Nearby are stalls where you can purchase food, and at the very base of the cliffs there is a freshwater spring. The water will cost you nothing, but you will have to change your coins for barter tokens at the Earthtemple if you want to buy food.”
Watching us go, the plump seaman gave Maruman, who was draped around my neck, a long look of bewildered wistfulness that spoke of the strength of his attachment. I had coerced all memory of their brief association from his mind, but clearly the impression h
ad been deep and some residue remained.
38
RUSHTON, HANNAY, AND Miryum cleared the rough shale and, with the twins’ aid, set about erecting the tents we had bought in Sutrium at Jakoby’s suggestion. Daffyd and Freya were charged with getting water, and Fian and I were to exchange our small store of coin for Temple barter tokens. Dameon elected to walk with us, and since the spring was on the way to the Temple, we went that far together.
I was relieved to find that Freya’s presence no longer disturbed me nearly as much as Rushton’s. Not that we did much talking. The heat beating down on our heads and thrown back as a reflection from the dazzling white sand was terrific. By the time we reached the cliffs, we were all gasping for breath.
We threw ourselves down at the edge of the icy spring and drank deeply before retreating into the dense shade cast by the cliffs.
“Incredible,” croaked Daffyd in a low voice.
“Where does such heat come from?” Freya asked weakly, fanning her face with her skirts.
“Ugh,” Fian groaned. “I’ve just realized we’ll have to climb up th’ rest of th’ spit to change th’ coins. Powyrs told me th’ Temple entrance can only be got to from th’ top of the cliffs.”
I would have groaned, too, if I had been able to spare the energy. The first impression of coolness in the shade had begun to abate, and already I was hot again. We sat a good while before I could bring myself to move.
Standing up reluctantly, I noticed two halfbreed gypsies among the throng of Sadorians. They stood out as much as we must in this land of tall, gold-skinned people in their flowing robes. Powyrs had said gypsies were treated well here. That being so, I had no doubt more would avail themselves of the coast road when the poisons had receded a little farther.
“Uh-oh,” Fian murmured.
He had risen, too, and was gazing back down the spit. I turned to see what had caught his attention. A number of gray-clad Landsmen stood talking, yellow cloaks fluttering at their shoulders—senior-ranking soldierguards.
I had known there were soldierguards in Sador, yet still it was a shock to see them. Even more so were the two Herders with them, clad in white robes and arrogance. I was astounded to see a number of Sadorians clustered about the priests. Could these possibly be converts?