I turned to Dameon and touched his arm. “Is he … he is not hurt?”
Kella looked exasperated. “Oh, Elspeth. Rushton has been odd ever since the Battlegames. He blames himself for our defeat.”
“He walks alone and hardly eats,” Miryum said. “He refuses to lead us.”
As they settled back into their tasks, I looked around at the others. At Miryum brooding over our loss of the games as Hannay worked to cheer her; at Fian and Kella grinding leaves for herb paste; at Freya and Dameon, settling in to listen as Angina and Miky sat side by side, practicing a new song. Angina still bore the great bruised lump on his forehead from the Battlegames, but their faces were serene.
I thought of the song they had chosen for the Battlegames, and in a flash, I understood the power it had possessed. The empaths had sung it before, never knowing why the soldier sang. But now they understood. No wonder it had reached even the hardened hearts of warriors, for there was truth in it.
I stared wildly about me, and the icy wall of detachment that had risen around me came crashing down.
Atthis had told me once that I should go to Obernewtyn and aid the Misfits in their struggle because it was worthy. I had gone and I had worked alongside the others, but I had always felt myself to be marking time, waiting for my true quest to begin. Now I saw that the two quests were parts of the same purpose. One without the other was meaningless.
Bram had been right to judge us unfit warriors. And perhaps in a world without threat of extinction from the weapons of the past, Obernewtyn would be free to usher in a new breed of humanity that would not take the same terrible path to destruction as the Beforetimers.
“What is it?” Kella asked, and I realized I had begun to grin like a fool.
I looked around and found they were all watching me. I took a deep breath.
Rushton had said we would learn about ourselves by taking part in the Battlegames and competing with the rebels. Well, we had learned all right. We had learned what it truly cost to be warriors. We had learned that the price was too high.
Losing the Battlegames had been the best thing that could have happened to us.
43
I FOUND RUSHTON sitting on a rock and staring out to sea.
“You haven’t failed us,” I said softly. “We haven’t failed.”
He was still for a moment. “Elspeth. I am glad you are well.” His voice was dull, and he did not turn. I had never heard him sound so defeated.
“Listen to me—”
“I have called myself your leader,” he said. “I thought to guide you all to battle, because I imagined your powers would fit you better for war, that all you needed was a leader to bind and direct you. But you are not meant for war. I failed you because I did not understand the truth of you.”
“If there is any fault, it belongs equally to all of us,” I protested.
He shook his head lethargically, but still he would not turn to face me.
“What will happen to you and the others when the Council sends its soldierguards to clear out Obernewtyn, Elspeth? Or when rebels like Malik come to wipe you from the earth? I wanted to protect you.”
“Us,” I said firmly, gently. “Us.”
“I am not one of you,” he said. “I have wanted to be and I have dreamed of it … but I know now that it will never be.”
“Of course you are one of us,” I said sharply. “Besides, leadership has nothing to do with your being a Misfit. You began this. You freed us and gave us a place and time to grow.”
“But I was wrong.…”
“So were we,” I cried. “I was the one who wanted to show the rebels our power and our might. If anyone is a fool, it is me.”
“You have the right to make such decisions,” he said more strongly. “Whereas I … I cannot even access my Talents without help.”
“You think there is something wrong with needing help?”
“It is a weakness.”
“Now you sound like Malik,” I said hotly. “And maybe that’s the point. Maybe there is a little of Malik in all of us. In spite of what Bram said, I have the feeling we could be like him if we wanted to badly enough. A Malik, after all, would never need help. Our need for one another is what makes us better than him!”
Now he did turn around. “You can say that? You, who never needed anyone in your life?”
“No one could say it with greater truth,” I said sadly.
“And what happens when you cannot have what you need?” he demanded angrily.
That was a question I could not yet begin to answer. I knew only that, though Rushton might not love me, there was far more at stake here than my feelings. “Look, I’m trying to tell you that what we learned in the Battlegames was important. We needed to know what we couldn’t do so that we could begin to think of what we can do. Remember Maryon said this journey had something to do with finding the right road? Can’t you see that we’ve done that?”
He shook his head. “Will that knowledge show you how to deal with the soldierguards?” Rushton asked, apathy returning to his tone.
I held on to my temper with difficulty. “It might. Misfits are hated and persecuted because people fear us. The Herder Faction and the Council enhance that fear, just as Angina enhances Miky’s songs. Maybe the answer isn’t to fight and force and make, but to show. To empathise. To let them understand us so that they will see there is nothing to fear from us. I think we should try to reshape ourselves and our purposes around empathy.”
“You are not an empath,” Rushton said.
“No, but I can try to understand and care for the unTalents. Any one of us can learn to do that.”
Rushton made a choking sound and turned away again. “You do not understand. How could you?”
A spurt of anger made me reach out and pull him back to look at me. “What do you know of how I feel? Do you think I am a machine like the ones the Beforetimers made?”
“I do not know,” Rushton said with a sudden fierce bitterness. “I know nothing, because you have never let me know. Because I am not like you.”
I gaped at him, my anger slipping away. “Not like you? What are you talking about? I have just been telling you …”
“Then why?” he asked softly, a world of pain in his voice. “Why will you never let me come near? Why do you reject me with every look and word if not because … I cannot reach my Talent, because I am not …” His voice faded away.
Had I understood correctly? “But surely Freya …,” I said faintly.
He nodded. “She is an enhancer. She has tried to teach me to use my powers, and we have had some success.” He paused. “Though I don’t know how you could know of it—but it is too little when you are … what you are.”
I gazed at him, incredulous, my mind rearranging itself like the colors of a kaleidoscope. He thought I did not love him because he could not use his Talent. He and Freya had been trying to reach his powers so that he would be worthy of me!
In that moment, I saw that if my quest to dismantle the weaponmachines and Obernewtyn’s future were bound together, so were Obernewtyn and I bound up as one in Rushton’s mind. In feeling he had failed one, he now felt he had failed the other.
But he had failed at neither. And I?
I understood that this was a moment that might never come again. I had learned the hardest way of all that beauty and happiness, like life, were ephemeral and could no more be saved up for later than a sunbeam could be hoarded. If I would have any life with Rushton, I must take it now, for now was all there ever was.
“What am I, Rushton?”
His eyes flared with a naked longing that seemed to suck the breath out of me.
He stood up suddenly, and I stepped back, almost frightened.
“You are everything,” he said roughly, hopelessly. “Freya said to give you time, and I tried. But you have gone further and further from me. I have been a fool to imagine that you would ever care for me.…” He shook his head, and the light faded from his eyes, l
eaving them dull and sad.
“You are a fool, all right,” I said tartly, half laughing.
He frowned at me, and my smile faded at the hurt in his face.
“You are a fool for thinking you failed Obernewtyn. You will go on leading us as we strive to find some other way to make our place in the world.”
He began to shake his head, but I reached out my hand and laid it against his cheek.
He stood very still, and I let my hand slide around until my fingers were against his lips.
“I love you, and I have done ever since I saw you at Obernewtyn carrying that silly pig,” I said simply, looking steadfastly into his eyes. “I just had to grow up enough not to be frightened of what I felt.”
Rushton’s face did not change, and for a moment, doubt flickered in me. But then I banished it, for surely nothing required courage so much as love, and I was equal to it.
Swallowing the fears of a lifetime, I reached out my mind, passing the barriers Rushton could not broach, and opened myself to him.
Only then did he move, and faintly, so faintly I could barely catch it, I heard his whisper inside my mind. “Ravek, my Elspethlove.”
EPILOGUE
MARUMAN GAVE ME a jaded look. “And what answer will that be?”
I leaned on the tower sill and looked out into the first flurry of wintertime snow, pulling my cloak about me.
“I don’t know, Maruman. But we have begun to find it—Rushton and I, the guildmerge and beasts. And whatever it is, it will be the right answer, because it comes out of us and what we are.”
“You will never make the funaga-li accept you,” Maruman sent.
“Maybe that’s the mistake we’ve made all along. Trying to make people accept us. I don’t think making is going to be part of our answer.”
I thought of Brydda. Just before we left Sador, he had come to the ship with Jakoby.
With them had been Miryum’s Sadorian suitor leading little Faraf and the giant horse, Zidon, which Malik had ridden. He had gone to the Coercer guilden and held out the lead ropes to her. She had stared up at him suspiciously.
“They are a gift—” Jakoby began.
Miryum interrupted, stilted and awkward. “Well, that’s all right, then.…” She took the ropes from the Sadorian’s hand.
The man gave her a look of such burning intensity that her polite thanks faded. Then he turned and walked away. Miryum looked even more bewildered.
“They are his bondgift to you,” Jakoby had told the astonished coercer then. “That you accepted them means you have accepted him as your ravek. When he is ready, he will come for you. That is the Sadorian way.”
Miryum’s mouth fell open.
Jakoby then turned to Rushton. “I ask a boon of you, Leader of the Misfits.”
This was the last thing we had expected.
“Bram and I ask that one of your empaths remain in Sador as a guest of the Earthtemple. We would have speech with you, for there is much about your people that intrigues us. This guest would be greatly honored and shown things none has seen before who was not of our people.”
She and Brydda had withdrawn a little at this so that we could discuss it amongst ourselves.
“I will stay,” Dameon had said without preamble. “This must be my task, for there has been nothing else for me to do. This must be why I was sent here.”
Miky and Angina had chorused horror, offering themselves in his place.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I want to stay. I am not sacrificing myself. It is … a selfish desire. I can learn much of these people, and perhaps teach them something. They have such a strange mixture of barbaric instincts and true wisdom. There is much in them that calls to me. The very fact that they regard empathy so …”
Rushton reached out and gripped his shoulder. “Dameon, I … I know why you would remain here.”
To my surprise, the empath had flushed. “Then you must let me stay.”
There was a long moment, and I wondered at this strangeness between them. Rushton expelled a breath of air. “Very well. One season. When wintertime is over and the pass is thawed, we will come for you. The two horses will stay here as well, for, in any case, they would not like the sea journey.”
I shivered. So already there was talk of returning. I seemed to see the ruined face of the overguardian of the Earthtemple, telling me that the Seeker would come to Sador in search of some fifth sign.
“You cannot stay alone,” Rushton was saying to Dameon. “Someone must stay with you to be your eyes and guard you.”
“I will stay,” Fian offered eagerly. “I will protect Dameon with my life and soul. And I can research this region for Garth.”
“I can protect him best,” Hannay said, flexing his muscles.
There was some more talk and more offers to accompany the Empath guildmaster, but in the end, Dameon and Fian stayed because it was felt there would be no need for guards. The Sadorians had too much honor to let anyone harm a guest.
Saying goodbye to Dameon had been harder than I could have imagined. I would have opened my mind and heart to him, but he had set a wall between us. Perhaps so that he would not be hurt by our sorrow at this parting; perhaps because he still felt Matthew’s loss.
“It will not be the same without you,” I had whispered, holding him tightly.
“Ever was Obernewtyn empty when you were not there,” he had said. “Yet I survived, and you will survive.”
“Rushton needs you, especially now.”
“He does not need me, especially now,” the empath said. “He has what he has long desired.”
I felt the blood surge in my face.
He smiled, his blind eyes turned to me. He reached up and touched my hair and face, running his fingers over me lightly. Seeing. I made myself smile so that he would think of me that way. His fingers had reached my lips and seemed to tremble before he took them away.
He had embraced a tearful Miky and a pale Angina then, reminding them that they would rule the Empath guild in his stead.
“Only until you come back,” Miky choked.
Dameon kissed her cheek and then farewelled Freya, who had not known him long and yet wept, too.
“I am ready now,” he said. Smiling farewell, Fian had offered his arm to the empath. As they departed, Rushton put his arm around my shoulders and held me tightly. “He will be well, Elspeth. He … he needs to do this. It is but a season.”
Then Brydda had come to bid us farewell. “I wish things might have been different.”
“Perhaps this is for the best.” Rushton clasped the big rebel’s wrist. “I thought an alliance was the answer, but we would want such different things after it was over, and we will always be Misfits to them. We must be what we are.”
Rushton’s eyes had shifted to me fleetingly, and this time I had not flinched from the desire in them. If there was a loss in loving, I was learning that there was a finding in it, too.
Brydda had looked from one of us to the other and then had leaned across to embrace me. “Goodbye, little sad eyes, though they are not so sad now.”
“You will always have our friendship, Brydda. No matter what,” I said.
He had crushed my hand then. “Friends. Always,” he said gruffly. “No matter what.”
And so we had gone our separate ways. He to his rebellion, and we, first by sea to Sutrium, only to find that Domick had not yet returned, and then home to Obernewtyn—where I belonged; where Dragon lay in her endless coma; where Matthew might one day return; my home, which I must someday leave forever to take up the dark burden of my destiny.
“What if the oldOne calls before this answer is found?” Maruman asked. “Will you obey? Will you walk the dark road?”
I shivered as the bitter wind changed direction slightly, pressing its icy fingers through the folds of my cloak. The snow was falling more heavily now, blurring the jagged darkness of the mountains, making them seem far away. “All roads are the one road. I gave my promise,” I
sent soberly. Then I smiled. “But there are five secrets to be uncovered, and I must one day return to Sador, and I must stand in battle with a gypsy whose life is bound to mine. These things will not happen in a moment, and so there is time in the midst of this for me to live.
“Atthis has not summoned me yet, and perhaps the call to walk the dark road will not come until I am old and gray. I have promised to go, but I have not sworn to live out my life in the dark shadow of that vow. I have learned that happiness is like the sun. It must be enjoyed when it comes and while it shines.”
But Maruman was not listening. He was looking up, searching for the moon’s cold face.
for my many-talented sister Ellen
1
IT WAS A chill, moonless night, the only light a raw glow from the fire in a stone-lined pit that reflected dully on the cobbles around its edge. Everything that lay outside the reach of the fire’s brooding lume was lost in that blackest shadow that seems to attend any night light. Sometimes it seems to me that the dark is drawn to the light, as a moth to flame. Maybe it is the nature of all things to be pulled toward their opposites.
I dragged my eyes from the hypnotic lurching of the flames, determined to read on while I was yet undisturbed. Holding the pages instinctively to the light, though the marks on them would have been all but invisible even in daylight, I ran the tips of my fingers over the rough lines of holes in the paper. I had learned the code of prickings much as I once learned my letters, and I knew the words they shaped, yet skimming over what I had read before, it seemed that other meanings hovered above them.
Perhaps this was only because he who had made them did not see the world with his eyes but with his other senses. I could smell and hear and taste, too, of course, but not as well as Dameon. Since he lacked sight, his other senses had gained strength to compensate.
When he had pricked the pages he had been sending me, had Dameon realized more than the words he set down? Knowing him, I could not doubt it, for he was ever subtle. As an empath, he had the power to read emotions and transmit them, yet I had always attributed his keen perception to his blindness rather than to his Talent. Of course, it was impossible to try to separate their effect on him, for together they made Dameon what he was.