“She tripped/stumbled in a pothole,” Gahltha sent as we lingered to allow her to catch up.
“I hinder you,” Faraf allowed regretfully.
“Never, little sistermind,” I assured her. “I was just about to suggest a stop.”
Miryum and one of her knights rode ahead to find a place out of sight of the main road. They returned and led us to a grassy glade to the east of the road, where there was a freshwater spring. The coercers built a scratch fire and boiled water for tea while Fian and I mixed a poultice of herbs and mud for Faraf’s leg.
“We will definitely have to stay th’ night at Tor,” Fian murmured as we applied the poultice.
I shrugged. “We’ll wait until this dries, and by then the swelling will have gone down enough to bandage it. See if anyone has cloth with them.”
Miryum brought me a mug of tea, and seeing everyone else preoccupied, I seized the opportunity to speak to her.
The coercer shrugged when I asked if she remembered the tribesman who had proposed to her in Sador, but she paled when I explained that he had escorted Faraf and Zidon to Obernewtyn with the express intention of claiming her as his bondmate.
“He must be mad!” she said incredulously. “I could not believe it was meant as anything other than a joke. How could a man offer a proposal to a stranger?”
“Well, it seems he did. Fortunately, given the Sadorian’s new attitude to beasts, his betrothal gift displeases him, and he means to ask you to name some desire that he can fulfill to replace the horses.”
“I will tell him there is no need for him to honor a betrothal promise to me.”
“I’m afraid he does honor it, and if you refuse, it is very likely that he will kill himself out of shame.”
She gaped at me, and seeing the flush play over her cheeks, it occurred to me for the first time that Miryum might want to accept the proposal.
“Do you want to bond with him?” I asked bluntly.
She looked mortified. “I did not even know his name until you said it!” I caught enough of her thoughts to see that she had ruled out love, feeling herself too plain to inspire it.
“The trouble is that you accepted the horses, so as far as Straaka is concerned, there is only the matter of the gift to be cleared up.”
Miryum shook her head and seemed to wake from a dream. “I will not bond with him nor any man. I am a knight and am sworn to chastity,” she said.
My temper frayed at her sudden reversion to grandiose heroine. “What in blazes is chastity?”
Her color deepened, but she said with less pomp, “It means we cannot give our bodies or minds or hearts to one person, for we are sworn to love all people equally.” Now it seemed there was a pleading look in her eye. “But I do not want him to die.”
I sighed. “At least you need not worry until the moon fair, for I asked Alad to relay the message that you would not give an answer until then. I will speak with Jakoby in the meantime and see what she can suggest.”
Miryum nodded and withdrew to sit, frowning and shaking her head as if she were conducting an inner dialogue.
I was bandaging Faraf’s leg when Gahltha sent a sharp warning that strangers approached. I cautioned the others to do nothing but act like gypsies and bid Gahltha lead the horses out of sight. I was not unduly bothered, since there was more than enough coercive talent among us to deal with trouble.
Five men and one woman leading saddled horses emerged from the trees. The woman had cropped yellow hair and was clad in peasant boots and fawn trousers, a loose tunic belted at her hips. The young man beside her had similarly colored hair and was dressed much the same but with a gorgeous green silk cloak, heavily embroidered at the hem with Council symbols, thrown over his shoulders. Three of the other men wore soldierguard cloaks, and the fifth was a thin, cringing fellow who looked like a farm worker.
“Here be gypsies,” he announced, as if no one would have known it without his saying so.
I rose up and bowed to the young Councilman in the perfunctory way gypsy halfbreeds had with such gestures.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“As you see, we drink tea dangerously,” I said.
“What is she saying?” he asked the woman, as if I spoke another language and must be interpreted.
“She said they are only drinking tea,” she said seriously, but her mouth twitched as if she was trying not to laugh. Her hair, though cut unusually severely for a woman, accentuated the beauty of her face and eyes.
“Who gave you permission to drink tea?” the Councilman demanded. The woman leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “Oh yes. I mean, who gave you leave to drink tea here!”
“I did not know this clearing was claimed to any farm holder. It is not fenced,” I countered mildly.
“It is not fenced,” one of the soldierguards snarled. “But it is claimed sure enough. By Bergold, son of Radost. All the land above Guanette to the western mountains is his, and any who goes there without permission will answer.”
“Fenced land is forbidden to us gypsies, but we may camp for up to three days wherever there are no fences,” I said, quoting Council lore.
“Filthy halfbreed. You dare to speak that way to Councilman Bergold?” The soldierguard unhooked his whip. “I will teach you to mind your manners.”
The young Councilman frowned and waved the man back. “Hold. Are you sure she is being insolent? After all, what she says is true. The land isn’t fenced.” He looked at the woman, and she came forward to his shoulder. “Do you think she is being insolent?”
Her eyes smiled, flickering above sober lips. “She is saucy, brother, but I think not insolent. Gypsies have that in their nature, so they cannot be blamed for it.”
“Yet Father blames you for your nature,” Bergold said. The woman made no response, but the yellow-cloaked soldierguard regarded her with fleeting hatred, which he swiftly masked.
“Well, I suppose one cannot have her whipped if sauce is in her blood,” the young Councilman decided.
“She should be whipped to set an example,” the yellow cloak snapped.
“I think you love your whip more than your manhood, Sestra; perhaps because it performs more willingly,” the woman said. She gave him no chance to reply to her insult, turning back to her brother. “I would release her with a warning, brother,” she advised. “After all, she can spread the word among her kind that this land is now yours, and no one else will trespass.”
Bergold brightened. “That’s so. Well, hear this, halfbreed: I will spare you, for gypsies can’t help their sauce, it seems. But you must show your gratitude by publishing my claim over this land.”
“I will let it be known among such of my people as I meet, and none who know will trespass, but I cannot promise to speak to every halfbreed.”
“The ones you know will do,” the woman said carelessly, now sounding bored. To her brother, she murmured that the word would spread soon enough regardless. “But it might be useful to have Sestra bang a few signposts into the ground along the road.”
“A good idea. See to that, Sestra,” the youth said imperiously. “In fact, we should post notices to ensure that my brother knows where my land ends and his begins.”
Thoughts running loudly under his words told me that Bergold’s older brother, Moss, resented not being given entire charge of the high country and both plots of land, and might well try to take more than his share.
The young Councilman scratched his head vigorously as if having his thoughts read itched him. I withdrew hastily in case he was mind-sensitive, then spoke to distract him.
“Shall we leave the fire alight for you to brew your own tea, sirrah?” I asked, rising.
Bergold shook his head. “I don’t like tea. I don’t suppose you have any ale?”
I caught the eye of his sister, who grinned at me. It was such a mischievous look that I was taken aback. She was entirely unlike any woman I had ever met.
“Well, what do ye make of all
that?” Fian asked after we had parted from them and were mounted up on the verge of the road.
“Bergold is clearly a simpleton, but the sister is not, and it seems as if she will keep a tight check on the soldierguards and her brother,” Miryum said.
I was less sure the sister could be so easily summed up, but I only said that I thought Bergold less a fool than simply young and not terribly bright.
“If th’ brother is anything like him, I’d say we have nowt to worry about,” Fian said.
But one of the coercer-knights said rather grimly that the two brothers were as different as night and day. “I lived in Sutrium before I came up here, and I knew Moss by reputation and sight. He was cruel and brutish even as a child.”
“Remember, too, Bergold may be relatively harmless, but Radost is his father,” Miryum pointed out.
Sobered by this, we rode silently until we came upon a place where the cliff had tumbled into a broken ramp that allowed us to leave the main road and make our way at last down to the White Valley. Through the trees, I caught the distant glitter of the upper Suggredoon, and beyond it, the Gelfort Range. There was neither a proper road nor a track once we reached the valley floor, but I was glad to dismount for a while. I loved riding, but I felt far more in touch with the land with it pressed against the soles of my feet. All of my senses seemed to sharpen. I heard small animals scurry away from us and the occasional bird call. Leaves rustled and branches creaked as we passed, twigs snapped underfoot, and whirring insects fell silent. The whole valley seemed significantly more overgrown than when I had last been there.
Reaching the river, we followed its bank until it switched back toward the road; then we set a straight course for Tor. Before long we came upon clear evidence of wagon ruts and recent passage. The coercers who always traveled with the teknoguilders were careful to erase all tracks before this point, but this was deep enough into the valley not to bother since no one would stumble upon them by chance. Here and there along either side of the track, among the tangle of fire-spawned regrowth, dead and utterly blackened trees rose up like shadowy accusers. It seemed the reek of smoke still lay over the place.
Eventually, the river looped back to meet us. When the undergrowth became less dense, we mounted up and alternated between trotting and walking, reaching the base of Tor late in the afternoon. Here the Suggredoon poured itself into the mountain via the gaping tunnel that led to the huge underground cavern housing the drowned Beforetime city.
We dismounted when we were within sight of the campsite, just as two teknoguilders came stumbling out of the tunnel, both blue to the lips and deathly pale. At first I thought something terrible had happened, but the coercer who had been on guard merely wrapped them in blankets, shaking his head.
I noticed both had wet hair. Without saying a word, I turned and strode into the tunnel, where the Teknoguild had chiseled a walkway above the water level. It had been widened considerably by the teknoguilders, but I was too outraged to pay much attention to this or to any other improvements.
I heard footsteps behind me. “What is the matter?” Miryum asked, her voice bouncing oddly from the stone walls.
“I don’t know, but I mean to find out,” I said grimly.
There were rush torches set into wall grooves, and these provided light as daylight faded behind us. We came into a newly widened section of the tunnel, where a shallow inlet had been created. Several rafts were tethered to a small wooden ramp. Here the walls were damp enough to provide habitat for the glowing insects that fed off tainted matter.
Miryum, Fian, and I boarded a raft, but the coercer-knights declined, preferring to walk. Miryum shrugged and poled us from the makeshift shore until the current picked us up and propelled us along the curving tunnel to the main cavern. She knew the currents, having been into the caves several times before. She did not like boat travel, but time on a raft did not affect her as sea travel had when we had gone to Sador.
As ever, I felt both wonder and horror at the sight of the Beforetime towers half submerged in the dark, oily-looking waters. From a distance, it seemed they had been untouched by the ages, but up close, their eroded surfaces resembled rich embroidery. Here and there were glowing patches of insects, and in other places gaping holes, or jagged sections where segments had fallen away.
I ran my eyes over the crumbling buildings, trying to envisage how they had looked when people had dwelt in them. Even now, flooded and cloaked in shadow, the city was an awe-inspiring creation. The horror was to understand that a people who had risen so high could have fallen so low.
The failings of the Beforetimers brought me back to Garth, and my anger swelled again. I was tempted to ask Fian if he had any idea what his master was up to, but I held my tongue, thinking I would give the edge of it to the Teknoguildmaster soon enough.
There were lights down at the end of the cavern, where the building that housed the Reichler Clinic Reception Center stood. Unlike many of the dead towers, this was built up at the shallow end of the cavern and had escaped the drowning. Or so we had imagined. If what the young teknoguilder said was true, what we thought of as the Reichler Clinic building was only part of it. The Teknoguild concentrated their activities here, not just because of our interest in the Clinic, but because the relative shallowness of the water meant there was less of a current and access to the dry parts was easier.
Miryum let the current carry us toward the light and wielded her pole only to prevent our being beached on the rubble islands created by fallen buildings. But when we were closer, she bid Fian take a pole, and between them they brought the raft out of the main channel and into a quiet canal that, far below, would be a side street. To go farther with the current would be dangerous, for it led to the hole where the water plunged steeply to the lowlands. Having miraculously survived that journey once, I had no desire to repeat it.
Gliding between the empty buildings, I imagined Hannah Seraphim hurrying along this very street with a book under her arm, or peering out one of the windows above.
Looking around, I spotted a haze of lights on a small pile of rubble partly obscured by other buildings. I pointed, and Miryum nodded and directed the raft that way.
As we drew nearer, I saw there was a great mass of things heaped about the edges of the isle. Some I recognized as equipment from the Teknoguild caves, but more looked as if it had been salvaged from the drowned city. The teknoguilders were all up at one end, clustered around a mass of tubes and lines of rope running from a square metal instrument down into the water. Several teknoguilders seemed to be working very hard operating the machine, while the rest stood by the water, looking down.
Garth was almost facing me as the raft made landfall, but so intent were they all on what they were doing that they did not even notice us.
“Do you see her?” I heard the Teknoguildmaster ask.
I signaled for Fian and Miryum to be silent so that I could listen, and stepped carefully from the raft.
“I think I see a light.” That was Louis Larkin’s voice. He was on his knees, peering into the water.
“There!” a girl cried. “It is a light. She’s coming up.”
“Silly little fool,” Garth muttered, sounding more exasperated than relieved.
I stepped up behind him and peered over his shoulder into the water just in time to see a pale, glowing face rise out of the depths. I gasped, for the body emerging was terribly bloated.
Garth clutched at his chest in fright and whirled to face me. “Elspeth! You gave me a fright coming up behind me like that!”
I couldn’t speak, though it was clear now that the girl was not gross from immersion but was clothed in some strange fleshy-textured suit, which even now Louis and the others were peeling from her. As with the two teknoguilders I had seen outside, her lips were blue and she was trembling violently. Around her neck swung a pair of glass goggles.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded of Garth.
“Do n-not bl-blame the guildmaster,”
the young teknoguilder said through chattering teeth. She took my wrist in an icy grip. “It is my fault for st-staying so long. G-Garth warned me but you cannot imagine how w-w-wonderful it is down there. You don’t even re-realize how cold you are getting.” She turned back to Garth. “It is lucky the glows started to fade—not a disadvantage after all th-that th- …” She could say no more for shivering, and Garth told her to go back to the camp with the others.
“We’ve done more than enough for the day,” he said, and looked at me cheerfully. “I hope you brought some food. I’m afraid there is not a great deal left to eat.”
I was speechless with outrage that he would dare to babble of food instead of explaining and defending his activities.
“I’ll gan out an’ light a fire,” Louis said with a laconic glance at me. He helped the shivering teknoguilder onto one of the rafts, and some of the others climbed aboard before Louis threw off the tether rope. Everyone else began to move about, covering equipment or winding tubes.
Garth sighed. “I know you are troubled, Elspeth, but they will push the time limit. Let us get back to camp.”
Fian and two more teknoguilders were already on a raft, and Miryum helped Garth and me aboard a third. When we were under way, he asked with infuriating calmness what brought me to Tor.
I gritted my teeth. “I came because I suspected you were having people try to swim down to this wretched cellar you’ve discovered. I couldn’t believe you would condone something so dangerous!”
“It is not terribly dangerous. The divers are well protected by the suits, and if they obey the time limits, they do not even become very cold. We did a great deal of research before anyone went down. Tomorrow I will show you how the air pump works. I assume you are staying the night. We have found a few interesting bits and pieces you might like to see.…”
My anger gave way to a kind of exhaustion. Talking to Garth was like trying to build a sand bridge in the path of the sea.
Miryum brought us swiftly to the small bay where the other rafts were tethered, and we were soon walking toward what little remained of the daylight. Garth was questioning Fian about Sador.