“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 uninhibited. 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.
I wondered if Matthew ever dreamed of us or of a dragon flying at him in the night. Then I reminded myself that for now I must focus on the rebellion and the need to find Rushton. Once the Land was secure in the hands of the rebels, and Rushton in his rightful place as Master of Obernewtyn, I could pursue the signs and dreamtrails with renewed purpose.
23
ALAD TOLD ME that there had been no news of Rushton, not by bird nor from the returned coercer-knights nor from the futuretellers.
“We will find him,” I said, dismayed to hear that I sounded more desperate than determined. I turned away from the flash of pity in his eyes, saying he had better come up to the house as soon as he had a chance.
By the time I was through the maze, I had composed myself; after all, it was hardly as if I had been expecting news from Rushton. I had hoped for it, but a dashed hope had not changed the situation for the worse or better. Walking along the stone passage leading to the Farseeker hall, I farsought Ceirwan before remembering that he was still in the lowlands.
I sent a tuned probe to locate Zarak and found him in the Healer hall. I returned his greetings, then asked him to summon the guildleaders.
“It will take some time for Garth to get here from the caves. Shall I tell Roland and the twins they are to come to your chamber once he arrives?”
“There is no need for them to come at the same time,” I said.
When the contact between us was severed, I farsent Miryum to ask her to attend a meeting with me in Gevan’s stead. She responded by saying she would come to represent the knights but that Rhianon should represent Gevan. She said they would come directly.
As I climbed the stairs to my chamber, I realized Gevan had been right in seeing that Miryum would use the situation to separate the knights from the Coercer guild. I could not decide if it was a bad thing, for she and the knights were proving to be a very useful mobile force and would no doubt continue to do so in the coming conflict.
I was disappointed to find my turret room empty, but it was hardly a surprise that Maruman would be elsewhere, for the air was dank and chilly despite the sun shining outside. It was strange how rooms deprived of their occupants developed a neglected air. I lit a fire, washed the travel dust from myself, and changed into a long dress and soft slippers, throwing a shawl over my shoulders to ward off the chill of the stone until the fire could warm the room. All the while, I mulled over how to explain to the others what had transpired at the rebel meeting.
Strictly speaking, our agreement to take a limited role in the rebellion should not have been made without guildmerge approval, but we had agreed in principle that there would be times when it was impossible to meet and vote before making crucial decisions. Even so, I kept my fingers crossed that if Maryon disagreed with our decision, she would merely be personally opposed rather than offering a definite futuretelling against it, because I had virtually committed us to involvement in the rebellion and the reshaping of the Land that would follow.
There was a timid knock at the door, and Aras appeared with a welcome tray of food. “I thought you might be hungry,” she said shyly.
“You read my mind,” I quipped, half expecting her to laugh as Ceirwan would have done, but she merely looked shocked and said she would never do such a thing. Sighing a little as she set out the utensils, I found myself missing Ceirwan more than ever. How I wished he and Rushton and all the others were safe at Obernewtyn and the pass blocked with wintertime ice. It was a childish wish, given what was unfolding. Very soon, many more of our number would ride out into danger, and it was I who had initiated the exodus. We were approaching the end of an era. Once the rebellion ended, there was no knowing how our lives would be changed. The only certainty was that they would be changed. I made another fruitless wish: that I would not have to face this moment without Rushton.
“Guildmistress?” Aras looked up from pouring some steaming herb tea.
“It’s nothing,” I said, realizing I must have sighed. I accepted a mug from her and sipped at its contents, enjoying the underlying flavor of ginger. My mother had seen it as a purifying herb, but it always made me feel more comforted than purified, perhaps because of its association with her.
As Aras smeared a wedge of vegetable slice onto a chunk of crusty bread and passed it to me, there was another knock at the door, and Alad entered without waiting for a response, puffing slightly. “I’m sorry, I thought you were in the library.” He helped himself to some food, declining Aras’s offer of tea. “I forgot to mention to you on the farms that I had seen the refuge that the Teknoguild has created. They have done a fine job, but there is still much to do.”
“It may be that—” I began, but there was another knock at the door. Miky and Zarak entered.
“Dell has gone to fetch Maryon, and Roland will be here soon,” Zarak said.
“He’s finishing a foul preparation for Javo’s bunions,” Miky reported with a grimace. “I didn’t wake Angina because Zar said it wasn’t a proper merge.”
I waved them to get stools and sit and, without preamble, outlined what had happened at the rebel meeting, including Malik’s use of the Herder-designed demon band. “I have not brought you here to vote on anything but merely to tell you what was decided and to ask you to compile a list of suitable candidates from your guilds—preferably those whose primary or secondary skills are empathic, coercive, or far seeking.…”
“So we are to join the rebellion after all,” Alad murmured. “The animals will be glad, for it will give them the opportunity to organize more escapes.”
I told him of the rumors circulating the lowlands of a band of beast thieves, and he grinned but absently, for his mind was audibly running over the members of his guild and their secondary skills. I was a little surprised that he did not dispute our decision.
“So this demon band does not work on empaths?” Miky asked.
“That’s what Gevan said, but you can question your own people when they return with him. We’ll have a proper guildmerge tomorrow to decide on who will go where,” I said. “With less than a sevenday before the rebellion begins, we will have to move swiftly. The rebels are literally awaiting our arrival to be able to reveal their plans to their own people. Those sent to the west coast will need all that time to reach their destinations. Those going to towns or villages in the upper lowlands and highlands won’t need to ride out for a couple days, though.”
“Gahltha will have told Avra by now, but we’ll still have to make a formal request to the Beastguild for support. How many people will be needed altogether?” Alad asked.
“Gevan and I thought at least three of us should join each of the thirteen rebel groups,” I said. “Thirty-nine altogether. We felt that three could look after one another better than two if something went wrong.”
“Sort of like the whiplash,” Zarak put in eagerly. “They’ll all be working for the same thing, but they have to be able to mesh as lone units as well.”
“A good example,” I said appreciatively. “Speaking of which, how is the whiplash progressing?”
“I think you’ll be surprised,” Zarak said with a sideways smile at Aras.
“I can see why we are offering help to the rebels, but I do not like our p
eople being decoys for Malik,” Alad said.
“I don’t trust him either,” I admitted. “That’s why I will be one of the three going to his group in Guanette.”
“No one is going to agree to that, and you know it. You can’t risk yourself, not with Rushton lost to us.”
“Given Maryon’s prediction, I doubt Obernewtyn is going to be any safer than anywhere else for the next little while. And I can handle Malik. I am easily as strong at coercing as Miryum and Gevan, and I have other Talents.”
“All of which will be useless, given that Malik wears one of these demon bands,” Miky said. “What is needed is an empath. I will go.”
“I’m afraid it can’t be you, Miky,” I responded. “Your first priority has to be helping Angina with Dragon.”
There was another peremptory knock, and Miryum entered with a grave-faced Rhianon.
Once they understood what was happening, Miryum suggested that as many knights as possible be included. They were well used to roaming the countryside and fending for themselves, and they could fight with their minds and their bodies.
“How many of you are there?” I asked.
“Ten, counting Straaka.”
I made no comment on this surprising addition. “Very well. Then I suggest that one of your knights travels with each of the groups going to the west coast. That makes five.…”
“The other five ought to act as Malik’s decoys,” Miryum said, but I shook my head.
“I think more than five of us will be required, and we will need empaths in case some of the soldierguards are wearing demon bands.”
“The decoy team ought to have beastspeakers as well,” Alad interjected. “To quiet guard dogs and to slow the horses carrying the soldierguards after us.”
“It might be wise to have the west coast group traveling together in magi wagons,” Rhianon suggested. “The rumor of the magi is bound to have reached that far by now, and it will ensure them a warmer welcome than halfbreeds usually get.”
Maryon entered so silently that none of us heard the door. I was struck by her calm expression.