Farther down the clearing, the gypsy beasthealer Darius limped toward Lina and two other beastspeakers who were sitting with a badly injured horse. Several other bandaged horses stepped aside as the old man drew near. He had a painful lurching walk, because, aside from a crippled leg, his spine was twisted so that his back rose up into a hump. Nevertheless, his skill with beasts was formidable. Many more would have died without his help, and already both the beastspeakers and beasts regarded him with reverence.
“Seven of ours dead,” Aras murmured, as if she needed to say the words aloud to begin to believe them. I turned to see that she was hanging another pot of sour-scented herb water, which Darius used in his healings, over the flames to heat. Her face was filthy except for the tracks made down it by tears. She had taken an arrow through the fleshy part of her thigh, but the wound was not serious.
“Eight if you count Straaka,” Gevan said wearily, nodding to where the Sadorian lay. Miryum was still sitting a lonely vigil beside him, stroking his limp hand and muttering to herself.
“How could Malik do such a terrible thing?” the young ward asked. She poked a stick needlessly into the fire under the pot.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. But I should have known, I thought bleakly.
“Humans seem ever capable of exceeding the lowest expectations,” Swallow said, coming to stand by the fire.
Aras gazed up at him, her face transformed by an adoring awe. “You saved our lives,” she said breathlessly. The gypsy made a negating gesture.
“She is right,” Gevan said stoutly. “You did save our lives, Swallow, and you have our heartfelt thanks for it. Malik would have stood by and watched us hacked to pieces if you had not happened along.”
“So that is who he was,” Swallow murmured. “Malik’s name is well known among the halfbreeds for his brutality. I only wish I’d been a bit quicker in getting here, but we had trouble finding a way to bring the wagons down into this cursed Valley.”
I looked over to where Angina lay.
He had not yet regained consciousness, and it was possible that he never would. An arrow had grazed the boy’s temple, and though seemingly a slight wound, it had caused internal damage, much of which could only be repaired by his own body. Miky had not left his side, and seeing the desperate intensity in her expression, I sensed she was using all her empathy to bind her twin to life.
I knew I ought to go to her, but when I tried getting up, Swallow caught my arm, pulling me to sit back down. “Just stay there, Elaria. You are in shock.”
I had no energy to resist him. It was all I could do to lift a hand and push back a strand of hair. I noticed that my fingers trembled violently and understood that if my body was weak, my mind was worse. It was possible that what had happened back on the main road had permanently harmed me in some way, but I could not summon up enough concentration to care. What use were all my powers if they could not keep those I loved safe?
Swallow dippered a mug of warm water from the pot and handed it to me. “It’s not hot yet, but the herbs in it will help to steady you.”
I drank only because I sensed he would force me if I refused. The liquid tasted foul, but my mind did seem to clear somewhat.
I knew that, given the time, the rebels would be in the midst of taking Sutrium. I had intended to ride down to the coast after the decoy operation to join them, but the night’s events had sucked all meaning from the rebellion. Soon we would light funeral fires for the beasts and beastspeakers, who preferred their bodies to be disposed of as beasts were, and later, all the remaining human dead, including the two soldierguards, would be buried. Too much death.
The only thing that raised a flicker of emotion in me was the possibility that other Misfits were among treacherous rebels, perhaps soon to be betrayed and slaughtered, because I had underestimated the loathing of unTalents. They had to know what the rebels were capable of.
Of course, Ceirwan must have seen Malik ride by. If so, he would have wondered at the absence of Misfits among the party. He would have probed their minds to learn what had transpired; therefore, he would know that we had been betrayed by Malik, and he would have warned Zarak.
Or would he? The terrifying swish of arrows and the screams of humans and horses rose in my mind with such ghastly clarity that I felt myself near to fainting.
After the funeral fires are lit, I will ride, I vowed.
I heard Aras ask, “How did you come to be in the Valley, uh … Swallow?”
The gypsy shrugged. “Luck guided us to your aid.” The pot of water began to boil, and he asked Aras to take it to Darius.
When she had gone, I said softly, “It was not luck that brought you to our rescue.”
He smiled, his teeth white against his dark, shining skin, but his eyes were serious. “I told you once that I had a vision we would stand together in battle when next we met.”
“That doesn’t explain how you came to be here tonight,” I persisted.
“A voice in my dreams bade me ride to the highlands with all haste, lest you perish and all promises be broken,” he said in a low, intimate tone.
I shivered. “A voice …”
“The same that sent me to save you from being whipped to death in Sutrium. And again I obeyed.”
I had once felt sure that the mysterious voice that had sent Swallow to my aid in Sutrium belonged to the Elder of the Agyllians, Atthis, and that the gypsy’s babble about my involvement in his people’s ancient promises was no more than some sort of coerced vision, implanted by the bird to make him biddable. But knowing that Twentyfamilies gypsies had carried two panels of wood to Obernewtyn containing a message to me carved by the mysterious Kasanda, I had to accept that our lives might be truly linked.
“These promises … to whom were they made?”
“To the first D’rekta, who led our people from the lands that were destroyed by the Great White to the country of the Red Queen.”
I gaped at him. “The … the Red Queen?”
He nodded. “The first D’rekta brought our people to her land. The Red Queen gave them refuge, but after many years, the D’rekta had a vision and asked the people to travel yet again with her. Many refused, for they had intermarried with the Red Queen’s people, and the D’rekta would not reveal her vision to any but those who had sworn to go. It is said that those in whom she confided walked silent and pale until the boat that the Red Queen commanded to be built was completed. But they did not tell what they had learned, for the D’rekta forbade them to speak of her vision henceforth, even to their own children.”
“Then you can’t know what her vision was,” I murmured, fascinated to discover that the first D’rekta had been a woman. But I was more intrigued by his talk of a Red Queen. I wanted to know the whereabouts of her land very badly, but some instinct bade me not to come upon it too bluntly. I asked, “Why did the Red Queen build the D’rekta a ship?”
“The two had become as sisters when the D’rekta bonded with the Red Queen’s brother,” Swallow said. “He died not long before the D’rekta had her vision, and many of the people who refused to go thought the vision a product of her grief.”
“What happened to her bondmate?”
Swallow shrugged. “He was killed by sea raiders. It is said that the queen wept as the boat was launched. Some say she did so because she grieved still for her brother, and others claim she wept because the D’rekta had revealed the vision to her. Still others say she shed tears for she knew that the D’rekta carried within her a child of royal blood when the ship set forth on its perilous journey to this Land.”
“The D’rekta’s vision brought them here? Why?”
“I cannot say,” Swallow said.
“Are the ancient promises about the vision?”
“In a sense, they are, but I cannot say more than that.”
“But you once said you saw me speak those promises,” I protested. “You said I was involved in them.”
He nodded gravely. “That is so.
But I do not know how the knowledge of them comes to you. Only the D’rektas know the words, and you have never met my father. Nor would he have told you, for we were bade keep our secret.”
Weary of his mystical talk, I remembered that I had questions of my own to ask. “Did you … did you ever hear of a woman named Kasanda?”
“No. Who is she?” The gypsy’s face was blank.
I sighed. “She was a woman who made a wood carving I have seen.”
Swallow’s dark eyes glimmered. “Perhaps she was a student of the D’rekta, then, for carving was her greatest skill. She learned it as a girl in the Beforetime, but she perfected her ability with the stone-carvers in the Red Queen’s country. When she came to the Land, she took students and taught carving throughout her pregnancy.”
I gaped at him, an incredible thought forming in my mind. “The … the D’rekta was a carver?”
“A master carver,” Swallow said, giving me a curious look.
I struggled to compose myself, dizzy at the possibility that the first gypsy D’rekta and the mysterious Kasanda might be the same woman!
Swallow misunderstood my reaction. “Is it so shocking to you that a woman shaped stone? It is true that here in this Land it is not common, but our stories tell that in the Beforetime and also in the land of the Red Queen, many women did so. Of course, it was not only stone that she shaped. All substances became graceful beneath her fingers. Glass and jewels and wood as well as metals. It was she who taught the Twentyfamilies the skills that allow us to tithe to the Council for safe passage.”
“What was the D’rekta’s name?” I asked, hoping I did not sound as breathless as I felt.
He shrugged. “I do not know that I ever heard it spoken.”
I wanted desperately to ask if the D’rekta had sent her people throughout the Land with her works—the signs—but feared this might come into the forbidden area of the ancient promises. “The original D’rekta brought your people here, and she negotiated with the Council to pay a tithe that let you have safe passage. Then what?”
“The D’rekta did not bargain for safe passage, though the statue that marks that pact is her work.…”
His words were virtually a paraphrasing of the fourth line in the message left on the doors of Obernewtyn!
“Why didn’t she make the pact?” I asked tensely.
“A vision took her from us before the day of the pact-signing came,” Swallow said simply.
“She … she was not taken by slavers, then,” I muttered, wondering how else she would have come to be with the Gadfians.
Swallow gaped at me in disbelief. “How could you know that?”
It was some seconds before I could speak, for the desire to do so warred with Atthis’s warning to tell no one of my quest. “I, too, have dreams,” I managed finally, taking refuge in mystery.
“You dreamed of the D’rekta?” Swallow asked very deliberately.
“You said a vision took her,” I countered.
He frowned. “There is dispute among the older ones over this matter. You see, slavers took her as she walked alone on a beach one night. But the day before, she had announced that she must go on a journey from which she would never return.
The Twentyfamilies mourned her loss to the slavers, believing that evil chance had stolen her from her intended journey, but the D’rekta’s son argued that his mother had foreseen the coming of the slavers, that she had walked upon the beach alone deliberately, knowing that it was their unwitting task to take her where she must go. He named himself D’rekta and vowed to honor and abide by the ancient promises, lest her vision be corrupted.” Swallow shook his head. “I have sometimes wondered what it must have been like, driven by visions into the hands of slavers. I do not think I could have given myself to them so wholly.”
You could, I thought somberly, if you knew what would come should you fail to obey the visions. I knew very well what the D’rekta’s quest had been. Was it not my own now?
“The D’rekta’s son …,” I murmured.
“He took her place as the leader of my ancestors, and he made the pact of safe passage with the Council in his mother’s stead.”
“Do the ancient promises have anything to do with the things the D’rekta carved?” I asked, hoping to surprise a response from him. His eyes flickered, but he only gave me a bland look, and it struck me that he had been more forthcoming when last we had spoken. Perhaps becoming D’rekta had made him more circumspect.
“Can you at least tell me if any of her stone carvings remain in the Land?”
“They do, but I may not reveal what they are or where they can be found,” Swallow said.
“Can you tell me where the D’rekta’s son was born?”
He considered this, then said, “He was born on the west coast, where our people dwelled for a time before we began to travel the long road.”
Suddenly a thought occurred to me. “You … you are a descendant of … the D’rekta,” I said. “You are of her blood.”
“I, and others of the Twentyfamilies,” Swallow agreed, looking puzzled.
But you have seen yourself standing beside me, I thought; and all at once I knew, as if I were a futureteller, that Swallow would be the one to go with me when I returned to Sador to seek the fifth sign—the one of Kasanda blood.
“I wish I could help you further, Elaria, but I must obey the ancient promises made to the D’rekta,” he said heavily. “I am no longer a man who may obey his own whims and desires.”
“I am sorry about your father.…”
“There was no love between us, and I mourn him less than the loss of my freedom. He was neither a good father nor a particularly good D’rekta.” He gave me a long measuring look, then gestured about the clearing. “What will you do now?”
The despair that had sapped my will and wits had largely abated during our conversation, but my heart sank a little as I thought of what lay ahead. Yet, as Swallow had his responsibilities, so I had mine.
“I must ride down to Sutrium,” I said. “The rebels will have secured the city if their plans have progressed as they hoped, and tonight they will move on the west coast. My friends are among them, and they must know what happened here.”
“It surprises me that you would ally with these rebels when they would betray you because of what you are.”
“And what do you think we are?” I asked warily.
He smiled sardonically. “I believed you and your friends to be escapees from the Councilfarms when last we met, but our seers tell me that you are Misfits of a special kind. And Malik’s loathing of all Misfits is well known.”
“We had no choice,” I said.
“There is always choice. But perhaps in some things, no choice is good.”
“Not all of the rebels are like Malik.…”
“Fortunately, it is not something I need concern myself with,” Swallow said.
“Unless the rebels win control of the Land.”
“Then we will negotiate safe passage with them,” he said.
I could hardly believe he was so indifferent about the rebellion. But on reflection, I realized he was right in feeling it had little to do with his people. If the rebels failed, life would continue as before for the gypsies, and if they succeeded, there would still be a market for the gypsies’ remarkable wares.
Aras returned with the empty pot and said that the beastspeakers were ready to light the funeral fires.
A little later, standing in the midst of a haze of smoke shot through with wan sunlight, I decided it was time for me to go. When there was time, Obernewtyn would mourn for its dead, but now there were the living to think about.
“You will leave?” Swallow asked.
I turned to him. “How did you know what I was thinking?” I demanded.
He smiled with an echo of his old mockery. “I cannot read your mind, if that is what you are asking.” His lids drooped secretively over his dark eyes, and I understood he had no intention of explaining himself to me.<
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I shrugged. “Well, the answer is yes.” I hesitated. “I know that many more of us, perhaps all, would have died if you had not come to our aid, Swallow. We owe you a debt of gratitude.”
He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “There is something else you would ask of me?”
I was confounded by his perceptiveness but knew there was no time to puzzle out this riddle of gypsy awareness. “I have to ride for Sutrium, as I told you. But the sick and wounded have to be taken back to our refuge in the high mountains.”
“You wish us to take them?” His brows lifted in a questioning arc.
“Few are fit to ride, let alone walk, and you have wagons. I can’t offer you any payment, but you will be well provisioned for your troubles.”
He smiled. “I will do as you ask, and perhaps there will come a day when I will ask a thing of you in return.”
Originally, I had thought that Gevan, Miryum, and I would ride down to Sutrium after the decoy operation, but Miryum had vanished in the early hours with Straaka’s body. The knights believed she had ridden with it to Sador.
Kella proposed that she take Miryum’s place. Unspoken was the possibility that she might be needed if there was further treachery.
“I am not against your coming,” I told her. “But what of Angina?”
The expression that crossed her face chilled me. “I can do nothing for him, Elspeth. He is stable enough to survive the journey to the mountains, and that is all I can say.”
“Well, come, then,” I told her shortly, thrusting my anxiety about the young empath to the back of my mind with my fears for Rushton.
As we were mounting, Lina strode over and demanded to come with us, saying she could be of use. I was on the verge of refusing, when it struck me that I had so long regarded her as a wayward child, I had failed to see she was almost a woman. And not just a woman. Her courage during the night was undeniable and deserved its due.
She looked surprised and gratified to be simply told to find a horse who would agree to carry her.