Back and forth we talked, proposing plans, refining them, arguing, changing our minds and then changing them back again. But always Dameon was the one to make the point that ended a discussion. I had been right about him being the one to lead us.
One morning, there was a rumor at firstmeal that someone had broken into Madam Vega’s chamber. I was immediately convinced that they had found the letters I had shoved under the steel cabinet in the doctor’s chamber. There was no way they could trace the matter to me, but it meant I must wait a time before going back for a map. I chafed at yet another delay, but we were able to prepare for the escape in other ways. We were stealing and hiding food and supplies in a hole concealed beneath a loose board in one of the barns. We had two sacks of flour and some dried apples and potatoes, as well as two good knives and some coats and blankets.
During this period, Louis told us that things were becoming unsettled in the highlands. There were even rumors that the ghosts of the Oldtimers had been stirring restlessly on the Beforetime ruins at the edge of the Blacklands.
A ghost of a different sort, Selmar now drifted about Obernewtyn like a gray wraith, unsmiling, silent, and pale. After the initial shock of her appearance, nobody took much notice of her, and as before, she was permitted to wander freely.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all, though, was the relationship that arose between Rushton and myself. I could not like him, exactly, but his gentleness about Jes’s death made me wonder why I had ever thought him a sinister figure. I had found out from Louis that he was a paid overseer who had been given the job by Madam Vega when he came to the mountains after his mother died, and sometimes I wondered at the purpose he had spoken of so fiercely.
For his part, Rushton no longer sneered at me whenever the opportunity arose. Ariel was another matter entirely. He had a queer mania that made him hurt people just to see them cringe—as though he wanted proof of his superiority. It had been even worse since he had brought Selmar back. As the days shortened, he took every opportunity to torment or hurt people, and everyone stayed out of his way as much as they could. He seemed to have forgotten about Cameo, but one day, near the end of the harvest season, he came to Cameo and bade her go with him to the doctor’s chamber.
We watched her trail after him with dread.
That night, she was in her bed, but not the next night or the one following. Soon her nightmares recommenced. I tried again to make her talk to me about what was happening to her, as did Matthew, who tortured himself with dreadful speculations. He could not bear even to look at Selmar. But Cameo refused to speak.
One night, she woke me with her mental cries, but when I went to comfort her as I had done before, I was appalled to see that her eyes were again the fierce eyes of a stranger.
“You’ll never find where I hid the map.” She laughed the rasping cackle of an old woman.
I stared at her. “What map?”
“Lukas said it was dangerous to think so much about the Beforetime, but I searched and I found it. I knew I would,” said Cameo.
Suddenly, I realized what Cameo’s altered eyes reminded me of—the yellow eyes in the portrait of Marisa Seraphim. Marisa, whose crabbed scribing was all over the Beforetime maps in the doctor’s chamber.
She suddenly fell back into a natural sleep.
“It could be that she muddled our talk of needing a map with something she heard when she was in the doctor’s chamber,” Dameon said the next day. “If she was hypnotized, she would be very suggestible.”
“You didn’t see her eyes,” I insisted. “They were yellow, like the eyes in the portrait. And she laughed like an old woman!”
“Are ye tryin’ to say she’s being haunted by the shade of a long-dead mistress of Obernewtyn?” Matthew asked bluntly.
I stared at him, knowing that this was exactly what I did think. “I know it sounds ridiculous,” I admitted. “But I’ve been thinking: what if the reason Alexi and Madam Vega want a Misfit with mental abilities is they think it will help them locate something that Marisa Seraphim found and hid? This map Cameo mentioned might show where it is.”
“A map to what?” Matthew wondered.
I looked at him helplessly.
Cameo’s decline accelerated rapidly after that; she lost weight and color until she was as fragile and ill-looking as she had been before. One day Matthew said, “Every time we talk about Cam, ye shake yer heads an’ look worried. But we’re nowt doing anything. I say we should get away from Obernewtyn before it is too late for her. Maybe we can still make it to th’ highlands before th’ pass freezes.”
Dameon shook his head. “Look at the skies. It could snow any day. We cannot take the chance of being trapped in the mountains for the entire wintertime without food enough to last. The wolves will grow hungry and daring, and Lud knows what other beasts will be on the prowl. We would have to endure cold, snow, hunger, and wild animals, not to mention pursuit. The mountains themselves would be nearly frozen solid, and the snow would keep us from being able to tell where the ground was tainted. Our only chance of surviving is to escape at the end of wintertime, as we have planned.”
Regardless of when we would leave, we still needed a map. I resolved to go to the doctor’s chamber again the next night. Whatever measures had been taken after the supposed break-in must surely have been eased by now, and if I had to, I would use coercion. It would not take much to prevent someone seeing me and surely it was far enough from the farms and the strange machine that had caught hold of me months before to risk it. I thought about the machine and wondered, as I had done before, if it was being used by Alexi and Madam Vega to try to trap a misfit like me. It seemed very likely. As for the machine itself, how had the Beforetimers created such a thing before the Great White had begun to cause Misfits to be born? Or had Alexi done something to adapt a Beforetime machine to his purpose? Madam Vega had spoken of his ability at dealing with Beforetime machines.
I admitted to myself that beyond my desire to secure a map, I wanted to see if I could discover what Alexi and Madam Vega were seeking. I was convinced I would find the answers to all my questions in the doctor’s chamber.
20
THE NEXT DAY, there was a story circulating that someone had tried to break into Obernewtyn. One of Ariel’s wolves had been poisoned, and another shot full of arrows. It seemed incredible and insane. Whoever would want to attack a home for Misfits? Surely there was not enough of value to entice robbers over the badlands, and so close to winter!
Someone told Matthew the attackers had been the Druid’s men and that one of them had been wounded in the clash. It seemed too far-fetched to credit, and yet I thought of Daffyd, who had spoken so knowledgeably of Henry Druid, then of his uncle’s visit earlier in the year, disguised as a potmender. Was it possible that the events were connected? Given what I knew of the Druid, I knew he might covet the Beforetime books in the doctor’s chamber. But how could he even know they existed?
I asked Louis what he thought, but he was in one of his reticent moods and answered all of my questions and speculations with shrugs and grunts.
That night, I waited until the others in my chamber slept, opened the lock, and slipped out into the halls. It was freezing cold, and I was shivering violently before I had gone more than a few steps. I had got as far as the circular entrance hall before I noticed a pungent smell in the air. I was moving along the hall to Madam Vega’s waiting room when I stumbled clumsily, and all at once it came to me that the strange smell in the air was the same scent that came from the sleep candles my mother had created when Jes and I were sick. I held my breath and used my abilities to coerce the fog from my mind, guessing the precaution was the result of the break-in.
At Madam Vega’s door, I forced myself to stop and listen carefully, despite the fact that my ears were beginning to buzz with my need for air. I could hear nothing, and I unlocked the door hastily. It was dark in the room beyond, for the moon was covered in a thick sludge of clouds, but the air was clear. I clos
ed the door behind me and gasped in a great breath before continuing cautiously to the doctor’s chamber. There was no one there, but the fire was burning brightly. Someone had been here not long ago.
This time I ignored the books. There were simply too many of them. I decided I would concentrate my search on the tables and their drawers. I set to work methodically, going from left to right.
In the second drawer, I found more arrowcases. Several were real compasses from the Beforetime. I pocketed a very small one with a cracked case, reasoning it would not be missed and that it would not hurt to have two.
Eventually, I came to a drawer containing a pile of modern maps. I took them out and began to leaf through them. There were dozens of them, and among them I found at last a map of the mountain region. It showed all of the mountains around Obernewtyn and even a sliver of the highlands, including a bit of the White Valley. I saw that the valley where Obernewtyn stood was only one of a series of valleys going high and deep into the mountains. I had not expected the area to be so big, and I felt a surge of relief, for surely we could find a place to hide. Resisting the urge to stand there poring over the map, I folded it and pushed it down my shirt, and I returned the rest to their drawer. Then I thought of the letters I had thrust under the metal cabinet.
I crossed to the bookshelf and entered the darker room behind it. I reached into the recess under the locked cabinet and pulled out the two letters I had thrust there in a panic.
I sat back on my heels, confused. If the report about someone breaking in had not been caused by the finding of the letters, then what? Was it possible that whoever had killed Ariel’s wolves had also got into Madam Vega’s room? There had been no specific mention of anyone gaining access to the doctor’s chamber, after all, so perhaps my carelessness wasn’t to blame.
Looking down at the letters, I decided on impulse to read them. The letter to Marisa from her husband was brief, a perfunctory inquiry after her health, then a list of books he had been able to obtain for her. At the end was a veiled suggestion that some of the books she wanted were dangerous, for the Herder Faction was becoming more stringent in its judgment against Beforetime artifacts.
The letter to Michael Seraphim was one page of what must have been a longer letter, and I gaped as I read it.
My friend,
I wish you would reconsider your notion to adopt young Alexi. Marisa finds him sly, and I fear I must for once agree with her. She is not motherly, of course, as you have oft said. She is too brilliant, too preoccupied with her books and researches, and seems to have little regard for her grandson, but she is still your mother. I think she knows that you never loved Manda and regrets your unhappiness. Now that Manda is dead, can you not bond again? Stephen is very young and would accept a stepmother, I am sure. What of the village girl you loved? Can you not seek her out?
Slowly I pushed the letter back into its envelope and replaced them both in the cabinet, astounded that Alexi was the adopted son of Michael Seraphim, the second Master of Obernewtyn. No wonder Alexi had spoken with such arrogance. He was more than the doctor’s “assistant”—they were legal brothers. How it must gall him to know that, by lore, only blood relatives could inherit property.
A slight scraping sound interrupted the thought, and I froze. The noise came again, and I crept across to the dividing shelf and peered into the main chamber. The door was closed fast, but to my utter amazement the entire huge fireplace suddenly swung open to reveal a descending staircase. I backed away and climbed under a table in a dark corner, my heart hammering. Hunched down as I was, I discovered that I could see the movement of legs and feet in the adjoining chamber. I could not tell if they were men or women, but there were four of them, and I saw the glitter of melting snow as they removed their coats. The passage they had used must lead outside.
The fireplace swung back into place, and when they spoke, I recognized their voices.
“I could have sworn I heard something as we came in,” said Ariel.
“Don’t be a fool,” came Alexi’s deep voice. “How could anyone come here without succumbing to the sleep candles?”
“Thank Lud we banked up the fire. It gets colder every time we go out, and now we have the snow to contend with,” said Madam Vega irritably.
The fourth person said nothing, but I could see she was a woman. Was it Guardian Myrna?
“What are you going to do about the Druid’s man?” Ariel asked.
“You can put his body out for the wild wolves,” said Madam Vega. “I do not know what the old man hoped to achieve in sending him up here.”
Alexi laughed. “I expect he fears that we are closer to the knowledge he seeks than he likes.”
“We don’t know for sure if the Druid is even alive. It could simply be his followers,” Vega said.
“That’s not what his man said,” Ariel laughed unpleasantly.
“Either way, I don’t like the competition. It’s a pity we can’t call the Council in to clear them up,” said Madam Vega.
“Impossible,” Alexi said coldly. “Soldierguards up here would make our search impossible. And imagine if they found out what we planned. It is hard enough to keep those nosy Herders from Darthnor out.”
“Well, tonight was a waste of time as far as the search goes,” Ariel said. “I told you she would be useless.”
“I did not think to achieve anything. I merely wanted to try out the new configuration of the machine, and I don’t want to ruin Cameo as we have this one,” he added. I understood then that the silent fourth must be poor Selmar.
“I’m sick of her and all of these Misfits,” Ariel said petulantly. “I am tired of guiding them through the maze and back and of listening to their idiocies.”
“They keep Stephen happy, thinking he has some humanitarian cause,” said Madam Vega. “And when the time comes, they will be good labor. Marisa thought the things we seek would be buried, and I have no intention of digging them up like a common farmer. Besides, it would have been impossible to suddenly stop purchasing Misfits without the Council wondering what was going on. And you must admit, the business of searching the orphan homes makes the perfect cover for our search for the right Misfit.” She paused thoughtfully. “You really think it was Cameo who set off the Zebkrahn that day?”
“It would have taken a high level of mental power to engage the machine and then to escape it, and I would not have thought her capable of it,” said Alexi. “But she has been dreaming about machines since it happened, according to our informant. It must be that she’s hiding the true extent of her abilities. But once we use the Zebkrahn on her directly, the pretense will end.”
“I’ll be relieved when our search is done,” Vega said.
“Damn that Marisa. If it wasn’t for her, we would have had the map long ago,” Alexi said angrily.
Madam Vega laughed. “Can you really blame her? It was she who discovered the location of the Beforetime weaponmachines, after all. A pity she was content to map their location and nothing more. Hiding the map from us was her sour idea of a joke … and I suspect she thought the knowledge would keep her alive,” she said.
“She misjudged my patience,” snarled Alexi. “I only hope she didn’t destroy the map.”
“She would never destroy knowledge,” Vega said with confidence.
They stood with their backs to my hiding place, warming their hands and silent for the moment. I thought about what I had overheard. Alexi, Madam Vega, and Ariel were seeking Beforetime weapon-machines, and so too, it seemed, was Henry Druid. But why?
I thought of the machine they had spoken about—the Zebkrahn. This must be the machine that had caught hold of my mind. I shuddered at the thought of such a thing being used on Cameo. And yet maybe it would not harm her, since she did not have the power they sought.
Suddenly, I realized that Selmar had left the fire and was drifting toward the dividing shelves. To my horror, she knelt down and peered through the gap to where I was hiding. I doubted she could see me, b
ut somehow she knew I was there. I held my breath.
“I’m so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open,” Madam Vega said with a yawn.
“Get her away from the books,” snapped Alexi.
Ariel came over and pulled Selmar to her feet. She went, unresisting as he led her away. To my relief, they all left the doctor’s chamber, but I was so unnerved by what had happened that it was almost morning before I could summon the courage to come out of my hiding place and creep back to my room.
I hid the map behind a loose stone in the wall near my bed, and then I lay down and watched the sky lighten through the slot window.
In the end, I fell asleep, and woke a short time later wishing I had not. I felt heavy-eyed and sluggish, and I had to splash my face with freezing water to rouse my wits. Cameo tried to tell me of a dream she’d had, but I forestalled her, saying she could tell me later.
If I had known what was to come, I would have listened.
21
I ATE ALONE at firstmeal, having missed the first sitting, and was put to work at once by Rushton when I arrived on the farms. But when midmeal came, I hastened to sit with Matthew and Dameon, wanting to tell them what I had discovered. Before I could speak, however, Dameon asked coolly whether I had been out the previous night.
“Yes, but how did you know?” I asked, puzzled.
“You were careless,” he said.
“No!” I said indignantly.
“You promised me that you would take care,” Dameon said. “And now the decision has been made to release Ariel’s wolf-dogs every night.”
“Wait,” I said. “Last night I went to the doctor’s chamber. I heard Alexi and Madam Vega talking, but I’m sure they didn’t see me. They had captured a man Henry Druid had sent here; he’s after the same thing they are. That must be why they decided to put the dogs out.”
“Henry Druid?” Matthew echoed, at the same time as Dameon asked what they were all searching for.