She nodded, and I was surprised to see no fear in her eyes. Perhaps she had not understood me clearly. I said, “I am called mutant by the Herders, because I have the power to speak inside another person’s thoughts and to hear their thoughts as well. I know that you cannot speak, but if you will permit me, I can enter your mind and speak with your thoughts.”
The girl seemed to consider this carefully and nodded, coming back up the steps.
“My name is Elspeth Gordie,” I sent, and some impulse made me coerce an image of us both in her mind. She gasped in astonishment as my image smiled reassuringly at her image.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“I…I can’t…oh, I am speaking!” Her image lifted its hands to its mouth, and she wept.
“Your name?” I prompted gently when she had recovered herself. Shyly, enunciating very carefully, she told me.
“Cinda,” I repeated aloud.
An incredulous smile broke over her pale little face, and she pressed her hands to her cheeks and nodded. From the corner of my eye, I saw the other shadows clutch at one another in evident excitement. Concentrating, I forespoke her image for some time, then she led me down the stairs, where, as she had explained to me, a discreet door opened into an obscure corner of a vast laundry built up against the wall surrounding the compound. Through a door and windows on the opposite side of the laundry chamber, I could see into a walled yard with washing lines strung from one side of the wall to the other. Cinda explained that a gate in this lesser wall led directly to the main body of the compound. From here, it was only a short walk to the black gates.
When we returned to the others, I explained what she had told me, adding that if it were true, we could remain in the One’s quarters. Then I charged Yarrow and Veril to go to Fallo, find the Norseland crew of the Stormdancer, and bring back Lark’s father at all speed. They took Grisyl and were to collect Asra and the coerced Hedra from the barracks on the way, in case they needed a fighting force. After they had gone, using the bathing-room steps, I sent Hilder to the watch-hut atop the wall that overlooked the channel, bidding him let me know the moment he saw a ship boat coming back across. I also told him to let Tomrick in the other watch-hut know what had been happening.
Harwood then ordered Geratty, Colwyn, Reuvan, and Ode to sleep, for we had all been up for many hours and must begin sleeping in shifts if we were to have our wits about us. Sover he bade sleep in the One’s chamber in case the One woke and might be questioned further.
“I daresay it is tasteless of me, but I am too hungry to sleep,” grumbled Geratty.
“We all need to eat,” Harwood agreed, and he asked Cinda, who hovered close by, how the One got his meals. She looked at me, and I entered her mind to learn there was a kitchen that served all in this sector of the compound. Ode went with Cinda and four other shadows to coerce a proper meal out of the kitchen workers. They soon returned with pease pudding, bread, and some queer sour vegetables, and we ate hungrily. We had just finished when Hilder brought news from Veril. Two of those sent out by Mendi to fetch the Norselanders had returned to the compound.
“Veril coerced them,” Hilder said. “We were right about the Norselanders guessing what the Hedra intended. The village where they lived was deserted when they arrived. The villagers have taken refuge in the swamp, and the Hedra have been searching for them, to no avail.”
“Have Veril and the others left?” I asked.
“They have, but I can reach them from the watch-hut before they cross the channel,” Hilder said.
“Do it,” I said at once. “Tell them that they probably cannot reach the Norselanders because according to the shipmaster’s boy, the swamp is full of tainted patches. Tell Veril to go to one of the other villages. Have them ask for the Per and tell him everything. He may even know how to find Helvar.”
Hilder nodded and departed at once. As I turned to speak to Harwood, Cinda came to me shyly with a battered pair of shoes such as shadows wore. I accepted them gratefully, and as I sat to pull them on, I noticed the other shadows watching with sorrowful expressions. I set aside my apprehensions for a moment to enter Cinda’s mind and ask why they were so sad; they need not fear they would be left behind when we sailed away to the Land.
“They do not fear being left,” Cinda’s image explained. “Many of us were taken from the west coast, and although none of us had any hope of returning to our families, we grieve at the thought of their being harmed.”
Full of pity for them as I was, it suddenly occurred to me that the ubiquitous shadows might have heard something said that would help us find the null more swiftly. With this in mind, I bade them come and sit with me by the fire. As they obeyed, Sover entered to say that the One had awakened briefly, but in his opinion, the old man did not know where the null was to be left ashore.
“I think the whole idea of a plagued null was Ariel’s notion,” he added. “The One said that he found plague seeds in some Beforetime storage place, and from what I can make out, he presented to the One the idea of sending a null infected with plague as if it had come to him from Lud. The fact that it would involve a lot of death seems to have made it especially pleasing to the One.”
“With Ariel, there might be no intention, save the desire to use what he has created,” I said grimly.
Sover ran his fingers through his thick, red-brown hair. “I have soothed the One to sleep again. He needs to rest if we are to get anything more from him.” He looked curiously at the cluster of shadows seated by the fire.
“We were just about to talk,” I said, and Harwood bade Sover return to the One’s chamber and rest while he had the chance. I turned to Cinda and asked her to tell me her companions’ names. I was aware of Harwood entering my mind discreetly to listen, but I ignored him and repeated aloud the name of each woman once Cinda’s image had conveyed it. As she heard her name spoken aloud, each shadow reacted strongly.
“Most of us do not ever hear our names spoken aloud,” Cinda explained.
I asked aloud if any of them knew what Ariel was doing on the west coast. At the mention of his name, several of the girls started in alarm, and one looked sick.
“It was Ariel who chose us and supervised the…the cutting….” Cinda gestured to her mouth. “Also, he…he uses us as he wishes, and he is very…cruel.” Then she told me that they knew nothing of Ariel’s conversation with the One, for he always made them leave.
Another shadow made several slight gestures with her hand, and Cinda raised her own hand and made several evocative gestures in return. I realized that the women had invented their own language of signals, just as Brydda had done to enable un Talents to communicate with beasts.
Harwood asked aloud how Cinda had come to Herder Isle, for she was not a Norselander. Cinda and the other shadows gave him a wary look. To her eyes, I realized, he was another Hedra with his split robe and shaven head. I explained to her and the others aloud that Harwood and all of us, save for Reuvan, were mutants in Hedra guise. Harwood added that his Talent was coercion: the use of deep-probe abilities to control the minds of others. Cinda glanced in sudden comprehension at the blank-faced Threes, the Herder Falc, and the two Hedra guards seated in a row against the wall, blank faced and docile, and Harwood admitted that he had manipulated their minds. He added that the shadows need not fear he would use his abilities on them, for Misfits did not tamper with the minds of allies. He smiled as he said this, and although he had a kind face, none of the shadows responded to his smile.
Cinda returned her serious gaze to my face and tapped her head. I took this as a request to raise an image in her mind and obliged, but I told her that the image was not really necessary. As long as I was within her mind, she need only imagine speaking, and I would hear her words. Her image nodded, and she began to tell her story.
She had been taken from the west coast by the Herders, along with her brother, who had been destined to become a novice. He had killed himself before he could be made an acolyte, and she had
only learned of it some time after because Ariel had selected her to serve the One, and she had been in the healing hall while her severed tongue healed.
Harwood interrupted to ask if all shadows had their tongues severed, and she shook her head. It had been Ariel’s idea that girls be used as body servants for the One, she explained, for although the old man hated clumsiness and roughness, he hated women even more. Ariel had suggested that his body servants ought to be slender girls whose hair was shorn and whose tongues were cut so he need not consider them females. They would serve until they began to develop breasts and were starved to put puberty off as long as possible, for the One disliked change, too. Once the chosen shadows became too old or shapely, they were put to work as invisible drudges in the compound’s kitchens and washhouses with the other women, many of whom could speak but did not for fear of having their own tongues cut out.
“Are all shadows women?” Colwyn asked, for he, too, had been monitoring the tale.
“There are male shadows, but they work in the mine or at the demon-band works. Their tongues are not cut,” her image explained. There was pity in her face, which astonished me, because how could one whose existence sounded so awful find it in herself to feel pity for another?
One of the other shadows, whose name had been given as Lure, made some gestures, and Cinda told me she had said that the Lud of the Herders must have died, else how could we have come to destroy the Faction?
Pity rose in me again, and I said aloud, “We did not come here to do battle. There are too few of us to fight. We must leave as soon as the ship we came on can be repaired. We must stop Ariel from bringing plague to the west coast. But know that in the Land, we have been preparing ourselves for a battle against the Faction, and the day is near when we will come here to fight them.”
The shadows exchanged looks, and then Lure made some emphatic gestures to Cinda, who nodded and said, “Lure says that you have begun the battle here already, and you must remain to finish it. She said that we will fight with you. All of the shadows will, from child to eldest. We will fight with teeth and nails if you have no weapons for us.”
“We are too few,” Harwood said aloud gently.
“You are few, but there are hundreds of us,” Cinda’s image told me in a low, fierce mindvoice. “It is as Lure said. If you will command us, we will serve. We will kill the Herders.”
I stared into her stormy eyes, amazed that such savage purpose could issue from such a waiflike figure. And when I looked at the others, their eyes held the same grim fire.
“If you rise up, many of you will be killed, especially if the Herders still have Beforetime weapons,” I told her gently.
“They would die, if they rose up without any plan,” Harwood broke in. “But with a plan, if there truly are hundreds of shadows willing to oppose their masters, it may be that we really can take control here.”
I gaped at the coercer in astonishment, for I had always seen him as rather cautious. “You know that when I spoke of taking control, I meant only that we should do so to get the ship repaired,” I said.
“I know it. But, Guildmistress, by pure chance we have managed to slip inside the very skin of the Faction, and we have the One and the Threes in our power. Would there ever again come a moment so ripe for the taking, even if we sailed up with ten ships to Hevon Bay? We came here, as you did, by accident, but these shadows have made me wonder if it was not mere chance that brought us here, but purposeful fate.”
Cinda and the other shadows gazed at the coercer-knight as if mesmerized.
Cinda touched his arm, and because I was still within her mind, I felt him enter her mind and heard her say, “Lead us and we will fight until the last of us drops!”
“Wait!” I said. “I understand what you are saying, but we have to go after Ariel and stop the plague, or there will be more deaths on the west coast than any of us could imagine in our most terrible dreams.”
Harwood rose and came to pull me to my feet. “Elspeth,” he said fiercely, “we can do both. Once the ship is repaired, you will travel with some of the others to find the null, and I and whoever else remain will lead these shadows.”
I farsent to him, “Harwood, only think! These are starveling girls and women with no fighting skills, and the shadow men are like to be the same. If they rise against the Faction, many will die.”
“We are dead already,” Cinda’s image said, for both of our minds were still within hers, and she had heard me. “If we fight, we will fight to live.”
Harwood said aloud, “Guildmistress, people died in the Land, too, during the rebellion, to achieve freedom. And we need not wage an open battle here. Look how these shadows move around within the Herder Compound, hearing everything, seeing everything, unnoticed. They cook food and serve drinks that might be drugged. They can go anywhere without anyone wondering why. They deliver messages that can be falsified or altered. Their very meekness and fragility would stop anyone seeing them as a threat. With their help and knowledge and our Talents, we could cut the heart from this place before the Herders know they are in danger.”
His words made me think of what my father had cried out before the Herders burned him. If we were to strike a blow against the Herders here, we would be striking at the heart of the foul organization that had killed my parents and my brother. “The Norselanders might fight, too,” I said at last, and Cinda and the other shadows nodded excitedly.
Slowly, I nodded. “All right. We will try. But nothing must hinder us from making the Stormdancer sea-worthy.”
Cinda turned to gesticulate urgently at the others, and Harwood sent to me, “I agree. Our first priority must be to stop Ariel, but until the shipfolk return, let us begin to make a map of this place.”
His words gave me another idea. Aloud, I said, “Ariel has chambers here. Coerce the Threes to find out where they are, and I will search them for clues about which city is the destination of the plague null.”
Cinda reached out to touch my wrist, and when I turned my attention to her mind, she said, “I will take you to my friend. He may know more of Ariel’s doings.”
Twenty minutes later, I was following the slender girl down the steps from the bathing room again, Falc’s hood drawn forward to conceal my hair.
Cinda opened the door to the laundry, and I froze, seeing that it was no longer empty. The coppers were now full, and there were shadows flitting about, their thin dark-clad forms half obscured by dense steam clouds. I hesitated, but Cinda assured me that no shadow would trouble me. Sure enough, the black-clad women paid so little heed to us as we passed that we might just as well have been invisible. But then Cinda stopped and gave me a reassuring look before she clapped her hands loudly. All the shadows turned to look at us, their faces bland. Cinda lifted her fingers and flicked them for a long time. Gradually, the blankness in the women’s faces gave way to wariness and then to amazement, hope, disbelief. Some of the women lifted their hands, but Cinda shook her head, fingers still fluttering, and in a moment, all the women had returned to their work, leaving me to feel I might have imagined the brief transformation I had witnessed.
“I told them to rejoice, for we are about to rise up against our masters,” Cinda said, leading me out of the overheated washing chamber into the yard, where the numerous lines I had seen earlier now sagged under the weight of wet sheets, towels, and hundreds of white, gray, and black robes. “I told them that you and your friends are powerful mutant spies who have already overpowered the One and the Threes and that you will lead us in the fight to come.” She saw my unguarded reaction and read it accurately, saying, “Do not fear that any of us will give you away. All who work in this laundry once served the One and so cannot speak, and the priests know nothing of our hand-speaking.”
“I do not believe you would betray us even if you could speak,” I said, shamed by my momentary doubts.
We reached the gate Cinda had mentioned earlier, and it brought us to a narrow lane that passed along the rear of two lo
ng rows of buildings. As we hastened along it, Cinda explained that this way was safer because such back lanes were used only by shadows, novices, and the occasional acolyte. They were called shadow paths because the Hedra rarely used them.
“Are there other paths in the compound?” I asked, and she nodded. We came to a small area outside a door where a Herder novice of about fifteen chopped kindling. Before I could think what to do, he turned and saw us. Cinda stepped forward, moving her fingers rapidly. The youth flicked an incredulous glance at me, but Cinda caught his arm and continued speaking with her hands. I realized this must be the friend she would have me meet, but I had not imagined he would be a novice. He was as tall and strongly built as she was thin and small, but when they turned to me, they wore the same look of yearning. The youth said in an uneven voice, “Is it true what Cinda says? You are the mutant who hid aboard the Stormdancer? I heard that you had been taken to the cells.”
“I am a Misfit,” I corrected him. “And I was rescued by friends who are also Misfits.”
“Cinda says you can speak inside her head and hear her thoughts.”
“I can listen to what she wants to tell me,” I said. “I can show you, if you like.”
He shook his head hastily, and Cinda flicked her fingers at the novice and laughed quietly. He scowled at her, red-cheeked. “I am not afraid!” Her expression became contrite, and she moved her fingers until he seemed mollified.
“Cinda asks me to tell you how I ended up here,” he said. He glanced warily both ways along the lane and then said, “I never wanted to be a Herder. Hardly any of us do, but those who fail the training are sold as slaves or become mine shadows. Those considered difficult are sent to the demon-band works, and after a few moons there, all of your hair and teeth fall out, and your bones start crumbling inside your skin. So I do my studies and I am obedient. But I am not a Herder, and I never will be,” he added almost savagely. “Is it true that you and your friends mean to overthrow the Faction?”