The Keeping Place

by Isobelle Carmody

  “Jude favors the Faction?”

  “He’s thick as thieves with the local cloister’s head priest,” Gevan growled.

  That was worth knowing, and I made a mental note to mention it to Tomash.

  Night fell as we ate and the others talked of this trick and that customer. I enjoyed the simple meal and the sound of the fire crackling over the muted roar of the sea. Afterward, when the empaths and coercer drummers began softly to practice a new tune they had heard musicians play at the fair, I wondered whether it would ever be possible to learn where gypsies had come by Kasanda’s carvings—and whether she’d produced any more such works in the Land.

  I asked Gevan if he had seen any carvings in his travels.

  “Carvings?” he echoed blankly.

  “As in monuments or maybe wall friezes.”

  The coercer looked as if he thought I had lost my mind. “I doubt they even whittle in Arandelft. It is not the sort of place where arts and crafts flourish,” he said at last.

  Merret said, “If you’re interested in carvings, Elspeth, the west coast is where you should be looking, not Arandelft or Sawlney.”

  “Where on the west coast?” I asked eagerly.

  The coercer licked her fingers and wiped them on a kerchief as she considered. “I’ve never seen it myself, but I’ve heard talk of a place outside Aborium on the Murmroth side, right on the sea cliff, which used to be where stone-carvers were trained.”

  “Used to be?”

  “Well, there’s still a quarry there, and stonecutters are apprenticed to learn their trade, but these days the emphasis of the place is on cutting and dressing stone for the facades of Council buildings and the houses of rich traders. Cloisters, too. The only true carving that gets done is on gravestones, but in the past the place was famous for its fine work. The carvers did everything from statues of Councilmen to public monuments. The fashion now is to have them made of fancy blown glass from Murmroth.”

  “A stone-carving works…,” I said doubtfully, thinking it did not sound like the sort of place where Kasanda would have worked.

  “Anyway, there is still a display of stone carvings there, if you want to see the sort of stuff they used to do,” Merret said with a shrug.

  “What makes you ask about such things?” Gevan asked curiously.

  “Perhaps we’ll want a monument ourselves sometime,” I said blandly. I gave him no chance to question me further, saying I would stretch my legs for a bit and then turn in. I strolled out of the cozy circle of wagons. The wind was stronger, and the sound of the sea had grown insistent, as if night had whipped it into a state of turbulent agitation. I dared not walk to the edge, as the cliffs were unstable with the sea constantly gnawing at their base. Nevertheless, the now inky expanse drew me. I went a few steps toward it, admiring the way it mirrored the shimmering band of stars my father had liked to call the sky road.

  I looked up, craning my neck. There was no moon, and I was glad. I had spent so much time with Maruman over the years that I had grown to dislike the sight of it looming over me, especially when it was full and looked like a burning white eye peering mercilessly down. I had no idea why Maruman felt as he did, but his loathing of the moon was as much a part of him as his legendary bad temper and queerly distorted mind.

  I turned to walk parallel to the cliff. Maruman had elected to stay at Obernewtyn, saying Gahltha would watch over me until I returned. I had taken that to mean he saw no particular danger in my journey. I yawned deeply, hoping that were so.

  Then I heard a soft footfall behind me.

  I whirled to find Gahltha approaching.

  “You should sleep,” he sent.

  “I am planning on it.”

  We walked side by side back to the magi campsite. I could hear that the empath musicians had given up practicing and were now playing a simplified version of the song that had accompanied the sleeping beauty story. The sound wound into the night, frayed at the edges by the mournful sigh of the wind, and I stopped, entranced by the way it seemed to absorb the sea noise.

  Again, I thought of Rushton, remembering the first time we had danced together with the wind in our hair and the night sky above.

  “It is hard to be away/separate from a mate,” Gahltha sent wistfully.

  I glanced at him. “You miss Avra and your foal.”

  “I do,” he sent. “But seeing them with the freerunning horses made me see what I am not.”

  I felt his pain as if it were my own and laid my head against his neck. “Dear one, you are yourself, and your spirit is free no matter that humans used you ill and bound and rode you. Perhaps in escaping the funaga-li, you are freer than the wild equines, because your freedom was hard-won. Can anyone really know freedom who has not known the lack of it?”

  I felt a tremor go through his body, but he said nothing. After some time, he moved and I let him go, knowing he would wander alone rather than join the other horses, for that was my own instinct when I was troubled. I understood the brooding aspect of his nature that had been shaped by his past. Even now, I sometimes felt myself to be crippled by my years in the orphan home system. Yet, these days, I no longer anguished over them. I was what the harsh years had made me and was perhaps better prepared for my dark quest than I would have been with a gentler life.

  21

  I DREAMED OF Cassy in a building that could only be a Beforetime library. She was accompanied by a young man with slanted eyes and golden yellow skin. He watched as she collected a pile of books from the shelves.

  “Cass, I don’t understand what you think you’re doing. Marching with us is one thing, but this is likely to get you killed,” he finally said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Cassy sat at a table and unloaded the books, skimming through their pages. “All I’m doing is looking for information about people interested in paranormal abilities.”

  “In the public library, where every book you remove from the shelf records your thumbprint? And right after you return from a holiday on a top-secret government base where they are experimenting on human beings to learn whether telepathy is possible?”

  She ignored this to ask, “You think I’m being watched?”

  “I think everyone is being watched all the time.”

  “That’s because you’re Tiban, and where you come from, everyone probably is watched all the time.”

  “Don’t be flippant, Cass. I think you’re out of your depth in this. If there really are people being held prisoner in that compound, you should go to the bulletins and let them expose it.”

  “There would be nothing to expose if I did that. The evidence would evaporate. I just have to find this one woman and tell her they’re there. I told you.”

  “A woman! Hell, Cassy, that’s just narrowed it down to half the human race! I don’t see why whoever you talked with couldn’t have told you more about her.”

  “It wasn’t possible,” Cassy said shortly. “All I know is that she’s interested in telepaths. Maybe a scientist, or…” Her eyes blazed. “I know!” She leapt up and walked along the shelves; then she knelt down and withdrew a book I recognized: Powers of the Mind.

  Trembling with wonder, I watched her open to a random page and read the very words I had first seen in a dark Beforetime library in a ruinous city on the west coast.

  The Reichler Clinic has conducted a progressive and serious examination of mental powers and has produced infallible proofs that telepathy and precognitive powers are the future for mankind. Reichler’s experiments have taken mind powers out of the realms of fantasy and set them firmly in the probable future.

  “What have you found?” the young man asked, coming to stand beside her.

  “This book was written by that man who funded the Reichler Clinic.”

  “The Reichler Clinic! That organization was totally discredited over falsification of results.”

  “I remember reading this book,” Cassy said dreamily. “I even went to one of those mobile testing clinics….” />
  “You weren’t the only gullible one,” the man said gently.

  “It was not long after that there was the scandal,” Cassy went on thoughtfully. “And then their whole place was destroyed. I always thought it weird how that happened.”

  “It was hinted that they did the job themselves for the insurance money. A lot of people being tested there were killed in the explosion. The only reason no one was charged was because they were trashers bused in for the day.”

  Cassy tapped the book with a fingernail. “The clinic was set up again somewhere else, wasn’t it? Somewhere in central Uropa, and they’ve kept a very low profile since.”

  “Wouldn’t you, with that much muck in your past? Besides, they’d have no money for the sort of splashy campaign they ran the first time around. Now all you see is the odd advertisement asking anyone who thinks they have paranormal abilities to contact them by calling a toll-free number.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would they bother testing people for paranormal abilities when they publicly admitted they had no credible proof that they exist?” Cassy asked.

  “Who knows? Some sort of scam maybe.”

  “It doesn’t make sense that they’d run a scam under the name of a discredited organization. And surely not all the people connected to the Reichler Clinic were charlatans. Even if the clinic was faking results to keep research money flowing in, there must have been some people who genuinely believed in what they were doing. What if they’re the ones who reestablished elsewhere in a modest fashion?”

  “Even if you’re right, so what?”

  Cassy pushed the book back in its place with unnecessary force. “What if the woman I’m meant to find is working there?”

  “Cassy, this is so far-fetched that you ought to write scripts for holodramas!” He put his arm around her. “Let go of this and come have some lunch with me. I have to go back into Chinon in two days….”

  Cassy looked at him in dismay. “After what happened last time?”

  “They need hard evidence of what is happening in Tiba. Photos, holos, tapes…” He shrugged. “But I don’t want to talk about that right now. Come and eat with me, and let’s forget about everything but us for a few hours. Okay?”

  They dissolved into a dream in which I was swimming in the star-flecked night sea, waves breaking against me with enough force to slap the breath out of my lungs. Rushton was floating just out of reach. I tried catching hold of him, but I was always a fraction short of the distance. I called to him and gradually realized with horror that he was not swimming but was being dragged away from me.

  Hannay woke me, looking so worried that I guessed I had been thrashing about in my sleep. But he merely said tactfully that porridge had been made if I wanted some.

  Gevan toasted himself a chunk of bread and buttered it lavishly, explaining that since the magi would not be putting on a show until evening, Merret had walked into Sawlney with some of the other coercers to perform informally in the square.

  “It troubles me that we haven’t found a single sign of Rushton,” he admitted.

  My appetite vanished, for I knew what he must say next. “Gevan—”

  He cut me off gently but firmly. “I know you don’t want to talk about this, Elspeth, but I’m afraid we must. If and when we find no evidence that any of the rebels have taken Rushton tonight, what then? Do we agree to a forced alliance as the kidnapper demands, or not?”

  “We made an oath.” I swallowed hard.

  “If we stick to our oath, then we must pretend compliance to the kidnapper’s demand. The trouble is that I doubt there’s much time left to pretend, with the rebellion looming so close.”

  “Truespoken,” I sighed. “And how do we explain the reason we have changed our minds about joining them?”

  “We tell them we all discussed it after Rushton returned and overruled his unilateral refusal. We decided we could give the rebels limited help, if it was wanted. We will offer to find their traitors for them. It will give them a nasty surprise that we know about the traitors, I warrant. We will offer to facilitate their communications; we will help in direct battle only when there is a surety that our help will prevent bloodshed rather than cause it. That sounds finicky enough to have been hammered out over a few long sessions, and it even fits with our oath.”

  “I expect they would want our people dispersed among them almost at once.”

  “I think we must plan on actually sending people out,” Gevan said. “It will give us the chance to keep an eye on the rebels, and, more importantly, it will mean we can search for Rushton. We should send mostly coercers, as they can protect themselves if things become dangerous. It would mean some of our people going a long way from home.”

  “This sounds as if we are planning a real alliance. What if the rebellion breaks out while they are still away?”

  “I’m afraid that is very likely at this point, but if we stipulate very clearly what our people will and won’t do, we can keep our oath. In a way, we are offering an alliance, I suppose, albeit a limited one, but…” Gevan broke off and slapped his head so hard that the others looked up from what they were doing to stare at him. “Oh, curse me for a fool, Elspeth. I forgot to tell you that the Herders are selling a thing they call a demon band, which they claim will protect decent folk from demons and the black arts.”

  I shrugged. “What does it matter? It will only be another scheme aimed at parting the gullible from their coin….”

  “But you don’t understand,” Gevan cried. “The blasted bands work on us! They must be impregnated with some slightly tainted material or some such. The Herders at the bonding ceremony handed them out to Alum and Jude, and when I attempted to probe them, it was like trying to read over tainted ground. Of course, the priests wore them as well, so I could get no information about the bands out of them.”

  “Are you saying the Faction has invented a way to block our powers?” I demanded, half shouting myself.

  “I’d like to believe it is an accident that it works on us, but we know the Faction are interested in Misfits and that they take those they can catch away to Herder Isle. The likelihood is that they have developed the bands specifically for use against us.”

  I felt shuddering cold all over. I could not doubt that the Herders knew as much about us as the Council did, and thanks to the rebel traitors, that meant they were aware that the rebels had asked us to join them. That had obviously been enough of a spur, on top of whatever else they knew, to send the Faction scurrying to invent a way to block us.

  Gevan went on. “Luckily, the demon bands don’t seem to work on empaths, whose Talents are much different than our own. And they are cursed expensive, so I doubt most folk could afford them. But I think we can expect the more powerful priests to be wearing them from now on, and maybe whichever Councilmen support the Faction. Maybe even all of them if the bands are given as gifts, though I don’t see the Herders giving away something when they can sell it.”

  I took a steadying breath before responding. “Even if these bands are distributed in limited ways, they will make things difficult for us.”

  “I agree. I think we need to keep a close eye on the Herders, though I don’t see them being a serious problem ultimately. If the Council loses its hold on the Land to the rebels, the Faction will have no standing at all.”

  I thought again of the figures Wila had outlined but decided against bringing that up now. “Does Brydda know of these demon bands?”

  “No doubt he has heard of them, but he’d have dismissed them as flimflam. How should he know any different? Of course we will tell him, but again it might be wise to keep it from the rest of the rebels lest they decide we are useless to them as a result. We haven’t had much trouble with natural mindshields here, though they seem cursed common among the gypsies.”

  “You’ve had no trouble passing?” I asked.

  “Not since you learned so much about their culture during your time in
Sutrium. I even took a stroll over to a nearby camp when we first arrived, to exchange useful gossip. I told them about Bergold and Moss up in the highlands. The other leader was courteous enough, and he was a touch curious when I told him about our show. Seems he’d heard of it. He asked if it was a good coin spinner. I told him the truth, and when I left, he was looking very thoughtful.”

  “Maybe your troupe won’t be the last magi show on the road.”

  “I hope we’re not,” Gevan said with surprising earnestness. “I’d like to think I had done something to improve the prospects of halfbreeds, for they have a lousy time of it. And unlike us with our dyes, they can’t wash their skins when they’re weary of being spat on and starved and told to go where decent folk won’t be contaminated. If they can come up with some acts and sell their skills, good for them. It makes my blood boil to think of the Twentyfamilies hoarding their pureblood and skills to save their own necks and letting kin go begging.”

  “I don’t think it’s as simple as that….”

  “Maybe not,” he conceded. “I suppose not all the Twentyfamilies feel so sanguine about the division anyway. That Swallow you met at least tried to help.”

  There was the sound of hoofbeats, and we stepped clear of the wagons to see Brydda riding over the grass to us. Sallah pranced a bit and waved her hooves in a showy fashion before settling to let the big rebel dismount; then she galloped off, farsending for Gahltha and the other horses to run with her. We watched them race off, their hooves sounding like distant thunder. Brydda laughed with sheer pleasure at the sight of them streaking along with their tails and manes flying like flags behind them.

  “She loves being away from the city,” he murmured fondly, coming over to us.

  We exchanged greetings, and the rebel explained the meeting would take place in a grain barn owned by Brocade. “It is early yet, but you may as well come with me now.”