The Keeping Place

by Isobelle Carmody

  Gahltha commanded the other horses to guard me with their lives, and I felt him gather himself to attack the soldierguard captain.

  “No! No, Gahltha!” I screamed as he moved toward the soldierguards, and I flung myself after him, grasping onto his mane.

  “Fire again!” the captain’s voice rang out.

  I heard the thrum of bowstrings, preternaturally loud despite the keening of dying horses and the groans of Misfits, and knew that both Gahltha and I were too clear as targets to miss this time.

  It seemed many minutes before the arrows struck. I saw Rushton’s face, grave and ardent, and Maruman’s dear, battered muzzle. Gahltha’s flank was warm against my belly, and I had the muddled thought that it was good to die so close to one I loved.

  But I did not die. Instead, the soldierguards cried out in shock and pain. They were falling.

  I gaped at the sight. A line of archers had entered the cul-de-sac, firing upon the soliderguards from behind.

  But they were not rebels. They were gypsies, pureblood and halfbreed alike, and foremost among them was the tall Twentyfamilies prince whom I knew only as Swallow.

  He nocked another arrow, training it on one of the captains.

  “Don’t kill them!” I cried.

  Swallow arched his brows. “As you wish,” he said in his rough velvet voice.

  26

  MALIK’S FACE WAS heavy with thwarted rage. Incredibly, he seemed oblivious to the sounds of suffering around us, blind to the fact that dozens of Misfits, soldierguards, and horses lay dead or injured. It was as if they did not exist to him.

  “Is this what you wanted?” I whispered. “Does it please you to see children and innocent beasts lying in their lifeblood, as well as soldierguards who need not have died?”

  “No one was killed by my men,” Malik mocked as his men rounded up uninjured soldierguards to rope their hands behind their backs.

  “What happened this night arose because you planned to let the soldierguards slaughter us before you took them prisoner,” I said.

  The rebel gave a hateful sliver of a smile; then his expression became cool and lofty. “Doubtless it looks that way to one with diminished mental capabilities, but it is merely that my people were longer in assuming position than we had calculated. Unfortunate, but—”

  “You were in position when we arrived,” I snapped.

  “You will tell your story, and I will tell mine. We will see which is believed,” he responded, actually sounding bored.

  “You betrayed us.”

  His eyes glittered. “One can only betray one’s own kind, Misfit,” he hissed. Then he said loudly, “I will take the soldierguards capable of walking with me to the lowlands. I leave the rest to your mercy, since it is your friends who injured them.” He cast a malevolent glance at Swallow, who had insisted on remaining at my side with a bared sword throughout the confrontation. The Twentyfamilies gypsy met the rebel’s gaze with wordless contempt.

  Malik turned on his heel and strode away, and his men followed, prodding a line of bewildered-looking soldierguards to march. Distantly, I noted that a few rebels looked about in furtive shame as they trailed after their leader, but most ran their eyes over the carnage with as little expression as if the dead were fallen leaves at the end of summerdays. Malik’s hatred was contagious.

  When they had gone, I felt paralyzed. Swallow touched my arm gently. “You are not hurt?”

  “No…no,” I said, and my voice was surprisingly calm. He hesitated, then went to help his people with the wounded.

  I heard the sound of running footsteps, and Miky burst from the path into the cul-de-sac. She stopped dead at the sight that met her eyes and at the moans and cries that rose on all sides from the darkness like some nightmarish chorus. Her face was white as paper in the moonlight.

  Gevan and Duria were close behind her. They stopped as she had done, to stare about in disbelief.

  “Elspeth, thank Lud you are not hurt,” the Coercer guildmaster said fervently. “Malik convinced us to move some way back with a handful of his men, in case any of the soldierguards tried to escape. It was Miky who sensed something was wrong, so we disabled the rebels. But we were too far away….”

  “If the gypsies had not come, you’d all be dead,” Duria said.

  “Too many are dead because of my blindness,” I said.

  Gevan gave a snort of fury. “Because of Malik’s treachery! But he will not get away with it. The other rebels will punish him.”

  “That will not bring back the dead,” I said.

  Swallow appeared out of the shadows, frowning. “Come, this is no time for talk. There are wounded who need attention. My people’s wagons are nearby, but the way into this pass is too narrow to admit them. We must carry out those who can be moved.”

  “Who are you?” Gevan asked.

  “I am known by many names, but you may call me Swallow.”

  “You are the Twentyfamilies prince?”

  “I am the king of the Twentyfamilies now, though we do not use such archaic terms. I am the D’rekta, and my people are at your disposal. But people and beasts suffer as we speak. Let us save our talk for the campfire.”

  Gevan nodded decisively. “You are right. Duria and I will find out how many can be moved. We’ll need someone to show us the way to your wagons.” Swallow nodded and turned to speak with a gypsy hovering at his elbow.

  I knew I should help, but I felt both weak and queerly indecisive. I walked through the clearing, feeling as if I were drifting rather than setting my feet on the ground. It was dark enough that bodies were merely crumpled shapes until I came close, and then, as in some nightmare, they seemed to form before my eyes to become someone I had known and loved. Many more than Angina and the coercer-knight had tried to shield the horses. At least a dozen horses lay dead, too, and the same number again were wounded, some mortally. One horse was screaming piteously in pain, and I saw that Lina was trying to staunch a bright red gush of blood from its neck.

  I should have stopped, but my legs carried me past them to where Kella was bent over the recumbent body of Straaka. I kneeled and touched his ankle where his flesh showed above the boot. His skin felt soft and warm. I managed to raise a weak probe that told me Kella was operating internally on the Sadorian, encouraging nerve and muscle tissue to knit in such a way as to stem massive internal bleeding around his heart. But his life force ebbed dangerously low.

  My vision blurred, and I realized that even this mildest form of probing was too much for my ravaged mind.

  Kella continued to work, but after a little, she sat back with a sob and shook her head.

  Miryum was kneeling beside us, an arrow she had taken in the soldierguards’ second volley protruding from her own shoulder, though she seemed oblivious to it. Her eyes were fixed on Kella. “He jumped in front of me,” she muttered.

  “He saved your life,” Kella said gently; then she got to her feet and moved away to find another who needed her.

  I rose, too, and the movement caught Miryum’s feverish gaze. “Elspeth,” she rasped. “He would not listen when I told him to stay back. He never listened.”

  I did not know what to say. Eventually, Miryum’s eyes fell to Straaka’s body, and I followed Kella, who was now kneeling beside Angina. He looked so dreadfully young, and Miky was clinging to his hand, her face streaming with tears. I needed no probe to tell me Angina was near to death.

  “Leave her to do what she can,” Swallow said, coming up beside me. “We need your help to carry one of the wounded.”

  I let myself be led to where an enormous soldierguard lay, an arrow in his back. With a shock, I saw that it was the man who had shot Straaka—the bearded leader of the soldierguards. Seeing my reaction, Swallow said noncommittally, “He will die if he is left to lie here.”

  I took a shuddering breath and shook my head. “We can’t carry him alone.”

  “No,” Swallow said, and he waved his hand to summon two ragged halfbreeds. Aras came over,
too, and between the five of us, we struggled to lift him. He gave a deep groan and then was silent. We were all panting hard and sweating by the time we were halfway down the trail from the cul-de-sac. Fortunately, more gypsies waited, and they took him from us. One of them was Swallow’s half sister, Iriny, but she did not notice me.

  “The arrow has not gone deep enough to kill him,” Swallow told her.

  “Maire will have a look at him. But here, do you want any of our herbalists down there?”

  “One,” he answered. “The horses will have to be treated where they fell. Where is Darius?”

  “He comes as fast as he can,” Iriny said with faint reproach.

  Swallow nodded and bid Aras and me return with him to the clearing. By the time we reached it, rain fell again.

  “Twenty-three horses dead and seventeen wounded. Ten people dead and the same number wounded,” Gevan said when all who could be moved had been taken to the gypsy rigs.

  It was just on dawn, and those of us who remained in the clearing were clustered around a small fire. It had been built when the rain stopped, but the air was still clammy with damp, and drops fell steadily from the leaves all around us onto the sodden ground. Only three injured humans remained, too seriously hurt to be shifted, and all of the surviving horses. The dead had been covered with blankets.

  Small makeshift canopies had been set up above the injured to keep them dry, and Kella and a gypsy herbalist were even now working on a soldierguard who had been arrowed in the stomach and in his hand. It was likely that the hand would have to be amputated. As I watched, Kella rose, moving away to examine a coercer-knight I had seen fall. There was little hope that she would survive, and I watched the healer settle a gentle hand on the girl and close her eyes as she drained away the girl’s pain.

  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 pouting 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.”