The Seeker

by Isobelle Carmody

  Just at dusk, for the first time, we encountered another creature. A wolf.

  The wolves that frequented the mountains were savage, pale-eyed wraiths with coats the color of mist and snow. They were nearly impossible to spot deliberately, and it was sheer luck that I saw this one. I had been plodding along, shivering and staring aimlessly into the distance, when the landscape appeared to shift fractionally. I realized I had been staring right at a wolf without seeing it. It had been watching us, but now it turned, melting back into the white landscape.

  Later I heard several desolate calls in the distance. I was tempted to try communicating, but the wild keening calls across the frozen wastes made a desolate song of the night and did not invite a response.

  The calls went on for hours, then abruptly ceased.

  I was glad of the respite, but Gahltha seemed more disturbed by the silence than by the bloodcurdling howls. I was too tired to worry and slept leaning against his warm flank. Gradually, I felt him relax, too. Exhausted and half-starved as we were, we needed sleep. Initial hunger pains had long since given way to an empty ache that was easier to bear. If sleep was all the comfort that remained for us, then that would have to be enough to get us home.

  Suddenly Gahltha stiffened, and I was jerked awake. Dense clouds obscured the moon. I looked around in the pitch darkness fearfully.

  “What is it?” I sent.

  “The Brildane,” Gahltha responded.

  I laid a gentle hand across his back, wondering if there was danger.

  “What or who are Brildane?” I asked.

  “I do not know what name is given them by the funaga, but Brildane is the name they call themselves. We call them gehdra, because they are invisible. They have no time for any creature but their own kind. But they hate the funaga, because your kind trap and slay their young.”

  “Are they hungry?” I asked, trying to understand what sort of animal it could be.

  “If they were, we would already be dead,” Gahltha sent. “You heard their calls throughout the night? The mountain equines know a little of their strange speech. Their calls concerned us. They wonder what we are doing here. The gehdra claim the high mountains as their own world. Here we are intruders.”

  “Wolves! The Brildane are wolves!” I cried. I looked at Gahltha. “Are you telling me they’re just curious?” I asked.

  “The curiosity of the gehdra is as savage as its hunger,” Gahltha sent quellingly.

  I looked around uneasily, wondering how he had known of their presence. I had heard not a sound. And even now, I could sense no minds but our own. The wolves must have some ability to cloak their minds.

  “Would it help if I sent a greeting?” I suggested.

  “No!” Gahltha sent urgently, as if he expected me to leap up and rush into the night with a cry of greeting on my lips. “It is impossible to predict what they will do. Speaking to them would not stop them eating us, if that was their desire. And if they wanted to confront us, they would have done it. But I think they came to look, not to feed or speak. Better to do nothing. With the gehdra, that is always safest.”

  Gahltha’s warnings were underlined by a sense of tangible fear. Bleakly, I realized these may be the very wolves Ariel had hunted and trapped. He had driven them mad to ensure their ferocity and had used them to guard the grounds, hunting and killing runaways. We had hoped to heal the beasts once Ariel had gone, but his sadistic treatment had made it impossible. In the end, the best we could do was give the wolves back their freedom.

  I dared not stir a limb until Gahltha reported that they had gone, fading back into the night as mysteriously as they had appeared.

  “Are you sure you didn’t imagine them?” I asked.

  “In the morning you will see,” was all he would say.

  It was hard to go back to sleep, but after a while I fell into a light, troubled slumber. I dreamed of Ariel as he had been, a boy with almost unearthly beauty and a sadistic turn of mind that delighted in causing pain. I woke disquieted. The night grew steadily colder, and even Gahltha’s considerable body heat could not keep me warm. Eventually, I gave up trying to sleep and lay waiting for the horse to wake.

  With relief, I felt Gahltha stir at dawn. It was barely light before we were off but light enough to see that Gahltha had been right the night before. The snow all around us was covered in paw prints, some a mere handspan from where my feet had lain.

  The Brildane.

  I shivered, and suddenly it began to snow. Just a few flakes at first, but blown with stinging force into our faces by a hard, icy wind. The snow was already thick underfoot and made walking tiring. Gahltha offered to carry me again, but he could only walk a little faster than I and was easily as tired, so I refused. I knew neither of us could go much farther without proper rest and food.

  Near to dropping, I was trying to remember how long it had been since I had eaten when Gahltha neighed loudly. Squinting against the wind and flying snow, I realized he had rounded a spur of rock and was out of sight. Forcing weary limbs to hurry, I caught up.

  “What is it?” I sent, wondering if I had strength enough left to deal with another obstacle.

  “We have reached the valley of the barud.”

  I blinked stupidly. Barud? “Obernewtyn!”

  All weariness fell away from me then. I was close enough to send a questing probe, but something kept me from it, a desire to have my first glimpse of Obernewtyn unhampered by greetings and explanations.

  I had just begun to recognize some of the hills and stone hummocks when the wind fell away and the snow stopped, making our first glimpse of Obernewtyn clear and unmistakable.

  A cry of happiness died in my throat, stillborn. I stumbled to a halt, unable to believe my eyes.

  All that remained of Obernewtyn was a charred ruin.

  26

  ONLY A FIRESTORM could have done so much damage.

  Little remained of Obernewtyn but rubble. The walls of the main building were no more than jagged, blackened stumps of stone. The windblown snow adhered to the crevices, and a rambling kind of thorn brush thrust its roots deep into the cracked rubble.

  It looked like a ruin of years rather than moons. How had it degenerated so quickly? I blinked, for when I stared hard, I seemed to see the ghostly shape of Obernewtyn as it had been.

  Tears blurred my vision, and the wind froze them before they could fall. It was bitter cold on the hillside, but I scarcely felt the chill. To have traveled so long and far only to find Obernewtyn destroyed was beyond a nightmare.

  “Come,” Gahltha sent.

  I stared at him incredulously.

  He asked doubtfully, “Do you not want to go to the barud? I am sworn to take you wherever you will.”

  I shook my head, disturbed by his lack of emotion. Perhaps he had changed less than I realized and welcomed the downfall of any funaga institution. I looked back at the wreckage and wondered whether any had escaped the firestorm. What a tragic irony that the lie that had protected us for so long had come so horribly true.

  Stumbling forward, I prayed I would find some clue as to where everyone had gone. The ground was sodden from the melting snow, and fresh flakes fell soft as ashes on the dark, wet earth.

  Abruptly, I stopped and stared, squinting against the cold wind blustering across the valley. I thought I had seen a smudge of smoke.

  It had come from somewhere on the far side of the valley, near the pass to the highlands. My heart beat faster as I made out a number of dark shapes that might be buildings. It seemed to me I was looking at a small settlement.

  Gahltha offered to carry me, though he seemed puzzled at my instruction not to pass too close to Obernewtyn. It occurred to me that equines might not know that a poisonous residue was left behind by a firestorm.

  Some obscure instinct of caution stopped me riding directly into the camp. I asked Gahltha to take us into a clump of trees a short distance away. With the mountains behind and on one side and the ruins of Obernewtyn on the other, w
e were safe from detection.

  Peering through the greenery, I could see several roughly constructed stone-and-thatch huts, set in a circle and surrounded by a wall of stripling branches. Even at a distance, it was clearly a poor settlement, and an air of hopeless dilapidation hung over it.

  Two men emerged from one of the hovels. I bit my lip. Soldierguards!

  They could only have come through the pass. That meant the thaw had already opened the way. At least the Council would have no more cause to doubt Rushton’s word … if he had survived the firestorm. A strange feeling of despair filled me at the realization that he might be dead.

  I felt Gahltha’s restive movements and looked at him. “Perhaps we should go to Obernewtyn to find out what has passed here,” he suggested.

  I shook my head impatiently. “What good will that do? Besides, it would be dangerous to go there now. I want to get a better look at that camp. The soldierguards can’t have built those huts. I want to know who did. We’ll go back the way we came and right around to the other side.”

  Before I could mount, Gahltha sent a warning that someone approached.

  To my horror, it was three soldierguards. Fortunately, they stopped in a clearing several spans from where we were hidden. Grumbling about the cold, they sat on logs, rubbing their hands and faces.

  “I tell you, I am weary of this hellish place,” said one man resentfully. “ ‘Get wood,’ the captain orders, but what is the use of it? Quick as the fire warms you, the wind chills you to the bone.”

  “That fellow Rushton does nowt seem to feel th’ cold,” said a big burly man with a highland accent, and I was glad to hear Rushton’s name despite the circumstances. “It whistles through th’ holes in his clothes, an’ he nary shows a shiver. His blood must be as cold as th’ snow.”

  “There is a madness in him,” said the first. “No sane man could wish to stay up here, yet the fool claims he will rebuild Obernewtyn once the taint is faded.”

  The big man nodded. “I heard he was offered a billet in th’ lowlands but chose to come back here.”

  “He is proud enough to want his inheritance rebuilt,” said the first speaker, rising and stamping his feet. “But what does any of this matter to the Council? I swear this is a fool’s errand. Three suns have risen on this barren valley since we came here. And why?”

  “Why indeed?” asked the third man, who had not spoken yet. He had an unpleasant hissing sort of voice and quick, sly eyes. “We are to find out if Obernewtyn is truly destroyed and if there is truth in rumors of sedition here.”

  “One look answered those questions,” said the first man.

  “Did it?” asked the third in an insinuating tone. His two companions eyed him curiously.

  “Do ye say there is sedition here? I have seen no sign of it,” said the big highlander at length.

  “I say neither yes nor no to it. But the captain is no fool. He would not stay here for pleasure. Perhaps he knows something we do not.”

  “What do ye mean?” asked the highlander.

  “Just this—captains, as a rule, are told more than rank-and-file soldierguards. I heard he had his orders direct from the Council’s agent. Who knows what information he has,” said the hissing man.

  “There is somethin’ strange about these mountain folk,” opined the highlander after a moment of thought. “I dinna know what it is, but when I am among them, my skin creeps.”

  “Mine too,” said the first man. “Ariel spoke certain of sedition, and he’s seldom wrong.”

  “Call him not by name!” snarled the third man, glancing about as if he feared immediate reprisal.

  “His name is not so secret,” sneered the first.

  “Well, then call him by it when next you see him, fool. There is one to make a man’s skin crawl.”

  “I say we mun just as soon kill them all, miserable creatures,” the big highlander pronounced. “Then we need not trouble ourselves with findin’ out if they be seditioners.”

  “Usually, we are told to bring back prisoners alive. But I have heard it whispered the Council’s agent wants none to come alive from the mountains. I wonder if it is true, and why,” pondered the first man.

  “Indeed. I wonder what he suspects … or fears,” said the third soldierguard.

  After a long pause, the highlander shook himself like an ox. “I wonder only how long before my head rests on a real bed an’ my tongue tastes a sweet fement,” he sighed plaintively.

  “Never, if I catch you idling again when I have given an order!” came a new voice, so close my heart skipped a beat. Cautiously, I moved and saw that two more men had entered the clearing. From the markings on his collar, the tall, sallow-faced newcomer was the captain.

  But the person behind him was no soldierguard. I stifled a gasp at the sight of Rushton!

  Clad in shabby trousers and a ragged jumper, he was grim-faced and gaunt. The wild, dark gleam in his eyes told me why the soldierguards had judged him mad. He looked like a man possessed, and deep lines of suffering and despair made him appear far older than he was. There was a bitter twist to his lips that I had never seen before, and I was filled with pity at the thought of what the destruction of Obernewtyn had meant to him. He must have loved it more than life for its demise to mark him so.

  As if he sensed my scrutiny, his head turned; he seemed to stare straight into my eyes. I shuddered at the emptiness in his face and was glad when he turned aside to follow the captain and his men from the clearing.

  I slumped back, aching all over from tension. I could not forget Rushton’s face, for it warned me worse might have happened than I could even imagine.

  I went afoot as we made our way back along the valley, but this time we went more warily and stayed close to the walls of Obernewtyn where trees grew thickly, offering shelter. I noticed fumes of faint blue smoke rising from the ruins and was struck by the feeling that I had seen them before.

  “Elspeth?” came a voice from behind. I whirled in fright and found myself looking into the astounded face of Daffyd. Gahltha, who did not know him, moved aggressively between us, until I reassured him.

  Daffyd came forward slowly, as if he thought I would disappear. “By Lud, it is you!” he cried. “I thought I was dreaming with my eyes open. We thought you dead. Your feet …” He looked down.

  “Are healed,” I said firmly. “I coerced you to think them worse than they were, because I knew I could not make it back to the mountains before the pass closed. But what has happened here? Was Obernewtyn like this when you arrived? Were any hurt in the firestorm? And when did the soldierguards come?”

  Daffyd burst into laughter. “It must be a powerful illusion if it fools even the guildmistress of the farseekers. But they do say little Dragon is as strong as you were … are,” he added ruefully.

  I felt my mouth drop open, and a great joy welled up in me. “Then … this”—I waved a trembling hand at the ruins—“this is all an illusion?”

  “Of course,” Daffyd said.

  I sank to my knees, weak with relief. “No wonder Gahltha behaved so oddly. Dragon’s illusions do not work on animals.” I sent an explanation to Gahltha, who still looked puzzled.

  “Then everyone is inside?” I asked.

  Daffyd shook his head. “Rushton thought that too much risk. We are using the Teknoguild cave network as a base. Only a few live in the camp, for appearance’s sake. Rushton, of course, and Ceirwan, Dameon, and most others trained in farseeking and empathy.”

  “Not coercers?” I wondered.

  “They are in another hidden camp very near the pass,” Daffyd explained. “They are our insurance, in case this sleight of hand fails to deceive the soldierguards and open battle is needed to stop them carrying tales to the Council.” He frowned. “But how is it they did not see you come through the pass just now?”

  I shrugged, realizing it would suit me to have everyone think I had come from the highlands, rather than from the high mountains. “I came very stealthily. And I h
ave some coercive Talent. The soldierguards didn’t see me either, but I saw them. And I fear we might have to fight despite this illusion.” I told Daffyd what I had overheard.

  “It is true the soldierguards have stayed longer than we hoped,” Daffyd said worriedly. “Tonight Rushton will come here, and you can tell him this news.” He gave me a quick look. “He will be amazed to see you here. I think your death was a grievous thing to him.”

  I nodded absently. “I heard one of the soldierguards say they have been here for three days. How is it Dragon can sustain an illusion so long?”

  “She has practiced all wintertime,” Daffyd said. “Even so, it is a strain, and she does not maintain it in the dark hours. Luck has made them come in the waning of the moon. The blue fumes are an added touch to give credence to Rushton’s story that the ruins are contaminated. That stops the soldierguards wanting a closer look.” He glanced at the ruin pensively. “I wonder what keeps the captain suspicious.”

  “From what I heard, it has to do with Ariel’s insistence.”

  “You were seemingly right about his haste for revenge. As you feared, the soldierguards arrived the moment the pass thawed,” Daffyd said. “We have kept Dragon out of their sight. It is easier for her to hold the illusion away from the distraction of people. Matthew stays with her to protect her during the day. At night, we three camp not far from here, for no one would dare come so close to Obernewtyn. They will be back soon. In the meantime, what about some food?”

  “I’m starving,” I said fervently. “And so is Gahltha.”

  As we walked to the campsite, I explained to the black horse all that I’d learned. It did not take Daffyd long to make a small fire and warm some stew. Gahltha preferred grass to the bags of horse feed. I sat gratefully by the fire and accepted a cup of strong fement once I had eaten.