I had heard enough about its contents to know that I needed to read it for the sake of my quest, and Garth had reluctantly promised to send it to me. His note warned that although the pages of the journal had been covered in plast by Jacob to protect them, some had not been completely sealed, so great care was needed in handling them. As soon as I had finished, Garth added, I should return the book to the Teknoguild caverns where a copy would be made for anyone wanting to look at it thereafter, this not so subtle reproach directed at me for my impatience.
Perching on the edge of the bed, I drew the lamp closer and opened the journal reverently. As I had been told, it began as a letter from Jacob to Hannah Seraphim, the leader of the Beforetime Misfits.
My dearest Hannah, I do not know if you will ever read this. You dreamed that we would lie together in a single grave but I know now this can never happen. What you foresaw must have been one of those possibilities that was extinguished by some action of ours. I fear we will never meet again in this life. My one consolation is to believe that you may also have been wrong about Sentinel, in which case the key you left in my care does not matter, save that it is a precious keepsake of you.
I broke off to draw a long breath. I had heard various speculations about the nature and purpose of the key Jacob had mentioned in the journal, but only now was I certain that it was Cassandra’s key. I read on, praying that Jacob would speak of hiding it and explain where it was to be found. Surely it must be somewhere at Obernewtyn. No one had spoken of a hidden key but Jacob might have scribed of its whereabouts in such a cryptic way that I alone would understand him.
Perhaps it was because you were so far away when our world fell that for a long time I was able to believe that you might have escaped the worst of the holocaust and would return as you promised. Indeed, this hope has been the only thing that has made my grief and loneliness tolerable. It seemed a terrible irony that it was speaking to you that saved me from the end faced by the others, and so condemned me to this long solitary life I have lived. Yet I cannot regret hearing your voice that one last time.
My dear, despite my loneliness I would remain here until death if I could be sure that you would return, but after all these years I have no hope of it. I cannot communicate by computer since our webgrid connection shut down but what little I have been able to glean from occasional shortwave radio broadcasts over these long lonely years tells me that our world has truly passed away. Much of Chinon is untouched, which is another irony perhaps, but Tipoda and the poles settlement, vast Mericanda and most of Uropa are radioactive wastelands. Even nature, in the end, struck out at humanity in the form of earthquakes and tremors that destroyed many areas left untouched by missiles. One broadcaster said that Newrome had been drowned after a huge quake caused a subterranean river to flood the caverns. Perhaps it was the same quake that destroyed the laboratories here. How it grieved me to learn that all of our people in the Reichler Clinic Reception Centre perished as well as those at Obernewtyn. I wonder what grotesque twist of fate decreed that I, who have no paranormal abilities, should survive when so many rare and gifted people have died.
I blame myself for the deaths here. If only I had insisted that everyone remain in the house. But when reports of the missile launches began to come through, everyone voted to go down into the lower levels of the laboratories. I reminded them that you had always said we would be safe within the house, but I had no argument when they answered that you might be wrong about that, since you had not foreseen that you would be absent from Obernewtyn when the end came.
So I let them go as I used Ines to try to reach you one last time.
It is so green and peaceful here. Sometimes it feels as if what happened is all a dream – all the years of loneliness. I wake and hear the birds singing and I find myself listening for the human voices that will tell me everyone here is alive.
I told you that I would wait forever when last we spoke. Did you foresee that I would not keep my promise even as you must have known that you would be unable to keep yours? It took me a long time to accept that even if you lived through the missile strikes and reached a shelter, the level of contamination there would require you to remain indoors for the rest of your life. My loneliness has been so great that my sanity has begun to crumble. Indeed, perhaps the dream of a shining city in a white desert is no more than the product of a disintegrating mind. Even so, I have decided it is better to pursue a hopeless hope than to give in to black despair. You told Cassandra that once, do you remember?
I will prepare myself carefully. It will take time and I will continue this letter as I make my preparations because writing these pages has made me feel close to you. I will leave this journal here when I go, just in case you return, but I will take the key with me because I swore I would always wear it around my neck. At least I can keep that promise …
There was a sound at the door, and I looked up to see Freya enter with a tray of food. ‘I knocked but you did not hear me,’ she said apologetically.
I waved her to set down the food on the bedside table and asked, ‘Did you leave a parcel here for me?’
She nodded. ‘Fian came by with it this afternoon. He said it was Jacob’s journal and he asked me to see that you got it. It is hard to believe it was scribed by the very man who built Obernewtyn. Ceir said he was completely alone here at the end. I cannot imagine how he endured it.’
The thought came to me unbidden that the worst loneliness must be to long for someone whom you knew could never come, but I only asked, ‘Is Fian still about?’
Freya shook her head. ‘He had some errand at the Teknoguild caves but he said he would come and see you tomorrow before he goes back down to the White Valley, to get any message you might scribe for his master.’
After she had gone, I went back eagerly to the journal and reread the last words.
I will take the key with me because I swore I would always wear it around my neck. At least I can keep that promise …
Jacob continued but he did not speak of the key again, and gradually I noticed there was a change in his tone. In the beginning his words seemed intimate, for they had been addressed to Hannah, but the scribing gradually became more of a record of his preparations for his departure from Obernewtyn than a letter, and the tone cooled. But rather than becoming despondent, his activities clearly gave him new heart. He had not exaggerated, either, when he had spoken of making careful preparations. There were pages of closely written calculations to do with air and food and water: he seemed to have some means of storing food so that it would require little space, and he also spoke of a device for cleansing water and of some sort of stove. But he did not say which direction he meant to take, save to say that he would go beyond the high peaks that bounded the upper end of the mountain valley. He did speak of some landmarks. Once he mentioned a pair of mountains that rose up like horns, and another time he scribed of some sort of building or settlement in the mountains where there were devices that would allow him to see the way to the city of his dreams. But he did not say where the building was nor where his city was, save to describe it as standing in the midst of a shining white plain. However, if the city was on a plain, then he would have to descend from the mountains and cross the Blacklands.
I began to skim pages searching for a mention of the key. Two-thirds of the way through the journal I came upon a reference to the dream that had jolted him out of his apathy.
No doubt it would seem madness to leave this green paradise to undertake a journey that will take me beyond the high mountains into the devastated and poisoned region left in the wake of the holocaust, yet my dream tells me that all is not dead that seems so. If there are survivors, it may be that they have a link to the world grid, and that they are in communication with others who escaped the destruction. It is my dearest hope that I will be able to communicate with you, my dear one, even if I can never see you again. That is what drives me, though there are times when what I will do seems the sheerest madness. Yet it was alwa
ys your dreams that led us all and perhaps it is fitting that in the end, I follow a dream of my own…
The segment ended abruptly at the end of a page, and on the next was a plan of the vessel Jacob was building to travel in when he left Obernewtyn. I had no idea how any vessel could traverse the precipitous terrain in the high mountains, but given the Beforetimers’ ability to create machines that would serve them, I did not doubt that Jacob had managed it. His words made it clear that he meant to remain enclosed in the vehicle, which would produce clean air for him to breath and protect him from the poisonous terrain until its power source failed. Then he had scribed that he would put on a plast suit and leave the vehicle, hauling his supplies on a simple cart that he would fashion from part of the vehicle. He did not scribe when or where this would happen. Perhaps his instruments would tell him when it was needful.
The distant sound of thunder roused me from trying to imagine Jacob setting off across the dreadful Blacklands beyond the high mountains that I had glimpsed but once and never forgotten. My head ached, my eyes burned and the stub of the time candle that remained attested to the fact that it was long past midnight. I had been reading for hours.
I closed the journal and stretched with a groan, suddenly feeling exhausted as well as stiff. It was only the knowledge that I must reek of horse and sweat that stopped me crawling into bed fully clothed. I added wood to the dying fire, poured water from the blackened cauldron that hung above the hearth into a wide bowl and bathed. The wash woke me to hunger and after pulling on a nightgown I went to investigate the tray Freya had left.
The honeyed milk was cold, but there were several slices of a loaf that smelled enticingly of Sadorian choca. I took up a slice and bit into it, realising this must be what Freya had made. It was delicious and I ate two pieces greedily, before carrying the final slice and the milk to the window. Moon and stars were completely obscured by great banks of cloud and the air smelled of rain and lightning, yet still the storm had not broken. Perhaps the wind would blow it up the valley, and it would spend itself on the high mountains. Craning my neck, I noted that the highest peaks, already snow clad, were the only things visible in the darkness, floating like ghost mountains.
Flicking away the skin that had formed on the milk, I sipped the sweetened liquid, thinking of Jacob looking out on just such a vista as he made his preparations to travel such a long time ago. Had he been afraid? There had not been a hint of it in the journal, nor, in my opinion, any sign of madness, though when I had heard others speak of the journey he planned, I had assumed he must have fallen into a mad state. It was true that his mood had been dark and profoundly sad when he had begun scribing his journal, but most of the pages I had read were filled with such careful plans that it was impossible to think of them coming from someone who was mad or who wanted to die. They were too purposeful. No, Jacob’s dream had convinced him that there was a city and untainted ground beyond the mountains, where people might have survived the Great White, and he had believed that he could reach it.
Unfortunately he had so far left no clue as to where his city might lie, and as far as I could tell, he had taken Cassandra’s key with him. Which left me in an impossible quandary. Even were I to calculate the distance Jacob had hoped to travel from the amounts of food and water listed in his provisions, I had no means of knowing which direction he had taken. Perhaps he had not even known the exact route he would take after he reached the high mountains. After all, he had scribed of travelling to a place in the mountains from which he hoped to see the city he sought. Perhaps he had expected his dreams to guide him. There had been a giddy lightness in his words sometimes, which gave me the feeling that he was relieved and elated to be casting his fate into the wind, even if it should mean his death.
I was tempted to read to the end of the journal, but I was suddenly too weary. I braided my hair loosely, and found myself picturing the maps that the brusque Sadorian map mistress Gorgol had once shown me. They represented the Land and Sador as tiny fragments at the bottom end of a vast, blackened landmass. The north-east part of the landmass had been incomplete because no ship had ever circumnavigated the whole of it, the distance being too great for a ship to carry provisions enough for its crew to survive the journey there and back. So, theoretically, it was possible that there were places beyond the high mountains, perhaps in the north-east, where a Beforetime city might stand intact on untainted ground. Yet if there were such a city, peopled by the descendants of Beforetimers who had not endured the Great White and the Age of Chaos that followed, we would surely know of it.
I shrugged. Whatever the map did or did not show, I had to find Cassandra’s key before I could complete my quest. How I was to do that when I knew only that Jacob had taken it with him from Obernewtyn, I had no notion. What I did know was that both Cassy and Hannah had regarded the key he had taken with him as vital to my quest.
I climbed into bed, drawing the covers up about my neck. The sheets were cold and as I lay still waiting for them to warm, it occurred to me that Zarak would be disappointed to learn he had been wrong in his guess that Hannah had been visiting Newrome when the Great White came. Jacob’s journal made it clear that she had been a good deal further away than Newrome. Which meant that I, too, had been wrong in my speculation that Rushton had been one of Hannah’s descendants because they shared the same second name.
Unless Hannah had eventually made her way back to the Land in an attempt to fulfil her promise to Jacob. It might be so, for had not Cassy made a vast journey with the Beforetime Misfits to the Land after the Great White? It was a queer thing to imagine that Cassandra and Hannah might both have come back to the Land, without either knowing the other had returned. Of course, if they had, one or both would surely have futuretold the presence of the other. Besides, there had never been anything to suggest they had met again after the Great White.
I rolled onto my belly, thinking that if Hannah had come to the Land and borne a child, she would have had to come much sooner than Cassy, since the latter had grown to womanhood in the Red Land. The one time I had dreamed of Hannah it had been in the Beforetime and she had been perhaps five and thirty. If she had waited the same length of time as Cassy had before returning to the Land, she would have been too old to bear children. Indeed, even if she had travelled straight to the Land, she would have had to meet and bond with a man very quickly to bear a child, and that in the midst of all the upheavals and dangers of the Age of Chaos.
One part of me was glad to have thought of a way to fit what I had learned into my theory of Hannah as Rushton’s ancestor, for I was very fond of it, but it was hard to think of Hannah meeting and so swiftly bonding with a man after I had just read Jacob’s scribings to her. His feelings for the Beforetime woman were achingly fresh in my mind, and it almost seemed a betrayal that she would have bonded with someone else. Yet no matter how Jacob had felt about her, maybe Hannah had not loved him, save as a dear friend and benefactor.
My eyelids were growing heavy but I resisted sleep. These last few moments each night were all I allowed myself for daydreaming about Rushton and I wondered with a wry smile if he struggled to push me to the back of his mind as hard as I did to stop myself thinking of him. But I had seen how deeply he loved me when I had delved into his mind on Norseland, so I knew the answer to my question.
Turning onto my back again, I closed my eyes and summoned up the memory of our last hours together in Sador. Rushton had spent the night preparing to petition the Sadorian tribal leaders for the use of their remaining two greatships on the voyage to the Red Land. It had been just before dawn when he had finally come to my tent, his face still badly bruised from his ordeal on Norseland. His eyes had been weary but full of tenderness. How hard it had been to tell him that I had to return to Obernewtyn that very day.
I had feared he would argue, or worse, that he would be hurt or angry, but instead he had jumped to the conclusion that I had experienced a premonition that compelled me to return to the mountains. I h
ad not corrected him because the Agyllians’ stern injunction never to reveal my quest meant I was unable to tell him Maruman had commanded me to return. Quite aside from the constraints of my quest, I felt obliged to Atthis because she had helped me to save Rushton’s life on Norseland.
I let the memory run on until the moment before our parting, when Rushton had taken me into his arms and kissed me hard enough to bruise my lips, whispering, ‘You are mine, whatever else you are …’
I thrilled at the memory of that kiss and the words he had spoken with such fierce passion, but another voice, cool and female, intruded into the memory – the futureteller Dell, informing me: Before the next wintertime ends, you will bid farewell to all that you love and you will journey far over land and sea …
I opened my eyes to gaze at the shifting play of firelight on the roof and thought of the clawed darkness that had pursued me through my dreams the previous night. ‘Come back soon, Rushton,’ I whispered. ‘Come back while there is still a little time for us …’
When at last I slept, I dreamed of Cassy.
The Beforetime girl lay on her back, her hands by her sides, legs straight, hair pulled back tightly and tucked out of sight behind her head. Her dark skin had an ashy purple tinge, and for one horrible moment I thought that she was dead and laid out for burial. Then her eyes opened. She squinted and blinked as if the light hurt her eyes, though it was only a dim reddish glow. After a little, she seemed to grow accustomed to the light and she gazed around with a puzzlement that quickly became dawning apprehension. Finally she lifted her hands and groped upward into the ruby darkness. It was only when her fingers stopped and flattened at the tips that I realised she was touching glass or plast. Cassy struck out at it, a look of panic in her eyes.
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