Cinda laid her hand on the Norselander’s arm and moved her fingers in what was obviously a question, for Elkar gave me an apologetic glance and began flicking his fingers. I bent to put more wood on the fire, giving them a moment of privacy, and stifled a yawn.
Presently Elkar said, ‘Cinda tells me you are riding out at dawn tomorrow, so it seems we must say goodbye now.’
‘I might get back before you leave,’ I told them, ‘but it would be as well to say goodbye in case I do not.’ I suddenly felt all the sorrow of my looming departure from the Land, to which I had been told I would never return. This time it was I who reached out and took their clasped hands in mine. ‘It has been an unlooked-for pleasure to see you here, my friends, and though I wish it had been a longer visit and that I had more time to spend with you, I am very grateful you came and more than glad to hear how well things are progressing for you and for all the others in the Norselands.’
‘Lady Elspeth, it aches me that I must say a final goodbye to you,’ Cinda said, speaking through the image in her mind.
I responded using my own image so that she alone heard my words. ‘Someone once told me that even the wise do not see all things, and what they do see may be misunderstood. Perhaps we shall meet again, even if not in the Land.’
She smiled to hear herself quoted, but her eyes were sad. ‘I will hope for it with all my heart and I wish you well in the days to come and pray that all may be as you desire.’ She embraced me and I felt how very slender she was in my arms. There was not truly much more flesh to her now than when I had first set eyes on her in the chamber of the One in the black city on Herder Isle. Her true strength had always been of heart and spirit, rather than of flesh and muscle.
When she released me, Elkar embraced me too and then they went out together, leaving me alone.
10
I had just drifted to the borderland of sleep when a memory brought me abruptly awake: I had once seen a map showing the whereabouts of the weaponmachines that had destroyed the Beforetime.
Lukas Seraphim had rebuilt Obernewtyn at the end of the Age of Chaos, while his bondmate, the coldly beautiful Marisa, had pursued her fascination with the Beforetime. Buying Beforetime books and other forbidden artefacts, she had eventually unearthed a pre-holocaust map showing what she had believed to be the weaponmachines that had destroyed the Beforetime, but which I now knew must have shown the whereabouts of Sentinel.
How Marisa had found a map showing the secret Sentinel complex and how she had managed to orientate Beforetime maps to the world that existed now, I could not guess, but eventually she had destroyed the map and all of her own maps and notes identifying its location in relation to the Land. But she had been too much of a scholar to destroy knowledge utterly. She had cunningly concealed the directions to Sentinel in a pattern, which she arranged to have carved into the border of a set of heavy wooden doors being made for the front entrance of the newly built Obernewtyn.
Her son’s ward, the brilliant but defective Alexi, had got wind of Marisa’s discoveries and had very likely killed her in his efforts to get his hands on the map references that would lead him to Sentinel, believing it to be a weaponmachine. Marisa never revealed her secrets to him but eventually he had hit upon the idea of exposing Misfits with forbidden defects – futuretelling or empathic Talents – to Marisa’s books and possessions in the hope that they would be able to tell him the whereabouts of the map. There were plenty of Misfits at his disposal because the original master of Obernewtyn, Lukas Seraphim, had made some arrangement with the Councilmen who ruled the Land to take over the care and keep of convicted Misfits in exchange for labour.
After the death of his foster father, Alexi’s adoptive brother Stephen Seraphim had become master of Obernewtyn. Alexi and his accomplice Madam Vega had contrived to prevent anyone knowing that Stephen Seraphim was mentally defective since this would cause Obernewtyn to revert to Council ownership. Stephen Seraphim had been completely under the sway of the pair, and they had done as they chose. Ariel had joined them at this time. There had been a rumour that he was Alexi’s son, but Rushton had told me that the rumours had originated with Ariel, who had not liked anyone mentioning the fact that he had been a Misfit. Rushton said he had started out by making himself useful to Alexi and Madam Vega by spying on the other Misfits and reporting those who might be concealing useful Talents.
I thought it likely he had also used coercion to make them accept him as an ally and to gradually raise him from his Misfit status. I did not think he had possessed more than an inkling of awareness of his Talents back then, or he would have done much more and much worse than he did do. Nor did I think he knew when he began serving Alexi and Madam Vega that he had the potential to locate and wake the ancient weaponmachines that had destroyed the Beforetime. Most likely the knowledge of the dark possibilities in his future had come to him little by little as he began to understand what Alexi was trying to learn from Marisa’s research. Indeed, this might have been how he had become the Destroyer, with the capacity to find and to wake the weaponmachines that had caused the Great White, and to bring a final doom to the world, if I failed in my quest.
As to when he had known what I was, that was harder to tell. It might have been when I had found myself strapped to the Zebkrahn machine being tortured to see if that would enable me to gain the knowledge Alexi desired from his stepmother’s papers. A partial mind link with Rushton had enabled me to bear the pain to which I was subjected, until the device had overheated and exploded into flames, burning my feet and legs terribly. The agony I had experienced had wakened the potent black killing power that lay at the bottom of my mind like a coiled and sleeping serpent, and it was this power, I understood now, that had enabled me to see not only the original map that Marisa had destroyed as well as the specifications carved in the doors to Obernewtyn, but also the very place they indicated: the murk-filled chasm where Sentinel stood. Horrified at the thought that someone might find the weaponmachines that had destroyed the Beforetime, I had contrived to have the original doors to Obernewtyn burned after we took over.
I had not known until afterwards that the central panels around which the doors had been built had been brought up to the mountains by gypsies and sold to Marisa, nor that they incorporated a list of instructions from Cassy – a list of directions that, once unravelled, were to lead me to all I would need to destroy Sentinel. I had been forced to revisit the doors on the dreamtrails to learn what they were. In retrospect it was a pity I had not taken a rubbing of the border where Marisa had concealed her directions to Sentinel, as well as the markings on the central panels, because all I knew for sure about its whereabouts was that it was far from Old Scotia in what had been a remote part of the world in the Beforetime, and that it had been close to or at least on the same landmass as another Govamen complex called Eden. This, according to my most recent Beforetime dream, was where two of the last flamebirds had been sent, who were distant ancestors of Atthis and the Agyllians.
I marvelled at this for a time, and then my thoughts returned to the White-faced Lords as I wondered if it was possible that Sentinel was situated in their distant land. How strange if, instead of being isolated and abandoned as I had always imagined, Sentinel lay at the heart of a thriving community, unrecognised for the deadly force it was!
Following the play of firelight on the curved roof, I thought about Cassandra’s key. I had no idea of the role it was to play, given that the memory seed Cassandra had left in the Sadorian Earthtemple was supposed to contain all I would need to get into the Sentinel Complex. Perhaps just as the memory seed was not truly a seed, Cassandra’s key was not truly a key, after all the word key had possessed a number of meanings in the Beforetime. The letters scribed upon the little blocks in the control panel of a computermachine, which were the means of communicating with it, were called keys, and the process of tapping instructions with them had been called keying. The chart of symbols and distances that made sense of a map was also calle
d a key, and maybe there were other meanings as well.
Irritated by the fact that I was now thoroughly awake from thinking about my quest instead of advancing it by speaking with Atthis on the dreamtrails, I had to remind myself that I had abandoned the idea of attempting it this night when I had found Cinda in my chamber, knowing it would be too late to seek out the dreamtrails when I had to get up before dawn. Besides, I had no desire to disturb Gahltha when doubtless he was with Avra.
If I was honest with myself, a part of me had been terribly distracted by the possibility that Rushton might come to me. In the wake of our early morning conversation and what I had so boldly invited, the prospect of a visit from the master of Obernewtyn was as disturbing as it was thrilling, and thinking of it had caused me to lie tossing and turning like a fool for a good hour after the Norselanders had left.
I sighed again, wishing I had simply asked Rushton outright if he would come to me that night, but when the others crowded around him I had restrained myself.
‘And why?’ I muttered restlessly. ‘Why am I always so careful?’
I had no sensation of falling asleep, but suddenly Gahltha was in my mind urging me to wake, telling me he was waiting outside the front entrance to Obernewtyn to carry me down to the watchhut.
Seeing that the sky was already the starless deep blue of predawn I muttered a curse and leapt up to splash my face with water and clean my teeth then I dressed and tied my hair back into a rough tail. I shivered as I stepped into the chill air of the unheated stairwell, despite wearing a thick, quilted vest, a warm woollen scarf and gloves and the new coat Maryon had gifted me, still pungent with the oil that had been rubbed into it to prevent the fabric from taking in water. Most of the candles had burned out in their sconces but there was light enough for me not to break my neck hurrying down the steps and across the Farseekers hall, and some restless and zealous futureteller had lit fresh candles along the halls to the main entrance.
‘I asked Alad to send Zade,’ I sent mildly to Gahltha, after I told him I was on my way.
Most beastspeakers were unable to communicate with beasts unless they were close to them, but my farseeking and coercive Talents enabled me to beastspeak at a distance. I would not have done so if Gahltha had been on the farms, since it would have woken every other beast between us, unless I had expended considerable effort to shield it, but it was unlikely that there would be any beast within the house that I would disturb.
‘I am not the only one who will guard you this day,’ Gahltha sent.
I was about to ask if Zade had come with him when I reached the front entrance hall and noticed a small bulging pack standing neatly on a table that had been set by the front door. A brief examination revealed that, as I had guessed, it was the food Ceirwan had promised. I hefted it onto my shoulders before pushing wide the great door that had been built to replace the two heavily carved doors that had contained both Cassy’s instructions and Marisa’s secrets.
Outside it was very still and cold. Veils of mist hung in the frigid air, and in the east, the indigo shadows of treetops loomed against a paling sky. In the greater dark cast by the buildings behind me, a circle of buttery gold light fell around the lamppost that stood a little distance from the steps. Just beyond it was the shining blue-black form of Gahltha.
‘Greetings Elspethlnnle,’ he sent coolly.
I sighed, realising he was offended. I went down the steps and through the lamplight to him and stroked his long, soft nose. ‘My dear friend, I asked for Zade only because I wanted you to have time with Avra and Theral,’ I beastspoke him.
‘We three rode/grazed together yesterday, stabled together last night,’ Gahltha sent, but his tone had thawed. ‘Now Theral is with the funaga LouisLarkin and with Linabeastspeaker so that they can teach him the signalspeech that will allow him to speak with funaga who cannot beastspeak. That is Avra’s purpose in bringing him here. Avra waits for you / us outside the gate to the barud. She will ride with us.’
I was startled at how much his speech had taken on the traditional rhythm and cadences of pure equine beastspeech after spending time with Avra. I was glad the mare would ride with us and wished I had thought to suggest it instead of offending Gahltha by asking for Zade.
‘It is long since we three have ridden together,’ I sent, as I mounted him.
It did not take us long to canter down the dark curving road and out through the main gate. I noticed that there was still a good bit of water lying about in great dark puddles. It would take a sevenday of sunshine before the sodden earth absorbed them and I wondered how the ground was about the tents that had been pitched for the moon fair.
Avra was grazing a little way along the road that ran back from the main gate to the farm gate, but she was immediately alert to our presence, lifting her head and giving a soft neigh of greeting before trotting up to us. I had barely beastspoken my own greetings when I realised there was a second horse waiting, a large dappled-grey mare I had never set eyes on before. Neither Avra nor Gahltha showed any surprise at seeing her and when she greeted me as ElspethInnle, giving her own name as Falada, I understood that she had been waiting for me, too. She was not an Obernewtyn horse, but neither did she look like one of the small sturdy mountain ponies that made up the majority of the wild herd. I was about to ask where she had come from when the Sadorian tribesman Ahmedri stepped out from the trees behind her.
As he bowed in Sadorian fashion, I noticed with surprise that he had a bulging saddlebag thrown over one shoulder.
‘You are returning to the desert lands?’ I asked, wondering if, hearing that I was to travel with the ships to the Red Land, he had realised that there would be no time for me to help him locate Miryum, if indeed she was being held prisoner.
But Ahmedri shook his head. ‘I heard that you would ride out before dawn this day, and I swore to remain with you until you led me to my brother’s woman.’
I was taken aback. ‘But I am only going down to the watchhut!’
‘That is what the Beastspeaking guildmaster told me, but the overguardian bade me stay with you until my brother’s woman is found,’ Ahmedri said stubbornly.
I gritted my teeth to stop myself snarling that I had merely meant that he might stay at Obernewtyn when I had agreed he could remain until Straaka’s bones were found. Had I realised the tribesman would interpret my words as meaning he could stay with me specifically, I would never have uttered them!
‘You had better mount up then, for I am late already,’ I said through clenched teeth.
I did not wait for him to settle himself on Falada’s back before bidding Gahltha walk on. The black stallion willingly set off along the road leading down to the pass, and after a little he broke into a canter, for the road was wide and smooth. Avra cantered on his left, and to my irritation, Falada and Ahmedri flanked us on the right. The tribesman rode as well as his brother had done, but I was too irritated by his presence to say a civil word to him.
It was nearing dawn and growing light when the horses slowed to a walk so that they could pick their way around several deep runnels in the road that had been created by the heavy rain. The exertion of the ride had warmed me nicely and I had also ridden off the worst of my bad temper, yet I had no more desire to speak to the tribesman than he appeared to have to speak with me.
‘I hope you have not spoken to your funaga / Ahmedri of me as Innle,’ I sent to Falada.
‘It is not for the funaga to know of Innle,’ Falada responded placidly.
‘The funaga do not understand / guess when they hear us speak of Innle,’ Avra told me. ‘They think of a joke / game.’
I doubted that the grim-faced Ahmedri would believe that Falada had elected to give me a pet name when we had just met, but fortunately he did not understand beastspeech so he could not hear how she addressed me. Nor was I able to imagine him asking the mare questions about me. He was the sort of man who would prefer to believe his own eyes and trust to his own experiences rather than relying on
someone else, and his whole mind and will were clearly bent on fulfilling the task set for him by the Earthtemple. I was no more to him than a means to an end. I wondered uneasily whether he would actually insist on accompanying me to the Red Land, since he had been commanded to remain with me. It would be ludicrous, since neither Miryum nor his brother’s bones could lie in that distant land. But I had a horrible sinking feeling that Jakoby would allow the tribesman a berth aboard one of the Sadorian vessels when Bruna told her what the Temple guardian had said to him.
When the way was clear and smooth again, I urged Gahltha into a gallop, glad that the road had narrowed so the other horses had to ride behind us. The next time we slowed to a walk, the sky was suffused with red and ruddy gold and it was in that moment it came to me that I could ask Atthis where Miryum was being held and by whom when at last I sought her out. The ancient bird might even tell me the whereabouts of Straaka’s bones, thereby freeing me from the intrusive tribesman.
Tonight, I promised myself, and I beastspoke Gahltha to tell him of my intention to travel the dreamtrails to see if I could make contact with the oldOnes, and to ask if he would accompany me.
‘I am the Daywatcher, ElspethInnle,’ Gahltha responded. ‘I will be your guardian and your shield.’
The sun was rising when we reached the part of the mountain road that followed a spine of rock that brought us high above the silent forest. From this point I could see the cleft in the mountains that marked the pass to the highlands and the lookout tower that rose up above the roof of the watchhut and the surrounding trees, from which it was possible to see down into the pass. It would have been difficult to see it if you did not know where to look, and impossible if you were coming up the road, but coming down the road with the sun rising, a wedge of red-gold sunlight sliced through jagged mountains peaks to all but highlight the watchhut.
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