But even if I had the capacity to use that dark power within me in such a way, had I truly the right to sever that which Elkar had reverently called the goddess bond? Thinking of the exquisite golden link that now connected me to Rushton, I felt I would die before I would allow it to be severed.
Yet what if Rushton were to die before I had completed my quest? I would have to go on living, for I had sworn an oath to complete my quest and I was not my own person until it was done. Or what if I was dying, and in doing so, was dragging Rushton to his death? Would I not want our link severed, to save him?
‘Elspeth?’
I opened my eyes, startled, and found myself looking at my reflection in Rushton’s eyes. It was not the goddess Elspeth that his spirit saw when it looked at me, but the true me, eyes dark with secrets, hair a great dishevelled black cloud.
‘Is something wrong?’
There was concern in Rushton’s expression but the sadness that I had seen in his eyes before he had let me draw him into unconsciousness was gone, which told me that the knowledge he had got from our mindmerge was securely chained to his spirit, leaving no trace in his conscious mind. ‘If I was too rough …’ he said, looking remorseful.
‘No!’ I cried, and leaned up to kiss his mouth softly. His arm tightened around me, but I drew back and looked pointedly at the small glass window where a sagging bit of hessian hung crooked, letting in a narrow beam of grey daylight.
He sighed. ‘I know, I know. I cannot believe we slept the whole night. It was early evening when we came here.’
‘They will be looking for us soon,’ I said.
He scowled. ‘Linnet has already managed to give me a painful prod during a brief break in the rain. She wanted to know when I would be coming back to the house.’
‘Did she … does she know we are together …’ I stopped, confused.
Rushton smiled almost sheepishly. ‘She had barely managed to ask before it started to rain again. Fortunately it is still raining a little, but I had better go back before she comes looking for me.’
He sat up, but when I would have done the same, he gently pushed me down, and bade me lie in while I had the chance. ‘I will go and see Grufyyd about these lemons and I will talk to Alad about the wet-weather plans for the moon fair, and then I will come back and we can walk up to the house together. Of course, if I could choose, I would rather stay here.’ His eyes swept over me from head to toe in a way that made my blood feel as if it were running backwards through my veins. He knelt to kiss me and said softly, ‘I will always remember you in this moment, lying there with your hair all dark and tumbled about your white shoulders and lovely breasts. How beautiful you are, my love. My ravek.’
Tears stung my eyes to hear him use the tribal term he had used when first we spoke of love to one another in Sador. It meant you who have my heart beneath your heel.
I sat up to kiss him back, thinking with anguish of the chained bear. Rushton frowned when he drew back as if he had felt my grief. Then I thought of the link and wondered if he had. I reached out to touch his cheek and said huskily, ‘I wish we might stay here together for the whole day.’
The shadow passed from his eyes as I had known it would at these provocative words, and he gave a low incredulous laugh. ‘I wonder if you can possibly imagine how much I love you,’ he said, then he bade me sternly to lie down and behave so he could make himself respectable. I laughed as he got up, wrapped himself in his still damp coat and went out, letting in a gust of clean, cold, rain-damp air.
Somehow I fell into a light doze and woke only when Rushton, now dressed, knelt by me and gestured to a bowl of warmed water, soap and a towel he had set out on the hearth for me to bathe myself. He told me that he had brought in some more wood from the pile outside to replace what we had used, then he rose and went out again.
I got up and washed myself slowly, conscious that the rain was falling so lightly now and that it was only a matter of time before Ceirwan sought me out. I kept my mind firmly shielded, and noted that my body ached, but with a strangely pleasant ache. I fell to thinking of the night until the room grew cold enough for me to notice I had nearly let the fire go out. I dried myself, got a bit of wood and put it on the embers, and then I pulled on my underclothes, which Rushton must have hung on the mantel when he got up. They were still damp, and so were my trews, but my shirt was completely dry. I dressed and pulled on my boots, combed my hair as best I could with my fingers and braided it tightly.
There was no mirror in the shack, I discovered, when a desire came over me to look at myself. I shrugged and searched for food, for my stomach felt as if it were cleaving to my bones I was so hungry. Unfortunately there was nothing in Louis’s pantry save some split peas in a tin and a sack of oats. Obviously he had run down his supplies, knowing he was going to be away for a few days. My stomach rumbled insistently and I was just wondering if I could tolerate porridge without honey when the door opened and Rushton entered, saying he had got some food from the farm kitchen so that we could share a firstmeal together before returning to the house. He had hot rolls, a round of sweet cheese, dried figs and a jug of fresh milk. The little fuss of finding plates and forks and heating the milk covered the momentary shyness I felt. Rushton said nothing of the night that had passed, but as we ate, his hands strayed often to me in passing, touching my hair, face and hands.
‘You saw Grufyyd?’ I asked when we had finished.
‘I did. He had intended to send mead and ferment as part of the tithe, but one of the Norselanders said shipmasters forbid intoxicating drinks at sea,’ Rushton said.
‘And do they?’ I asked.
‘Powyrs drank ferment aboard The Cutter, but I do remember Reuvan once saying that no ship he had sailed upon had ever more than water. I can’t speak for the Sadorians, though I don’t believe I ever saw anyone take a drink aboard. My feeling is that the matter depends upon the views of the shipmaster more than any hard and fast law. But on this voyage I reminded Grufyyd that space had better be given to staples. He finally decided he would send a few kegs per ship of his special ferment, which might serve as an offering, or at a pinch, to clean wounds. If the shipmasters refuse them, he says we should wet the hull of the new ship before we sail away.’
‘There won’t be much time for celebrating before we set sail,’ I said. I listened, struck by the silence. ‘Has the rain stopped?’
‘It has,’ Rushton said, and then he grimaced. ‘I hate to say it but we had better go back. Your guild will be wondering where you have got to and Grufyyd said several wagons had already come in with traders and other folk last night and this morning, all of them wanting to know where they are supposed to set up their stalls.’
We both got up and as I bent to rake out the fire, Rushton looked around the shack slowly. When his gaze found its way back to me, we stared at one another for a long transfixed moment then he laughed and said, ‘If we had trouble being distracted by thoughts of one another before, it will be impossible now!’
We tidied the remnants of our meal away before heading back to the house along the most direct route. It was very early and very cold and the ground was sodden as we wove our way through the bedraggled tents that lined both sides of the path beside the maze. But I noticed a lot of hay had already been laid down to cover the mud, and the sky was clear pale blue. There was not a breath of wind.
My head ached a little and my body felt tender, but I was careful to give no sign of it, lest Rushton again worry that he had hurt me. It was impossible to explain that this soft, heavy, wounded feeling was sweet.
As we passed Jacob’s grave, my steps faltered and I stopped, almost able to imagine the old man setting his journal and the plast suit in the empty grave before he left Obernewtyn for the last time. ‘I wonder if he really did go into the mountains,’ I said.
I did not realise I had spoken my thought aloud until Rushton enfolded me in his arms from behind and rested his chin on my shoulder, saying, ‘I do not know why this old r
iddle interests you so, my love.’
I turned and kissed him lightly, thinking that he did know, but that he could not remember. The thought pained me, but we went on hand in hand, until we reached the side door that would bring me to the Farseekers hall. I stopped. ‘I will go in this way,’ I said.
‘I wish that our paths need never diverge in even the smallest way,’ Rushton said, but then he kissed me gently and went on along the path towards the front entrance.
By the time I reached my turret room, I was shivering with cold in my damp clothes and my headache had worsened. Accepting glumly that I had probably taken a chill, I stripped off my wet garments and pulled on a robe, fragrant from the cedar chest where it had been stored. Someone had lit and banked a fire the night before and there were enough hot embers remaining for me to get it alight again. I stood before it to warm myself while I waited for a kettle of water to boil. I had some herbs which, steeped in hot water, would soothe my throat and hopefully I would need nothing more, since my body was probably already mustering the self-healing skills taught it by the Agyllian healer Nerat. By the morrow, I would be perfectly well, sooner if I slept an hour or two and surrendered wholly to the healing process, but before I could think of taking to my bed I had to go to the Healing Hall to see if Darius and Kella had tried yet to rouse Miky. I also wanted to ask Kella about Dragon, since she had been virtually the last person to see the girl before she disappeared.
I would sleep a few hours in the afternoon, I decided, for I needed to be fresh that night, when I was determined to finally seek out Atthis on the dreamtrails. Yet as I shed my robe and dressed in dry clothes, it was hard to feel the urgency of anything. A languid warmth like honey seemed to be flowing through me which made me feel as if I were melting from within. I went to look at myself in the little mirror set upon the mantelshelf above the fire. Glad no one had seen me looking so dishevelled, I unbraided my hair. But this led me to remembering the feel of Rushton’s fingers caressing my head. Every touch seemed to lead back to the previous night.
I fought to school my thoughts as I combed my hair briskly. It would be mortifying if I went about all day leaking emotions and intimate images! I noted that my lips were swollen and my cheeks were very flushed. It is only the fever, I told myself firmly, turning my back on the mirror. Nevertheless I was glad I had not encountered anyone on the way to the turret room, clad in damp crumpled clothes with unravelling hair, my lips red from being kissed. It was not that I was shamed by what had happened, it was rather that it was too precious, too full of joy and sorrow to be exposed to anyone yet.
I felt Ceirwan’s probe touch my mind lightly and I shielded my private thoughts firmly and opened my mind to him. ‘Good morning, Guildmistress,’ he greeted me cheerfully. ‘Linnet said you an’ Rushton decided to stay down on th’ farms last night. It was a very wild night.’
‘At least the rain has stopped and the sky looks clear now,’ I sent, glad he could not see my face and hoping he would not ask where I had slept. ‘Come up to the turret room in half an hour or so. I am just changing into dry clothes and then I want to go to the Healing Hall to see if Darius and Kella have tried to rouse Miky.’
14
The guilden arrived a half hour later at the same time as Aras and Zarak and we had an impromptu meeting over what had yet to be done for the Red Land expedition. Zarak reported that the futuretellers had given the members of our guild who were to go with the ships new boots, coats, a blanket and pack each as well as spare clothes for the journey. Some had also got weapons from the Coercer guild and the rest would have them by the morrow. Roland had his guild preparing small individual healing packs for each person, but they would not be ready for another day or so. Otherwise, we had simply to help the remaining guilds with their preparations, and fetch and carry for Alad and Javo, upon whom the job of providing our tithe had fallen. Our main task had been to provide information, and when I asked how that was progressing, Aras said that one more night would see the last of the information scribed and then she would take the parchment pages to the Teknoguild cave so that they could be properly bound, for it would be hardier as a true book. She had also scribed the measurements of the maps that were still drying, and had already asked the teknoguilders for a case to protect them. I was impressed with her forethought and said so.
It was as Rushton had observed at the guildmerge – we were well on the way to being completely prepared for the expedition. We turned our attention to the looming moon fair. Needless to say, the storms had wreaked havoc on the sites where tents had been erected, but Katlyn, who seemed to have an uncanny ability to read the weather, had declared that it would not rain again until after the moon fair. Such was her record of accuracy that Ceirwan and the others accepted her word as a decree. I hoped she was right, especially given the recent arrival of several small wagons and carriages carrying traders and their families and wares.
I had not seen them on the farms, but then I had not seen anyone but Rushton. For a moment I saw him, his face flushed, lying beside me, smiling.
‘Elspeth?’ Ceirwan said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, feeling myself flush. ‘What about the choosing?’
‘I was just sayin’ that we have spoken with each of the final candidates who have said they will name the Farseekers guild when they undergo the choosing during the moon fair,’ he said. He went on to explain that both he and Zarak had approved all of the candidates, but Aras felt that two of the youngest Westland orphans who possessed two equally strong secondary Talents were simply too young to choose between them. However, after we discussed it, there seemed no other possibility but to allow it, since the two had no family and there were no organisations within our community, save the guilds, to care for them.
This led us to an old discussion about the possibility of offering a novice year in which young candidates could spend a certain amount of time in each guild, regardless of their abilities, and at the conclusion of the year, they would choose a guild. Aras, who had suggested it, said again that it might be best to link the conclusion of the novice period to an age rather than a period of time, since people took more or less time to learn, depending on their abilities and temperament. Zarak disagreed with the whole idea, saying yet again that he would have fretted even more bitterly than he had done in the Beastguild if he had had to spend a year marking time before he could choose his guild.
‘And after all, a candidate who feels they chose wrongly can always request to change guilds as I did,’ he said.
‘Yet if you had had more time, you might have chosen the Farseekers first,’ Aras said composedly.
Zarak looked irritated and then he sighed and admitted that she might be right. He thought for a moment and then asked if we could not better offer a general novice year in which signal speech and exercises were taught, and where the novices could receive some early training in each of their Talents, as well as being tested for others. That would make the year more purposeful and it could even be offered to unTalented Landfolk to study at Obernewtyn for a time.
Aras nodded, her eyes shining with enthusiasm. ‘Those taking part could work on the farms to earn their keep, or in the kitchens, and they would have the chance to live in a community where beasts and humans were equal. If they lived among us, they would know we were not monsters.’
Ceirwan nodded too. ‘It might even be possible for this year to include th’ scribin’ an’ countin’ and readin’ that Dardelan and Gwynedd want all bairns to learn. A bairn could then have th’ option of learnin’ those things here as part of an introductory guild course, or at one of the teaching centres that are to be established throughout the Land.’
‘You really think unTalented folk would choose to come here?’ I asked, startled by their enthusiasm.
‘I think learnin’ here could be presented as an inter-estin’ and special alternative,’ the guilden insisted. ‘An’ it will be good timin’, since if we are to become a settlement, we are bound to have unTalented
people as well as Talented livin’ among us.’
The others went on talking and planning eagerly, while I kept my doubts to myself, for it had suddenly struck me that this was how it would be when I was gone. These three would lead the Farseekers and Obernewtyn would be a shire. After they had talked themselves out, I said I thought they should work on the proposal and present it to the other guildmasters for comments and suggestions before presenting it to a full guildmerge. Ceirwan looked disappointed but he agreed that it would be better to wait until Obernewtyn had become a shire, and the moon fair was over.
‘Do you want us to wait until you return?’ Aras asked me.
I shook my head, keeping my thoughts and emotions well shielded. ‘I think you should go ahead and present it at the next guildmerge.’
We went on then to discuss those whom we had decided to raise up from novice to full farseeker and about who might be sent to the west coast to work with Dell in setting up a Farseeker guild there. It had been suggested at a previous guildmerge that Ceirwan ought to become master of the new guild at Oldhaven, being the most senior farseeker aside from me, but he had asked that the matter be postponed until the following guildmerge. I had supported his request for a postponement because, aside from knowing that neither he nor Freya wished to live in the west, I was aware that he would need to fill my shoes when I left Obernewtyn. Since everyone now knew I was to travel with the expedition, the subject had not arisen at the last guildmerge and I had avoided discussing the future with Ceirwan, knowing that the matter would soon be settled.
‘I could go there to help set up a guild but I would not want to be posted to Oldhaven permanently,’ Zarak said now. I distracted him by asking if he had actually asked Lina to bond with him yet. ‘I have and she said yes,’ he replied rather smugly.
‘Of course she did and I am happy for you both,’ I said. ‘You will bond this moon fair, then?’
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