‘I will,’ Rushton said, on an outward rush of air. ‘Lud help me, I will do my duty.’ Then he drew a long breath. ‘Forgive me, I am full of self-pity tonight.’
‘No,’ Freya said. ‘You grieve for something precious taken from you, as she must grieve.’
‘I know,’ Rushton said and he heaved a sigh. ‘Truly I know that Elspeth suffers as I do, whether or not she knew that she would not come to the Red Land with me all along. For a long time after she had first spoken of love in Sador, I could not truly believe she had chosen me. It seemed such a miracle that she, whom I desired more than any other, could desire me. It was easier to doubt it than to believe it, and doubt gnawed at me constantly. Yet she showed me upon Norseland that she loved me more than her own life and to doubt her after that would be to prove myself utterly unworthy of her.’ He was silent for a long time, and I wondered if he was thinking about the fierce tenderness of our lovemaking in Louis Larkin’s hut, rain thundering down on the shingled roof. He would not remember what he had learned when we merged minds, nor what I had done afterwards to hide those memories from his conscious mind, but he must remember the radiance of our loving and he must sense the spirit link that connected us.
I thought I must be right, when relief showed on Ceirwan’s face as Rushton thanked them. ‘You have comforted me by reminding me that I am fortunate to have loved so deeply and to have had the love of such a one as Elspeth Gordie. The memory of what was between us must strengthen me in the days to come.’
The words were resolute, and hearing them broke my heart.
The memory-dream faded but instead of waking, I drifted down through the layers of my mind to the mindstream. A shining tendril rose from it and reached out to me as if summoned. Accepting it, I willed myself to consciousness, thinking that I might as well take the opportunity to look at Gavyn and Rasial with spirit-eyes. I willed the tendril from the mindstream through me and watched the silvery matter pool and take on my spirit-form. The transference of my consciousness to the spirit-form was so effortless that I thought again that I must be dreaming, for I had never felt so much in control of myself.
I opened my eyes and saw below me the brownish shape of my slumbering body, half invisible against the deeper brown and black of earth and stone. Then I heard or felt something calling me.
I willed myself to rise towards the summoning, leaving the world of matter behind. I rose until I was floating close enough to the dreamtrails to feel the weight of the wings of my spirit-form. I was also aware of the weight of the spirit sword at my belt and wondered if that was why I felt so much more in control than before. I was in spirit-form, and therefore much more aware of the repository of spirit-force slumbering deep inside me. I was also aware of a residue of that force in my body.
Even as I reached the eldritch clouds through which the dreamtrails wove, Maruman appeared in the air beside me in one of his favourite spirit-forms – a greatcat with a tawny gold pelt slashed with black streaks, one of his eyes diamond white and the other a rich gold.
‘Do not stay here / on the dreamtrails, ElspethInnle, lest the H’rayka sense you and seek you out,’ he sent. ‘You must wake.’
‘Maybe I need not flee from it,’ I said, moving my hand to the hilt of the black sword.
‘The darkness that seeks you is stronger than you,’ Maruman said bluntly, urgently. ‘Wake.’
Reluctantly I willed myself to obey, but nothing happened save that I drifted closer to the dreamtrails. ‘I … I can’t wake,’ I sent, puzzled. I concentrated hard and strove downward more strongly, but still I could not exert any force. ‘Maybe whoever is summoning me prevents me waking. Can you feel it?’
‘You are summoned?’ Maruman asked sharply.
‘Can’t you feel it? Something is calling me, drawing me up, I can feel it right now,’ I said.
‘Up?’ Maruman echoed. ‘Maybe it is the oldOnes. Rise then, but beware. Do not go too high, lest you lose yourself.’
‘Come with me, Marumanyelloweyes,’ I sent, wondering what he meant by the oldOnes.
‘I will try,’ he answered warily.
I focused my mind on the calling, which was less a sound than a feeling. It was definitely coming from above, and when I willed myself to respond, I was astonished to find my strength and control had returned, and I was moving very swiftly. I willed myself to move faster, and found myself fairly soaring upward. Only the fear of losing Maruman made me slow down.
Yet it seemed but a moment had passed before I entered the strange realm of merging colour. As before, I felt my form becoming lighter and less defined.
‘This is a realm of pure spirit,’ Maruman sent. ‘It is difficult for the living to come here. The higher you / we go, the less you will feel yourflesh. Only yourmind / will can hold the link. You must keep your spirit-form intact, else this realm will eat you.’
Unnerved by the notion of a mere idea of my spirit-form being the only thing between me and oblivion, I summoned up a visual image of myself as I had done for Cinda, and set it in my own mind, imagining it in great detail. I gave the image the black sword in its sheath, and immediately felt the weight of it as a slight downward pull. At the same time, I felt my spirit-form sharpen.
‘Good,’ Maruman approved.
‘Why do you say it is the oldOnes calling me?’ I asked. ‘You told me Atthis is dead.’
‘They cannot summon you directly unless the new Elder is chosen and encompasses their minds,’ Maruman sent. ‘Until then, the merged minds of the oldOnes have no link to flesh and so no way to reach the realms below this. Unless they have found a messenger.’
‘Who?’ I asked. For some reason his words had made me think of Angina.
‘Not that one,’ Maruman sent. ‘His spirit has gone into the mindstream.’
I had known Angina was dead and yet it hurt to hear it said. I felt my spirit-form softening, losing the integrity of its shape. It was a slow almost molten sensation where I seemed both to grow warm and spread out as if I were a shape of wax melting in the sunlight. I ought to have been afraid, but it was oddly pleasant to feel myself losing all tension and rigidity. I began to feel the formless allure of the matter about me, which was as vividly compelling in its own way as the mindstream. I wondered what difference there was between the two realms. Was it that the memories of life and flesh went into the mindstream, but the experiences of spirit came here?
‘Beware, ElspethInnle, lest our spirits blend, for if that happens, we will be merged forever!’ Maruman warned me sharply, and only then did I realise with a little shock of fright that my spirit-form had begun to overlap his. It was only the strength of his spirit-form that had stopped us merging.
Frightened by what had almost happened, I summoned up the image of myself. It was like trying to keep a ball of very soft mud together. For the moment I tried to think of anything else, it began to soften again.
‘Use the black sword,’ Maruman sent.
I thought of the sword, and immediately its weight and strength gave substance to the visual image I was holding in my mind. But I resisted the temptation to draw on the spirit-force to which it was linked, sensing that once I did, I would be dragged downward and away from the strange realm.
I looked at Maruman and was alarmed to see that his greatcat form was blurring.
‘I cannot hold,’ the old cat sent at last, and he vanished.
I was frightened then, for Maruman had far more strength and skill in his spirit-form than I did, so how was it that I was able to remain in this strange spirit realm while he could not? Was it the black sword?
Without warning or any feeling of movement or transformation, I was floating above a wide ledge of stone jutting out from a shadowy mountain. It was very like a ledge I had rested on halfway up the bluff we had climbed. My spirit-form had never felt so real before, even on the dreamtrails.
‘Where am I?’ I wondered.
‘I have shaped this place from your memories to anchor your dream form,’ said a w
hispered voice. ‘It will be easier than trying to hold your image of flesh. Easier still if you can engage with the dream.’
I could see nothing, but I recognised the voice. ‘It was you who saved me from the Destroyer,’ I said, and then I saw the same shimmering, vaguely human shape floating in the air before me that I had seen once before.
‘Thank you,’ said the voice, more strongly. ‘It is very difficult for me to take physical form even in your spirit-dream without the will of flesh.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘I was Straaka the tribesman,’ said the voice.
Then Straaka stood before me on the ledge exactly as he had looked in life, in tribal robes, his hair in plaits and beaded just as it had been when I had last seen him standing in the cul-de-sac in the White Valley before he was killed. The silver cuffs in his hair clinked as he bowed in proper Sadorian fashion.
‘You are dead,’ I whispered, cold fear snaking through me.
The shock I felt caused the mountain face to waver but I willed myself to stand on the stone ledge, and the mountain settled and became solid.
‘My body is dead,’ Straaka agreed. ‘My spirit would have gone into the mindstream save that at the moment of death, my ravek bound her spirit to mine, thereby linking my spirit to her living flesh. I welcomed it at first, for I had yearned for such closeness to her when I lived, and though she had never allowed it, I saw that she had come to love me.’
I thought of Straaka, who had been slain by a soldier-guard’s arrow meant for Miryum, wondering how she had been able to bind the spirit of a dying man to her. She was one of the most powerful coercers I had ever known, but she had no futuretelling ability that would have given her power over his spirit. But Straaka said she had loved him and I knew that love could form a potent link between two people. Was that it?
Straaka went on. ‘At first she thought it was madness that made her hear my voice in her dreams, for she did not know what she had done. It was madness that made her carry my body from the White Valley. When I was able to make her understand that her realisation that she loved me, coupled with her anguish at my death, had given her spirit the power to reach out to mine and hold it, she was glad. For a time we were content, but I was not a man any longer, and I soon saw that she could not live a proper life of flesh bound to my spirit-form. I told her this but she would not hear me.’
‘You are talking as if you spoke to her. How did you do that?’ I asked.
‘To begin with I dwelt in her dreams and I spoke to her when she slept,’ he answered in his grave, courteous way. ‘Later I learned to shape a spirit-form and I taught Miryum to do the same. I discovered the dreamtrails and we went there together. But that was before I came to see that it was not enough for a living person to love a spirit and to live only in her dreams. I knew I had to make her sever the link binding me to her. I asked her to bring my bones to the hot springs and clean them, and then to take them to the vale of the dead in the spice groves of Sador. I told her it was my wish that my bones be buried there. I knew that in that place, my spirit would be able to draw on the strength of my ancestors to sever the bindings she had woven which tied my spirit to hers, whether she willed it or no. But somehow she sensed my intention, and after she cleaned my bones, she bore me in the opposite direction.’
I drew in a breath. ‘Into the high mountains!’
Straaka nodded gravely.
‘But why?’ I asked.
‘To begin with she was simply doing the opposite of what I had asked her, but the strain of having me in her mind was beginning to tell on her. Since she was a child, she had dreamed of a Beforetime city standing in a white desert surrounded by Blacklands. She had spoken to me of the dream when I lived, and to others of her coercer-knights. Many times she visited Newrome under Tor mountain seeking to understand why the dream came again and again to her. She feared there was a warning in it that she was failing to understand. Once when I was there with her, she told me she had seen us walking together in her dream city. I remember how it lifted my spirits, for I saw it as a sign that she was beginning to care for me.’ He was silent for a time. Then he said, ‘Once we were in the high mountains, Miryum dreamed of the city again. I entered the dream and begged her to turn back and to release me, but she said that she would not, for the meaning of it was finally clear to her. The city was real and it stood on a white plain beyond the high mountains, just as we were seeing.
‘I told her that there were only deadly Blacklands that way, for my people had sailed further around this great landmass in their ships than any shipfolk from the Land, and the coasts were black as far as they had sailed. Never once had they seen any untainted land, let alone a Beforetime city. Miryum would not listen. She had convinced herself that the city existed too far inland to be seen by eyes looking from the deck of a ship. She believed it was inhabited by Beforetimers who had somehow remained untouched by the Great White. She thought that her dream of us walking there meant that the Beforetimers had the power to restore me to life. It was madness and I told her so, but she would not hear.’
I was flabbergasted at his tale, for there could be no doubt that Miryum had dreamed of the same city as Jacob.
‘It is real,’ I told him. ‘The city she dreamed of is the very place I am seeking.’
‘I know,’ Straaka said grimly. ‘I know it now because that is where Miryum is. But let me tell the tale in order. Miryum told me that she was going to carry my bones to the city of her dreams to bring me back to life. She would not listen to me when I told her it was not possible. I strove to journey in my dreams to Sador, so that I could draw on the strength of those of my blood, but they were too distant.’
‘How did she find her way to the city?’ I asked.
‘I do not know and my memories of the journey are hers,’ he answered. ‘Understand that I am cut off from the world of flesh, save through Miryum’s senses. I saw enough in her memories and dreams to know that she carried my bones deep into the high mountains and beyond them, but apart from that, her journey is lost to me. You see, as she travelled, it was harder and harder to read in her memories what was happening in the waking world, because Miryum had fallen ill. Her mind grew clouded with strange visions and imaginings and I saw only what she imagined she saw. After a time, I was unable to tell what was real and what was delusion. Ironically, as she became more ill, she began to assume her spirit-form far more strongly, for the link to her flesh was weakened, but it was harder for me to communicate with it because she was ill.
‘Then one day the delirium stopped and she took on her spirit-form and told me clearly that she was a prisoner of the city of her dreams. I asked her what had happened and she said that she had been taken captive and brought to the city, where she had been forced into a sleep from which she could not wake. I thought all of this another delusion, and that she had fallen ill from walking over tainted ground and was dying. But she did not die, and in time, I came to believe she had spoken the truth. She strove and strove to wake, but I had no power to help her. Then one day she begged me to help her to die. She was terrified at the thought of sleeping her whole life until she grew old and died. She said if only she could die, both our spirits would be free. I brought her to this high realm, thinking that the link between her body and spirit would dissolve. But then she fell asleep and I could not wake or bring her any higher.’
‘What do you mean she slept? Wasn’t she already asleep?’ I asked.
‘Her flesh slept, but now her spirit-form sleeps, too. I tried to bring her down to the dreamtrails, but discovered to my horror that I could not take her down from this realm without her spirit being awake and willing it. We were both trapped here.’
I stared at him, thinking of the dreams recorded in the dream-books in which Miryum had been seen lying still and white as death, and of Bruna’s message from the overguardian of the Earthtemple saying Straaka’s bones would not be found until Miryum was released. I had taken this to mean she was a captive, but
from Straaka’s strange story, she lay in some sort of coma. I could hardly bring myself to believe she had been captured by Beforetimers, but she could not have been asleep so long without dying of thirst and hunger, if no one tended her. Yet what purpose could her captors have in forcing her to sleep?
‘One day, as I roamed alone at the outer limits of this strange high place,’ Straaka continued, ‘I heard my name being called. Thus did the merged spirits of the oldOnes summon me. They had foreseen my coming and were waiting for me. They drew me up to them by the power of their will and told me what they were. It was a shock to discover that I was speaking to the merged spirits of Agyllian birds, which among my people are seen as mythical creatures. I knew they truly existed only after I came to the mountains. The oldOnes told me what they were and they told me what you were and what you must do. After all that had happened to Miryum and to me, it was not so hard to believe. They said that until a living Agyllian came to take them in, they were unable to help you.’
‘So the oldOnes are merged spirits,’ I murmured.
‘Like me, their flesh has died, but they remain, delaying their passing from life, not because of a bond to a living person but by the sheer power of their will. But they cannot hold forever. They are drifting slowly upwards, and if the new Elder does not find a way to rise to this realm and encompass them soon, they will pass from the world.’
‘For a long time, I thought the oldOnes were simply the collective memories of the past Elders,’ I said. ‘I do not understand how they can remain here without flesh to hold them from the mindstream. You do not have your own flesh, but you are linked to Miryum’s.’
‘This realm is far from the mindstream and yet they are both ends of life. The merged spirits of the oldOnes stay in the world for your sake, Elspeth, and for the sake of all that lives that you must save,’ Straaka said gravely. ‘It is no small sacrifice.’
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