‘There is fodder?’ I asked, looking around in disbelief.
‘To the south, there is a place where something grows. Rasial sent back to tell me of it and the others went and found that it is edible, though sadly not very tasty,’ he said. ‘But what is that thing you funaga say? Beggars cannot be choosers?’
I laughed aloud, startled that he had acquired one of Garth’s favourite Beforetime homilies. Then I kissed his nose and bade him begone. When Analivia returned with some water and food, I asked her about Rasial’s leg.
‘She can walk well enough but Dameon says she feels more pain than she is letting us see. Yet she will not let me tend her.’
‘I do not think you need concern yourself with her. The white dog is no fool and if she truly needed help, she would ask for it,’ said Ahmedri, handing me a mug of tisane. I thanked him as I took it and sipped it gingerly. To my relief it was unexpectedly pleasant and I was glad to accept a second mug after I had drained the first.
Then Swallow said, with the air of someone who had been restraining himself, ‘Now, what was the other thing that you would have told us last night, if you had not been snoring your head off?’
The others looked at me expectantly so I asked Swallow to bring me the long, heavy, cloth-wrapped package that Sendari had been carrying since Dragon had joined us. When it lay between us, I bade him unwrap it carefully. The others leaned forward, intrigued.
‘A stone sword?’ Swallow said blankly, when it was revealed. Then he stared at it more closely and looked astonished. ‘But this is the work of the D’rekta!’
‘Of Cassandra, yes,’ I said. ‘But the words, like those she carved on the panels that became part of the doors to Obernewtyn, are in Gadfian script, unlike the words carved on the statues she left. Do you know anything of the making of the door panels?’
Swallow shook his head in bafflement, his eyes on the sword. ‘I know nothing of them, but she must have known gadi from the Beforetime.’
‘Or she learned it after she went to Sador and sent the door panels from there,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘She might have had a ship bring them to Halfmoon Bay, where they could then have been transported by land to Stonehill, with instructions for her son to take them to the mountains and offer them to Marisa Seraphim. Ships did travel to the desert lands back then, even if no one dared admit their existence because of the Herder dogma that insisted there was no other place in the world that had been spared the wrath of Lud but the Land.’
‘But the D’rekta did not go to Sador,’ Swallow said, looking puzzled. ‘She was taken by Gadfian slavers.’
I nodded and drew a deep breath before continuing. ‘She was. And they took her to the same settlement as the women stolen from Sador by her Gadfian captors. When the Sadorian greatships rescued their women years later they brought Cassandra with them back to Sador. Indeed, she was revered by the other survivors, for by all accounts she had helped them and cared for them and defended them against their captors. When she arrived in Sador, she set up the Earthtemple, partly to house the deformed children born of the stolen women, raped by their taint-afflicted captors, and partly to house the things she meant to leave for me, having learned that the Sadorians kept no permanent residences.’
Dameon said, ‘You speak of the first Kasanda!’
‘I do,’ I said. The empath had dwelt for a year among the Sadorian tribesfolk, and it was he who had first related the story of Kasanda to me.
Swallow looked utterly dumbstruck as Ahmedri demanded, ‘Do you say that this Cassandra, who was a Beforetimer and who became D’rekta of the Twentyfamilies, was the same Kasanda that my people revere?’
‘Kasanda … Cassandra!’ Analivia cried.
‘That is what I am saying, yes,’ I said evenly. I told them about the carved frieze I had been shown by the then overguardian of the Earthtemple the first time I had visited Sador to take part in the Battlegames, explaining that I had at once recognised them as being the work of the same person who had carved the Obernewtyn door panels.
‘I had always assumed the door panels were less polished work than the stone frieze in the Earthtemple because Cassy had done them much earlier when she was in the Land, but it comes to me now that they might have been carved in her early days in Sador while she was still weak and ill from her time among the Gadfians. Certainly she and all of the women would have been suffering some degree of exposure to the Beforetime poisons of the Blacklands that surrounded the Gadfian settlements, though they would not have been so badly afflicted as the Gadfians born of generations that had dwelt there, gradually becoming less and less fertile,’ I said.
‘I cannot believe the D’rekta died in Sador,’ Swallow said, shaking his head as if to clear it. ‘None of our seers saw it.’
‘Or if they did, they did not say so,’ Dameon said gently. ‘May I?’
I nodded to Analivia who guided the empath’s hands to the sword, and as he slid them over it, feeling out the shape and marks with his long, sensitive fingers, I told them of the futuretelling which had said I would return to the Earthtemple to get the final sign left for the Seeker.
‘I thought it meant I must get all of the other signs mentioned on the door panels before I could return for whatever had been left there, but later discovered it meant only that that was the final sign Cassy left anywhere. The last sign.’
‘The sword,’ Swallow said.
I shook my head. ‘The sword was left for me by Cassandra, but it was not one of the signs connected to my quest.’
‘But you said she had left a final sign there,’ Analivia protested.
‘And so she did,’ I murmured. I told them of the amethyst chamber within the Earthtemple which had somehow operated as a source of temporary power that had brought to life a small computermachine that contained a message from Cassy, and the memory seed I had been bidden bring away with me. I got the memory seed from its waxed and buttoned pocket to show to them.
‘I have seen such things in the collections of the teknoguilders,’ Analivia said. ‘What does it do?’
‘Apparently it will enable me to enter the Sentinel complex safely,’ I said. ‘It was after I came from getting that in the amethyst chamber that a Temple guardian gave me the sword. She said I was to keep it with me until I could restore it to its rightful owner.’
‘Who?’ Analivia asked eagerly.
‘That I was not told,’ I said drily.
‘But it was the Kasanda who commanded it?’ Ahmedri asked.
I nodded.
‘I just can’t seem to take it in that the D’rekta dwelt and died in Sador without ever sending word to her son,’ Swallow said.
‘She did not die in Sador,’ Ahmedri said.
Now it was my turn to stare. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What I said.’ He shrugged. ‘The Kasanda did not die in Sador.’
‘That’s right,’ Dameon murmured. ‘I remember being told when I was there. She vanished and no one ever knew what happened to her. Some say she gave herself to the sea.’
‘But what can a stone sword have to do with stopping Sentinel?’ Analivia asked, as focused as any teknoguilder.
‘As I said, I don’t think it has anything to do with my quest,’ I told her. ‘But I brought it with me. In truth I had half hoped that when I showed it to you, one of you would know something about it that would tell me whose it is.’
‘Ahmedri, cannot you read the scribing?’ Swallow asked.
‘My people do not read or scribe gadi,’ the tribesman answered somewhat brusquely.
I frowned. ‘I forgot, in which case Cassy could not have learned it in Sador. She must have learned it in the Beforetime.’
‘But she could still have sent those door panels from Sador,’ Analivia said. ‘What I don’t understand is why she would have let herself be taken by slavers. Surely if she needed to get to Sador, she had only to board a ship and bribe the shipmaster.’
‘I wondered that myself,’ I admitted. ‘But if she had
gone to Sador in a ship by her own will, she would simply have been a stranger among the people there. Why would they help her set up her Earthtemple and keep it in her honour? It was the fact that she had shared the exile of the stolen women and helped them and was rescued with them that made her one of them. She must have seen that, but in any case, she needed to get something from the Gadfians. The small computermachine and the memory seed, maybe, for if she had them with her when she was captured, the slavers would have taken them.’
‘It is not a proper sword,’ Dameon said.
The rest of us looked at the empath blankly. He was still running his fingers over the markings on the sword, frowning in concentration. It was only now, seeing him bathed in morning sunlight, that I became aware that the sun had risen. I had been too utterly engrossed in our talk to notice anything else.
‘Of course it is not a proper sword,’ said Swallow impatiently. ‘No one could fight with a stone sword.’
‘I meant the shape is wrong for a sword,’ Dameon said. ‘You see? A real sword would be the same on both sides, but this side is shaped like a sword with grooves while the other is rounded.’
He was right, we realised, though this did not do anything to answer the mystery of its owner or purpose. I listened to the others speculate for a time, and then I got up, murmuring that I needed to relieve myself. I moved away onto the grey earth behind the mound of stone at the end of the lake, since it offered the only privacy, noting how the white sand blazed so brightly in the early morning sun as to dazzle the eyes. Glancing behind me, I saw that the ground merely looked dull, for of course it would not glow in daylight, no matter how badly it was tainted. Squinting, I thought I could just make out the hazy black outline of the mountains. I turned back towards the water, knelt to wash my hands and splash my face. Someone had taken my boots off the night before, and the sand felt cool and soft under my bare feet.
‘Greetings ElspethInnle,’ Darga sent mildly, and only then did I notice him lying in the shadow of the mound of stone from which the spring welled. He was stretched out on the sand beside the water.
I dipped in a hand and found it cold but far from icy. All at once I felt filthy and sticky and no doubt I stank besides. The thought of swimming was suddenly irresistible. I knew the lake was lightly tainted, but if it was clean enough to drink from it was surely clean enough to bathe in. Making up my mind, I stripped off my outer clothes and went to the narrow end so that I would not dirty water the horses would drink from. I eased myself in, being careful of my broken arm. The water was cold enough to make me gasp, but it was utterly delicious once my skin became accustomed to the chill. Fully immersed, I rubbed the dirt from my hair and face and neck and body. Then Analivia appeared and offered me a small ball of lavender-scented soap.
‘Won’t the soap foul the water?’
‘Not if we stay down this end, for the water flows straight into the stream and away,’ Analivia said, and then she was stripping off her own clothes to enter. She slipped into the water with a sigh of bliss that was almost a moan. ‘I have been longing to do this since I set eyes on it,’ she admitted.
In the end we all bathed, and it was a strange and lovely few hours we spent in the tear-shaped lake, where the desert lapped against the barren Blacklands.
‘How do you suppose it happened?’ Swallow asked, gliding up beside me as I gazed along the vanishing line between white and black to the north. His hair hung loose and wetly sleek about his broad brown shoulders and it was much longer than it looked when he wore it clubbed back in gypsy fashion.
I shrugged. ‘An explosion of some vast kind, or maybe some sort of chemical that flowed over the land and poisoned it. It is said the Beforetimers had the power to destroy whole cities with a single weapon.’
‘For all we know, this once could have been a city,’ Swallow said.
I shook my head. ‘Remember Jacob scribed in his journal that there were only a couple of settlements this side of the mountains on his Beforetime maps, and no cities?’
I noticed Analivia gazing at Swallow, but when she caught my eye she blushed and said briskly, ‘I was thinking we should bathe Dragon again. I know the water won’t wake her but at least she can be clean.’
Swallow went out and carried the unconscious girl gently to the outermost stone bowl that did not spill its contents into the lake but back down the mound where it soaked into the grey earth. It was shallow so there was no need for anyone to hold her as Analivia, dressed now, began to lave her with water. I turned on my back to float. Thus suspended with the clear blue sky arching above me it struck me that if I did not think of the past or the future, I would be content. This is how beasts can live, I thought. But I was no beast. I turned my head one way to look at the Blacklands stretching away to the south and all that I had left behind me, then I turned east to what lay before us, narrowing my eyes against the dazzling brightness of the white plain.
Immediately my contentment faded into unease, for Rheagor had said the city we sought was many days away, and that we would have to follow a path of stone trees. There were no trees at all to be seen, let alone stone ones, nor would there be food or fodder. We could endure for some time without food, but not without water. Unfortunately we had only the few gourd bottles and they would not last more than a few days.
I told myself firmly that Rheagor’s ancestor had made the crossing, so there must be water. If all else failed, I might have cause to be grateful that one of my companions was a tribesman who understood the ways of the desert. Inevitably, thinking of the desert, I thought of Rushton, for it was in Sador, after the abortive Battlegames, that we had first spoken of love. I tried to envisage him on a ship at sea, striding around the deck with a fair wind ruffling his dark hair, green eyes caught by a ship fish leaping from a phosphorescent wave, or the flash of sunlight on the curved back of a blue-green swell, but the dream of the storm and of the ship being swamped by a great black wave overshadowed it.
I clenched my teeth and told myself it had been only a nightmare, for if I let myself believe that he was dead, I would be crippled. He lives, I thought fiercely. He must live else all that remains of life is duty without hope.
‘Elspeth?’ Dameon asked.
I turned to him and said as calmly as I could manage, ‘I was thinking of Obernewtyn.’
The empath’s expression grew sombre, reminding me that I was not alone in leaving all that I loved. I said softly, ‘Atthis always said I would have to leave Obernewtyn, and later Dell futuretold the same thing, only she also said I would never return.’ I frowned. ‘Mind you, she also said I would leave all I loved, and yet I didn’t, for I love Dragon and I love you.’
‘But you did leave us,’ Dameon reminded me gently. ‘It is only that the foretellings said nothing of what those you love would do, after you left them.’ Despite everything I smiled at that, but the empath went on, ‘I have been thinking about Oldhaven. It was a strange place. It made me feel how it might have been to live in the Beforetime; the ease of being surrounded on all sides by machines that would do as you wished. I think it would affect you.’
‘Pavo always claimed that was where teknoguilders’ Talent originated,’ I murmured, ‘from the Beforetimers living so intimately with the machines they made, relying on them and communicating with them.’
‘It was the scale of Oldhaven that staggered me,’ Dameon said. ‘To build such a vast, deep, intricate place as a shelter, with a forest and machines capable of nurturing it so deep under the earth.’
‘What I can never understand is that the Beforetimers built those places because they saw that the things they were doing might lead to the Great White, but for all their abilities and brilliance, they did nothing to stop it.’
‘Perhaps they tried,’ Dameon said. ‘Perhaps the people who built the shelters did so because they could not stop those who were building weaponmachines.’
‘Pavo always said it was the fatal flaw of the Beforetimers that they were like the Janus head.�
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‘I remember. Two faces on the same head, looking in different directions,’ Dameon said. ‘Still, there might have been those who opposed the weaponmakers and users. They cannot all have been the same. After all, Cassandra and Hannah Seraphim were also Beforetimers.’
I felt a surge of love for the blind empath and said impulsively, ‘That you are with me is one of the few things I can be glad about, Dameon, though that is a truly selfish thought.’
‘I am glad to be with you, too,’ Dameon said gravely.
Touched, I reached out to take his hands. To my surprise the empath stiffened and drew back. I pretended not to notice, for it shamed me that, even in a moment of calmness, Dameon would feel the need to protect himself from the clumsy overflow of my emotions. As if he felt my embarrassment, the empath began to ask me questions about dreamtravelling. I felt no need to restrain myself in answering him, given that none of my companions possessed the deep-probe ability that would enable them to acquire a spirit-shape and dreamtravel.
Then Analivia was calling Swallow and Ahmedri to help her lift Dragon from the water. My arm would not allow me to help them with her, but I waded up to that end of the pool to watch as Swallow leaned over the stone bowl and effortlessly scooped up Dragon’s limp, dripping form. But when he straightened his foot slipped on the wet earth and he slipped sideways, jolting his arm on another of the stone bowls. To my horror, Dragon slipped from his grasp and slithered towards the water, insensible as a rag doll. Analivia screamed but I surged forward just in time to catch Dragon’s head and shoulders in my good arm and prevent her being submerged. The force of her landing against my chest made me gasp with pain but I held onto her. Then I looked down and my heart stopped beating, for Dragon gave a soft moan and opened her eyes.
For one long second I stared down into her face, frozen with apprehension.
‘Elspeth?’ she rasped at last, then her eyes widened, filling with fear. My heart sank, but she said, ‘Elspeth! The man … He caught me and he hit me. He tied me up!’ She was near a grown woman and yet she spoke in the terrified voice of a child.
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