The Red Queen

by Isobelle Carmody

  I heard Swallow draw in a fierce, ragged breath of outrage, but my eyes were on the knife poised against Dragon’s throat.

  “Obey me or the mutant pig dies,” Moss told his sister gloatingly. His mouth split into a feral lunatic grin. “Unless you would like me to kill it. Is that it?

  Are you jealous, Analivia? I did not use her, for she is a mutant and to take such a one to my bed would be vile.”

  “Moss,” I said softly. “You are hurt and hungry. Sit and I will give you some food and Ana can tend your hurts. We can talk. No one needs to die here.”

  Moss bared his teeth at me but I saw with relief that he had withdrawn the knife a little. “Sit down, bitch, or I will cut her head off.” Then his eyes narrowed. “You will come back with me, too, Elspeth Gordie, doxy to the master of Obernewtyn. Him and all the beast lovers will cringe and weep and grovel to do my bidding once they see I have you. And if they don’t move fast enough, why, you can use your filthy mutant powers on them. I heard you can kill with your mind. I’d like to see that.” He grinned horribly and I saw that his teeth were streaked with blood. “You’d have killed me I guess, if it wasn’t for the demon band I wear.”

  My mouth fell open as I understood why Dragon had not been able to affect him, and then it struck me that this might be why he was sick. He must not know—or perhaps he did not believe it—that demon bands were filled with tainted matter, which prevents a Misfit from entering the wearer’s mind but would eventually kill them.

  His blackened lips split in a wide, delighted smile that made the sores about his mouth crack and ooze glistening pus. “Show me the trick now, mutant. Kill the gypsy there. Do it or I will kill the girl.”

  “Moss,” Analivia cried, but even as her brother turned toward her, a small owl appeared out of the enfolding darkness on silent gray wings, talons outstretched as it flew at Moss’s face. He bellowed and instinctively lifted his hands to protect his eyes. The little owl banked at the last second to cut away and vanish into the black night as soundlessly as it had come.

  After a stunned moment, both Swallow and I sprang forward and I was conscious of Darga leaping from his nest of blankets at the same moment, but the knife that flew between us was faster and buried itself in the left side of Moss’s chest with a woody thump. It was a clean and perfect kill, and Moss did not utter a sound as he fell flat on his back with the heavy lifeless thud of a sack of flour.

  I ran to scoop up Dragon, who had slid boneless to the ground when Moss released her to fend off the owl. I was terrified that he might have killed her but thankfully he had missed the vein. Even so, the cut was deep enough that blood ran freely down her neck and her skin felt cold and clammy. I looked up to ask for a blanket and saw Analivia swaying on her feet, her expression a ghastly mixture of horror and triumph.

  Only then did I realize that it was she who had thrown the knife.

  Swallow put an arm about her shoulders and drew her to sit by the fire as Ahmedri knelt by me and wrapped a blanket around Dragon before lifting her effortlessly into his arms. “I will tend her,” he said, beginning to open a pouch at his belt. He looked at me. “I know what to do.”

  I was glad when he bade me get water and warm it, for it gave me something to do. But when I tried to pour water from my bottle into a pan, my hand shook so hard that I spilled most of it.

  “You look white enough to faint, too. Sit,” Swallow said, taking the pan from me and filling it before setting it to warm on the fire.

  Analivia was rigid beside me, her eyes wide and unfocused. Pity welled up in me as I thought of what she must have endured, and I reached out to take her hands. They were ice cold and limp, so I chafed them gently between my own until the blankness faded from her eyes.

  She took a shuddering breath and looked at me, shame in her expression. “I … I dreamed so many times of killing him, but I was a child and I was terrified of what he would do to me if I failed.” She shuddered. “I told him that I would tell the Councilman or the healer what he did to me and he said he would cut my tongue and eyes out if I did, for he had no need of them.”

  Her words reminded me too vividly of the nightmarish period when I had been a prisoner of the rebel Malik. For a moment I seemed to feel the cold touch of his knife tip against my cheek, when he had threatened to cut my eyes out. He would have mutilated and tortured me before killing me, but he had not been my brother and he had not abused me first.

  “Ana, none of it was your fault or your doing,” I said softly. “Moss was stronger and older.”

  She did not seem to hear me as she went on, half babbling and occasionally giving a sobbing kind of laugh. “I almost hated my name, because his mouth could speak it. But my mother gave it to me and … and I loved her. She knew what he would do, I think, before even he knew. She sent me away on errands as much as she could. She had the healer teach me midwifing because it meant I would have to be away from home a lot. She … protected me as best she could, but she could not protect herself from my father, and when she was gone, Moss came.” Tears had begun to stream down her cheeks and I found myself weeping, too, because my own childhood, however brutally it had ended, had been full of love.

  Swallow sat down on the other side of Analivia and clasped my hands and hers in his. Gradually Analivia’s wild storm of weeping became less violent until finally she ceased with a little shuddering sigh.

  “He was a monster,” Swallow said, and never had I heard him speak with such icy rage.

  “He was my brother and I killed him,” Analivia said. She sounded numb and exhausted.

  “You did not kill him out of hate or the desire for revenge, though you had reason enough to feel both. You killed him to protect Dragon.”

  Analivia looked at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable, and then she took her hands from ours, covered her face with them, and began to weep again, very softly.

  We spent the remainder of the night in the hollow for Dragon’s sake, in the hope that she would wake. Her skin was very cool and pale, a sure sign of shock, Ahmedri said, and Swallow agreed. I felt only a terrible sense of weariness at seeing her lost in sleep yet again. I did not dare try to enter her mind to draw her out. I could only pray, as I had done so many times before, that she would wake and that her mind and memories would be intact.

  I had farsent Dameon to let the others know what had happened, and they all hurried back to the hollow. The moon was setting by the time Gavyn and Rasial appeared, with Dameon and the horses. The little owl, which I had not seen for days and had all but forgotten until she attacked Moss, was sitting on Gavyn’s shoulder, her eyes wide and yellow in the darkness.

  “Did you send Fey?” I asked Rasial, remembering the name Kella had given her.

  “The cub did,” Rasial said when Gavyn did not seem to even have heard the question. “We flew with the bird and watched in spirit-form, and when we saw that the funaga-li meant to kill the she-cub, we bade her attack.”

  I shivered at the thought of being watched by spirit-eyes, and yet had I not watched the world through spirit-eyes more than once, if inexpertly? Besides, if they had not watched and sent the owl flying into Moss’s face, the night might have ended very differently. I thanked Rasial and then Gavyn, but the boy rose and wandered away in the midst of my words to look down at the sleeping Dragon. Then he smiled his soft, strange smile and, to my surprise, he threw the owl into the air. As the tiny bird floated away, Gavyn stretched out on the bare ground alongside Dragon, and Rasial went to lie on the other side of the girl. That reminded me of how the beasthealer Darius had summoned this strange pair to help him tend to Miky. Had he been able to see that their spirits were merged, and how or why had he used them to help Miky? But Miky had woken, and now I could only hope they would be able to bring Dragon to wakefulness.

  Analivia had wanted to sit vigil by Dragon but, displaced now, she stood uncertainly looking down at the odd trio. I bade her join us by the fire for a meal but she answered tersely that she was tired a
nd would rather sleep than eat. She would not meet my eyes and in a short while she wrapped herself in her blanket and lay down with her back to us.

  As Swallow prepared his meal, Ahmedri went off for a time and arrived back at the camp dragging several surprisingly large branches from a dead tree that he had noticed growing from the cliff below, where the Beforetime road ran. He had found in its roots a handful of dry-looking tubers. The latter were added to the stew while Ahmedri broke up the wood and fed it to the fire. The firenuts Gavyn had collected put out more heat, but there was something pleasing about the loud crack and hiss and the pungent scent of burning wood.

  I looked across the fire at Dameon, in whose lap Maruman lay, contentedly asleep. The empath was gazing into the fire, his expression very serious, and I wondered what he was thinking about. I had told him what had transpired with Moss and Analivia when I farsought him, but none of us had talked about what had happened. Perhaps we had been constrained by the dead Moss, whose body Swallow and Ahmedri had dragged out of sight of his sister, or by the things he had revealed about his relationship with Analivia. Now she lay still, but I did not think anyone believed she was sleeping.

  The horses were grazing while they had the chance. Faraf had told me that Rheagor had come with two other wolves to get us, but after talking with Rasial, they had departed again, bidding us come as soon as we were able. They had promised to leave a trail that even a dog could follow. Faraf had said diffidently that she supposed that was meant to be an insult but that Rasial had merely acknowledged the wolf’s words.

  When I had told the others what had been said, they all sobered at the news that we would soon be crossing tainted ground, though I assured them, as Rheagor had assured Rasial, that he would lead us where the taint was lightest.

  “She sleeps,” Dameon said softly, and I realized that what I had taken for preoccupation had been the empath sending calmness and tranquility and serenity to Analivia. No wonder Maruman was sitting on his lap. Indeed, now that Dameon had ceased to empathize, Maruman opened his yellow eye and glared at the empath before shifting from his lap to my knee, kneading and clawing me painfully until he had made me comfortable for himself.

  “You should get some sleep,” Dameon suggested.

  “I can feel you worrying about Dragon, but that won’t help her.”

  “I am worried about her, but it is Analivia who concerns me right now. I can’t help but think about her childhood. It must have been appalling.”

  “She rose above it,” Dameon said firmly. “At the moment, the hardest thing for her to bear is knowing that we know what was done to her.”

  “But she has no cause for shame,” I said indignantly, and then I sighed. “Yet it is true that victims often blame themselves for what has happened to them.” I looked over at Dragon. “I wonder who Dragon will blame for what has happened to her when she wakes. But more, I wonder how Moss knew his sister would be in the mountains with me. When I asked how he had found this camp, he said that blood knows blood, but what does that mean? In truth, I cannot believe it was mere chance that he happened on Dragon, who was coming to where his sister was.”

  “Why would the dream speaker allow Dragon to bring Moss to you?” Dameon asked. “What gain would there be in it?”

  “Dragon is connected to my quest, Dameon. There is something in her memories of the Red Land that I need to know, to deal with Sentinel.”

  Dameon looked astonished, but then he said, “I have been thinking about your Cassandra. You said that she went to the Red Land before she came to the Land. Why didn’t she just deal with Sentinel herself while she was there?”

  “I have wondered about that myself, and I can only suppose that either she did not have all that was needed or that Sentinel is not in the Red Land,” I said. “Besides, remember that Hannah had foreseen that I alone would be capable of preventing it from being used.”

  “I had forgotten that,” Dameon admitted.

  I noticed that Ahmedri and Swallow were listening, and I included them with a glance when I said, “We have to decide what to do if Dragon does not wake.”

  “We make a travois,” Ahmedri said swiftly enough that I guessed he had given the matter some thought. “The horses can take turns pulling it, and when the way is too steep, we can use ropes to haul it up or down.” He added that he had already laid aside the longest branches from the tree he had dragged in to use as side poles.

  Swallow nodded his approval, yawning, and then suggested we might be wise to get some sleep if we wanted to leave the next day.

  “I will take first watch,” I offered, knowing I was too wide awake to sleep yet.

  “I will sit with you,” Dameon said gently.

  “I will take the next watch and that will bring us through to dawn, I fear,” said Ahmedri.

  “Wake me when the sun is up, my friend, and we will cover the body with a cairn before Ana rises,” Swallow said. “He was a bastard but he was her brother and her blood, so we cannot leave him as a feast for the firelizards.”

  “If we carry him up and lay him by the remains of the talus, we will not have to carry the stones far,” Ahmedri said, yawning as well. Both men went off into the darkness, still talking of cairns and travois, and then they returned to wrap themselves in their blankets and sleep.

  I found my eyes drawn again to Dragon, who slept still between Gavyn and Rasial. Her hair was a dirty red gold in the firelight, and although Ahmedri had wiped the injured places on her face and body in order to treat them, tomorrow I would get up early and bathe her.

  I felt Dameon’s empathy soothing me, and sighed.

  “I am sorry. I can’t stop worrying about things. Tell me, what do you feel when you are close to them? Rasial and Gavyn, I mean. Do you feel anything from them now?”

  “I sense they are doing something but I do not know what,” Dameon answered.

  I told him about the merged spirits of the strange pair and about how Darius had used them to help him tend to Miky.

  “Perhaps they are healing Dragon’s spirit,” Dameon said. “Maybe when Darius used them to help with Miky, they saw how it was done.”

  “I hope so,” I said grimly. “My fear is that she will wake, but without any memory of her past.”

  “She loves you, Elspeth, and one day she will recollect it,” the empath said.

  “Do you feel it or do you know it?” I asked with a wry smile.

  He smiled wanly back. “For me, very often it is the same thing, but in this case, I suppose the best way to put it is to say that love is not so easily forgotten. Think how Rushton’s mind was possessed by the things Ariel did to him, yet it clung to a memory of you that saved him, even though, paradoxically, it was your image that was used to torture him. The love Rushton felt for you was stronger than the fear and hate Ariel had trained his mind to feel,” he said.

  I noticed a queer rigidity in the empath’s face. “Did you quarrel with Rushton, Dameon?”

  A startled, almost wary expression came over his features. “Why do you ask?”

  I shrugged, already wishing I had not spoken. “It is … it is just that when you speak of him, I see something in your expression. Some reserve.”

  “I love him and honor him and yet I left him so I could join the woman he loves while he could not,” Dameon said flatly. He was silent for a time, and then he said, “Perhaps I envy him as well.”

  “Because he can see?” I asked incredulously. “You see more than most sighted folk and always have. In truth, Rushton would envy your Talent and call himself blind by comparison.”

  “Yet he has Talent,” Dameon said.

  “A great cavern within him that he cannot enter of his own will, and he does not acknowledge it as a Talent.”

  “What is a Talent but an ability that most people do not possess? But I meant that I envy Rushton the strength of his will. He is a born leader because he can truly put the welfare of others ahead of his own desires.” Dameon rose suddenly and said he would try to sle
ep.

  “Sleep well,” I said, slightly bewildered by his sudden departure. Only when he had curled up in his blanket did I realize that he had not answered my question, yet I could not imagine him quarreling with Rushton.

  “All funaga are blind in one way or another,” Maruman grumbled sleepily.

  I stared into the fire for a long time, thinking about Straaka and Ahmedri and the oldOnes and about Miryum and the mysterious efari, if it was they who had captured her. I thought about Cassandra and about Hannah and Jacob Obernewtyn. Then I thought about Analivia and her father and brothers, and about Rasial and Gavyn. There was so much to think about, so much that I had discovered since leaving Obernewtyn.

  I looked at Dragon often and prayed that when morning came she would wake. Even if she still feared and hated me, that would be better than this. I could try to befriend her from the beginning this time, rather than frightening her by insisting she acknowledge a friendship she did not remember. Having Dameon with us would help. Indeed, it was possible that was why he had been summoned.

  When I calculated I had finished my watch, I awakened Swallow and bade him good morning and good night before rolling myself in my blanket to sleep. Maruman curled up with me.

  “My guardians,” I murmured, and slept.

  I dreamed of a dragon flying in the wind, red and gold as the sun rising from the sea behind it. I saw the wolfman dream form flying alongside it. They swooped down to brush the bronze skin of the sea, and I heard a lovely wash of music rising from the waves, and then Ari-noor was leaping from the sea to sail up into the air, and the music rose until it seemed a tide of sound, lifting them all higher and higher, until they began to melt and merge in the high realm of pure spirit.

  The dream changed and I saw a little girl with pale skin and dark unruly hair crouched low in a meadow of long and impossibly vivid green grass. The girl giggled, then raised her head slowly as if playing hide-and-seek. A woman came and hunkered down alongside her. I noted the darkness of her skin and the long, thick, curling hair, black as night, that brushed her waist. A pureblood gypsy, I thought, only there was no Twentyfamilies tattoo on her arm. A halfbreed that throws to her gypsy side. Then she turned to look in the direction the child was pointing and I saw her face.