There was a great violent crack and I sat bolt upright, heart pounding. Another deafening crack shook the air and then rain began hammering down on the roof shingles. Thunder, I realised, and lay back relieved. The storm had broken at last.
My senses told me that it was still very early morning and I turned on my side to ponder my odd, unsettling dream of the Beforetimer, trying to make up my mind if it had been a fragment of a past-dream or merely a dream.
I had first dreamed of the Beforetime girl soon after my arrival at Obernewtyn and I had dreamed of her often enough since to build up a picture of her life in the Beforetime. These dreams of the past could not be provoked or controlled, so there were gaps in my knowledge. I knew that her mentor, Hannah Seraphim, had foreseen the end of the Beforetime, but I had no idea whether Cassy had dreamed of it too.
My guess was that Hannah alone had dreamed of the Beforetime and of me, initially, since I had never seen Cassy use her futuretelling Talent in any of my past-dreams. It had been an ancestor of the Agyllian birds that had beastspoken the young Cassy to tell her of the kidnapped paranormals being held in the Govamen compound her father directed. The same bird had sent her in search of Hannah, and later, Cassy passed on to Hannah material that the captives had smuggled out, which led to the revelation that those developing Sentinel as a means of preventing violence and war had secret connections to the powerful weaponmaking industry.
Another gap in my knowledge was how Sentinel, created as a deterrent to violence, had come to destroy the Beforetime. Perhaps Cassy and Hannah had never known exactly how the Great White came about. I did know from my past-dreams of Cassy that the Sentinel Project had been very near completion at the time of the Great White. It had always been my suspicion that when Sentinel had been tested, something had gone wrong, causing it to unleash the Balance of Terror arsenal. No dream supported this theory but I could not believe that even the most power-hungry and heedless Beforetimers would have deliberately brought about the end of their world. As to why Sentinel would target so many different locations yet stop short of complete destruction, the only thing I could think of was that someone had managed to disrupt the operation of the Balance of Terror weapons before they could destroy everything. Yet supposedly they and Sentinel had been designed to be unassailable, beyond any human interference.
My dreams of Cassy showed that initially Hannah had believed the disaster she had seen could be averted. She and her friends had worked to this end, but at some point she had understood that the holocaust was inevitable. I did not know how long after she had acquired this dark knowledge that she had foreseen the coming of the Seeker. Perhaps it was only when she dreamed about me that she understood she could not stop the Great White from happening, that I alone would have the potential to end the threat of a second holocaust.
Nor did I know if she or Cassy had ever foreseen the coming of the Destroyer, who would be born in the same time as the Seeker, and have the potential to use Sentinel and bring the world to a final doom. I suspected they must have known or seen something of him, for it was the only explanation for the cryptic nature of the directions Cassy had left me. They had been so obscurely phrased and so difficult to interpret that I was sure Cassy had been striving to make sure no one but I would be able to make head or tail of them.
That was what I thought, but I did not know.
What I did know was that Hannah and Cassy had worked together towards the end of the Beforetime to prepare the way for me. At what point in their preparations the Great White had come or how Cassy had escaped death was a mystery. The likelihood was that she had taken refuge in one of the shelters the Beforetimers had constructed, and since she had led the kidnapped paranormals to the Land, I had to assume the shelter had been within the Govamen compound where they had been held. But it was all guesswork because my dreams had never shown me the Great White or anything beyond it. All I knew of Cassy’s life after the holocaust had come from unravelling the clues she had left for me on the doors to Obernewtyn, and from conversations with the Twentyfamilies gypsy leader, Swallow, for he, and all of the Twentyfamilies gypsies, were descendants of Cassy and the Beforetime Misfits.
I wanted to go back to sleep, but instead I found myself thinking about Swallow. As far as I knew, the Twentyfamilies gypsy had no idea that the sacred D’rekta of the Twentyfamilies had been a Beforetime girl called Cassy, or that when she was older, Cassy had become the revered Sadorian seer Kasanda. I had put together the clues over time. Cassy had left her final message to me in the Earthtemple, or rather the last sign she had created, not the final sign, for according to the clues, that sign awaited me in the Red Land.
I focused my mind on the sound of the falling rain and tried to order my thoughts. It was my guess that Cassandra’s futuretelling Talent had manifested later in her life, as Misfit abilities sometimes did. How else could she have known, without foresight, where to leave clues for me that would survive until I was born? Hannah might have foreseen much of my life and told Cassy of it. She might even conceivably have foreseen the journey Cassy and the Beforetime Misfits would make to the Red Land, before coming to the Land, but could she truly have seen all that would happen in the long years Cassy would spend in the Land, all the signs she would leave and the creation of the Twentyfamilies, not to mention her capture and removal from the Land by Gadfian slavers? It was my belief that Cassy had developed futuretelling abilities before leaving the Land, and that these had been honed during the time between her capture by the slavers and her arrival in Sador, where she had left her last message for me, knowing I would come there seeking it. Certainly her powers must have been formidable, for a derivative of her name was used in Sador for those who exhibited that Talent.
I had no idea why I dreamed of Cassy or why I only dreamed of her life before the Great White. That was no less a mystery than why I was the Seeker. I had always assumed it must be because of the unusual range and strength of Talents I had been born with, which would be needed to find the clues that Cassy would leave. Certainly, much of my time since my first encounter with the Agyllians had been spent trying to decipher her instructions.
My task had been complicated and occasionally aided by upheavals in the Land, some of which Cassy must have futuretold. The previous year had seen an invasion of warrior priests, the overthrow of the Council and soldierguards on the west coast, and of the Herder priests in the Norselands. Despite being intimately involved in these events, I had found two of Cassy’s signs during this period; one had been a phrase scribed upon a memorial cairn to Cassy’s son Evander, and the second had been a small device called a memory seed, secreted inside a computermachine in the Sadorian Earthtemple.
I had three things yet to locate. The first was Cassandra’s key, which I had always thought to find at Obernewtyn. The second was on or within a sculpture created by Cassandra to mark the safe-passage agreement she had negotiated with the Councilmen who had then ruled the Land, so that the Twentyfamilies and their descendants would be able to travel freely about the Land and watch over the signs left for me. It was my belief that the final sign lay in the Red Queen’s land.
I pictured the much-crumpled paper upon which Fian had scribed a rough translation of the gadi words Cassy had carved, referring to the final sign.
[That which] will [open/access/reach] the darkest door lies where the … [lies/sleeps]? Strange is the keeping place of this dreadful [sign/key] but there is no other, for all who knew it are dead save one who does not know what she knows. Seek her … past … Only through her may you go where you have never been and must someday go … danger. Beware … dragon.’
I had been baffled by the clue until I discovered that Dragon, who had lost her memory, was the missing daughter of the murdered queen of the Red Land.
Incredible as it seemed, Cassandra must have foreseen that a descendant of the Red Queen would come to the Land in the time of the Seeker, and she had to have foreseen it when she was in the Red Queen’s land. How else could she
have given information to the Red Queen to pass on to her daughter and to her daughter’s daughter, so that Dragon would hear or see whatever it was that was locked in her memories, waiting for me to discover it? And how else could Cassy have left a sign or a key for the Seeker in the Red Land before she had ever come to the Land and created the clue referring to it?
Unfortunately the clue had not told me how to acquire the knowledge hidden in Dragon’s suppressed memories, but the healers had assured me that her memory would return in time.
Sadly, a chance encounter with Herder priests had forced me to break into Dragon’s mind to prevent her falling into their hands. This had caused the girl to sink into a long coma where she had relived over and over the brutal betrayal and death of her mother. When she finally woke, it was with no recollection of the Red Land or of the time she had spent at Obernewtyn, but with a violent aversion to me because she associated me with the pain she had experienced, though she had no conscious memory of it.
During my time in Sador I had resolved to try to establish a new friendship with Dragon rather than seeking to revive the old one, but when I returned to Obernewtyn, I learned that she had disappeared. The only thing that kept me from despairing was the fact that the Futuretell guildmistress insisted Dragon was safe. I made the difficult decision not to seek the girl in the hope that, wherever she was and whatever she was doing, she would eventually return to Obernewtyn of her own accord, with her memory intact.
It troubled me that I had never told Rushton that Dragon was the daughter of the Red Queen, and that taking her aboard one of the four ships that would sail to the Red Land would ensure that her people would rise against their oppressors, thereby preventing the course of events that would lead to the foreseen invasion of the Land. Right now, Rushton and the others were planning the journey Maryon had said must be made, without having any idea how four ships could thwart an invasion.
I might have scribed of the matter to Rushton, but until now, he had been travelling from Sador to the Norse Islands and to the west coast, and besides, sending a letter about Dragon when she was missing had seemed pointless.
But after darkmoon we would enter the Days of Rain when the ships were due to sail, so I had decided to tell Rushton Dragon’s identity as soon as he returned, whether or not she was still missing. I turned onto my side and sighed. I had resolved not to worry about Dragon, and here I was doing just that. Yet she might very well simply appear in time to travel with the ships. Had not the other clues been found when I had least expected them? And I had only to call into Saithwold on the way to the ships to learn what Cassy had left for me in the statue there, created ostensibly to mark the safe-passage agreement.
The truth was that it was Cassandra’s key that now seemed the only thing impossible to obtain before the ships left for the Red Land.
3
Unable to sleep and weary of lying there listening to the rain and worrying, I sat up, slid my feet into woven slippers and went to the deep, recessed shelf under the window. The air felt damp, and I shivered. I could see nothing through the half-open shutters save for the glimmer of the few drops that caught the dim ruby light cast by the dying fire, but it was still raining hard.
I drew out a long, narrow, heavy parcel and laid it on the tapestried window seat. Folding back the cloth wrapping I bared the stone sword that I had been given in the Earthtemple.
Here was another puzzle, for although the sword had been left for me by Cassy, it did not appear to be connected to my quest as the Seeker. The reigning overguardian had told me that the mystic Kasanda had instructed that the sword be given to the Seeker when they came for the last sign. I had been bidden keep it with me until I found its rightful owner. I could not imagine who would want such an unwieldy and useless thing as a stone sword, nor could I guess why Cassy had left it to me to return it to its owner. The only thing I could think of was that she had foreseen that my path would bring me into contact with them.
I ran a finger along the scribing on the hilt. I could not read the words because they were in gadi script but it suddenly occurred to me that I could make a rubbing of the markings and show them to Fian. The young teknoguilder had already translated the words from Cassy’s clue on the original doors to Obernewtyn, which had also been in gadi. I took a sheet of parchment and used some charcoal from the fire to make the rubbing, thinking that knowing what the words meant might enable me to understand why I had been given the sword. I laid the rubbing on the sill, reached into the shelf again and drew out the Beforetime device that had been inside the small computermachine Cassy had left for me. This was the last sign she had devised, and by some process I could not understand, the device had swallowed my voice and Maruman’s. Thus armed, it was supposed to enable me to enter all levels of the Sentinel Complex. I had been tempted to show it to Garth when I had first got back to Obernewtyn in the hope that the Teknoguildmaster would be able to explain how it might be used, but I would have been obliged to explain how I had obtained it.
Instead, I had interrogated Reul about the workings of computermachines whenever I got the chance, hoping the subject of memory seeds would come up. It was not hard to initiate such talk among the teknoguilders for they had all been fascinated to learn that a computermachine containing a program named Ines had been wakened by the futureteller Dell, and now spoke to her in the dulcet tones of a woman. Ines had restored operation to most of the lesser computermachines in the vast Beforetime shelter beneath the ruins of an ancient library on the west coast, and this had led the teknoguilders to dream of locating and waking a similarly powerful computermachine in the ruins under the Teknoguild caves.
Garth had been disappointed to learn that the teknoguilder Jak had no plans to return to Obernewtyn, for he had been hoping to make use of Jak’s experience with Ines. I understood why Jak had elected to remain on the west coast, having myself experienced the wondrous strangeness of conversing with a computermachine that responded almost as if it were sentient. For a teknoguilder, there was also the fascination of the many levels of the complex full of Beforetime artefacts to be investigated, not to mention the vast amount of knowledge of the Beforetime that reposed in Ines’s memory.
Jak had promised that he and Seely would visit Obernewtyn on their way back to the west coast complex, which they now called Oldhaven, after they had finished establishing a colony of taint-devouring insects in the Sadorian desert. Their most recent missive had bidden us expect them for the next moon fair, which was to commence on darkmoon. It would be a somewhat larger occasion than usual because Dardelan planned to attend in his capacity as high chieftain to perform the offices that would confirm Obernewtyn as a settlement and Rushton as its chieftain. In a brief missive to me, Rushton had explained that, given Dardelan’s intentions, he had issued an open invitation to the moon fair to all Landfolk.
He had asked that I announce the news at guildmerge, since we would need to prepare for the visitors. He also asked me to explain that the moon fair would be run over three days, as on the west coast, rather than lasting a single day.
Most of the others had been excited by the idea of having a three-day moon fair, and moreover one that would be attended by strangers instead of only our own people. Secretly I hoped most Landfolk would decide against accepting Rushton’s invitation for fear of being attacked by the bands of robbers and ruffians rumoured to be active on the main roads of late, or out of reluctance to travel in the notoriously uncertain weather. I did not like the thought of so many strangers roaming about, besides which it seemed likely to me that anyone who came up to Obernewtyn would be unable to resist returning to make a home here. Unfortunately, we had received numerous missives from traders and jacks wanting to apply for space to set up stalls, which, as Ceirwan had observed with irritatingly good humour, indicated that many would make the long journey to the mountain valley for the moon fair.
I had promptly delegated all preparations for the expected influx of visitors to him and the other guildmasters, ple
ading my duties as mistress of Obernewtyn as an excuse to distance myself from the moon fair; to my guilty relief, no one appeared to find it odd or unfair. Certainly Ceirwan did not seem to be finding it a burden, though the weight of most decisions had been falling to him.
Despite the expected numbers of outsiders and strangers, I had no doubt that Garth would find time to interrogate Jak about Ines and Oldhaven, and that in his turn, Jak would try to convince his master to visit Oldhaven. Garth, anticipating the request, had told me that he intended sending Reul with Jak to learn what he could. His own dearest desire was to see the collection of Beforetime books being amassed by the Norselanders on Herder Isle. The main Faction library had been destroyed when the Norselanders rose to overthrow the priests on Herder Isle, but there were hundreds of books stored in barrels in vaults under the city, some of which had been brought there by the original Faction priests shipwrecked on Herder Isle. Garth was convinced these tomes would divulge where the Herders had come from initially, and why they had left their own land. His interest in the origins of the Herders was almost as strong as his interest in the relationship between the Beforetimers Hannah Seraphim and Jacob Obernewtyn.
I rewrapped the sword, returning it and the memory seed to their shelf, then I bent to stoke the fire. There was only a little wood and, on impulse, I dressed, intending to go outside and get some more. Just as I was adding the last of the wood to the small blaze I had coaxed from the embers, there was a knock at the door. Aras entered with a tray of food and a basket of wood over her arm. I frowned at the ward, wishing she would leave such chores to farseeker novices. There was no use in protesting, however, because she regarded it as an honour to serve me. That she was not alone in this belief made it impossible to announce that I would prefer to fetch my own meals from the kitchen, or my own wood from the woodshed. In truth, the reverence of those at Obernewtyn sometimes served to isolate me as much as my secret quest.
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