Sending

by Carmody Isobelle

  ‘He is dead so you never need fear him again,’ Analivia told her, slipping into the pool and pushing forward to take her from me. Though it had pained me to hold her slight weight, it was harder by far to let her go. But even as Ahmedri came into the water to help Analivia lift her out, Dragon’s lovely blue eyes sought me out, full of pleading.

  ‘I am coming, dear one,’ I said, tears of relief and joy spilling down my face as I waded to the edge and climbed out with Swallow’s help. I saw the brightness of blood on his teeth. ‘You are hurt.’

  ‘I merely bit my tongue,’ he told me drily. ‘I would curse my clumsiness except it seems to have been of some use.’

  I went over to the bier where Dragon had been laid alongside the still-sleeping Maruman. Analivia was drying her tenderly, for despite waking, Dragon was weak from her mistreatment at Moss’s hands. But at least she was not as depleted as she would have been if Analivia and I had not been force-feeding her.

  ‘Your eyes are like his,’ Dragon said suddenly to Analivia, who had drawn the blanket over her. She began to shiver so violently that her teeth clattered together.

  ‘Shock,’ Analivia told me, saying she would get another blanket, but her own face was very pale.

  I went to the side of the bier and knelt down, ignoring the renewed stabbing pain in my chest. ‘Dragon, I am so very glad to see you awake. So glad that you remember me.’

  Dragon gave me a bewildered look. ‘It is as if I have been broken into pieces and all the bits are coming together, only I can’t understand them. Why am I so weak?’ She stopped abruptly, seeming to see Ahmedri for the first time.

  I said, ‘This is Ahmedri. He is a tribesman from Sador. That was Analivia drying your hair and Swallow and Dameon you know.’

  She did not seem to hear my last words. Her eyes were still fixed on Ahmedri. ‘I thought you were him, but you are not,’ she said. Then she winced and looked fearfully at Analivia who was tucking a second blanket around her.

  ‘I … I am sorry. There are many scratches and cuts on you.’ Analivia’s expression was shattered but she dressed Dragon efficiently and then propped her up in the bier, promising the girl that she would be able to walk and move normally before long.

  Dragon turned her gaze to Swallow, who had come to rest a brown hand comfortingly on Analivia’s bare shoulder. ‘I lied to you,’ Dragon told Swallow, unexpectedly.

  He blinked at her in surprise. ‘You have not lied to me.’

  ‘I told you I wanted to go into the Healing Centre alone. I didn’t want you to come with me because I meant to run away as soon as you left.’ She frowned and turned her blue gaze to me, wonderingly. ‘I feared you.’ She sounded puzzled and uneasy. ‘Why would I be afraid of you, Elspeth? You are my friend.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, and forced myself to smile. She smiled, too, but there was confusion in her eyes. I was struck by how dark the blue shadows were under her eyes, like bruises. Ahmedri brought a mug of water and helped her to lift her head and drink it. She could not manage more than a quarter cup.

  ‘You look so like him,’ she told the tribesman, and when he frowned she added, ‘Straaka.’

  ‘He was my brother,’ the tribesman said.

  ‘He said I should go back, for I was needed. He said Maruman was calling to me. Then the wolfman came and he wanted to bring me down, but I was afraid. But Straaka kept telling me I had to go down,’ she whispered. She closed her eyes for a moment, and I took her hand in mine.

  She opened her eyes to look at me, and I asked, ‘Dragon, can you tell us why the man who held you captive brought you to the mountains? Did he make you tell him where to find us?’

  She frowned. ‘He said he had to take me into the mountains and I was to lead him to you and his sister. I told him that I did not know him or his sister but he did not hear. Sometimes he said that he would kill us both and other times he said he would let me go when I brought him to his sister. He had some food to begin with, but he was sick when he took me prisoner and he got worse in the mountains and then he did not care about food. He thought I might try to run away because he was sick so he bound my hands and feet and tied me.’ She was trembling and her eyes had gone glassy. ‘He smelled so bad but his eyes were worse than his smell. Sometimes he thought I was his sister. He said she had run away and that he had to find her and punish her. He hurt me …’ She stopped and swallowed, and then she said in the same childish voice as she had used when first she woke, ‘He was a bad man.’

  ‘He was,’ Analivia said fiercely, drawing Dragon’s blue gaze. ‘But now he is a dead bad man, so he can’t hurt anyone ever again.’ She was trembling too, I saw, and Swallow came to put his arm around her and draw her away, saying they would prepare some food.

  Ahmedri and I exchanged a look, even as Dameon took Analivia’s place and laid his hand unerringly over Dragon’s. Seeing him, she smiled. ‘Guildmaster,’ she murmured, and when he shifted his hand to her face, she turned her head to press her cheek to his palm.

  ‘Rest, child, and we will watch over you,’ Dameon said, and because I was holding her other hand, I felt him emanating comfort and serenity to her. But when she closed her eyes again, I felt a jab of panic. Dameon shook his head at me and said softly, ‘She is sleeping naturally. Do not fear, Elspeth. Let her rest. You can ask her all of your questions when she wakes. It is more than fortunate that she woke here when we have a hiatus in our journey.’

  ‘Yes,’ I murmured, hardly able to take in that she had woken and remembered me.

  It was clear enough that Atthis had manipulated Moss to bring Dragon to me. No doubt the dying bird had been unable to break through the fierce shield about Dragon’s mind. But Moss’s mind would have been easy to penetrate, especially if the rebel had got hold of a demonband before escaping the Councilfarm, for his sickness would have been advanced enough that he would have risen to the dreamtrails in an unconscious spirit-form.

  Eventually, Atthis had to have given Dragon directions for Moss, else he would have deemed her useless, but when had she managed it, for surely she was dead before Moss brought Dragon to the mountains? The only answer seemed to be that she had communed with Dragon after her death. It chilled me to think that Atthis might have counted on her being mistreated and terrorised and starved by Moss to make her accessible. Yet in the end, despite the efforts of Maruman and the merged spirit-form of Gavyn and Rasial, and all of the Agyllian Elder’s manipulations, Dragon had fallen unconscious and it had taken an accident to wake her. Or had Atthis foreseen that as well? It was a cold thought, and yet no matter what else she had been, Atthis had been an animal with all the ruthless pragmatism of Rheagor. Dragon had said nothing of Atthis or of guiding Moss yet, but it was the only thing that made sense. And how was I to disagree with Atthis’s methods when here was Dragon, awake and with her memory restored?

  The crucial thing, of course, was whether she remembered the Red Land and her mother, but Dameon was right in saying that she needed rest before I could interrogate her. We would have plenty of time to talk in the days ahead. The trouble was, Dragon was much depleted by her mistreatment and our journey into the desert was not going to be a healing stroll in a garden.

  Dragon was still sleeping when the sun began westering, but Analivia had refused to rouse her, saying that, paradoxical as it sounded, she needed sleep more than food. Natural sleep, she added, seeing my face.

  We were able to light a fire after Gavyn had returned with Rasial carrying a hempen sack full of a smaller version of the firenuts he had found in the valley of the Skylake. Unfortunately he had not found any food, but Ahmedri cooked a thin but nourishing gruel for Dragon.

  I questioned Rasial about Dragon, but the ridgeback only reiterated that she and Gavyn had flown with Dragon on the dreamtrails. When I asked about Maruman, who slept still, Darga sent that Marumanyelloweyes flew seliga.

  That chilled me, yet there was nothing to be done about it unless I would seek him out in spirit-form. Even if I were willing, I ha
d no idea where or what seliga was.

  I asked Darga what exactly Rheagor had told him, but he only repeated what Analivia had said, that the wolves would return when the sun had set.

  But the wolves did not return at dusk, and when dawn came, still they had not come.

  31

  Gazing out over the shimmering white desert, I sensed that something had gone wrong. It was not a premonition, but a bone-deep certainty, and though none of the others had said it, I did not doubt that, like me, they feared the wolves had been attacked by the rhenling horde, though I had a disquieting memory of the huge dark thing I had seen moving in the canyon where we had slept in the spring caves.

  The other possibility was that the wolves had ventured into the desert and had fallen foul of the efari, who might well roam beyond the limits of their city, given what Miryum had said about her captors carrying her there.

  ‘What now?’ Swallow asked, coming to stand by me.

  ‘We will wait until dusk,’ I decided. ‘The horses can spend the day grazing and we have water and food for the nonce. You and Ahmedri and Gavyn might go foraging and see if you can find us anything to add to our supplies.’

  ‘And if the wolves do not come at dusk?’

  ‘Then we will head east, and seek out this path of stone trees that is supposed to lead to the city of the efari.’

  ‘You know that Jacob only thought that Pellmar Quadrans had become the city he dreamed of,’ Swallow said. ‘What if it is not the same place as the city of the efari?’

  ‘If it is not, then we will learn it by going there,’ I said. ‘Indeed, we will know for sure when we come to the path of stone trees, and it leads us north-east.’

  ‘The trouble is we could pass right by this path of stone trees if it begins one dune away from us,’ Swallow said.

  ‘I would prefer to wait for the wolves, but we cannot wait forever,’ I said. ‘And Rheagor bade us go east and he would catch us up.’

  ‘Let us hope this path runs right across our way, then, and that there is water to be found in the desert, for the horses will need a good deal more than we can carry and they will not last more than a threeday without it,’ Swallow said. ‘Nor will we.’

  The sun rose and the morning unfolded hot and bright and still, for the slight wind that had been blowing the night before had fallen to little more than a faint stirring of the air. I had thought it quiet before, but now the silence was almost palpable. Every movement we made was audible, and when no one stirred, there was the soft distinct sound of the spring water dropping from stone bowl to stone bowl and the deeper note it sounded overflowing into the lake.

  At one point I noticed Ahmedri bent over a scrap of parchment scribing, which puzzled me, given the Gadfian repudiation of scribing and reading. But when I asked what he was doing the tribesman explained that he was making notations from which he would later create a map, for it was clear to him that the maps of his people needed correcting. They showed the mountains we had come through as having an arm that ran north-east, when in fact his own eyes had shown him that the mountains curved right around to run almost directly east where they rose above or maybe even formed the soaring black escarpment that bounded the desert lands of Sador to the eastern coast. The maps also failed to show the width of the Blacklands Range or to clearly identify the great spine of high peaks that ran down the centre of it. Land maps were equally inaccurate, for they showed the other arm of the range curving to the north-west, but in fact the mountains marched almost exactly north, though obviously it would be a mistake to assume that they went on in that way.

  ‘A mapmaker should never assume,’ the tribesman said severely. ‘Our maps show the whole of the territory beyond the mountains as Blacklands and yet no one can have been there, so why include it? A map should end where knowledge ends. Besides correcting the maps, I will show where clean water can be found and where the observatory and the ancient roads are located, and the valley of the Skylake.’ As he spoke, Ahmedri pointed to the list of lines and cryptic markings he had made on the parchment, showing an enthusiasm and animation I had not so far seen in him.

  I felt unexpectedly cheered as I left him to finish his notes, because what purpose could there be in such a map save that it be taken back to the Land? On the other hand, he of all of us had a task that was not connected directly to my quest and which actually required him to return to Sador with his brother’s bones.

  At midday, Ahmedri set aside his parchment and he and Swallow went to explore to the north, to see if there might not be another body of water and food fit for humans as well as beasts. Gavyn and Rasial had gone off again to the north soon after sunrise to get more firenuts. The ridgeback still limped though less than she had.

  Only Darga, Analivia and I were left in our makeshift camp when Dragon woke in the middle of the afternoon. Swallow and Ahmedri had dragged the travois into shade on the southern side of the rocks when they left, but the sun had moved and we were trying to shift her again when Dragon opened her eyes and squinted up at us in confusion.

  She was groggy from sleep but we were able to get her out of the bier and onto a blanket in the shade on the eastern side of the rocks, where Analivia fed her gruel and helped her to bathe. Then Analivia went for a swim, leaving me to keep Dragon company. I stroked Maruman, whom I had lifted onto my lap, more for my comfort than his. It worried me that he was still limp and unresponsive when Dragon had woken for the second time.

  ‘Marumanyelloweyes travels seliga,’ Darga sent, from where he had flopped down alongside Analivia’s trews on the other side of Dragon.

  ‘So I understand, but why?’ I demanded.

  ‘Who can know why Marumanyelloweyes does anything? Maybe the oldOnes bade him do it. Maybe he is lost.’

  I thought of Descantra, snarling at Rheagor that he would never wake if he went seliga, and a little chill ran through me.

  ‘Elspeth?’ Dragon said and I saw that her eyes were clear. ‘Where are we going?’

  I reached out and took her hand. ‘Dragon, I hardly know where to begin. We left the mountains, where Moss brought you, days past, and we have travelled far beyond them, and across Blacklands guided by a pack of wolves whose ancestor once came this way. Right now we are waiting for them to return to lead us across the white desert in search of a Beforetime city where there is something that I need.’ I gestured rather aimlessly to the white land running away from us, and decided not to speak of the part she was to play in my quest for the moment, adding only that I regretted that she would have to go with us when she was still weakened by her ordeal.

  But Dragon said, ‘I am supposed to go with you. She said so. The red bird.’

  ‘The red bird?’ I prompted.

  ‘The man started hurting me. I fainted and I turned into a dragon so I could fly away. I dreamed a bird flew to me and whispered that I should fly higher and I would not feel the pain. She said I had made myself a dragon by accident, but that she would show me how to do it on purpose.’ She frowned and before my very eyes seemed to shift from child to woman. ‘I flew up with her and the pain stopped. I didn’t want to go back down but she showed me where you were and she said I must go back and lead the man to you. She said it was my duty to go back, for my people needed me.’

  ‘Your people?’ I echoed.

  ‘She made me see the slavemasters coming in ships to the Red Land when I was just a little girl.’ Dragon hitched a breath and then she grew calm, though her face was full of sorrow. ‘She made me remember that I had seen my mother betrayed. We were taken from the Red Land over the sea to be sold in the land of the slavemasters, but my mother summoned a greatfish to destroy the ship and all who were aboard. She was going to jump overboard with me, but she was hurt. Her last deed was to ask the ship fish to bring me to land, then she bade me leave her.’ Tears were streaming down her cheeks and dripping from her chin.

  ‘Then you know what you are,’ I said, my heart hammering.

  ‘I am the daughter of the Red Qu
een,’ she whispered.

  ‘Do you remember how you came to Obernewtyn?’ I asked, sounding breathless to my own ears.

  She nodded, her eyes meeting mine. Then her expression changed subtly as she said, ‘I remember Matthew.’ She was silent for a moment, and then she went on, ‘I remember trying to rescue two children in Sutrium. I recognised the soldierguard holding them. I saw him before, at the place the Gadfian ship stopped after the slavemasters took my mother and me from the Red Land. He offered … offered to buy me.’

  I could not think of a single thing to say.

  ‘I did not remember who he was when I saw him hurting the children, but my head started hurting dreadfully when I saw his face. I threw a vision at him to stop him hurting them. I made it strong and terrible and big the way Matthew showed me how to do.’ She lifted the corners of her lips so fleetingly it was like the ghost of a smile. ‘When we were at Obernewtyn, Matthew showed me how to make my visions much stronger to frighten off the soldierguards. When they rode away he laughed and he kissed me on the mouth. He said I was … magnificent, but in Sutrium when I attacked the soldierguard, he was angry with me, and he was … cruel.’

  Hearing her pain I swallowed hard and remembered Cinda chiding me for dismissing Dragon’s love for Matthew as a mere greenstick love. For her, I realised, it had always been more than that, but there was no gain in dwelling on it now.

  ‘Did Atthis also show you how I rendered you unconscious to get you away from the soldierguard and how you fell into a coma?’ I said. ‘Do you remember what happened as you slept?’

  She nodded gravely. ‘Maruman showed me, but later. Atthis only said that I must lead the man to you. I said I feared he would hurt you, too, but she said you would not be alone and that your companions would not allow any harm to come to you, or to his sister who was with you, so I woke and I led the man through the mountains as she had bidden me. Then the man hurt me again because he did not like it that I told him only this way then that way. He wanted me to tell him all I knew at once, but Atthis had said he would kill me if I did that. He hurt me so badly that I fainted. I was so glad to escape. I turned myself into a dragon but this time I couldn’t find Atthis. That is when Maruman came, only he had made himself into a greatcat.’ She paused and chewed at her lip for a little before going on with her story.