“I have,” I said. “I am going to do it. Rushton wants to know where we stand with the rebels, and this meeting will give us an answer one way or the other. As soon as it is over, we will go at once to Obernewtyn.”
Domick nodded soberly. “That is best. But be careful tomorrow, for all our sakes.” He rose and reached for his cloak.
“You are going out again?” I asked, surprised.
“I have to go back to the Councilcourt. There is some sort of delegation from Sador arriving tonight.”
“Sador,” I murmured. There had been a lot of talk about the distant province of late. A year ago, only the few seamen who plied that part of the coast had even known of it.
He nodded. “They are coming by ship. I expect they will request the removal of the Faction mission from their domain. They have been sending delegations to that effect from the first sevenday the Herders dwelt among them.” He pulled on his cloak. “The Herders were sent not long after the road was opened. They are interfering in the Sadorian religion, and the Sadorians don’t like it. The Earthtemple in Sador regulates how much spice is harvested, and it will allow only a small yield. It is my guess the Herders have been sent by the Council to erode the power of the Earthtemple and take it for themselves. Then they will increase the spice yield.”
The coercer then departed with a perfunctory farewell that obviously distressed Kella. I felt for her, and spoke to give her time to compose herself.
“I should alter my appearance again. I dare not go out as a girl since the soldierguards have my description. I would need to have a coercive cloak the whole time, and that’s a risk. Since that Twentyfamilies gypsy saw me as a boy, I will have to think of something else. Perhaps I could remain a boy but cut off my hair.…”
“No!” Kella looked horrified. “It is so long and beautiful. Like black silk.”
Glad to have distracted her, I was nonetheless embarrassed by her words. “I don’t care about hair.”
“But gypsies do,” she said insistently. “They do not cut their hair—men or women.”
That was true enough. I had forgotten for the moment.
“Cut?” Dragon said. She was holding a knife in her hand and looking so hopeful that both Kella and I burst into laughter.
Dragon hooted along happily.
“What’s so funny?” Matthew asked lightly, coming in with his hair wet from a bath.
Dragon’s laughter died, and her eyes followed the ward as he moved across the kitchen and peered into the pot.
“I hope that is not for us,” he quipped, sniffing at the herbal preparation.
He could not have helped being aware of the empathcoercer’s obsessive regard, but he made out that he had not noticed her.
“What about something to drink?” Kella asked Matthew. He sat down and nodded.
“And will you sit and be waited on?” I snapped, disliking the lazy way he expected the healer to bring him his mug. He flushed and rose to help her, and I found myself thinking of him as he had been when first I came to Obernewtyn, with his thinness and his limp and his quick dark gaze. A child then, and not yet a man now, for all he looked like one.
“Dragon will drink,” Dragon said, looking up at him with pathetic eagerness.
The farseeker scowled, but he filled a mug with the steaming liquid and handed it to her ungraciously. Dragon took it and drank with the solemn air of a Herder acolyte performing a sacred rite.
Matthew turned pointedly away, and I felt my temper stir. He might not relish Dragon’s adoration, but there was no need for him to be so unkind. He had used all of his charm to make her obedient when he was developing her powers so that she could defend Obernewtyn, but now he was refusing to deal with what he had set in motion.
I forced my anger back, knowing Dragon would detect it if I was not more careful.
Matthew went to refill the empty pot from a stone jug on a bench, and Dragon trailed across the kitchen in his wake, drawn as if by some force she could not control. The farseeker did not notice her standing at his elbow, and when he turned back, he cannoned hard into her, sending both the full pot of fement and Dragon’s mug smashing to the floorboards.
“Fer Lud’s sake, ye idiot!” he exploded. “If ye’d drunk th’ stuff instead of gollerin’ at me like a fool, this wouldn’t have happened!”
Dragon’s face was white as paper. She turned and ran from the room without a word.
Matthew was left standing amidst the debris of broken mugs and steaming fement, looking from one to the other of us. “Ye dinna understand!”
“I understand that was unnecessary,” I said coldly.
He paled and ran his fingers distractedly through his hair. “Ah, Luddamn it. Yer right. I’ll go an’ apologize.”
“Why?” Kella demanded fiercely. “She should not be surprised. More fool her for expecting anything more of you.”
“Kella, I’m sorry …,” Matthew began, but the healer tossed her head, her blue eyes flashing.
“Don’t tell me!” she said stonily. “I’m not the one you should be talking to. You don’t deserve her love, Matthew. She’s worth ten of you, but you’re too stupid to see it.”
“She’s a savage,” Matthew flared, stung by the disgust in her voice.
Kella laughed contemptuously. “You don’t have the slightest idea who or what Dragon is, even after all these months you’ve spent with her. She’s a lot of things, but she’s no savage. Eating with fingers and having dirty clothes doesn’t make a person a savage. Cruelty and thoughtlessness do. That makes you the only savage here.”
I was amazed to hear the gentle healer speak with such passion. Matthew glared at her, then turned on his heel and stalked out. A moment later, the stair door slammed.
I felt as though a firestorm had roared its destructive way through the room.
Kella let out a great sobbing breath and sank into a chair. I crossed to sit by her and lay a tentative hand on her arm. “Dragon will be all right. It wasn’t as bad as all that.…”
The healer shook her head. “It’s not Dragon, Elspeth. Matthew was wrong, but I should not have spoken to him like that. It … it is Domick. You saw how he was tonight. I’ve tried and tried not to see, but I can’t lie to myself anymore. He no longer cares for me. Sometimes I think he hates me.” She looked at me with tormented eyes. “He’s changed. That is why you did not tell him what Maryon said, isn’t it? I know it. Of course, I know. Oh, Elspeth, I just want to go home to Obernewtyn.”
She began to weep in earnest.
I stared at her helplessly. After a long minute, I crossed to the sky window and stared up. Rain fell lightly but steadily on the glass.
“Perhaps it is time for all of us to go home,” I said softly to the night.
14
I SANK INTO the hot, soapy water with a sigh.
My backside and legs ached from hours of riding about Sutrium, and I was chilled to the bone by the constant icy drizzle that had fallen.
It had been altogether a miserable and fruitless morning. I had gone to the biggest green and then to as many other greens as I could find. At each, I had tried to farseek gypsies at random—but every single one I had tried had been mentally shielded! The Twentyfamilies gypsies were even more tightly blocked than the halfbreeds. I had been forced to assume that all gypsies possessed natural mindshields, though of varying strengths.
As I had done with the gypsy woman, I could have entered any of the gypsies at a subconscious level, but there was simply no point. I would not find what I needed in their underminds.
In desperation, for by now there was no other course, I had tried talking to some gypsies clustered around a well, thinking to draw them gradually to talk of the woman who had escaped the Herder fires; but Domick had been right—they were impossibly suspicious of strangers, including gypsies who were unknown to them. I had not needed empathic Talent to be immediately aware of their hostility.
I might have kept on but for the patches of static arising from the bu
ildings. This had puzzled me until it came to me that the Council might be using stone from Oldtime ruins to build within the city. The amount of residual poison was not high enough to cause the rotting sickness, but having to circumvent it stole my energy. The other problem was the mysterious, stronger static given off by the sea and the Suggredoon. There were several smaller greens close enough to these to make farseeking difficult, if not impossible.
I had returned to the safe house exhausted, disheartened, and convinced the only hope of success now lay in letting the gypsy go and following her. I was not sure that would qualify as returning her to her people, or even if it would enable me to learn the meaning of the word swallow, but what else could I do?
Kella had interrupted my depressive account to suggest a bath. “You can’t think properly when you are all tied up in knots, cold and tense and miserable.”
I had been too tired to argue, though when peeling off my garments, I had wondered how I could possibly relax.
But I sank deeper in the hot water and felt some of the stiffness melt from my bones. I closed my eyes with a sigh.
My mind drifted a little, and I found myself wondering if snow had fallen in the highest valleys yet. Gahltha and I had loved to ride through the light snowfalls, scattering the powdery whiteness high.
My thoughts moved down to the valley where Obernewtyn lay, as if I rode there on Gahltha’s back. I visualized the farms and orchards visible from the foothills of the higher mountains. The last crops would be readying themselves for harvest, and Alad’s beastspeakers would soon be working hard.
Unbidden, the image of Rushton came to me with a queer ache.
I blinked and the image faded, leaving me to ponder what it was about Rushton that made me feel suffocated and tense whenever I was with him, and yet think of him so often when we were apart. A queer contrariness, yet it had always been that way between us. When we had met, he had been pretending to be a farm overseer at Obernewtyn, hiding his true identity from Ariel and his masters. My first sight was of him carrying a squealing, struggling piglet.
The memory made me smile, though at the time, I had feared he could somehow sense my powers and would report me. I had been no more content at his attentions than the pig! But he had not reported me, and in time we had become allies. Yet, in truth, we had never been friends.
I thought of Dragon trailing helplessly after Matthew and shuddered. Starkly, I heard the words Rushton had rasped to me once in delirium: “Elspeth, love.” I had tried to rob those words of their meaning and to tell myself his emotions were latent or distorted—that he did not truly feel love but some lesser thing because of our mindbond.
But it was not true. None of it.
He loved me and I knew it. Had always known it. And I?
I became aware that my hands were trembling violently where they rested on the rim of the bathing barrel. I thrust them under the water and wrenched my mind forcibly away from Rushton.
I thought of guildmerge, and my emotions calmed.
There was something infinitely reassuring about the thought of the huge circular room lined with books where guildmerge was held. It was the heart of Obernewtyn. The memory of it was so real that I could almost smell the smoke from the fire and hear the crack of mountain pine above the hum of conversation. I seemed to feel Avra’s breath tickling the hair at my neck, for the mountain mare always stood at my side during guildmerge. Sometimes she would reach down and touch her nose to Maruman, who invariably slept on my lap when not away on his travels. Other times she would nudge Alad, signaling her desire to communicate or to reproach him for failing to interpret her clearly enough.
Life at Obernewtyn revolved around the guildmerge and what it stood for: community and purpose. In contrast, Sutrium was dark and chaotic, devoid of hope or purpose. All at once, I felt a longing to be home at Obernewtyn that was as savage and powerful as a hot knife in my belly. The strength of it took my breath away.
Then the irony of it struck me just as forcibly, for I had been only too ready to leave for Sutrium. Ever had it been my way to long for Obernewtyn when I was severed from it and yet to hate it when I was there.
I blinked in surprise, seeing this was exactly how I felt about Rushton.
How strange.
But perhaps not. I loved Obernewtyn and the feeling it gave me of being part of something larger than myself, but often I felt absorbed and devoured by it as well. In many ways, I had used my secret quest to raise a barrier between Obernewtyn and my lone self. My fear of Rushton—if that was the right word for it—was the fear that giving myself to him would cause me to lose myself, that in some queer way I would be absorbed and no longer myself.
Shivering—and only partly from the chilled water—I climbed from the barrel and toweled myself vigorously. Better to worry about what to do with the gypsy than to think of Rushton. That was a far more immediate problem.
Dressing hurriedly, I went to the kitchen. A fire had been lit, and Matthew was repairing a tear in his breeches.
Before I could speak, Kella rushed in behind me. “Dragon,” she cried breathlessly. “She’s gone.”
Matthew jumped to his feet. “Gone? What do ye mean, gone?”
“Just what I said,” Kella answered. “She refused to answer the door to her chamber this morning. I thought she needed time, so I left her. But just now I noticed that the door was open, and she wasn’t in there!”
“Well, for Lud’s sake,” Matthew said impatiently. “She’ll be downstairs with—”
Kella gave him a look of such searing fury that he flinched. “Stop telling me and let me tell you! I’ve checked everywhere. The horse yard, the healing hall, the bathing room, the repair shed. She’s gone, I tell you.”
Her eyes accused Matthew, and he paled. “It’s my fault. I meant to apologize for shoutin’ at her when she came out,” he whispered.
“You should have gone in to her,” Kella blazed. “That’s the usual way to go about an apology. Or did you expect her to beg for that as well?”
“Kella …”
The healer swung to face me. “We have to find her!”
“Do you have any idea where she might have gone?” I asked them.
“To Obernewtyn!” Kella said at once, voicing her own longings.
“She … she might have gone to th’ market,” Matthew said hesitantly. “I … she’s been pesterin’ me since we got here to take her.”
He flushed crimson under the healer’s scathing look. “What are ye lookin’ at me like I murdered her for?” he shouted, his highland accent thickened with anger. “I’m nowt responsible fer her. She shouldn’a be here in th’ first place.”
“Well, maybe you’ll be lucky and she’ll be killed. That would teach her obedience, wouldn’t it?” hissed Kella.
Matthew whitened to the lips.
“That’s enough,” I said, shocked at the cruelty of her words. “The thing is to find her, not to decide whose fault it is that she’s gone. Matthew, you go out and look for her on foot. I’ll farseek her, and if I can’t find her, I’ll go out on Gahltha. Leave a channel open for me. I’ll reach out to you,” I said, knowing he might not be able to farseek me in the fog of static that was Sutrium.
He ducked his head and hurried out as I turned to the healer. “Have another good look around the safe house. See if she has taken anything from the chamber with her.”
She nodded and ran out.
I sat down on a chair and composed my thoughts, blocking out all apprehension and shaping a probe to Dragon’s mind-set. If she was near, and not on badly tainted ground, the probe would locate her.
It took less than a minute.
She was wandering through the stalls in the central trade market of the adjoining district. I fixed her position in my mind and then farsought Matthew.
“I will go there straightaway,” he sent, his mind leaking emotional surges of relief and anger.
Kella came in. “She has taken nothing with her.”
“S
he is in a market in the next district. Matthew has gone there on foot. I’ll go over with Gahltha and bring her back.”
“Thank Lud,” Kella murmured.
I hurried along the hall and down the stairs, farseeking to Gahltha as I went. Fortunately, I was clad in boyish clothes, so there was no need for me to waste time in changing. Only the gypsy who had followed me would know me in that guise, and if I had outwitted him once, I could do it again.
Gahltha was waiting, snorting with impatience at my slowness.
“You have forgotten the coldmetal painmaker,” he chided as I vaulted onto his back.
With a curse I dismounted, found a bridle in the wagon, and buckled it on him with an apology.
“Do not sorrow for forgetting the fetter, ElspethInnle. Would that all the funaga would forget. Where is the little mornir?”
I sent Gahltha an explanation as I remounted, and as soon as we were clear of the little square, he broke into a brisk trot. It had stopped raining, but the drains ran swiftly, filled to overflowing after a day and night of rain. In seconds, the chilly breeze had leached all the bath’s warmth from my bones.
I resisted the urge to ask Gahltha to go faster, knowing it would attract too much attention. I could have used a coercive cloak to stop anyone noticing us, but the more obtrusive the behavior, the more energy required to hide it. The effort of cloaking a wild gallop over any distance would virtually drain my immediate energy, and I had the sudden, uneasy premonition that I was going to need my powers very soon.
I chafed at the delay, my mind filled with visions of Dragon wandering through the market with her unforgettable face and hair. If anything alarmed her, she would resort instinctively to her phenomenal power, calling up the dragonish illusions for which she had been named.
I breathed a sigh of relief as the market came into view at the street’s end, but drawing nearer, I felt a stab of dismay.
This was a far larger market than the one beside the safe house. If anything happened here, hundreds would witness it. The feeling of danger increased as Gahltha brought me to the perimeter of the crowds.
The Rebellion Page 13