The Seventh World Trilogy omnibus

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  Kris looked down on it for a long time, weighing something in his mind, before he turned to his companions and said, “Come.”

  Gingerly they made their way down the steep ridge to the valley floor. Michael slipped once, and Stocky created a small avalanche of snow as he trod, but Kris and the pony did not seem to disturb the snow at all.

  When they were within eye-level of the stone house, Michael caught his breath at the sight that greeted them. Snow lay thick on the ground, just as it did everywhere else, but up from the white blanket grew bushes and vines, green as though it was the height of summer. Roses were in full bloom, their scent intoxicating. Their soft pink petals sparkled with a dusting of frost.

  The snow was deep, and Michael’s feet were heavy as he followed Kris to the front door. The mountain man did not knock. As he pushed the oak door open, such a fluttering of wings arose from within the house that Michael wondered if he had disturbed the nesting place of every bird that ought to have flown south.

  In the hearth, embers were still glowing, and plants and flowers graced every window ledge. Vines climbed around the frames of the windows and door. Birds—so many of them!—perched in the thatching and over the hearth, on the sparse furniture and in every cranny of the rock walls. A white dove landed on Kris’s shoulder and cooed softly.

  A whine greeted them, and a grey dog jumped up from its place in a corner and limped to Michael. Its leg was tightly bound where a wound had been incurred. Michael stood still while the dog approached him—something was strange about the animal. He realized suddenly that this was no dog, but a wolf. It nudged the rose in Michael’s belt and whined again.

  Stocky said what Michael knew and did not utter: “This is her house, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Kris.

  “Why have you brought us here?” Michael asked.

  “It was on the way,” Kris answered. His eyes met Michael’s without flinching. “And I thought you should see… some of what she is.”

  They did not stay long. Kris stamped out the embers in the hearth and placed the dove on the mantle, stroking its feathers lightly. They turned to go, and the wolf limped after them.

  “Go back, boy,” said Michael. “Stay.”

  The wolf looked at him reproachfully. “All right then,” Michael said. “Come along. But you mustn’t slow us down. Understand?”

  The wolf ran its tongue over sharp white teeth and whined.

  “He understands, Michael, well enough,” said Stocky. “Look at that, would you?”

  They closed the oak door behind them. Michael would have pulled it tight, but Kris stopped his hand.

  “The birds may want to fly again before she comes back here,” he said. “Leave it open a little.”

  The dove began to mourn as they headed back up the side of the mountain ridge: three men, a black pony, and a limping grey wolf.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  Alone and Not Alone

  The city of Athrom sprawled like a great cluster of jewels over the flatlands of Italya. Its wide streets were made for pageantry and parade, made to showcase the colour and splendour of a man who ruled the world.

  Lucien Morel, Emperor of the Seventh World, was a man on whose brow the Jeweled Crown of the Empire rested uneasily. His thick black hair was greying at the temples; his face, handsome and strong in its lines, was too pale. When he was angry or nervous or excited—when he felt any emotion at all—the little finger on his right hand twitched.

  Lucien Morel stood on a small marble bridge in the garden of his villa east of Athrom. A brook flowed under the bridge, very close, he thought, to the soles of his feet. He stood on the bridge with his hands on the rail, and his finger tapped the marble. A servant, short and balding, stood at a respectful distance. He stayed close enough to see if the Emperor needed anything, but far enough that he could not hear Morel muttering to himself.

  “Hundreds of them,” said Lucien Morel to no one in particular. “Thousands. All over the Seventh World. A plague on them all.” He sniffed. “They are a plague.”

  The water under his feet seemed to rise. At least, he thought it had risen. Just a little. Half an inch. Heavy rains in the north would do it. Make it rise like that. He swallowed. His finger twitched hard, jerking itself nearly out of joint.

  “It can’t go on like this,” he said. “My father should have done something. My grandfather. Should have tamed them, made them settle down. Made them pay taxes and pay homage and pay!” He slammed his fist on the rail. “Too late now. Now it’s my job, and there are thousands of them. Too many to tame. I’ll have to. Have to…” He glanced at the water. “Kill them.”

  He shuddered. His finger twitched. He sounded like Skraetock when he said things like that. Ruthless, cruel things. He sounded like Skraetock and his black-cloaked cronies.

  He hated them.

  The word hatred ran through his mind. He stiffened and looked around. He saw his servant, pudgy and balding—harmless—standing in the shade. He relaxed. Skraetock was gone. He and—that other. They had gone north, after one of their prized “Gifted Ones.”

  Lucien Morel wondered how many of the black-cloaked men there really were. He had never seen more than a few at a time. That was enough, he thought; enough to be too many. They were worse than the Gypsies. But you couldn’t kill them, no matter how much you wanted to.

  “Mannish!” he called.

  The servant snapped to attention. “Sir?”

  “Do you like Gypsies?” Morel asked.

  Mannish concealed his surprise well. “No, sir,” he said.

  Morel leaned over the rail and muttered, “Just as well nobody likes them.”

  The river swirled blackly under his feet. He looked down at it and tried to catch his own reflection, but the water would not form his face. It kept swirling, eating away at his lines. He was cold, he realized. His finger was not twitching. It was frozen.

  He was afraid. He hated water. He hated rivers, and brooks, and streams. He hated them because they hated him.

  He could not tell anyone that. They would think he was crazy.

  The Emperor of the Seventh World turned and left the bridge. His servant followed a respectful distance behind him.

  * * *

  Nicolas stayed off the road as much as he could. The road belonged to the Empire, and the Empire had gone mad. The High Police rode under the direction of the men cloaked in black, the Order of the Spider.

  In the forests of Galce, off the roads, life continued as it had for hundreds of years. The trees lived their long lives and the insects their short ones, and no creature complained of its lot in life. Nicolas needed the steadiness of the wilderness as much as he needed its beauty—as much as he needed the secrets which the forest might reveal unexpectedly, in a white flash as a deer bounded from a clearing, in the discovery of red winter berries growing even in the snow.

  There were times when Nicolas thought he would never go back to mankind. He knew how to survive in the wild. Why should he ever leave it? As a child he had often stared wistfully out at the edges of the meadows where the Gypsies camped. The trees on the other side, guardians of the deep forest, seemed to challenge him to step into their realm forever. When the Gypsies would stay by the edge of a lake or at the mouth of a cave, young Nicolas would shiver to think that he could dive into the water if he liked, or disappear into the cave, and never come back again. Then the Gypsies would speak of him only in rumour and legend, as they spoke of all the world’s mysteries.

  But in the end, Nicolas could never bring himself to truly disappear. Even now, as he wandered the forests of Galce, loneliness began to gnaw at him. Its touch was no less painful for its familiarity. Bear was with him always, his faithful companion, and the creatures of the wood spoke many things to his listening ears, but there would always come a time when Nicolas could not be separated from his own kind anymore, a time when his physical ears longed to hear greetings and the sound of his own name. So he would go back to t
he Gypsy camps or the Galcic cities to pretend that he was normal and accepted as other people were. And he would stay until the old wedge of his differentness, his Giftedness, drove itself between him and his kind once again.

  He often thought of Maggie as he and Bear made their way to the southern border of Galce. When he had first found her in the streets of Calai, he was on his way back to the forests. But she had stopped him. He had gone back for her, and not only because she was in danger. Something in her had made him go back. He could have entered the world of men and never left it again if she would have stood by his side. But she did not. The eyes of another man captured her heart, and when he died her heart was buried with him.

  When Nicolas had last spoken with Maggie beside the body of the Eastern rebel whom she loved, he had felt himself once again driven from the world of men. He had gone into the forests and buried himself there, nursing the hurt that even now festered inside.

  From that time till this he had returned to the world of humanity only three times. Once, he had gone to supply himself with clothing for the winter. Another time he went to listen to the rumours concerning Pravik that swept the Eastern Lands and the provinces that bordered them. He kept himself quiet as the words were repeated, over and over, that all who knew what had truly happened in Pravik had afterward disappeared. Lastly, he had gone to deliver the wounded Gypsy into the hands of someone who could care for him. The horrible vision of the captive Gypsies on the road and the farm girl’s whispered threats to the “queer folk” had distanced Nicolas even more.

  But he could not avoid the road forever. The brook led him out of the mountainous forests and into the Galcic flatlands near the southern border. Here, the brook ran directly alongside the road. To make matters worse, the plains offered no hiding place.

  The snow was sparse on the flatlands, and Nicolas was soon covered with mud from the soles of his boots to his knees. The lonely road wound its way through uninhabited wasteland. No bird flew in the wide empty sky; no sound broke the stillness of the day.

  “What is this?” Nicolas said suddenly, and stopped. He had reached the beginning of a wooden fence, cracked and covered with dead brown lichen, that ran for miles between the road and the brook. It began in the middle of nowhere, and Nicolas could not see any reason for its being there.

  “Do you suppose there used to be farm fields here?” Nicolas asked. “What think you, Bear?”

  Bear only grunted and kept on going.

  “All right then, don’t comment,” Nicolas said. The fence managed to keep his interest for a while, but soon the sight of it became as monotonous as the mud of the road and the sound of the brook.

  It caught his interest again six miles or so down the road, when he saw the markings.

  The tiny symbols had been carved into the wood only recently. Their lines stood out clean and pale on the dark fencing. Nicolas ran his finger over them. Gypsy markings. He read their story silently. A warning to other Gypsies: a warning, and a remembrance.

  Bloody the road where hearts sicken and die. Treachery stains the road. Here the free have fought; here the free have fallen. Sing for them, fight for them. Vengeance is his who will take it.

  Nicolas came to the last symbol and opened his eyes wide in surprise. It was a signature—one that he knew. Carved into the fence was the emblem of a small bird surrounded by a wreath of leaves. It was the mark of a Gypsy clan whose numbers had dwindled over the years: the mark of the People of the Sky.

  At that moment Nicolas heard the keening of a hawk overhead; and from a high willow tree, rising like a lone soldier on the barren plains, came an answering whistle. He jumped to his feet and whirled around to face the tree. A tiny gust of wind blew in his face, carrying the smell of pipe tobacco with it.

  The long hanging branches of the willow parted, and a young Gypsy woman emerged. A purple scarf adorned her head; tarnished gold earrings decorated her ears. Her deerskin boots were muddy and patched. She smiled at the look on Nicolas’s face. The branches parted again, and the Gypsy girl’s cousin, a young man smoking a pipe, stepped out.

  Nicolas said the first thing that came into his head, which was, “What are you doing here?”

  “Is that the best welcome you can give?” Marja asked, folding her arms. “Come now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nicolas said. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

  “Obviously not.” Marja smiled. “It is good to see you too, Nicolas Fisher.”

  “My question stands, though,” Nicolas said. “What are you doing here?”

  “We’re Gypsies,” Marja said. “We wander. Remember?”

  “But you’re here alone,” Nicolas said.

  “Hardly,” Marja answered. “We are with you.”

  Nicolas shook his head. “Where are you going?”

  Peter the Pipesmoker took his pipe from his mouth. “With you, I expect.”

  Nicolas choked. “You can’t come with me!” he said.

  “We don’t have anywhere else to go,” Marja said. “We’ve run away, Nicolas; and since you are the best runaway we know, it’s good that we’ve met up with you. We’ll go wherever you’re going.”

  “I’m not sure where I’m going,” Nicolas said. “But you can’t come with me. I’m on a—I have something important to do.”

  Marja raised a pretty eyebrow. “Last time you went questing, you had a companion with you.”

  Nicolas reddened. “That was different,” he said. “Where are the Major’s Gypsies? Why don’t you go back to the band?”

  “Because we can’t,” Marja said.

  The blood drained from Nicolas’s face. “Why?” he whispered. “Where are they?”

  “There isn’t any more ‘they,’” Peter said. “Just us, and I, and you. The band has broken up.”

  “The High Police,” Nicolas began.

  “No,” Marja cut in, holding out her hand as if to stop him. “They did not reach us. We eluded them for over a week, traveling into the Eastern mountains. But you cannot hide an entire caravan easily. The Major ordered us to disband so that each family and individual could seek safety.”

  “Most are headed for Pravik,” Peter said. “A caravan could never get past the soldiers around the city, but there are ways in for smaller groups.”

  Nicolas leaned against the fence. He felt as though the breath had been knocked out of him. “And you?” he asked. “You’re a long way from Pravik.”

  “The People of the Sky do not do well underground,” Marja said. She saw Nicolas stiffen with alarm, and she smiled.

  “Don’t be afraid—the secret of Pravik is not known to the world. Your friends are still safe in the catacombs. The Gypsies have used the undercity for centuries, whenever we had need of it. It was not hard for us to guess the means of the mysterious disappearances in the City of Bridges. But most of the world does not know.”

  Nicolas relaxed and leaned on the fence again. “You could be in danger out here,” he said. “The Empire does not look kindly on Gypsies these days.”

  Marja’s dark eyes flashed. “The Emperor cannot bear to see any in the Seventh World free,” she said. “But some of us will never be enslaved.”

  Nicolas looked down at the fence, and his eyes fell again on the markings. “You made these,” he said. “What happened here?”

  Marja was silent a long time. When Nicolas looked up, he saw tears running down her face. “The High Police herd our people like cattle over the roads,” she said. “And when the horns of the oppressed gore their oppressors, blood is spilled.”

  “We saw a band of captives on the road,” Peter explained. His pipe was back in his mouth, and he puffed out smoke between words. “There were a few boys who tried to fight. We saw it all from up in the willow tree.”

  For the first time Nicolas thought he saw a red tint in the mud. His face paled.

  “The police slaughtered them,” Marja said. “They believe their injustice is hidden from the eyes of the world. But I saw it.”

&n
bsp; The tone in her voice was unmistakable: Marja would see to it that many heard what the High Police had done. There was nothing of the passive witness in Marja. Every atrocity she witnessed became a weapon in her hands. Nicolas could imagine her in the light of a hundred campfires, telling the story of what she had seen—inciting others to vengeance with her words.

  That night, Nicolas, Marja, and Peter made a fire of willow branches in the road. Nicolas leaned against a fence post. Peter rested on a rock a good way back from the fire, his face in shadow, his features lit every few minutes as he puffed on his pipe. Marja sat in the road, wrapped in her faded red coat. She played with a jeweled dagger as she spoke. The light glinted off its golden handle and sharp blade, off the gold of Marja’s earrings and the bracelet on her wrist, off the deep black of her hair.

  “The Major has convinced many a Gypsy to go to Pravik,” she was saying. “I think he plans to join the rebels there. When next they move, he will fight alongside them.”

  “Then the Ploughman has a worthy ally,” said Nicolas.

  Marja’s eyes flickered to Nicolas’s face and back to her dagger. “And where are you going?” she asked. “Surely you could use allies of your own.”

  “I am going to Italya,” Nicolas told her. She looked up, surprised, and laid the dagger in her lap.

  “Then of course you can’t go alone,” she said. “The Emperor’s own province is no place to go without friends.”

  “It is no place to take friends, either,” said Nicolas.

  “Why are you going?” Marja asked. She leaned forward. “What voices have been calling to you?”

  Nicolas looked away from her abruptly.

  “I have always known you were Gifted,” she began.

  He held up a hand to stop her. “Marja, I don’t—”