“Your men are refusing to go deeper,” the Ploughman said. “So they say.”
The man coloured slightly. “Only to the west.”
“Do they have a reason for going against my orders?” the Ploughman said.
The leader of the company seemed uneasy. “Voices, sir,” he said.
“What?” said the Ploughman.
“They say there are voices in the deep western part of the caves,” the man said. “Forgive me, but they are afraid. I hate to make them keep going.”
The Ploughman frowned, then laid his hand on the farmer’s shoulder. “You have all worked hard since we came here,” he said. “Perhaps it is time your men are given a break.”
The leader smiled. “It might help with the voices, my lord,” he said.
“Yes, I expect it will,” the Ploughman said. “Withdraw your men. We’ll put a new company of explorers to work.”
The farmer looked at his leader with affection and nodded his head. “Thank you.”
The men left the cavern as Libuse entered with a small retinue. She went to the Ploughman, who bowed and kissed her hand. Professor Huss smiled wryly and turned back to the wall. In a moment Libuse’s voice pulled him away from his examination once again. “Will you come with us, Professor?” she said. “The Major has asked for a meeting. I don’t know for sure, but I believe he means to say good-bye.”
* * *
They met in the Ploughman’s quarters: old friends and new. Maggie and Pat stood on either side of Mrs. Cook. Virginia sat apart from the others, listening with her head bent. Darne shuffled his feet and hung his head, embarrassed, it seemed, to be counted with such a company. Professor Huss poked the young Gypsy occasionally in an effort to make him stand still. Libuse and the Ploughman sat together, while the Major stood before them, in the center of the company, and spoke of his desire to serve his people outside of the city.
“I cannot continue to sit in the darkness while the enemies of freedom persecute my people,” the Major said. Libuse watched the Ploughman uneasily as the Gypsy leader spoke, but his face did not betray how he felt.
When he had finished, the Ploughman stood and took the Major’s hand in his own.
“We will miss you,” the Ploughman said. “You are right to do as you do. Know that all you send to us will find refuge.”
“I know it well,” the Major said.
He turned to go when the voice of a young woman, tinged with the accent of the Bryllan Highlands, spoke.
“Major,” Virginia said, rising slowly to her feet, “you may find the darkness above ground harder to bear than the darkness here. But do not lose hope. There is light in the world yet. One day soon it will burn back the darkness.”
* * *
Shannon O’Roarke let the waves wash over her feet and soak her thin shoes. The salt wind was cold; it blew through her chestnut hair and made the edges of her shawl dance. The rising sun painted the horizon cream and blue, green and purple, and behind her a cock crowed.
Shannon watched the sun rise until at last she turned away. She sighed as she started back up the path to the cottage, where peat smoke smudged the sky above the thatched roof and thorny rose bushes. Vines lay dead and brown in the chill of winter. A cow lowed in the yard, and Shannon heard the creak and rattle of chains as a bucket was brought up from the well.
The water crashed behind her. A far-reaching wave lapped at her ankles, and she turned back to the sea one last time.
There was something on the horizon.
Shannon lifted her hand to shade her eyes and gathered her skirts as she dashed back into the waves, running as though she meant to run across the sea to meet the longship.
It was Michael. She was sure of it.
Shannon turned and ran for the cottage, shouting at the top of her lungs.
* * *
They saw the children first, dancing and leaping in the sea foam on the shore. Michael shouted and waved, and the four little ones clapped their hands and waved back, their voices drowned out by the crash of the water. Stocky grinned and whooped.
“Eh, Michael! That’s a welcome, isn’t it?” he said.
Behind the men, balancing carefully in the rocking ship, Miracle smiled and stood. Kris steadied her with his hand. They peered at the shoreline where young men and women were gathering now, waving, shouting, capering in the waves like children themselves.
“It’s been a long year since,” Kris said quietly. “And Michael says my roses still bloom!”
Two of the younger men struck out in the waves as the longship drew close, bearing ropes. They attached the ropes to the ship and pulled it to shore, laughing and calling to Michael and Stocky as they worked.
When the bottom of the ship scraped sand, Michael jumped down into the embrace of a young woman who bore a striking resemblance to him. Stocky hurled himself over the side and nearly landed on a small child, whom he chased with a bellow and good-natured threats.
Kris stepped into the ankle-deep water and approached Michael and his sister.
“Shannon O’Roarke,” he said. “How you have grown!”
Shannon held out her hand with a smile. “Michael promised to bring back a deed to land from the mountains,” she said. “He said nothing about bringing back Kris of the Mountains himself!”
“Do you remember me, miss?” Kris asked.
“I would know you anywhere,” Shannon said. “But whether I remember you or whether it is my mother’s many descriptions of you that make me think I do—that I cannot say.”
Michael left Shannon’s side and waded back to the boat. Miracle looked down at him with a gentle smile. He took her in his arms and carried her to shore while the people of Clann O’Roarke walked before and behind them with many a curious, badly-covered glance.
Michael set Miracle down on the dry ground. He took her hand and joined it with Shannon’s.
“My sister,” he said. “Shannon, this is Miracle. She is going to stay with us.”
Shannon nodded and smiled. “Welcome,” she said. “I’m sorry we could not come out to greet you properly. My brother hardly gave us fair warning. The real celebrations will have to wait a while!”
Stocky appeared on the horizon, surrounded by four children who somehow made a crowd. “Do you smell the stew, Michael?” he shouted. “We’re home!”
“Aye, Michael,” Shannon said, laying her head on her brother’s shoulder. “Welcome home.”
They walked together, Shannon, Michael, and Miracle. Shannon looked behind her and gasped.
“Michael, what is that?” she asked.
Michael turned and eyed the creature on the beach with the strangest of smiles. “Another new companion, Shannon,” he said. “Don’t worry your head about him. He doesn’t look it—but he’s safe.”
The white wolf followed them to the cottage door.
* * *
Chapter 9
Unexpected Meetings
Spring came early to Italya. It came in whispers on the warm wind and crept through the ground, where roots drank it in and began to wake.
Nicolas stepped out of the hut one morning and looked around him with clouded eyes.
“The vines are budding,” he said. His voice was thick. “The first buds of spring.”
Marja looked up from the coat she was mending. She stood and laid a hand on Nicolas’s arm. “Has he—?”
Nicolas looked away and nodded quickly.
Marja stepped back and nudged Peter. “Come then,” she said. “There’s work to do.”
Peter put out his pipe as he stood. He stuck it in his pocket as he followed Marja into the hut.
Nicolas stayed outside, alone. He let the clouds over his eyes burst and send rain down his cheeks as he surveyed the long rows of grape vines, taking in every tiny green bud. He ran his eyes down the rows to the horizon, where the morning haze had come in from the sea, and he looked for a place to dig a grave.
They buried Nicolas’s father in the bright sunlight of midday,
at the top of the hill overlooking the hut. Peter and Nicolas brought a stone to lay on the grave, and Marja carved it with the curious markings that only Gypsies could read.
“His name, Nicolas?” she asked. “What was your father’s name?”
He looked at her for a long moment, as though he did not understand, and said, slowly, “His name was Lucas Barrington.”
Late that night Nicolas awoke to the sound of footsteps and voices. There were men coming. They were yet a good way off, but they were headed for the hut. Nicolas heard them as plainly as if they had been standing next to him.
“I tell you,” said one voice, “I’ve seen smoke from the hut more than once over the winter.”
“We’ve had squatters before,” said another. “Won’t take long to drive them off. Not if my sword-arm has anything to say about it.”
Nicolas rolled over and tapped Peter. He squirmed in his sleep, and Nicolas tapped him harder.
“Ow,” said Peter. “What’s that for?”
“Wake up,” Nicolas whispered. Across the floor, Marja lifted her head.
“Our stay here is over,” Nicolas said. “The vineyard-keepers are on their way.”
It didn’t take long to vacate the hut. Peter folded their small store of reina bark and rabbit meat into his coat while Marja and Nicolas gathered the few things they had collected over the winter. The hut was empty in less than half an hour.
Only some scattered straw on the floor and a few warm coals in the stove were left to say that anyone had ever been there.
* * *
“O where shall ye go,
and where shall ye go,
and where shall we go,
O wanderer?”
Marja sang as they walked, twirling a willow branch in the air. The muddy road sucked at their boots and filled the air with a rank smell, but even Nicolas felt a certain exhilaration in the wind on his face as he watched the road pass by underneath his feet.
“We shall go with the road,
where’er the road goes,
there we shall go,
O wanderer!”
Nicolas smiled as he listened. He turned his head to watch Marja as she moved. Peter said something and laughed, but Nicolas didn’t catch his words. Other words were ringing in his head: his father’s words just before he died, words Nicolas had not shared with his companions.
Suddenly even the memory of his father’s voice faded out, replaced by others. He stumbled in his surprise and nearly landed face down in the mud.
“What is it?” Marja asked.
“I heard—I’m not sure,” Nicolas said, “but I think the Major’s on the road ahead of us.”
They met together hours later in the warm spring sun, up to their ankles in mud, and laughed with the joy of meeting. Indeed, the Major was on the road—had been, he said, since late winter. And he was not alone. Bear had joined him only three days before and startled him very badly.
Whether Nicolas was happier to see Bear or to see the Major was not easy to tell. But when they had gone a few miles down the road together, Nicolas ducked his head shyly and said, “It is good to see you, Uncle.”
The Major stopped in the squelching mud. “And you, Nephew!” he said. “But I think you must have a story to tell me.”
“I do,” Nicolas said, but the story had to wait. In the time it had taken the Major to say his few words, he had become stuck fast in the mud, and it took nearly half an hour to get him out again.
It rained—a warm, sparkling, spring rain. The companions climbed a tree by the side of the road and let their sodden boots hang down. Bear walked circles beneath the branches while the Gypsies talked. Nicolas ended his story with the burial of his father. For a while they let it hang in the air, as uncle and nephew each became lost in his own thoughts.
After some time Peter spoke, from a branch above the Major’s head.
“And what of you, Major?” he asked. “Last we knew you were on your way to Pravik.”
“I have been in Pravik,” the Major said. “Most of the winter. The band is settled there. The Ploughman rules a good camp. Our people are safe.”
Marja’s eyes flashed. “Some of our people,” she said.
“Yes,” the Major answered. “That is why I left. In midwinter we were joined by a ragged band of refugees led by a young man named Darne.”
Nicolas looked up in recognition.
“Earlier in the year, a Galcic vagabond they call Asa joined us, bringing with him a badly wounded Gypsy. From the accounts of both Darne and Asa, we learned that you have been very active.”
“And that is why you came above ground?” Nicolas asked.
“I couldn’t very well leave you three to do all the work yourselves,” the Major said.
“So you came to find the saviours of the Wandering Race,” Marja said. “And all the time we have been hiding in a mud hut.”
“Not a bad idea,” the Major said. “The persecution of the High Police seems to have eased over the latter part of the winter. Now that spring is here, it is time to come out of hiding again.”
Bear grunted beneath the tree.
“Yes,” Nicolas said, “and it is high time you came out of hibernation as well.”
In the quietness of the day Nicolas leaned against the trunk of the tree and closed his eyes. He could hear—spring was possessed of a thousand voices, and he heard them all. He heard the birds calling to each other, heard the scrape and hurry of small animals as they emerged from their winter dens and established homes for the coming seasons. He heard Bear thinking to himself, talking in his peculiar bear-voice. And through it all, woven through it all, he heard the Father-Song.
He heard other music as well. Still so far away that he could not distinguish the notes were the second and third strains of the Three-Fold Song.
He thought of the River-Daughter and wished to hear her voice again. He had come so far in obedience to her call. It had been so long—he still feared that he would fail her before he finished his task. But excitement and anticipation also filled him now. In some way, the journey itself would teach him the song that now sang just at the edges of his hearing.
He whispered the words as the sun streamed through the tree-branches and bathed his head with warmth. “I am trying. But I still can’t hear it all. Stars help me—help me hear the song.”
* * *
Pat stepped close to Maggie and whispered, “I didn’t think it was possible for it to get darker.”
“You wanted to do this,” Maggie whispered back.
Behind them, Darne said aloud, “Now I understand why the explorers thought they heard voices.”
The Ploughman, holding a torch at the head of the small procession, turned and looked down the narrow corridor at Darne. “The darkness has a thousand tricks to play,” he said. “The deeper you go, the more true that is.”
Professor Huss tucked Maggie’s arm into the crook of his own. “Lead on,” he said. “We are curious to see what is ahead.”
“Yes,” said Asa, who was directly behind the Ploughman. “Lead on.”
The Ploughman lifted his torch high. They continued down the dark tunnel when a sudden whoosh of air whistled past their ears. The torch went out. The tunnel was plunged into absolute blackness.
“Is it too late to make a decision?” Pat said. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“We’re not far from the Hold,” the Ploughman said. “Some of the men are there. They will have light. Join hands and follow me.”
Pat, Maggie, Professor Huss, Asa, and Darne obeyed. They were in the deepest part of the Ploughman’s excavations, not far from a place he called the Hold—an enormous fortified cavern which he planned to use for defence in case the underground colony finally clashed with the forces of the Empire.
Maggie held the professor’s wrinkled, thin hand in front of her and felt Pat’s tight grip behind as she stumbled through the dark passage. The Ploughman led in silence, and the others followed suit. The only so
unds were the cautious shuffle of footsteps on rock and the occasional moan of wind. From what the Ploughman had said, Maggie thought they would have reached the Hold in minutes, but time—if time even existed in the dark—seemed to have slowed. They went on and on, and no one said anything.
A gush of wind brought with it the smell of camp smoke, mingled with the scent of fish and bread, and Maggie breathed a sigh of relief. She wondered where the Ploughman’s men had come by a supply of fish, but before she could ask, the line in front of her stopped.
Her heart beat painfully in the stillness. She knew why they had stopped; why no one dared speak a word.
She had heard it, too.
There were voices in the darkness.
For an instant she dared think it was only the wind, but then she heard them again: whisperings, mutterings, now alone, now speaking all together. The voices came from above and behind and all around. And then another sound: blade sliding against leather as the Ploughman drew his sword. The quiet chatter intensified. The Ploughman’s voice cut through it.
“Show yourselves,” he said. “If you are friends or foes, let us see you.”
A voice answered. “The Sunworlders’ eyes are weak. We can see you.” The words were spoken in the language of the Empire, but the accent was strange to Maggie’s ears.
There came a scrambling as someone moved from a perch above and settled directly in front of the Ploughman. A dim blue light came on suddenly behind the smudged glass of a lantern held in a thin, pale hand. It illuminated the face and outline of a man.
He was small in height and in build. His dark eyes, enormous in a gaunt, small-boned face, glimmered. His head was white and hairless except for one dark, bound lock that began at the top of his head and fell to his shoulders, and a glittering band of fish scales circled his brow. His other clothing was dark in colour, but here and there the light picked up a strand of gold in the weaving. He wore a sleeveless tunic that reached his knees, cinched at the waist by a braided belt. His shoulders were bare; each arm covered to the wrist with a sleeve of tight braids. His legs were covered with the same material from his knees to his ankles, and his feet, which were large and pale, were bare.
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