The Seventh World Trilogy omnibus

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  The Ploughman’s eyes were glowing with rage, yet he stood unmoving. The others had gathered close to him, all but Harutek’s men.

  “Fight your way free if that’s what you want,” Cratus said. “But the professor and the Singer will die if you do. You cannot save them all. You might get yourself out—but do you really think all ten of your men would make it? You are surrounded by fifty of my finest soldiers, and there are many more outside. And your lover is likewise surrounded. The mountains of Pravik are full of High Police. An entire army, in fact. Waiting for me to give orders. You could leave here, Ploughman. But you would not find any home by the time you got back.”

  The Ploughman glared at him. Still, he did not move.

  Harutek pushed Maggie to her knees and held his knife against the back of her neck. She swallowed and looked across the floor at Professor Huss. He was still alive, though his eyes were clouding over from the pain. Go, she silently urged the Ploughman. Get out of here.

  “This is for all of our best,” Harutek whispered.

  Cratus strode across the dais, obviously enjoying the view. He gestured, and his police began to close in.

  “This is your chance,” he said. “Take your stand now. Fight.”

  The Ploughman dropped his sword. It clattered on the marble floor, and Maggie shut her eyes. She heard the echo as the others released their weapons also, and then the sounds as the police moved in and began to bind their hands. Harutek’s knife was still at the back of her neck.

  “A wise choice,” Cratus said. “The Darkworld prince said you would not fight if it meant sacrificing any one of your people. Perhaps especially the Singer?”

  “Alliance is clearly not why you brought us here,” the Ploughman said, ignoring the soldier who was chaining his hands. “Tell me what you do have in mind.”

  “Originally?” Cratus said. “I meant to bring you here and kill you, thereby destroying Pravik, the one black spot in an otherwise wonderful Empire. Well, of course, there are still the Gypsies—but without your city to rally round, even they would not be so well off. But that was before I saw you fight.” His eyes went to Maggie. “And before I saw songs heal wounds, reverse rust. Before our friend Harutek apprised me of things I did not know—about the Gifted.”

  He descended a step, scaring the emperor away. “Now that I know more of what you are, I’ve decided to keep you alive. You see, I do have one more problem in this Empire of mine. The Order of the Spider. You know them. They served the Morels well, but in recent years have grown… independent. I had planned to go on as the emperors did, bribing and bowing and making do with a bad alliance. But Harutek tells me my options are not so limited. And my own eyes tell me the same thing.”

  He descended two more steps and stood eye to eye with the Ploughman, whose rigid control showed in every line of his stance.

  “There is power in you,” Cratus said. “I want it. So I cannot do as I planned to do—I cannot just kill you. I need you both. And I need the rest of you too.”

  “The rest?” Maggie asked, and Harutek dug the knife in a little deeper. She yelped and glared over her shoulder at him.

  “I paid attention to the priests when they raised me,” Harutek said. “They and their talk of the King’s coming again, of prophecies and stars—and the Six. Two more are well known to us all: the Seer, and the Gypsy who hears.”

  Maggie closed her eyes. Virginia and Nicolas.

  “I have already sent word back,” Cratus said. “My men are looking for them. As for the final two, they are a mystery still—but they will not be impossible to find.”

  “You are a coward,” the Ploughman said. “Hiding behind a madman—stealing the power of others. Are you supposed to inspire our awe?”

  “No,” Cratus said. “Because I am not a Morel. I do not care to inspire feelings. I am a practical man. I only want power.”

  He turned and looked at Maggie. “Where is the Seer?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said. She was glad—deeply glad—that she spoke the truth. She has gone to Bryllan to seek the King, she could have said—but where exactly Virginia was she had no idea. And Cratus did not need to know even that much.

  Cratus smiled as he turned back to the Ploughman. “No battle?” he asked. “No desperate, heroic attempts to break free?”

  A soldier behind the Ploughman clubbed him in the head, and the tall warrior fell.

  Cratus looked past them all to the rows of High Police.

  “Take them away,” he said. “Put the old man with the girl. No doctors. It’s time we see just how much power there is in song.”

  * * *

  Early that morning, Virginia dreamed.

  She stood in a grey haze, looking at a barren path that stretched out before her. She stared down it, afraid to move, but something at the end was calling to her. Through the haze a blue light began to shine, but its light was not light—it was hungry, consuming. A man stood within it, and his features slowly became visible.

  Lord Robert, her once-guardian and betrayer.

  He opened his mouth and said, “Help me.” His eyes pleaded out of emptiness and pain.

  Behind him dark clouds gathered, swirling, sweeping down over the road like smoke. The light that was not light played among the clouds, drawing shapes and faces. The clouds swallowed Lord Robert in their darkness, and then they swept up around Virginia also. She was not on the road anymore, but back on the hilltop.

  She stood where the Order of the Spider had taken her and twisted her, leaving inside her a pain too deep to touch for fear it would destroy her, while the laird looked on and allowed it.

  All around, the black clouds swallowed the earth. From the hilltop she could see the world spread out before her and the Blackness destroying everything. The clouds swallowed Bryllan and the hillside where she had grown up. They took Pravik down into a deep black place and scorched the life from the woods and the ocean, from mankind, from the Earth Brethren.

  She reached out in the roiling blackness, where faces leered and claws grabbed at her, reached out with all her spirit for the King.

  He appeared before her. She saw him as a man, a young man whose whole being was life. He smiled at her. But as she watched, the clouds reached up around him like clawed hands and dragged him into darkness too.

  A voice spoke out of the death on every side.

  The voice said, “And thus it must be.”

  Virginia woke, and she was not dead, and the world was not dead. Her heart was pounding.

  The door at the back of the wagon stood open, and the early morning air outside was alive. Insects were singing ancient songs of their own. A few birds were calling. The trees around the Gypsy camp moved in a gentle breeze. Virginia shivered; she was cool with sleep and clammy with the dream. She gathered a scratchy wool blanket tighter around herself and sat up.

  She knew if she closed her senses she would be able to recall the nightmare in every detail. The voice and its prophecy hung in her heart like a heavy iron bell she was afraid to ring.

  Someone in the doorway moved, cloth rustling against the frame. Virginia thought it was Rehtse, but when a voice spoke quietly, it was Marja’s.

  “We were in the coliseum in Athrom, Nicolas and I,” Marja said. “We married there. If you had not sent the soldiers from Pravik to save us from death, perhaps we would not be here to save you. Strange how life turns, isn’t it?”

  “Why are you here?” Virginia asked.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Marja said. She sounded a little embarrassed, but defiantly so—a personality trait Virginia suspected marked her. “And I wanted to come and look at you. I am sorry if that unnerves you.”

  Virginia shook her head, smiling a little. She had often wished she could look at others, could really see them for any length of time. “Why me?”

  “Because I know when I’m looking at a legend,” Marja said. “Your visions have already changed the world. And my life. I thank you for that.”

 
Fingers gripped Virginia’s as Marja knelt beside the bunk. She had moved so lightly from her place in the door that Virginia hadn’t heard her. Her grip was tight, her voice earnest.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you, but now that you are awake—let me say it again. Thank you. What you did saved our lives.”

  Virginia shook her head. “I did so little,” she said. “Only saw—and told others what I had seen.”

  Marja hesitated to reply. “You are troubled?” she said.

  “I have seen again,” Virginia said. She hadn’t meant to tell anyone about the dream. Especially not a near-stranger, no matter how compelling that stranger’s presence might be.

  “And what you have seen disturbs you,” Marja said.

  Virginia didn’t answer. Marja stood and released Virginia’s hands, moving back to the door again. “Among our people, I am a storyteller,” the Gypsy woman went on. “And I have learned something about stories. They always grow dark near the end. Sometimes so dark that it seems there is no way out.”

  Virginia bent her head toward Marja’s voice, letting her words sink in.

  “But that darkness is never truly the end,” Marja said. “What you have seen—it may not be the whole story.”

  “Virginia?” a voice called. Rehtse—coming from somewhere outside. “Are you all right?”

  “Perfectly all right,” Virginia called back.

  “It’s wrong of me to keep you awake,” Marja said. “The whole camp will be rousing in an hour or so. Sleep a little more while you can.” The wagon creaked as Marja turned to jump down.

  “Wait—” Virginia said. Marja paused. “You married in the coliseum?” Virginia asked softly. “Under the sentence of death?”

  “Yes,” Marja answered.

  “Some would call you foolish,” Virginia said.

  “What do you call me?” Marja asked.

  Virginia smiled and shook her head. “Remarkable,” she said.

  Marja departed.

  In her wake, the dream had lost some of its power.

  * * *

  The prison was damp and cold, despite the warm air outside. Maggie’s voice shook as she sang a lullaby. Her fingers stroked Huss’s beard almost convulsively, wiping away blood-flecked spittle near his mouth. Her throat was raw, but she couldn’t afford to stop. He clung to her other hand and kept his eyes fixed on her face.

  On the other side of the cell, the Ploughman groaned.

  Maggie raised her eyes to look at him, and her song devolved into a hum. The Ploughman should have awakened before now. The soldiers had forced something down his throat when they brought him here. A drug, she suspected.

  Footsteps outside the cell announced the presence of Merlyn Cratus, and Maggie abruptly stopped singing. She tightened her hold on Huss’s hand and waited.

  The general stepped into view and looked down on them. He was silent.

  “Well?” Maggie said. “What are you hoping to see?”

  “The old man is still alive,” Cratus said. It was a question, though he did not phrase it as one.

  “No thanks to you,” Maggie said. “He needs a doctor.”

  Another voice came from the shadows beyond Cratus, and Maggie stiffened. Harutek.

  “One of the Six is a healer,” he said. “But she isn’t the one. You can’t keep her singing forever.”

  Cratus sniffed. “And he doesn’t have to live forever. I’m no fool. When I collect power, I keep it under control. This is easier than drugging her too.” His mouth crooked in a smile. “And far more interesting.”

  Harutek met Maggie’s eyes, and she looked away quickly. His expression was too hard to face. She wanted to be angry with him—but she saw compassion there, and real concern. When he spoke, his voice was heavy.

  “Men should not meddle with powers that are beyond them,” he said quietly. “We have learned that much in the Darkworld. We would have been better off without stories of the Gifted… of the King.”

  “No, Harutek,” Maggie said. Her voice barely held out, and she cleared her throat, wincing against its rawness. “Look around you. This dungeon—this cell. This is what life without the King looks like.”

  Professor Huss groaned, and Maggie closed her eyes and sang again, ignoring the visitors.

  Harutek was right. She was no healer. But her songs with their reconstructive power could help a little to stave off death. She refused to look back up as she sang to her dying friend. Into the song she tried to weave something of her love, and of her concern for the others—for Pat, and for Rivan and the rest of the Ploughman’s men, and for Libuse and the people in the city.

  It struck her, as she thought of them, how far she had come. How far they all had come. She had been raised to believe that the present world, like a prison cell, was all that existed. That the Empire was supreme, that people lived and died without reference to any greater power, any greater song. Through happenstance—or perhaps providence—she had come to see another side of reality, and to believe in the King. To hope in him.

  Now, in this place, he was the only real reality, and she clung to him.

  Into her song’s strains another prayer came. She thought the words even as she sang.

  Go, Virginia. Find the King. We need you now.

  * * *

  Virginia did not sleep again, but lay awhile in thought. She drew Tyrentyllith’s seeds from an inner pocket and fingered the rough bag. After an hour, Rehtse reentered the wagon and moved to Virginia’s side, crouching down near her elbow and waiting.

  “Didn’t you sleep?” Virginia asked. “You’ve been gone most of the night.”

  “You are perceptive for one who cannot see,” Rehtse answered.

  “Yes, well,” Virginia said, “one learns to pay attention. Where were you?”

  “Outside,” Rehtse said. “Sitting atop the wagon.”

  Virginia sat up and drew the blanket around her bare feet. “We have far to go,” she said. “You should rest when you can.”

  “I am accustomed to little sleep,” Rehtse said. “In the Darkworld we held long prayer vigils at night. Divad hoped they might speed the King’s return.”

  “He felt that it needed speeding?” Virginia asked.

  “He saw dark times coming,” Rehtse answered.

  “And what did you do up there?” Virginia asked, tipping her chin to gesture at the ceiling.

  Rehtse sighed. “I intended to pray,” she said, “but I could not cease looking at the stars. How do you ever sleep when the stars are shining?”

  Virginia smiled, and Rehtse caught herself quickly. “Not you,” she said. “Everyone else. Those who can see the stars but do not—surely they do not, or they would never close their eyes.”

  Rehtse’s voice grew distant for a moment as memories of the nightmare came back to Virginia. The bell was still hanging there, black and ominous. She refused to ring it. So she said, “I have never seen the stars. As a child I could see a little, but never that far. Describe them to me?”

  There was quiet for a moment. “A million lights,” Rehtse said. “Lights in a sky that isn’t black, it’s blue—deep blue.”

  “Is there colour to the lights?” Virginia asked.

  “They’re white like the heart of fire,” Rehtse said.

  They were quiet again. “A million million fires burning in deep blue,” Rehtse repeated. “And if you know how to look for them, there are stories in the star patterns. Our fathers carved some of them in the caverns, hundreds of years ago, and they’re still there in the sky.”

  “Did your fathers tell you the stories too?” Virginia said.

  “Pieces,” Rehtse answered. “We only know pieces. The stories are all about the King. They praise and adore him, and they say he will return to us.”

  “Do they say—” Virginia paused. “What?” Rehtse asked.

  “Do they say how he will come?” Virginia asked. “Or if he will come in triumph?”

  “Of course he will triumph,” Rehtse said. “You are not a
fraid that the Blackness is too strong for him?”

  “The Blackness is very strong, Rehtse,” Virginia said.

  “Not stronger than the King.”

  Virginia nodded.

  “Are you well?” Rehtse asked.

  She nodded again. “I dreamed. But I do not understand what I saw. Perhaps it was only a nightmare.” Her voice lost some of its strength. “I am sure it was.”

  A third voice intruded—Marja once again. “Nicolas and the Major think it best that you remain inside the wagons today. We will pull up camp in a few hours and continue through the mountains. Do not come out.”

  “And our news?” Virginia asked. “Will you take word of the soldiers to Libuse?”

  “Fear not,” Marja said. “The Gypsies carry the word now. We will make sure it reaches all who need to hear it.”

  She crossed the wagon floor with her characteristically light steps and pressed something into Virginia’s hand—smooth, polished wood inlaid with carved designs. The pattern was stylized, but Virginia thought it was in the shape of a bird.

  “I want you to take this with you,” Marja said. “It is the treasure of my clan. When you find the King, and the time is right to reveal him, sound it—so that some who have long waited for him may know he has come.”

  “A whistle?” Rehtse asked.

  Marja gave a low whistle of her own, trilling at the end in a bird call. “It is not only Gypsies and Darkworlders who wait for the King,” she said. “Promise me you will do as I ask?”

  Virginia nodded. “If it is in my power to sound it, I will,” she said. “When the time is right.” She tucked the whistle in beside her seed pouch, then reached up and touched Marja’s face, taking in its youth and beauty lined with suffering and the maturity of motherhood and martyrdom.

  The young Gypsy woman nodded, satisfied. “I only wish we could go with you,” she said. “But the King will watch over your steps, and send those you need to help you along your way.”

  She stood as the creaking of the wagon announced that its wheels were beginning to roll.