The Seeker

  I shrugged. “Believe what you want. Why would I bother to lie?”

  It was odd how everyone seemed to know that the firestorm story was a lie, though no one but our own people had been up to the mountains since Rushton had staked his claim to Obernewtyn. I decided to ask my own questions.

  “How did you discover your powers?”

  Gilaine smiled. “It happened the night Lidgebaby was born,” she sent.

  The baby coercer had woken the entire group to operancy. Gilaine sent a graphic impression of the night the baby was born. She had been in bed asleep when the sound of a baby screaming woke her. She was in the street in her nightgown before she realized the cry she was hearing was inside her mind. She had gone back inside and dressed quickly, her mind reeling at the effort of fighting the summons. Only when she reached the street outside the birthing house did she begin to understand what had happened, for she was not alone. They had all answered the call: Saul, acolyte apprentice; Jow, an animal handler; his younger brother, Daffyd; and the two musicians.

  Daffyd had sobered first to the peril of such a gathering, and they had dispersed at his urging, planning to meet again in less dangerous circumstances. It would prove the first of many such meetings. They all understood two things at once, though. They would never again be alone in their own minds, for Lidgebaby was with them constantly, linking them irrevocably to one another. And they were in terrible danger.

  In that dramatic birthbonding, Lidgebaby had forged an indelible emotional link between himself and the group. None could ever consciously harm the baby. All were coerced to love and protect.

  Little monster, I thought, keeping my mind shielded. No wonder I could not hear their communication. They talked through the baby, using their own powers only to maintain contact with Lidge. It was the combined network of minds, and the child’s mental overflow, that was blocking me.

  This incredible situation gave me a clear idea of Lidgebaby’s mental prowess. A baby, his coercive demands were selfish but basically innocent. But what would happen when he grew up and became conscious of the power he wielded? I shuddered, seeing them smile in the collective memory of that first enslavement/wakening of their Misfit minds.

  Seeing my eyes on him, Saul frowned and turned away.

  “Where will you go, if we help you?” Gilaine asked.

  “We hadn’t thought that far ahead. We meant to use an Olden pass we’d heard about to reach the lowlands without going along the main roads.”

  Saul snorted. “No one can get through that pass alive.”

  I stared. “You mean there is a pass?”

  Gilaine nodded. “But Saul is right. No way to go there. Dangerous.”

  Jow shifted in his seat and the others fell silent. For the first time, I glimpsed a hint of Daffyd’s features in his face. “Where are you headed?” he asked aloud.

  I shrugged. “To the west coast. We thought of getting a boat. I’ve heard there are places …” I hesitated.

  “Over the sea,” said the boy musician wistfully.

  “I have heard there are places over the edge of the world, where there is no Council or Herder Faction,” Jow said pensively.

  “Why do you stay here?” I asked. “It’s terribly dangerous.”

  Jow shook his head. “Better to wait until winter is over. And we must wait until Lidgebaby is weaned.”

  “Couldn’t you get the mother to go with you?”

  “The mother is bonded to an acolyte and has already had one babe burned. She denounced it,” Jow said.

  I stared at him in horror. “Why are you offering to help us?” I finally asked.

  Jow frowned. “You are a danger to us as long as you stay. You are a danger to Lidgebaby. We’ll help you, but you must understand we can’t let you talk if you are caught. The acolytes are very persuasive.”

  I nodded, understanding what he left unsaid. “How can you help?”

  “There are two things,” Jow said. “First, we can absorb Lidgebaby’s emanations so that you can communicate with your friends in the compound. Second, we will organize a diversion to give you all time to get away. The timing is good because soldierguards from the training camps below Gelfort Range will leave in a few days to witness the ordination of new Herders in Sutrium. That will mean the main road will be safe for a week or so, and you can cut right through their camp and make for the coast between the lower mountains and Glenelg Mor.”

  I bit my lip. It would take several days to go that way, but it seemed there was no choice.

  At a word from Jow, Saul seated himself at the table, and the group linked hands. “Be quick,” Jow said. “I’m not sure how long we can hold it.”

  They closed their eyes. For a long moment, there was silence. A log cracked noisily in the fire, spitting out an orange flame. Beads of perspiration stood out on Jow’s face.

  Then the block was gone.

  I gasped in delight, realizing how greatly the restriction had oppressed me. I sent a specific probe tuned to Matthew’s mind. There was too little time to locate him physically. He was asleep when I found him, and I woke him with an ungentle mental jab.

  “Wha?” his mind inquired stupidly. “Elspethelf?” he sent.

  “I don’t have much time, so listen carefully,” I sent. “Some Misfits here are going to help us escape. They’ll create a joint diversion to give us the chance to get away.”

  “We canna use th’ Olden way,” Matthew warned.

  I told Matthew about Jow’s alternate route. “They still believe us gypsies—I can’t let them know the truth about Obernewtyn if they intend on staying here. So I told them nothing about Domick. I’m going to try to reach him now.”

  Matthew interrupted eagerly. “I was able to farseek with him.” I was astonished. It was impossible to communicate over significant distance with anyone but another farseeker unless communicator and communicant each possessed some deep-probing ability. It seemed Ceirwan was right about Matthew’s developing powers. But there was no time to think about that now.

  “Are the horses with Domick?”

  “An’ Darga,” Matthew sent. “Wait a minute! If ye haven’t escaped, how can ye be contactin’ me? We’re in a compound, outside the settlement, but you—”

  “The Misfits here helped me stop the block temporarily. It’s not a machine. The static is caused by a baby with coercive powers.”

  “A baby!” Matthew echoed.

  “Where is this compound? Show me,” I demanded.

  Matthew made his mind passive so that I could use his eyes. At once a ghostly vision unfolded in my mind. He was looking down a long, narrow rift between two mountains. There was a fence dividing a barren foreground from a heavily vegetated background. I thought I could see patches of glowing gas in the faint moonlight beyond the barrier. It took a moment for me to realize what I was seeing.

  “The Olden pass …”

  Matthew confirmed it. “It’s there, but so is tainted ground, poisoned air, an’ gigantic growling beasts.”

  “Why build a compound there?” I wondered.

  In answer, Matthew turned again. Dirt, rocks, and dispossessed trees lay in mounds on either side of a broad hole in the ground. A row of rough huts sat amidst the debris. “Th’ ground here is safe enough. We’re here to pander to th’ Druid’s favorite obsession: Oldtime ruins. He thinks th’ Great White was made by one of their machines and that th’ machine is here somewhere. Mad as a snake is our Druid, to think it would still be workin’ after all this time.”

  Not so mad, I thought with a feeling of cold dread.

  “How is Pavo?” I asked.

  “He says he refuses to die in a dirty, damp Druid hole,” Matthew sent. “He’s convinced you’ll be along any minute to rescue us. ‘Elspeth is a survivor,’ he keeps sayin’.”

  “I wish I shared his faith. There’s no hope now of getting to the lowlands and back before wintertime.”

  “If only we could farseek Ceirwan at Obernewtyn,” Matthew sent.

>   I shrugged. He knew as well as I that it was impossible. But he was right—we needed to contact Obernewtyn. “I want you and Louis to take Mira and Lo and go back home as soon as you’re free. Make sure you don’t leave tracks or get caught. Someone has to warn Rushton about what the Druid is up to here.” I made Matthew repeat the message back to me before bidding him goodbye.

  Next I sought Domick. This was harder, and he instinctively responded by trying to repel me.

  “You!” I saw him assimilate my ease in demolishing his defenses. “Have you escaped?”

  I told him all I had told Matthew. “Then we are still going?” Domick asked when I had finished. “You know we can’t make Maryon’s deadline if we go that way. We are already cutting it too close because of the delay here.”

  “We dare not head back to Obernewtyn anyway, since the Druid would follow,” I said flatly. “I’m sending Matthew and Louis to warn Rushton. The rest of us will continue, if only to draw the Druid’s attention away from the high mountains. I’ll contact you as soon as we get outside the baby’s static. In the meantime, stay out of sight. A group of armsmen went out this morning to hunt. Where are you now?”

  Domick was unable to let me use his eyes, but he projected a picture with painful force into my mind. Cross-guild farseeking had its drawbacks. The coercer was right at the foot of the mountains. “Tor,” he sent in explanation. “I’ve been hiding in the cave where the Suggredoon goes into the mountain. There’s a good wide ledge. Pity it doesn’t go right through alongside the river, or we could simply walk to the other side.”

  Severing the contact, I found myself back inside the room. The group was still hand-linked. Gathering my exhausted senses, I reached out to Jik. He was overjoyed to hear Darga was safe. I was in the middle of explaining the escape plans when the contact was severed neatly, and Lidgebaby’s static filled the air.

  I opened my eyes in time to see Gilaine pitch forward. Jow picked her up gently and laid her on the floor, using his coat as a pillow. She moaned, and her eyes fluttered open. I went to her side, stricken with guilt.

  “She was the focus. Lidge likes her best,” Saul said petulantly.

  “Did you get through?” Jow asked.

  I nodded. Gilaine reached out for my arm and projected a message to us all. “It will be difficult. Perhaps they should stay through the winter and leave when we go.”

  “They can’t stay!” Saul broke in angrily. “They endanger the baby. They endanger us all. It was bad enough to reveal ourselves.…”

  The older musician shook his head reproachfully. “Saul, we have already gone over this. Once Gilaine was revealed, it was the same as if we were all exposed. If the Druid forced her name from Elspeth, she in turn would be forced to betray us. I’m sorry, Gilaine, but it would be better for them to go.”

  She hung her head.

  A queer expression flitted across Saul’s intense features, and I felt certain he was thinking Gilaine’s death would solve everything.

  “We won’t be staying,” I said firmly. I looked at Jow. “You’ll never have cause to regret this,” I promised. “And someday you might be glad.”

  I vowed to myself that I would return to bring Gilaine and her friends up to Obernewtyn as soon as I had completed my quest to the west coast. By then, Lidgebaby would be old enough to travel.

  I woke the next day to Rilla shaking me impatiently. “Elspeth. Ye sleep like th’ dead,” she scolded.

  Outside, rain was falling steadily, and thunder rumbled in the distance. Hurrying across the gap that separated the washhouse from the kitchen, I glanced up at the drear gray sky with faint apprehension.

  To my surprise, Emmon was sitting at the kitchen table with Kella. Seeing me, they both stood abruptly.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Gilaine sent me to tell ye,” Emmon said. “Only ye mun nowt let on ye know, or she’ll be in for it.”

  “I promise. Now what?”

  “Yer to be bonded tomorrow,” Emmon said, refusing to meet my eyes.

  “To whom?” I asked in a strangely distant voice.

  He made a warding-off gesture with his hand. “To … Relward. The gatewarden. This is Erin’s doin’,” he added in a rush.

  “But why?” I asked faintly.

  “She’s jealous. She thinks Gilbert means to request ye in bonding. He’s gone off to hunt, an’ by th’ time he gans back, it will be too late for him to protest,” Emmon explained.

  I blinked rapidly, fighting off an unexpected rush of tears. I had always used Rushton’s stern, dark face as a talisman against despair, but this time the thought of him only evoked a fierce pain in my chest and a bittersweet longing to be home.

  Then the irony of it struck me, helping me gain a measure of calmness. Here was Erin, violently jealous of the fleeting and surely lighthearted interest Gilbert had taken in me, willing to go to incredible lengths to stop something I had no more desire for than she.

  “I can’t let it happen,” I said, and in that moment, a daring idea came to me. With Emmon’s help, I managed to speak privately with Gilaine. She agreed the bonding must be avoided and said she would talk to the others about an immediate escape. I also told her I had heard Pavo was getting sicker and that I wanted to make sure he would be able to walk unaided. But that night, when Gilaine and her friends damped Lidgebaby’s emanations, I contacted Domick instead.

  “Has something gone wrong?” he asked, responding to the agitation in my thoughts.

  I told him of the intended bonding and that Kella would likely be next. I was surprised at the vehemence with which he said it must not be allowed to happen. “If I can help it, it won’t,” I sent. “Our friends here have set their plans for tomorrow night. But after we get away from here, I have an alternative to going round the mountains. It’s dangerous. Rushton would never approve. But if it succeeds, we will be on the other side of the mountains in less than two days.”

  “Impossible. Unless your undisclosed Talents include teaching giant birds to carry us across the sky.”

  I ignored his sarcasm. “I want you to build a raft. A strong raft.”

  “A raft. But … you can’t mean …?”

  “We’re going to raft through the mountains on the Suggredoon,” I sent determinedly.

  12

  ERIN SMILED.

  “Wait in here,” she said. She opened a door off the hallway, and I entered a small, musty-smelling antechamber.

  Inside the Druid’s house, it was unexpectedly quiet. The room was dark, though it was not yet evening. The day had been dreary, overshadowed by banks of foreboding storm clouds. A single candle burned in a sconce on the wall, offering meager light.

  As soon as Erin’s footsteps faded, I crossed to the window facing the street and pulled aside a gauzy pleat of curtain. I peeped into the windswept street. A brilliant flash of lightning gave the fleeting impression of a blighted daytime. Then it was dark again.

  I hoped nothing had happened to delay the others.

  There was another flash of lightning, and I wondered uneasily at the building storm. I did not mind the rain but thought warily of firestorms and of a theory of Pavo’s that they were increasing in frequency in the lowlands. He had explained that they were not real storms, despite the lightning and thunder, but were an electrical imbalance in the complex forces holding the earth together—another legacy of the cataclysmic disturbance of the Great White. He could not explain why firestorm rain burned the skin, nor why that rain alone could extinguish the destructive flames that always preceded it. He was certain, though, that there had been no firestorms in the Beforetime.

  The Herders also believed firestorms followed the holocaust but claimed they were sent by Lud and would continue ravaging the earth until the world was again pure. Naturally, the only way to achieve such a state of grace was to adhere to Herder doctrine. If there was a firestorm brewing, we could not think of escape. Firestorm flames burned even stone, but there would be more protection in the D
ruid encampment than in the open, at the mercy of the lethal flames.

  Outside, the wind muttered sullenly, echoing my inner disquiet. Erin and her traditional lecture about the duties of a bondmate were the least of my worries. Though not yet told I was to be bonded that very night, I did not doubt it.

  Scanning the length of the street visible from the window, I wondered anxiously if Kella had managed to get a message to Gilaine. She should have contacted her as soon as I was sent to the Druid’s house. Jow had decided that was the best time to make our move. But if they did not come …

  More lightning flashed, followed by a sharp crack of thunder. The time lapse between the flashes and the thunder was growing shorter. Rain fell in light flurries, but the heaviness of the clouds illuminated in the intermittent light indicated a deluge was coming.

  Hearing a movement at the door, I dropped the curtain and moved quickly away from the window. Erin came in cautiously, as if she had thought I would be waiting to attack her. Her hand rested lightly on the hilt of a short knife she wore in a jeweled waist scabbard.

  “You have been sent here so that I can tell you some wonderful news,” Erin said, her eyes glittering vindictively. I was taken aback at the force of her dislike.

  “Yes?” I asked calmly.

  Her lips stretched across her teeth in a smile that looked more like a snarl. “You are to be bonded—to Relward.”

  Knowing took the force out of my reaction, and I was glad to see her look disappointed. “This is your news?” I asked sourly.

  For a moment, Erin looked nonplussed; then her cheeks mottled with anger. “You are to be bonded tonight,” she added viciously.

  I shrugged. “I don’t bother with such things,” I said lethargically.

  “You … w-what?” she stammered.

  “What does it matter to be bonded or not? It is all the same in the dark,” I added crudely.

  Her face reddened, and she stepped away from me as if she thought I would contaminate her. “You dare speak of such things to me?”

  I shrugged. “If you don’t like such talk, why are you the one to tell me of this bonding?” Taking advantage of her loss of balance, I stepped toward her.