"I/Maruman amweary," the cat sent, as if to confirm my thoughts. "The h'rayka searches in the dreamtrails of Elspethlnnle, and I have fought many battles to guard the way."
Abruptly I was wide awake.
Maruman had lately spoken often of these dreamtrails, and though he would not be drawn to explain exactly what he meant by the term, I had got the impression they were as real to him as a road. He often spoke of meeting the Agyllians on the dreamtrails. But it was not his talk of dreampaths that disturbed me. H'rayka, translated loosely from beast thoughtsymbols, meant one who breaks and rends. Atthis had told me that if I did not find the weaponmachines and disable them, another human whose fate pam twinned my own, whom she called the Destroyer, would find and activate them, raining a new doom on the world.
And now Maruman said a Destroyer was searching my dreams. Could Maruman mean that he had dreamed the Destroyer was searching for me?
I shivered, for I had never considered that the Destroyer might be someone I would have to confront. I had seen our search for the weaponmachines as a sort of parallel race. Surely Atthis would have warned me if I was to be hunted by this person.
Another possibility occurred to me. What if Maruman was trying to tell me that the Destroyer had begun to search not for me, but for the weaponmachines? This seemed far more likely.
But, perhaps, I had misunderstood Maruman altogether. I looked into his eye.
"Maruman, who/what is h'rayka?"
"H'rayka is the one who brings destruction," the cat sent.
I felt a rush of pure terror, followed by fury, for if my interpretation was correct, and Maruman had just warned me that the Destroyer was searching for the weapon-machines, why was I wasting time in Sutrium?
Why hadn't Atthis called me?
"The oldOne called," Maruman answered my despairing deepthought disconcertingly. "You do her bidding here in barud-li."
I stared at him. "I do the bidding of Maryon/tallone."
"Maryon/tallone hears the ashling of the oldOne/speaks the oldOne's words toInnle."
I struggled to stay calm. "Are you... are you saying Atthis sent a dream to Maryon to make me come to Sutrium?"
"A path forms itself like snow in the high valley of me barud," Maruman sent dreamily. "First there is this piece of whitecold and that piece, and they are alone and nothing. But soon they join and they cover the earth."
The obliqueness of his answer exasperated me, for past experience told me that this was his way of indicating that he was sick of a subject. Any further questions would be met with increasingly obscure answers.
The old cat gave me a sly look, then curled to sleep.
I tried reading his subvocal thoughts, but could not penetrate the drifting mists of distortion.
I sat back on my heels and stared into the fire.
Could it be true that Maryon's vision had been sent by Atthis? If so, then the need to return the gypsy to her people must be somehow connected to my secret quest to find and destroy the weaponmachines. Or perhaps the return of the gypsy had been nothing more than an excuse to get me to Sutrium. Yet the deadline Maryon had given fitted with the Twentyfamilies departure, and I had learned, at least in part, what Swallow meant.
Frustrated, I tried thinking it through from another direction.
Maryon's first trance had produced a warning for Ob-ernewtyn, while her second and deeper futuretelling had concerned me. Perhaps Atthis had caused only the second trance. But why bother to send messages through the futureteller instead of speaking to my mind directly? I had sworn to heed her direction, so it could not be through fear that I would refuse to obey.
Yet there was a precedent. The first time Atthis summoned me had been through Maruman's mind. In any case, if Maruman spoke the truth, I had no more cause to fret at leaving Obernewtyn, or fear I would not be there when I was summoned.
It struck me suddenly that rather than spending my time worrying about my destined quest, I should simply live and trust in the fates to bring me where I was needed.
I stared into the flames, with a feeling of having perceived a tremendous truth.
For a moment, in spite of weariness and concern over Idris and the rebel alliance, I felt a sense of clarity and purpose such as I had not experienced since standing on the high peaks of the Agyllian ken. It seemed to me that simply by existing, I fulfilled the purpose of my life.
"There is blood on your shirt," Kella said, sounding startled.
"Some louts in the market whipped me," I said.
"Let me see," she commanded.
I flapped my hand for her to leave me be. "It has already been cleaned and treated—by a gypsy herb lorist."
In a tired way, I enjoyed the amazement in their faces. I let them speculate a moment before telling them what had happened, leaving out only the gypsy's kiss. It shamed me to think of it, as if somehow I had wanted it, or made it happen. Nor did I complicate matters by telling them about the triple Guanette bird design, nor the mysterious Swallow.
But what I had told was enough to have them all agog.
"When will ye take her to them?" Matthew asked.
"When Kella says it is safe for her to travel. After that business with Dragon in the market, all the eyes in every rat-hole and cranny of the city will be peeled for gypsies, so even if she was able to move now, I'd wait a day or so. Unfortunately, they saw you take her so neither of us will be able to move about too easily, and certainly not together."
"Iriny," Kella said, for I had told her the name of the gypsy. "Strange to give her a name after so long. She is sleeping naturally now and her wounds have begun to knit nicely."
I nodded and looked around. "Where is Dragon?"
"Sleeping still," Kella said. "It's not surprising. You must have had to hit her hard to knock her out right through her shield. I didn't even know that was possible."
The stair door slammed and Domick came in. Kella recounted the day's events to him, but the coercer seemed more concerned about Idris than anything else.
"When did Reuvan say he was seen last?" he demanded.
"Last night. Or mayhap yestermorn," Matthew said.
"He has only been missing a night," I pointed out, as the coercer began to pace back and forward. "Surely, this is a little soon for everyone to be panicking."
"Did ye try farseekin' him?" Domick demanded.
"I did, but it was an unfocused probe and I could not find him. There are lots of blank spots in the city where the ground must be tainted. And the sea seems to be throwing up static as well, and that makes it hard to focus along the wharfs. Or he might just be sleeping. You know it is much harder to find a sleeping mind even with an attuned probe."
"He might also be dead," Domick murmured.
I glared at him. "Do you take pleasure in being so miserable and hopeless?"
His hard eyes met mine. "In suggesting Idris is dead, I offer hope. If he is not, he may very well wish he were."
"Wh ... what?" Kella gasped faintly.
"None of you seems to have grasped what Idris' disappearance may mean," Domick said. "If someone has him and questions him, he will be made to tell all he knows..."
"The safe house," Kella whispered, lifting a hand to her lips. "He knows where it is and all about us."
"He knows everything about Brydda and the rebels too," Domick reminded us brusquely.
I groaned, seeing more than that. "Lud save us. He knows about Obernewtyn!"
"He'd nivver give us away," Matthew said stoutly.
Domick turned a bleak look on the Farseeker ward and suddenly they seemed decades apart in age.
"You don't have any idea, do you? Faced with a skilled torturer, you or I, even Rushton himself, would tell all. And Idris is a boy. Make no mistakes, if those who have him want information, he will tell them everything he knows."
XIX
After a heated discussion, we decided not to abandon the safe house immediately, but to wait until first light in the hope that Idris would be found. At th
e coercer's urging, we spent the night packing into woven boxes Kella's precious store of herbs and herb lore preparations, and her healing implements.
When we were almost finished, Kella went to waken Dragon so that she Could apply the skin dye. After the way the soldierguard had looked at her, we dared not let her remain undisguised. Domick took out a city map which showed the location of the nearest green.
"I wish you would reconsider," he said.
"I wish you would stop suggesting it," I snapped.
The coercer wanted us to go directly to Obernewtyn to alert Rushton and help evacuate. I had argued against doing anything so drastic before we had clarified exactly what the rebels knew of Idris' disappearance. After all, Reuvan had not suggested there was any danger to us or to the safe house.
Kella pointed out that he might have been too distraught to think of warning us. "He seemed almost dazed when he left the safe house."
I was sure that Brydda would have sent someone to warn us if there was any need and had said so, arguing that we could lose ourselves quickly and easily in the morning bustle of traders moving into their places at the markets. If we stole away in the night, someone was certain to report it. We had also agreed not to go to Obernewtyn at once, but to the nearest green, to wait and watch. If there were no raid on the safe house, we would return to it after a while; if there was a raid or any suspicious activity at all, Matthew would ride at once to warn Obernewtyn while the rest of us would follow in the rig.
"You must go back to Obernewtyn too, if the safe house is lost to us," Domick told Kella, who had come in and was now rinsing dye from her fingers.
"What about you?"
"I will stay at an inn as Mika."
"I will stay with you," she said stubbornly.
"Mika has no bondmate and I don't want you connected with him, in case something goes wrong and he has to disappear."
Kella blinked hard at his peremptory tone, and turned away to pull the last of her dried herbs down from the wall racks. His words reminded me of something else.
"Domick, didn't your last report mention people just vanishing without trace in Sutrium?"
The coercer nodded.
"Maybe, whatever happened to those other people is what happened to Idris. And since these disappearances have nothing to do with the Council, then surely we need not fear..."
"We don't know that the Council has anything to do with them," Domick interrupted.
"But your report..."
"Contained conjecture as well as facts. I simply said that • I had heard nothing to make me think the Council was behind the disappearances. But I don't hear everything that goes on and, sometimes, the very fact that I have not, means only that people have been warned to hold their tongues." He shrugged. "There are so many factions within the Council and the soldierguard ranks, all with their own plots, and if I have learned one thing in the time I have spent here, it is that sooner or later everything is linked to everything else."
There was something profound in his words, which struck a note of response in me, but it was swamped by a wrenching weariness.
"You remember when we went to see Brydda the first night you got here?" Domick went on. "Reuvan came in and spoke of Salamander."
I nodded. "You said he was something to do with the slave trade."
"He is its leader. Salamander buys the people who disappear, and the increase in disappearances corresponds with an increase in the demand for slaves."
"Buying them from whom?"
"The rumor is that the disappearances are the work of an organization which specializes in kidnapping or removing people for a price. I think it is likely that Salamander set it up himself, to ensure his supply. No one in the slave trade knows what he looks like, because he is fanatical about keeping his face and identity secret. He delegates like a king to a whole herd of people and rarely appears in person. When he does, there is almost no prior warning. It has long been rumored that he is a Councilman or some other high official. No doubt he is well aware that the mystery surrounding his identity creates an atmosphere of terror and suspicion, and keeps his people silent and obedient."
"I didn't know the slave trade had a leader," I said, amazed.
"It did not—until Salamander came on the scene. Once, it was only the odd ship that stole people from the Land and sold them to lands over the seas which were supposed not to exist.
"Then a ship with a flag showing a flaming salamander began to attack any vessel known to trade in slaves, sinking it. One crew member would be kept alive, tortured, then cast ashore to tell the story of a ship with Beforetime weapons that spat fire. In no time the trade virtually ceased, for no one wanted to make themselves a target for such a nemesis."
I had a sudden vision of the hatred that had flared so unexpectedly in Idris' mild eyes when Reuvan had said Salamander was in Sutrium.
"Idris' family were taken by slavers, weren't they?"
"His sisters," Kella said. Her shoulders were hunched forward and there were dark shadows under her eyes. Whenever she looked at her bondmate, there was pain in her eyes.
Domick was oblivious. "If Idris has been taken by the slavers, he will be tortured for information that could be used, before he is sold. Blackmail is another of Salamander's specialties, and you can be sure he will know the value of a Seditioner with inside knowledge of the rebel organization. He would sell it dearly to the Council, and perhaps even Idris himself. So we are back where we started."
It was a grim prospect, for Idris and for Obernewtyn, and we fell into a weary staring sort of silence contemplating it. This was broken when Domick slammed a hand on the arm of his chair.
"Look at us sitting here and yawping into the fire like a herd of defectives! Don't you see that it doesn't matter who has Idris? If I am right, someone may be on their way here now! How will we make a run for it with Dragon and the gypsy unable to walk?"
He was right. I stood up and flung the dregs of the fement onto the fire. It gave a vicious hiss and belched a sullen cloud of smoke.
"All right," I said shortly. "Let's get everything down to the wagon."
Kella continued the last bit of packing while Domick and I transferred the boxes downstairs. Matthew took them from us and packed them into the cramped interior of the gypsy rig, sweating freely in spite of the chill air.
"If Idris is made to talk, won't he mention this room you keep?" I asked.
Domick shook his head and motioned for Matthew to take the other end of the box he carried. "He knows nothing about it."
"But he knows about you."
"He knows about Domick," the coercer corrected. "Not about the Council worker, Mika. Even a physical description of me will fit a number of others. And if he does tell them of a spy in the Councilcourt, I will know they are seeking me long before they realize which one I am, and vanish."
He had it all worked out and no doubt he was correct, but one part of me wondered if this new Domick was not pleased for an excuse to hurry us all out of Sutrium.
"But why risk it at all?" Matthew demanded, shoving a box in place against the others.
The coercer's voice was curt with dismissal. "Because my position is too valuable to abandon lightly. Apart from that, if Idris is brought to the Councilcourt, I might be able to wipe his mind so he may not be able to speak of the rebels or of us."
The ease with which he proposed to erase the boy's mind shocked me. I stared at him for a moment, half-tempted to loose a farseeking probe in case any surface thoughts drifted free of the coercer's mindshield. It would not be ethical to probe him, but if he were careless I might learn what had so altered him. What stopped me asking him outright was the fear that whatever was wrong arose from his relationship with Kella. And no matter how it hurt her, and chilled me to see him this way, the changes did not seem to be affecting his work for Obernewtyn, and therefore were none of my business.
The sleepless night and the long day that had preceded it were taking their toll and I thought longin
gly of my bed upstairs. It was hard and lumpy and bits of straw poked into me in the night, but I could think of nothing more wonderful at that moment than to have the freedom to sink into it and pull the covers over my head while there were still a few hours of night left. Sometimes I longed fiercely to have only myself to worry about.
"After what happened with Dragon yesterday, all the gypsy greens will be under observation. It would be safer for you to go straight back to Obernewtyn," Domick went on relentlessly, as we made our way back up to the kitchen.
I lost my temper. "Do you suggest we take the gypsy back with us to Obernewtyn? And if the greens are watched, then the gates will be watched too, which means the risk of being identified as we leave will be doubled."
"Returning her to her people is surely less important than keeping Obernewtyn safe," Domick persisted. "As for the gates, you can coerce yourself past them because you know who to coerce. In the city you will have no idea who watches with hostile eyes and, if you are recognized, you will still have to pass the gates to escape."
I shook my head in exasperation and brushed past him to enter the kitchen again. Domick went on and on like water dripping on stone. Everything he said made sense— if Idris had been taken by someone who would ask about us.
"The gypsy cannot be taken on the trip back to the mountains just yet," Kella said, having heard my words. "After a couple of days of rest and quiet..."
"I am sure she would prefer a little discomfort to being captured along with us and burned at the stake!" Domick interrupted coldly. He looked around the empty kitchen. "Surely everything must now be packed, Kella, or must you also bring such necessities as the bathing barrels?"
The healer's shoulders slumped as he turned on his heel and stalked out, and I wondered how long her love for the coercer would survive his insensitivity.
"He is rough in saying it, but right," I said gently to her after a moment. "It will do the gypsy no good to be healthy if the soldierguards get hold of her. There are times when we must endure what comes and take our luck. Go and prepare her to be carried down to the wagon."