The Stone Key

  I sighed. “I know you are right. It is just that he has suffered so.” I was unfastening the small ties down the front of Domick’s Herder tunic so we could remove it and cool him down. I glared with loathing at the demon band he wore, wishing I could unlock it, but the taint in it was simply too potent.

  “Don’t worry about the Demon band,” Merret said. “Jak can remove it easily once we arrive.” I nodded and pulled open Domick’s Herder tunic. I was sickened to see that there was almost no flesh on his body without cuts or burns, and many of the scars were puckered and angry-looking, as if they had never properly healed. Blyss was just entering the tent again and gave a cry that was as much a reaction to our horror as to the savage scarring on the coercer’s pale, emaciated torso.

  “Hush,” Merret said, leaping up to lay her long arm around the shoulders of the slender blond empath.

  Orys looked into the tent worriedly, having heard Blyss cry out. He grimaced, seeing Domick’s body. “I will bring in the water to clean him once it is boiled,” he said, grim-faced, and withdrew.

  His words had been directed at Blyss, who now came to kneel on the other side of the coercer. Brushing away tears, she slipped a woven bag from her shoulder and removed a pouch from it. It was a small but efficiently composed basic healer’s kit such as Kella prepared for each of her guild. Except Blyss was an empath, not a healer. Yet there was no doubt that the instruments were hers and that she knew how to use them as she began to examine Domick’s wounds.

  Merret came to sit cross-legged beside me, saying softly, “We have had to turn our hands to many additional duties since we were cut off from the other part of the Land, Guildmistess. As you will see, Blyss has become a very competent healer.” She smiled at the golden head bowed in concentration, and the tenderness in her eyes made me wonder what else had developed in the months of their isolation.

  Once Domick had been cleaned and made as comfortable as possible, Blyss laid a damp cloth over his brow and another over his body to reduce his fever. Then she bade us go and eat, as she would take first watch. Outside, Orys had begun to prepare a stew, regretting the lack of bread. I suggested that there might be some in the parcels that Rolf had packed, and Merret offered to fetch it. When she returned, she handed Orys a loaf of dark bread, which he set about slicing. I excused myself, for I had just remembered Rawen. Shamed to have forgotten about her, I farsent her at once to invite her to join us, saying there was water and fodder aplenty as well as equine companions. She accepted eagerly, with no reproaches for my forgetfulness. Warning her to stay well away from the road, I withdrew.

  The meal was not yet ready. Casting around for a way to distract myself from the memory of Domick’s ravaged body and my fears for Iriny, I wandered to the horses and beastspoke with several, who told me of the freerunning herd that, on occasion, lent their aid to the funaga who dwelt in the Beforetime ruins, in exchange for water and fodder when grazing was sparse. I saw Ran, the white stallion who led the freerunning herd, in close conversation with Golfur as they champed on the hay Orys had put out for them. Curiosity made me open my mind to their communication, and I heard Ran urging the greathorse to join the freerunning herd, saying there were two other greathorses among them, both of whom were mares.

  Golfur answered in a slow, deep mindvoice that he must return to Rolf, who was his little brother and would certainly get into difficulties without him. Ran was clearly struggling to understand how a funaga could be regarded as kin to a horse, and Golfur seemed entirely unmoved by the suggestion that he was a slave. I remembered Rolf’s comments about the greathorse and thought that, whether or not the crippled metalworker understood beastspeech, he certainly knew Golfur.

  Rather than interrupt the conversation, I asked Sigund, the charcoal mare that Orys had ridden, to let Ran know that another mare would join them later, then I returned to the camp in time to hear Domick groan loudly. I strode across to the tent and entered it to find Blyss leaning over Domick, who was writhing horribly, his face twisting in agony.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Blyss looked up at me, white-faced. “I am no true healer, such as Kella, but my empathy tells me that Domick is dreaming of what was done to him, and the memory is so deep and powerful that he feels the pain of his torture all over again.”

  “Is there nothing you can do?” I asked.

  “I have done all I can for his body. If I had some sleep potion, I could use it to deepen his sleep so that he will not dream.”

  “Wait!” I cried, and withdrew the bottle Rolf had given to me. The empath unstoppered the bottle and carefully dribbled a few drops onto a kerchief and held it over Domick’s mouth, just as Rolf had done.

  Coming out of the tent again, I heard the drumming of hooves approaching. Orys and Merret were gazing along the road toward the Suggredoon, as were the people in the adjoining camps. Soon the riders came into view, grim-faced Hedra who thundered past without stopping. A chill ran down my spine at the realization that if Dell had not warned us, we would have been overtaken and searched. I came to stand by Merret as we watched the darkness swallow the troop.

  “We will break camp before dawn and head directly toward the Blacklands, taking care not to be seen,” she said. “We will ride right to the badlands that run in a narrow strip along the edge of the Blacklands. There are mutated plants and shrubs that grow high enough to give us some cover. Then we will ride for the ruins, being careful to go slowly enough to raise no telltale dust.”

  “Because they will come back?” I asked, nodding after the riders.

  Merret inclined her head. “Dell says they will be angry, and they will tear apart every camp beside the road, looking for Domick and for the woman who took him,” she said.

  As we ate the stew Orys had prepared, I told them about meeting Iriny and of the danger she now faced for helping me. “Rolf promised to help her, but he did not know she was being hunted for crossing the river, and now they think it is she who took Domick,” I said.

  “Do not trouble yourself,” Merret said, “I will return to Halfmoon Bay after I have brought you to the ruins. If nothing else, we should let these people who helped you know that they are safe from plague. I assume you told them about it?”

  I nodded, and then I asked if she would take Golfur with her, because the greathorse wished to return to Rolf.

  “This Rolf must be quite a man to impress a greathorse.”

  “He is,” I said.

  Orys offered me a bowl of dried fruit softened with hot water and sweetened with honey, saying how odd it was to think that Rushton and Dardelan and all those on the other side of the Suggredoon knew nothing of the plague threat or of Domick’s part in it.

  “Or mine,” I murmured. “Unless Maryon has future-told it. But they will know it when the Stormdancer sails from Herder Isle.” I thought of Yarrow and Asra and wondered if the Hedra master had surrendered yet.

  “They will know of the plague, but they will not know we have Domick,” Orys pointed out.

  “I wonder if they know Iriny came across,” Merret said thoughtfully. “From what you say, it was entirely a Twentyfamilies venture, yet the rebels must have seen the burning rafts. I must tell you that I am impressed that she got across the Suggredoon. We have been trying for months from this side.” She stretched, her joints making loud popping noises. “You said that Iriny buried the plast suit she used. Perhaps it can be recovered, and we can use it to send a messenger to Dardelan, letting him know that we managed to prevent the outbreak of plague. I will speak of it to the gypsy when I go to Halfmoon Bay…” She trailed into silence as Orys threw some shrub wood onto the fire and went to relieve Blyss.

  “How do you think the Council and the Herders here will react when they learn that those on Herder Isle have been overthrown?” I asked.

  Merret prodded at the embers and said, “The Councilcourt will be pleased to discover they no longer need to dance to the Faction’s tunes, for much of the Herders’ power rests upon the fac
t that there are so many more of them just across the strait. The soldierguards will be elated, because if you count Hedra and soldierguards here on the west coast, I would say the numbers are similar. It may even be that there are more soldierguards, but the Hedra are more deadly and disciplined fighters.”

  “Are you saying they would clash?”

  “I think that a war between them is inevitable,” Merret said. “I would not lose sleep over the idea of their killing one another, except both sides will conscript ordinary folk to fight with them. We are nowhere near prepared to rise here, but we may have no choice if the soldierguards go to war against the Hedra.”

  “You speak of the soldierguards, but what of the Council in all this?” I asked.

  “The truth is that their power always rested on that of the soldierguards and the terror invoked by the Faction,” Merret said. “I think, though, that they will have to back the soldierguards simply because the Faction will have no use for them at all.”

  “There is another thing to consider,” I said. “I told you of the weapons I saw in the Herder Compound armory. If demon bands were shipped here, why not weapons as well? If even some of the vile weapons I saw there are stored here in the cloisters, this war you speak of could be far more savage than anyone could imagine, and the likelihood is that the priests will win.”

  Blyss emerged from the tent and sat down wearily on a blanket Merret spread out for her. The coercer asked how Domick was, and Blyss answered that he was sleeping soundly and that his fever had fallen slightly. Merret solicitously filled a bowl with stew and gave it to her.

  As the night wore on, I asked what had happened on the west coast following the closing of the Suggredoon. Merret replied that Serba had escaped and gone to warn the rebels on the other side of the river while Yavok and a few of his men survived simply because the rebel had been late collecting them for the meeting. Tardis survived, along with all of her people, only because Merret had ridden out to farseek a warning to the healer Kader. He had been stationed with the Murmroth rebel group, and Tardis had immediately commanded that all rebel haunts be abandoned. She then convened what came to be known as the Cloud Court: a meeting place that changed constantly. For a time, it looked as if Murmroth would be the rallying point for all rebels left on the west coast, but then Yavok was murdered by one of his own men, and the Murmroth rebel group under Tardis responded by closing ranks, rejecting all the rebels from outside Murmroth and ejecting Alun and even Kader, who had saved them.

  “It was a sore point with Tardis that we refused to divulge the location of our safe house, you see.” Merret sighed. “In truth, while Tardis was not as fanatically prejudiced against Misfits as her father seems to have been, she did not feel comfortable around our kind and was glad of an excuse to cut the connection. So we Misfits who had survived retreated to the ruins to live as best we could and to wait, for we knew you would come eventually.”

  “It was a time of terror,” Blyss whispered, her eyes unfocused as if she looked into the past. “The Council was not satisfied with having killed most rebels on the Night of Blood. They searched for survivors and killed them publicly and horribly whenever they found them, along with whoever had sheltered them. The Councilmen arrested and tortured anyone known to have sympathized with the rebel cause, and it became a crime even to voice any criticism of the Council. The torture of people resulted in more arrests and more torture, often of innocent people.”

  “The Herders were equally fervent in their search for Misfits,” Merret said in a low voice. “They knew that we had helped the rebels, and they held services reviling mutants as damned creatures and demons, and they demanded ritual cursing. Anyone who did not show enough fervor was taken and interrogated, then burned for having Misfit sympathies. People attended as never before because to be absent was to be suspect. Also, hundreds of people who may or may not have had Misfit tendencies were burned after being reported by neighbors.”

  “It sounds hellish,” I murmured.

  “It was. The soldierguards who had fled across the river were enraged at having been forced to abandon their homes and families. They demanded an immediate offensive on the rebels, but the Councilmen refused. We later learned that the Herders had warned them not to invade until they were equipped to wipe the rebels off the face of the earth. I am sure the Councilmen took the Herders’ advice, because only the priests’ warning had prevented the rebels from taking over the west coast as well. And the Council readily accepted the Faction’s offer of demon bands to protect all Councilmen and soldierguards against mutant possession. The soldierguards from the other side of the river were absorbed into the various city troops, and the Council set up the barrier and river watch. But the soldierguards from the other side of the river remained volatile, and their grievances added an unruly, dissatisfied element to a group that was already difficult to control. That the Hedra were openly contemptuous of them did not improve the relationship between the two groups. Nevertheless, for a time, the Council and the Faction settled into their old uneasy relationship, secure in the knowledge that the rebel network had been broken on the west coast and that no one could cross the river. Both poured their anger and energy and frustration into ensuring that no one would ever dare to rebel again. In a way they succeeded, until Tardis died and Gwynedd became the leader of the Murmroth rebels.”

  “I gather he made contact with you,” I said.

  “He wished to do so, but he knew only that we had a secret desert camp,” Merret said. “It was chance alone that had me in Aborium foraging for information when one of the Aborium rebels I knew recognized me. She told me that Tardis was dead and that Gwynedd had taken over the rebel group in Murmroth. She said he had begun to resurrect the rebel network, contacting survivors, encouraging them to reform proper cells with elected leaders, urging them to recruit new members. People were receptive, because they knew that most soldierguards were greedy for Salamander’s bonuses. They were weary of their children and friends being arrested on the slightest pretext, especially if they looked healthy, and being taken away across the sea to be sold as slaves. She told me that Gwynedd wanted to communicate with us, so I rode to Murmroth to speak with him.

  “Thus we began to work with the rebels. Their numbers began to grow after Gwynedd staged several operations with our aid to rescue prisoners from Councilcourt cells. We also attacked the Faction. Priests out to collect tithes were robbed and sent stumbling naked back to their cloisters, and the coin was used to buy the freedom of young men and women taken by the soldierguards. During many raids, rebels rescued groups of boys destined for the cloisters. The lads could not return to their homes, of course, but remote grubber farms began to have visits from distant cousins. Some of those saved remained in Murmroth and began to train as rebels under Gwynedd, whom they naturally revered,” Merret said.

  “Did the Council and the Faction realize all of their troubles were emanating from Murmroth?” I asked, curious.

  “No,” Merret said. “Gwynedd made sure we operated along the coast in all the towns and outside all cloisters. He knew a good deal about the Councilmen of the other coastal cities because of the information Seely had given him, so the Council was convinced there was another full network in operation, however much they might deny it publicly.”

  “I don’t understand,” I protested. “Tomash questioned Seely, and her information about the west coast was unusable.”

  “Useless to us because we knew too little about the west coast to fit Seely’s idiosyncratic knowledge into any sort of framework that would give it meaning,” Merret said. “But Gwynedd has the framework, and he also knew what questions to ask. It seems that Gavyn’s father was very sociable, and both high-ranking citizens and Councilmen alike were his guests. Once he bonded with Lady Slawyna after Gavyn’s mother died, he often had Herders visit as well, for his wife’s son was a Herder. Being part of the household and yet also a servant of sorts meant Seely was in the perfect position to gather information and gossip
.” The coercer chuckled. “It is a nice irony that Seely has been the most useful of us to the rebels.”

  I smiled and wondered if becoming useful had altered Seely’s shy diffidence.

  “How do things stand now with the rebels?” I asked.

  Merret shrugged. “As I have told you, there are too few of us for a proper uprising. Indeed, Gwynedd has never suggested wresting control with so few rebels. He seeks only to weaken the Faction and the Council as much as he can and to prepare us to aid Dardelan and the other rebels when they come for the west coast.”

  I wondered if Merret had any idea how often she included herself when she spoke of the rebels under Gwynedd. Something in my expression seemed to convey my reserve, for she said mildly, “I do not think it a betrayal of Misfits to admire a man who has no Talent yet is gifted and honorable.”

  “What made you trust Gwynedd, given that he had served Tardis?” I asked.

  Merret considered the question. “In part, it was that he insisted upon being taught Brydda’s fingerspeech, and he encouraged all of his people to do the same. But the true moment of revelation came when it struck me that Gwynedd had never offered freedom to the horses with which he communicated. I wondered why until I realized that he never saw it as his to offer. From the first moment he communicated with them, he has regarded horses as fellow freedom fighters. ‘When we are free,’ he always says, to them and to us and to his own people. But I do not seek to convince you, Elspeth. You will judge him for yourself soon enough. Needless to say, he sees your arrival as a sign that we will soon rise against our oppressors.”

  I laughed without much amusement. “A meager sign since I am only one, and instead of coming on a ship, I was washed up on the beach like a piece of flotsam.”

  Merret shook her head. “If only one could come, who else should it be but you, Elspeth Gordie?” She laughed in faint exasperation at my uncomprehending look. “Think about what you have told me! You stopped the Hedra from invading the Land. You went to Herder Isle and defeated the Faction on its own territory. You rode a ship fish across the strait, found Domick, and brought him out of Halfmoon Bay before he could begin a plague.”