The Stone Key

  Finally, the candidates were called for Halfmoon Bay. To my regret, Rolf did not rise with the other seven, but after they had all made their speeches, Gwynedd rose to ask Arolfic Smithson to stand and speak as well. He had interrupted on two other occasions to ask people who had not risen to speak, and in both cases, the people chosen had given a good account of themselves.

  I waited as eagerly as everyone else as Rolf rose with obvious reluctance and said gruffly that he did not want to suggest that the chieftain of Murmroth had judged ill, but he was not the sort of man to lead a city. “I am not highborn, nor have I ever served in any capacity as a leader. I did not join the rebel cause, and aside from being crippled in one leg, I am only a metalworker, yet I know that people are harder to mold than iron and copper. There is a subtle skill to governing that I think a chieftain ought to have.”

  He would have sat then, but someone in the audience called out to ask what qualities he thought a chieftain ought to have. Before Rolf could respond, another man asked rather scornfully what a lowborn metalworker could know of the qualities needed to undertake the high and complex business of governing a city.

  Frowning, Rolf said to the second man that if only wealth and birth were required of a chieftain, then governance of the city might as well be given back to Councilman Kana, who had been taxing Halfmoon Bay’s citizens to fund the purchase of the costly Sadorian spiceweed used in the production of his foul and addictive dreamweed.

  “You asked what qualities I think a chieftain ought to have? I will answer, for though I have little money and am crippled, I know well enough what kind of person I would wish for a leader. I would wish for a chieftain who is honest and just and compassionate. I would happily vote for a man or woman whose first consideration is not how to increase the wealth of the city and its highborn citizens, but who would look to serve all who dwelt within it. Were I chieftain, I would sentence those who had committed low crimes to clean the streets when other citizens slept. I would happily set our former Councilman to scouring the walls and windows of all the little cottages next to his foul factories. And I would not stop at cleaning the city.

  “When I was a young man, Halfmoon Bay was the flower of the west—the Westland—and those who came for our masked moon fair did so because of the city’s beauty, because of the cleverness and wit of the entertainments offered, and because of the quality of workmanship in anything produced there. Once upon a time, there was not such a legion of beggars in the street. There were shelters funded by the wealthy, and healing and caring houses for the elderly and sick. Our good Councilman closed them so he could open his factories in their stead. No doubt it is backward of me, but I wish for a chieftain who has the vision and moral courage to turn back time and restore Halfmoon Bay to its former glory. I wish for a just, strong person with a good sense of humor and a sobering dollop of sternness when needed, as it surely will be. I wish for a man or woman who will lead by inspiration and vision and example.

  “No doubt I have spoken in a lumpish metalworker’s way, but I have spoken the truth, and no man or woman should be asked to do more or less than that.”

  He sat down to a good smattering of applause and much nodding, but Gwynedd rose quickly, saying that since Arolfic had not thought to mention it, he wished all those present to know that the metalworker had put himself at considerable personal risk to help locate a Herder agent who had been infected by deadly plague before being set down in Halfmoon Bay during the masked moon fair. The shocked silence that met this announcement told me that Gwynedd had not spoken of this yet, and as he went on to speak of what the plague would have done, I could not bear to hear it. All I could see was Domick, his face distorted by buboes.

  “Then let us go/leave this house of words. I am hungry,” Maruman grumped suddenly, shifting his soft weight in my lap.

  I rose and bade Blyss farewell, barely seeing her face through the mist of tears that had risen in my eyes. But I managed to ask if she would come to the Umborine to see me once the meeting had ended.

  When I came outside, I was astonished to discover that the sun had set. I had not realized so much time had passed, and I wondered if it would be thought odd that a meeting of merchants would last so long. Then the cleverness of disguising a meeting of rebels as a meeting of merchants struck me anew, because what Councilman or soldierguard would dare interfere with the works of commerce, since the activities of merchants lined their pockets and kept the citizens content and fed.

  I yawned widely. It had been stuffy and hot in the meeting chamber, and I was glad to feel the cool evening air. I remembered that I had left my cloak with Gahltha in my saddlebags and formed a probe to locate him.

  Making my way to the holding yard, I suggested he might prefer to remain ashore for the time being with Calcasuus and the other Sadorian horses. But Gahltha refused. He wished to remain close to me, he told me stoically, even if it meant being aboard a ship. His devotion made me feel a great stab of love for him, which irritated Maruman, and he sprang from my arms with a hiss, landing atop a high wall that ran along the side of the holding yard.

  “I/Maruman will roam and hunt,” the old cat sent coldly. I bit back the urge to plead with him to stay with me, knowing that his anger and resentment at having been abandoned would be eased by his abandonment of me. Even so, after he had leapt out of sight behind the wall, I wished I had begged him to stay.

  “He will come after us to the ship,” Gahltha assured me as we set off toward the waterfront through curving streets.

  By the time I began to smell the briny stink of the waves, I was thirsty and footsore, but I would not dream of riding Gahltha just to save myself a few blisters. Need and joy were the only reasons to mount him, and I would not readily set aside those two standards even if he would, for one did not make a convenience of a friend. I forgot the pain in my feet when we came out of the street into the open square where, in daylight, the sea market would be held. As with the streets I had traversed, there were still a good many people making their way hither and thither, which suggested that, if there was a curfew in Aborium, it was very late. It had grown dark, and I had to strain to see the wharf, seeking the Umborine. The memory of another night flowed over me, when I had sat in a cart in a shadowed corner of this very square, watching Herder priests load their vessel. For a moment, the mingled odors of oil and fish and the sound of the water gurgling against the wharf summoned up the memory of that night so vividly that I seemed to see Jik, standing between two priests, hands bound and head drooping. Then Gahltha nuzzled my neck, and I spotted the Umborine at the far end of the wharf, its deck and rigging lit by the glow of lanterns. I pushed through the cobweb tendrils of memory and made my way across the square to the greatship.

  The subtle song of the waves was strong and compelling. Gazing at the ship, I was struck by how similar it was to Salamander’s Black Ship. Both were greatships, of course, but it was more than that. Take away the ugly weapons and additional structures from the Black Ship. and it could very well be a Sadorian vessel. Jakoby had never mentioned one of the sacred ships being stolen, but perhaps Salamander had acquired the Black Ship from the Gadfian raiders, from whom the Sadorians were descended. In order for this to be a possibility, it would have to be that the gadi settlements from whom the Sadorians had rescued their stolen womenfolk had survived, despite having no women or any means of getting healthy children. Unless Salamander had traded healthy women and children for a greatship.

  Hearing a soft footfall behind me, I turned swiftly, lifting my hands to defend myself, but it was only the Druid armsman Gilbert, smiling down at me with a good deal more warmth than I liked.

  “I saw you from the deck,” he said.

  “You were aboard the Umborine?” I asked, puzzled.

  He nodded. “I have been helping to load. Shall I escort you aboard? My room is below deck, but you are to have a cabin on deck. You will have a magnificent view when we are under way.”

  “I don’t understand,” I sai
d. “Your cabin?”

  “Well, strictly speaking, I will share it with six other armsmen, but at the moment they are back at the Councilcourt taking part in the choosing.”

  “You and six armsmen are going to Sador?”

  “There will be thirty of us, including Gwynedd,” Gilbert said. “And we are traveling to Norseland, though I believe the ship is to go to Sador after that. I knew you were coming aboard, because I heard one of the Sadorians tell Raka that an empty cabin was being kept for your use. I suppose you are bound for Sador?”

  I ignored his question as a picture came into my mind of Gwynedd and Jakoby speaking together. Gwynedd must have asked if Jakoby would take him and thirty of his people to Norseland, and then he had sent off the dark-haired man to command Gilbert and some of the others to carry stores aboard the Umborine. I knew it all, yet I did not know why Gwynedd would leave the west coast, having just been voted chieftain of Murmroth and when there was so much to be done.

  Whatever she thought, Jakoby would have been forced to accede to Gwynedd’s request, because the overguardian of the Temple had bidden her do whatever was asked of her by anyone who had traveled to the desert lands, and Gwynedd had done so for the Battlegames. So now, because I had said nothing, I must travel to Norseland, too, for if I asked the tribeswoman to bring me to Sador, she would say that first she must deal with Gwynedd’s request.

  “What is the purpose of this journey Gwynedd would make?” I asked Gilbert.

  “I do not know precisely,” he answered. “Perhaps it is that the Norselanders are Gwynedd’s kin. He will tell us when he comes aboard after the meeting.”

  “The suddenness of this journey does not trouble you?” I asked, his smiling demeanor beginning to irritate me. “Are you and his other armsfolk so eager to leave the Westland? No one will regret your departure?”

  The armsman’s mouth twisted into a grimace of such bitterness that I was startled out of my indignation. “My bondmate would as soon pay a slaver to carry me away than regret my going,” he snarled. Then he laughed as if this were a joke, but a jarring note suggested that not even he found it truly funny.

  Feeling as awkward as ever, I said nothing, but Gilbert nodded as if he had heard a question in my silence. “I am afraid my bondmate dislikes my devotion to the rebel cause; she says it endangers her babies and is proof that I care more for warmongering than for my family. She sent me packing. So now I have nothing left but the hope of finding someone else to love me.” His voice had dropped to a caressing note. “In truth, I am looking forward to this voyage and to the chance of getting to know you properly,” he added with a smile that made my hand itch to slap him. I was dismayed at the thought of having to endure a sea voyage with this man imagining he was in love with me.

  “Maybe this funaga truly loves you,” Gahltha beastspoke, and he offered his own vivid memory of the day I had escaped the Druid camp. Through his eyes, I saw my face turned up in dismay as Gahltha reared and screamed his terror. I saw myself trying to convince him to board the raft that was tossing and bucking in the upper Suggredoon’s turbulent waters. Gilbert burst into the dark on the other side of the rain-lashed clearing that ran to the edge of the river, his red hair and clothes plastered to his head. Seeing him, Domick slashed the rope binding the raft, and the violent, rain-swollen water wrenched it away from the shore. Gilbert shouted something just before the raft vanished from sight. I had not been able to hear his words over the storm, but Gahltha had heard him call out my gypsy name, and now, hearing it, I also heard the unmistakable note of anguished longing.

  I reeled from the vision to find an older Gilbert frowning at me in consternation. “Are you well?” he said.

  I gaped at him, confused, because now that he was not smiling, he looked more like the Gilbert of Gahltha’s vision. The memory of that other Gilbert made me say, “I was just thinking of what you said about your bondmate and children. It is sad that you would leave them with so little concern.”

  “It pleases me that you are concerned for me,” Gilbert said, leaning nearer. “Let me escort you aboard.”

  “I need no escort,” I told him coldly, and marched past him up the ramp without a backward glance.

  Not until I reached the top, where two tribesmen waited, did I realize that Gahltha was not with me. I turned, half expecting to find him balking at boarding, but he was looking back along the wharf. I leaned out to see what had caught his attention and spotted Maruman. The old cat ran up the ramp, and only then did the horse follow. The Sadorians at the top of the ramp bowed with great respect to the beasts and then to me.

  “You are Elspeth Gordie?” one of them asked.

  “I am,” I said. “I believe you have a chamber set aside for me?”

  He nodded, and lifting to his lips a small whistle that hung on a chain about his neck, he gave two sharp blasts. A Sadorian girl about my age came hurrying up and bowed reverently to Gahltha before offering him a greeting in fingerspeech. He responded with a nod and a flick of one ear, sending to me that this was the groom who had tended to him earlier. I asked where I could find him and was surprised to see a picture form in his thoughts of holding boxes spread with sand, set up upon the deck toward the rear of the ship.

  After Gahltha had been led away, Maruman said loftily, “I will show you where we will sleep.”

  I followed him meekly along the deck toward the front of the ship, where several cabins were clustered. He clawed delicately at one of the doors, and I tried the handle and looked inside. It was too dark to see anything, so I retraced my steps to get a lantern from the Sadorian woman at the gangplank. It revealed a spacious chamber with a bed fixed against one wall and some very beautifully crafted lockers and two big round-topped windows on the seaward side of the ship. I opened the windows, and the cool salt-scented breeze sweeping into the cabin made me sigh with pleasure.

  Maruman leapt onto the sill, and as we both looked up into a sky shimmering with stars, I pondered what Gilbert had told me and wondered again why Gwynedd would suddenly decide to take a group of men to Norseland when the Westland was far from secure. I did not know him, though seeing him speak, Gwynedd had not struck me as a rash or hasty man. All that he said of the future suggested a man who planned thoroughly and well in advance. Yet he was taking thirty fighters to an island where many hundreds of Hedra were being trained and where there were, perhaps, unthinkable weapons. I shook my head, realizing my speculations were pointless until I learned Gwynedd’s thinking.

  I went to the bed, removed my heavy boots, and stretched out fully clothed, because I wanted to be able to get up the moment Blyss and Merret arrived. Maruman leapt down from the sill and padded over to join me on the bed. I yawned and wondered why I felt so weary. I yawned again, and the candle flared, revealing that the dark ceiling of the cabin was elaborately carved. I sat up and lifted the candle higher to study the intricacies. Although it had not been carved by Kasanda, whoever had done it had been influenced by her style. It occurred to me that Kasanda must have trained some of the tribesfolk, for she could not possibly have carved all the stone faces into the cliff at Templeport herself.

  I lay back and thought of Stonehill, trying to imagine Cassy as an older woman, bringing up her son amid the thriving and busy community of gypsies who had once made their home atop the tor. The girl that Iriny had said Cassy loved as a daughter, even though she was not a Twentyfamilies, must have lived on Stonehill as well, growing to womanhood. In Cassy’s past would have been the visit to the Red Land and the loss of her bondmate, the brother of the Red Queen, and also her youth in the Beforetime.

  As ever, I puzzled at how someone from the Beforetime could have lived through the Age of Chaos, but that was something I would never know. Had Cassy known all through her years upon Stonehill that her journey had not ended, that someday she would be taken by Gadfian slavers and rescued by the Sadorians, only to end her life as a seer in the desert lands? Or had that knowledge come to her not long before she had left the Lan
d?

  I thought of my vision of Cassy’s meeting with Hannah and wondered if the older woman had known that Cassy was a futureteller. It had never been said in any of my visions, yet how could she have left signs for me without foreknowledge to guide her? It might even be that training at Obernewtyn had brought her farseeking Talent to light, in the same way that farseeking novices sometimes realized they could use their deep probe to coerce as well.

  Maruman sighed, and I turned my head to look at him, curled up beside me, tail curled over his nose. The breeze ruffled his fur, alternately hiding and revealing his scars.

  “I love you, and you are growing old,” I said softly, reaching out to stroke his fur lightly, so as not to waken him. Then I closed my eyes again, and as I floated into sleep, a vision rose in my mind of Domick’s stone cairn at the edge of the Beforetime ruins, the wind and the sand hissing in an endless susurrus over it. The same wind that scoured Evander’s grave atop Stonehill.

  13

  I WOKE GROGGILY to the sound of boots on deck and the vague queasiness I always felt aboard a ship until I became accustomed to the deck’s pitching. The pale lemon light bathing the cabin told me it was early morning, and I got up, careful not to waken Maruman, and went to open the window, which had blown shut in the stiff wind. The sky was a soup of delicate rose and lavender streaked with gold, confirming that it was not long after dawn. Closing the window and latching it, I began opening wall panels, remembering from my previous journey aboard a Sadorian greatship that they concealed all manner of snug and intricate fittings. Sure enough, I soon found a bowl with a spout and lever above it and a locker containing toiletries and clothing. I filled a bowl with water, stripped off my clothes, and washed myself down with a sea sponge. Once dried, I investigated the clothes piled neatly in the locker. They were women’s clothes and made of brightly dyed and lightly beaded Sadorian silk. I dressed in sand-colored loose trousers and an undershirt made of silk so thin that it was virtually transparent. Shivering with pleasure at their softness, I reminded myself to thank Jakoby for providing them. After some agreeable dithering, I pulled on a knee-length tunic, slit above the waist on both sides and dyed in swirls of violet and sea green. There were dyed silk slippers to match, but they were too narrow; I was content to go barefoot as the Sadorians did on board.