Not quite nothing. We must lose our innocence, for to agree to the contest meant literally casting aside all of our dreams of peaceful coexistence and gradual friendship. It meant accepting that we would only ever be tolerated, and even that must be fought for. Well, they would have to face that unpleasant truth sooner or later. It was only too clear to me now that we had been naive to think we could win the rebels by offering our help. We had wanted to believe that opposing the same enemies made us allies, but that was not so.
I tried to anticipate how guildmerge would respond to my suggestion that we use the Battlegames to teach the rebels to respect us—even to fear us—so that they would think twice before turning on us, no matter what happened in the rebellion. What other choice had we but to play by their rules?
Rushton would understand that—his whole life had been one of compromise to obtain his birthright. But I could imagine how Roland and Maryon would take it.
Under their leadership, the Healer and Futureteller guilds had opposed the Coercer’s Talent contests when the idea was first mooted in guildmerge, claiming that competition promoted aggression. They had been narrowly outvoted, and the contests had since become an important event during our mountain moon fair.
There had been unexpected benefits. Mindmelds had increased in coordination, and individual skills had been honed and strengthened with the competitions as a goad. In addition, the stress of competition occasionally revealed unsuspected secondary and even tertiary abilities.
Though there was rather more at stake than a crown of flowers, the Battlegames was still a contest.
Of course, Roland would point out that what had begun as competition between guilders had swiftly metamorphosed into stylized displays of skill, with both competitors playing to the audience rather than trying to outdo each other; it was as much a team effort as anything else.
I would answer that it might be so with the Battlegames.
But that would expose the main weakness of my argument: I did not know what the Battlegames entailed, any more than Malik or Brydda did. Jakoby had refused to elaborate, saying only that they were not for the fainthearted and would test our ability in battle decisively. She would give no hint about what qualities and abilities might be needed. All we knew was that each side should muster a team of ten and must reach Sador within five days, for Jakoby had explained that Battlegames were held only on full-moon days during the Days of Rain.
I had come to Sutrium galvanized by an impossible deadline, and now I would leave the same way. Life seemed to resound in echoes and oblique reflections.
I could still hear Malik’s malicious laughter ringing in my ears, as jagged as pieces of broken glass falling through the night. He had laughed, I thought, because he imagined I had played right into his hands in agreeing to the contest. That might have been expected from Malik, but it had shocked me a little to think that Brydda felt the same.
“How can your people win against Malik and his warriors?” he had demanded just before our parting. “He is the best strategist among us. He will win these Battlegames, no matter what they involve. It was madness for you to agree, for in doing so, you have made an alliance with Misfits conditional on a win. I don’t know what possessed you.”
“You said there could be no rebellion without Malik,” I had pointed out. “I tell you, he would never have agreed to an alliance any other way than this. Now, at least Malik has committed himself to accepting us if we beat him, and Gwynedd seems to think Tardis will agree, too.”
Brydda had only shaken his head and insisted I tell Rushton that the whole matter could be dismissed as a mistake if he would send a message quickly, saying I had overstepped my authority. He had even promised to send Reuvan to the safe house with a bird that might be loosed from Obernewtyn with this message.
Out of honor, I would have to convey Brydda’s words and the doubts that fueled them. I wondered if Rushton would take the rebel’s advice or mine.
Coming through the repair-yard gate, absorbed by my thoughts, I was utterly unprepared to see the object of them leaning against the side of a small gypsy wagon.
I stopped dead, a fist of reaction clenching in my gut. Rushton’s arms were folded across his chest, and he was clearly deep in thought, a closed, brooding look on his face.
Though I had not spoken nor made a sound, he must have sensed he was no longer alone. He turned his head toward me. His green eyes seemed to reach across the yard with all the force of a jet of flame.
“Elspeth.”
Just that: He spoke my name flatly, almost coldly. He straightened and walked across the yard, and I felt the blood rise in my cheeks. I made myself walk to meet him, to show I was not disconcerted, only to find that this brought us too close for my comfort. Before I could prevent myself, I stepped back.
Rushton’s face sharpened to a kind of ironic enjoyment at my awkwardness. He stopped and made a little bow, as if something had been agreed to between us.
“I have been waiting for you. Kella said you had gone to meet with the rebels.”
I nodded, my thoughts chaotic, but on the heels of my reaction to Rushton’s presence was a rising fear. “How … why are you here? What has happened?” I demanded.
“Nothing. Not yet, at least. We are here because Maryon sent us.”
I was about to ask who else had come when it struck me, with some force, that there was only one explanation for this expedition. Maryon had foreseen the journey to Sador.
Could it be that need would be answered so gracefully after all the misfortune that had haunted our time on the coast?
Rushton nodded. “So it’s true, then. She said you would understand.”
“Understand?”
“Maryon futuretold us coming here, but she did not know why. She said you would.”
And again that awful, swirling, helpless feeling of being a leaf borne on some impossibly strong tide. Maryon had known that I would know. It was too much.
“You just came without knowing why, because …”
“Because Maryon said it was vital for Obernewtyn. Yes.” Rushton nodded, a faint challenge in his green eyes. “It would be a little late to be deciding now that we would not live our lives by the whimsical wisdoms of futuretellers, don’t you think?”
“But that was …”
“Dangerous, foolhardy, rash? Of course.” He spread his fingers into a gesture of acceptance. Then his expression hardened, and the mockery in it died. “Why are we here, Elspeth?”
I took a deep breath. “I think because of something that happened at my meeting with the rebels.”
“Do you think you might manage to be a little less cryptic?”
“You were right when you said they regard us as freaks. The meeting did not change that, in spite of Brydda’s hopes. That was why Brydda had not contacted us—he was trying to make them change their mind,” I said. “The two main rebel leaders in particular wanted nothing to do with us.…”
I told him everything then, about Brydda’s intention in bringing me to the meeting, about Malik and Tardis and the power struggle between them, and finally about the Battlegames.
It was impossible to know if he was angry. He was too good at keeping his thoughts and emotions hidden.
At last he sighed. “We had better go and tell the others to prepare themselves for a sea journey.”
Maryon had named the members of the expedition herself, Rushton told me. My heart sank when I saw whom she had sent. No wonder Rushton had sighed when I told him of the Battlegames.
The young Empath guilden, twins Miky and Angina, were sitting across from each other at the table sorting herbs. Receptive Miky intercepted my astonishment and swung around, her face creased in a welcoming smile tinged with mischief. “I bet we are the last people you imagined seeing here.”
“That is saying it mildly,” I said.
The stocky Coercer guilden, Miryum, was seated by the hearth with a pile of toasting forks on her knees. She had been rubbing the points over a
whetstone as we entered, but hearing Miky, she threw them down and strode across the room to thump me on the back with painful enthusiasm.
“It is good to see you, Guildmistress. This is a queer business, is it not?”
I was distracted from answering by the sight of an unfamiliar plain-faced girl with yellow hair.
“Greetings, Guildmistress Elspeth,” she said. “I am Freya. I believe you left Obernewtyn a sevenday or so before I arrived.” She gave me a sweet smile that lit serene gray eyes, and I realized I had been wrong. She was not plain at all.
“Greetings,” I said faintly.
The enormous, soft-spoken coercer Hannay was helping Kella to slice cheese and bread. “Greetings, Guildmistress,” he rumbled, and went on slicing.
Beside him was the Teknoguild ward, Fian. “Kella told us about Matthew. I am sorry,” he said gently, and his highland accent hurt because it reminded me vividly of the farseeker.
“And Dragon,” Miky murmured, her face falling. “Poor little Dragon. If only Maryon would have let the others come and get her.”
I stared at the empath. “What do you mean, if Maryon had let the others come?”
“She foresaw Dragon following you,” Rushton said briskly. “We wanted to come after you to get her—you had only been gone a few hours. But Maryon said you needed to have her with you, that it was necessary.” His eyes met my growing fury with bleak resignation. I remembered the words he had just said to me, about living by the whims of futuretellers.
I shook my head, anger making my eyes burn and my head hurt. Did we have no will to exert? No choice? I remembered, with a kind of sickness, that it was Maryon’s futuretelling that had sent Jik with me to the lowlands and to his death. “Did she dream of Dragon falling into a coma as well, when she stopped you bringing her back?” I snarled.
“Maryon foresaw Dragon following you, Elspeth,” Rushton said wearily. “But Dragon chose to come after you of her own will. And you cannot have it both ways. If Maryon was right in predicting that Dragon would follow, then it must be that she was also right when she predicted the necessity of it happening.”
I wanted to scream at him. If Maryon saw me walking off a cliff, would he not try to prevent my death? Might there not be moments when a futuretelling was shown as a warning? Would so much have been altered had Maryon defied her vision? What difference would it make if Dragon had not come to Sutrium, other than that she might not now be comatose?
A great deal, I realized with a queer chill. I might just as well ask how many ripples a single fallen leaf would cause in a stream and how far they might spread.
“Dragon’s not dead. She’s just asleep,” Angina said softly, his empath Talent swirling out to enfold me in hope and compassion.
I sat down. “I know … I know. I’m sorry.”
There was a moment of silence, and then the others began to talk, filling the void with words to give me time to recover myself.
“It was awful on the road, Elspeth,” Miky murmured presently. “We were searched at the gate, and when they started to check our papers against a birth register, I near died.”
“Miryum and Hannay had to coerce us through,” Angina said eagerly, taking up his sister’s lead, his face a masculine echo of hers. “Even so, we were lucky, because the second gate guard had a natural shield. A good thing he wasn’t the one checking.”
“I can’t believe we’re really here in Sutrium!” Miky said. “When Rushton came to firstmeal an’ told us that Maryon had futuretold another expedition to follow you here, we never guessed for a minute we’d be on it.”
Angina took up the story without missing a beat. “We thought there would be a guildmerge and a voting, but Rushton said Maryon already knew who was to come.”
Why these Misfits, Maryon? I wondered with sudden suspicion. What are you up to now?
“She said it was vital for Obernewtyn,” Miky went on.
Doesn’t she always? I thought bitterly. Hannay’s inclusion made sense, as much because of his deep patience as for his utter reliability. And Miryum’s coercive powers were formidable. But why choose Miky, who had great empathic Talent but no secondary ability and no physical strength; and Rushton, who could not reach his powers; or this Freya, who, no matter what her Talent, was a newcomer to Obernewtyn?
“She would nowt say more’n that,” Fian spoke with all the disgruntlement of a thwarted teknoguilder, interrupting the dual flow of the twins’ story.
“She didn’t know any more than that,” Miky said quickly.
“But Elspeth knows,” Angina chimed.
The others looked at me expectantly, but I realized I did not know why they had come. Not them in particular. And there were only seven of them.
Then all at once, it occurred to me there might be more of them. There must be.
“Who else came?” I asked with a shimmer of uneasy premonition.
Rushton gave me a queer, lopsided smile, anticipating my reaction.
“One other. Dameon.”
I stared at him incredulously. Maryon had sent Dameon, the gentle and blind Empath guildmaster, to do battle with Malik and the rebels for the future of Obernewtyn!
33
DAMEON WAS SITTING by Dragon’s bed, holding her hand. She was oblivious of his presence, though some foolish bit of me had hoped he might have reached her. But, no, she was locked in a sleep that must be close to the equines’ longsleep, suspended in some netherworld between life and death.
I could have wept for the sadness in his face and the bowed shape of his shoulders. I felt a rush of love at the sight of him that was nearly painful.
Of course, he sensed the surge of emotions. I saw it in his sudden stillness.
“Elspeth,” he murmured in his gentle voice.
Only then did he turn his face to me, his white-blind eyes gleaming in the light of a single candle guttering low in a wall sconce behind me.
“I could bear everything, if only she would wake,” I murmured, coming to stand beside him.
He rose to meet me, letting go of Dragon’s fingers to take mine.
“She will wake,” he said. His words were a promise, but how could he know? He was no futureteller.
“Oh, Dameon,” I sighed.
“There was a Beforetime story in one of the books you brought back from the underground library, which told the tale of a sleeping princess,” he said, drawing me to sit by him.
“A story,” I said flatly.
He smiled, and the compassion in his expression was like a slap, for what right did I have to expect him to comfort me? Was Dragon not his charge, as a member of his guild? Had he not known Matthew longer?
“The story tells of a beautiful princess who may or may not have had red hair and who, cursed, pricked her hand on a poisoned needle,” Dameon went on. “She fell into an enchanted sleep from which none could wake her.”
I looked down at Dragon and shivered.
“She slept long, until a prince came who was her truest love, and the enchantment between them allowed him to break the spell.”
“How?” I breathed, drawn into the story in spite of myself. “What did he do to wake her?”
“He woke her”—Dameon took Dragon’s pale hand again and lifted it to his lips—“with a kiss.”
I thought of Matthew—the only love Dragon had ever known, and an unwilling one at that. Would that love ever return to kiss her awake?
“It is a … lovely story,” I said huskily.
Dameon nodded. “It is. Miky and Angina have made it into a song, and they will sing it to you.”
“Dameon …”
He shook his head and gathered me into his long arms. “I know.”
He patted my back as if I were a very young child or a frightened animal, his empathic Talent wrapping me in a warm blanket of affection and reassurance. I was dimly surprised to find he had erected an empathic barrier between us. He must have sensed I would not want my emotions bared to him.
“Matthew has been t
aken,” he said gently. “But no slaver or shackle will hold him for long. He will return, just as he swore he would. As full of gossip and wild stories as ever.”
Listening to his soft accent, I felt for the first time that it might truly be so.
“Well, this is touching,” Rushton said from the door. “When you have finished the tender reconciliations, perhaps you will spare us a moment.”
Sitting in the kitchen with the rain pattering against night-dark windows, Rushton told me for the first time what Maryon had futuretold.
“She said she saw eight of us journeying to Sutrium and your face, Elspeth, at the end of the journey. There was more—something about thirteen going over water.” He hesitated, and I sensed there was something here he kept back. “She said it had something to do with Obernewtyn and figuring out what to do next.” He frowned, as if this was not exactly right. “Something about finding the right road to tread.”
He made a gesture indicating that I was to go on from there, and so I did, telling the group all that I’d told Rushton.
“I do not understand why this Jakoby woman would make such an offer,” Miryum said suspiciously when I had finished. “What does she get out of helping us?”
“She wouldn’t see it as helping us or the rebels,” I said. “There was a problem, and she simply offered a Sadorian solution. Sadorians are … are not like Landfolk, and I don’t think you can judge them by our values. But honor is very important to them, so I don’t think they would cheat or lie.”
“Are you so sure this woman’s offer of the Battlegames is what Maryon’s futuretelling concerned?” Dameon asked softly. “She said nothing about battles.”
“It would be too much of a coincidence for it not to mean Sador,” Hannay said. “Where else would we go on a journey over water? Across the Suggredoon? Maryon said Elspeth would know, and she knows about the trip to Sador and the Battlegames.”
“Could it have meant something about rescuing the Farseeker ward?” Freya asked. “He has been taken over water, after all.”
“Where would we search for him, and how?” Rushton asked. He shook his head regretfully. “I wish we were going to find Matthew, but my instincts say the journey foreseen by Maryon is the one offered by this Jakoby. It fits too neatly. Why else would so many of us come, if not to take part in these Battlegames and win the alliance we need?”