“It is no bird.”
I looked down to find Maruman standing beside me, swishing his tail back and forth and gazing at the horizon. I knew now that I was dreaming, for he was in a shape he often took when he entered my dreams of his own will—far larger and stronger than in his true form, with slash marks on his coat. He looked very similar to those great cats that Beforetime books called tygers.
“Mayhap this dream form is truer than that other shape I bear,” Maruman sent, and he let out a roar that seemed to shake the stone under us.
“It is louder, in any case,” I sent. “What are you doing in my dream?”
“The oldOnes sent me. They say you must not walk dreamtrails without me, ElspethInnle. I must guard you on them, as Gahltha guards your waking trails.”
“I do not walk the dreamtrails. I do not even know how to find them. I am only dozing a little and dreaming aimlessly.”
“Dreams may have purposes the dreamer cannot fathom. They are gateways to dreamtrails and may lead also to longsleep,” Maruman sent. “Wake now and be safe.”
“Soon,” I told him. “Do you know what that was, flying above the horizon? You said it wasn’t a bird.”
“Is great winged beast, and its madness goes out from it along dreamtrails like a wind that shudders all it touches. Do not think of it, for doing so will summon it.”
“Haven’t I already summoned the beast, since it was in my dream?”
“You did not summon me, yet I came. Dreams touch other dreams, and things may travel from one to the other unbidden. That beast rides its madness like it rides the air, and it enters into those dreams which draw its notice—as will yours, now you think of it.”
“I don’t understand. How did I draw its notice in the first place? How could I have been thinking of its before I saw it?”
“Perhaps it thinks of you,” he responded, but distantly, as if his mind wandered elsewhere.
I felt my arm being shaken, and all at once I was awake. Alad was smiling apologetically down at me, and behind him the yard was almost empty. Little remained of the fire but a few glowing coals in the pit.
“The merge is over, Elspeth,” he said.
I rubbed my eyes and shook my head to restore my wits. “I wanted to hear what went on, but I did not sleep well last night.”
“Do not apologize. I have slept ill of late, too. Maruman is wisest of us.”
The old cat was still sleeping. Now I could see him in the ember glow. He looked very small and frail, and his whiskers shone gray.
“He walks the dreamtrails, as is his wont,” Gahltha sent, coming over with Avra. “Do not fear for him, ElspethInnle, for he has long walked those strange ways.”
“I am wakeful. I will watch over the yelloweyes,” Avra offered.
I glanced at the mare’s swollen belly and did not wonder at her wakefulness. She had to be very near to foaling.
“Will you walk back to the house with me?” Freya asked diffidently.
I nodded, and we left the courtyard just as a light snow began to fall.
2
WE ENTERED THE gate to the greenthorn maze that separated the main buildings of Obernewtyn from its farm and fields, walking somewhat awkwardly beside each other on the narrow track that ran between two thick-packed banks of snow. The nights were still painfully cold. I pulled my coat around me and sank my face into the collar.
Our progress was noisy, for the ground was covered in a crust of ice that cracked loudly when it was broken. For some way, we did not speak but only watched where we walked. It was very dark, and aside from the possibility of slipping, greenthorn stings were unpleasant.
Fresh snow fell like a dusting of flour on the black earth and on the evergreen foliage of the bushes flanking either side of us. The moon rose when we were halfway through the maze, and our shadows appeared on the path before us, deep blue and sharp edged. There was less need to watch our steps so intently, and Freya asked, “Do you miss Rushton?”
“He only just left, so it is less a matter of missing him than knowing I will miss him,” I said wryly. “Certainly I already miss him as Master of Obernewtyn.”
“I suppose it is no pleasure to have to stand in his stead,” Freya said.
“I would not like the responsibility.”
“I doubt Rushton likes the responsibility of being master here, if it comes to that.”
“But he is Master of Obernewtyn, and it is not his nature to question what is,” Freya murmured. She knew him well because she had spent much time trying to help Rushton to reach his latent Talent.
I glanced sideways at the empath-enhancer, and it struck me that something was troubling her. My instinct was not to pry, yet this rose out of my discomfort with emotions. I had always found them cursed awkward things, but these days I was trying to be as receptive as a nonempath could be. The fact that I had noticed Freya’s mood proved that at least I was honing my awareness somewhat. Nevertheless, I struggled a little with my own reticence before speaking. “Are you happy here?”
A fleeting smile bestowed on her plain features a quicksilver beauty. “If I could not be happy here, then I am incapable of it.”
“And yet?” I sounded abrupt rather than sympathetic and regretted my clumsiness.
Freya sighed and blinked snowflakes from her lashes. “When Avra asked me to speak about those days traveling with my father, it all came back to me.”
Freya’s father sold her because her gift for soothing horses—the very Talent by which he had made his livelihood—had caused the Council to mutter of the black arts.
“Many poisons rise at night and seep away by morning,” I said.
We came in mutual silence to the end of the maze path and parted in the cobbled area beyond its gate. The snow had stopped falling and was melting on the stones as I entered the Farseekers’ wing of Obernewtyn. Mounting the stairs to my turret room, I felt as if I would sleep for a year.
Yet it seemed but a few minutes before Ceirwan was waking me with a tray of hot tea and toasted bread, and a list of matters to be dealt with at the Farseeker meeting to take place that evening after nightmeal.
“I thought ye mun want to go through th’ agenda an’ add a few things after last night’s beastmerge,” he said. “I’ll pick th’ list up later.” I nodded sleepily, and he fussed about for a time with papers and the fire before opening the door to go. Maruman entered as he left, slinking across the room and leaping onto the window ledge.
I rose and splashed my face with icy water, then brought my tray to the ledge. Maruman refused any of my food, saying he had drunk his fill on the farms.
I ate, looking out upon the patch of garden clasped within the elbow of the rambling west wing of Obernewtyn. Over it, I could see a segment of the gray stone wall that surrounded our land, and past that, because the land sloped up, the mass of the forest that lay around us in the mountain valley. Most of the trees were still bare, and above them rose the high mountains—shoulder upon shoulder of them, still clad in their wintertime pelt and seeming almost to float in the sky.
They looked so pure and untouched, and yet the snow concealed the streaks of blackened earth left by the holocaust poisons, where still, centuries after, nothing could grow. In many places, the poisons were so virulent as to sear and blister the flesh at a touch, and more than the briefest exposure to them ensured a painful death. The world was full of such tainted places, some vast beyond imagining.
Maruman reached out a lazy paw and batted like a kitten at a strand of my hair caught up by the wind. I felt a rush of tenderness for him but resisted the urge to run my fingers over his soft belly fur, for he little liked to be petted as if he were a tame beast.
Thinking of beasts reminded me of Dameon’s letter. In it, he urged me to press Alad to send a beastspeaker to Sador to teach humans and beasts there Brydda’s fingerspeech. Unfortunately, the empath knew only a little of the signals and movements that made up the language, as it was ill designed for a blind man’s use.
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I ought to have mentioned Dameon’s request at the beastmerge, I thought, and sighed. So much time was spent in meetings and merges, and in hurrying to yet another meeting to speak of what had been decided at the one before.
I pulled my shawl tighter, enjoying the delicate pink-gold quality of the light. It contained the promise of the brief, sweet season of spring. Each year, I both desired and dreaded the end of wintertime and the thawing of the pass that was our only access to the rest of the Land, for though it meant the end of the bitter cold, it also meant we were again accessible to our enemies.
It was the fear that we might be found and attacked by the Council that had led us the previous year to seek an alliance with their sworn enemies, a Landwide network of rebels. They had largely rejected us as freaks and mutants, so we had tried to prove our worthiness as battle companions, only to demonstrate to the rebels and to ourselves that our Talents did not incline to aggression or violence.
This had been a revelation, and instead of lamenting our inability to be warriors, we had rejoiced, determined to henceforth concentrate our resources and abilities on seeking nonaggressive means of defending ourselves from the Council.
We had parted from the rebels without anger, and I had been sure that we would see Brydda Llewellyn from time to time. Not only because he was our friend, but also because his parents had moved to Obernewtyn. But none of us had known what to make of his missive requesting that Rushton meet with the rebels in Sutrium. Rushton had gone out of friendship and curiosity, and because a journey to Sutrium was an opportunity to talk to the coercer Domick.
Domick had been changed terribly by his work as our spy within the Councilcourt, for in this role, he had been forced to witness and accept torture and other horrors. He had become strange and remote and had severed himself from his bondmate, the Healer ward Kella. Just before the wintertime, we had received a letter in which he formally withdrew from the Coercer guild and from Obernewtyn, saying he could not accept our new oath of nonviolence. “It would be like a lamb declaring to a pack of savage wolves that he was a pacifist. What do the wolves care!”
Despite his estrangement from us, Domick had continued to send regular messages about matters he uncovered in his spying. I suspected he kept Brydda informed, too, for he had always respected the big rebel. But his messages had grown more and more cryptic.
None of us who had seen Domick in recent times could doubt that he needed healing. He had become a living symbol of what it meant to act against our natures. Rushton intended to bring him back to Obernewtyn, but I did not think Domick would come.
Thinking of Rushton made me feel his absence, despite what I had said to Freya. I missed him, not in the same way as I missed Dameon, but as if I hungered for food or water or some other essential need of life.
Rushton would be amused to hear himself compared to bread or water, and the thought of his laughter assuaged some of my longing for him. He would understand my missing Dameon, for they had been close friends. So much so that Rushton had seemed to understand, far more than I, why Dameon had chosen to remain in Sador when we left to return to Obernewtyn.
I felt a sudden coldness, for the sun had shifted as I sat there. I pulled my shawl about me and resumed my seat by the hearth. Ceirwan had lit a little blaze to warm the chill from the stones, and I added a few sticks of wood. Then I took Dameon’s thick letter and flattened it on my knees, and once again the dry whisper of my fingers over the paper rose into the air.
These Sadorians have memories that go back beyond the Great White. They are not passed on as written words in books but as spoken chants. This is a risky way of saving memories, it seems to me. But Sadorians do not believe the past should be remembered too well. The Temple overguardian says that if it is adored overmuch, the present is deemed less important.
I suspect this philosophy of holding lightly to the past arose from the Sadorians’ own history. Their ancestors came from some distant place called Gadfia, where a savage Lud was worshipped. The Gadfians thought that if they were killed fighting for their Lud, they would be taken directly to dwell with him in splendor. Since there were many of them and they were very poor, I have no doubt heaven often seemed more attractive than life. Perhaps for this reason they held life very cheap. The only reason humans existed was to worship Lud and to force others to worship him, so men were counted important because they were warriors. Women were only the means of getting sons. They were considered much as the unTalents of our Land think of beasts and were owned utterly by the man to whom their father gave them. Daughters were considered worthless except as material for barter or to seal alliances, and many were killed.
Eventually, a group of defiant women and the men who dared aid them fled and journeyed to the desert country where they now dwell. They feared pursuit, so they dwelt as nomads to ensure they could no more be sieged or tracked than could the grains of sand that shift on the side of the desert dunes. I think much of their philosophy of leaving the earth untouched grew out of their fear of being followed. But their beliefs are no less profound for all that. They came to love the desert’s barren emptiness, because there were no marks of human dominance on it.
In the end, it was the Great White that prevented immediate pursuit. The Sadorians think of it almost as the saving of them, because Sador was virtually untouched, though lands on all sides of it were laid waste. Unlike the Land, Sador was completely isolated by Blacklands and mountains and sea. No refugees came there, and they lived untroubled by the outer world. The Sadorians think of that time, which we call the Age of Chaos, as a golden time, but their chants reveal that they suffered internal struggles. They split into tribes, and there were skirmishes and a number of bloody engagements and then something worse. It seems there was a Beforetime weapon of some description, either found by the Sadorians or brought with them when they fled Gadfia, and this was used to devastating effect.
Left alone, the Sadorians may have gone the way of the very Gadfians they had fled. But their isolation was not to last. Eventually, during the one season that the tribes converged on the coast for fishing purposes, they were descended upon by five ships full of Gadfian warriors.
The Sadorians were completely unprepared. Many were killed, mostly men, and over a hundred women stolen. But the invaders had underestimated the Sadorians, for the tribes managed to prevent one of the ships from leaving, and they used this as a pattern to build two of their own. Eventually, the newly united Sadorians took warriors from each tribe and set off in search of the Gadfian settlement. They found the Land at this time, but for months all else they saw was Blacklands, including what had been Gadfia.
The Sadorians at last found small settlements along the coast, separated by Blacklands. A raid was made on one of them, and the Sadorians learned that these settlements were called New Gadfia. The men there were desperate for sons to carry on their holy war, for since the Great White, they had been unable to conceive healthy children—and as a result, they had beaten or stoned their own women to death for imagined offenses against Lud.
Of course, both the men and the women of Gadfia had been afflicted by the poisons of the Great White, so the stolen Sadorian women had also produced deformed babies. Unable to accept that their own monstrous seed was to blame, the men decided that Lud was offended by their use of unbelievers. The Sadorian women who had not been slain must be “instructed” in the faith. The birth of a deformed baby was taken as proof that Lud had rejected the mother. Already, many had been killed along with their poor, misshapen babies.
Horrified, the Sadorians attacked the three largest settlements on three consecutive nights and took them without losing a single person. They tried the leaders before a court of women and carried out executions. The Sadorians continued to plunder the smaller settlements, until they had rescued every last surviving Sadorian, and more women besides, many of whom were pregnant.
They returned to Templeport in triumph almost two years after they had first set out. The gravid wome
n could not travel, and so the cliffs, riddled with caves and tunnels, became the first and only permanent dwelling in Sador. All of the children born of the stolen women were deformed and many died. Those who did not were cared for tenderly and later became the first Temple guardians.
Now I wonder if the slaver Salamander sells human cargo to whoever remains in New Gadfia, for the Sadorians did not destroy all the settlements nor kill all the men. Of course, lacking children, they ought long ago to have died out, but what if they gave up stealing women and bought children instead, to raise as their own? As Gadfians? The thought chills me.
I stopped reading, for a vision of the Farseeker ward, Matthew, rose in my mind. Dameon had been thinking of him as he bent over the page, and a wave of sadness flowed through me. Matthew’s abduction by slavers had been a grievous blow, and my only consolation was that, though I mourned him, he was not dead.
I read on, but to my disappointment, Dameon wrote no more about slavery.
Elspeth, there are times when I am lost in these people and their lives. I work alongside the Temple guardians, caring for the sick, aware of the tragic irony that they themselves are dying slowly. Fian is sometimes shocked to see their deformities, and his emotional reactions tell me some are truly dreadful. I do not see them. I know the guardians only by their gentle hands or soft voices, and so they are fair to me. Fian says that after a little, he cannot see ugliness in them either, but I do not wonder why they keep themselves covered when they move among outsiders. Even now that they have lost interest in Sador, the Herders might be driven by their fear of mutants to force the Council to attack the Earthtemple if they learned the guardians are all deformed. I have still not been able to find out why it is so. Guardians are celibate by choice and so do not bear children, which means the deformities cannot be hereditary.