“Don’t be absurd,” Roland growled impatiently. “To blame yourself for this …”
“Roland, last night the dragon appeared in my dreams and tried to attack me. Maruman was with me, and he deliberately got in the way.”
Roland stared at me. “This cannot go on. Dragon must be taken away from Obernewtyn.”
“It may not be necessary. Maruman said Angina’s music had an effect. I know it didn’t stop Dragon last night, but perhaps, given time …”
“One more night may be all it takes to cause some irretrievable harm.”
“At this stage, I am the only one in danger. Dragon wasn’t attacking Maruman last night. She was after me.” I told him that I would eat firstmeal and then seek out Angina.
He nodded and took his leave, but he stopped at the door. “By the way, Dell said she needed to speak with you today. Or to put it more exactly, she said she had foreseen that she would speak with you today.”
After he had gone, I lifted Maruman gently into my bed. The cat gave a soft buzzing snore, and I rubbed his soft belly and rested my head beside his on my blanket.
Even before I was washed and dressed for firstmeal, dark clouds had blotted out the sun, and the smell of rain was in the air. If the morrow was like this, most of the outdoor events and displays planned for our moon fair would have to be canceled. On top of Dameon’s absence, it was almost too much, and when I reached the kitchens, I saw that I was not alone in thinking so. The tables were surrounded by gloomy expressions.
Spotting Angina next to Miky, I went over to join them. He looked exhausted and downcast. “I feel so bad about Dragon scratching Maruman,” he told me. “I had the beast mesmerized, but then I fell asleep.”
“That is very good news,” I said. “If the dragon attacked only when you stopped playing, we know it can be controlled.”
“We’ve been talking about it,” his sister said eagerly. “Last night, I dreamed Angina was playing his gita beside a big gray wall of stone. The dragon was sitting atop the wall, but after a while, it came and laid on the grass beside him, listening. It was only when the music stopped that it flew away.” She frowned. “I saw Maruman, too.”
“Maruman?” I was startled to think mine were not the only dreams the old cat wandered through.
“He was watching the dragon, too,” the empath explained. “He looked like a big striped cat with queer shining eyes, but I knew it was him the way you do in dreams. He went away before Angina stopped playing.”
“Do you and Angina often dream of each other?”
“We dream next to each other,” Angina said cryptically. Seeing my puzzlement, he went on “I can go into Miky’s dreams if I want, and she into mine. Sometimes we just dream together, but it’s not always easy to tell whether we’re dreaming of one another, or if we’re sharing the dream. Not until we wake up and talk.”
One of the kitchen helpers interrupted us to bring bowls of steaming oatmeal. I poured creamy milk over my oats and added a dollop of honey, wondering what the effect would have been if I had entered the twins’ dream. Would the music have counteracted the creature’s violent response to me, or would the sight of me inflame it enough for it to brush aside the music?
“What do you think of a rota of musicians playing to her constantly?” I asked.
Angina shook his head decisively. “The others might not be able to hold her. I don’t mean to sound conceited, but it’s very difficult. You have to … to reach her somehow, as I’ve done. It’s not just the music.” He paused, and suddenly I thought of the strands I had seen linking his aura to Dragon’s. “Miky and I have talked about it, and we’ve decided it’s best if I keep watch and play my gita. Some others can take turns watching me so I don’t fall asleep, and a healer can draw off a little fatigue if I get too tired.”
“You can’t do that forever,” I said. “You will need to sleep sometime.”
“I will sleep in the daytime,” he answered. “After all, the dragon can’t get into someone’s dream unless they are asleep.”
As I left the kitchen, I debated going the longer way round to the Futuretell wing, under cover, but in the end, I pulled my cloak over my head and ran across the yard. I burst into the futuretellers’ hall at a run, startling a young man and two girls sitting around a frame that hemmed a splendid tapestry.
Each year, the futuretellers made a tapestry depicting a part of our Misfit history and presented it to Obernewtyn at the first moon fair following wintertime. Usually, Rushton unveiled the work and made a speech about our future.
I averted my eyes as the futuretellers covered their work, but I had seen enough to know that they were depicting the Battlegames. I let myself be patted down with a towel and fussed over, trying to recall the names of the embroiderers. The two girls were sisters who had sought refuge with us after being freed from an orphan home by the farseekers scrying out their forbidden Talents, and the young man had been sent to us by Brydda the previous year to save him being dragged to the Councilcourt and sentenced as a dreamer. His mother had begged the rebel leader’s help.
Valda! His name came to me at the same time as the memory of gossip that he was paying court to Rosamunde, who had once loved my brother, Jes.
Like many condemned to Obernewtyn in the old days, Rosamunde was unTalented, but her association with Jes had cast enough suspicion on her to have her tried by the Councilcourt. Since then, she had always regarded me with hostility. I was never sure whether she saw Jes in me and it pained her, or if she hated me for meddling with her mind when we were both at the Kinraide orphan home. To my surprise, she had elected to stay on after Rushton took over Obernewtyn. To begin with, she had worked in the kitchens, but now she dwelt in the Futuretell demesnes.
The three futuretellers were regarding me with the discomfiting intensity of their kind.
“Maryon said to ask you to go up when you arrived,” Valda said.
Repressing a flash of irritation, I thanked them and made my way up a flight of stone steps to the guildmistress’s turret room. But when the door opened, it was Dell who looked out at me. She said that she had just brewed choca, and, cheered by this, I allowed myself to be ushered into the turret room that was a mirror image of my own.
“It is not often you come here, ElspethInnle,” Dell said.
I was startled at her use of this form of my name but decided to make nothing of it. “Roland said you wanted to see me.”
“Did he say that?” She smiled, a slow quirk of the lips. “Well, it is true in any case. We have a gift for you.”
“A gift for me? But why?”
“Does there need to be a reason fer a giftin’? Can it nowt simply be of itself?” Maryon asked, gliding from behind the stone wall that divided the chamber.
“A gift can be for no reason, I suppose, but seldom are they, or so I have found.”
Dell’s smile deepened, but Maryon’s face remained gravely courteous. “Nevertheless, our gift is fer no reason other than that it pleases us.” She reached for a basket under the table and drew from it an astonishing swatch of red-dyed heavy silk of the sort lately shipped from Sador. I was coerced by its loveliness to stroke it.
“We procured it last year and embroidered it throughout this winter just past,” Dell said. “Only yesterday did we finally sew the fringing on.”
As she spoke, they spread it out, and I saw that it was a shawl worked in silken thread. Here and there, mirror beads and glass balls glimmered like sunlight dancing on water. But it was the design that thrilled me more than the exquisite fabric, for it featured a multitude of intertwined beasts. A tyger with flaring eyes, a rearing black horse and a small pony, a dark dog and a white one, three silver-eyed wolves, and, most astonishing, a dragon hovering over all the rest. The fringe was long and moss-green, and this color found an echo in the delicate subtheme of interwoven leaves behind the beasts.
“It … it is the most lovely thing I have ever seen,” I whispered, overwhelmed.
“Th’ des
ign came to me in a trance,” Maryon said, and even now, the remoteness in her tone stopped me from expressing the warmth her gift deserved.
Yet this gift did not serve life’s purpose and could come only out of some specific individual wish to please me. I did not understand and admitted to myself that knowing Maryon’s past did not truly explain her nature. I watched her fold the shawl with graceful economy that reflected her desire to have no gush. She restored the lovely thing to the basket, saying offhandedly that her people had also made me a moon-fair dress and slippers to complement the shawl, and they were in the basket as well.
“I thank you, Maryon, and all who had a hand in this magnificent gift. It is a work of art whose skill even the Twentyfamilies must envy,” I said, determined to thank her properly, even if it had to be very formal.
Maryon inclined her head and then nodded to Dell, who poured choca into three small silver goblets. Taking one, I asked how she had fared in her night vigil over Dragon.
“You know about Maruman being wounded, of course,” Dell said, handing one of the goblets to her mistress. “And of Miky’s dream of the beast listening to the music?” I nodded. “Then you know everything.”
“You didn’t dream anything yourself, then?”
Her eyes flickered, but she said, “I regret sleeping very much. I made the mistake of forgetting how powerful Angina’s ability is to empathise through music; his gentleness is the secret of his strength.”
“You didn’t dream, then?” I persisted.
“Well, I did,” she admitted with the faintest irritation. She turned to her guildmistress, who nodded. I felt a pang of alarm and wished suddenly that I had not been so insistent. “I dreamed of you, ElspethInnle. I saw you walking with a great horde of animals into the deepest Blacklands.”
I could not think of a thing to say.
“It is clear to Dell an’ I, at least, that yer truly th’ Innle th’ beasts tell of in their stories,” Maryon said with a certainty that was all the more devastating because it was so casually put. “Ye need nowt fear we will speak of it, nor question ye about it, fer there is a deep and needful silence laid about this matter.”
I made myself sip the choca, though I was too rattled to taste it. The silence between us lengthened, and I cast about for a change of subject. “Have any of your guild seen whether Dragon will wake?” I had never dared ask this before so bluntly.
Instead of speaking, Maryon reached under the table and withdrew a rolled cloth. She opened it to reveal an elaborate dreamscape and pointed to a small, irregular blue shape. “This represents the sum of dreams within which Dragon wakes, but in every one of them, th’ dreamer has nowt been able to say how th’ child is when she wakens.”
“You’re saying she will definitely wake, but you don’t know if she’ll be defective.…”
“Nor how long before she wakens,” Dell elaborated. “But you might be pleased to know that a lot of our people have been seeing Matthew as they delve.”
“Futuretellings?” I asked.
“Most of the seein’s of Matthew were memory dreams,” the Futuretell guildmistress said. “Th’ rest might be true seein’. They correspond in detail. Yer welcome to read our dream journal if you wish. But what Dell has nowt told ye is that in almost all the dreams where Matthew appeared, Dragon—or rather her dragon beast self—swoops an’ tears Matthew to pieces. Of course, it’s a dream manikin she destroys, but it shows all too vividly that he rouses in her th’ same violent rage as ye do.
“Th’ other thing to consider is that none of us dreamed of th’ lad until Dragon fell into her coma. This suggests she is somehow responsible fer th’ dreams, or for somehow openin’ a connection between us an’ him.”
“I should like to read your dream journal. May I take it now?” I asked eagerly, wondering if it would be possible to deliberately reach Matthew using the dreamtrails.
“You could not carry it alone,” Dell said. “I will have two of our lads bring it to your chamber when the skies clear.”
As I departed, I glanced over at the window, where rain continued to fall hard. The drumming roar of it seemed constant, for all Dell’s certainty that it would abate.
12
“IT IS BEAUTIFUL here,” Straaka said, turning in his saddle to look back at the mountains through a gap in the trees. Wan afternoon sunlight poked through the tattered edges of fraying storm clouds, giving the Sadorian’s skin the gleam of old wood polished to blue-black with beeswax. His eyes had a rich amber glow within the brown and were fringed by very long lashes.
I was aware for the first time that Miryum’s suitor was an attractive man measured by any standard. Miryum must have felt this, and I thought again of her hesitation before she had announced her decision to reject him.
“It rains so cursed much, my mount is hard-pressed to keep her footing,” Jakoby growled from behind. “Never would I have thought to hear myself complain about rain, but by the Earth goddess, this is a sodden land!”
“I think you would like it even less in the wintertime, when the ground is hard as stone under layers of snow,” I said, slowing Gahltha to let her draw alongside. “This soft, wet land has its harsh face, too.”
The tribeswoman grinned at me. “Like its people?”
I smiled and transferred my gaze to the sky, willing the clouds to depart entirely rather than massing again before morning. It was not so much the wet ground that troubled me as the thought of the moon fair being washed out.
Without warning, Gahltha moved into a slow trot, and I adjusted my seat to the motion. He and the Sadorians had been ready and waiting to go when I arrived on the farms, which meant we would be able to reach the Teknoguild cave network in daylight. It was a rare occasion, the guild opting for a formal meal in honor of the Sadorian guests—usually they stopped working only long enough to have a hasty bit of this or that.
But, in fact, research was on my mind at least. Fian was my best hope for translating Kasanda’s writing from gadi. Hoping to avoid awkward questions about what exactly I’d based a rubbing on, I’d transcribed the text, making a careful copy by hand.
We passed into a dip containing a thicker belt of trees. Their leaves were still small and pale enough to let the sun through, and it seemed to give a shimmer to every wet leaf. I thought for the thousandth time how much I loved the mountain valley that had become my home and refuge. As always after rain, the world seemed fresh and sharp-edged. Rushton loved the forest after rain, too, and we had taken many wandering walks together when we could steal the time.
Bruna urged her mount forward to speak in a low voice to her mother. I found myself pondering her passion for Bodera’s son, Dardelan. Could such a violent desire become real love and affection? It was as if a lamb were loved by a wolf. But perhaps she was not all wolf, nor Dardelan all lamb, despite his gentleness.
Straaka’s horse floundered slightly in yet another boggy patch on the trail, and the other horses fell back to give it room to find its feet. As we waited for the others to catch up, I asked Jakoby’s horse Calcasuus how he liked the Land.
“Green/wet lands seek the sky, ElspethInnle,” he responded.
“Slippery/high/climbing lands lead to the freerunning barud,” Straaka’s horse suggested as he joined us.
“Our barud is the freerunning land,” sent Bruna’s fiery, high-stepping mare, Domina. I thought in this case that mount and rider were certainly matched in temperament.
“Funaga dwell in our barud and in this barud. The freerunning-barud-ha will not be ruled by them,” Calcasuus sent, his long-fringed eyes mild. Ha was an obscure thoughtsymbol that suggested reverence for the subject to which it was attached.
“It is good that the drylands are free, for not all beasts will follow Innle to the barud-ha,” Gahltha observed.
“Some beasts will remain. All roads lead to different barud,” Calcasuus agreed.
“But only one path will lead to the barud-ha,” Gahltha sent softly.
Chilled by the
ir certainty of my future course, I was glad when we reached a straight, firm stretch of the path, and Bruna announced that Domina desired to canter. I thought it unwise for the desert-bred equines to go so fast over unfamiliar ground, but despite some close calls and wild skids, no horse fell or lost its rider. The sun was nigh to setting when we came to the fold in the low granite hills swelling out of the earth that marked the Teknoguild caves. There was a new mosaic around the entrance we were approaching, glinting with pieces of mirror and green and blue glass. I was somewhat surprised, for teknoguilders were inclined to the functional.
As we dismounted, Fian emerged to welcome us. With him were two young teknoguilder boys with beastspeaking abilities, both eager to tend the horses. I stroked Gahltha’s flank fondly, noting the devotion with which the Sadorians examined the hooves of their horses for stones. Once they were done, I suggested we go inside and leave the Teknoguild lads to feed the horses. The others agreed, but Bruna would let no one else attend Domina. She bade us go in, saying that she would come along when she was finished.
We were not many steps into the tunnel before daylight faded, and our way was lit by bottled bulbs of glowing insects hung from potmetal hooks imbedded in the walls. When Jakoby expressed her curiosity about them, Fian explained that the Teknoguilden Jak had smeared the inside of the bulbs with a substance that attracted the insects. The creatures were quite free to escape, but there was no reason for them to do so. They had very short lives—a few brief months to make the journey from larvae to death. Not wanting to disrupt their life cycle, the teknoguilders had elected not to plug the dribbles of slimy water in any of the tunnels connecting various parts of the cave network, for the dampness was an essential part of the insects’ habitat.
Fian was obviously well at ease with the tribesfolk, and conversation flowed easily between them. The Sadorians were more formal with me, though that might simply have been because of my position as temporary leader of the Misfits. When the tunnel narrowed, Straaka fell in beside me. A split second before he spoke, I caught a flow of subconscious thought that told me he wanted to ask about Miryum.