“I told you that not all of the rebels were like Malik,” I said.
“Perhaps not, but in my deepest self, I doubt life for gypsies or Misfits will differ greatly under these rebels. People do not easily relinquish their scapegoats, for if they accept us, who will they blame for their misfortunes?”
I shrugged. “I have to hope change is possible; otherwise, why strive at all? But change won’t come easily, and maybe there will always be some places it is better not to go. Yet I think you will find that some areas do change, depending on which rebel rules them. If Dardelan runs Sutrium, as I think he will, gypsies and Misfits will receive fair treatment there.”
“Better to continue to live warily everywhere,” Swallow said.
Iriny interrupted to give Dameon and me platters laden with spiced vegetables and covered in a delicious-smelling sauce. I was feeling almost dizzy with hunger. The divers had spoken of their appetite after dives, and I marveled that my own, shorter immersion had the same effect.
One of the other gypsies came up to speak with Swallow, and between mouthfuls, I took the opportunity to ask Dameon where Gavyn was.
“He went trailing after Darius hours ago,” the Empath guildmaster said. “He seemed quite drawn to the old man.”
“What did Darius make of the boy?”
“He did not say, but they went off together to where the horses are grazing. Rasial went, too. ‘Following Gavyn like a pale shadow’ was how Zarak described it.” The empath shook his head. “It is a curious thing, but there are times when I cannot tell the boy apart from Rasial. It is understandable in Rasial’s case, for my beast empathy is very slight. But I have the same opaque sense of Gavyn.…” He trailed off, clearly troubled by his inability to express himself more accurately. “His … affinity with animals has nothing to do with Talent. It is as if he aligns with them somehow, as if he is not quite human.”
“These Talents your people have,” Swallow said, having heard the last words. “I am interested to know more about them, for as you know, my people also have abilities not possessed by ordinary folk.”
“Your people can futuretell,” I said.
He nodded. “They can, though we call it seering. And we can scry out truth and lies when people speak.”
“Truly?” Dameon murmured.
Swallow smiled in his wicked way. “Well, it’s more of a trick than a Talent. We have learned how to see and read the patterns of energy that hover about all things. One can read many things in the fluctuations of pattern and color as a person speaks. Seeing is the easy part, though. Anyone could be trained to it, I think. The real ability lies in learning to read and interpret, and that’s a lot of long, hard work.”
Auras, I thought incredulously. Surely he was speaking of seeing auras with his ordinary eyes.
“What else can your people do?” Roland asked. He had been standing, but now he brought a stool and came closer.
Swallow frowned. “Naught but those two things and healing, although we have an affinity for beasts. But I think that rises from our love of and our respect for them. We cannot beastspeak.”
Roland explained that only some Misfits knew how to beastspeak but that all of us could communicate with animals using a form of signal language. Swallow grew excited at this, and for a time, the conversation centered on Brydda and his fingerspeech.
Someone came to refill our plates and pour mugs of ale. I asked for water, though, ever preferring to have my wits solidly about me. Swallow tossed back a deep draft and said that he would like to learn the signal language but that his people would be on the move within the next few days.
“There are matters that must be attended to on the west coast,” he said.
“But you can’t get to the west,” Roland objected. “The whole of the Suggredoon from the coast to the Blacklands will be guarded on this side by rebels and on the other by soldierguards.”
“The best guards are slack from time to time.”
“If you’re determined, you’d best speak to Dardelan,” I said. “The rebel guards this side are like to think you a spy if you are caught trying to sneak by them.”
“I don’t doubt we can elude clumsy Landfolk, but maybe I will speak to this young rebel. I’d like to get his measure.”
“How will you get across the water?” Roland demanded. “A boat of any kind would make you an easy target, and you could not swim, for the water is poisonous.”
Garth said, “Well, you could swim in tainted water with a diving suit, if you could keep your head out.”
Everyone stared at the Teknoguildmaster.
“Are you telling me diving suits would protect a person from being poisoned?” I asked.
“For a limited time, if it were completely sealed and thick enough, yes.”
“Brydda would be interested in this,” Roland said.
“I am interested,” Swallow said with an imperious flash of his dark eyes. He looked at me. “You said before that you were in our debt. I would take one of these suits as fair discharge of that debt.”
“You don’t understand,” Garth spluttered. “I do not have such a suit just lying about. It would have to be made and tested. That would take time.”
“I am a patient man,” Swallow said, his saturnine features alight with purpose. “I will send someone to collect it once it is ready.”
“This is madness,” Roland said.
“Sometimes success demands a certain refined insanity,” the gypsy responded.
A sudden burst of music made further discussion impossible. The gypsy musicians had finished their meal, and their first song was greeted by laughter and clapping from gypsies and Misfits alike. In no time, men and women were up dancing in the wild gypsy style. I saw Zadia hauled to her feet by one of the halfbreeds, and even Roland was drawn into the dance by a Twentyfamilies girl with a bewitching smile.
At length, everyone had risen, leaving me alone with Swallow.
“Will you dance?” he asked, holding out his hand.
Rushton’s face rose in my memory, asking the same thing, and I shook my head. “I am not truly in the mood for dancing. But if you could bear a walk, I would like to see the monument your people have been constructing. I understand your camp is not far.…”
“It is being constructed within the cul-de-sac, but that is not more than an hour’s walk, if you are willing.”
The rollicking music faded into the sounds of the night as we left the merry campfire scene behind. We walked some way without speaking; then I said, “This Red Queen’s country—do your people have maps of the journey from there to here?”
“There was never any map. The D’rekta led us here by her visions.”
“What about a diary?”
“There is no written record, but there were songs. Some of the old people might recall the words.”
“Perhaps when you come for the suit, you could bring me the words of these songs.”
He looked at me. “You need no map to find the Red Queen’s land, if you are meant to find it,” he said.
I blinked at him. “You really believe that no matter what you or I do or don’t do, we will end up where we need to be?”
He nodded without hesitation.
I sighed. “I have never found it easy to give myself into the hands of fate.”
“I do not think it is a matter of giving,” Swallow said. “I see fate as more of a ruthless tyrant than a gentle supplicant.”
“You think we have no choice?”
“I think our choices are irrelevant. I also think that only a fool would try to pit his or her puny human will against fate.” His expression became more serious. “But even if it were possible, I would not fight my fate in this. It would be to turn my back on the ancient promises and to spurn everything that my life has meant, for I am as I am because of the D’rekta’s vision. Because of my obedience to it.”
I realized the conversation was beginning to loop uselessly back on itself, and I wondered why I persisted in try
ing to get Swallow to name the ancient promises. I was more than certain that his D’rekta’s vision dealt with my quest to locate and disarm the weaponmachines, and the ancient promises were no more than a means to protect the signs and portents she had left for me—the Seeker.
“What will you do now?” Swallow asked.
I shrugged, suddenly dejected. “Return to Obernewtyn and hope that Roland has learned enough from your Darius to help Rushton,” I said. “Wait for news from the west and also from the rebels.” I gave him a straight look. “As to the rest, we shall see.”
“It is better not to speak of matters that involve fate,” Swallow agreed. “Our old people say that to do so is like discussing the affairs of the wind. I will send Darius with you tomorrow, if you like. Aside from helping your Rushton if he can, he could learn this beast fingerspeech you spoke of earlier.” Now his voice was businesslike rather than fey, and he was every bit the leader of his people.
All at once, we came upon the track leading into the cul-de-sac. I followed Swallow wordlessly and drew in my breath when we came to it. Fresh burial mounds were limned silver in the moonlight.
“There,” Swallow said, pointing to a pale pillar at the end of the mounds. It reminded me eerily of a Beforetime column that stood on the way from the Kinraide orphan home to the Silent Vale and had always caused our Herder escort to gibber prayers and make fierce warding-off signs. I went closer to read the lettering and realized the stone was finely carved into an intricate stylization of fire.
“It is beautiful,” I murmured, noticing despite myself that the work owed much to Kasanda’s style.
“It is fitting that their deaths should be marked,” Swallow said.
I read through the list of names again, noting that the soldierguards had been listed as well. No doubt their names had been scribed on the small silver tags they wore on chains about their necks.
“Let us return,” Swallow said after some time.
That night, I dreamed I was back in the dark foyer with the glass monument, only this time the statue contained the faces of Selmar and Cameo, Matthew and Dragon, Jik and Pavo, all wound dementedly together. The severed head was Rushton’s, and it lay at the top of the steps. I tried to pick it up, but as my hands closed around it, I found it was all jagged edges. I gasped and drew back, my palms covered in blood. Without warning, an inexorable flood of water swept the severed head from my sight. I struggled against the onrush, groping for the head, somehow knowing that unless I could find it and restore it to the monument, Rushton would be lost to me, like all of the others.
32
“HIS MIND IS gone,” Darius said decisively. “I cannot help him.”
I stared at the hunchback in disbelief. “What do you mean? He has been drugged to madness, but—”
He shook his head. “He is not mad. I could help him if he were. His mind—his spirit—is gone. There is nothing to work with but flesh, and that is not sickened.”
I looked at Rushton lying in the bed between us. His face was calm, and his chest rose and fell smoothly. He looked as if he had simply fallen asleep. I had a mad urge to kiss him on the lips.
“When we left Sutrium, he was having fits, raving and frothing at the mouth,” Kella said. “Someone without a mind does not rave.”
“That is true,” Darius said. “But if he was mad when you left Sutrium, then something further has happened since he has been here.”
“He came out of the sleepseal late last night, but instead of waking, he has lain like this ever since,” Kella said. “Just like Dragon.”
Darius asked curiously what a sleepseal was, and Roland explained. They were too calm. I could feel myself beginning to shake, when Kella gave me a look of profound pity and sorrow.
“I am afraid I can do nothing,” Darius said again. “But this Dragon you mention; she is the comatose girl whose restless spirit torments your dreams?”
“Her mind went into a passive state last night, so there is not much for you to examine,” Kella said softly. “It seems to go in cycles, running from this state to some sort of powerful agitation. That’s when she troubles our minds.”
“I should like to look at her, just the same.”
Roland nodded to Kella, who led the old gypsy from the tiny chamber. The Healer guildmaster made to follow them; then he hesitated and returned to press my shoulder. “Elspeth, don’t take this too much to heart. Darius is a healer of beasts, after all. Perhaps he is wrong.”
“Rushton lives,” I muttered. “If he lives, he can be healed.”
Roland sighed and said that he would return later. Left alone, I sank to the floor at the side of the bed and laid my hand on Rushton’s cheek. He did not stir, and though his skin was warm, there was a waxen lifelessness to it.
“My love, don’t leave me,” I whispered, and tears I had not felt gather spilled down my cheeks.
Later, I heard Roland and Kella speaking outside the door.
“Let her stay with him until it’s over,” I heard the Healer guildmaster say in a voice roughened with sadness. “Darius says a body cannot live long when its mind is gone.”
I wept until there were no more tears in me, only a rusty kind of dryness. Then I whispered into Rushton’s deaf ears all the thousand endearments I had been too shy or stubborn to say to him in life. It seemed that I had withheld the deepest part of my love from him, giving only what mean crumbs I had felt I could dispense with. I had been a miser, taking all that he lavished and giving little in return.
When sleep stole me from his side, I dreamed again of the city under Tor. I was swimming through the murk, searching for Rushton. I knew he was trapped somewhere under the rubble, and if I did not find him quickly, he would suffocate. But the harder I swam, the more slowly I moved, and the submarine foliage seemed to clutch at me with flabby fingers. Then a swift current caught hold of me, and I was propelled upward. I came suddenly to the water’s surface, but I had not reached the outside. I had come up inside a cave.
Dragging myself from the water, shivering and gasping, I struggled to my feet. The only source of light was the ghostly glow of the insects clustered on the walls. It was enough to illuminate several tunnels leading from the cave.
I chose one at random. Some way into it, I heard a noise and stopped to listen. It was the sound of water dripping into water.
“No!” I cried. “I can’t be here. I have to find Rushton!”
I turned back, but the tunnel behind me had become a great, carved niche, and within it stood a stuffed Agyllian bird. Not Atthis, as in the old nightmare, but the smaller Beforetime equivalent I had seen in my dream of Cassy.
“I made no promises to you,” I said in a weak, sullen voice that shamed me.
The light around me faded until I was standing in darkness.
“You are the promise,” a voice whispered into my mind. “You are the end of all the promises.”
“What of my promises?” I cried.
Then a familiar mindvoice called my name.
“Come, ElsepthInnle,” Maruman sent. “There is not much time.”
I woke to find myself slumped over Rushton’s bed in the healing hall. Sitting up, I saw that Maruman was crouched on Rushton’s chest and peering intently up at me. His single eye flared brilliantly in the candlelight.
My heart seized in terror. “Is he …?”
“He lives,” Maruman sent calmly. “But Rushtonmind far from here.”
I gaped at the old cat. “Wh-what? They said his mind was gone.”
“Rushtonmind hurt. Fled to dreamtrails. Did not know where belonging. Could not return to flesh.”
“I will travel the dreamtrails and bring his mind back!” I cried, springing to my feet.
“Rushtonmind no longer on dreamtrails. Is with Mornirdragon.”
“With Dragon? I don’t understand.”
“Mornirdragon took Rushtonmind beyond gray fortress wall.”
“She what?”
“ElspethInnle must follow.” r />
“But … you said before that I shouldn’t do that.”
“OldOnes say ElspethInnle must go beyond gray fortress wall. Summoned ElspethInnle from lowlands for this journeying/signseeking.”
“Signseeking?”
“Sign! What else?” Maruman demanded irritably.
Was it possible the glass monument under Tor had not been the sign I was summoned from Sutrium to see? I had no doubt that the glass statue had been created by Kasanda who was both Cassy and the first gypsy D’rekta. So what was the statue if not a sign?
Unless it was one of the other signs?
“But I thought …” I stopped, remembering Kasanda’s enigmatic words.
That which will [open/access/reach] the darkest door lies where the [?] [waits/sleeps]. Strange is the keeping place of this dreadful [step/sign/thing], and all who knew it are dead save one who does not know what she knows. Seek her past. Only through her may you go where you have never been and must someday go. Danger. Beware. Dragon.
The words had fit the glass statue, but incredibly, they also fit the current situation. Dragon’s mind was the strange keeping place for the sign. Her lost memory contained something that I needed for my quest.
“Must go,” Maruman sent firmly. “Search for Rushtonmind will bring ElspethInnle to Mornirdragon for signseeking.”
I understood all too clearly from this what he did not say: that bringing Rushton back was not the point. That he was irrelevant.
“Did the oldOnes say how I get back?”
Maruman chilled me by ignoring this. “Marumanyelloweyes will come,” he sent.
I opened my mouth and then closed it. I wanted to argue with him. He was my dearest friend, but he was also an implacable guardian of my sworn quest, and maybe his presence would tip the balance in my favor. That he would not speak of returning revealed how dangerous this journey was. If I failed to return, Rushton, Maruman, and probably Dragon would die; and because I would die, too, then the world would fall to the Destroyer.