Elii urged us again to hurry if we did not want to spend a night in the Weirwood. We entered the ravine gingerly and descended the slippery steps fearfully. By the time we reached the bottom, I was numb with the cold' and we huddled together at the foot of the steps, afraid to move where we could not see. Moments passed and the sun reached its zenith, piercing the damp mists that filled the ravine and lighting up the Vale.
It was much wider at the base, and unexpectedly, there were trees growing, though they were stunted and diseased, with few leaves. A thick whitish moss covered the ground and some of the. walls in a dense carpet, while the walls of the ravine exposed were scored and charred, possibly marked by the fire said to have rained from the skies during the first days of the holocaust. A faint charred stench still filled the air.
Elii handed out the gloves and bags for gathering the whitestick, instructing us needlessly to be quick and careful, never letting the substance touch our skins. Pulling on the slippery gloves, we spread out and set to work, searching for the telltale black nodules that concealed the deposits of whitestick.
The bags were only small, but took time to fill because the substance crumbled to dust if not handled carefully. Standing to ease my aching back once I had finished, I noticed that I had wandered out of sight of everyone else. I could hear nothing, though the others must be quite near. I had noticed at once the aptly named Vale was oddly silent, but now it struck me anew how unnatural that silence was, and how complete. Even the wind made no murmur. It was as if a special kind of death had come to the Silent Vale.
"Are you finished?" Rosamunde asked, apologizing when I jumped in fright. "This place is enough to give even a soldierguard a taste of the horrors. Do you notice how quiet it is, as though everything we say is absorbed?"
I nodded, thinking how all the places where whitestick was mined had the same aberrant feel.
Returning to where some of the others had gathered around the steps, we heard voices from somewhere near.
"What do they use this stuff for anyway?" one asked.
"Medicines and such, or so they say," said another voice with a bitter edge. It was the voice of the outspoken girl marked with Herder red. "But I have heard rumors the priests use it to make special poisons, and to torture their prisoners for information," she added softly.
Rosamunde looked at me in horror, but we said nothing. I was no informer and I did not think Rosamunde was. But that girl was bent on disaster, and she would take anyone with her stupid enough not to see the danger. Better to forget what we had overheard.
I left Rosamunde with the others, going to examine a deep fissure I had spotted in the ground. The Great White had savaged the eardi and there were many such holes and chasms leading deep into the ground. I bent and looked in and a chill air seemed to strike at my face from those black depths.
Impulsively, I picked up a rock and dropped it in. My heart beat many times before I heard die faint sound of impact. It echoed in the Vale.
"What was that?" cried the Herder, who had been packing the bags of whitestick.
Elii strode purposefully over. "Idiot of a girl. This is a serious place, not the garden at Kinraide. Throw yourself in next time and make me happy." I looked at my feet with a fast-beating heart. That was twice now I had called attention to myself and that was dangerous. Suddenly there was a vague murmur from the ground beneath our feet.
"What was that?" the Herder cried again, edging closer to the steps.
"I don't know," Elii said with a frown. "Probably nothing but I don't like it. We are not far from the Blacklands. Come, the sun is going." The Herder, who came last, kept looking behind him fearfully as if he expected something to reach out and grab him.
An air of relief came over the group as we threw off the oppressive air of the Vale. Fortunately we had gathered enough whitestick and we made good time on our return, reaching Kinraide early in the evening.
To my private astonishment, Jes was among those who met us, and he wore the beaten potmetal armband of a Herders' assistant.
II
"Elspeth?"
It was Jes, and I willed him to go away. He knocked again, then stuck his head around the door. "How are you?" he asked with a hint of disapproval. Anger overcame caution.
"For Lud's sake, Jes, they're not going to condemn me because of a headache. If you think it looks suspicious, then why don't you report me," I retorted, staring pointedly at his armband.
He whitened and shut the door behind him. "Keep your voice down. There are people outside."
I bit my lip and forced myself to be calm. "What do you want?" I asked him coldly. I knew I was being stupid but I didn't care. Jes was the only one I could strike out at. And that, I thought, looking at his stiff face, was becoming increasingly dangerous.
"Maybe you, don't care about being burned but I do. Much as you scorn it, caution has kept us safe until now. No thanks to you," he added, and I was bitterly reminded that our plight was my fault. "A headache is nothing, but you know how little things are blown out of all proportion. It is a short step from gossip to the Councilcourt in Sutrium."
"You have been made an assistant," I said flatly and now he reddened, A look of pride mingled with shame came over his face.
"How could you?"' I asked him bleakly.
He clenched his jaw. "You will not ruin this for me," he said at last. "You are my sister. It is my sin that I do not denounce you."
"You would not dare denounce me," I said. "Your own life would be ruined if it was known you had a Misfit for a sister. Don't pretend you care for me."
A queer flicker passed over his face and I suddenly felt certain that this was the truth. When he had gone I lay back, my head aching dully, partly from tension.
For all my bravado, I was afraid of Jes. There had been a time when we were close. Not so much when we were young, for he had been a dutiful son and I too much of a wanderer to please anyone except my beloved mother, but after we had come into the orphan home system following the trial and execution of our parents, we had clung to each other. Jes had vowed then to have revenge on the Council and the Herder Faction for their evil work that day. He had wiped my eyes and sworn to protect me.
He had not known what that would entail. Neither of us had realized that I was more than the daughter of a Seditioner. Our remote childhood in Rangorn had kept us innocent of the knowledge that would come later. In those first years, we regarded our secretive behavior as a game. It was only as we grew older that we became increasingly aware of the dangers. Discovering the truth about myself made me more solitary than ever, while Jes developed a near obsession with caution. In those days his one desire had been to get a Normalcy Certificate and get out, then ask permission to have me with him. But somehow we had drifted apart, till the bonds that held us were fragile indeed. I knew Jes had become fascinated with the Herder Faction and its ideas. But as an orphan he would never be accepted into the cloister, so I had thought little of it. I could not understand why he was interested.
The feet that he had now been made an assistant drove yet another wedge between us, for I still believed the Herders and the Council to be the murderers of my parents.
Recently we had fought bitterly over his explanations for why the Herders had burned our parents. I called him a traitor and a dogmatic fool; in his turn he had called me a Misfit. That he would even say the word revealed how much he had changed.
Since then we had maintained an uneasy truce. He said nothing of my secret and I had spoken no more than was necessary to him. Lately I had seen him watching me, with a look so bright and alien that I was chilled. Those looks might have meant nothing, but instinct warned me to beware.
People thought my headaches were the result of my fall on the path to the Silent Vale that day. When I had cried out in the night, the guardians came to hear of it. I told them of the fall because I did not want them to speculate, and had been given light duties and some bitter powders by the Herder.
At first I told myself the headaches were
simply a reaction to a change in the weather, for winds from the Blacklands did cause fevers and rashes. But deep down I knew they had nothing to do with either the fall or the weather.
I shook my head and decided to go for a walk in the garden. Perhaps Maruman would be back. I had missed his gruff company.
I slipped out a side door into the fading sunset. Jes had called me a Misfit, and according to Council lore, that was what I was. But I did not feel like a monster. In a queer mental leap I thought about my first visit with my father to the great city of Sutrium. In my mind it seemed we must have gone all that way just for the fabulous Sutrium moon fair. Everyone who could walk, hobble, or ride seemed to be on the road to the biggest town in the land, bringing with them hay, wool, embroidery, honey, perfume, and a hundred other things to trade. They had come from Saithwold, Sawlney, Port Oran, Morganna, and even Aborium and Murmroth.
I had not known then that Sutrium was also the home of the main Councilcourt. That I had discovered on my grim second visit. There had been no fair this time. It was wintertime and the city was gray and cold. There were no gay crowds filling the streets, only a few furtive looks from people as we passed in the open carriage, our faces stinging from the red dye. We had not known then that Henry Druid had only recently disappeared, fleeing the wrath of the Council, and that the entire community was fearful of the consequences, since many had known and openly agreed with the rebel. But what I did understand, even then, was the hatred and fear in the faces of the people who looked at us. I felt then the terror of being different that has never left me.
Shuddering, I thrust the grim memory away. Ludwill-ing, I would never see such looks again.
The time of Changing was near and I sighed, thinking it would be better for us both if Jes and I were sent this time to separate homes. The Herder told us the custom of moving orphans around regularly from home to home had arisen to prevent the friendships forming that could not be continued once leaving the homes, but it was widely accepted that the Changing was engineered to prevent alliances between the children of Seditioners, which might lead to further trouble. But there was another effect evident only when the time for the Changing approached. No one knew where they might go, and whom they might trust in the new home.
Even before the relocation, we learned to prepare mentally, withdrawing and preparing for the loneliness that must come until the new home was familiar, until it was possible to tell who could be trusted and who were the informers. Those who had before been friends, now became aloof and even slightly suspicious of one another.
I looked up. It was growing dark and soon I would have to go in. Fortunately, no one minded me wandering in the garden even on the coldest of days, but I never stayed out beyond nightfall—those dark hours belonged to the spirits of the Beforetime. I leaned against a statue of the founder of Kinraide. Here I was hidden from the windows by a big laurel tree and it was my favorite place.
The moon had risen early and the rapidly darkening sky made it glow. I frowned and an unnatural weakness coursed through me. I felt a sticky sweat break out on my forehead and thought I was going to faint. The pain in my head made me stagger to my knees.
I tried to force the vision not to come, but it was impossible. I stared up at the moon, which had become a penetrating yellow eye. I knew that eye sought me, and felt a scream rise within me.
Then abruptly there was only the pale moon, and I shivered violently and stood up. I would not let myself wonder about the vision or the others that had preceded it. Jes had told me long ago, when we could still talk of such things, that only Herders were permitted visions. "You must not imagine that you have them," he had said.
But I did not imagine them, either then or now, I thought, and walked shakily back across the garden. Those premonitions were warnings. I always had such visions. Yet, though I did not try to understand what they meant, a few days later the meaning forced itself on me.
III
Maruman confirmed it in the end.
It had been a cold year despite the sometimes muggy days that came whenever the wind blew in from the Blacklands. Most often even spring days were bitten with pale, frosted skies stretching away to the north and south, and over the seas to the icy poles of the legends.
Sometimes in the late afternoon I would sit and imagine the color fading out to where there, is no color at all, as if the Great White again filled the skies, its lethal radiance leaching the natural blue. But unlike that age of terror when night was banished for days on end, I fancied that region would be permanently frozen into the white world of wintertime, the sea afloat with giant towers of ice such as those in the stories my mother had told.
"Stories!" Maruman snorted as he came up, having overheard the last of my thoughts. I smiled at him as he joined me beside the statue of the founder. I scratched his stomach, and he rolled about and stretched with familiar abandon.
He was not a pretty cat nor a pampered one. He had a battered head and a torn ear, and his wild eyes were of a fierce amber hue. He once told me he had fought a village dog over a bone and that the hound had cheated by biting him on the head.
"Never can trust them pap-fed funaga lovers," he observed disdainfully. Funaga was the thought symbol he used for men and women. "I'd no sooner trust a wild one any time; they'd bite me in half at one go."
Maruman possessed a dramatic and fanciful imagination. Perhaps that old war injury was to blame. It seemed to trouble him a good deal, though he never referred to. it. Occasionally his thoughts would become muddled and disturbed. During those periods he could dream very vividly. Shortly after we had begun to communicate, he had undergone such a fit, only to tell me that one day the mountains would seek me. I had laughed because it was such a strange image.
Another time he confessed a Guanette bird had told him his destiny was twined with mine. This bird was a rather obscure symbol that appeared to have risen since the holocaust, representing an oraclelike wisdom or a preordained order of things, themselves archaic symbols from the Oldtime. The odd thing about the Guanette bird was the lack of origin for the legends surrounding it, and the whole meaning and reason behind the myths was a subject favored among scholars. In fact, there was such a bird, but it was said to be almost if not completely extinct. Maruman quite often attributed his insights or notions to the direct intervention of the mythical wise bird.
It was not always easy to understand Maruman. He was sensitive about birds, which struck me as unnatural, since he was their natural predator. However, I paid little attention to his predictions, though occasionally there was some substance to them.
For the rest of the time he was cynical, haughty, conceited; full of opinions about everything. And how he loved to air them. Some of the things he said made me think twice about the Herder teachings.
Maruman was, he often told me, his own "cat. Not so much wild, he would point out, as unencumbered. He once observed that life with a master was doubtless very nice, but for all that he preferred his own way. Having a master, he said, seemed to take the stuffing out of a beast. I reflected to myself that this was certainly true.
With a touch of cynicism, I thought that part of Mar-uman's devotion to me was because I fed him. But I looked at him fondly. There seemed little to love in this rude, unbalanced cat with an ear that looked half-devoured. Yet there was a kind of wild joy about him that I could only envy, for I was far from free.
If he had been human, I think he would have been a gypsy, and in fact he quite liked to visit the troupes that roved about. He told me they fed him scraps and sang rollicking songs and laughed more than other funaga. They were the descendants of those people in the community who had chosen not to cleave to the Council in those early years. Though tolerated now, they were neither liked nor trusted.
The bond between Maruman and myself had been an accident and without him I would never have discovered the full extent of my telepathic powers. He said it was destiny, but I doubted it.
Ironically, I had been seated ri
ght next to the statue of the founder when it happened. A scraggy-looking cat was stalking a bird. Normally I would have ignored them both, but that day I was struck by the carelessness of the bird. I thought it almost deserved its fate. As I concentrated on the pursuit, I had the sensation of something moving in my head. It was the queerest feeling and I gasped loudly.
Startled, the bird flew off with an irritated chirp, I had saved the wretched creature's life and it was annoyed. Not even then did I wonder how I knew what the bird felt. The cat seemed to glare indignantly at me with its bright yellow eyes. I shrugged wryly and it looked away and began to clean itself.
I had the notion it was only pretending to ignore me. Then I laughed, thinking I must have sat too long in the sun. The cat looked at me again and for a moment I imagined a glint of amusement in its look. Maybe Jes was right and I was going mad.
"Stupid funaga," said a voice in my head. I knew it was the cat, but I didn't know how I knew. The cat glared at me balefully. "All fonaga are stupid." Again I had heard what it was thinking.
"They are not!" I answered, without opening my mouth. Now it was the cat's turn to stare.
That first moment of mutual astonishment had given way to a curiosity about each other that had in time grown to an enduring friendship, and it was hard to imagine moving on to the next home without Maruman. He was grumpy, moody, and more than anything else rude-mannered, but I genuinely cared for him and sensed he felt the same, though he would have died rather than admit it. Once we had overcome our initial disbelief and pooled knowledge, Maruman revealed the astonishing fact that all beasts were capable of thinking together as we did, though not so deeply or intimately, sensing emotions and pictures as well as brief messages. He said animals had been able to do that in a limited form even before the holocaust, which, interestingly, he too called the Great White. Maruman said animals knew all about the Great White and the Beforetime.