Obernewtyn

  He went on to explain the various new rulings and penalties, and I shuddered at the effect this would have on the community. Each time the Council sought to tighten its control, a new wave of denunciations and burnings occurred. Oddly enough, I fancied a look of surprise had crossed the face of the younger priest at the mention of Herder researches.

  VII

  It took some time to reach the outskirts of Sutrium. I had not expected the city to be so big. The streets were completely deserted and it was well into the morning before we reached the end of the town's sprawling outer limits, but toward midday the city fell rapidly behind.

  I had lived in urban orphan homes now for many years, but the curved road parting the soft folded hills and gullies brought back clear memories of my childhood, far from the towns and the ever present menace of the Council. I realized I had not lied to Jes when I told him I was almost glad. There was an odd sort of peace in having got the thing done at last. I thought of Head Keeper Madam Vega, and reflected that Obernewtyn was bound to be less terrible than the stories.

  It was not hard to forget fear and to surrender myself to die peaceful solitude of the carriage. The morning burgeoned into a sun-filled day, and between naps, I watched the country unfold.

  To the east of the road we passed the villages of Saith-wold and Sawlney, and beyond them to the north were soft woodlands, where from the window I could see the downs sloping gently to Arandelft, set deep in, the forest. To the west of the road were the vast hazy moors of Glenelg.

  The road curved down to pass on the farthermost outskirts of the village, where slate-gray buildings were framed by surrounding cultivated fields flanked by borders of bloodberry trees. More than twenty leagues away and closing the horizon were Aran Craggie and the Gel-fort Ranges—Tor, Highfeld Gamorr, and Emerald Fel. They marked the border of the Highlands and as if to underline this, the road began gradually to incline upward.

  We passed on the low western slopes of the Brown Haw Rises, hillocked and undulant—I was astounded to discover how much I knew of land I had never seen. My father had talked a good deal of these places. He had traveled much in the land before he bonded with my mother. Sometimes he had seated me on his knee and showed me colored pictures that he called maps. He would point to places, tell me their names, and explain what they were like. I thought he must have bequeathed his restless spirit to me.

  We passed a small moor, wetter and more dense than Glenelg, and I peered through the leafy Eben trees along the roadside at the mist-wreathed expanse. There had been no moors in Rangorn but I recognized this from my father's descriptions. He had said the mists never went away but were always fed by some hissing subterranean source. He thought the moors were caused by some inner disturbance in the earth, yet another legacy of the Great White. I was astounded at my memories.

  My mother had said good herbs always grew near the moors; she came from the high country and knew a great deal about herbal lore. I thought of the great, white-trunked trees that had stood on the hillside around our house. Were they still there, though the house had long ago been reduced to ashes? I remembered my mother making me listen to the whispering sounds of the trees, and of the rich, shadowed glades where we collected mushrooms and healing flowers and the summer brambles laden with fat berries dragging over the bank of our favored swimming pool. I thought of standing with my father and looking down from the hills to where the Ford of Rangorn met the onrush of the Suggredoon, and the distant grayish glint far in the distance where I knew there was a lake in the Blacklands.

  And I remembered the burning of my mother and father, in the midst of all the beauty of Rangorn. Perhaps that was what Jes remembered most, what had made him so cold and strange in recent times. Yet in the end he had seemed genuinely distressed to see me go. What would happen to him now? It no longer angered me that he longed to become a Herder, though that could never be. I hoped he would be happy and safe, but he was already becoming a shadowy figure.

  I had the fleeting impression something in me wanted to put the old life behind me and try to find something in this new life worth living for. It had been a long time since I had done more than live for the minute, preoccupied with fear of discovery and the desire to be free. I wondered if it would be possible for me to find a better existence in the mountains.

  As the late afternoon sun slanted through the window of the carnage, we halted briefly at a wayside hostel and a new coachman came to take the place of the other. The hostel was just outside a village called Guanette and I felt a jolt at the name. It made me think of Maruman, and my regret at having to leave him. I wondered if he had understood that I really was going away for good. The name of the village would have intrigued him because of the dreams he claimed to have in which those birds appeared. I wondered how it had come to have that name. The way that word kept cropping up, I felt there ought to be some significance to it, though I could hardly see what. Resolutely putting Maruman and the tantalizing name of the place from me, I thought it would be pleasant to live there, if one could not live in Rangorn. But that was no longer even a distant possibility. As a Misfit, I would never be free. But perhaps I would find some compensations in the life that waited for me at Obernewtyn.

  The village consisted mostly of small, stone-wrought hovels with shingled roofs. They looked ancient and had probably been established during the Age of Chaos. Their stolidness seemed a defense against the turmoiled . past

  Laughter drifted in through the windows as we passed children scrabbling in pools of dust along the roadway. They looked up indifferently as we passed. I was once like them, I thought, rather bitterly, until the Council had taken a hand.

  The carriage jerked suddenly to a halt and the coachman dismounted. We had stopped outside yet another hostel called "The Green Tree."

  After a long time he came back, unlocked a window, and threw a soft parcel to me. "Supper," he grunted in a curious accent. Impulsively, I asked him if I could sit outside and eat.

  He hesitated, then unlocked the door. "Out yer get then," he said.

  Thanking him profusely, I did as he bade, and he-re-locked the carriage, muttering about children. I stood blinking at him. "Go round th' back. Ye can cat there. Mind ye don't wander." Thanking him again, I hastened away, thinking many of the late night callers at my father's house had spoken like this, slowly with a singsong lilt. They had looked like this man too, gnarled and brown with kind eyes.

  There was a pretty, unkempt garden out the back of the hostel and I scoured the porch for a spot under one of the trees.

  "Least you could do is spare me some food," came a plaintive thought. I jumped to my feet in fright, dropping the food parcel. Maruman rushed forward and sniffed it tenderly. "Now look what you've done."

  I stared at him in bewilderment, unable to believe my eyes. "What... how did you get here!" My mind reeled. Maruman gave me a sly cat look and fell to tearing at the parcel. I sat back down and unwrapped it for him, my own appetite forgotten.

  "I came with you," he told me as he ate. I was so delighted to see him that I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

  "I came in the box with wheels, on the back. I am very clever," he added smugly and I burst out laughing, then I looked around in fright because my laughter sounded so loud.

  "But why?" I asked, relieved at least that his fits were over.

  "You regret my presence?" he asked. I shook my head emphatically and hugged him till he squeaked. "I had to come," he said when he had struggled free. "Innle must be protected."

  I looked at his eyes but there was no sign of madness. "You won't be able to come all the way to Obernewtyn," I said. "The carriage goes over the Blacklands."

  "Maruman knows that," he said haughtily. "I will stay here and you will come to me. I do not like the mountains. I smell the white there."

  I shook my head impatiently. "I can't possibly come back. I told you, Obernewtyn is like a cage. I won't be allowed to do as I please." I forestalled a thought I saw forming in his mind. "An
d it's not at all like the orphan home so I won't be able to sneak off." Unperturbed by my words, he began cleaning one of his paws. "You will come," he said at last. (tMaruman does not want to come to the mountains," he added reproachfully.

  "Well, how will you live here?" I asked him. He gave me a very old look; Maruman had after all lived a good many years before meeting me. Just the same, I reflected, he was not a young cat, and then there were his fits of madness. He curled up in my lap and promptly went to sleep.

  I thought of what I had said to Daffyd, the boy in the Councilcourt I had not meant it then, but now I seriously considered escaping. I could run off; it would be far easier here than it would have been in Sutrium.

  My mother once had bought a wild bird from an old man who caught the poor things. We hadn't much money but she had a soft heart and a sweet smile. He had given her the oldest bird, an ugly creature he had had for some time. She had opened the cage to let it fly away. But it was a poor, half-starved thing and would not go even when prodded. It died there, huddled in the corner of the cage. My mother had said it had been caged for too long. Neither Jes nor I had understood then, but I wondered if, like that bird, I had been caged too long to contemplate freedom.

  A voice called my name and Maruman woke and stepped from my knee. He melted into the shadows just as the coachman and a woman came onto the porch of the hostel. The old man blinked and I sensed he had seen Maruman, but he said nothing. The woman turned to him. 'Just as well for you that she did not wander away." She flicked her hand at me. "Get into the carriage."

  I followed them back to the road with an inward sigh, noticing the horses had been changed. I would have preferred to travel this last leg of the journey alone. The woman climbed heavily into the seat and glared at me as she settled herself.

  Eventually she spoke. "I am guardian Hester."

  I boked at her expectantly, but she seemed to feel it was beneath her to say any more to me. She had a valise with her and I thought she was returning to Obernewtyn, possibly from a visit to the Lowlands. She yawned several times and seemed bored. Eventually she took a small vial from her pocket, uncorked it, and drank the contents. I recognized the bitter odor of the sleep drug. In a very short time, she was dozing.

  Since leaving Guanette, the country had grown steadily steeper. The road was still well cobbled but it had become progressively more narrow and winding. The coachman maneuvered carefully around the bends, for on one side was a sharp drop to a darkly wooded valley extending as far as the eye could see. It was tough going, and after about an hour, he pulled over to the edge and poured water from a barrel into a bucket to water the horses. I called out to him.

  "Hey," he mimicked. "Is that my name then?"

  "I'm sorry. No one tells us names. Can I ride up there with you?"

  I held little hope and predictably he shook his head, peering in at the guardian's sleeping form. "If ye were alone maybe I would let ye," he said slowly and softly. "But if she were to waken an' see ye gone." He shook his head in anticipation of the coals of wrath that would be heaped on his head.

  "But she won't wake for hours. She took some of that sleep stuff." I poked her hard to show him I spoke the truth.

  He ruminated for a moment, then took out his keys.

  "Oh thank you," I gasped, astounded at my luck.

  "Well fine of me it is," he agreed. "But she better not wake or I'll be in deep troubles." He finished watering the horses while I capered in the crisp highland air. "Enoch," the coachman said suddenly.

  "Pardon?" I said.

  "Enoch, girl," he repeated. "That's my name." He helped me up onto the seat beside him and I felt a thrill as he clicked his tongue and the coach began to move.

  "My name ..." I began to say, then stopped. Perhaps he wouldn't want to know my name. Misfits, after all, weren't supposed to be quite human.

  "Your name?" he said, and encouraged, I told him. He nodded and fell silent for a bit as if he didn't know what else to say. Then he pointed to the valley. "That's the White Valley."

  I stared, thinking that Maruman would not like the name. Enoch went on talking. "Many have gone to that valley in search of hidin' but it ain't a friendly place. Strange animals rove mere an' they don't love men."

  "I heard Henry Druid came to the mountains. Maybe that's where he died," I said thoughtfully, but the old man snorted with laughter.

  "He's nowt dead," he said. He saw my quick look of interest and his expression was bland. "Leastways, rumor says his ghost wanders there, an' in th' mountains. That valley goes on for fifty leagues in all directions. 'Tis said this place was once part of the Blacklands but I dinna think so."

  I looked at the wood and reflected that twice in a very short span, I had been told the Druid lived.

  "That were a fine .cat," the coachman said.

  I jumped, but decided not to deny it. Instinctively I guessed this man meant no harm.

  "He'd been with us some way. I guess he just likes ridin'," the old man said casually.

  Still I said nothing.

  "Some don't like cats. Reckon they're too haughty, but I dinna think so. Either ye like cats or ye don't."

  "He's not a very pretty cat," I said hesitantly.

  The old man grinned. "All that's fine is nowt pretty. Look at me. As a matter of fact, I thought him a handsome creature." He looked at me again. "I've a good mind to have a bit of a look for him. Maybe he'd fancy living with me. Of course cats are queer creatures an' he might not take to me."

  "Oh, he will!" I cried.

  The coachman smiled and nodded slightly and we rode for some distance in companionable silence. Perhaps Enoch would find Maruman. I hoped so.

  The valley was lost to sight at last as we wound into the mountains. "That stuff would kill a pig," said the coachman. He jerked his head back to where the guardian slept. "Now me mam gave us herbs when we couldn't sleep. Good natural things. That were' good enough for us then."

  "But herbal lore is banned," I said.

  He looked taken aback. "An' so it is. Damned if I didn't forget fer a minute. But it weren't against th' law when I were a lad." He paused, seemingly struck by the oddness of something that had been a good thing in his youth but that had become evil since, in the eyes of the community. Finally he sighed as if the problem were un-resolvable. "Things were different then," he said.

  Looking around, he pointed again to where we had come back into the open; this time there was a broad plain on the other side of the road. The mountains hid the White Valley from us. "Th' land hereabout is Darthnor, and th' village of Darthnor is that way," Enoch said, nodding to the east. I stared but could see nothing. " 'Tis a strange place," he said, "an' I say so even though I were born there. None dwell in these parts but a few shepherds. Those at Darthnor are mostly miners but I reckon th' ground here is tainted so I dinna go under like me father did before me." He looked sad. "A few years under th' ground and the rotting sickness sets in, though it moves fearful slow." He looked ahead suddenly, then pulled to the edge of the road.

  "Ye'll have to get in now. Soon we come to tainted ground an' the vapors are pure poison," he said.

  I climbed down and held the horses while he watered them and tied rags around their noses and faces and bags on their hoofs.

  "Won't you get sick?" I asked, but he shook his head saying Darthnor bred a hardy sort and that he would be all right for the short time we would be on tainted earth. Nonetheless he tied a scarf around his face before locking me back into the carriage.

  Suddenly he gave a shout and pointed up. I looked but saw nothing.

  "That were a Guanette bird," he shouted. "Ye missed it an' that's a shame for 'tis a rare sight."

  "A Guanette bird?" I gaped, thinking I had misheard him. "I thought they were extinct." , Enoch shook his head slowly. "Nowt extinct, but I guess it might be better to be thought so. They're rare and rare things are hunted," he added darkly. "That village back diere were named for die birds hy the 6rst Master of Obernewtyn, Sir Lukas Ser
aphim. He were the first to come to th' mountains, an' a grand queer man he must have been to make his home up there with the Blacklands all round. His grandson is master up there now."

  There was a subtly different note in his voice at the mention of the present master of Obernewtyn.

  "Have you seen him?" I asked, hoping to elicit further information.

  "Never in me life," said the coachman. "All the time he's workin' on his treatments." A strange look crossed his face but it was so brief I thpught I had imagined it. His mention of treatments made me uneasy.

  "In yer go," he said, and moved to lock the window. He hesitated. "Look, if ye be special fond of animals, I've a friend of sorts up there. His name be Rushton. Tell him I said I'd vouch for ye an' maybe he'll find a job ye'll like."

  But before I could thank him, he had locked me in.

  VIII

  I dreamed.

  In my dream, I was somewhere cold and darkly quiet. I could hear water dripping and was afraid, though I didn't know why. I seemed to be waiting for something.

  In the distance, there was a bright flash of light. A feeling of urgency made me hasten toward the light, stumbling over uneven ground I could not see. A high-pitched whining noise filled the air like a scream, but no one could scream for so long without stopping to breathe. I sensed danger, but the compulsion to find die light overrode my instincts. Again it flashed, apparently no closer than before. I could not tell what the source was, though it was obviously unnatural.

  All at once, a voice spoke inside me. Shocked, I skidded to a halt, for it was a human voice. But that was impossible.

  "Tell me," the voice said, "tell me."

  There was a sharp pain behind my eyes and I flinched in astonishment that a voice was capable of hurting me, understanding at the same time that the crooning noise and the voice inside me were the same thing. I turned to run, at last obeying the urge to escape, then the ground under me burst into flames and I screamed.