I woke and stared wildly about, my heart thundering even as the nightmare faded. I could feel perspiration on my hands and back. I lay back, trying to think what such a dream might mean. I rarely dreamed that intensely. I had slept for hours and it was dark. I wondered if we had already passed the tainted ground and did not know whether to be disappointed or not.
Bruised, purple clouds scudded across the sky making it appear later than it must have been. A distant cracking noise heralded the coming storm and within moments, a flash of lightning illuminated the barren landscape. There was a rumble of thunder and I pitied Enoch. There was another crack and this time the scent of charred wood drifted in through the window. I hoped Maruman was somewhere safe.
Despite the steep grade of the road, I sensed the unease of the animals and with each crash of thunder, their tension grew; yet I had the odd impression it was not the storm but something else that unnerved mem. There was another loud crash, very close, and a log fell right alongside the carriage.
The horses' suppressed terror erupted and they plunged along the road at a mad pace, jerking the coach wildly after them like some doomed creature dragged to its death. I could hear Enoch's blasphemous thoughts as he fought to control the maddened team.
Holding tightly onto the window, I looked down at the guardian, who slept on. Branches scraped at the window and the road had suddenly narrowed and we were in the midst of a thick clump of gnarled trees. I hoped none would fall for they were big enough to crush the carriage.
A blinding gray rain began to fall, beating deep into the hard, cold earth as we passed from the trees out into the open again. I could see very little because of the rain and the darkness but the landscape looked barren and ugly. The rain stopped quite abruptly, like a tap had been turned off.
The silence that followed was so complete it was uncanny. The horses were under control again and I heard a tired snort from one. The sound almost echoed in the stillness. It had grown fractionally lighter and I could see sparse trees drooping wearily. This land must indeed be cursed with demons for the fury of nature to strike at it so mercilessly.
T,hen before my eyes, the land seemed to transform itself from a barren place to the bleakest, deadest piece of earth. Here was a place where it was impossible to imagine a single blade of grass or even the most stunted tree growing. A strange terrible burning smell penetrated the carriage, despite the locks and thick glass. I could see vapors rising sluggishly from the earth and writhing along like yellowish snakes. In some places, the ground was as smooth and shiny as glass.
This, then, was the tainted ground, but surely it could not long ago have been true Blacklands.
It was not a very great time before we had passed over it, but it seemed to take an eternity. Now I understood the tension of the horses. It was not the storm they had feared, but the poisoned earth they must cross.
I heard a faint sound and looking around again, wondered what now. The noise arose almost from the hills themselves and I wondered if Obernewtyn was somewhere near. A small breeze rose in the trees and they moved sluggishly. The sky was lighter still but had the dull sheen of polished metal. It was colder now.
Then the storm burst over us again. This time there was no rain, just a fierce wind that tossed the cart around like a leaf. The long-suffering trees were bent almost double beneath this fresh onslaught and I began to understand their ragged appearance. They did well even to survive in this savage land. There seemed something primitive and destructive in the wind, an evil intent I could nearly feel.
like the rain, it stopped suddenly and all at once I could hear only the slushy rattle of the wheels as they plowed through the new mud. The sound accomplished what nothing else had been able to do and woke the guardian.
With a grunt she sat up and blinked owlishly. "Have we passed the storms?" she asked,
I gaped "You mean... they're always like that?" I asked.
"If you went back mere right now. the storms would be going on," she said: "They're caused by the Black-lands." She saw the look on my face. "Obernewtyn is a way off yet."
I sighed with relief and looked out the windows again.
The last stretch of the journey seemed endless but it was as the guardian had said. Oberaewtyn was some distance from real Blacklands and its belt of storms. The country grew more fertile and ordinary, though very jagged and uneven. It was still a wild sort of land but not so very different from the high country.
I had lost my sense of time many hours back, but I realized now that night must have given way to the early morning, for its dense blackness had transmuted into a cold, dark blue.
"There it is," said the guardian suddenly and I saw a sign swinging between two posts. In dark lettering it read: OBERNEWTYN. KEEP OUT.
The sight of it chilled me more effectively than all the Blacklands in the land. Just beyond was an iron gate set into a high stone wall. The wall extended as far as I could see in both directions and I wondered how big Obernew-tyn was. I half expected it to be a rambling building as most of the orphan homes were. Enoch pulled the horses up and unlocked the gate. He walked the weary team through, then relocked it from the other side. I wondered why they bothered—surely its remoteness barred the way more effectively than any locks. I tried to see the house, but thick, ornately clipped trees hid their secret well in the curving drive. Someone had gone to great lengths to keep Obernewtyn from prying eyes. What sort of person would make a home in such a place?
"Obernewtyn," whispered the guardian, looking out the other window. Her voice was low as if the sight of that sombre building quelled her as much as it did me. Even the horses seemed to walk softly.
It was a massive construction and outwardly more like a series of buildings than one single mansion. It was constructed of large rough-hewn blocks of gray stone streaked with flecks of darker stone. There was no grace in the outline and no effort had been made to make one section harmonize with the rest. In some places it was two and three stories high, each wall pocked with hundreds of slitlike holes that must have served as windows.
Impossible to tell exactly how big it was in the darkness, but what could be seen was immense enough to make me wonder how many hundreds of people lived here. There was something unnerving about the anonymity of all those windows. I had not imagined it would be so huge.
As we drew closer to the only obvious entrance, I noticed a tall pole rising from an ugly fountain set a few feet from the steps, At the top of the pole was a lantern whose flame flickered behind gleaming panels, making shadows dance and leap along the walls. I shivered, aware I was already letting the atmosphere work on me.
And there was an atmosphere about the place, for all its sprawling ugliness. It was a grim, gray place with an oddly secretive look because of the lack of doors and normal windows. I tried to tell myself the wind and the darkness and the hissing trees were creating their own sinister air, but I could not tear my eyes from the doors. The carriage drew up at the entrance and cold air gusted and made my hair and cloak flap violently. It was freezing cold outside and the branches of the trees were filled with the blustering wind.
At the top of broad low steps were two large, heavily carved front doors. The carving was an odd touch, since everything else about Obernewtyn was strictly utilitarian, at least outwardly. Looking more closely, I saw that the carvings were fantastical in nature, and completely inappropriate to the institution.
The guardian pressed a bell that sounded dimly within, and as we waited, I studied the carvings. Men and all manner of queer beasts were represented, many seeming half man and half beast. That struck me as blasphemous. Still, whoever had done the work was a true craftsman, for the expressions on the faces portrayed the essences of the emotions they bore. The doors were framed by a wide gilt border covered in exotic symbols. Those markings were so unusual I had the fantastic notion the doors were artifacts from the Beforetime, impossible though that was.
The doors opened to show a tall, thin woman holding a candelabrum
. The light played over gaunt features, giving her face a curious fluid look and making it hard to tell exacdy what she looked like. She bent closer and I wondered if she found me as indistinct in the light. I was too tired to pretend dullness, and hoped weariness would do as well.
"You'll get no sense out of her," said guardian Hester. "I thought Madam Vega said she didn't intend bringing up any more dreamers. She doesn't even look strong enough to be a good worker."
The other woman raised her eyebrows disdainfully. She was a cold-looking woman with her long face and severe bun. "Then it is fortunate for us you are not paid to think," she said. "If Madam brought this creature here, she will not have done so without purpose," she said very distinctly, and peered into my face in much the same way Madam Vega had at Kinraide, but without any of her hypnotic power.
"Elspeth, this is guardian Myrna."
"You may leave now," the other woman said abruptly.
"But... but I thought since it was so late ..." She hesitated and faltered before the gaze of the other.
"It is not permitted for temporary guardians to stay in the main house. You know that. If our arrangement does not please you ..."
Guardian Hester clasped her hands together. "Please. No. I... forgot. I'll go with the coachman," she begged.
Guardian Myrna inclined her head regally after a weighty pause. "You should hurry, I think they have put the dogs out," she said. The other woman paled and hastened to the door. Guardian Myrna watched her go with a smile, then she took some keys from her apron pocket. "Come with me," she said.
We went out a door leading off the circular entrance chamber and into a long hall pitted with heavy doors. Big, clumsy locks hung from each door. If this was an indication of the security at Obernewtyn, I would have no trouble getting away. Distantly, I heard the bark of a dog.
The guardian unlocked one of the doors. "Tonight you will sleep here and tomorrow you will be given a permanent room." She shut the door and bolted it.
I stood a moment in the total darkness, feeling the room out with my mind. I was alone. It was too cold to get undressed, so I slipped my shoes off and climbed into the nearest bed. Shivering, I wished I was anywhere but at Obernewtyn and drifted uneasily to sleep.
IX
The door banged violently open.
It was still not full light but I could see a young girl standing on the stone threshold with a candle in one hand. With her free hand she continued to hammer loudly at the open door with a peculiar fixed smile on her face.
"What is it?" I said.
She was some years younger than I, but very tall. She looked at me through lackluster eyes. "I have come ... I have come ..." She hesitated as though her feeble brain had lost the thread of whatever message she had come to impart. Then she frowned and her face seemed to change. "I have come to ... to warn you." There was a glimmer in the depth of her muddy eyes and all at once I doubted my initial impression that she was defective.
"Warn me about what?" I asked warily, trying to decide if the approach was some sort of trick.
She made a warding-off movement with her free hand. "Them, you know."
I shook my head. "I don't know what you're talking about. Who are you?"
She jerked her head in a spasm of despair and a look of anguish came over her face. "Nothing! I'm nothing anymore..."
She looked across the room at me and started to laugh. "You should not have come here," she said at last.
"I didn't choose to come here or anywhere else. I was an orphan, and now I suppose I am a Misfit."
The other girl giggled. "I was no orphan, but I'm a Misfit. Oh sure I am." She laughed again.
Unable to make any sense out of her, I reached out with my thoughts. Her name was Selmar and her mind was a charred wreckage. Most of her thought links did not exist and little remained that was normal. Yet in that brief second, I saw the remnant of someone I could have liked. But whatever she had gone through, or suffered, there was little enough of that person left. All that remained of her past were half-remembered fragments. Here was a mind teetering on the brink of madness. She was a hair's-breadth from it now. It was impossible to know what she thought she was warning me about. I felt a rush of compassion for her.
Her eyes rolled back in panic and cursing my stupidity I realized she could feel me! She must have been one of those people with some fleeting ability. For an instant, her eyes rolled forward and the other girl looked out with a sort of puzzlement as if she were struggling to remember something of great importance. But all too quickly the muddiness in her eyes returned, and with it a pitiful cowering fear.
"I promise I don't know anything," she whispered. I stared in amazement. What was she talking about now? I had expected her to start screaming but she was behaving as if she were terrified. I climbed out of my bed onto the cold floor.
"Selmar," I began compassionately, then a childish voice interrupted my soft plea.
"Selmar, how is it that you take so long to wake one person?"
It was a sweet, piping voice, high-pitched and querulous. Not a voice to inspire fear, yet, if it were possible, Selmar paled even further as she turned to face the young boy behind her. No more than eleven or twelve years, he was as slender as a wand, with delicate curls, slim, girlish shoulders, and large, pale eyes. His lips were pressed tight with anger.
"Well, answer me," he screamed, and she swayed as if she would faint.
"I... I didn't do anything..." she gibbered. "It was her. She wouldn't wake up."
Ariel clicked his teeth. "You took too long," he said coldly as if he were pronouncing a judgment. "I see you will have to have a talk with Madam and then our master might want to see you again," he said with a cruel, thin smile. The malicious gleam in his beautiful face angered me.
"It is as she told you. I had trouble waking because we got here so late last night," I said.
He looked at Selmar and she nodded pathetically.
"Well, go on then," he conceded with a nasty smile. Selmar turned without another word and fled down the hall, her stumbling footsteps echoing after her. Chewing his underlip, the boy watched her departure with thoughtful eyes.
"What did she say to you?" he asked, turning back on me.
"Nothing," I answered flatly, wondering what right this boy had to interrogate me.
He frowned petulantly. "You're new. Before long you will find out things are different up here. You will learn," he said, his eyes flicking after the departed Selmar. "Get dressed and I will come back for you." He closed the door behind him.
Rummaging angrily through a chest of assorted clothes, I dressed myself. It was freezing within the stone walls and I wondered if the sun would warm the buildings at all when it rose. Yet I was heated in part by my temper. How dare that child behave like a guardian.
Forcing him from my thoughts, I looked around. I could not help thinking that Obernewtyn would be hellish in the wintertime. The pale, early morning light spilled in wanly from a high slitted window. There were no shutters and cold, gusts of air swept freely through the opening. I had thought of looking outside, wondering what I would see, but the window was practically inaccessible, fashioned long and thin, reaching from above my head up to the ceiling. Cut deep into the ancient stone, it would show itself as the merest slit from the outside. Inside it was cut sharply away to admit the maximum light.
The doop opened suddenly. "Come on then," Ariel snapped.
I controlled my irritation and suppressed a sudden fear that he was taking me to see the Master of Obernewtyn. If Selmar had shown such terror at the mention of him, what must he be like?
As we walked down the hall I noticed a good deal more than the previous night. The candle brackets I had seen along the wall were metal and shaped like gargoyles' heads with savage mouths. Cold, greenish drips of wax hung obscenely frozen from the gaping jaws. Whoever had built Obernewtyn had no desire for homely comfort.
We passed down the stairs and continued along a narrow walkway on the other side o
f the entrance hall.
"Are you taking me to the Head?" I asked.
The boy did not answer and presently we came to a double set of doors. He opened one of the doors with something of a flourish. The room it opened onto was a kitchen.
It was a long, rectangular room with two large side arbors filled with bench seats and trestle tables. At the very end of the kitchen almost an entire wall was taken up with a cavernous fireplace. Above it was set an immense mantelshelf, laden with stone and iron pots. From its underside hung a further selection of pans and pannikins. A huge, blackened cauldron was suspended above the flame and stirring the contents was a woman of mountainous proportions to match the size of the giant kitchen.
Her elbows, though bent, resembled large cured hams and her legs were hidden beneath the voluminous folds of her grown. A large, white bow sat incongruously on her fat-cheeked hips and waggled whenever she moved.
The roaring heat of the fire had kept the noise of our entrance from her. .Tearing my eyes away, I saw that there were several doors besides the one we had come through and a great number of cupboards and benches. A young girl was sitting at one of these. She had been scraping vegetables and they sat in two mounds on either side of her, scraped and unscraped. She had noticed our entrance and now watched me from two startled curranty eyes, buried in a slab-jowled face. The knife poised above the potato glinted brightly.
"Ma!" she yelled, waving the knife in agitation, throwing its light at me.
The mountain of flesh at the stove trembled, then turned with surprising grace. Her face was flushed from the heat and distorted by too many chins, but there was a definite resemblance between her and the girl. The thick ladle in her hand dripped brown gravy unheeded.
"Ariel!" she cried in dulcet tones. Her accent was similar to Enoch's but less musical. "Dear Hinny, I have nowt seen ye in an age. Ye have not deserted me have ye, sweet boy?" I felt sick, but Ariel simply basked in her fawning. "But ye know I don't mean anything by my scoldings. Come, I have a treat for ye."