Raffi was surprised. It was a long time since anyone had asked him that. “Fine,” he said weakly.
“Why were you watching us?” Galen’s voice was cold; Raffi felt the tension behind it. For a moment he felt sick again, and sat down abruptly.
“He’s ill,” the girl remarked accusingly.
Irritated, Galen glanced down. Then he hauled Raffi up and turned, his hawk-face dark against the rainy moon. “Come under the tree. We can talk.”
Without waiting to see if she followed, he led Raffi in and sat him against the hollow trunk, tossing the blankets to him. Sensing the tree behind him made Raffi feel better, as if the strength of the wood and the spirit of it gave something back to him. His head cleared, and he looked up.
The girl stood hesitating under the thatch of branches. As she crouched he noticed the crossbow for the first time; it was wound back and loaded, he could see the bolt from here. She laid it on the dusty needles, but her hand stayed near it.
“I wasn’t watching you. At least, not at first.” She glanced curiously around at the enormous bulk of the yew. “I saw the trees and came up to see if I could shelter here. The rain’s getting heavy.”
Galen said nothing. He was still standing, his head bent under the low roof of twigs.
“Then I heard you talking.” She shrugged. “I crept up. I wanted to see who you were. You have to be careful, traveling alone.” Her fingers tapped the smooth shaft of the bow.
“Indeed you do,” Galen said. He sat down. “That goes for us too.”
She looked at him shrewdly. “I’m no threat to you. I think I know what you are.” As neither of them moved or spoke, she shrugged again. “All right, I won’t say it. But no one else could have . . . It was very dark under here, but I’m sure I heard him . . .” She glanced at Raffi and shook her head, as if she couldn’t get the words out.
“The tree spoke to him.” Galen’s voice was hard. “Is that so difficult?”
“For some.” She gave him a half smile.
After a moment he said, “Why travel alone?”
“I was with two friends of mine, but they turned back at the last village. They’d heard stories about the Sekoi tombs on the downs, and that scared them off.” She glared at her feet fiercely. “We had a terrible row and I stormed away. Told them I’d go on by myself. Then the rain came. They may be looking for me; but I doubt it. They had all the courage of jekkle-mice.” She looked up suddenly. “You haven’t got anything to eat, have you?”
Raffi’s hopes plunged. Galen shook his head. “No. So where is it you’re so eager to get to?”
For a moment she was silent, as if weighing him up. “I’m looking for my father.” Her voice dropped. “The Watch took him.”
Raffi peeled himself off the tree. “The Watch! Why?”
“Oh, you do speak, do you?” For a moment a laugh glinted in her face; then she turned it into the shadows. “I don’t really know the answer to that. I wasn’t there. When I came back to the village where we lived, he was gone. The Watchmen had come in the night—six of them, all armed, on black horses. They had broken the door down, dragged him out and taken him. It was so sudden . . .” Her voice was quiet; the rain outside hissed harder. Drops fell on Raffi’s shoulder. “There was talk later that a man and a woman—travelers—had come to the house two days before. My father gave them a room, for one night. They paid him. There was nothing wrong with that. But if they were keepers . . .”
They were silent a moment. Raffi knew the Watch wouldn’t have hesitated.
Carys looked up. “They came west, but I’ve lost the track. You would know, keeper. Where might they take him?”
Even Raffi wondered. But Galen said bleakly, “They want information. They’ll get it out of him, then kill him. It’s useless.”
Stubbornly she shook her head. “I’m not giving up! Where?”
In the darkness of the tree the three of them had become dim shapes to one another. Galen’s voice sounded strange. “I don’t know. Maybe to Tasceron.”
“Tasceron! Does it still exist?”
“It exists.”
The rain was lessening. Slowly it pattered into silence, but the slow drops still fell here and there through the thick growth, branch to branch, steady and relentless, and the scents of the wet night rose in the after-storm hush.
Carys looked at them curiously. “Is that where you’re going?”
Galen laughed harshly. “Us! It’s the last place we’d want to go.”
The girl was silent a moment. Then she said, “Look. Will you let me go on with you? I don’t like being on my own. Not out here.”
For a long moment the Relic Master watched the darkness outside. Then he said, “Until we reach a village, or a place you’ll be safe. But we’ve no horses. We walk.”
“So can I.” Carys knelt up eagerly on the crushed needles. “Thank you. So now I won’t need this.” She lifted the bow.
“Maybe,” Galen said stiffly. “Maybe we’re not so safe as you think.”
“I think you are.” She stood up against the sky. “I’ll bring my horse up.” Then turning, she said, “You didn’t tell me your names.”
Galen looked into the dark. “Galen Harn,” he said, his voice quiet. “And Raffael Morel.”
When she was gone he looked across. “Well?”
Raffi pulled the blankets tight. He felt better now, but tired. “She seems all right. And she’s on her own. She won’t be any threat.”
“But is she telling the truth?”
“I don’t know!” His throat was dry; he swallowed a few drops of rain from the ends of his fingers. “I don’t know how to tell.”
Galen was silent. “Once I knew when people were lying to me.”
Raffi winced. The keeper turned on him suddenly as the horse harness clinked in the dark. “One thing. She’s not to know about what happened to me. Understand? She’s not to know!”
Sadly, Raffi nodded.
Journal of Carys Arrin Agramonsnight 9.16.546
The boy’s asleep. Harn has drifted into some sort of trance; he sways and murmurs prayers in the dimness. I’m taking a chance but this book’s small and easy to hide. It may be my last chance to write for a while.
First of all, the tree. I was lying out in the long grass—it was dark, but it seemed to me the boy was speaking to the tree and it was answering. I heard no words, but there was a sort of . . . tingle. I know this is heresy and I know it can’t be real. But why make an illusion if they didn’t know I was there? And the boy believed it.
I heard one thing that puzzled me. The boy distinctly said the Crow was in Tasceron. I remember the stories of the Crow from my training, but I’d always thought it was a figure of myth, a bird that talked. The bolt was on the crossbow; I had it aimed right at the middle of the keeper’s back—but those words stopped me. After all, dead or alive are the orders. And they know something about this Crow. It may be the name of someone real, high in the Order, like an Archkeeper. A code name. It seemed worth a risk to find out.
So I let them see me. Harn is wary; he asked a lot of questions. I told them a story that would get them on my side, make us all enemies of the Watch. I was surprised how easy they were to deceive. The boy looked ill; they both seem half starved.
(Note for Jellie—the psychic defenses the records mention can’t exist. I’m certain they didn’t know I was there.)
I’ll try and stay with them as long as possible—to Tasceron, because I’m sure that’s where they’re going. I know the city is enormous, but if they find this Crow I’ll be with them. To catch Harn and his boy would be good, but someone higher, a real chance to get into the secrets of the Order—that would make old Jeltok sit up. He always said I’d never make an agent.
I’m hungry, and the rain’s started again. On foot we’ll be slow. But they won’t get rid of me now.
12
Tamar called the Sekoi to him and said, “We have brought life to the world, new trees, new animals. What gif
t have we for you, tall people?”
The Sekoi spoke among themselves. Then they said, “We ask no gifts of you. You are not our Makers. We were here before you. We will be here after you.”
And Tamar was angry with the Sekoi, and turned them away.
Book of the Seven Moons
FOR TWO DAYS THEY TRAMPED the endless downs. They lived on water and whinberries and dried fish from the pack, and Raffi took it in turns with Carys to ride on the horse, which he enjoyed. Galen bluntly refused, and limped ahead.
Over the slow miles of chalk, Carys talked. She told him about her village, the school there, the ruined keeper’s house beside it, and about her father, a small, shrewd man with red hair, though Raffi noticed if he asked too many questions she fell silent after a while. She must be worried sick, he thought guiltily.
The Sekoi tombs still bothered him. They were watchful, and eerie at night. Galen was silent most of the time. After the night at the tree he hurried them on, and Raffi knew that the promise of Tasceron tormented him, the lure of the Crow, of the cure he might find. He pushed them on all day till they were worn out, but even at night Raffi woke to see the keeper sitting up in the moonlight, turning the pages of the Book, while the were-birds moaned over his head.
“What’s wrong with him?” Carys whispered once.
Alarmed, Raffi shook his head. “Nothing. And quiet, he’ll hear.”
“So? You seem scared of him.”
He shrugged. “No. It’s just . . . we’ve been through a lot.”
“He doesn’t treat you very well,” she said archly.
“He doesn’t treat himself very well.”
“That’s no excuse.”
She had plenty to say and said what she thought. She made him laugh, and he hadn’t done that for a long time. He realized how he had longed for company of his own age—at home there had been seven others. Though he’d missed them bitterly at first, he’d gotten used to Galen’s morose silence. Or thought he had.
“How did you come to be a scholar?” she asked as they half slid down a slope of slippery grass, coaxing the horse. Galen was ahead, far below. Raffi pulled a face. “I lived on my mother’s farm. There were eight of us.”
“No father?”
“He’d died. Galen turned up one night, about four years ago.” The sun broke through as he said it, and he had a dream-flash of his mother turning from the door, her eyes full of surprise, the man’s gaunt shadow behind her. “He stayed three days. I remember how he watched all of us. He scared us a bit.”
Carys grinned. “I’m not surprised.”
“No . . . Then he picked me. He didn’t say why. Just caught my arm one day and made me sit down and talk to him. Asked me about my dreams. Looked into my mind, my spirit-web.”
Carys stumbled over a tussock. She brushed hair from her eyes. “He can do that?” she asked, her voice strained.
“Yes. At least . . . Well, sometimes.” Raffi looked up at a wan yellow cloud blotting out the sun. “He asked me if I wanted to go with him.”
She looked at him sidelong. “That’s all? No payment?”
“Payment! Keepers have no money. My mother was honored, and I think a bit relieved. It’s hard to feed eight. And as for me . . .” He shrugged. “I knew it would be dangerous, but that was exciting. And I wanted to learn. The Litany, the mind-webs, the opening and closing, all the rites and the Branches of power. I wanted that. I still do. I haven’t learned half of it yet. They knew so much, Carys, these people! Before the Watch destroyed everything.”
She was silent, nodding.
“The Watch are always after us. A while back I had a feeling they were on our trail. It’s petered out now . . .”
“Raffi!”
Galen’s yell was urgent. He was rigid, staring up at the sky.
Raffi raced down. “What is it?”
“That!”
Before them the sky was sour, a hissing yellow haze. It seemed to shift and swirl as if some enormous insect swarm blew toward them on the rising wind.
“Fireseed!” Carys breathed, beside him.
Galen nodded. “You’ve seen it before?”
“Heard of it.”
So had Raffi, and the sight filled him with terror.
Once he had seen a man who’d only just survived a fireseed storm, his face burned and horribly scarred. Most weren’t so lucky. Early in autumn, when the weather began to chill, the firepods exploded, the round spiked seed drifting, sometimes for days, in great poisonous clouds until they sank and grew into the dull reddish plants that were so common. There was nothing dangerous about the plants, but the seed would sear through the flesh it touched, the acid on the soft spines burning through leather and clothes. Kest’s work. Like all the other evils.
Galen glanced around. There was no shelter. Only a few Sekoi barrows studded the turf.
The yellow cloud billowed.
“Run!” Galen turned. “Get on your horse, girl. Get out of here!”
He scrambled back up the slope; Raffi raced after him, grabbing handfuls of grass to haul himself up. Carys galloped ahead; she reached the ridge top and stared around hopelessly, the horse whickering with fear.
“Nothing! Not for miles!”
Galen pulled Raffi up. “The tomb. The nearest! Inside it!”
Despite the crackling cloud looming down on them, Carys paused. The horse pirouetted in terror. She had a sudden urge to gallop before the storm, away, abandoning them. But it was already too late. Scowling, she urged the beast toward the barrow.
Raffi was nearly there, Galen limping behind him. As she raced after them the storm swirled over her; glancing up she caught her breath at the yellow mass of seeds, billions of them, clotted like a rustling curtain. Something stung her face; she screamed, rubbing at it, jerking her head down on the horse’s sweating neck.
The sky crackled around them. Galloping past Galen, she swung herself off. The barrow was a huge green swelling in the storm.
“How do we get in?” she screamed.
Seeds gusted around them, scattered on Galen’s hood. He scrabbled at the edge of the mound, the row of sealing stones, tearing them away. She pulled too, and Raffi; something slid and rumbled, small stones falling in a dusty heap.
A black slit opened in the tomb like an eye. Raffi was gone, burrowing in, the pack dragged after him. “Now you!” Galen yelled.
Seeds fell on her shoulders; she squirmed and beat them off. “My horse!”
“We can’t save it! Get inside!”
Pain stung her cheek. Desperately she dragged the maddened horse still; tore the small bag from the saddle. Then she was down, worming into the tiny black hole, stinging seeds kicked from her legs. Hands hauled her in. Galen’s head and shoulders scrabbled through; then he was in, piling rocks in the entrance, and she glimpsed for a moment the air outside thick with poisonous flying drifts. The last stone blocked the gap.
“My poor horse,” she whispered in the dark.
“Can’t be helped.” Galen’s voice sounded hollow; it echoed around them. Raffi realized his skin was stinging; he rubbed his forehead and his fingers were burned, so that he hissed with the pain.
“Don’t touch it,” Galen’s voice said. A sputter and crack came from the tinderbox; then a small flame lengthened to yellow. Galen’s face and hands loomed out of the dark; he stuck the candle in a crevice and rummaged in the pack.
Raffi looked around, uneasy. He sensed that the chamber was small, too low to stand in. A roof of stone hung above; somewhere at the back of him was a low passageway, invisible. He let his mind grope into it. There were chambers down there, on each side. Traces of bones lingered in their dust. The last chamber, the one at the end, had something else in it.
He felt for it cautiously. Something very old.
Galen had the box of ointments out; he looked into Raffi’s face. “Are we alone?”
“I don’t think so.”
Nodding, he thrust a small clay pot at Carys. “Then we’ll have
to hurry. Use this first.”
She pulled the top off and dipped a finger in; it was cold and stiff, richly scented. Rubbing it on her hands and scorched face, she felt the seared skin cool; the relief was wonderful.
“What is it?”
“Never mind.” Galen slapped it on his own hands, fingers over fingers. “Hurry up, Raffi. There are things to do.”
When they had finished he cleared a space, lit seven candles and arranged them in a circle, working quickly. Carys felt uneasy. The new light showed a low passageway behind her, leading farther into the tomb. And though she told herself she was a fool, she felt with a prickling of her skin that there was something down there. “Raffi . . .” she began.
“We know.” He looked up. “We know what to do.”
He had poured water into a small silver dish, and now pulled out a red leather bag, full of objects. Despite her worry, excitement shivered through her. These were relics.
“Which one?” Raffi had his hand inside.
Galen thought quickly. “The bracelet.”
He pulled it out. It was made of some smooth black leather, with a tiny fastening. Threaded on it was a strange flat slab of gold, studded with no stones, but with a gray window. Minute touch-buttons decorated the sides.
Carys edged nearer.
Raffi glanced at her. “Look at this.” With his thumbnail he pressed one of the buttons hard. She stared, astounded. For a second, faint numbers had flickered in the window.
“What is it?”
“Who knows. It’s almost dead now.” Reverently he laid it down among the candles.
Galen had taken one string of black and green crystals from his neck; now he made a circle of it, around the relic. Then he and Raffi began to chant.
She recognized odd words, nothing more. This was the language of the Makers, long lost, except to the Order. It calmed her, made her feel strangely serene. It seemed important, here in the blackness of the tomb, though outside she would have laughed at it. But in this place something else lived, and she felt the strength of the chant, its protection, warming her, reassuring her. They’ll have you believing all this, she told herself wanly. The crossbow lay under her hand, and she was glad it was loaded.