The city was abandoned. Streets and buildings were deserted, and the black roads were covered here and there in white sand that had run up against the sides of walls in bleached mounds. Tumbleweeds rolled unchecked along paths where a sparse fringe of dun-colored saltweed grew up through a multitude of small cracks.
Beyond the city, I saw a plain shining white in the moonlight.
I saw Maruman leap onto a large Beforetime machine sitting on the side of the black road. Parts of it were rotted to black lace but I guessed by its shape and position at the side of the road that it was one of the machines the Beforetimers had used to ride along the ground. Horseless carriages, as Garth named them.
Sitting neatly atop the immobile hulk, the old cat looked utterly at home in the deserted city lit by its many reflected moons, yet his ears pricked and twitched and his eye was dark and there was an alertness to his bearing that told me he was in the midst of stalking something.
But what? I wondered as the dream slipped away, and once again I floated in the vast darkness. I could not find the levels of my own mind. I did not know which way was up or down. A great heavy stupidity seemed to possess me.
I drifted down, deeper than I had ever gone, and yet there was no mindstream. I tried to rise, but a great hand seemed to press me gently but inexorably down into a void of shadows. I grew afraid at the realization of my powerlessness, but I could do nothing to fight it. I thought of the spirit-force I had for so long feared as a murderous power that had taken up residence in me.
It is part of you, Rushton had told me just before I chained my secrets in the great inner vault that was his Talent. To pretend it is not is as foolish as binding your eyes and pretending to be blind.
Rushton, I thought with a surge of grief and longing so potent that it disrupted the dreadful downward drift.
Then I was lying on my back beside a greatship driven up onto a sandy shore. The mast was broken and the sails hung in tatters. People stood around me talking.
“There had better be water here or we’re done for, even if the storm did spit us out,” said one. I recognized the voice of the seaman Reuvan. Above him the sky was the color of tarnished metal streaked with sickly yellow.
“Can’t you help him?” someone asked. “He won’t last much longer like this.”
“He has lasted longer than I thought he would, but we need to gan the heat out of him,” said someone else. A woman?
“Dunk him in the waves and ye might as well drown him in this state,” said a man. “His heart won’t take it.”
“He’s awake,” said another voice. “Surely that’s a good sign.”
“He is not truly awake, poor lad,” said another voice I knew—Gwynedd, who was high chieftain of the Westland and king of the Norselands.
“Rushton has survived a lot worse than this bitty storm an’ a wee flux,” said Brydda Llewellyn stoutly, but when he leaned over me, his face was haggard with weariness and worry.
I am inside Rushton again, I thought, and then my heart leaped, for if that were so, then this was no mere dream! He lived.
“The trouble is he was sick and then the storm came,” said Gwynedd. “One or the other he might have managed.”
“He nivver says owt but Elspeth,” said an older man. “Who’s that I’d like to ken.”
There was a profound silence.
“That is the woman he loves,” said Brydda at last. “Elspeth Gordie. Guildmistress of the farseekers of Obernewtyn Shire, and a stronger woman I never met. If she were here, she would nowt let him slip away. Once before, he near died and she held on to him and forbade it and he lived.”
“Ask me an’ I’ll tell ye he dinna hold to life because she dinna be here,” said the old man. “Ye ken he asked her to bond and she left him, or so his ravings’d have it.”
Another silence, then Brydda growled, “A man’s ravings ought not to be spoken of, and the way I heard it, she left only because there was a task she had to do. A matter touching on many lives.”
I have to help him, I thought, fighting the stupor that sapped my will by imagining the black sword. This time, I felt its weight. Gathering myself, I summoned it into me more strongly than I had ever dared to do before. It was as if I had swallowed a hive of dark, furious bees. I rose up from Rushton’s body and felt the steady muscular beat of the wings of my spirit-form as the world of matter faded into vague shapes and silence. I lifted my hands to look at them. They were greenish white, though I had no memory of creating a spirit-form or of transferring my consciousness to it.
The black sword is me, I thought, just as Rushton said.
“Sometimes even funaga speak wisely,” said Maruman. “Maybe that is why Marumanyelloweyes troubled to hold him to life.” The cat stood before me in his greatcat spirit-form of gold slashed with black. His long snaky tail lashed and his two eyes flashed, one gold and one diamond bright and white, glittering fiercely. Now it is up to ElspethInnle, he said, and vanished.
I looked down at the dull brown form that was Rushton’s body and saw the red and sickly green streaks in the spirit-form overlaying it. I thought of the golden link that bound us, and as if the thought had summoned it, the link showed itself to my eyes, shining bright as sunlight on waves. I put my hand into it and felt the hot red ravenous heat of Rushton’s sickness shot through with a longing for me so great that even as I willed myself into him, he was drawing me to him.
Then I was standing on a silent seashore. It was dark and very quiet save for the soft whisper of the waves against my feet. There was no moon and the stars overhead were none I knew, but the sea itself was alive with phosphorescence.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Rushton.
“My love,” he said, and took me in his arms.
Oh, the joy and wonder of that embrace. I breathed deep, smelling his warm body, relishing the feel of his hard, muscular arms wrapped so tightly around me. Never let me go, I thought, but I said, “You are ill.”
He only kissed me. His lips were on my brow, on my cheeks, on my neck, and finally, hungrily, on my mouth. At last, he said, “I will die content holding you, for though this be but a dream, it is a sweeter dream than life without you.”
I drew back from him and looked up into his face. “This is no dream, my love. I am real. We are linked whether we are together or apart. I am here because of that link. Only if you die will the link be severed. Live, for me, my love. Draw on that which binds us and live. For if you live, I can endure. I can do what I must do no matter where it leads me. Because I will know you are in the world.”
“Elspeth, you are fading,” Rushton said urgently. His face grew grim and desperate. “I will not let you go again.”
“Then hold to life, my ravek,” I sent, even as I slipped from his grasp into the darkness. For a moment I was lost in the shadow sea, and once again I felt the inexorable hand pressing me down ever deeper, but I fought it for the sake of the quest I must complete and for the sake of all I loved.
And I rose.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With thanks to my brilliant, tender editor, Nan McNab, without whom my characters would have died of thirst or hunger or been half mad with sleep deprivation and who would certainly have seen too many full moons. Without whom, in fact, I would be lost.
A warm thank-you to Melinda Dean, who examined a rough manuscript and found many a chink through which the wind would have whistled without her canny eye. Thanks also to Heather Giles, my indispensable helper, who has long been first reader of my manuscripts. And a huge thank-you to Chelsea Eberly for her refined and lovely editing.
A final heartfelt thank-you to the lovely Penguins: to Jeanmarie Morosin, who began the journey with us; to Katrina Lehman, who rode shotgun to bring us to a timely end; to Cathy Larsen for her fabulous covers; and especially to Laura Harris, who allowed the split that will enable me to finish Elspeth’s story properly.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ISOBELLE CARMODY began the first of her highly a
cclaimed Obernewtyn Chronicles while still in high school. She continued writing while completing a Bachelor of Arts and a journalism cadetship. This series and her short stories have established her at the forefront of fantasy writing in Australia and abroad.
She is the award-winning author of several novels and many series for young readers, including the Legend of Little Fur, the Gateway Trilogy, and the Obernewtyn Chronicles.
She lives with her family, and they divide their time between homes in Australia and the Czech Republic.
Isobelle Carmody, The Waking Dragon
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