With a shock, I realized something else. The suppressing barrier was gone from my mind, and so was the pain!
The only answer seemed to be that I had slept off the pain somehow, but if that were the case, the infection in my feet would have worsened, being untended. The pain would be dreadful. Better lie still.
And wait.
I frowned, wondering what I was waiting for. I shivered and again puzzled at the chill in the air.
Why was it so cold?
Curiosity overcame my fear of pain. Very carefully I rolled away from the wall, meaning to look out of the cave entrance to find out if it really had begun to snow. I was surprised to feel no pain and guessed the numbness had returned.
Something warm and moist touched my face and I gasped in fright staring wildly into the darkness. Gazing down at me with dark, troubled eyes, was a black horse - unmistakably Gahltha.
'It is I, Funaga,' Gahltha sent in answer to my thought that I was still dreaming. 'I am Galta who was once Gahltha.'
'Galta?' I echoed stupidly. My eyes drifted past the horse, and questions about his self-imposed change of name were swept aside in an even greater shock.
I was no longer in the cave in the White Valley, with its pervasive reek of smoke and the blackened skeletons of trees standing outside like silent sentinels.
I was lying on a flat narrow stone ledge jutting out from what seemed to be a cliff face. I had woken facing the cliff, but there were no walls around me, and no roof. I was out in the open. Spread on all sides beyond the grey-pitted cliff face was a vast, flat plain covered in snow. The moon shone a cold bluish light on the glittering snowy plain. In the distance, I could see darkly defined the shape of mountain spurs and outcrops of cracked stone. There was not a single tree or bush in sight.
The ice and snow, the lack of trees, and the incredible brightness of the stars told me I was in the mountains.
Except that it was impossible.
I thought fleetingly that the suppressing had shattered and the accumulated pain had destroyed my mind. Madness seemed the only rational answer. I giggled at the paradox and shivered when the sound echoed.
Gahltha watched me patiently, his dark coat almost blending with the pelt of the night.
I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it with an audible snap, thinking of the queer dream I had fallen into after Daffyd had gone. If it had been a dream. The dream answered all the questions clamouring in me - how I had come to the high mountains, why and when.
The old bird had said I would be delivered to one who would carry me back to Obernewtyn. But how could it be Gahltha? I clutched at this flaw with a rush of relief, since it must mean the dream was just a dream. If it were real, then all the rest must be real too, the prophecy, and the Beforetime machines. And the healing.
Carefully, I levered myself into a sitting position. There was no pain in my feet or legs. I looked down.
My legs were bare and unscarred. I touched them reverently, remembering I had done that in the dream. Only it had not been a dream. Thin legs with knobbled knees and rather long feet, but at that moment the most perfect legs in the world.
'Where are we?' I asked my feet.
'In the mountains,' Gahltha answered gently. I looked up to find him staring across the frozen wasteland. 'When I came here, there was a lake. Now it has frozen over. I have found a place where we will be warm. We must go there before the storm comes.'
'Storm?' I said vaguely.
Gahltha looked down at me with grave serenity, and I wondered at the change in him. The last time I had seen him on the banks of the Suggredoon, he had been almost insane with terror and frustration. The violent impatience and scorching bitterness that had characterized his behaviour had disappeared as completely as my own wounds.
'Come,' he sent. 'If you are too weak to walk, I will carry you. Soon the storm will come and it must not find us in the open.'
I looked up at the cloudless sky, wondering why he thought there was going to be a storm. But I left my doubt unspoken. So much had happened that was impossible to explain, that a clear sky might easily hide a storm. I pulled my socks and shoes back on and slid from the ledge, tensing myself for the pain that had been part of my life for so long.
There was a faint jarring, but no pain. I stared down at my feet in fresh wonder.
'Come,' Gahltha sent. There is wood. You will light a fire for us and perhaps we will live. It will be a bad storm.'
I looked up startled, and realized with a faint shiver that he was quite serious.
I stepped forward, sinking up to my knees in powdery snow. Gahltha went ahead, forging a wide track. I followed in his wake, marvelling at the pleasure of walking without pain. It was ironic - for two years I had longed to be free of the pain and crippling scars on my feet, and just when I had finally begun to accept that I would have to live with it for ever, it was gone.
The wind whipped my hair and skirt around, now that we were away from the buffer of the cliffs, and the cold stole into my bones long before we reached Gahltha's shelter. It turned out to be a cave at the end of a narrow cleft. I sighed, thinking I was in danger of becoming accustomed to living in caves, I had seen the inside of so many. This one was dry and surprisingly warm, being cut off from the wind by its awkward position in the wedge-shaped cleft. Outside, the wind had begun to whine sullenly.
'We must block the mouth or the coldwhite will come in,' Gahltha sent.
Under his direction, I laboured for more than an hour, shivering in the light dress and coat, to pile stones in a cairn round the mouth of the cave. When I had finished, there was nothing but a narrow slit I could barely squeeze through.
Impulsively, I went outside the cleft, braving a scything wind. The ledge I had woken on was barely visible, dwarfed by the immensity of the cliff from which it extended. But it was there. It was too dark to see the top of the cliff, but I had the feeling I would not be able to do that, even in the full daylight.
'Now the fire,' Gahltha instructed, when I came back inside. Fortunately I still had my hand flint, and Gahltha led me in the darkness to a pile of wood and twigs. I managed to burn myself twice before setting them to flame. The cave was quite big and nearly round. I crouched over the flames, trying to warm my fingers, and smoke curled up in a shower of cinders to the roof of the cave. Outside, the wind had reached a shrieking intensity, and snow fell in dense flurries.
I looked at Gahltha searchingly. 'I must have gone mad,' I said, more to myself than him.
Gahltha only stared into the flames as if mesmerized.
'How long do you think the storm will last?' I asked humbly.
He answered simply that he did not know.
I bit my lip. 'How did you get here?' Never mind about me, I thought.
Gahltha looked up. 'The funaga must know everything,' he sent, but without the old contempt. He looked into the fire as if it were a window, and miniature flames leaped in his eyes.
'I spent many days in the place where the mountain ate you. I wished I had died there, for I thought you must be dead. I was tortured by my cowardice. I thought I did not care what happened to me, but when the funaga tried to trap me with their nets, I fought them and ran away up to the mountains. I did not go to Obernewtyn, but higher, to the fields where I rode with Avra. But I could not stay there. I went on and on to the high places where the old equines go to die. I meant to abase myself before their spirits. I hoped I would die myself; that they would demand it of me.
'I did not eat or drink, as is the custom among equines seeking a vision. I waited and, day after day, there was no answer. I thought the old ones were deaf to me, and had cast me out. I called myself Galta - nothing.
Then one night I slept, and in my dream I saw a vision of a high mountain valley, where a lake lay yet unfrozen in the midst of ice and snow. A voice told me to find that place. It promised that I would find absolution there. And when I woke, I remembered, and began to search.
'It was hard and many times I despaired and thought of givi
ng up, but every night in my sleep, the voice came, reassuring me, urging me higher, promising an answer to the pain in my heart and a purpose for my life. It told me many things for my ears alone and a blackness, that had been inside me all my life, began to melt as easily as coldwhite before the sun. I could have gone back to Obernewtyn then, for I understood that pride and arrogance, rather than true grief, had kept me away. But the voice urged me always to go on.
'At last, I found this valley. Then the voice came again, telling me I had been drawn to the mountains to take part in a quest whose end would concern all living creatures, not only equine and funaga. This was to be my life's most important work, above any other glory I had imagined.' Gahltha's thought was faintly awed.
'The voice told me a funaga would be brought here whom I must keep safe. One day, this funaga would fight a great and perilous battle whose outcome was unknown even to the wisest of the wise, but which might mean the destruction of all life on the earth for ever. I must carry this funaga wherever it wishes to go, and protect it with my own life if it were needed.
'It was strange and ironic that I, who had so despised the funaga, should find myself bound to such a task. There was a time when I would have refused, believing funaga to be a blight on the world. But the voice had made me see that no life form is greater than another, and that all are bound up in an intricate and delicately balanced pattern of co-existence.
'In the daylight, I found this cave. And then I waited. Many weeks passed, yet always the voice told me to wait. So I waited. Two moons passed, and still I waited, wondering if it were my punishment to wait for ever in these cold lands for one who would never come,' he sent bleakly.
'Two moons?' I whispered incredulously. I remembered how I had imagined time passing in my sleep. If Gahltha were right, winter was near ended. I felt a stab of despair at the thought that Obernewtyn was yet unwarned, unless Daffyd had got there in time.
'Then I found you, lying on the ledge. At first I could not believe you were the funaga the voice had spoken of. But why else would you be there? And how could you have come there - there was not a single footprint in all the untouched snow? Then I thought you were dead, for your skin was like ice, but your heart was beating. So I waited for you to wake.'
There was a long silence in the wake of his strange tale. Outside the storm winds howled derisively, and tiny whirlwinds of snow blew through the cave opening, falling in a white drift against the stones. The fire crackled and orange firelight danced silently along the walls of the cave.
'Only someone insane could believe your story. Or mine,' I said softly, but my words sounded hollow. I had fallen asleep, half-dead, in the Highlands, and woken completely healed, sixty days and more than a thousand spans distant, on the highest, loneliest mountain peaks.
I felt a ghostly echo of the dangerous weight of pain, pressing against the feebly erected barrier in my mind and shuddered.
The fire cracked and I turned my face to the glowing embers, drinking in the warmth.
'When this storm is over, we will go back to Obernewtyn,' I said.
But outside, the storm winds shrieked.
25
Hoping the sudden silence was not merely a lull, I used a stick to clear the snow and rocks from the entrance of the cave. We had lost count of time and the firewood was nearly exhausted.
Coming out of the narrow crevice, I was cold and hungry, but I forgot physical discomfort in the dazzling sight that met my eyes. The world was blanketed in pristine white, reflecting the sunshine with painful intensity.
Unaccountably, I remembered sitting at the Kinraide Orphan Home with Maruman, dreaming of the fabled world of the Snow Queen, a forbidden Oldtime tale my mother had told us. A delicate lace of icicles hung from the ledge where Gahltha had found me.
'It is a hard trek to Obernewtyn,' Gahltha warned. 'It will not be safe to go too quickly. The whitecold will hide crevices and rocks. We will have to put our feet down carefully.'
'Life has always been a matter of putting your feet down carefully,' I said, but even the prospect of a long hard trek through frost-bitten country with an empty belly and scant clothes could not quell my joy.
We left at once for there were no preparations to be made. Gahltha led, forging a path; even so my shoes and legs were quickly soaked. I was glad to walk since the exertion and the sun reflected blindingly from the snow kept me warm.
Gahltha warned me to shade my eyes with a piece of cloth to avoid being snow blinded.
I looked back once before we began at the mountain in whose skirts we had sheltered. It sloped backwards, outjutting rocks and drifts of snow adhering to the flat surfaces making it look like the stern face of a very old man. The slant made it impossible to see the top, and I wondered if that were where the Ken of the Agyllians lay.
The more time that passed between the meeting with the strange birds in their lofty eyrie, the more fantastic and unbelievable the whole matter seemed, the more dreamlike. Only the healed scars on my legs and feet reminded me that it had really happened. And how would I explain them?
We travelled across the ice lake and the land beyond seemed to go right to the horizon. This puzzled me until Gahltha said the distance was an illusion. We were on a large flat plateau and would shortly reach its edge.
The wind which had howled for days and nights, seemed to have exhausted itself and the air was clear and still. The only sound to break the silence was that of our footsteps and breathing. We might be the only people alive in all the Land. Hunger increased the heady feeling. I felt as if the air were a kind of fement that one might become drunk on. At the same time, I felt I could understand anything and everything very easily there on the roof of the world.
It was nearing dusk when we reached the edge of the plateau. I was within a single handspan of the edge before I realized. Only a sharp warning from Gahltha stopped me walking off the edge. I looked over and a cold freshening gust of air blew up into my face. What I saw below took my breath away.
Clouds were strung out across the sky like skeins of wool - below my feet!
Glimpsed through a woolly curtain, the Land was barely visible. Seen from above, the clouds were fluffy mounds of cream or sea foam shot with glorious sunset colours - a fairy realm. And between the Land and the plateau there were rank upon rank of mountains, jagged as upturned teeth, streaked with snow and lacking the slightest touch of colour or softness.
Some of the mountains were dense and dark, unmistakably Blacklands. Few dared travel through mountainous terrain because a snow fall could hide a lethal plain and much of the poisoned fringelands was difficult to tell apart from untainted ground. Yet Gahltha seemed unperturbed, saying only that the voices had told him where to walk safely.
I had often gazed at the distant mountains, but I had never had any real idea of the sheer size and barrenness of them. Gahltha's lone trek to the heights had been an incredible act of faith.
Something glistened on the far horizon.
Squinting, I realized I was looking at the Great Sea. For a moment I seemed to smell the salty wetness of waves on the shore. All the world lay spread at my feet. The one thing I could not see was a way down. The plateau stood apart from the other plains and mountains. I looked at the black horse and found him watching me inscrutably.
'I brought you here to see the world, Funaga. I wondered if it would move you as it once moved a proud and bitter equine. Before this, I saw my own smallness, and understood how stupid and arrogant I had let pride and hatred make me,' he sent.
'Not many could see this and be unchanged,' I sent gently. 'But you haven't said how we can get down.'
'Patience,' Gahltha sent.
He cast one final look from the heights and turned with a sigh. I followed, wondering what the Elder had said to him. I had the feeling only he would ever know the whole story.
He made for the opposite side of the plateau and, there, I looked out, aghast.
Again the plateau was high, but there were no clouds t
o hide the dreadful vision from us.
Stretched out like a black skin were hundreds of spans of Blacklands, lifeless and still. I had thought the snowy slopes barren, but this was a terrible dead stretch of obsidian flecked here and there with dark gleaming pools reflecting a tarnished sky. An arm of mountains, breaking away from the main mass, ran across the nightmarish terrain and out of sight. It was the Land, dead and without hope of life. Looking at that it was impossible to believe Pavo's assurance that the Blacklands would not last for ever.
Even as I watched, night crept like a dark shadow across the bleak plains and, though the heights were still bathed in sunlight, I felt strangely cold.
'Next time, there will be nothing left . . .' Atthis had warned.
I shivered, chilled to the bone. I had wondered why the Agyllians left me in the mountains when it would have been so easy for them to carry me down to Obernewtyn. Now, I thought I understood. They had known Gahltha would bring me there. They had wanted me to see it.
'I did not know it went on so far. So much land poisoned . . .' I whispered.
'Perhaps there are many lessons to be learnt in the mountains,' Gahltha sent gravely.
I could not take my eyes away.
I thought of the Oldtimers, and wondered whether they would have built their death machines if they could have foreseen what would come to pass. And why create machines that would outlast a hundred lives? Had they been so enamoured of war and destruction that they must make it immortal?
No wonder equines despised the funaga. Perhaps it was fitting that the solution lay in human hands.
For the first time, I felt I could understand the original Councilmen and their tyrannous rule. Farmers and children of the Oldtimers, they had understood the will to destroy and the hunger for power that knew no boundaries. Perhaps they had even known the death machines existed and had hoped to ensure no one would ever use them again. No wonder they had forbidden delving into the past.
They had been afraid.
Unfortunately, the repressive philosophies had become a different sort of threat. I doubted the present Council understood the real dangers any better than those who had made the white-death machines. I had only to think of Henry Druid and Alexi, to know there would always be men and women prepared to pay any price for power. Even our own Teknoguild would risk agonizing death to revive the knowledge of a lost age.