“As for the details of our defense, that is not something that can be decided here.” His eyes flickered my way without ever meeting my gaze. “That will happen in Sutrium once we have learned the precise details of the invasion from Malik.”
Noviny went to speak with the man who had spoken, and Rushton turned back to me. “I am sorry I did not have the chance to warn you about what I would say, but I assumed you would wish to remain until Darius can be taken safely to his people. That will be at least a sevenday according to the healer who now tends him,” he said in a low voice.
His explanation ought to have mollified me, but his cool formality stripped the words of comfort. I was still trying to think how to respond when Zarak said, “I have been thinkin’ on how we can gan to the invaders’ ships without havin’ to fight our way to them. Noviny was tellin’ me about these deep caves at the foot of the cliffs, just along from the stone steps, where he saw th’ Herders meet with Malik….”
“I have said already that we will not know where along the coast the invasion force will land until Malik has been interrogated,” Rushton cut in sternly.
Zarak flushed and looked mortified, but Rushton reached out to grasp his shoulder. “You have a fine mind, lad, and I think if your guildmistress will permit it, you might ride along with us to Sutrium tonight, for we will need such skills in the days ahead.” Rushton released him, saying in a louder voice, “It is time for us to leave for Sutrium. Make your preparations.”
A babble of talk erupted, but rather than becoming engaged in it, Rushton turned on his heel and strode across the room toward the door.
Zarak looked at me pleadingly, and despite my own emotional turmoil, I could not help but smile. Even if I had wanted to refuse him, I could not have done so anyway with Khuria standing behind his son, beaming with pride. I nodded, and Zarak hugged his father and raced to get his things.
As the room gradually emptied, those locals who had attended the meeting came to bid Dameon and me a rather stiff farewell, but after the empath spoke a few words to them, they were smiling, and I knew he had bathed them in waves of calmness and trust. I wondered, as I had often done before, at the morality of this, for was it not another form of coercion, even if it was benevolent?
“…Garth was completely astonished,” Dameon was saying.
“Astonished about what?” I asked, realizing he had been speaking.
He smiled wryly. “I was saying that Rushton summoned Garth back to Obernewtyn the same day you left the White Valley and ordered him to open Jacob Obernewtyn’s grave. As you can imagine, the Teknoguildmaster wasted no time. You know how obsessed he is about Hannah Seraphim. Strangely, there were no bones in the grave, nor any sign that a body had even been there. Instead, there was a suit, which Garth says is the Beforetime version of our plast suits, and a notebook with the pages sealed in plast. The writing in the notebook begins as a letter to Hannah Seraphim, though later parts seemed more like a journal, from what I heard.”
“Jacob’s journal?” I guessed, my interest quickening.
Dameon nodded. “He scribes that he is weary of his loneliness and has decided to leave Obernewtyn. He says that he will take with him the key Hannah left behind. Since she never returned, it will never lie with them in the grave they had prepared to hold their bodies.”
“Never returned from where?” I asked, baffled.
“He did not say where, but the letter appears to have been written over a period when he was making elaborate preparations to leave. Some of what he scribes makes me sure he intended to go into the Black lands beyond the mountains above Obernewtyn.”
“Poor man mun have been mad,” Khuria said.
“If he is speaking of the Blacklands, then the letter was scribed after the Great White,” I said. “But what does he mean about being alone? Even if Hannah was not there, there would have been others.”
“The letter tells that the others had decided to take refuge from the missiles and something called a fallout in what used to be the building that housed the teknoguilders of their time. And you know what happened to it, of course. The upper levels were destroyed and the lower levels crushed, not by weapons but by immense movements in the earth, which were the result of the Great White.
“Jacob scribes that Hannah had warned them that Obernewtyn would be the safest place for them during the holocaust, but when it all began, everyone was frightened that she might have made a mistake. After all, she had never foreseen her own absence. So they voted to go into the lower chambers of the Teknoguild laboratories. Jacob scribed that he would have been with them, but he was in the house trying to reach Hannah on a computermachine. From what he says, he spoke to her, and that was when she promised him that she would return, for she had foreseen that their bones would lie together at the end with the key.”
“What is this key he speaks of?” Khuria asked curiously.
Dameon shrugged. “Jacob said only that it had been given to Hannah in trust and that she was supposed to hold it safe for someone else, though I do not know how she could have done that if they were supposed to take it to their grave.”
“I wonder where Hannah went,” I said.
“It mun have been as my lad has always thought,” Khuria offered. “Hannah were in Newrome under Tor when the Great White came, an’ she died there.”
“But Jacob scribed that he spoke to her, so maybe she escaped the flooding of the city under Tor but had no way of getting through the mountain pass to Obernewtyn,” Dameon said. “Remember, the pass would have been a good deal more poisonous right after the Great White.”
“Jacob had a plast suit, though. Why dinna he use it and gan to her?” Khuria wondered.
Dameon frowned. “He must have had two suits, because he scribed that he was going to wear one and leave one for Hannah in the tomb so she could follow him. But I don’t know how he thought she would manage that, since he did not leave any information about where he meant to go.”
Khuria said grimly, “I have seen a glimpse of what lies beyond the high mountains, and I tell ye that no one could gan there an’ live, even if they wore a plast suit. It is a vast unending desolation that stretches to th’ horizon. Jacob’d nowt last more than a sevenday there without food, an’ less without water, and if he took off his suit to eat or drink, he’d die eventually of wastin’ sickness.”
“He would not last long,” I said. “The air above tainted earth would also have been poisoned back then, Garth says. He would be dead within hours.”
“No,” Dameon said. “Jacob scribed that he was taking an air purifier and food and water in special containers that he could use without taking the suit off. He also had some sort of device to eliminate waste.”
“Even so, he was alone, and how much food and water could he have carried?” I said.
“Poor man,” Khuria murmured. “He mun have been driven mad waitin’ in vain all those years for the woman he loved.”
“We don’t really know if there was anything between Hannah and Jacob, despite what Garth thinks,” I pointed out, somewhat startled by the old man’s romanticism.
“They mun have loved one another, else why choose to share a grave?” Khuria asked.
“You could not read his words and doubt that he loved her,” Dameon said slowly. “Yet maybe she did not love him.”
“Why did Rushton command the grave be opened?” I asked.
“Maryon said it must be so,” Dameon said. “She did not say why.”
The others began speculating about why the Futuretell guildmistress would want an old grave opened. I said nothing, for it seemed to me quite likely that Maryon had been manipulated by the Agyllian birds guiding my quest, to ensure that I knew the key that ought to have been in the grave was not where it was meant to be. But if that were true, what was I supposed to do about it? The only thing I was sure of was that the key Jacob had taken with him must be the one referred to in the carving on the Obernewtyn doors.
“…that key which must b
e [used/found] [before all else] is [with/given/sent to] she who first dreamed of the searcher—the hope beyond the darkness to come….”
Which meant I had been wrong to think that the words on the glass statue under Tor, created by Cassy Duprey and given to Hannah, were the key referred to by this line. It must be as I had first thought: that the key had been sent to Hannah concealed in or with the glass sculpture. Hannah must have promised Cassy that the key would go with her to her grave, neither of them foreseeing that the Great White could separate Hannah irrevocably from the key or that Jacob would go into the Blacklands, taking it with him.
But I refused to fall into despair—at least not until I had read Jacob’s journal, for there might be a clue in it that only I would understand. Or maybe the clue waiting for me in the Earthtemple in Sador was the result of a later futuretelling by Kasanda, which would direct me to the missing key. Perhaps it was good that Rushton had not asked me to come to Sutrium, for it left me free to return directly to Obernewtyn. After all, Dameon could surely manage Saithwold in my absence.
A question occurred to me. “How did Garth react to Maryon’s command to open the grave?”
Dameon laughed. “As you can imagine, given her previous opposition to his requests, he was torn between wanting to embrace her and wanting to strangle her.”
A gust of cold wind blew around us, stirring the flames in the fire, and I turned with the others to see that the outer door had opened. Zarak stood there, wearing boots and greatcoat, his cheeks pink with exertion and excitement. “Rushton said to tell you we are about to leave,” he said.
The wind had the smell of the sea in it, as well as the scent of storms to come. Apt, I thought. The sky was blanketed in cloud that allowed neither moonlight nor star shine to show through. But several of the coercers carried lanterns whose flames danced and fluttered even behind their glass shields.
I breathed in the sweet wild air, realizing that thinking of my quest had cooled the anger I felt toward Rushton. I looked at Malik. His face might have been carved of rock for all the emotion it showed. This thought reminded me that I had yet to see the statue that stood in Noviny’s garden. At least the delay in our departure would give me time to find out if it was another sign from Kasanda to the Seeker.
I saw Kevrik preparing to mount up, and realizing that Rushton must have asked him to go to Sutrium as well, I went to bid him farewell. I was interested to see his clumsy attempt at fingerspeech. He flushed and smiled when the horse made no response. “I have already learned a few words in beastspeech, an’ young Zarak has promised to teach me more as we ride. He says he owes me a lesson fer th’ headache he gave me in the cell.”
“I have not thanked you properly for saving my life,” I said seriously.
His expression sobered. “’Tis I who should be thanking ye for allowing me the chance to become a free man. I dinna mean that I am nowt in a cell either. I mean free of foolish prejudices that are as bad as bars. Some of th’ men who served Vos feel the same way after meeting Linnet an’ the knights, and your Rushton is an impressive sort of man, by anyone’s standard.”
I gritted my teeth at hearing Rushton referred to as mine, but before I could correct Kevrik, Rushton was calling everyone to mount up. Kevrik obeyed with alacrity as Rushton came over to me. “I wish you a safer journey than thus far, Guildmistress,” he said formally.
“Give my good wishes to Dardelan and Reuvan,” I managed to say composedly, but as he mounted Esred, I thought again of what had passed between us the night I had ridden out from Obernewtyn.
“You must tell me what is wrong,” I had pleaded. “Why do you not touch me or smile at me or look at me?”
He had sighed, and when he did look at me, I had seen only a deadly weariness. If I could have stopped him answering then, I would have. For I suddenly knew, as if I were a futureteller, that if he spoke, his words would destroy something precious. But it was too late.
“Do you not understand, Elspeth, you who are so bright? Is it not obvious? There is nothing left in me to feel emotions with,” Rushton said slowly. He glanced toward the turret window, which overlooked the wall encircling Obernewtyn and the jagged mountains surrounding us, their tips blanketed in snow. Then he looked back at me. “We loved, you and I. That is a truth. But not all love lasts forever, and that is also a truth. I do not love you any longer. Since I woke from my…time in the cloister, I have felt nothing. It is as if all capacity for feeling has been burned from me. I remember love, but I do not feel it any more than one who has had a limb amputated. At some moments, there is something…and I have waited to see if it would grow into true feeling, but it has not, and I know now that I am nothing more than a limbless person who experiences an itch in a leg that is no longer there.”
“Rushton, if you would only let me help you re-member what happened in the cloister, perhaps your ability to feel would return,” I said.
“I do not wish to remember,” Rushton answered flatly. “I am sorry, for I know that what I say must give you pain, and yet you need to know the truth so that you can be healed of…of what you feel for me.” He looked out the window again, his green eyes remote.
The pain of his words cut so deep. But I could see that even the pity he expressed was nothing more than a mimicking of that emotion. He could not truly feel pity any more than he could feel love. Yet he seemed to have lost none of his devotion to Obernewtyn. Or was that just another simulation? How cruel pain made me in that moment. How I wanted to scratch at that calm face to see if he felt even that.
“I…see,” I managed to say, the words jerking from my mouth. “I am glad you have explained it to me. I had not thought of love as a wound that might need healing. Well, it must be possible, for you have managed it without even a scar. Maybe it is not so difficult as I might have imagined.”
The metallic taste of blood woke me to the present, and I realized that I had bitten my lip. Everyone had mounted now, and they were riding out the gate. Malik was at the back between two coercer-knights, and he turned to look back. I expected to see loathing in his eyes, but instead he gave me a look of vicious triumph.
A shiver of premonition came to me as I remembered Malik saying in the woods that he had no need to escape. I had felt sure he meant the invasion, but he knew now that we were aware of the bargain he had struck with the Herders, so why that look of triumph? I shaped a probe to call them back so we could coerce Malik at once and learn what lay behind that look. But the thought of facing Rushton again stopped me sending it. Whatever secret Malik nursed would be wrested from him by a coercer in Sutrium on the morrow.
I stood for a long time after the sound of the horses’ hooves faded, only half conscious that the wind had grown stronger. No one spoke to me as they drifted back inside, and I guessed they imagined that I pined for Rushton. No doubt they thought that we had quarreled. Would that it were so simple, for quarrels could be mended. I had felt myself devastated by what Rushton had said that last night at Obernewtyn, but I understood only now that I had not accepted his words. When Rushton had ridden up on Esred earlier that day, I had looked for signs of his love, feeling certain that such love as we had shared could not simply be extinguished like a fire.
But now hope was truly dead.
Whatever the Herders had done to Rushton had changed him irrevocably. Hearing of what Malik had done to me, he had behaved as if an injustice had been done that he would see was put right. Remembering Malik’s sly hateful words about Rushton being hollowed out, I wondered if what lay behind his triumphant look of malice was his awareness that Rushton could not love me. After all, he witnessed the coolness between us as Rushton bade me farewell.
I had meant to look for Maruman to mend the rift between us, but my heart and mind were full of turmoil and grief. I stumbled along the side of the house to the back door and went directly to the bedroom I had been shown earlier. Opening a window in case Maruman recovered from his dudgeon and came seeking me in the night, I farsent Gahltha to say
good night, only to find that the old cat was with him. Relieved that he was safe, I withdrew and lay on my bed, fully clothed. I fell at once into a dream.
I dreamed vividly of the day my parents had died. I saw the soldierguards burst through the door of our home as my mother prepared nightmeal. One soldierguard grasped my mother about the waist, and Jes flew at him. The soldierguard swatted him away as if he were an insect, and Jes hit the wall with a loud crack and fell down, lying half stunned against it. I ran to my mother and tried to climb into her arms, but another soldierguard tore me away from her and hurled me over to where Jes was beginning to stir. My mother was dragged outside, and then two soldierguards pushed us after her. I heard her calling out to neighbors and friends to help us. But though people’s faces appeared at windows, no one tried to stop the soldierguards or the Herders directing them.
We were brought to the central square of Rangorn, where moon fairs and sevenday markets were held. Here a small crowd stood gathered about a man tied to a pole in the midst of a woodpile. I realized as we came nearer that the man was my father. He spoke my mother’s name with grief, and she cried out his name and then our names. Anguish crossed my father’s features as he saw us, and he cursed the Herders standing by, pale and gray-robed, their heads bald and gleaming in the sunlight. My mother only begged the priests to take us away so we would not see the burning.
The older of the priests answered her in a dry, fussy voice, saying that we were the children of seditioners and must see where our parents’ treachery had led so we would not follow in their footsteps. Then one of the soldierguards held us while another daubed our cheeks and foreheads with the stinging dye used to mark the children of seditioners.