The Rebellion (3 page)

Even from the back of the crowd, I could see the Herder mottle with outrage. Then his lips folded into a vindictive smile. “Evil must not be permitted to think itself triumphant,” he said silkily, and then turned to speak a word to his acolyte, eyes glittering with malice.

The boy proffered a selection of long-handled metal tools.

“Th’ bastard’s goin’ to brand her before he burns her,” Matthew hissed into my ear, his highland accent thickened with anger.

“Am I blind?” I snapped. The amount of blood pooled about the woman’s feet told me she would likely not live long enough to feel the flames of purification, let alone to be rescued. Despite her boldness, her face had grown as white as smoke.

“We mun do somethin’,” Matthew whispered urgently. He gestured to our gypsy disguise, as if it made some point of its own.

“Be silent and let me think.” I sent the thought directly to his mind.

The sensible thing to do would be to accept that it was too late to save her and withdraw before anyone noticed us. I looked at the gypsy again. Her chin lifted in defiance as the Herder approached with the brands.

I cursed under my breath and slid down from Zade’s back, mentally asking the horse to stand quietly until I called. I told Matthew to turn the carriage around and go back to the main road, not trusting his instinct for drama.

“What will you do?” he asked eagerly.

“I’ll think of something,” I said shortly. “Wait for me out of sight.”

As soon as he was gone, I pushed my way through the crowd, at the same time extending a delicate mental probe. Fortunately, the Herder was not mind-sensitive, so he was not aware of my intrusion.

“Where is her wagon?” I demanded aloud.

The Herder swung to face me, his eyes narrowing into slits at the sight of my gypsy attire. “By what right do you question a voice of Lud?” he snarled.

“By right of blood,” I said.

It was Council lore that blood kin might speak in defense of their own. In the past, this had not stopped Herders doing what they wished and later making excuses to the Council for excessive zeal. But with the growing rift between Faction and Council, the priests’ power had waned, and they were less wont to openly flout Council lore. In any case, it was only a stalling tactic, since I had no proof of kinship to the gypsy. “Her wagon has been burned, as have all her Luddamned utensils and potions,” the Herder said grudgingly, but his memory showed him riffling through the wagon and removing various pieces before the thing was flamed. My probe slid sideways into a memory in which he tortured the gypsy’s bondmate to death, and I shuddered inwardly.

“You have proof that you are related?” he demanded.

“All gypsies are brothers and sisters,” I answered, not wanting to be caught openly in a lie.

“Do not taint my ears with the practices of your foul breed,” he hissed. “I asked for proof of kinship—you have shown me none, therefore be silent.”

I saw his mind form a plan to report me to the soldierguards for sedition, thereby ridding himself of me in case I
was
related by blood. He turned back to the gypsy and snorted in annoyance to find her hanging limply from her bindings.

Alarmed, I reached out a probe, but her body still pulsed with life. She had only fainted.

The Herder cast down the brand and reached for a torch to fire the woodpile at the foot of the stake. A great rage seared me. Throwing off caution, I reached into the bottom of my mind for the darkest of my Misfit Talents.

But before I could stun him, an arrow hurtled through the air to bed itself in the center of the Herder’s chest. He sucked in an agonized breath and clawed at the wooden stave, trying vainly to withdraw it. Then his eyes clouded and he collapsed, blood bubbling obscenely from his lips.

I disengaged my probe with a scream, almost dragged to my own doom by his swift spiral into death. Panting, I stared down at him in astonishment, and for a moment, silence reigned in the village clearing.

“The Herders will kill us all for this,” a woman wailed, shattering the stillness, her eyes searching the trees for the archer.

“Not if we kill these gypsies and throw the bodies in the White Valley. We can say we saw nothing of what happened,” a man began, but before he could continue, another arrow whistled through the air, piercing his neck.

He crumpled to the ground with a rattling gurgle.

That was enough for the rest. It was one thing to watch someone else die, and quite another to risk your own life.

People scattered in all directions, crying out in terror.

I did not know who had loosed the arrows, and there was no time to find out. Situated on the border of the highlands and lowlands, Guanette was visited regularly by off-duty
soldierguards seeking amusement. At any minute, several might be drawn by the screams to investigate.

I rushed forward to the stake. Fortunately, the cuts on the gypsy’s arms were shallow, since the aim of bloodpurging was to exact a full confession, not to kill. Still, the cuts were enough to drain her blood slowly. I ripped at the hem of my skirts and bound the torn strips around her arms, automatically setting up a barrier to repel the chaotic wave of unconscious thought that flowed from the gypsy as our flesh met. Then I cut through her bonds with shaking fingers, staggering as she fell heavily into my arms. A thick pot-metal band around her upper arm grazed my cheek.

All at once, my hair was wrenched savagely from behind, and I was pulled over backward, dragging the unconscious gypsy on top of me. For a second, I lay still, winded; then the acolyte launched himself at me, renewing his attack, raining blows on my head, his eyes alight with fanatical rage.

“Demon gypsy! Holocaust scum! Halfbreed!” he screamed in a reedy voice. “They’ve killed my master! Soldierguards!”

Fighting free of the gypsy’s dead weight, I shoved the boy hard, toppling him to the ground. He glared up at me, a handprint of the gypsy’s blood on his chest.

“You will die for this,” he hissed. “Lud has granted my masters great power to kill their enemies. One day we will destroy all of your kind, even the stinking Twentyfamilies.”

I turned from him in disgust and hauled the woman to her feet. This was no easy task, for she was tall and full-bodied, and her arms and upper body were slicked with blood. By the time I had her upright, Zade had responded to my mental summons. From the corner of my eye, I saw the acolyte’s
eyes bulge in astonishment as the horse knelt to receive the woman’s body.

I groaned aloud as two soldierguards burst through the trees, wielding short-swords.

One dropped like a stone, pierced by another deadly arrow from my mysterious helper. The other soldierguard gave the dead man a sick look and flung himself behind a cart, scanning the treetops fearfully.

“Quickly, climb/get on my back,” Zade sent, rising to stand upright. “Gahltha will be angered if you are harmed in my care.”

Obediently, I vaulted onto him and wound my fingers in his mane, clamping my knees around the unconscious gypsy.

“Go!” I shouted, and he leapt forward.

Using coercion inwardly, I locked my muscles in place to ensure stability. Then I turned my head, sending an outward coercive bolt at the acolyte to erase all that he had seen. The block slammed into the boy’s stunned mind, but not swiftly enough to prevent him from throwing the bloodpurge knife.

It pinwheeled toward me with uncanny accuracy: blade, hilt, blade …

There was no time to summon the mental energy to deflect it, but instinctively, I threw my head backward.

A split second later, the knife hammered into my temple.

I’m dead
, I thought, and the world exploded into painful pieces, sending me into the abyss.

2

I
WAS STANDING
on a high plateau at the beginning of a path that led down into the terrible seared deadness of the Blacklands. It was night and darkly quiet. The distant noise of liquid dripping slowly into liquid was the sound of seconds dissolving and falling away into the sea of time.

Far across the Blacklands, I saw a flash of dull, yellowish light. I blinked, and suddenly I was down in the valley; the bleary gleam I had seen from afar shone from the gaping maw of a tunnel cut into a rocky outcrop.

Entering, I walked until I reached the source of the light: two great carved doors set deep in a granite arch in the tunnel wall. Incredibly, though made of stone, the doors were ablaze. Opposite them, illuminated by the glow, was a small grotto. I felt a surge of terror, for within it, dead and stuffed, was the Agyllian Elder, Atthis.

Then a voice spoke inside my mind—Atthis’s voice from the past.

“Long ago … I dreamed one would be born among the funaga, a Seeker to cross the black wastes in search of the deathmachines, one who possessed the power to destroy them.… You are that Seeker.…”

The voice had grown steadily softer until it faded altogether.

“Atthis?” I whispered, but the bird in the grotto was as
cold and silent as the rock, her clouded eyes gleaming with reflected flame.

I turned to face the doors again, for there was something about them that tugged at me. Before I could understand why, they swung open. Standing in their fiery embrace was a radiantly beautiful boy with gleaming yellow hair.

“Ariel …,” I whispered disbelievingly.

He gave a prim, cruel little smile. “Of course it is I. Did you really think we were done with each other?” His voice was as I remembered: high-pitched and taunting. “You cannot hide from me. But my revenge will wait, because there is a thing you must do for me.”

“I won’t do anything for you,” I hissed.

“Do as you wish and you shall still do my bidding,” he said with an angelic smile. “And when you have served my purpose, I will kill you. Until then, let me give you a gift of pain to remember me by.”

I backed away from him, but before he could do anything, Maruman leapt from the darkness into the tunnel. The old cat was huge—the size of a wild wolf—and he positioned himself between Ariel and me, tail twitching back and forth. Tattered ears flat to the skull, he gave a yowling cry. The sound lifted the hair on my neck.

Ariel’s eyes widened with terror. He made a warding-off shape with his fingers, and all at once, as if by moon-fair conjury, it was not Ariel on the threshold of the burning doors but another blond boy—Jik.

The sight of the empath filled me with sorrow, and I barely noticed that Maruman had vanished.

“Promise,” Jik murmured, the word barely audible against the crack of flame.

“Jik—” I began.

“Promise!” His voice drove into my mind, his eyes bright with dread.

Before I could summon the wit to answer, he lifted a hand to me. Instantly, fire licked at his sleeve and leapt into his hair.

At last I found my voice.

I screamed, but the noise that came from my mouth was a slow, rumbling growl that shook the world.

I opened my eyes and squinted in the dim light, my heart pounding sluggishly. The stone walls and tapestry hangings told me I was in the Healer hall at Obernewtyn.

I frowned. I had dreamed a long, oddly chaotic dream. And before that? The effort of trying to remember made my head throb.

Thunder rumbled ominously, and I looked out the window. Storm clouds darkened the horizon, and distant flashes of lightning threw the edges of the high mountains into sharp relief. Closer, in the gardens, the treetops whirled in a dervish dance in the rising wind.

As if my waking had been a cue, it began to rain heavily. I started as someone moved to the window, blocking my view.

“So the Days of Rain begin,” Rushton murmured.

The sadness in his voice startled me, for the Master of Obernewtyn rarely displayed emotion. I felt immediately uncomfortable at his presence.

“It is just as well this season is brief, for, in truth, it casts a shadow on my spirits.” Dameon’s voice rose out of the darkness. The blind empath spoke with the slightly stilted formality of the highborn, for so he had been before being charged Misfit. Why were the leaders of Obernewtyn at my bedside?

“They feared for you, ElspethInnle,” Maruman’s voice whispered into my mind.