The Rebellion (58 page)

“I don’t know, Maruman. But we have begun to find it—Rushton and I, the guildmerge and beasts. And whatever it is, it will be the right answer, because it comes out of us and what we are.”

“You will never make the funaga-li accept you,” Maruman sent.

“Maybe that’s the mistake we’ve made all along. Trying to make people accept us. I don’t think
making
is going to be part of our answer.”

I thought of Brydda. Just before we left Sador, he had come to the ship with Jakoby.

With them had been Miryum’s Sadorian suitor leading little Faraf and the giant horse, Zidon, which Malik had ridden. He had gone to the Coercer guilden and held out the lead ropes to her. She had stared up at him suspiciously.

“They are a gift—” Jakoby began.

Miryum interrupted, stilted and awkward. “Well, that’s all right, then.…” She took the ropes from the Sadorian’s hand.

The man gave her a look of such burning intensity that her polite thanks faded. Then he turned and walked away.
Miryum looked even more bewildered.

“They are his bondgift to you,” Jakoby had told the astonished coercer then. “That you accepted them means you have accepted him as your ravek. When he is ready, he will come for you. That is the Sadorian way.”

Miryum’s mouth fell open.

Jakoby then turned to Rushton. “I ask a boon of you, Leader of the Misfits.”

This was the last thing we had expected.

“Bram and I ask that one of your empaths remain in Sador as a guest of the Earthtemple. We would have speech with you, for there is much about your people that intrigues us. This guest would be greatly honored and shown things none has seen before who was not of our people.”

She and Brydda had withdrawn a little at this so that we could discuss it amongst ourselves.

“I will stay,” Dameon had said without preamble. “This must be my task, for there has been nothing else for me to do. This must be why I was sent here.”

Miky and Angina had chorused horror, offering themselves in his place.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “I
want
to stay. I am not sacrificing myself. It is … a selfish desire. I can learn much of these people, and perhaps teach them something. They have such a strange mixture of barbaric instincts and true wisdom. There is much in them that calls to me. The very fact that they regard empathy so …”

Rushton reached out and gripped his shoulder. “Dameon, I … I know why you would remain here.”

To my surprise, the empath had flushed. “Then you must let me stay.”

There was a long moment, and I wondered at this strangeness
between them. Rushton expelled a breath of air. “Very well. One season. When wintertime is over and the pass is thawed, we will come for you. The two horses will stay here as well, for, in any case, they would not like the sea journey.”

I shivered. So already there was talk of returning. I seemed to see the ruined face of the overguardian of the Earthtemple, telling me that the Seeker would come to Sador in search of some fifth sign.

“You cannot stay alone,” Rushton was saying to Dameon. “Someone must stay with you to be your eyes and guard you.”

“I will stay,” Fian offered eagerly. “I will protect Dameon with my life and soul. And I can research this region for Garth.”

“I can protect him best,” Hannay said, flexing his muscles.

There was some more talk and more offers to accompany the Empath guildmaster, but in the end, Dameon and Fian stayed because it was felt there would be no need for guards. The Sadorians had too much honor to let anyone harm a guest.

Saying goodbye to Dameon had been harder than I could have imagined. I would have opened my mind and heart to him, but he had set a wall between us. Perhaps so that he would not be hurt by our sorrow at this parting; perhaps because he still felt Matthew’s loss.

“It will not be the same without you,” I had whispered, holding him tightly.

“Ever was Obernewtyn empty when you were not there,” he had said. “Yet I survived, and you will survive.”

“Rushton needs you, especially now.”

“He does not need me, especially now,” the empath said. “He has what he has long desired.”

I felt the blood surge in my face.

He smiled, his blind eyes turned to me. He reached up and touched my hair and face, running his fingers over me lightly. Seeing. I made myself smile so that he would think of me that way. His fingers had reached my lips and seemed to tremble before he took them away.

He had embraced a tearful Miky and a pale Angina then, reminding them that they would rule the Empath guild in his stead.

“Only until you come back,” Miky choked.

Dameon kissed her cheek and then farewelled Freya, who had not known him long and yet wept, too.

“I am ready now,” he said. Smiling farewell, Fian had offered his arm to the empath. As they departed, Rushton put his arm around my shoulders and held me tightly. “He will be well, Elspeth. He … he needs to do this. It is but a season.”

Then Brydda had come to bid us farewell. “I wish things might have been different.”

“Perhaps this is for the best.” Rushton clasped the big rebel’s wrist. “I thought an alliance was the answer, but we would want such different things after it was over, and we will always be Misfits to them. We must be what we are.”

Rushton’s eyes had shifted to me fleetingly, and this time I had not flinched from the desire in them. If there was a loss in loving, I was learning that there was a finding in it, too.

Brydda had looked from one of us to the other and then had leaned across to embrace me. “Goodbye, little sad eyes, though they are not so sad now.”

“You will always have our friendship, Brydda. No matter what,” I said.

He had crushed my hand then. “Friends. Always,” he said gruffly. “No matter what.”

And so we had gone our separate ways. He to his rebellion, and we, first by sea to Sutrium, only to find that Domick had not yet returned, and then home to Obernewtyn—where I belonged; where Dragon lay in her endless coma; where Matthew might one day return; my home, which I must someday leave forever to take up the dark burden of my destiny.

“What if the oldOne calls before this answer is found?” Maruman asked. “Will you obey? Will you walk the dark road?”

I shivered as the bitter wind changed direction slightly, pressing its icy fingers through the folds of my cloak. The snow was falling more heavily now, blurring the jagged darkness of the mountains, making them seem far away. “All roads are the one road. I gave my promise,” I sent soberly. Then I smiled. “But there are five secrets to be uncovered, and I must one day return to Sador, and I must stand in battle with a gypsy whose life is bound to mine. These things will not happen in a moment, and so there is time in the midst of this for me to live.

“Atthis has not summoned me yet, and perhaps the call to walk the dark road will not come until I am old and gray. I have promised to go, but I have not sworn to live out my life in the dark shadow of that vow. I have learned that happiness is like the sun. It must be enjoyed when it comes and while it shines.”

But Maruman was not listening. He was looking up, searching for the moon’s cold face.

1

I
T WAS A
chill, moonless night, the only light a raw glow from the fire in a stone-lined pit that reflected dully on the cobbles around its edge. Everything that lay outside the reach of the fire’s brooding lume was lost in that blackest shadow that seems to attend any night light. Sometimes it seems to me that the dark is drawn to the light, as a moth to flame. Maybe it is the nature of all things to be pulled toward their opposites.

I dragged my eyes from the hypnotic lurching of the flames, determined to read on while I was yet undisturbed. Holding the pages instinctively to the light, though the marks on them would have been all but invisible even in daylight, I ran the tips of my fingers over the rough lines of holes in the paper. I had learned the code of prickings much as I once learned my letters, and I knew the words they shaped, yet skimming over what I had read before, it seemed that other meanings hovered above them.

Perhaps this was only because he who had made them did not see the world with his eyes but with his other senses. I could smell and hear and taste, too, of course, but not as well as Dameon. Since he lacked sight, his other senses had gained strength to compensate.

When he had pricked the pages he had been sending me, had Dameon realized more than the words he set down? Knowing him, I could not doubt it, for he was ever subtle. As
an empath, he had the power to read emotions and transmit them, yet I had always attributed his keen perception to his blindness rather than to his Talent. Of course, it was impossible to try to separate their effect on him, for together they made Dameon what he was.

I missed the empath, and perhaps that was what made me strive for the essence of him within his letter, carrying it about with me despite its bulk and snatching what moments I might to read a few lines. With him gone, it was as if Obernewtyn had lost something vital to itself, some necessary spark so modest as to reveal its importance only in its absence. I did not know what name to give to it. Miky said we lacked our heart without him, and Angina said it was the soul we missed with their master away. Rushton called Dameon his conscience and regretted the loss of his sharp-honed ethical sense. But I thought it had some finer shading than all of those things. To my mind, Kella told it best when she said she missed Dameon’s sweetness.

“Funaga-li need names for all things, even that which cannot be named,” Maruman sent from where he lay on the bench seat behind me.

The old cat used the derogatory form of
funaga
, which was the thoughtsymbol beasts used for humans, but his mental voice lacked its usual bite. No doubt because he had been lolling in the sun all afternoon.

“Maruman does not loll,” he sent indignantly. I turned to find his single yellow eye regarding me balefully, but the rest of him—his many scars, his battered head and torn ear, the empty socket of his ruined eye—was hidden in my shadow and the general darkness.