The Rebellion (83 page)

He drew the wagon to a halt to water the horses at a stream, and I forced my mind to close itself to his thoughts, feeling shamed. Somehow, without being told, I knew that listening to his private mind was as wrong as eavesdropping, and maybe worse.

“Sometimes you have to eavesdrop,” a familiar, piping voice said.

I looked down to find Ariel, as a child, too, standing by the side of the road and looking up at me. He tittered with malice and became a man before my eyes.

“Greetings, Elspethelf,” he said in caressing tones. “That’s what your brother used to call you, isn’t it?”

“What do you want?”

He held out a white, long-boned hand. “Come down, and we will talk. Come.”

I shook my head, unaccountably frightened.

“Are you afraid?” he whispered. Darkness began to pour from him like smoke, and in seconds it was as night. Dimly, I saw his form change. He was a child again; then he was something huge and writhing. A pallid tentacle crawled toward the stream where my father was still filling a bucket.

“Da!” I screamed, and began to climb down. Then something smashed into the wagon, toppling it violently sideways, and I was thrown into the air with a shriek of terror.

I sat up gasping in fear. It was still dark, and it took me a moment to calm down from my nightmare enough to recall that the Sadorians were departing at dawn, and I had set my mind to wake me. I stepped out of bed onto stones that felt like slabs of ice, and dressed in thick trousers, socks, and two undershirts, all the while wondering why I had dreamed of Ariel yet again. Pulling on my riding boots and an oiled jacket, I glanced out the shutter and was relieved to find it hadn’t snowed, despite the icy feel of the air. I dragged a comb through my hair and farsent to Alad, who was sharing a predawn meal with the Sadorians, and told him I would meet them.

“Oh, you should know that Avra had a filly as coal black as her da about an hour ago,” he sent.

“Are they well?”

“Avra is tired but triumphant, from the tenor of her thoughts, and the foal is staggering about wondering what it is. Gahltha doesn’t want to leave them yet, so Zidon will carry you to the pass and back.”

I caught a brief image through his mind of the Sadorians rising from the table and realized I had best get a move on if I was to be at the front door when they came past.

Waiting at the end of the curving moonlit drive, I had an eerie sense of déjà vu, for it reminded me of the night I had visited Obernewtyn on the dreamtrails. The stillness of the mountain predawn made it seem as if the world held its breath. There was not a whisper of wind to disturb the trees. Not a leaf rustled nor a frog croaked, and a thick frost glimmered over everything. Then I heard the sound of horses.

As the riders emerged like shadows from the darkness, I saw Fian and Rasial as well as Alad and the Sadorians. Fian was mounted on Faraf.

“I’m just on my way back to th’ Teknoguild caves,” Fian said. “It was so late, I figured I mun wait until mornin’ an’ ride along wi’ ye a way. Faraf offered to carry me to give her leg a bit of exercise.”

I greeted Faraf and asked if her leg was truly well enough to bear the lad.

“The boy is light and will soon dismount,” she sent.

Alad interrupted to say he was freezing without a proper coat and must get indoors. He got down from Zidon, and I took his place. As the horses turned their noses to the lowlands, Jakoby invited me to ride by her.

When she again praised the empath singers’ moon-fair performance, I took the opportunity to tell her we had decided to send an empath and two beastspeakers to replace Dameon.

She looked pleased. “Any of your people would be welcome among us, particularly empaths and beastspeakers. Which reminds me: You have shown us great courtesy here, and I hope you will not mind extending it further. Straaka
took ill yesterday, and we have had to leave him behind.”

I assured her that we would be happy to host the tribesman until he was fit to travel.

“He was alone with Miryum when it happened,” she mused. “She said he was in the midst of greeting her when, without warning, he apparently fainted. It is puzzling for, as a rule, he is not a sickly man.”

Realizing she must have questioned Miryum, I felt uneasy. The coercer would not lie well. “Perhaps the mountain air affected him,” I murmured. “It is thinner up here than at sea level. But whatever happened, we have accomplished healers. I’m sure it won’t be long before he follows you.”

“I think that might depend more on your Miryum than on Straaka’s health,” the tribeswoman said, giving me a sideways glance.

“Perhaps Straaka will return to Sador to await Miryum’s arrival.”

Jakoby shook her head decisively. “He will not return to Sador without her. Either he will wait as an exile here, or he will take his life. No tribesman could prepare for a wife and then fail to bring her without being ridiculed.”

“That seems very harsh,” I said, beginning to wonder if I had been too clever for my own good.

We rode in silence as the sky grew steadily brighter. The moon stayed high but faded to a pale sliver against the blue, and by the time Fian left us, the sun was close to rising, and the mountains glowed gold and magenta. Riderless now, Faraf trotted alongside Zidon, and behind them Rasial padded tirelessly, offering no clue as to why she had decided to accompany us. In sight of the pass, I asked if Alad had given them a brace of homing birds so they could send back a message if they encountered Rushton or at least heard news
of his passing. Bruna held up the wicker cage tied to her pack, where two birds on a swinging perch looked phlegmatic and unimpressed.

“If you don’t hear anything on the way, would you ask Brydda to let us know what happened when Rushton was there? Who he met and spoke to, and especially who saw him last and when.”

“You need not worry for him, surely. Your seers would foresee harm to their master,” Bruna said so loftily that I felt an urge to slap her.

We trotted slowly down the last stretch to the pass, hailing the coercers on watch in their fortified hut. I farsent to ask if there had been any activity on the road and learned that there had been no sign of anyone as far as Guanette since the previous day.

“That is good news,” Jakoby said. None of us dismounted, for it was not the Sadorian way to do so at partings.

“Travel safely and give Dameon my love when you see him. Say we miss him sorely,” I said.

“I will,” Jakoby promised. Then she put her arm across her chest and half bowed in Sadorian fashion. “I hope Rushton comes home safe and soon.”

“So do I,” I said.

Watching the riders break into a gallop and diminish in the distance, I wished with all my heart that I would see Rushton riding up toward me, but of course he did not appear. As Zidon turned his back on the pass, I glanced down at Rasial, wondering again why she had come.

“The loss of a mate is a hard thing,” Rasial sent morosely. “The funaga-li killed my mate before he could sire pups on me.”

“You are not old. Perhaps you will find another mate?”
Zidon sent compassionately. As usual, animal exchanges were on an open band, so I could understand what they said to each other as well as what was directed specifically to me.

“I will bear no pups,” Rasial sent, her strange eyes burning with a queer zealotry that reminded me of the way Herders looked during burnings.

“I don’t see how you—” I began, but Rasial began to growl a warning. “What is it?” I demanded. When she did not respond, I sent out a probe to discover what had alarmed her. I could find nothing, though she continued growling and all the hackles were up on her neck.

I noticed Faraf was trembling and had drawn nearer to Zidon. “What is it?” I demanded of them both. “What do you sense/scent?”

“Funaga,” Faraf sent tremulously.

“Impossible. I don’t sense any human nearby.”

“No sense funaga. Smell,” Rasial sent, lifting her lip to bare her teeth in a ferocious grimace.

I did not understand. A human who could be scented ought to be easily found with a probe. Unless whomever the animals scented was cloaking themselves coercively.

I thought of the killing power that lay slumbering in my mind. I had drawn on it before to enhance my other abilities. Carefully, I delved down into my mind, drawing on a shred of the dark power and sheathing my farseeking probe in it. Casting it out again, I had a sense of exaltation, for it made my probe far more potent. This time, the probe located two human minds beneath a strong coercive shield.

Asking the animals to wait for me in the clearing, I pushed through the trees toward the minds I had sensed. It did not take me long to find them physically: a girl of about twelve and a much younger boy, cowering in the bole of a huge dead
tree. The boy burst into tears at the sight of me peering in at them, and the coercive cloak that had hitherto hidden them dissolved.

“I’m sorry, Seely!” he wailed to the girl.

“You are runaways?” I asked calmly.

“We are, and what of it?” The girl’s belligerent answer was belied by her frightened eyes. “Who are you?”

“I live near here,” I said ambiguously, registering that the girl was an unTalent.

Her eyes widened in a different kind of fear. “We heard that no one lives up in the mountains, because the people who dwelt here got burned in a firestorm and them that survived died later of the plague.”

“I don’t have the plague,” I promised, spreading my hands. “Come out. I won’t hurt you. I’m unarmed.”

The girl hesitated before urging the boy out and crawling quickly after him. She wrapped her thin arm protectively around his chubby shoulders. There was a delicate cast to her face and frame that suggested she was not the child of a rough peasant household. The sturdy little boy might have been a peasant child, but he had a mass of golden curls and soft skin under the dirt and scratches, which marked him the son of wealthy parents, too. A prickle ran up my spine, for here was a riddle—and maybe a dangerous one.

“Do you have food?” the girl asked, an edge of desperation in her voice. “I have a few coins.…”

“Are there soldierguards after you?” I asked.

“They might be looking for us, but not up here,” the girl said with a glint of malice in her eyes.

“You’re not highlanders, are you?”

She glared at me with a mixture of defiance and fear. Clearly, she knew they needed help, and I could almost see
her trying to decide how much of their story to tell. “I’ll help you,” I said bluntly, “but I need to know for certain that no soldierguards are on your trail.”

“I swear no one knows we are here. Gavyn has hid us from soldierguards and other travelers on the road.”

“Well and good, then. Come along with me. There’s a clearing just over here where you can have a drink, and then we’ll ride to my home.”

“Hooray! A drink!” the little boy caroled. He turned his guileless eyes on me. “I don’t mind at all that you found us.”

The girl looked at him, then at me. “How
did
you find us?” she demanded suspiciously.

There was no point in prevarication, so I told her.

“You are like Gavyn?” She gaped. “I thought the poor lad was a lone freak and pitied him for it. You are up here hiding from the Herders as well, then?”

“You could say that,” I said, repressing a smile. Then I realized what she’d said. “Here, a moment past you said the soldierguards weren’t after you, but what about the Herders?”

Her brown eyes flared with hatred. “The bastards would like to have us, but they don’t have any idea where we are.”

I stared, for the curse had been the sort she would never have heard in a wealthy house. When the pair of them had quenched their thirst, I felt the girl decide she might as well tell the truth of their story. Having made up her mind, she told their tale quite simply, with a weariness that was all the more poignant because it was too heavy for her years.

Seely’s parents had died when she was very young, and she’d been adopted by distant relatives. She said little, but enough bitter visions flickered through her mind to show she had been more maid than daughter to the family that took
her in. Nevertheless, she formed a friendship with the daughter of the house, who was some years older than her and who’d been promised by her parents to a Councilman. When the daughter went to her man’s house and bed, Seely went with her as her companion and personal maid.

She had a better time of it then, living in luxury and traveling when the couple went about on Council business. The man had turned out not to be such a bad sort, though obviously he was too old for his bondmate. Nevertheless, he’d got her with a child. Seely helped birth young Gavyn. She had held him, weeping her eyes out, as her friend died in the bloody childbed. She stayed to care for the boy, on whom the father doted.

Things went well enough until the man got another bondmate, Lady Slawyna; she was older and unpleasant, with a grown son from a previous bonding. Though the woman cooed and praised Gavyn in his father’s hearing, Seely quickly saw she hated the child and wanted him dead so that her bondmate’s rich holdings would go to her own son. He was a Herder, and though he could not inherit himself, his order would receive whatever he would have inherited, paving the way for his promotion within the Faction.

Things went on in that uneasy way until Gavyn’s father died. Then Lady Slawyna took over as guardian of the heir to all her man’s wealth. Seely knew the woman would not dare to harm the boy openly, but still the girl never let Gavyn out of her sight, for she’d sworn to her friend a deathbed oath to protect him. But Gavyn grew to be a strange child, and Lady Slawyna began to cast a fishy eye on him, watching him like a cat watches a bird hopping closer and closer to its claws.

“One night, I heard her speaking to her Herder son about Gavyn,” Seely recalled. “The son said he’d have to be
examined, but if he was truly Misfit, there’d be no question of him inheriting. He promised to set the process of investigation in motion. I knew then we’d have to run.” Her eyes clouded with memory. “I never knew how hard it would be. Ye gods, we’ve run from one end of the Land to the other, and if there’s no refuge for us here …” She finished on a sob that made the boy look at her anxiously.