The Dreamtrails (4 page)

“Jik said they were always more interested in children with Misfit powers and that some abilities interested them more than others.”

“Maybe they wanted to train them to catch us,” Zarak suggested.

“Maybe they used them to help create demon bands,” I suggested.

Zarak made no response, and when I glanced at him, he was looking at me. For a moment, I saw myself as he must: a long lean woman with a tight-bound plait and overly serious moss-green eyes. I said gently, “Do not blame yourself for Jik’s death, Zar. Many things happened to bring him here, not simply the foolish disobedience of one young farseeker.”

“Do ye remember that dog Jik insisted we rescue with him?” Zarak said suddenly, half smiling. “He was th’ ugliest creature I ever saw.”

“The Herders breed them to look like that,” I said. “Darga.”

“Yes, that was his name. I had forgotten.” Zarak gave me a look of curiosity that I pretended not to notice. It was generally assumed that Darga had perished with Jik in the firestorm, but the Agyllian birds that saved my life claimed he lived. They said he would return when it was time for me to
leave Obernewtyn to undertake the final stage of my quest—to destroy the deadly weaponmachines left by the Beforetimers.

I had been waiting so many years for that moment that I sometimes wondered if it would ever come.

Zarak had drawn ahead, no doubt discouraged by my silence, but Kella took his place. I glanced at her, wondering if she would regret leaving Obernewtyn to run the healing center she had established in the old Sutrium Herder cloister during the rebel uprising. She and Dardelan had developed a genuine liking and respect for each other during that time, so it was hardly surprising when he asked her to come and run the center and establish a teaching facility for healers. But Kella’s acceptance had startled me.

Roland, the Healer guildmaster, had been enthusiastic about his guilden’s new venture, and Rushton, too, praised it as an excellent way of further impressing ordinary Landfolk with the usefulness of Misfit abilities. I seemed to be alone in feeling that Kella’s departure marked the end of an era. Of course, it was time for us to live in the Land openly. Wasn’t that what we had fought and longed for? Yet my heart ached for the days when Obernewtyn had been our secret refuge, just as it had been for the Beforetime Misfits.

Kella gave me a quizzical look, no doubt sensing something of my feelings.

“I was just thinking of the Beforetimers,” I told her quickly.

To my surprise, she bridled fiercely. “We are not like them. We would never do to our world what they did to theirs.”

Would we not?
I wondered morosely. Or was it only that we did not have the ability to destroy as efficiently as they had?

I
HEARD A
shout and looked up to see the slender, brown-haired teknoguilder Fian burst through the trees with loud halloos that scattered birds from nearby bushes. Garth beckoned to him impatiently and they spoke, then the Teknoguildmaster strode on, and Fian came beaming to greet me.

At Obernewtyn, I was accustomed to being honored and held in awe for my powers and for what I had done, but I was unused to being liked. Yet Fian liked me. In part, he knew me better than most, having taken part in several farseeker rescues that I had led; moreover, the year he had spent in Sador with the Empath guildmaster, Dameon, had given him an independence of thought and attitude that allowed him to see everyone as an equal, despite differences in rank and power. I valued his friendship as well as his cleverness and unfailing good humor. The fact that he had also unwittingly adopted several of Dameon’s mannerisms only endeared him to me more, for the Empath guildmaster was my closest friend.

“Is Dameon nowt with ye?” Fian asked, as if he had read the name in my thoughts. He nodded a smile to Dragon, who shrank behind Kella.

“Dameon has decided he would rather ride to Sutrium with Rushton and the coercer-knights next sevenday,” I said.

Fian’s eyes widened. “Did ye say he would
ride
?”

I nodded. “He has been practicing with Faraf, and he
wants to see how well he can manage. She knows he is blind, of course, and that she must be his eyes.” I spoke as if it was a minor detail, but in fact I wondered very much why Dameon had become so determined to ride when he had always seemed satisfied with being driven in wagons. I could not believe it had anything to do with the case against the cousin who, in order to inherit his property, had reported Dameon to the Council as a Misfit. There were many such cases now, as people who had been dispossessed of their property sued for its return.

“What will Dameon do if he gets his farm back?” Fian asked curiously. “I canna believe he wants to run it himself.”

“He means to establish it as a cooperative farm run jointly by beasts and unTalented humans. He hopes ordinary Landfolk will see that it is possible to work with beasts to our mutual advantage, even without Misfit translators. It is a brilliant idea. I am only sorry that it will not be established in time for the elections.”

“Alad thinks Dardelan ought to present the Charter of Laws and his Beast Charter at the same time.”

I shook my head. “If he did, both would be rejected. By keeping the two charters separate, no matter what happens in the elections, Dardelan will have at least established a basic set of good and fair laws for the Land. And people who dislike the idea of rights for beasts might still vote for him, since Dardelan is known for listening to the opinions of many different people and might be talked out of it.”

“He’ll nowt change his mind,” Fian said stoutly.

I smiled. “I don’t think so either.”

More teknoguilders came toward us now, but my attention was caught by the long, low, curving building I could see in the clearing beyond them. Constructed from wood and
stone, it faced the section of the Suggredoon River from whence I had once set off on a raft to escape the renegade Herder Henry Druid. I had a fleeting but vivid memory of the gallant, red-haired druid armsman Gilbert. He had been one of the few to survive the firestorm that had killed his master.

“Ye see how the buildin’ masks th’ openin’ to the subterranean city?” Fian pointed out enthusiastically. “Garth designed it that way, because he said we want to distract strangers from noticin’ the cave an’ wonderin’ where it leads.”

I nodded, impressed by how much had been achieved in the few weeks since thaw. But as I came closer, I saw that there was no glass in the windows, and when I looked through one of them, I saw that the floor had yet to be laid.

“It’s nowt finished,” Fian said unnecessarily. “Guildmaster Garth felt it were more important to get the whole thing up so that from a distance it would look finished. In case any Landfolk come into the White Valley. We are about fencin’ the land now to keep anyone from comin’ too close. We can complete th’ inside of the homestead later.” This was said so carelessly that I wondered if the Teknoguild would ever finish it. Their researches were generally so compelling to them that anything not utterly vital was put off. It would not surprise me to find that in a year, when wintertime returned, the Teknoguild homestead still lacked a floor and windows.

Fian led me around the back of the building to the tents and shacks that presently housed the resident and visiting teknoguilders in the White Valley.

At first glance, the camp reminded me of a Sadorian desert camp, which was not surprising since the excellent cloth huts the guild used had been gifts from the Sadorian tribal leader,
Jakoby. But there was also something of a gypsy encampment about the settlement, for there were boxes and bales piled haphazardly and clothes laid out on the grass to dry. Sadorians possessed little, so they did not produce clutter, whereas for both teknoguilders and gypsies, clutter seemed a natural consequence of busy and active lives. Indeed, as with any gathering of teknoguilders, a quiet but intense sense of purpose and concentration pervaded the scene. Here and there, teknoguilders sat cross-legged on the grass, scratching their heads over notes they were making, or perched on barrels or bales reading or poring over some queer Beforetime object brought out of the subterranean city. The day was warm enough that most wore shirtsleeves or light shifts, but there was a fire burning in a stone-lined pit in the midst of the rough semicircle of tents. Judging by the smells coming from pots suspended over it, something good was simmering away. It was long past midmeal, but the teknoguilders never bothered with formal mealtimes except on special occasions.

“Are ye hungry?” Fian asked, seeing my gaze. “We expected ye hours ago, but there is still plenty of soup.”

“Starving,” I said, my mouth watering. I had skipped firstmeal, unable to face Rushton sitting stiffly by me and making polite, meaningless conversation with everyone in the dining hall looking on, knowing something was amiss yet being unable to help. The only time we seemed able to behave normally was during guildmerge, when we were guildmistress and Master of Obernewtyn.

Fian hastened to lay his kerchief over a bale for me to sit on, and Garth looked about vaguely as if he wondered where the table and chairs had been put. But the idea did not gain sufficient focus for him to realize that furniture was something else put off until later. Instead, he found a wide barrel,
sat on it, and began examining something one of the teknoguilders wanted to show him. Katlyn, Kella, and Dragon came slowly to the fireside with Darius. The gypsy’s crooked body, awkward movements, and prematurely gray hair always made me think of Darius as old, but when he laughed at something Katlyn said, it struck me that he was only a few years older than Rushton.

We all ate with good appetite, but afterward, instead of someone producing an instrument and suggesting a song, as would happen around other campfires, Garth heaved himself up and said that he needed to go into the mountain to see something too large to be carried out. He invited anyone interested to accompany him, and most of the teknoguilders stood at once, as did Zarak. Darius and Kella said they had better see to the soldierguards, and Katlyn wanted to look for certain herbs that did not grow in the high mountains. The herbalist intended to try growing them in a cave high above Obernewtyn where the teknoguilders had discovered a hot spring. At Katlyn’s request, the cave’s top opening had been roofed in thin, nearly transparent plast sheets, for she was sure the warm, moist atmosphere would allow all sorts of unlikely plants to grow there. For her, the gathering of seeds was the expedition’s main purpose, apart from seeing her son. When the older woman rose, Dragon went with her, giving me a backward glance that told me her desire was less to gather herbs than to avoid me.

Garth looked at me expectantly, but I shook my head, pretending not to see his disappointment. I had been into the subterranean city many times, and my mood was already too melancholy to endure the complicated mixture of wonder and dismay I always felt at seeing it. Louis Larkin made no response to Garth’s invitation, for straight after eating, he had
stretched out on his back and now snored loudly.

Once the others had gone, I regarded the old man with fond amusement and thought about the day, many decades past, when he had seen two gypsies come to Obernewtyn to offer carvings to Marisa Seraphim, then Mistress of Obernewtyn.

The carvings, containing secret messages from the seer Kasanda, had become part of the front doors to Obernewtyn. I had long since learned their secrets, but I wanted to be able to see and hear the gypsies who had brought them to Obernewtyn in the hope of learning how they had come by the carvings.

Of course, I could not delve into Louis Larkin’s memories without seeking his permission first.

Feeling restless, I farsought Maruman, but I could find no trace of the cantankerous old cat. No doubt he had gone to sleep somewhere. It was almost impossible to probe a sleeping mind unless you knew where the sleeper lay or could make physical contact; even then it was sometimes impossible to enter Maruman’s mind. Gahltha had once told me this was because the old cat often went
seliga
when he slept. This was one of the few beast words I did not understand clearly. It meant something like “before” and something like “behind.”

I decided to walk to the monument created by the Twentyfamilies gypsies in memory of the Misfits and beasts who had perished in the White Valley because of Malik’s betrayal. A lone teknoguilder sat on a log by the fire, engrossed in a book. I did not know her name, but when I touched her arm to tell her my intention, she looked at me in astonishment. I told her where I was going, and she promised to let the others know if they returned before me.

I had not been walking more than fifteen minutes when I sensed that someone was following me. I sent out a mindprobe but found only the minds of numerous burrowers and other little creatures dwelling in the valley. It occurred to me that Dragon might be following me. It would not be the first time she had done so, and she was the only Misfit whose coercive strength would allow her to evade my probe.

I stopped, shaped a probe to her mind, and swept the area again, but it would not locate. Yet my sense of being watched was stronger than ever. I considered turning back but decided against it; if Dragon was following me, she might finally allow me to talk to her. If it was not her, then it must be a large animal with a small brain. This did not frighten me, for all beasts seemed to recognize that I was the Seeker when I beastspoke them. For animals, the Seeker was not the person who was supposed to find and end the threat of the Beforetime weaponmachines but was a legendary figure destined to lead beasts to freedom from humans. I was fairly sure that the mystic Agyllians had concocted this legend to ensure that beasts would protect me, for the ancient birds set my quest to destroy the weaponmachines above the welfare of any individual creatures, human or beast.