The Dreamtrails (96 page)

Nausea rose in me as I imagined the pleasure this vision would have given Ariel, whose need for me made him loathe me and whose defective nature made him take pleasure in cruelty and pain. I could scarcely encompass the idea that Ariel was capable of foreseeing so much, and a deadly, hopeless lethargy stole over me, for how could anyone prevail against an enemy who knew so much?

Then I heard Maryon’s cool voice saying that no futureteller, however powerful, could see everything, because even the strongest futuretelling was only the most likely thing to happen. A single, random, unexpected event could change something. And Ariel did not see everything. Domick had said that. Ariel had not foreseen that the coercer would tell me Rushton had been on Norseland. Mika was supposed to have been too strong for Domick to break through. Rushton was supposed to batter himself to death trying to kill me, and I was to be tormented by not knowing why.

Rushton moaned and rolled onto his side, groaning. His face was a mask of blood, and his eyes were vague and bewildered as he hauled himself to his feet. But as before, the second they fixed on me, unstoppable rage flowed into them, and I knew that Rushton would kill himself trying to get at me while I remained safe, locked behind an unbreakable shield of glass.

Shield
.

The word echoed strangely in my mind, and I heard Dameon’s gentle voice telling me that I must have the courage to believe that Rushton still loved me. The blind empath had claimed that Rushton’s rejection was proof that there was love. If he was truly indifferent, he would not have
such a violent aversion to seeing me. But he had been wrong. Love had been destroyed by the Destroyer, replaced by bloated lunatic hatred. Yet Rushton’s rejection did not fit the plan, because Ariel would not have wanted him to drive me away. That would only have slowed Rushton’s mental breakdown. He would have made sure that the hatred was sealed away so Rushton would appear to heal and be normal. This could only mean that Rushton had been rejecting me because somewhere deep inside, he was trying to avoid the fate that had been knitted up for him.
“Do not be a coward,”
Dameon’s soft voice whispered in my memory.
“It is not only Rushton’s love for you but also his very life that you fight for.”

I licked my lips and thought,
This, this is my limit
. And I watched Rushton marshal his strength for another useless assault on the door, understanding that his rejection was exactly what Dameon had said: proof of love.

There was only one course open to me. Ariel must have striven to futuretell this moment a hundred times, to make sure that it would come out as he desired. He must have looked at this moment again and again, trying to see if there was anything that could go wrong. He knew that Rushton would want to kill me, and he knew that I would be safe. He would watch it again and again, building a web of certainty, just as Dell had done in order to make sure that Domick would reach the ruins complex without infecting anyone. But there was no complete certainty, even in a web forecasting. Some unexpected element could always intervene. My only chance to save Rushton now was to introduce some element that Ariel could not have foreseen. I must do the unthinkable. I stood on legs that trembled.

“Rushton,” I said. “Here. Here is where you must put your hand to open the door so you can reach me. Here.” I tapped
the hand-shaped recess, which I could see through the glass. I mimicked pressing my hand into it. “Look, Rushton. Like this. Press your hand here and the glass will open. Here.” Over and over I repeated it as Rushton stood glaring at me with malevolent loathing, opening and closing his fists. Again and again I tapped the indentation and mimicked pressing a hand against it.

At last, I saw his eyes drop to my hand, and I laid it over the recess. Slowly, the blank, black hatred gave way to a glimmer of purpose, and Rushton lurched forward and pressed his hand into the recess. For a heart-stopping moment, our fingers were but the thickness of glass apart. Then there was a click and a hiss that sounded like an indrawn breath, and the glass slid away.

Rushton bared his teeth, and I resisted the urge to step back.

“I love you,” I said, letting my hand fall to my side.

Strangely, I was not afraid, for in showing Rushton how to open the compartment door, I had defied Ariel and the power of his futuretelling abilities. Now there were only two possible outcomes: I would die or I would not. And Ariel had done all in his considerable power to make sure Rushton would have an unassailable desire to kill me. If Ariel had foreseen this moment, he would not have taken the risk of setting this is motion, because if Rushton killed me, the Seeker would never come to the weaponmachines to try to shut them down. The Destroyer needed the Seeker to try and fail to stop the weaponmachines before he could take control of them.

Ariel must have foreseen that I would be locked in, and he might have seen Rushton battering himself against the door, but it would never occur to him that I might show Rushton how to open the door.

Of course, the most likely outcome was that I would die. But even thinking this, I was not afraid. I felt only a strange liberating elation at the knowledge that, for the first time in my life, I had acted wholly as Elspeth Gordie and not as the Seeker.

Rushton lifted his fist over his head as if it were a club, his face blank and mindless. I looked into his eyes and said, “I am your shield.”

He hesitated. His fist trembled, but it did not descend. Rushton gave a groaning cry and seemed to fight with himself, his fist still upraised. I dared not move, for I had introduced something fragile and random into certainty, and the outcome of this moment was so finely balanced that a single breath would push him to attack.

Suddenly Rushton dropped to his knees with a horrible half-strangled snarl. He lunged at me, but he stopped short of grasping me. His expression in the red light shifted maniacally between mad rage and terror. He snarled and groaned, now creeping toward me with clawed hands, now falling back and shuddering. His dreadful inner battle seemed to go on for hours, and in all that time, I did not move or speak. At last he grew quiet. His head was bowed, so I could not see the expression on his face, but suddenly I could not stay still any longer. I knelt down and reached a hand toward him, palm up. I knew he was looking at it. After a long, slow age, he leaned forward and laid his blood-slicked cheek against my hand.

I gave a gasping sob. “My love! My dearest love.” I put my arms around him and drew his dark head to my breasts. He gave a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul, and I felt the rage and strength flow out of him as he collapsed against me in a dead faint. I sat back on my heels, cradling his body in my arms. I loosened one hand and
reached up to unclasp the demon band about his neck. Then I held him tight, kissed his head, and entered his mind.

It was as if I had entered the ferocious, keening heart of a storm. All was blackness and screaming chaos. Nightmarish creatures flew around me and over me and under me. The only thing solid in the maelstrom was a stony track leading steeply down. Limping along it was the scarred bear of the shape Rushton had worn inside Dragon’s dreams. I had thought that image her creation, but I saw now that this wounded beast was the essence of Rushton. I could see scars and open wounds all over his body. I tried to touch him, but he did not seem to feel or hear me. His whole being was focused on the road. Now, far away, far down at its end, I saw a gleaming thread. The mindstream.

“No,” I whispered, but Rushton did not hear me.

Without thinking, I did something I had never done before. I entered the mind of the wounded bear. To my astonishment, I found myself knee-deep in freshly fallen snow.
Was this a memory that I had entered?
I wondered.

Before me was a house formed entirely of ice. It was beautiful, but there was a cruel and deadly coldness in its beauty. Footsteps in the snow led to the house. Paw prints. I ran to the door, and it opened even before I touched it. The bear was vanishing into the vaporous mist that filled the corridor inside.

I went after him, slipping and skidding on the smooth gleaming ice. My feet ached, and I realized that I was barefoot. I ignored the burning cold and went down icy steps into a vast white chamber. It was exquisitely beautiful but deathly cold. Veils of mist hung like scarves in the air. A chandelier of ice crystals glittered like a fall of diamonds, and beneath it
stood Ariel, as white and fair and deadly as this house of ice. He was tall, and his shoulders were wide, his neck and chin those of a man now; yet his mouth and eyes were those of the cruel spoiled child I had met at Obernewtyn. His hair hung about his shoulders like a cape of some sleek fur, and he stroked it with evident pleasure.

At his feet was Domick. Ariel was caressing his head as if he were a well-loved hound. “Go, Mika. Go and tend to your kennel mate.”

Domick slunk to an alcove where the bear lay, panting and shuddering. He was dragging a whip that left a bloody smear of gore on the shining white floor. I ran past Domick to Rushton, ignoring him, for he was only an image from Rushton’s broken mind. I stroked the bear’s matted fur, horrified at the depth of some of the wounds, which had surely grown deeper and wider since I had seen him on the road. Then I realized that this bear was within the bear I had seen on the road, and the markings on both bears were only reflections of the damage that had been done to the different layers of Rushton’s mind.

On impulse, I probed the bear’s mind again.

This time I found myself standing by a sunlit steaming pool. The bear sat on the edge of the pool watching a woman swim. Incredulous, I saw that the woman was me, but this Elspeth was taller and stronger than me and so beautiful as to take my breath away. She was a warrior woman with proud eyes that glowed like jewels. Her hair splayed out in the water like a silken net as she swam, and when she smiled, a radiance flowed from her face and a sweetness filled the air.

I turned to the bear and found Ariel was now standing beside him. He ran a long elegant white hand over the bear’s head.

“It is not I who hurt you,” Ariel said persuasively. “It is she who will do you the greatest harm. She will teach you the true meaning of pain.”

The Goddess-Elspeth in the pool emerged, and I saw that she was carrying a long, thin-bladed knife. I tried to cry out a warning, but no one heard me.

“I do not love you,” she said coldly to the bear. “You know that I always meant to leave you.”

She lifted the knife. I threw myself into her as she reached out with her other hand to stroke the bear’s fur. She/I felt the thick, warm coarseness of fur in one hand and the hardness of the knife hilt in the other. I could not stop her as she drove the knife into the bear. He gave an agonized growl, and she/I felt him slump against me.

I left the Goddess-Elspeth and dived into his mind. The bear was falling away from me. I followed him, stretching myself out, arrowing down. I caught him and closed my arms around him, catching handfulls of his fur. I tried pulling him back up, but the impetus of his descent was too great. All I could do was slow him, but we continued to descend through his deepest mind and through images of torture so horrible that I felt I was in danger of losing my own mind just witnessing them. If Domick and Ariel had not been mad before they tortured Rushton, their minds had surely crumbled under the corrosive insanity of their deeds.

All at once, we were hanging above the mindstream. The bear struggled, but I clung to him, knowing that if I let go, he would surely enter the mindstream. For a long moment, I held him safe, but then my strength began to fade. Bit by bit, we began to drop. I would not let him go, I swore to myself. If he went into the stream, then I would follow.

“You must not go!” I recognized the voice of Atthis.

“Help me!” I cried.

“I cannot. I am still much weakened from the spirit merge, and I have not the strength for what you want,” she sent sternly. “You must let him go.”

“No! Help me save him or we will both go into the stream.”

“Then the Destroyer will win.”

“Help me.”

“There will be a price,” said the bird.

“I will pay it.”

“It is not you who will pay,” Atthis answered, but I felt a warm flow of energy coursing through me.

“Tell me what to do!” I cried, for the pull of the mindstream was growing stronger.

“To prevent him from seeking death is not enough,” Atthis said, her voice growing faint. “If you would save his mind and soul, you must enter his deepest mind.” And then her voice and presence were gone.

It seemed impossible that there would be another layer of his mind when we were so close to the mindstream, but I entered the bear. I found myself in a vast shadowy cavern. The bear was curled motionless in a pool of black blood at my feet. Ariel was standing over him, laughing. He spoke to me, over the bear. “Did you think I would not be here as well? There is no part of him that I have not invaded and violated. He will never be free of me until he is dead.”

My heart faltered until I remembered that this was not Ariel. It was only a loathsome image he had stamped in Rushton’s mind. He was not real.
But I was
.

“You are not real,” I said.

I lifted my hand and directed the golden energy from Atthis at Ariel. His pale beauty melted as if he were made of
candle wax. Then I was alone in the vast cavern that was Rushton’s Talent. Here, a hundred minds could merge and be contained, and still there would be room for more. I was alone in this miraculous secret fastness; alone, save for the bear that was Rushton’s soul. Here he had come, seeking sanctuary, and even here had Ariel come, with Mika’s help, for Domick had known what lay locked inside the mind of the Master of Obernewtyn. He had once merged with Roland and others inside his mind, to find and save me.

I sat down and lifted the bear’s head into my lap, surprised at its weight. I stroked his fur, and the gashes closed and scars healed at my touch. I stroked him until his fur was sleek and beautiful and smooth. Then the gleaming fur shortened and became pale flesh under my fingers, and it was Rushton I held in my arms.