The Rebellion (44 page)

D
AMEON WAS SITTING
by Dragon’s bed, holding her hand. She was oblivious of his presence, though some foolish bit of me had hoped he might have reached her. But, no, she was locked in a sleep that must be close to the equines’ longsleep, suspended in some netherworld between life and death.

I could have wept for the sadness in his face and the bowed shape of his shoulders. I felt a rush of love at the sight of him that was nearly painful.

Of course, he sensed the surge of emotions. I saw it in his sudden stillness.

“Elspeth,” he murmured in his gentle voice.

Only then did he turn his face to me, his white-blind eyes gleaming in the light of a single candle guttering low in a wall sconce behind me.

“I could bear everything, if only she would wake,” I murmured, coming to stand beside him.

He rose to meet me, letting go of Dragon’s fingers to take mine.

“She will wake,” he said. His words were a promise, but how could he know? He was no futureteller.

“Oh, Dameon,” I sighed.

“There was a Beforetime story in one of the books you brought back from the underground library, which told the tale of a sleeping princess,” he said, drawing me to sit by him.

“A story,” I said flatly.

He smiled, and the compassion in his expression was like a slap, for what right did I have to expect him to comfort me? Was Dragon not his charge, as a member of his guild? Had he not known Matthew longer?

“The story tells of a beautiful princess who may or may not have had red hair and who, cursed, pricked her hand on a poisoned needle,” Dameon went on. “She fell into an enchanted sleep from which none could wake her.”

I looked down at Dragon and shivered.

“She slept long, until a prince came who was her truest love, and the enchantment between them allowed him to break the spell.”

“How?” I breathed, drawn into the story in spite of myself. “What did he do to wake her?”

“He woke her”—Dameon took Dragon’s pale hand again and lifted it to his lips—“with a kiss.”

I thought of Matthew—the only love Dragon had ever known, and an unwilling one at that. Would that love ever return to kiss her awake?

“It is a … lovely story,” I said huskily.

Dameon nodded. “It is. Miky and Angina have made it into a song, and they will sing it to you.”

“Dameon …”

He shook his head and gathered me into his long arms. “I know.”

He patted my back as if I were a very young child or a frightened animal, his empathic Talent wrapping me in a warm blanket of affection and reassurance. I was dimly surprised to find he had erected an empathic barrier between us. He must have sensed I would not want my emotions bared to him.

“Matthew has been taken,” he said gently. “But no slaver or shackle will hold him for long. He will return, just as he swore he would. As full of gossip and wild stories as ever.”

Listening to his soft accent, I felt for the first time that it might truly be so.

“Well, this is touching,” Rushton said from the door. “When you have finished the tender reconciliations, perhaps you will spare us a moment.”

Sitting in the kitchen with the rain pattering against night-dark windows, Rushton told me for the first time what Maryon had futuretold.

“She said she saw eight of us journeying to Sutrium and your face, Elspeth, at the end of the journey. There was more—something about thirteen going over water.” He hesitated, and I sensed there was something here he kept back. “She said it had something to do with Obernewtyn and figuring out what to do next.” He frowned, as if this was not exactly right. “Something about finding the right road to tread.”

He made a gesture indicating that I was to go on from there, and so I did, telling the group all that I’d told Rushton.

“I do not understand why this Jakoby woman would make such an offer,” Miryum said suspiciously when I had finished. “What does she get out of helping us?”

“She wouldn’t see it as helping us or the rebels,” I said. “There was a problem, and she simply offered a Sadorian solution. Sadorians are … are not like Landfolk, and I don’t think you can judge them by our values. But honor is very important to them, so I don’t think they would cheat or lie.”

“Are you so sure this woman’s offer of the Battlegames is what Maryon’s futuretelling concerned?” Dameon asked softly. “She said nothing about battles.”

“It would be too much of a coincidence for it not to mean Sador,” Hannay said. “Where else would we go on a journey over water? Across the Suggredoon? Maryon said Elspeth would know, and she knows about the trip to Sador and the Battlegames.”

“Could it have meant something about rescuing the Farseeker ward?” Freya asked. “He has been taken over water, after all.”

“Where would we search for him, and how?” Rushton asked. He shook his head regretfully. “I wish we were going to find Matthew, but my instincts say the journey foreseen by Maryon is the one offered by this Jakoby. It fits too neatly. Why else would so many of us come, if not to take part in these Battlegames and win the alliance we need?”

“But there are not enough anyway,” Miky said. “Maryon said thirteen of us would go over the water.”

“It is possible this battle will not happen. Perhaps we must go to Sador for some other reason that has yet to be revealed,” Dameon said slowly. “Maybe we will have the chance of proving to this Malik and the other rebels that we are human.”

I hesitated, then shook my head, not wanting to give anyone false hope.

“There is no point in us going into this imagining we can all be friends afterward. We will never be accepted by the rebels. But the Battlegames are at least an opportunity for a temporary alliance. And they will also provide us with a chance to show the Maliks of the Land that we can defend ourselves from them!”

“A show of strength,” Miryum said approvingly.

“If you like. Or maybe just revealing ourselves for what we are.”

“And what are we?” Dameon asked, his voice threaded with sadness. “Warriors? Misfits? That is part of our trouble. We do not know what we are, and so we are constantly reacting to things, rather than taking the initiative.”

“Maryon said we would find the road to tread on this journey over water,” Rushton said pensively. “We have to see what happens.”

“There is another thing you should know,” I said, remembering. “After the contest, the rebels plan to meet and to decide once and for all when and how the rebellion will be staged.”

Rushton’s eyes flared with an unholy green fire. “Well, that puts it in a very different light. By winning, we would have gained the right to take part in their councils.”

“And of course we will win,” Miryum said. “Whatever the nature of these games, I do not think we need be frightened of ten unTalents. Hannay, Elspeth, and I could deal with them between us.”

It was late the following day before we stood on the deck of a ship bound for Sador.

Contrary to Maryon’s futuretelling of thirteen, there were only eleven of us, counting Dragon. We could not leave without her, and Kella had assured us that the journey would not hurt her. Domick had embarked on a Council errand to Morganna, and he wouldn’t be back for a day. And we were forced to leave the horses behind in Sutrium—much as Gahltha disapproved—for fear that the travel and the climate would do them harm.

No amount of searching had located Maruman. I couldn’t help worrying, though I knew the old cat could fend for himself.
He had made his own way to Obernewtyn before; he could do it again.

Reuvan, calling to drop off a homing bird at Brydda’s instruction, had learned we meant to travel to Sador at once. Advising that we leave it to him to organize a ship, he arranged passage to Sador’s Templeport with a seafaring friend and longtime rebel supporter.

Powyrs turned out to be a jolly, bold, brown-faced man with twinkling eyes and a habit of winking that startled us somewhat until we were accustomed to it. He had no qualms about carrying gypsies. I had the feeling he would not have given a damn if we told him we were Misfits.

I was standing on the deck of Powyrs’s sturdy little ship,
The Cutter
, waiting for the Council inspectors to give final clearance to sail, when Kella pinched my arm to get my attention. Leaning close, she whispered into my ear in an absurdly furtive way that Reuvan was coming. I was not surprised that he had come to see us off, but I was startled to see that Dardelan was with him, as was a long-limbed, exotic girl with yellow, almond-shaped eyes and a satiric smile. She could only be Jakoby’s daughter. If anything, she was more beautiful than her mother.

“You are the first to leave, but the rest of us will not be far behind,” Reuvan said as they approached us. “Malik and his cronies are traveling tomorrow, and I will travel with Jakoby and the rest on the Sadorian ship, the
Zephyr
, on the next day.”

“Am I to be presented, or shall I stand like a nameless dolt?” the dark Sadorian girl asked haughtily.

Dardelan flushed and apologized. “This is Jakoby’s daughter, Bruna; Bruna, this is Elspeth.”

“I am pleased to know you,” I said.

“Ah. I-am-pleased-to-know-you,” Bruna said, exactly mimicking my intonation.

Unnerved a little by this and by her frank scrutiny, I busied myself introducing the others. When Dardelan and Rushton shook hands, they exchanged a measuring look and seemed satisfied by what they saw.

“You will like my land, of course,” Bruna said haughtily. “Your people are welcome there, for like the tribes, they have no need to mark the ground where they have been, like a rutting beast marking its territory. Unlike these Landfolk.” Her eyes ran over our halfbreed gypsy attire approvingly, but she gave poor Dardelan a look of amused contempt.

“In Sador, there is room to run with the wind and ride the kamuli,” she went on, seeming to address all of us now. Wearing little, despite the gray, chilly weather, she was as oblivious to the cold as she was to the stares of passersby. No wonder Jakoby had looked amused when she said Sadorian women needed scant looking after.

The girl waved an imperious finger under Dardelan’s nose. “And now you will guide me to the place of many trees. The forest. These I do not see in my own desert, and there might be some beauty in them worthy of a song.”

“Of … of course,” Dardelan stammered, and she bore him away.

“A pup watching over a bear,” Reuvan said.

“A bear cub,” I corrected, thinking that for all her imperiousness, Bruna lacked her mother’s subtlety and dangerous grace.

It began to rain lightly as the inspectors arrived and set about searching the ship from top to bottom, seeking any Landgoods that were being exported without tax being paid to the Council. When Powyrs suggested we go inside, I was
glad enough to do so. The fishy smell of the ship’s oiled deck and the movement of it running up and down the swelling waves were making me feel distinctly queasy.

“I will want to cast off as soon as this is over to catch the out tides. Go into the main salon,” Powyrs said. He looked at Reuvan. “I will come there and warn you before we are to depart.”

As we trooped along the deck, I could not help but think of Matthew being led onto
The Calor Lady
’s gangplank in chains. Had he felt this strange, unsettling nausea? Was he somewhere out over the ocean being rained on, too?

I glanced back and noticed an old beggar in filthy brown robes come up to Powyrs and speak with him. At first the seaman shook his head decisively, but then he stopped and seemed to be listening intently. I was curious enough to farseek, but the queer static from whatever had tainted the sea about Sutrium’s shores prevented this.

“Come on,” Miky said, tugging at me.

The salon turned out to be spacious and light, despite dark wood paneling and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. This was due to three enormous box windows along the outside wall, crisscrossed by wide-spaced metal grilles. Cushioned seats were built into the windows, and a table, chairs, and various other pieces of furniture were fixed to the floor. The salon adjoined the galley, and Kella’s eyes lit up as she surveyed its miniature neatness.

Rushton dropped into a window seat and gestured to Reuvan, Miryum, and Hannay to sit beside him. They talked in low, serious voices while Angina and his twin began to tune their instruments. Kella came out of the galley and stood at a window. Her eyes looked out to the sea, but I was sure she saw nothing but the face of her bondmate.

Powyrs had taken Dameon below to a cabin with Dragon. I moved to the door with the thought of going to sit with him, but Powyrs returned, blocking my way.

“Casting off!” he warned in a stentorian bellow. “All who will not sail should get ashore.”

Reuvan rose. “I’d better move. A seaman is ruled by the tides, and if catching the tide means an unwilling passenger or two, then so be it.”

The ship lurched suddenly, and all of us pitched sideways save Reuvan, who was accustomed to walking on a shifting deck.

He smiled somewhat wistfully. “You must learn to dance with the sea—not tread on her toes.”

We went out on deck to bid him farewell. The rain had ceased, and the clouds had parted to reveal the sun sinking toward the horizon.

As the ropes were cast away by Powyrs’s crew and the shore began to slip away, a curious but definite feeling of loss assailed me, a feeling that I had somehow cast off from my life and was sailing toward a new one.

From the look of those gathered along the edge of the deck, I was not alone in this feeling. The others gazed back to the shore, their faces reflecting their unease. This was the first time any of us had left the Land. There were numerous disaster stories Landfolk told about the perils of the seas, and suddenly the wildest tales seemed to gain substance.

The sun sank into the sea, becoming increasingly large and orange as it did so, staining the gray-edged clouds that framed it a livid pink. I was intrigued to feel the taint in the water fading. That meant whatever had caused it was confined to the shore area. Perhaps some Beforetime container had broken under the sea, spilling its poisons.

“That’s that, then,” Kella said huskily when the sun finally vanished and Sutrium fell into a purple haze that merged with the horizon. “I feel as if I’m leaving a part of myself here.”