The Rebellion (45 page)

I forbore pointing out the obvious.

“To Sador,” Miky sighed dreamily on the other side of me.

“I feel sick,” Miryum said, and I was startled to see that she looked bright green about the face and lips.

“I do not feel so well myself,” I murmured.

34

K
ELLA SET ABOUT
adjusting our senses to the movement of
The Cutter
, but some of us responded better to her treatment than others.

The empaths were only mildly affected by the motion of the waves and were quickly eased. I was less fortunate.

Because of the instinctive blocking ability I appeared to have developed as a response to intrusion, I had to hold my mind open to the healer. This was not easy, and when she was done, the wooden decks continued to pitch, rendering me queasy and disoriented.

Disappointed, I asked Powyrs if there was not some seaman’s remedy that would settle my stomach.

He looked at me intently for a moment, then shook his head. “Your illness is not physical. It is a matter of the will. You resist the ocean as if it were an opponent. But you cannot defeat the sea—it is too great and too uncaring. You can only surrender to its power. While you fight, you will suffer.”

I laughed and said he talked as if the sea were alive. He only shrugged. “Laugh, but it is true. All things that exist live, though maybe they do not measure life as we do.”

I thought this absurd. The fish in the sea lived, but not the sea itself. It was just water. But seafolk were as notoriously superstitious as highlanders, and I liked Powyrs too much to make fun of his beliefs.

The coercers suffered worst of us. That was not unexpected, for coercers were always disturbed by anything that altered their balance or perceptions. Roland believed this had something to do with the nature of coercing and how the deep probe was shaped to serve their Talent. The more powerful the coercer, the more severe the response. Accordingly, Hannay was nauseous but Miryum violently ill. All Kella could do was render her unconscious with a sleepseal.

Like me, Hannay resigned himself to an uncomfortable few days.

That first night, my stomach churned at the thought of food, and I sat a little apart as many of the others ate a mushroom stew and regaled Kella with news from Obernewtyn.

Turning to a window, I looked through the reflection of the room and its ghostly occupants to the dark sea beyond.

I shook my head at the sudden melancholy that assailed me. Perhaps it was that I had grown accustomed, these last two sevendays, to strife and activity and urgency. Sea travel was not like travel on land where there were always things to be done, if only to break camp and set up bedding at night. We journeyed, and yet we went nowhere.

I sighed, wishing it was not my nature to see life as if it were the reflection in a window. I could never just accept it. I had to be squinting my eyes and looking to see what was underneath it, tormenting myself with doubts and questions. And it was worse when I had nothing to distract me.

The moon penetrated the clouds for a moment, lighting up a small cluster of rock spikes. Powyrs had said these were good shoals because you could see them. But there were many more such shoals hiding just below the surface that could tear the bottom from a boat if the seamen were not vigilant. The ocean’s teeth, he had named them, winking.

I was like a wary seafarer, never trusting the smooth, glimmering surface of life for fear of the hidden teeth. Perhaps that was why I could not settle as the others had and enjoy the enforced idleness. Even when there was no need, I watched for the teeth.

I scowled at my own face in the glass, telling myself again that I should be content. After all, Maryon’s dream had solved my immediate problems.

I bit my lip, understanding that this was what lay at the root of my strange discontent. I had left Obernewtyn driven by Maryon’s dreams. But once away, I had done as I chose. I made decisions and acted on them and felt as if I owned my life. Now Maryon and her dreams had reached out to wrest control from me again. I was not the wary seaman after all. I was a ship, floating on the tides and eddies of capricious fate just as
The Cutter
was driven by the sea. But at least the ship had a captain. Who was the captain of my voyage? Atthis? Maryon? Certainly not me.

I thought of the futureteller. How did Maryon feel to know that she had only to speak of her dreams to be obeyed? It was true power. But Maryon did not control her dreams, so, in a sense, the power was not hers. The dreams controlled her, pulling this way and that, demanding to be told or acted upon. Was the self-knowledge she and all her fellow futuretellers sought worth this slavery to their dreams?

The salon door banged open, and I turned to see Rushton enter.

Of us all, Rushton had adapted most easily to the movement of the ship. From almost his first steps on deck, he had mastered the graceful rolling walk affected by Powyrs and his crew. His cheeks were red, his hair wildly tangled, and his
eyes bright as they swept the room. He was clearly finding his first sea journey exhilarating.

“I am ravenous,” he said.

The door behind him burst open again to reveal the old beggar who had been speaking to Powyrs at the bottom of the gangplank just before we departed.

“You can’t come in here …,” Hannay began firmly.

The beggar threw off the hood of his brown robe to reveal a familiar tanned face in the candlelight.

“Daffyd!” I murmured. There were cries as the others recognized him, too.

He ignored them, his eyes sweeping the room to settle on me. I gasped, for only when he faced me properly could I see that his left eye socket was swollen to twice its size, his lip split, and his cheek marked with bloody striations.

“What in Lud’s name has happened to you?”

“I escaped from Ayle,” he said hoarsely.

“Sit down, man,” Rushton said, steering him to a window seat beside me.

“He found you out?” I asked.

“Ayle found nothing out. Salamander told him I was a spy.”

I was confused. “He can’t have returned already?” My heart rose. “Unless the slaves have only been taken to Morganna or Aborium …”

Daffyd shook his head. “Salamander told Ayle, the day he came to take the slaves, that I was to be locked up until he got back.” He shuddered. “Lud knows how he learned I was a spy or what he planned to do to me when he returned. As soon as I got a chance, I broke out and fought my way free. I headed straight for the city gates, but Ayle was quicker. I
spotted his people just in time. I would never have made it, and I knew if they were watching one gate, they would be watching them all.”

“You went to the safe house?”

He nodded. “It was all locked up. I had no choice but to try sending out an attuned probe to you. It near killed me to hold it together when it got near the sea, but it locked on to your mind a split second before the static got the better of me. That was long enough for me to learn that you were sailing at dusk for Sador. I told your captain that I was a friend. I hope you do not object to another traveling companion.”

“We are glad to have you,” Rushton said, but he spoke as if his mind was elsewhere.

“That’s twelve of us,” Miky breathed beside me.

“Elspeth believes she saw Ariel on board the Herder ship that took Matthew away,” Rushton said. “Did you see him?”

Though I would not have thought it possible, Daffyd paled further.

“It seems unlikely, since there is no connection between Ariel and this Salamander …,” Rushton said.

Daffyd stood up abruptly and stared down at him. “You are wrong.” His face was clenched in misery, and he began to pace. “I said at the safe house that there was not enough time to tell my story. Now I wish I had taken the time.”

“It would be a simple matter if lives were lived by hindsight,” Rushton said. “There is much we would not begin if we could see how it would end.”

Daffyd would not be consoled. “Matthew was my friend, and I ought to have done something. If Ariel was aboard …”

“From what Elspeth said, there was nothing you could have done,” Rushton said firmly. He pulled Daffyd back down and motioned to Kella to wash his wounds. When the
healer was settled and bathing the gashes, Rushton asked Daffyd what connection there was between Salamander and Ariel.

“I will tell you,” Daffyd said, “but I must start at the beginning. After leaving Obernewtyn with Kella and Domick last summerdays, I traveled to the White Valley and the site of the Druid encampment. My plan was to see if I could find any clue as to what direction the survivors might have taken.” His eyes were distant, as if he truly gazed into the past and saw the events he described unscrolling before his eyes.

“I left the valley without any sign to give me hope and tracked all through and around the Gelfort Range. I found some few scattered camping places, but there was never any way of knowing whose they had been. I went about small settlements in the highlands and in the upper lowlands, talking and asking questions. I sometimes pretended to be a Councilman and at other times a Herder agent.

“Then one night at a dingy inn in a tiny settlement, I came face to face with one of the Druid armsmen from the camp.”

Daffyd’s face reflected the elation he must have felt at this first breakthrough in his long search. But the smile faded at once. “He told me that shortly before the firestorm destroyed the camp—mere days—Ariel came to see the Druid.”

I seemed to see that pale, impossibly fair face turning to me on the deck of
The Calor Lady
.

“As you know,” Daffyd went on, “Ariel was working as an agent for the Herder Faction back then, and for the Council, while at the same time styling himself a secret friend to Henry Druid. On this last visit, he told the Druid that the Council had learned the location of his secret camp and that soldierguards were being dispatched to clean it out. He advised the Druid to prepare his people for battle, insisting that they would be able
to defend the fortified camp, and he suggested sending the young, the frail, and the elderly out of harm’s way up into the foothills of the Gelfort Range. Ariel claimed he dared not remain to help drive off the soldierguards, since it would betray his identity and put an end to his usefulness as a spy. But he offered to lead those who would not fight to a safe place in the hills until it was over.”

Daffyd’s face twisted in a spasm of uncontrollable rage. “The Druid thanked him for his friendship and loyalty and did as he suggested. When Ariel had gone, Henry Druid decided to send out a small advance party to give warning of the soldierguards’ approach. The three scouts rode out a bare hour before the firestorm razed the camp to the ground—the man who told this story to me was, of course, one of the three. They saw the storm and returned when it was over to find nothing remained of their camp. They looked for Ariel and those who had been led away, but there was no trace of them. Nor, in the days that followed, did any soldierguard force materialize.”

It took a moment to understand what this must mean. “Ariel lied!” I said incredulously.

Daffyd nodded, his eyes bleak. “What other answer could there be? I suppose he true-dreamed the firestorm and saw it as a natural and anonymous way to end a potentially embarrassing and no longer necessary connection with an outlawed priest. The visit was simply to ensure that the Druid and his armsmen were in the camp when it burned.” His voice was choked with rage and despair.

I saw that Rushton had grown pale. At first I thought he was experiencing the same shock as I, at this suggestion that Ariel had powers like ours. But then I remembered that, long ago, the Druid had befriended Rushton and treated him as a
son. He had not seemed terribly affected when the firestorm destroyed the camp, but there was a difference between being killed in a firestorm from nature’s random arsenal and being lured into a deadly trap. Ariel had even found a way to use nature for his perverted ends.

“What of the people he led out?” Kella murmured.

I could guess what was to be told next—the answer was threaded through all that had happened.

“When the three surviving armsmen could not find them, they split up. Two went to the west coast. The third man remained, and it was he who I met. For a time, we traveled together, but we found no trace of the others. He began to fear that taking them from the camp had simply been Ariel’s means of getting out before the firestorm struck, a ruse, and that he had killed them after. But I could not accept they were dead. So we parted, too. Gilbert went to join the other two armsmen, and I—”