The Dreamtrails (44 page)

The words I had intended to say died on my lips, for I saw that I could say nothing about what they had done that would make any sense to them. They had spoken to the One in the language he and his foul brethren had taught them—the language of cruelty and pain—and it was the only language they knew.

“Come over to the fire. No one will hurt you or punish you,” I told them.

They obeyed, and as Cinda came with water and began to
wash their hands, I tried to think of something that would allow us to bridge this moment. Nothing came to mind, and when Cinda sat back on her heels, I asked her rather desperately to tell me Elkar’s story, adding the inward request that she tell the story with her fingers as well as her mind. She looked puzzled, but she obeyed, and as I had hoped, the blank devastation ebbed in the eyes of the two younger shadows as her tale unfolded.

Elkar had been born on Herder Isle, Cinda explained. Like so many other Norse boys, he was taken from his family to become a novice. He had resisted the training until he and the other novices had been taken to see the mine and demon-band works, and he had understood that this would be their fate if they did not succeed in becoming novices. Elkar had given up his rebellious refusal to cooperate and had tried to forget his family and believe the words of Lud, as expressed by his masters. He had worked hard, and when it was found that he had an aptitude for scribing, he was sent to the Herder scribes. Eventually, he had been assigned to his present master who, although devout, was one of the few Herders with a passion for something other than worshipping Lud. Although friendship was impossible, Elkar had come to respect his master’s ability to read and scribe.

The boy had proven so quick and willing to learn that almost before he had realized what he was doing, the old man was teaching him to read and scribe. This was forbidden, but his master had known that Elkar would work more swiftly and efficiently if he could read and scribe, and his own eyesight was beginning to fail. Elkar was careful never to reveal his abilities, realizing that he would be killed if anyone learned that he knew how to read. In time, his master trusted
him so well that he had given over the scribing of older scrips to Elkar.

“Why rescribe older scrips?” I interrupted.

“The reason given was that they were old and falling to bits,” Cinda explained. “But more often it was because a bit of the scrip had become unacceptable and needed to be altered. This was supposed to be done by Elkar’s master and merely copied by the scrip novices.”

That scrips said to have come to the One in visions sent by Lud were altered and sometimes even reversed made it impossible for Elkar to believe in the Herders’ Lud. But he was older now and wise enough in the ways of the Faction to make sure he never revealed his disbelief.

Cinda ceased her story as Geratty reentered and passed through the chamber with a blank-faced Herder priest carrying a healer’s bag. Instead of referring to the interruption, I asked her how she and Elkar had become friends. She smiled shyly and said that he had noticed the shadows’ finger movements. Elkar had studied the movements of the shadows, and one day, when Cinda had been serving food to him, he had made the signal that he believed was a greeting between shadows. She had started so violently that she had spilled hot soup on him, but the novice had said nothing. Frightened and confused, she had managed to stay away from the meal hall for some time, and when she had to go there, she had been careful to avoid him. Yet she had not been able to forget the movement of his fingers, which had expressed the word
friend
. Then one day as she was taking a tray to the One, Elkar had been outside the scrip cutting kindling. He had approached Cinda, again using the finger signal for “friend,” then told her aloud that he wanted her to teach him the signal language.

“I was afraid at first,” Cinda said. “I knew that many of us would be killed if our masters knew how well we could communicate. Yet I feared to refuse him. I decided I would pretend to be very dull-witted and show him only the simplest language so he would believe we used it to communicate only what was necessary for our work. I hoped he would grow bored, but he was so clever and quick. He would make this or that signal and ask what it meant. My sisters told me that we must poison him, but I did not know whom he had told about me, and I wanted to know before I killed him. As time passed, I understood that Elkar had told no one what he had guessed. I asked why he wanted to know how to speak to a shadow, and he answered that he was curious and that he envied our freedom of speech.”

The words Cinda used in her upper mind were less eloquent than the picture in her undermind, which was loud and radiant. Cinda had at first feared the white-clad novice, but she had soon learned that his regard was not unfriendly. Indeed, to her astonishment, it had dawned on her that it was the opposite: He was lonely and wished them to be friends. She resisted until, one day, he said that he would repay her for her lessons by teaching her to scribe and to read. Knowing that he could be killed for being able to read, she had taken it as an offering of friendship. But by now, her own feelings for him ran deeper than that, though she never dared let Elkar see how she felt.

Then came the day that she had scribed her name for the first time with a thrill of pure terror, and Elkar had read it aloud. She had looked up at him in wonder and sorrow, for she had not heard her name spoken aloud since her brother had been dragged from her arms, screaming it. She wept, and Elkar had taken her in his arms and kissed her tears away.
This gentle tenderness had shown Cinda that his feelings ran as deep as hers.

When Cinda’s image spoke again, it was to say that Elkar’s feelings for her made him sympathetic to the plight of all shadows, whose lives he realized were much harder than any novice’s. He had become determined to find a way to help the shadows, but save for being as kind and considerate as he dared, he could not think how.

Then one day, Cinda asked if he could scribe a note that would transfer a young shadow from one sector to another, where the girl’s sister labored. Since shadows were used as messengers, it was no difficulty for one to deliver the note Elkar had scribed, and soon the sisters were reunited. With this note, Elkar had proven himself to all the shadows, and thereafter he had become their secret champion.

More requests followed, and Elkar came to recruit others among the novices and acolytes, and even one ranked priest, who felt as he did. The little secret group passed among themselves messages of hope, warnings, and occasionally books Elkar had stolen from the library. Some were from the Beforetime and told of a world that was nothing like the Beforetime of the Faction’s preachings, which passionately interested all of them. But their main task was to ease the lot of the shadows. And the shadows found ways of helping them, too. A novice being punished would be starved, but the shadows would bring him food; a note sent to command the punishment of a novice would be brought to Elkar, who would rescribe it and simply send the boy to another sector. Cinda assured me that there was little danger, because no priest could ever imagine anyone disobeying him, so he did not check that his orders had been carried out.

I wondered why Ariel had not foreseen what was going
on, unless, like the Herders, he simply never focused his attention on the shadows.

Yarrow was hovering, and when I rose, apologizing to Cinda for interrupting her story, he drew me into the dressing room where Geratty waited. The older man told me that the healing Herder had given the One medicines to soothe his pain but that his mind, already teetering under the weight of Ariel’s block, was broken altogether now. Certainly it would be some time before they could even attempt to enter it.

I nearly shuddered at the thought.

“Has Harwood been in contact yet?” I asked them.

Geratty shook his head. “Asra has been outside trying, but neither he nor Tomrick has heard a peep from him since he summoned Hilder down from the wall, and now they can’t reach him either. They will keep trying.”

Yarrow said suddenly, “You know, I don’t think Ariel ever meant to come back here.”

I stared at him. “We know he is going to the west coast before he returns to Herder Isle,” I said.

“No, I mean I don’t believe he meant to come back here at all.”

“What makes you think that?” I asked.

“Because he must have known that he would not return from the west coast in time to save the old man’s mind, and yet he set no safeguards against its being destroyed. Why on earth let him die or go mad when he had been so useful? Unless Ariel had no further use for him.”

“Maybe he plans to let one of the Threes take his place. After all, the One’s mind is disintegrating.”

“True enough, but it is more than that,” Yarrow said. “Ariel has always contrived never to be there when something he is involved in falls apart. And now, when we are
making a good start at bringing this place down, Ariel is elsewhere. Maybe he foresaw that Herder Isle would fall.”

“If he did, then why didn’t he take steps to stop it?” I asked.

“Maybe he foresaw that it can’t be stopped,” Yarrow suggested.

“He has access to an army of Hedra on Norseland,” I said. “He could have had Salamander blast the wall down.”

“He
could
if he wanted to protect the Faction, but why would he? He has just been using them to further his own interests, hasn’t he? The way he used Henry Druid and the Councilmen. He has never hesitated to betray people in the past.”

“You are saying you think he has left this place for good? Left it to us?”

“That is what it seems like to me.”

“Where would he go after he has poisoned the west coast?” I asked. Even as I spoke, my mind flew to the Red Land.

But Yarrow said, “He has a stronghold on Norseland. It seems to me that he will return there after he has left the null on the west coast. I was speaking to the Per about Norseland, and it sounds as if it is virtually unassailable, being all high cliffs, save for Main Cove, where there is a single narrow road leading up to Covetown, overlooked by the cloister. Not far from there the Hedra have their own permanent encampment, inhabited by an army in waiting. I do not doubt that Ariel can coerce its captains into accepting his authority, but maybe he would not need them to defend himself. I was also poking around in Zuria’s mind on our way back here, and it seems that Ariel found other weapons from the Beforetime when he found the plague seeds, and the Threes believe he keeps them in his residence.”

My blood ran cold at the thought of Ariel in possession of Beforetime weapons.

“But if Ariel knew he would not return to Herder Isle, why leave instructions that the guildmistress be left unhurt until he came to interrogate her?” Geratty asked.

Yarrow frowned. “Hmm. I had forgotten that.” He fell silent, mulling it over, but I knew why Ariel would have ordered me not to be harmed. He needed the Seeker alive. He may even have foreseen that I was the Misfit aboard the
Stormdancer
and acted to make sure I would not be tortured before the coercer-knights took control of the compound. That he had not stayed to take me captive himself meant he knew that I had not yet gathered all I needed to find and disable the weaponmachines that had caused the Great White. Perhaps Yarrow was exactly right, and Ariel would return to Norseland once he had done with the west coast, to wait until he futuretold that I was ready for the final stage of my quest. Then what? Did he plan to capture me then or simply follow me to the weaponmachines so he could snatch victory from my hands?

What did not fit was that at least one of the remaining clues was on the west coast, and though Ariel need not know it, he must know it might be possible. Yet he was willing to spread a deadly plague. Did he know that my body’s capacity to heal itself could survive even exposure to a deadly sickness, or had he reasoned that once the last plague victim died on the west coast, the plague itself would die?

Suddenly Yarrow stiffened, and seeing his absorbed expression, I waited impatiently for his eyes to clear, my heart sinking at the grim expression on his face.

“That was Tomrick. He says that Harwood farsent him,” he said at last. “Colwyn and Hilder are trapped with the
Hedra. Harwood wants all of us to come now, and we are to bring Zuria and Mendi.”

Less than half an hour passed before Geratty, Reuvan, Yarrow, and I approached the dye works where Harwood had bidden us meet him, having left Asra to watch over the shadows, the Hedra guards, Falc, and the One. Cinda and two other shadows had accompanied us, bearing lanterns for pretense more than need.

Harwood looked pale and grim as he ushered us through the door of the dye works and closed it behind us. A row of Herders tied up along the wall glared at us, watched by a composed Ode and a little cluster of frightened-looking shadows hovering in the back of the large room. Cinda went to greet them as Harwood explained that he had taken over the place, because we would draw attention if we were all standing out in the open.

“You did not coerce them?” I nodded to the bound priests.

“I did not want to waste my energy, for we may need it,” Harwood said.

“How were Colwyn and Hilder caught?” I asked.

Harwood shook his head. “I did not say they were caught. They are
trapped
. About two hours ago, one of the shadows came to us to say that a group of shadows had locked a Herder in a cellar. He had been beating one of them, and instead of standing back and watching as they would normally, the shadows attacked him. Fortunately, they had the sense to send to us for help. Ode and I came to sort it out. I coerced the Hedra to believe he had fallen down some stairs and sent Ode to take him and Grisyl to Sover while I calmed the shadows. I was growing concerned about Colwyn, because I had not been able to reach him since I had sent him to investigate the
armory. So when Hilder farsought me to say he might as well come down from the watch-hut because the mist made it impossible to see anything, I sent him to look for Colwyn. As I discovered later, Hilder found him still awaiting an opportunity to sneak across the Hedra yards to the armory. I had not been able to reach his mind, because he was too close to the tainted wall.” Harwood sighed and said that before the two coercers could retreat, one of the Hedra captains spotted them and commanded them to take their places in the ranks for the evening exercises. They had no choice but to obey, for every Hedra in sight was streaming down to the exercise yard.