The Dreamtrails (45 page)

“I knew none of this yet, of course, because now I could not reach Hilder either,” Harwood continued. Worried, he had gone close enough to the armory to discover that the wall was tainted, but there was no sign of either coercer. “Finally, I spotted Hilder going through an exercise movement with a vast troop of Hedra. I tried to reach his mind, but it was locked to me. It was the same with Colwyn.”

“The Hedra must have been wearing demon bands,” Yarrow said. “If there were enough—”

“No,” Harwood interrupted. “In exercising together with such precision, concentrating their whole minds upon the synchronized movements of the rest, the Hedra create a group mind that is impenetrable save to one who would mesh with it. Colwyn and Hilder would have had no choice but to mesh.”

Yarrow and Geratty looked horrified.

Harwood said heavily, “That is why I summoned all of you here. I want to get control of the armory tonight, and it might take all of us to break the group mind.”

“But surely Colwyn and Hilder will be free as soon as the exercise ends?” Yarrow said.

“That is what I believe. If not, I will send Zuria in. I did not send for the rest of you to rescue them. I want to go ahead and penetrate the armory, but if something goes wrong, it may be that the Hedra will form a group mind when they fight. If that is so, I will need your help to break it.”

“What is your plan?” Yarrow asked.

“We will wait until this exercise ends, in the hope that Hilder and Colwyn will be released. I should be able to reach them then, and I will send them to the armory to tell whoever is in charge that Zuria and Mendi are on their way to make an inspection at the One’s behest. Soon after, we will march in with the Threes, and during our so-called inspection, we will coerce every Hedra we encounter until we have control. If at any point the Hedra form a group mind, we merge to crack it open.”

“Who controls the Hedra group mind?” Yarrow asked.

“I have been thinking about that,” Harwood said. “In an ordinary unconscious group mind, the group itself has a natural leader, but in the case of the Hedra, there is no central mind. That is what makes it impossible to probe. I think the group mind is actually centered on some sort of shared illusion of the Herder Lud, and the group does what it believes this Lud desires. Our one advantage is that the Hedra form this group mind unconsciously, so they are unaware of the advantage it gives them over us.”

“What if you can’t crack it?” Reuvan asked.

“Then we had better discover that sooner rather than later,” Harwood said grimly.

I drew a deep breath and bade Geratty explain what had happened to the One. Harwood grimaced as Geratty told his story, and once it was concluded, he remarked almost sadly, “I thought we could take over this place as stealthily as beetles
burrowing into wood and with as little bloodshed as when we took the Land from the Council. But it is the Herders we are dealing with, and the Faction traffics in death and brutality so readily that it is no wonder even the shadows have learned it.” He glanced at a time candle he had set on the table. “According to the shadows, each set of exercises goes on for two hours, which means we have less than an hour to wait.”

Harwood turned his attention to Yarrow, asking what had been happening on Fallo. The coercer explained all that he had told me and concluded, “Veril will farseek Tomrick as soon as he gets across the channel with the Norselanders, but given what the Per said, I doubt that will happen much before morning. Maybe it’s just as well given what we are about to do.”

Harwood nodded.

The others began to discuss the need to find somewhere to put prisoners, for we could not be forever rearranging the priests’ memories, and unless deeply coerced, they had to be coerced again frequently. I left this to the others and wrapped myself in my cloak to sleep while I had the chance.

It seemed but a moment before Harwood was shaking me gently awake.

“I just spoke to Sover. He says the rumor you began is spreading like wildfire. Several Hedra have come to the healing center to ask if there is plague in the compound. Hard to believe a rumor could spread so swiftly from such a small event. It seems that the failure of any of the Threes to return to their cottages these last two nights is being seen as proof that something is wrong. I have told Sover he might as well put Grisyl into a bed and let it be known that he is ill, for it occurs to me that the rumor of sickness could serve us very well.”

“The rumor of sickness was already established,” I said. “Remember, Elkar told us he had heard talk that the Hedra aboard the
Orizon
had caught plague in the Land and that this was the real reason Salamander had sunk the ship.”

Harwood opened his mouth to speak and then stiffened. A moment later he nodded and looked relieved, saying aloud, “That was Colwyn. He and Hilder are both fine, but they are being marched to a meal with the other Hedra. They will have to wait until after the meal to go to the armory.” He fell silent again, and as I waited for him to finish communicating with Colwyn, I farsent Tomrick and bade him check how the One was. After farsending Asra, Tomrick reported that the One was still alive and that several shadows had come looking for Cinda, as had Elkar. “Asra said the lad insisted on knowing where Cinda was, so I told him you were in the dye works. He is like to be there any minute.”

I withdrew and told Harwood what I had learned. He nodded, but I could see that he was preoccupied. When I asked what troubled him, he said that he thought we should use the enforced wait to search Ariel’s chambers, given that they were so near the dye works. We quickly decided that he and I would go alone. Yarrow was left in charge and, in case anything went wrong, was bidden to take the armory as planned.

“Do you expect anything to go wrong?” I asked as we left the dye house.

Before he could answer, a figure emerged from the thick misty darkness, but it was only Elkar. Once he heard what we intended, he insisted that he lead the way, for Ariel’s chambers were
through
the labyrinthine library. He also insisted that Harwood wear the cloak of an ordinary priest, for Hedra never went to the library. Once the dye-works master had
been divested of his cloak, we set off again.

The lanes and streets we passed along were thick with mist and very dark, but Elkar now carried the lantern I had been carrying, having pointed out that no Herder priest of rank would do such a thing. Glancing at the stark black stone buildings on either side of us, I marveled aloud that anyone would deliberately create such a dreary place to live. The mist was so thick, muffling even the noise of our steps, that I had no fear of speaking aloud. “Do these priests think their Lud dislikes beauty as well as women?”

Elkar gave me a quizzical look and answered softly, “My master would say that a woman’s beauty is an illusion.”

“Is the beauty of a tree also an illusion, then?”

“I do not think that Lud objects to trees,” Elkar said. “It is only that trees will not grow here, nor any flower or plant or lichen.”

“But what of the walled garden if the land is so barren?” I asked.

“It is barren, save for the earth behind that wall,” Elkar insisted. “It was many years before I was born, but the One commanded a garden to be created to honor Lud, so earth was brought from Norseland to allow things to grow.”

I gaped at him, unable to imagine how much earth would need to have been shipped to Herder Isle from Norseland to allow
trees
to grow.

“Here,” said Elkar, gesturing to an open gateway in a wall. Beyond was a cobbled yard swathed in mist. “The library is on the other side of that yard,” whispered the novice. “There are no guards outside.”

We went through the gate with some trepidation, but as Elkar had said, there were no guards at the entrance to the large library building. But after we had entered the doors, two
young Hedra stepped forward. Elkar nodded to them familiarly, introducing Harwood and myself as his master’s new assistants, and they moved aside to let us enter. In a moment, we had passed out of their sight. Almost at once we came to shelves full of books separated by narrow aisles. Interspersed between them were tables where priests sat poring over tomes and making crabbed notes, lanterns pulled close to their elbows. I tried to look studious, though Elkar had promised they would pay no heed to us, as long as we did nothing to draw their attention.

We passed through two more chambers and then came through a door to a small courtyard. From the smell of it, there were privies here, but Elkar indicated a door set into a wall on the opposite side of the yard, saying this was the entrance to Ariel’s chambers.

The door was locked and a taint emanated from it, strong enough to make it hard to focus my mind as I laid my hands over the lock and closed my eyes. The mechanism was so astonishingly complex that it could only have come from the Beforetime. I took a deep breath and concentrated all of my will on it. Then I stepped back, the cold chill of premonition touching my heart. My mind had shown me that anyone opening the lock without a key would set off a small explosive device. It was so small that I doubted it would have force enough to break the door down, yet the premonition of danger had been so strong that nothing would bring me to try disarming the lock.

“What is it?” Harwood asked.

My mouth was so dry that I had trouble speaking. “No one must touch this door,” I said. “There is … some terrible danger here.”

“You had a premonition?” Harwood guessed.

I nodded, and shivered. “No one must enter this chamber.”

“Very well. Let us return to the others, then.”

We had been gone scarcely a half hour, but by the time we got back to the dye works, Yarrow and the coercers had gone, taking Zuria and Mendi and leaving Cinda and the shadows to watch over the trussed and rather red-faced Herders. She explained that Yarrow had tried to reach us, and when he had failed, he had elected to go on with the plan, for Hilder and Colwyn had got away sooner than expected and had gone at once to the armory.

I bade the shadows loosen the Herders’ gags slightly so the priests could breathe but to have a rock handy in case they tried anything. I spoke more as a warning to the Herders than as a direction to the shadows, until it occurred to me the women were all too likely to batter the priests’ heads in, given what had happened to the One. I bade Elkar wait with them.

Outside, it was now raining, which dismayed me, because it would be impossible to farseek the others. It would also prevent Veril from farseeking Tomrick. He would have to come into the compound, and of course he would go first to the One’s chamber. I regretted that I had not sent Elkar back there to wait, but it was too late to do so now. Harwood cursed the ill timing of the rain, but I said that although it was inconvenient, at least rain would ensure that no one would be outside, save those commanded to be there, so we likely would have an easier job ahead of us.

We spotted the end of the narrow path that ran between the walls surrounding the library yard and the inner-cadre garden; beyond lay the Hedra buildings. Someone reached out from a darkened doorway and caught my hand. I stifled
a cry, for it was Yarrow, and pressed into the doorway behind him were Reuvan, Ode, Geratty, and Zuria, their faces slicked with rain.

“What is happening?” Harwood asked, wasting no time. He spoke aloud because the taint from the armory wall was strong enough to make farseeking impossible, even if it had not been raining.

“Hilder and Colwyn presented themselves at the armory gate and were taken to the Hedra master,” Yarrow said.

“Did you say Hedra master?” I repeated.

He nodded. “It seems that he is one of seven Hedra generals who run the Hedra force, and from Zuria’s memories, he is the most powerful, for he reports each new moon directly to the One. That means he will likely take this inspection by Zuria as interference at best and an insult at worst. We will need to be very careful how we proceed, especially if even a lesser number of Hedra can form this group mind outside of an exercise.”

Harwood said, “It is a great pity we cannot reach Hilder or Colwyn to find out how they have been received by this general.”

“Colwyn did send a mental picture of the yard,” Yarrow said, and both Harwood and I reached out to make physical contact so we could take it from his mind. I saw a dark rainswept yard paved in black cobbles and a single blocklike building set against the outer wall of the compound. Before its two huge metal doors stood ten armed Hedra.

“It seems small for an armory,” Harwood muttered.

“A lot of protection for seemingly little,” I said.

“Therefore, there must be more than there seems,” Harwood added.

“There might be levels underground,” Reuvan suggested.

“Let’s find out,” Harwood said.

“Who goes there?” demanded the Hedra at the armory gate, his bald head gleaming wetly in the light of the lantern he carried.

Zuria stepped forward as he had been coerced to do and asked sharply if the two Hedra sent ahead had not arrived to announce him. “If they have not delivered my message, I will have them confined in the tidal cells,” he snapped.

The other Hedra made the throat-tapping gesture that we now understood denoted obedience and said that two Hedra had arrived a short time ago and had been taken to the Hedra master.

“And are two Threes to wait in the rain while two Hedra are questioned?” Zuria snarled.

“I am sorry, Master,” said the first Hedra. “If you will accompany me, I will bring you to the Hedra master.”

We followed him along the path, which ran to the right of the gates and along the inside of the armory wall to a barracks built against it. I bit my lip, aware that being so near the tainted wall would prevent us from coercing anyone, including Zuria or Mendi. I moved close enough to make contact with Harwood and pointed this out. He said calmly that he had anticipated it and had already given both Threes their instructions. Moreover, he would stay close enough to both to be able to make contact.

I nodded and, falling behind again, glanced across the wet cobbles at the lantern-lit face of the armory with its phalanx of guards. It looked bigger than it had in Yarrow’s memory vision, but even so, it was smaller than I would have expected, given the number of Hedra warriors. Reuvan might be right
about levels underground, but how many could there be in such a flat island?