The Dreamtrails (52 page)

I told myself that it mattered not if ignorance as much as courage had brought me into the strait, so long as I reached the west coast.

All I had to do was stay awake.

There was a low rumble of thunder, and I looked up, noting the dark, congested clouds overhead, and wondered what sort of storm was brewing. Aside from the danger of being struck by lightning, I welcomed the possibility of a storm, for surely there would be rain, and the thirst of hours before had become a torment. The temptation to drink a mouthful of seawater was so compelling that I was frightened I might succumb.

“Do not drink,” Ari-noor warned.

Desperately, I cast about for something to occupy my thoughts. Strangely, I found myself remembering the day I had ridden away from Obernewtyn. In retrospect, there had been a brightness to that day, although I had been in no mood to appreciate it. I had been so full of grief over my estrangement from Rushton and worry about Khuria’s letters and Malik’s trial that I had not properly appreciated the feel of Gahltha’s warm faithful flesh moving under me and Maruman’s softness about my neck and curving into my mind.

Then it occurred to me that I was guilty of doing exactly the same thing again. Only a few days past, I had believed that I would never see Maruman or Gahltha or Rushton again, for I had thought myself doomed to a horrible death at the hands of the Herders. Yet now that I knew that I
would
see them again, instead of rejoicing, I was full of self-pity. I felt a surge of disgust for myself and deliberately turned my thoughts to wondering if they had any idea of what had been happening to me. Atthis might have let Maruman know where I was, and the old cat would have let the others know through the beastspeakers. Or maybe not. Maruman was contrary and uninformative at the best of times, and he had been angry with me even before I abandoned him in Saithwold.

Maryon might also have dreamed of me and sent a messenger to Sutrium to let the others know what had happened. But how much could she have seen? Had she known that I would find myself trapped aboard a Herder ship and taken to Herder Isle? I wondered what I would have done if Maryon had brought me into her high chamber in Obernewtyn’s Futuretell wing to tell me all that would happen to me after I left the mountains. Would I have gone to Saithwold, knowing that Malik awaited me, even if I had known that his attempt to kill me would fail? And what of the tunnel under the cloister? Would I have taken that, knowing it would lead me to Herder Isle and into the hands of the Herders? And what lay at the end of this journey across the strait, which I had begun so impulsively?

“She mind swims in circles,” Ari-noor sent soothingly. “Will the waves change because someone swims through them? What has happened has happened, and what will happen will happen.”

Night fell subtly, for the storm that threatened all afternoon had not broken despite the sullen mutter of thunder. The clouds that had masked the sun now hid dusk and then the rising of moon and stars. Night gradually darkened from steel gray to black, and I scanned the sea in the distance, seeking the dull blurs of orange light that would denote land, though in my heart I knew it was too soon. By my reckoning, we were still moving along the strait and had yet to angle toward the shore and enter the coastal currents.

I turned my mind to what Elkar had told me when we had first arrived at the healing center after the confrontation with the Hedra master. He had managed to track down the novice who had seen Ariel’s special nulls when he had been sent to deliver a message to the One’s favorite. Ariel had just locked the door of his chambers, and he had two nulls with him. According to the novice, one had been very small—a midget, he had supposed—until it looked at him, and he had seen that it was a child. It had been impossible to tell if it was a boy or a girl, because its head had been shaven like all nulls’ heads, and its face had been horribly scarred. I doubted Ariel would give a child the responsibility of spreading his plague, because a child would be vulnerable and might come to harm before it had done his bidding. But the other null had been described as a grown man, sickly pale as one long imprisoned in a cell without fresh air or sunlight. I was certain he was the null I must seek. But when I learned where the null had gone ashore, I would concentrate my search not on him but on Ariel. Of course, he might not have accompanied the null ashore, but if it were safe to do so, he would be unable to resist the vicious pleasure of walking through a crowd and gloating over what awaited them. All I needed to do was to ask around until I found someone who had seen a fair,
astonishingly handsome young man accompanied by a very pale, dark-haired man.

“Just as long as he is not in a cloister,” I muttered.

A wave cuffed me hard, knocking the breath out of me. “Anything else?” I gasped wrathfully at the heavens. Another wave broke against me, and by the time I had finished coughing and choking out swallowed seawater, I had ceased thinking of Ariel and the null. The wind had been growing steadily, and it now howled overhead, whipping the waves into high peaks that broke over me until I feared I would drown clinging to the back of the ship fish. Ari-noor seemed unaffected, yet I was buffeted mercilessly by the sea, and every breath was a struggle. When I remembered my surrender to the waves in the narrow inlet, I relaxed, and at once I became aware that a song throbbed in the air, made up of the sea’s roar and hiss and the wind’s howling. The strange, wild music had a rhythm, and Ari-noor’s movements synchronized with it and were part of it. I thought of Powyrs, the shipmaster of
The Cutter
, telling me that the sea was too strong and vast to be fought. One must surrender to it. I thought I had surrendered to it in the narrow inlet, but I had only given up struggling against it. In order to hear the song of the waves, I began to understand that I had to give up singing my own song of fear first. Powyrs had called it
surrender
, but in truth he meant that one needed to cease one’s own competing song. Only then could I listen to the song of the waves and become part of it as the ship fish did.

The sensation of being in tune with the vast, mysterious ocean was profoundly soothing, and the wild waves and the roar of the storm overhead and the dreadful thirst I felt were no less a part of it than Ari-noor. I thought of the mindstream that lay at the bottom of all minds, connecting us to one another
and to the past and the future. Perhaps the sea and the creatures in it were closer than creatures of the land and air to that final merging of all life that was the end of individuality, which we humans called
death
.

I shivered, noting dimly that I was growing cold. Ari-noor had long since ceased to feed me from her ohrana. Indeed, she no longer scolded me or reminded me to keep hold or stay awake, and I could feel her fatigue. I had the feeling that if I let go of her, she would swim lightly on, hardly noticing that she had lost me. The thought no longer frightened me. Death, too, was part of the song of the waves. A serene fatalism possessed me.

I drifted, and while I did not sleep, sleep was no longer separate from waking. Both states flowed through me, and my spirit become loose and free in my body, as if I need only lean over for it to pour out into the waves. Liquid into liquid. I felt no urge to pour myself into the sea but no fear of it either, and in that utterly passive state, I heard something. It was not music, yet it was; and it was not exactly sound, yet my spirit floating in my flesh heard it. It flowed through the water, wave after wave of exquisite sound. Swells and eddies and currents of sound that, incredibly, moved through me as if I were part of the sea, as if my flesh did not separate us. This was the wavesong that Ari-noor and Ari-roth had spoken of, I realized in wonderment. This was what sea beasts heard and what had carried the song of my need across time and space.

I floated for a long time, listening and feeling the wavesong before I understood that there was meaning in it. Not one single meaning but a thousand meanings flowing side by side. Not meaning that could be understood as words are, but meaning as music carries meaning. Even a musician without empathy can evoke anger or sorrow or fear with
music, and this was like that, only a thousand times more complex. Eddies and rills and coils of meaning merged and flowed and seemed to change and develop, as if meaning communicated with meaning.

As I lost myself in the wavesong, I began to feel a warning or a foreboding of something immense and dark and utterly strange. I struggled to understand what it could be, but its meaning was too fluid. There was death in it.

Frightened, I asked Ari-noor what it was.

She made no response. I called again and realized that I could not feel her in my mind. Unease flowed through me, thickening the fluid softness of my spirit, and as I became aware of my body—how cold and stiff it was—the wavesong faded.

Again I tried to farseek Ari-noor, and to my dismay, I discovered that she was
no longer with me
!

Panicking, I tread water and turned, seeking the sleek gray form of the ship fish, but if she was near I could not see her, for a thick, soft, blinding mist swirled above the waves. I called out her name again, mentally and aloud, but there was no response. Either she had been too weary to register my departure, or she had felt that my letting go severed the commitment she had made to bring me across the strait. Or perhaps in allowing the wavesong to enter me, she felt I had no more need of her.

Abruptly, I stopped splashing and shouting, aware that I was alone in the rain-swept sea and that sharks were probably scything through the waves, drawn by the discordant song of fear I had been emanating.

Something banged against my feet, and I would have screamed in fright if I had had any strength. A wave crashed over me, thrusting me downward with such force that it felt
as if I had hit something solid. I thrashed my arms, desperate to reach the surface, and grazed my elbow. I imagined sharks seething in the water, snapping at my flailing limbs. I managed one breath of air before another wave pummeled me, this time sending me tumbling head over heels. Dizzy and confused, I was no longer sure which way was up or down. Again my elbow and then my knee struck something hard, and I realized I must have been washed into a shoal! I could be battered to pieces on the rocks just below the surface. Another wave lifted me and threw me down. My head struck something, and I dropped into blackness. I sank like a stone to the depths of my mind. The descent was so swift that I knew I would not be able to prevent myself from entering the mindstream. Instead of feeling fear or desperation, my will dissolved and I ceased trying to slow my descent.

But I came to a sudden violent stop above the mindstream. Stunned at how abruptly my fall had ended, it took me a moment to understand that some other will had stopped me. Only one will was powerful enough for such a thing.

“Atthis.”

“Even
I
could not stop your fall alone,” sent the Agyllian. “It took all of the eldar, and even we would have failed without your friends.”

“My friends?” I echoed.

“The cat and the horse who are your protectors,” Atthis said. “The dog Rasial and the funaga Gavryn, Swallow, and Maryon. They have agreed to let us draw on them.”

My mind reeled at the names. “But … how?”

“I entered their dreams and summoned their aid. When they opened themselves to me, I drew on their spirits to strengthen our merge, just as the ship fish fed you their ohrana,” Atthis answered.

“Then my friends know what has been happening to me?”

“No,” Atthis answered. “They know only that ElspethInnle was in great danger of death and must be saved. I asked their aid, and they gave it. Now you must exert your own will and rise, for it drains all of us to hold you.”

I tried to do as she bid me, but my mind was sodden and responded sluggishly. “I can’t,” I sent.

“You are hurt badly,” Atthis said. “We have taught your body to heal itself, and it will begin to do so when you withdraw from the mindstream. This close, your body cannot heal. Draw back, and we will send help.”

I strove again to focus my mind and rise. This time, I managed to withdraw from the mindstream a little, but I felt the strange, wrenching regret of leaving behind that inevitable final merging with all that had been and would be. I tried to throw off my regret by thinking of Maruman and Gahltha, strange Gavryn and the others, who had somehow allowed themselves to be used to save me. And I thought of Cinda and the little boy Mouse, who had endured such horrors, and their will and courage to go on living. Most of all, though, I thought of the west coast, that I alone had the chance to save. If I died, thousands would die of plague.

“If you perish, a world will die,” Atthis sent. “All beasts and funaga and plants. All.”

“If I live, I will save them?” I asked.

“You will try, and you may succeed,” the Agyllian elder answered. “Now rise, for even augmented, our merge weakens.”

I tried again to rise, but the mindstream sang to me, its song as great and alluring as the wavesong, and I was weak. There was only one way to save myself. I delved into myself and tapped the dark killing force that slumbered deep in my mind. I was careful not to rouse it, but its dark hot strength
flowed through me, and I heard Atthis gasp as I began to rise swiftly. As I felt Atthis slip away from me, I faltered in my will to rise. A bubble of matter rose lazily and inexorably from the mindstream to engulf me.