Authors: Isobelle Carmody
I
SAT BACK
on my heels and squinted against the rain to study the terrain. Little was visible in the rainy darkness, but in the flashes of lightning, which seemed less frequent than they had been aboard the ship, I saw that the island was every bit as flat and featureless as I had been led to believe. Looking east, I could not see the rocky knoll upon which Ariel’s residence was supposedly constructed or any other sign of human habitation. And when I looked west where Fryddcove was said to lie, I could not see the Hedra encampment, the cloister, or the town that spread out around the top of the trail leading up from Uttecove.
Then Gwynedd lay a hand on my shoulder and gave me a brief, unexpectedly warm smile, and told me that he had bidden the two Sadorians and Gilbert to accompany Jak and me to Ariel’s residence.
“Take care, and remember, you must be in the boulders on the cliff outside Covetown by tomorrow night or the morning after, at the latest, or the ship will have to leave without you. Good luck,” he told all of us, and turned to lead his armsfolk away along the cliff edge in the opposite direction.
After what seemed like hours of shouldering our way into the bullying, rain-filled wind over flat but infuriatingly uneven ground, I slipped on a patch of bare rock and went
down hard enough on one knee to bring hot tears to my eyes. Cursing furiously, I stumbled on after the others, only slightly mollified by the fact that Jak and Gilbert were finding the way no easier. Ironically, the two Sadorians handled the terrain most gracefully, for though they were desert people, their shipboard training had accustomed them to slippery surfaces.
“Are you all right?” Gilbert asked, seeing that I had fallen behind. The rain was falling more heavily than ever, but the thunder and lightning had eased, so it was possible to talk.
“Bruised but hale,” I said.
“It cannot be much farther to this knoll if the one spoken of on Herder Isle is the same one as the knoll Gwynedd’s mother described to him,” Gilbert assured me, and it warmed me slightly to see the smile I remembered from Henry Druid’s secret encampment and not the dazzling superficial smile of recent days. But then his expression turned grim as he glanced about. “Trust Ariel to choose such a place for his home.”
Gilbert’s words reminded me that he had known Ariel, too, from the time he had spent in Henry Druid’s secret encampment in the White Valley. But when I asked what he had thought of Ariel in those days, he shrugged, saying he had seen little of him. “It was my impression that he was not the sort to trouble with anyone he did not wish to make use of, and I had nothing he wanted. I do recall it being slyly said that he courted the Druid as much as his daughter. I mean Erin, not Gilaine. Little Gilly never liked him. No doubt her powers let her see his true nature.”
I nodded, only wondering that Ariel’s powers had not let him see what she was. On the other hand, perhaps Lidgebaby’s powerful emanations had prevented Ariel from reaching the mind of any Misfit in the camp. I wondered how he had rationalized the net of mental static, for it must have impeded
his coercive abilities even if his twisted Talent for empathy had been unaffected.
I thought again of Domick’s words, realizing they had taken on a talismanic power for me: “
He does not see everything!
”
Gilbert had instinctively taken the lead when we set off, and now he called a halt. I was weary enough to be glad of it, but there was neither shelter nor any means of warming ourselves, so after a short time, we went on again. I was trying to steel myself for another long stumbling walk when Jak gave a cry and pointed out a dark square-edged plateau almost invisible against the cloud-clogged sky. It could only be the knoll we had been seeking, though I had been imagining a low round-topped mound rising not much higher than ground level. This knoll looked to be twice as high as a tall man, and I could discern no building upon it.
We were almost upon it before I realized that the stone knoll was no more than shoulder height, and the rest was a wall rising up from the edge of the knoll formed of stone blocks mortared snugly together. No light showed above it or through any of the spy slits. The rain prevented me from sending out a probe to search for watchers, but it would have been useless in any case due to the strength of the taint in the wall. This, more than anything else, assured me that this was Ariel’s residence.
We followed the knoll until we came to a corner. I marveled at the fact that the mound was as squared off as the wall atop it. The angle was so sharp that I stopped to examine the knoll, expecting to find that it had been deliberately shaped to match the wall’s corner, but there was neither chisel mark nor any sign that nature had
not
shaped the stone. Still pondering this, I rounded the corner and stopped to stare, for the wall that
stretched away was at least twice as long as the one we had already paced out. We had not gone far along it before we came to a gate at the top of a set of steps hewn into the knoll.
Through the gate I could see a strange wide building, quite square, with a queer flat roof that ended abruptly at the walls like a giant box. I was reminded of the skyscrapers of the Beforetime laid down on their sides, for the building did not rise more than a single level above the ground. I no longer wondered if Salamander and his crew had stayed here, or if the slaves to be transported to the Red Queen’s land were kept here, for why else build such a massive residence?
With no windows in the front, there was no way to see if the building was occupied, but to my surprise, Gilbert withdrew from his pack a Herder robe, donned it, then bade us stay back and went to hammer and shout at the gate. There was no response. Still warning us to keep back, he reached into his backpack and drew out a short metal bar with one end flattened to a wedge and the other tapered to a point. He pushed this into one of the gate hinges and heaved on it. There was a slight grinding sound, barely audible over the relentless hissing of the wind, and then with a snap, the metal gate sagged inward with a creak. Despite the tension of the moment, or maybe because of it, I found myself stifling the urge to laugh, for if faced with the same locked gates, I would have exhausted myself opening the lock, never thinking of attacking the hinge.
There is a lesson there
, I thought as Gilbert slipped through the gap.
When the rest of us would have followed, he held up a hand and shook his head, but Andorra made a clicking sound with her tongue. Gilbert looked back questioningly. She tapped her chest. He considered a moment, then nodded, and she slipped through the gap to join him, drawing a thick,
short-bladed knife from a hip sheath and carrying it point down like a great fang. They crossed the yard to the door at the front of the building, and Andorra pressed herself flat to the wall beside it, knife at the ready. Gilbert adjusted his sword and knocked loudly.
There was no response. I saw Gilbert reach for the handle of the door and all at once I remembered the premonition I had experienced at the door to Ariel’s chamber in the Herder Compound. I gave a roar and raced across the yard.
Gilbert swung around in surprise, and I gasped out an explanation. Then he and Andorra stood back as I laid my hand over the lock. To my relief, it was merely a rather simple lock, so I focused my mind to turn the tumblers and opened the door.
It was too dark to see anything. I stepped inside and sent out a general probe. Then I turned to Gilbert and Andorra, who had entered behind me. “Either there is no one here or someone is trying to make it seem so. There are just two places I can’t probe.”
Gilbert nodded and knelt to remove a lantern from his pack; then he rummaged for a tinderbox with which to light it. Andorra had gone to summon Jak and the Sadorian man, and they arrived just as the lantern wick caught. We all stared about at the room we had entered. There was not a piece of furniture and no rug on the floor or hanging upon the stone walls, but there was a large hearth where a fire had been laid but not lit and three doors other than the front one. Gilbert went to light the fire, for we were all wet and shivering with cold. I sent out a probe again. Still there was nothing, but I had not truly expected to find anyone.
“The place seems empty,” Gilbert said, regarding the fire critically before prodding two pieces of wood into different
positions. Then he looked up at me and frowned. “You’d better stay here and thaw out a bit. You too,” he said to Jak. “The Sadorians and I will take one of those doors each and make a preliminary search of the place?” He phrased it as a question, and the Sadorians nodded as one. After they had gone, I turned back to the fire.
“Take off the coat so the heat can get to you,” Jak said through chattering teeth, removing his own. I obeyed, and he took both and hung them on hooks by the hearth. Then he rummaged in his own bag and withdrew a wide metal pan and a small pot, which he carried outside.
“It will take hours to fill them,” I protested. “Surely there is a supply of water in this place.”
“I have set them under a downpipe from the roof,” Jak said mildly, squatting down and stretching his hands out to the flames. “We will certainly need something to warm us after we search this building. It is a queer chilly place to call home, I must say, yet mayhap it matches the strange cold shape of Ariel’s soul.”
I stared down at him, startled to hear a teknoguilder wax poetic. Then I turned, too, and squatted to be closer to the flames. It would be some time before the fire emitted much real heat, but the brightness was heartening. Shortly, Gilbert and the Sadorians returned to say they had found nothing to suggest that the building was inhabited. I was ready to begin searching, but Jak said he would make some porridge, for we would all search the better for eating. I disliked wasting time, but I was hungry, and I was as glad as the others to accept a bowl and devour it.
Warmed inside and out, we were then ready to begin searching in earnest. As we ate, Jak had told us what we ought to be looking for. Now he warned us very seriously to touch
nothing and summon him if we found anything that looked like a room a healer might use or perhaps a dye worker or even a candle or perfume maker.
We split into two parties, for one of the passages leading back from the entrance had led only to a door that opened into an enormous rain-swept courtyard. Jak would take one of the other passages with the Sadorian man, named Hakim, while Andorra and I would take the third with Gilbert, who had found a store of lanterns and oil for us to carry.
“What bothers me is where the servants are,” Gilbert said as we walked along the hall. We did not bother opening any doors, because he had already checked this area.
“I suppose Ariel dismissed them when he left,” I said, “though it seems it would have been too far for people from Cloistertown to travel each day. Maybe they stayed here. There are certainly bedchambers and common chambers enough for an army of servants. He might also have used the nulls. That is what he did on Herder Isle.”
We reached a turn in the passage where Gilbert looked back to say that henceforth we must search, for this was as far as he had got earlier. Gilbert moved ahead, saying Andorra should check one side of the corridor and I the other.
To begin with, every door I opened belonged to a bedchamber, but unlike those closer to the front door, these had locks and, therefore, must be slave accommodations. Each chamber was as bare as most of the rooms and halls, equipped with a bed, chest, shelves, and a mat on the floor. I flipped over each mat until Gilbert noticed and asked me why. I told him that I was looking for trapdoors, and he reminded me that the whole place was built on a great raft of solid rock.
As we continued, I found myself thinking of Domick and
Rushton, who must also have traversed these halls. Had they been conscious, walking with their hands chained behind their backs, or had they simply awakened in cells? Long ago I had experienced a vision of Domick in a cell, and I was suddenly convinced that cell was here. I shivered, profoundly glad that Rushton was safely aboard the
Umborine
.
Thoughts of the ship turned my attention to Brydda and the Sadorian who had mastered the third ship boat and the rest of Gwynedd’s armsfolk ashore. I could only pray that they had merely missed the entrance and had returned to the greatship. How would I tell Brydda’s parents if he perished? How would I bear his loss?
Then I thought of Gwynedd, wondering if he and the others had reached Cloistertown safely, and what sort of reception the Per had given them. Brydda had told me that Gwynedd had no intention of revealing that he was kin to the last Norse king unless he needed to induce the Norselanders to help him. I could not help but wonder why he imagined they would believe him, but according to Brydda, the Norselander had no doubts on that account.
Gilbert and Andorra were walking more quickly than I, and a little pool of darkness had opened between our lanterns. I hastened to catch up as the horrible thought crept into my mind that, despite my certainty of Ariel’s departure from Norseland, I had no proof of it. I might come face to face with Ariel here as I had done so often in the dark and twisting passages of my dreams.
“Come to me,”
he had whispered many times. And now I had.
An hour later, I opened a door to a large bare dining chamber containing a long trestle and some twenty unadorned and
uncushioned chairs. It was the second I had seen, but the first had been a smaller and far more luxuriously appointed room with a thick red rug on the floor and embroidered chairs. There had also been two sitting rooms, one as large and bare as this dining chamber and another about half its size, with soft couches and embroidered chairs with beaded cushions. It looked as if Ariel used the bare rooms to entertain his official guests and kept the smaller more lavish versions for his own use.
“Come and look at this,” Gilbert murmured, beckoning. Andorra and I joined him at an open door to see a lavish bedchamber filled with every conceivable color, texture, and ornament, as well as every conceivable comfort.